Hiroyuki Watanabe, Japan's Whaling: The Politics of Culture in Historical Perspective (Paperback)    [ more ]
Price: $54.95

This is the first English-language book written by a Japanese researcher to challenge the assertion that whaling is 'traditional Japanese culture' and to demonstrate that Japanese whaling has been closely bound to Japan's expansionism. The author investigates how the numerous relationships between people and whales in Japan become reduced to the single relationship of killing whales for their meat.

Leonie Stickland, Gender Gymnastics: Performing and Consuming Japan's Takarazuka Revue    [ more ]
Price: $49.95

The artifice of gender performance - sometimes playful, mostly conscientious - as enthralled and entertained audiences of Japan’s all-female Takarazuka Revue for more than ninety years. The dashing male-role players in its musical theatre productions enjoy the adulation of a predominantly female audience for whom those handsome idols represent ideal masculinity, while those 'men' in turn are reflected and magnified by the overwrought femininity of their female-role counterparts.

Masami Iwata and Akihiko Nishizawa (eds), Poverty and Social Welfare in Japan (Paperback)    [ more ]
Price: $54.95

Poverty in Japan has been concealed in the chorus of admiration recognizing the nation becoming the world's second largest economy in the latter half of the twentieth century. This collection of papers by ten specialists in poverty research unravels the ways in which the poor have been socially excluded in contemporary Japan.

Reiko Kosugi, Escape from Work: Freelancing Youth and the Challenge to Corporate Japan (Paperback)    [ more ]
Price: $54.95

Globalization and heightened competition have accelerated the casualization of work in Japan. Kosugi documents the increase in the number of causal workers in Japan over the past two decades and looks at their demographics. Based on rich interview data and extensive surveys, Kosugi brings together the findings of a large research project carried out in the early years of this century. The study explores ways in which the furitaa, young persons falling outside the normal pattern in making the transition from school to employment, might better be incorporated into Japan's world of regular, full-time employment.

Ryoji Ihara, Toyota's Assembly Line: A View from the Factory Floor (Paperback)    [ more ]
Price: $54.95

Any dedicated Toyota driver and admirer of the Toyota Production System will be shocked to read of Ryoji Ihara's experience as a casual worker in a Toyota factory in Japan. As Toyota Motor Corporation continues its inexorable march to become the world's biggest and most profitable carmaker, workers on the factory floor are making sacrifices under the appalling conditions.

Ihara's book is both a fearless expose and a meticulous academic study firmly situated within the context of the sociology of labor. The work is written in a relaxed, entertaining style that should appeal to any reader with an interest in car making, the sociology of work or Japanese society in general.

Ueno, The Modern Family in Japan: Its Rise and Fall (Paperback)    [ more ]
Price: $54.95

This is an award-winning book that brings together Chizuko Ueno�fs groundbreaking essays on the rise and fall of the modern family in Japan. Combining historical, sociological, anthropological, and journalistic methodologies, Ueno, who is arguably the foremost feminist theoretician in Japan, delineates in vivid detail how the family has been changing in form and function in the last hundred years. In each chapter Ueno introduces the reader to a different facet of modern family life, ranging from children who fantasize being orphans to the elderly who confront 'pre-senescence.'

Yoshifumi Tamada, Myths and Realities: The Democratization of Thai Politics (Paperback)    [ more ]
Price: $54.95

This study traces the current instability of Thai politics back to the 1990s. The book challenges the prevailing view that the nation's democratization process in the decade was led by the active middle class and presents an alternative explanation focusing upon the appeasement of 'passive' forces.