The purpose of this article is to review the studies on self-esteem during last 10 years in Japan and to examine the usefulness of the concept of self-esteem and the validity of the self-esteem scales. It is shown that high self-esteem individuals are different from low self-esteem individuals in various social cognitions and behaviors in Japan as well as USA, but that the Rosenberg\u27s self-esteem scale is not good enough fot understanding "self-esteem" of Japanese people
