This book provides a comprehensive overview of the impact of low birth-rates and population decline on Japan and Germany. Experts from both countries examine a broad range of issues, from demographic change, social ageing, family policies, family formation, work-life balance, domestic and international migration to business perspectives and labour market issues. Focussed on Japan and Germany, two highly developed countries with extremely low fertility, the chapters of this volume also refer to several other countries for comparison. In the absence of war, famine and pandemics, rapid population decline is a new phenomenon. Japan and Germany are struggling with this reality, but many other countries will follow their example.
Focusing on the post war reconstruction of the education systems in Japan and Germany under U.S. military occupation after World War II, this book offers a comparative historical investigation of education reform policies in these two war ravaged and ideologically compromised countries. While in Japan large-scale reforms were undertaken swiftly after the end of the war, the U.S. zone in Germany maintained most of the traditional aspects of the German education system. Why did Japan so readily accept ideas and values developed in the allied countries while Germany resisted? Masako Shibata explores this question, arguing that the role of the university and the pattern of elite formation, which can be traced back to the period of the formation of Meiji Japan and the Kaiserreich, created the conditions for differing reactions from educational leaders in each country; this had a decisive impact on the proposed reforms. By examining these reactions through a sociological, cultural, and historical frame, an explanation emerges. Japan and Germany under the U.S. Occupation will prove to be a valuable resource both to scholars of history and education reform.
Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject Ethnology / Cultural Anthropology, grade: 88%, Venice International University, 26 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Japan and Germany, two of the most powerful nations in the world, are strongly connected, but still the people in these countries know very few about each other. In this work the reader should get an overview about both countries so that somebody who doesn't hava a good knowledge gets an impression of these countries. In interviews people from both countries were asked what they think about each other, what prejudices they have, how they see the relationship between their countries and which experiences they have made in their own countries. For sure, this can not be seen represantative for all inhabitants, but it gives an impression of the thoughts of younger people in a world, which becomes closer and closer and in which no country can stand isolated. A generalization e.g. "The Germans, or the Japanese do..." isn't adequate, because the scientists cannot say that a whole country behaves equally. Because of the process of globalization it is essential for politicians and managers who work in Japan and reversly to know about the customs in the host country. That is the point, where the work of a modern cultural anthropologist is useful and needed. Imagine a business man from Germany to be in Japan and not knowing why the Japanese bow to greet. Maybe he thinks, the Japanese wants to attack him by running into his stomach? It is difficult to write about a country you have never been to, so the sources are based on the interviewed people, facts written in books and another useful medium is the internet. In order to compare the two countries it is indispensable that the reader knows some facts about the countries. So, in the first part of this paper the aim is to inform the reader about the geographical situation, the political system and the religion in the two countries. The
Cognitive-strategic capabilities of a country are decisive for overcoming the strong path dependence in climate-related policies and to achieve ecological and economic modernization. This is the result of a unique comparison approach focusing on four highly intertwined policy areas (Automobiles, Nuclear Energy, Renewables and Rare Earth) in Japan and Germany. Both countries have in principle sufficient economic, technological and institutional capacities for an ecological transformation, but they are lacking an integrated policy strategy to mobilize and organize the existing capacities in favor of structural changes. The focused four policy areas are analyzed in depth and compared by experts from political science.
In this now classic book, internationally famed journalist Ian Buruma examines how Germany and Japan have attempted to come to terms with their conduct during World War II—a war that they aggressively began and humiliatingly lost, and in the course of which they committed monstrous war crimes. As he travels through both countries, to Berlin and Tokyo, Hiroshima and Auschwitz, he encounters people who are remarkably honest in confronting the past and others who astonish by their evasions of responsibility, some who wish to forget the past and others who wish to use it as a warning against the resurgence of militarism. Buruma explores these contrasting responses to the war and the two countries’ very different ways of memorializing its atrocities, as well as the ways in which political movements, government policies, literature, and art have been shaped by its shadow. Today, seventy years after the end of the war, he finds that while the Germans have for the most part coped with the darkest period of their history, the Japanese remain haunted by historical controversies that should have been resolved long ago. Sensitive yet unsparing, complex and unsettling, this is a profound study of how people face up to or deny terrible legacies of guilt and shame.
This parallel study of the post-war ‘resurrection’ of two defeated nations provides a striking new and insightful analysis into the nature of Germany and Japan’s recovery – highlighting in particular the shared cultural, linguistic, moral and technological factors that were essential for this ‘phoenix’ phenomenon to take place.
First study of the fascinating parallelism that characterizes developments in Japan and Germany by one of Germany's leading Japan specialists. With the founding of their respective national states, the Meiji Empire in 1869 and the German Reich in 1871, Japan and Germany entered world politics. Since then both countries have developed in strikingly similar ways, and it is not surprising that these two became close allies during the Second World War, although in the end this proved a "fatal attraction."
Considering the great influence textbooks have as interpreters of history, politics and culture to future generations of citizens, it is no surprise that they generate considerable controversy. Focusing largely on textbook treatment of lingering - and sometimes explosive - tensions originating in World War II, "Censoring History" addresses issues of textbook nationalism in historical and comparative perspective. Discussions include Japan's Comfort Women and the Nanjing Massacre; Nazi genocide against the Jews, Gypsies, Catholics and others; Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Indochina wars. The essays address controversies over textbook content around the globe: How and why do specific representations of war evolve? What are the international and national forces affecting how textbook writers, publishers and state censors depict the past? How do these forces differ from country to country? Other comparative essays analyze nationalist and war controversies in German, US and Chinese textbook debates.
The institutional arrangements governing skill formation are widely seen as a key element in the institutional constellations defining 'varieties of capitalism' across the developed democracies. This book explores the origins and evolution of such institutions in four countries - Germany, Britain, the United States and Japan. It traces cross-national differences in contemporary training regimes back to the nineteenth century, and specifically to the character of the political settlement achieved among employers in skill-intensive industries, artisans, and early trade unions. The book also tracks evolution and change in training institutions over a century of development, uncovering important continuities through putative 'break points' in history. Crucially, it also provides insights into modes of institutional change that are incremental but cumulatively transformative. The study underscores the limits of the most prominent approaches to institutional change, and identifies the political processes through which the form and functions of institutions can be radically reconfigured over time.
"In The Origins of Nonliberal Capitalism, German sociologists and American and Japanese political scientists draw extensively on the work of economists and historians from their home countries, as well as from the United Kingdom and France. The contributors analyze the historical origins of nonliberal capitalism in Germany and Japan from two perspectives: the emergence and survival of a capitalism that does not assume liberal ideas and ideology; and the causes of difference between the systems of Germany and Japan. They also outline the requirements for internally coherent national models of an embedded capitalist economy."--BOOK JACKET.
