Work and Lifecourse in Japan
Work and Lifecourse in Japan

Author: David W. Plath

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 1984-06-30

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 1438416229

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The durability of Japan's industrial products now holds world acclaim. But the durability of jobs in Japan—despite misleading Western images of lifetime employment—is no better than in other industrial nations. The "group model" of Japanese society that has been in fashion in the West confuses the goals of an organization with the personal aims and aspirations of its members. Like workers anywhere, those in Japan must go through life reconciling their duties to the job with their often conflicting obligations to family, to community, and to self-respect. Career outcomes are anything but certain in Japan—once we see them from a worker's point of view. Work and Lifecourse in Japan is a collection of workers' eye-level reports on career development in a variety of Japanese organizations and professions. In addition, there are overview chapters on employment trends in the Japanese economy, and on the problems of scheduling one's life-events in the demanding milieu of our post-industrial world.

Re-made in Japan
Re-made in Japan

Author: Joseph Jay Tobin

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 1992-01-01

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9780300060829

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Colonel Sanders, Elvis, Mickey Mouse, and Jack Daniels have been enthusiastically embraced by Japanese consumers in recent decades. But rather than simply imitate or borrow from the West, the Japanese reinterpret and transform Western products and practices to suit their culture. This entertaining and enlightening book shows how in the process of domesticating foreign goods and customs, the Japanese have created a culture in which once-exotic practices (such as ballroom dancing) have become familiar, and once- familiar practices (such as public bathing) have become exotic. Written by scholars from anthropology, sociology, and the humanities, the book ranges from analyses of Tokyo Disneyland and the Japanese passion for the Argentinean tango to discussions of Japanese haute couture and the search for an authentic nouvelle cuisine japonaise. These topics are approached from a variety of perspectives, with explorations of the interrelations of culture, ideology, and national identity and analyses of the roles that gender, class, generational, and regional differences play in the patterning of Japanese consumption. The result is a fascinating look at a dynamic society that is at once like and unlike our own.

Configurations of Family in Contemporary Japan
Configurations of Family in Contemporary Japan

Author: Tomoko Aoyama

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-09-15

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 1317974980

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The middle-class nuclear family model has long dominated discourses on family in Japan. Yet there have always been multiple configurations of family and kinship, which, in the context of significant socio-economic and demographic shifts since the 1990s, have become increasingly visible in public discourse. This book explores the meanings and practices of "family" in Japan, and brings together research by scholars of literature, gender studies, media and cultural studies, sociology and anthropology. While the primary focus is the "Japanese" family, it also examines the experience and practice of family beyond the borders of Japan, in such settings as Brazil, Australia, and Bali. The chapters explore key issues such as ageing, single households, non-heterosexual living arrangements and parenting. Moreover, many of the issues addressed, such as the growing diversity of family, the increase in single-person households, and the implications of an ageing society, are applicable to other mature, late-industrial societies. Employing both multi- and inter-disciplinary approaches, this book combines textual analysis of contemporary television, film, literature, manga, anime and other media with empirical and ethnographic studies of families in Japan and in transnational spaces. As such, it will be of great interest to students and scholars working across a number of fields including Japanese culture and society, sociology of family, gender studies, film and media studies, literature and cultural studies, and gerontology.

Constructs For Understanding Japan
Constructs For Understanding Japan

Author: Yoshio Sugimoto

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-09-05

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 113614370X

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First published in 1989. This volume has emerged from the International Colloquium on the Comparative Study of Japanese Society. Held at Noosa Heads in Queensland from 29 January to 6 February 1982, the colloquium brought together participants from eight countries to discuss about thirty papers. The participants came with a common sense of dissatisfaction with the 'group model' or 'consensus-oriented theories' as a means of understanding Japanese society. The papers and discussion focused on alternative approaches for conceptualizing Japanese society and on methodological issues in the comparative study of Japanese society.

