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Japanese nationalism has gained its peculiar belligerence against the background of the loss of hope. The loss of hope reflects many aspects of Japanese society today, two of which are an increasing income disparity and the loss of upward social mobility. During Japan's Lost Decade of dismal economic growth, higher unemployment, and the retreat of traditional leftist organizations including the Socialist Party and the General Council of Labor Unions of Japan, not only national television networks and national newspapers but also the publishing industry at large seem to have taken a definitive turn toward the political right. The rhetoric of Japanese culturalism has been predominantly obsessed with the image of Japanese distinctiveness, but such rhetoric was produced only in contrast to some fantastic image of Western culture. Modern politics has appealed to the idea of nationality as the basis for its legitimacy and has constituted internationality as relationships among the state sovereignties, each of which is hypothesized to represent its own nation as an ethnolinguistic unity.

This introductory chapter discusses the common misconceptions surrounding Japanese wartime behavior during and after World War II. More specifically, it questions the distinction between the Japanese state—thought to be responsible for the nation's role in the Second World War—and that of the Japanese people, who are often treated as passive victims within the historical narrative. Such a view obscures the underlying complexity surrounding the Japanese wartime behavior and instead creates an image of a nation backwards in its thinking as it is swept into a Westernized power struggle. But rather than observe Japan's history from the actions of the leaders of the state, this book focuses on the “common people” of Japanese society, and how the complex socio-cultural interactions taking place as a whole have come to shape a “bottom-up” characterization that presents Japan as both victim and victimizer.

This chapter talks about the postwar transformation of Japanese disabled veterans into casualties of history. Despite the accolades of the late 1930s and early 1940s, public acclaim for wounded servicemen faded once Japan began to experience Allied bombing raids from late 1944 onward. Ordinary men, women, and children became casualties of war; as a result, praising war-wounded men for their sacrifices became a risky public affair. After the war ended, the Japanese society began to prepare for foreign occupation. When Allied occupation forces started implementing the reforms for demilitarizing Japan, they decided to abolish the wartime systems of preferential treatment for military casualties. The chapter traces the emergence of new state-directed social welfare services that replaced the ones introduced by the Welfare Ministry, such as the Livelihood Protection Law and the Law for the Welfare of Physically Disabled Persons.

This chapter argues that despite the gloomy economic conditions of the early postwar years, some entrepreneurs found immense business opportunities in the emerging new technologies of mass communication. One man in particular—Shōriki Matsutarō, a newspaper magnate who well understood the power and profitability of the media—forged alliances with politicians, bureaucrats, and investors to bring television to Japan much sooner than conventional economic logic would have suggested. In doing so, he both formed a new industry and contributed to the transformation of Japanese society.

The ageing of the population has affected many industrial societies, upsetting the existing balance of financial, material and instrumental resources across generations. The remarkable speed of societal ageing in Japan also poses a considerable challenge to the family and the state partly due to the increasing need for nursing care. This chapter explores, in the context of postwar demographics and socioeconomic and policy changes, the changing patterns of intergenerational relations, and in particular, the reciprocal dimension of the exchange of goods and services between ageing parents and their adult children. Given the specific cultural norms and traditions, this chapter first examines how intergenerational relations have been perceived in Japan, and how they are transforming with particular reference to living arrangements, co-residence in particular, and the provision of nursing care. It also discusses the wider issues linked to the development of social policy as well as gender issues.

This chapter focuses on the very brief history of Japanese sexual harassment laws and presents the landmark Japanese court decision in the Fukuoka case, which introduced the concept of sexual harassment to the Japanese legal community and to Japanese society as a whole. It provides the reader an overview of Japanese sexual harassment law and, to this end, focuses on three points. First, the chapter describes the historical and social context in which the Fukuoka case was brought; second, it describes the impact that the case has had on the subsequent development of Japanese sexual harassment law; and finally, it summarizes the current state of Japanese sexual harassment law and the steps which still need to be taken.

This chapter traces the origins of certain basic structures—so-called building blocks—in Japan that were to last up to about 600 CE. It first provides an overview of Japanese geography and ecology and their impact on economy and society. It then considers hunting and gathering in the period 35,000 BP–900 BCE as well as the transition to agriculture that ushered in an agrarian society. It also examines the gradual evolution of a political consciousness under the Yamato state centered in the Kyoto-Osaka-Nara region. Finally, it discusses Japanese society and economy in 600, focusing on a number of important changes such as a dense and growing population, increasing area of land under cultivation, the emergence of industries such as salt making and metallurgy, the rise of various occupations like fishing and trading, and the establishment of the confederation as the typical political structure.

This chapter introduces the cultural history of exile during the Nara and Heian periods in Japan. The chapter also provides a theoretical framework for the study of exile in Japanese court society. In addition, the introduction explains specific themes underlying the entire book, including the vocabulary of exile, the topic of centers and peripheries, the nature of Japanese court society, and the idea of a Heian “imaginary.”

This book explores various aspects of life in contemporary Japan in terms of the shift toward differentiation and uncertainty and from the perspective of social actors positioned differently in Japanese society, including schoolgirls, teachers, women, mothers of young children, small-business owners, people with disabilities, and the elderly. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted during the first decade of the twenty-first century, the book examines a wide range of topics such as work, schooling, entertainment, lifestyle choices, volunteering, and material culture. It also considers family and marital relations, child rearing, driving manners, aging, death and memorial rituals, divination, and sexuality. Finally, it discusses the importance of self-realization and individuality in today's Japan.

This book has argued that the “environment” in Japan remains intensely Japanese even as it offers numerous facets that shed light on other parts of the world. It has explored what environment in Japan really means by focusing on the strata of Japanese society, revealing Japanese attitudes toward waste and pollution. It has presented evidence showing that urban Japanese attend to, and are in many ways deeply concerned with, their surroundings and participate in elaborate discourses on “nature.” It has also considered how threats to reproduction, conceptions of hygiene, notions of health and illness, shifting boundaries of place and the home, exclusionary mappings of the community, and evocations of nature together influence the social climate of Japan in general and Tokyo in particular. The book concludes by discussing the role that environmental anthropology can play in elucidating the rather underexplored contextual nature of environmental engagement.

This book investigates the influence of the 1855 Ansei Edo earthquake in the context of major earthquakes of Japan's early modern and modern eras. It argues that the Ansei Edo earthquake played a pivotal role in a process of shaping conceptions of Japan in the realms of politics, religion, geography, and natural science. Furthermore, it produced new ideas about human agency vis-à-vis earthquakes that have affected notions of seismicity and society in modern Japan. The book also examines the relevance of time in a society's vulnerability to natural hazards and connects both factors to the Ansei Edo earthquake in terms of when it began and when it ended. This chapter provides some basic information about earthquakes that struck early modern and modern Japan and describes early modern Japanese society by focusing on social and political geography, the nature of bakufu power, mass media and literacy, religious and intellectual milieu, and the belief that earthquakes were caused by catfish living under the earth.

This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to examine changing death rites in Japan's postindustrial society. The central questions asked are: What new constraints and opportunities have emerged to shape post-death trajectories in Japan's postindustrial society, and what innovations have been made to the end-of-life rites to accommodate them? How have such innovations created a new death and a new beyond? Who are the main actors making these changes? Why are they making these changes? What are the implications of these changes for the society and for the actors and their loved ones? Highlighting the perspectives of aging persons who have adopted the practice of scattering ashes to ritualize their own deaths, this study explores the creation of this new memorial strategy in Japan, one that has developed since 1991 as a citizens' movement based at the Grave-Free Promotion Society (GFPS, Sōsō No Jiyū O Susumeru Kai). An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.