Social lives of teenagers, especially high school students, are always centered on their peer groups. As every country has different cultures, natures of peer groups vary in each country. From my own experience and reading the Murray’s essay, Japanese and American high school peer groups are very different when considering how much they are related to student’s status.
Japanese high school peer grouping is nothing to do with student’s status compared to that of American high school student. As Murray says, it seems that peer groups are significantly important for American students, considering the fact that with whom they hang out is fairly influential to their status. However, on the other hand, Japanese peer grouping is simpler. Students belong to group in which they can fit the best, no matter how much popularity they can get from staying in the group. Therefore, Japanese high school peer groups tend to derive from each club. For example, soccer team members always stay with teammates. In my opinion, the reason why peer grouping for American students can be directly related to their status is that students live in or are from the same community or town, so they all know each other well, compared to Japanese students. Thus, they know who is popular or not. However, on the other hand since Japanese high school has students from fairly large area, students barely know each other, so they cannot judge about each other from the beginning. As a result, all students have equal status and never try to gain different status from others actively because of Japanese nature of conformity with everybody.
In conclusion, by comparing natures of Japanese and American, it seems to me that peer grouping in context with status is significantly influenced by the cultures of the countries, such as community and their implication to status.
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