Kaori Kawai (ed.), Groups: The Evolution of Human Sociality    [ more ]
Price: $109.95

This volume is the product of a collaborative project based at the Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. Researchers primarily involved in three fields -- primate sociology and ecology, ecological anthropology and socio-cultural anthropology -- came together to discuss the shape and variations of groups as sympatric entities and the evolutionary historical foundations that have led to the orientation of groups in present-day human society. To that end, the chapters in this volume turn to non-human primates for comparative purposes to consider the nature of the evolutionary historical foundations of sociality.

Katsuya Minamida and Izumi Tsuji (eds), Pop Culture and the Everyday in Japan (Paperback)    [ more ]
Price: $34.95

Manga, anime, J-pop and other forms of Japan's mass culture are increasingly popular around the world, a situation which requires structural, demographic and communicative research from sociological perspectives. In this study, a group of young Japanese sociologists scrutinizes the sociological foundations of the ways in which the Japanese people produce and consume cultural commodities and live their everyday lives surrounded by these products.

Marc Humbert and Yoshimichi Sato (eds), Social Exclusion: Perspectives from France and Japan (Paperback)    [ more ]
Price: $34.95

This book analyses and contrasts the French and Japanese experiences of social exclusion. Although social exclusion in France and Japan are in many respects quite similar and in important respects they are quite different. Using a wide array of methodologies, the authors present a diverse range of perspectives on the problematic of social exclusion as well as suggesting various ways that it might be resolved.

Masako Ito, Politics of Ethnic Classification in Vietnam    [ more ]
Price: $94.95

Officially, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam has a total of 54 ethnic groups, including the majority Kinh and 53 ethnic minority groups. In this book, Ito Masako examines the history of the ethnic group determination process, highlighting some of the challenges the official policies pose to both the state and the affected peoples.

Sawako Shirahase (ed.), Demographic Change and Inequality in Japan (Paperback)    [ more ]
Price: $34.95

Japan is a rapidly aging society, with a declining birthrate and increasing lifespan. The nation's youth tend to marry late, and some never engage in this form of social contract. Further, the number of couples without children is on the rise, and the proportion of senior citizens in the age pyramid is growing at exceptional speed. Demographic change that reflects these transformations now impacts the country's system of social stratification and inequality. In this collective study, a group of leading Japanese sociologists scrutinizes hidden disparities behind the demographic shifts.

Toshiaki Kimura (ed.), Social Stratification in Cultural Contexts: Cases from East and Southeast Asia (hardcover)    [ more ]
Price: $89.95

This book is a collection drawn from research results of the East Asian Division of the Center for the Study of Social Stratification and Inequality at Tohoku University. In this book, seven scholars who specialize in areas of East and Southeast Asia examine how the problem of stratification manifests in different cultural and historical contexts, discussing when and in what circumstances the problem of stratification has become more serious and suggesting how the tension could be eased.

Yasuko Takezawa (ed.), Racial Representations in Asia    [ more ]
Price: $89.95

Though there is no biological validity to race, it continues to play a central role in various aspects of our daily lives. What, then, generates and reinforces the reality of race, and in what ways? In order to explore these questions, this book examines racial representations from both scientific and humanistic perspectives, taking into account both historical and contemporary views. This incisive anthology is the product of an interdisciplinary collaboration among scholars whose backgrounds vary from Japan to Korea, Singapore, Germany, Israel/Iraq, and the United States.

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

Reprinted again, 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.

Chizuko 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's 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.'

Deborah M. Aoki, Widows of Japan: An Anthropological Perspective    [ more ]
Price: $54.95

This book presents a wide-ranging study of widows in Japan filtered through the dramatic and complex intersection of women with death. These experiences are portrayed as intensely personal and yet foreshadowing momentous societal ramifications. The work represents years of research, numerous personal interviews conducted throughout the country, and reflects not only historical and current perspectives, but also the diverse voices of widows who participated in the research.

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.

Ken-ichi Ohbuchi and Nobuko Asai (eds), Inequality, Discrimination and Conflict in Japan (Hardcover)    [ more ]
Price: $89.95

After a decade of deregulation and economic liberalization the high levels of unity and social harmony that had been achieved during Japan�fs decades of rapid economic growth is under threat. Social conflict is rapidly increasing, as economic disparities continue to grow, the economy remains stagnant, and new generations of workers find it increasingly difficult to find positions in the lifetime employment system. Against this backdrop, this book reports on the latest social psychology research into social conflict in Japan and how it is managed. Recognizing that social justice is an important factor in many forms of social conflict, the chapters each address the issue of conflict resolution from a social justice perspective.

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

The artifice of gender performance - sometimes playful, mostly conscientious - has 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.

Mari Nakami, In Pursuit of Composite Beauty: Yanagi Soetsu, His Aesthetics and Aspirations for Peace    [ more ]
Price: $84.95

This book is a study of the life and thought of Yanagi Sotsu (1889-1961), known primarily as the founder of Japan's mingei (folk crafts) movement. He was a thinker who believed that world peace could not be achieved by 'painting the world in one single color.' At a time when Japan was invading Asia and enforcing its cultural assimilation policy in its colonies and occupied territories before and during World War II, Yanagi aspired to realize a world in which multiple races and cultures could coexist.

Masako Amano, In Pursuit of the Seikatsusha: A Genealogy of the Autonomous Citizen in Japan (Paperback)    [ more ]
Price: $34.95

This is a study of Japan's home-grown concept of seikatsusha that resembles 'citizen,' 'people,' 'consumer,' 'common man,' and 'the public,' though not exactly identical with any of them. The idea has occupied an important place in Japanese everyday life, academia and progressive movements. Masako Amano presents an extensive genealogy of the concept from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day. The work points to the viability of the idea of seikatsusha in a sustainable welfare society in the twenty-first century, and is the first in English to fully investigate the concept within Japan's historical and structural context.

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.

Naoki Yoshihara, Fluidity of Place: Globalization and the Transformation of Urban Space (Hardcover)    [ more ]
Price: $109.95

Fluidity of Place presents an interdisciplinary conversation with theories of space-time, place and globalization at the cutting edge of social theory. Focussing on the construction of urban space in the context of hyper-mobility, Yoshihara examines the social relations that form place in a globalized world.

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.

Yoshimichi Sato and Jun Imai (eds), Japan's New Inequality: Intersection of Employment Reform and Welfare Arrangements (paperback)    [ more ]
Price: $34.95

After the collapse of Japan�fs bubble-economy in the late 1980s, a wide range of neo-liberal reforms were introduced which dramatically affected the nature of the labor market. These reforms expanded and consolidated a two-tier market, widening the gap between those who benefit from the 'company citizenship' of 'regular', long-term and secure employment conditions and those who are increasingly disadvantaged by reduced income and security in the peripheral non-regular system of casual and short-term employment.