Author: Sally Ann Hastings
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN: 0822977184
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 291
Book Description
In this pre-World War II analysis of working-class areas of Tokyo, primarily its Honjo ward, Hastings shows that bureaucrats, particularly in the Home Ministry, were concerned with the needs of their citizens and took significant steps to protect the city's working families and the poor. She also demonstrates that the public participated broadly in politics, through organizations such as reservist groups, national youth leagues, neighborhood organizations, as well as growing suffrage and workplace organizations.
Neighborhood and Nation in Tokyo, 1905–1937
Author: Sally Ann Hastings
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN: 0822977184
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 291
Book Description
In this pre-World War II analysis of working-class areas of Tokyo, primarily its Honjo ward, Hastings shows that bureaucrats, particularly in the Home Ministry, were concerned with the needs of their citizens and took significant steps to protect the city's working families and the poor. She also demonstrates that the public participated broadly in politics, through organizations such as reservist groups, national youth leagues, neighborhood organizations, as well as growing suffrage and workplace organizations.
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN: 0822977184
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 291
Book Description
In this pre-World War II analysis of working-class areas of Tokyo, primarily its Honjo ward, Hastings shows that bureaucrats, particularly in the Home Ministry, were concerned with the needs of their citizens and took significant steps to protect the city's working families and the poor. She also demonstrates that the public participated broadly in politics, through organizations such as reservist groups, national youth leagues, neighborhood organizations, as well as growing suffrage and workplace organizations.
Neighborhood Associations and Local Governance in Japan
Author: Robert J. Pekkanen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317754425
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 317
Book Description
Although local neighborhood associations are found in many countries, Japan’s are distinguished by their ubiquity, scope of activities, and very high participation rates, making them important for the study of society and politics. Most Japanese belong to one local neighborhood association or another, making them Japan’s most numerous civil society organization, and one that powerfully shapes governance outcomes in the country. And, they also often blur the state-society boundary, making them theoretically intriguing. Neighborhood Associations and Local Governance in Japan draws on a unique and novel body of empirical data derived from the first national survey of neighborhood associations carried out in 2007 and provides a multifaceted empirical portrait of Japan’s neighborhood associations. It examines how local associational structures affect the quality of local governance, and thus the quality of life for Japan’s citizens and residents, and illuminates the way in which these ambiguous associations can help us refine civil society theory and show how they contribute to governance. As well as outlining the key features of neighbourhood associations, the book goes on to examine in detail the way in which neighbourhood associations contribute to governance, in terms of social capital, networks with other community organizations, social service provision, cooperation with local governments and political participation. This book will be welcomed by students and scholars of Japanese politics, Japanese society, anthropology, urban studies as well as those interested in social capital and civil society.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317754425
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 317
Book Description
Although local neighborhood associations are found in many countries, Japan’s are distinguished by their ubiquity, scope of activities, and very high participation rates, making them important for the study of society and politics. Most Japanese belong to one local neighborhood association or another, making them Japan’s most numerous civil society organization, and one that powerfully shapes governance outcomes in the country. And, they also often blur the state-society boundary, making them theoretically intriguing. Neighborhood Associations and Local Governance in Japan draws on a unique and novel body of empirical data derived from the first national survey of neighborhood associations carried out in 2007 and provides a multifaceted empirical portrait of Japan’s neighborhood associations. It examines how local associational structures affect the quality of local governance, and thus the quality of life for Japan’s citizens and residents, and illuminates the way in which these ambiguous associations can help us refine civil society theory and show how they contribute to governance. As well as outlining the key features of neighbourhood associations, the book goes on to examine in detail the way in which neighbourhood associations contribute to governance, in terms of social capital, networks with other community organizations, social service provision, cooperation with local governments and political participation. This book will be welcomed by students and scholars of Japanese politics, Japanese society, anthropology, urban studies as well as those interested in social capital and civil society.
The Social Construction of Democracy
Author: George Reid Andrews
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814715060
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 401
Book Description
The recent revival of democracy across much of the globe, and the fragility of many of the new regimes, have inspired renewed interest in the origins of dictatorship and democracy in modern times. This book assembles renowned specialists on Eastern and Western Europe, the U.S., Latin America, and Japan to explore why democracies have succeeded and why they have failed over the past 100 years.
