Social Class in Contemporary Japan

Social Class in Contemporary Japan PDF Author: Hiroshi Ishida
Publisher:
ISBN: 0415474752
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 243

Get Book Here

Book Description
Social Class in Contemporary Japan is the first single volume that traces the dynamics of social structure, institutional socialization and class culture through this turbulent period, all the way into the contemporary neoliberal movement. Using an innovative multi-disciplinary approach that includes top scholars working on quantitative class structure, policy development, and ethnographic analysis, this volume highlights the centrality of class formation to our understanding of the many levels of Japanese society. Written by a team of contributors from Japan, the US and Europe, this book will be invaluable to students and scholars of Japanese society and culture, as well as those interested in cultural anthropology and social class alike.

Social Class in Contemporary Japan

Social Class in Contemporary Japan PDF Author: Hiroshi Ishida
Publisher:
ISBN: 0415474752
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 243

Get Book Here

Book Description
Social Class in Contemporary Japan is the first single volume that traces the dynamics of social structure, institutional socialization and class culture through this turbulent period, all the way into the contemporary neoliberal movement. Using an innovative multi-disciplinary approach that includes top scholars working on quantitative class structure, policy development, and ethnographic analysis, this volume highlights the centrality of class formation to our understanding of the many levels of Japanese society. Written by a team of contributors from Japan, the US and Europe, this book will be invaluable to students and scholars of Japanese society and culture, as well as those interested in cultural anthropology and social class alike.

Social Class in Contemporary Japan

Social Class in Contemporary Japan PDF Author: Hiroshi Ishida
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135248176
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 262

Get Book Here

Book Description
Through examination of contemporary Japanese society, this book demonstrates that the analysis of class formation is fundamental for a clear understanding of institutions and collective identity such as family, school work, gender and ethnicity.

Cultural and Social Division in Contemporary Japan

Cultural and Social Division in Contemporary Japan PDF Author: Yoshikazu Shiobara
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351387871
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 270

Get Book Here

Book Description
The recent manifestation of exclusionism in Japan has emerged at a time of intensified neoliberal economic policies, increased cross-border migration brought on by globalization, the elevated threat of global terrorism, heightened tensions between East Asian states over historical and territorial conflicts, and a backlash by Japanese conservatives over perceived historical apologism. The social and political environment for minorities in Japan has shifted drastically since the 1990s, yet many studies of Japan still tend to view Japan through the dominant discourses of “ethnic homogeneity (tanitsu minzoku shakai)” and “middle-class society (so ̄churyu ̄-shakai)” which positions the exclusion of minorities as an exceptional phenomenon. While exclusionism has been recognized as a serious threat to minority groups, it has not often been considered a representative issue for the whole of Japanese society. This tendency will persist until the discourses of tanitsu minzoku shakai and so ̄churyu ̄-shakai are systematically debunked and Japan is widely recognized as both multiethnic and socio-economically stratified. Today, as with most advanced capitalist countries, serious social divides occasioned by the impacts of globalization and neoliberalism have destabilized Japanese society. This book explores not only how Japanese society is diversified and unequal, but also how diversity and inequality have caused people to divide into separate realities from which conflict and violence have emerged. It empirically examines the current situation while considering the historical development of exclusionism from the interdisciplinary viewpoints of history, policy studies, cultural studies, sociology and cultural anthropology. In addition to analyzing the realities of division and exclusionism, the authors propose theoretical alternatives to overcome such cultural and social divides.

Class Structure in Contemporary Japan

Class Structure in Contemporary Japan PDF Author: Kenji Hashimoto
Publisher: Trans Pacific Press
ISBN: 9781876843717
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Get Book Here

Book Description
Based on data collected on 1995 by the Japanese Sociological Association, this book investigates four major classes - new, old middle, capitalist and working - and their characteristics and mobility patterns in terms of income, work, social network, leisure activity, gender relations and voting behaviour.

Single Mothers in Contemporary Japan

Single Mothers in Contemporary Japan PDF Author: Aya Ezawa
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498529976
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 157

Get Book Here

Book Description
Combining work and family remains a major challenge for married women in contemporary Japan, and it’s not uncommon for them to quit working when starting a family. Single mothers, by contrast, almost always work, regardless of the age of their children. Despite their eagerness to support themselves and their children through employment, their average income remains low and many live on a household budget close to the poverty line. This book examines how the difficult living conditions facing single mothers in Japan highlight not only the challenges they face in earning a family wage and managing the work-family balance, but also reveals the class dimensions of family life in contemporary Japan. The need to make ends meet with few resources means that mothers may find it difficult to uphold the lifestyle they may consider as most appropriate for the upbringing of their children, and that they may have to choose between their presence at home, in line with the ideal of the middle-class housewife and mother, or devoting more time to earning an income that can pay for a good education. Social class, in this case, is not just a matter of education, occupation, or income, but is also expressed by mothers’ approaches to their children’s’ upbringing and future opportunities in education and employment. Based on life history interviews with single mothers, this study examines the gendered meanings of social class and social achievement and the role of maternal practices in shaping their children’s future life trajectories.