Re-Imaging Japanese Women
Re-Imaging Japanese Women

Author: Anne E. Imamura

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1996-07-31

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 9780520202634

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Re-Imaging Japanese Women takes a revealing look at women whose voices have only recently begun to be heard in Japanese society: politicians, practitioners of traditional arts, writers, radicals, wives, mothers, bar hostesses, department store and blue-collar workers. This unique collection of essays gives a broad, interdisciplinary view of contemporary Japanese women while challenging readers to see the development of Japanese women's lives against the backdrop of domestic and global change. These essays provide a "second generation" analysis of roles, issues and social change. The collection brings up to date the work begun in Gail Lee Bernstein's Recreating Japanese Women, 1600-1945 (California, 1991), exploring disparities between the current range of images of Japanese women and the reality behind the choices women make.

Identity, Gender, and Status in Japan
Identity, Gender, and Status in Japan

Author: Takie Lebra

Publisher: Global Oriental

Published: 2007-06-21

Total Pages: 469

ISBN-13: 9004213414

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As one of Japan’s leading post-war anthropologists, the writings of Takie Lebra have had significant impact on Western understanding and appreciation of the structures and workings of Japanese society. In particular, her research into the notions of self and self-other relationships, issues of gender and women and motherhood has provided a new paradigm in the way these issues are now addressed. Similarly, her analysis of the status culture of royalty and the aristocracy in Japan, based on extensive field study, which culminated in her book Above the Clouds: Status Culture of the Modern Japanese Nobility (1993), has been widely regarded as the most important contribution of its kind to date. This volume brings together twenty-four of the author’s key papers on the three principal areas of her research over the last thirty-five years, and includes a complete Bibliography of her published writings, subdivided into books, articles in journals or as book chapters, and book reviews. The collection is introduced by Takie Lebra herself, in which she first ‘reviews’ selected essays appearing in the volume, along with a consideration of the contemporary controversy surrounding the imperial succession. In conclusion, by way of a personal ‘mini memoir’, she offers what she terms ‘a sentimental reverie on my own self as a “native outsider”’.

Ceremony and Ritual in Japan
Ceremony and Ritual in Japan

Author: D. P. Martinez

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-02-01

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 1134818548

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Japan is one of the most urbanised and industrialised countries in the world. Yet the Japanese continue to practise a variety of religious rituals and ceremonies despite the high-tech, highly regimented nature of Japanese society. Ceremony and Ritual in Japan focuses on the traditional and religious aspects of Japanese society from an anthropological perspective, presenting new material and making cross-cultural comparisons. The chapters in this collection cover topics as diverse as funerals and mourning, sweeping, women's roles in ritual, the division of ceremonial foods into bitter and sweet, the history of a shrine, the playing of games, the exchange of towels and the relationship between ceremony and the workplace. The book provides an overview of the meaning of tradition, and looks at the way in which new ceremonies have sprung up in changing circumstances, while old ones have been preserved, or have developed new meanings.

Capturing Contemporary Japan
Capturing Contemporary Japan

Author: Satsuki Kawano

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2014-08-31

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 082483870X

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What are people’s life experiences in present-day Japan? This timely volume addresses fundamental questions vital to understanding Japan in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Its chapters collectively reveal a questioning of middle-class ideals once considered the essence of Japaneseness. In the postwar model household a man was expected to obtain a job at a major firm that offered life-long employment; his counterpart, the “professional” housewife, managed the domestic sphere and the children, who were educated in a system that provided a path to mainstream success. In the past twenty years, however, Japanese society has seen a sharp increase in precarious forms of employment, higher divorce rates, and a widening gap between haves and have-nots. Contributors draw on rich, nuanced fieldwork data collected during the 2000s to examine work, schooling, family and marital relations, child rearing, entertainment, lifestyle choices, community support, consumption and waste, material culture, well-being, aging, death and memorial rites, and sexuality. The voices in these pages vary widely: They include schoolchildren, teenagers, career women, unmarried women, young mothers, people with disabilities, small business owners, organic farmers, retirees, and the elderly.