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814715060
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 401
Book Description
The recent revival of democracy across much of the globe, and the fragility of many of the new regimes, have inspired renewed interest in the origins of dictatorship and democracy in modern times. This book assembles renowned specialists on Eastern and Western Europe, the U.S., Latin America, and Japan to explore why democracies have succeeded and why they have failed over the past 100 years.
Passages to Modernity
Author: Kathleen S. Uno
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824821371
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252
Book Description
Contemporary Japanese women are often presented as devoted full-time wives and mothers. At the extreme, they are stereotyped as "education mothers" (kyoiku mama), completely dedicated to the academic success of their children. Children of working mothers are pitied; day-care users, both children and mothers, are faintly disparaged for their inadequate home lives; hired babysitters are virtually unknown. Yet historical evidence reveals a strikingly different picture of Japanese motherhood and childcare at the beginning of the twentieth century. In contrast to today, child tending by non-maternal caregivers was widely accepted at all levels of Japanese society. Day-care centers flourished, and there was virtually no expectation of exclusive maternal care of children, even infants. The patterns of the formation of modern Japanese attitudes toward motherhood, childhood, child-rearing, and home life become visible as this study traces the early twentieth-century rise of Japanese day-care centers, institutions established by middle-class philanthropists and reformers to provide for the physical well-being and mental and moral development of urban lower-class preschool children. Day-care gained broad support in turn-of-the-century Japan for several reasons. For one, day-care did not clash with widely accepted norms of child care. A second factor was the perception of public and private policymakers that day-care held the promise of social and national progress through economic and moral betterment of the urban lower classes. Finally, day-care offered working mothers the opportunity to earn a better livelihood with fewer worries about their children. In spite of emerging notions that total devotion to child-rearing was a woman's highest calling, Japanese nationalism, a signal force in the genesis of the modern Japanese state, economy, and middle-class culture, fed a deep wellspring of support for day-care and fostered significant reshaping of motherhood, childhood, home life, and view of the urban lower classes. Passages to Modernity is an important and original contribution to our understanding of the institutional and ideological reach of the early twentieth-century state and the contested emergence of a striking new discourse about woman as domestic caregiver and homemaker.
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824821371
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252
Book Description
Contemporary Japanese women are often presented as devoted full-time wives and mothers. At the extreme, they are stereotyped as "education mothers" (kyoiku mama), completely dedicated to the academic success of their children. Children of working mothers are pitied; day-care users, both children and mothers, are faintly disparaged for their inadequate home lives; hired babysitters are virtually unknown. Yet historical evidence reveals a strikingly different picture of Japanese motherhood and childcare at the beginning of the twentieth century. In contrast to today, child tending by non-maternal caregivers was widely accepted at all levels of Japanese society. Day-care centers flourished, and there was virtually no expectation of exclusive maternal care of children, even infants. The patterns of the formation of modern Japanese attitudes toward motherhood, childhood, child-rearing, and home life become visible as this study traces the early twentieth-century rise of Japanese day-care centers, institutions established by middle-class philanthropists and reformers to provide for the physical well-being and mental and moral development of urban lower-class preschool children. Day-care gained broad support in turn-of-the-century Japan for several reasons. For one, day-care did not clash with widely accepted norms of child care. A second factor was the perception of public and private policymakers that day-care held the promise of social and national progress through economic and moral betterment of the urban lower classes. Finally, day-care offered working mothers the opportunity to earn a better livelihood with fewer worries about their children. In spite of emerging notions that total devotion to child-rearing was a woman's highest calling, Japanese nationalism, a signal force in the genesis of the modern Japanese state, economy, and middle-class culture, fed a deep wellspring of support for day-care and fostered significant reshaping of motherhood, childhood, home life, and view of the urban lower classes. Passages to Modernity is an important and original contribution to our understanding of the institutional and ideological reach of the early twentieth-century state and the contested emergence of a striking new discourse about woman as domestic caregiver and homemaker.