An Introduction to Japanese Society

An Introduction to Japanese Society PDF Author: Yoshio Sugimoto
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 113948947X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 359

Get Book Here

Book Description
Essential reading for students of Japanese society, An Introduction to Japanese Society now enters its third edition. Here, internationally renowned scholar, Yoshio Sugimoto, writes a sophisticated, yet highly readable and lucid text, using both English and Japanese sources to update and expand upon his original narrative. The book challenges the traditional notion that Japan comprises a uniform culture, and draws attention to its subcultural diversity and class competition. Covering all aspects of Japanese society, it includes chapters on class, geographical and generational variation, work, education, gender, minorities, popular culture and the establishment. This new edition features sections on: Japan's cultural capitalism; the decline of the conventional Japanese management model; the rise of the 'socially divided society' thesis; changes of government; the spread of manga, animation and Japan's popular culture overseas; and the expansion of civil society in Japan.

Precarious Japan

Precarious Japan PDF Author: Anne Allison
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822377241
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Get Book Here

Book Description
In an era of irregular labor, nagging recession, nuclear contamination, and a shrinking population, Japan is facing precarious times. How the Japanese experience insecurity in their daily and social lives is the subject of Precarious Japan. Tacking between the structural conditions of socioeconomic life and the ways people are making do, or not, Anne Allison chronicles the loss of home affecting many Japanese, not only in the literal sense but also in the figurative sense of not belonging. Until the collapse of Japan's economic bubble in 1991, lifelong employment and a secure income were within reach of most Japanese men, enabling them to maintain their families in a comfortable middle-class lifestyle. Now, as fewer and fewer people are able to find full-time work, hope turns to hopelessness and security gives way to a pervasive unease. Yet some Japanese are getting by, partly by reconceiving notions of home, family, and togetherness.

Religious Violence in Contemporary Japan

Religious Violence in Contemporary Japan PDF Author: Ian Reader
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113681941X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 323

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Tokyo subway attack in March 1995 was just one of a series of criminal activities including murder, kidnapping, extortion, and the illegal manufacture of arms and drugs carried out by the Japanese new religious movement Aum Shinrikyo, under the guidance of its leader Asahara Shoko. Reader looks at Aum's claims about itself and asks, why did a religious movement ostensibly focussed on yoga, meditation, asceticism and the pursuit of enlightenment become involved in violent activities? Reader discusses Aum's spiritual roots, placing it in the context of contemporary Japanese religious patterns. Asahara's teaching are examined from his earliest public pronouncements through to his sermons at the time of the attack, and statements he has made in court. In analysing how Aum not only manufactured nerve gases but constructed its own internal doctrinal justifications for using them Reader focuses on the formation of what made all this possible: Aum's internal thought-world, and on how this was developed. Reader argues that despite the horrors of this particular case, Aum should not be seen as unique, nor as solely a political or criminal terror group. Rather it can best be analysed within the context of religious violence, as an extreme example of a religious movement that has created friction with the wider world that escalated into violence.

The Making of Modern Japan

The Making of Modern Japan PDF Author: Marius B. Jansen
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674039106
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 933

Get Book Here

Book Description
Magisterial in vision, sweeping in scope, this monumental work presents a seamless account of Japanese society during the modern era, from 1600 to the present. A distillation of more than fifty years’ engagement with Japan and its history, it is the crowning work of our leading interpreter of the modern Japanese experience. Since 1600 Japan has undergone three periods of wrenching social and institutional change, following the imposition of hegemonic order on feudal society by the Tokugawa shogun; the opening of Japan’s ports by Commodore Perry; and defeat in World War II. The Making of Modern Japan charts these changes: the social engineering begun with the founding of the shogunate in 1600, the emergence of village and castle towns with consumer populations, and the diffusion of samurai values in the culture. Marius Jansen covers the making of the modern state, the adaptation of Western models, growing international trade, the broadening opportunity in Japanese society with industrialization, and the postwar occupation reforms imposed by General MacArthur. Throughout, the book gives voice to the individuals and views that have shaped the actions and beliefs of the Japanese, with writers, artists, and thinkers, as well as political leaders given their due. The story this book tells, though marked by profound changes, is also one of remarkable consistency, in which continuities outweigh upheavals in the development of society, and successive waves of outside influence have only served to strengthen a sense of what is unique and native to Japanese experience. The Making of Modern Japan takes us to the core of this experience as it illuminates one of the contemporary world’s most compelling transformations.

Routledge Handbook of Japanese Culture and Society

Routledge Handbook of Japanese Culture and Society PDF Author: Victoria Bestor
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1136736271
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Get Book Here

Book Description
This Handbook is an interdisciplinary resource that focuses on contemporary Japan and the social and cultural trends that are important at the beginning of the twenty-first century.