Parkscapes
Author: Thomas R. H. Havens
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824860594
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
Japan today protects one-seventh of its land surface in parks, which are visited by well over a billion people each year. Parkscapes analyzes the origins, development, and distinctive features of these public spaces. Green zones were created by the government beginning in the late nineteenth century for state purposes but eventually evolved into sites of negotiation between bureaucrats and ordinary citizens who use them for demonstrations, riots, and shelters, as well as recreation. Thomas Havens shows how revolutionary officials in the 1870s seized private properties and converted them into public parks for educating and managing citizens in the new emperor-sanctioned state. Rebuilding Tokyo and Yokohama after the earthquake and fires of 1923 spurred the spread of urban parklands both in the capital and other cities. According to Havens, the growth of suburbs, the national mobilization of World War II, and the post-1945 American occupation helped speed the creation of more urban parks, setting the stage for vast increases in public green spaces during Japan’s golden age of affluence from the 1960s through the 1980s. Since the 1990s the Japanese public has embraced a heightened ecological consciousness and become deeply involved in the design and management of both city and natural parks—realms once monopolized by government bureaucrats. As in other prosperous countries, public-private partnerships have increasingly become the norm in operating parks for public benefit, yet the heavy hand of officialdom is still felt throughout Japan’s open lands. Based on extensive research in government documents, travel records, and accounts by frequent park visitors, Parkscapes is the first book in any language to examine the history of both urban and national parks of Japan. As an account of how Japan’s experience of spatial modernity challenges current thinking about protection and use of the nonhuman environment globally, the book will appeal widely to readers of spatial and environmental history as well as those interested in modern Japan and its many inviting green spaces.
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824860594
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
Japan today protects one-seventh of its land surface in parks, which are visited by well over a billion people each year. Parkscapes analyzes the origins, development, and distinctive features of these public spaces. Green zones were created by the government beginning in the late nineteenth century for state purposes but eventually evolved into sites of negotiation between bureaucrats and ordinary citizens who use them for demonstrations, riots, and shelters, as well as recreation. Thomas Havens shows how revolutionary officials in the 1870s seized private properties and converted them into public parks for educating and managing citizens in the new emperor-sanctioned state. Rebuilding Tokyo and Yokohama after the earthquake and fires of 1923 spurred the spread of urban parklands both in the capital and other cities. According to Havens, the growth of suburbs, the national mobilization of World War II, and the post-1945 American occupation helped speed the creation of more urban parks, setting the stage for vast increases in public green spaces during Japan’s golden age of affluence from the 1960s through the 1980s. Since the 1990s the Japanese public has embraced a heightened ecological consciousness and become deeply involved in the design and management of both city and natural parks—realms once monopolized by government bureaucrats. As in other prosperous countries, public-private partnerships have increasingly become the norm in operating parks for public benefit, yet the heavy hand of officialdom is still felt throughout Japan’s open lands. Based on extensive research in government documents, travel records, and accounts by frequent park visitors, Parkscapes is the first book in any language to examine the history of both urban and national parks of Japan. As an account of how Japan’s experience of spatial modernity challenges current thinking about protection and use of the nonhuman environment globally, the book will appeal widely to readers of spatial and environmental history as well as those interested in modern Japan and its many inviting green spaces.
Constructing Subjectivities
Author: Noboru Tomonari
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 9780739117163
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Book Description
Constructing Subjectivities addresses the relationship between memory and modernity and its relevance to Japanese autobiographical texts. Tomonari construes autobiographies as embodying memory in modernity, and regards the conditions of modernity as having determined, in part, the shape of autobiographical texts. At the same time, however, he argues that Japanese autobiographies were not simply bound to the cultural and social norms of the time, but rather that the texts themselves were among the main agents of fostering Japanese modernity. The autobiographies he discusses served to initiate certain societal transitions and took part in the remaking of social norms and conventions. According to Constructing Subjectivities, mnemonic texts were crucial to the construction of modern ideological discourses such as those on the self, the family, entrepreneurship, the roles of women, and the nation. The study of this discursive process enables us to understand how the Japanese themselves tried to control the form of modernity that materialized in Japan. Because autobiography constructed and embodied collective memory at this time, analyzing the discursive process is also crucial to understanding both contemporary Japan and the self-perception of the Japanese people.
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 9780739117163
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Book Description
Constructing Subjectivities addresses the relationship between memory and modernity and its relevance to Japanese autobiographical texts. Tomonari construes autobiographies as embodying memory in modernity, and regards the conditions of modernity as having determined, in part, the shape of autobiographical texts. At the same time, however, he argues that Japanese autobiographies were not simply bound to the cultural and social norms of the time, but rather that the texts themselves were among the main agents of fostering Japanese modernity. The autobiographies he discusses served to initiate certain societal transitions and took part in the remaking of social norms and conventions. According to Constructing Subjectivities, mnemonic texts were crucial to the construction of modern ideological discourses such as those on the self, the family, entrepreneurship, the roles of women, and the nation. The study of this discursive process enables us to understand how the Japanese themselves tried to control the form of modernity that materialized in Japan. Because autobiography constructed and embodied collective memory at this time, analyzing the discursive process is also crucial to understanding both contemporary Japan and the self-perception of the Japanese people.
Family and Social Policy in Japan
Author: Roger Goodman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521016353
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
Table of contents
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521016353
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
Table of contents
A Companion to Japanese History
Author: William M. Tsutsui
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1405193395
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 633
Book Description
A Companion to Japanese History provides an authoritative overview of current debates and approaches within the study of Japan’s history. Composed of 30 chapters written by an international group of scholars Combines traditional perspectives with the most recent scholarly concerns Supplements a chronological survey with targeted thematic analyses Presents stimulating interventions into individual controversies
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1405193395
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 633
Book Description
A Companion to Japanese History provides an authoritative overview of current debates and approaches within the study of Japan’s history. Composed of 30 chapters written by an international group of scholars Combines traditional perspectives with the most recent scholarly concerns Supplements a chronological survey with targeted thematic analyses Presents stimulating interventions into individual controversies
Routledge Handbook of Democratization in East Asia
Author: Tun-jen Cheng
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317559258
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 550
Book Description
This handbook provides a comprehensive analysis of the dynamics and prospects of democratization in East Asia. A team of leading experts in the field offers discussion at both the country and regional level, including analysis of democratic attitudes and movements in China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Evaluating all the key components of regime evolution, from citizen politics to democratic institutions, the sections covered include: • Regional Trends and Country Overviews • Institutions, Elections, and Political Parties • Democratic Citizenship • Democratic Governance • The Political Economy of Democratization Examining the challenges that East Asian emerging democracies still face today, as well as the prospects of the region's authoritarian regimes, the Routledge Handbook of Democratization in East Asia will be useful for students and scholars of East Asian Politics, Comparative Politics, and Asian Studies.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317559258
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 550
Book Description
This handbook provides a comprehensive analysis of the dynamics and prospects of democratization in East Asia. A team of leading experts in the field offers discussion at both the country and regional level, including analysis of democratic attitudes and movements in China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Evaluating all the key components of regime evolution, from citizen politics to democratic institutions, the sections covered include: • Regional Trends and Country Overviews • Institutions, Elections, and Political Parties • Democratic Citizenship • Democratic Governance • The Political Economy of Democratization Examining the challenges that East Asian emerging democracies still face today, as well as the prospects of the region's authoritarian regimes, the Routledge Handbook of Democratization in East Asia will be useful for students and scholars of East Asian Politics, Comparative Politics, and Asian Studies.
The Dynamics of Social Capital and Civic Engagement in Asia
Author: Amrita Daniere
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136456554
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 299
Book Description
The purpose of this volume is to highlight the impacts on civic engagement of social capital, and its various component parts (trust, norms, networks and associations), in diverse parts of Asia. Addressing the pressing need for improved governance within the spatial, political and cultural realities in the rapidly transforming landscapes of Asia, the contributors to the book bring together interdisciplinary work that focuses on the ways in which civic engagement can link with social capital building. The goal of this volume is to inspire policy that recognizes that a vibrant society with access to rich stores of positive social capital requires civil society, alternate civilities and the state. The result is a dialogue on the interplay of social capital and civic engagement in socio-political contexts quite different from those found in the West. This book contributes to current discussions about the nature of social relations and their connection to politics and change and offers a unique lens into the validity of these important concepts in contemporary research across a variety of Asian settings. It will be of interest to social scientists across the board, especially those with an interest in Asia and Asian development.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136456554
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 299
Book Description
The purpose of this volume is to highlight the impacts on civic engagement of social capital, and its various component parts (trust, norms, networks and associations), in diverse parts of Asia. Addressing the pressing need for improved governance within the spatial, political and cultural realities in the rapidly transforming landscapes of Asia, the contributors to the book bring together interdisciplinary work that focuses on the ways in which civic engagement can link with social capital building. The goal of this volume is to inspire policy that recognizes that a vibrant society with access to rich stores of positive social capital requires civil society, alternate civilities and the state. The result is a dialogue on the interplay of social capital and civic engagement in socio-political contexts quite different from those found in the West. This book contributes to current discussions about the nature of social relations and their connection to politics and change and offers a unique lens into the validity of these important concepts in contemporary research across a variety of Asian settings. It will be of interest to social scientists across the board, especially those with an interest in Asia and Asian development.