High economic growth and relatively equitable distribution were among the most conspicuous characteristics of the postwar Japanese political economy. The lure of the Japanese model, however, has faded since the 1990s. Growth is in short supply and equality a thing of the past. In Welfare through Work, Mari Miura looks in depth at Japan's social protection system as a factor in the contemporary malaise of the Japanese political economy. The Japanese social protection system should be understood as a system of "welfare through work," Miura suggests, because employment protection has functionally substituted for income maintenance. A gendered dual system in the labor market allowed a high degree of labor market flexibility, which enabled Japan to achieve high employment rates as well as strong legal protections for regular workers. In recent years, conservatives gradually replaced the productivism and cooperatism that had resulted from earlier party politics with neoliberalism, which, in turn, hampered the effectiveness of the welfare through work system. In Miura's view, the dynamics of partisan competition fostered ideational renewal, just as the political visions and ideologies of the governing party strongly affected the design of the social protection system. In the scenario Miura describes, the partisan dynamics since the 1990s resulted in the policy change that further undermined the social protection system, and the ensuing disruption has been felt throughout Japan.
Musicians of Asian descent enjoy unprecedented prominence in concert halls, conservatories, and classical music performance competitions. In the first book on the subject, Mari Yoshihara looks into the reasons for this phenomenon, starting with her own experience of learning to play piano in Japan at the age of three. Yoshihara shows how a confluence of culture, politics and commerce after the war made classical music a staple in middle-class households, established Yamaha as the world's largest producer of pianos and gave the Suzuki method of music training an international clientele. Soon, talented musicians from Japan, China and South Korea were flocking to the United States to study and establish careers, and Asian American families were enrolling toddlers in music classes. Against this historical backdrop, Yoshihara interviews Asian and Asian American musicians, such as Cho-Liang Lin, Margaret Leng Tan, Kent Nagano, who have taken various routes into classical music careers. They offer their views about the connections of race and culture and discuss whether the music is really as universal as many claim it to be. Their personal histories and Yoshihara's observations present a snapshot of today's dynamic and revived classical music scene.
High economic growth and relatively equitable distribution were among the most conspicuous characteristics of the postwar Japanese political economy. The lure of the Japanese model, however, has faded since the 1990s. Growth is in short supply and equality a thing of the past. In Welfare through Work, Mari Miura looks in depth at Japan’s social protection system as a factor in the contemporary malaise of the Japanese political economy. The Japanese social protection system should be understood as a system of "welfare through work," Miura suggests, because employment protection has functionally substituted for income maintenance. A gendered dual system in the labor market allowed a high degree of labor market flexibility, which enabled Japan to achieve high employment rates as well as strong legal protections for regular workers. In recent years, conservatives gradually replaced the productivism and cooperatism that had resulted from earlier party politics with neoliberalism, which, in turn, hampered the effectiveness of the welfare through work system. In Miura’s view, the dynamics of partisan competition fostered ideational renewal, just as the political visions and ideologies of the governing party strongly affected the design of the social protection system. In the scenario Miura describes, the partisan dynamics since the 1990s resulted in the policy change that further undermined the social protection system, and the ensuing disruption has been felt throughout Japan.
Musicians of Asian descent enjoy unprecedented prominence in concert halls, conservatories, and classical music performance competitions. In the first book on the subject, Mari Yoshihara looks into the reasons for this phenomenon, starting with her own experience of learning to play piano in Japan at the age of three. Yoshihara shows how a confluence of culture, politics and commerce after the war made classical music a staple in middle-class households, established Yamaha as the world's largest producer of pianos and gave the Suzuki method of music training an international clientele. Soon, talented musicians from Japan, China and South Korea were flocking to the United States to study and establish careers, and Asian American families were enrolling toddlers in music classes. Against this historical backdrop, Yoshihara interviews Asian and Asian American musicians, such as Cho-Liang Lin, Margaret Leng Tan, Kent Nagano, who have taken various routes into classical music careers. They offer their views about the connections of race and culture and discuss whether the music is really as universal as many claim it to be. Their personal histories and Yoshihara's observations present a snapshot of today's dynamic and revived classical music scene.
The present study analyzes the livelihood security system of contemporary Japan in international comparison from a historical and gender perspective. It posits ‘livelihood security systems’ rather than ‘welfare states’ or ‘welfare regimes’ as its object of analysis to enter the role of non-governmental institutions and of governmental policies reaching beyond income transfers into vision. Based on rich statistical materials, the evolution of Japan’s livelihood security system in recent decades is traced to reveal a rigid male breadwinner orientation increasingly out of step with social realities. The need for remedying the gender bias built into Japan’s social insurance schemes has been politically highlighted since the late 1990s, but legislative action has continued to be deferred. The author argues that at present the livelihood security system of Japan is not only dysfunctional, but actually functioning in reverse, in a sense of furthering social exclusion. The study concludes with suggestions for a possible reconstruction of Japan’s social security system, arguing for an increased role of the ‘third sector’ or ‘social economy’ in livelihood security and care provision. This book will appeal to scholars and students with an interest in social policy, welfare economics and gender studies, as well as Japanese politics and society.
Because people’s contact with the criminal justice system comes in different shapes and forms, scholars are now broadening their analytical scope and examining the overall repercussions of criminal justice contact on families of offenders. Compared to Western societies, Japan is known for its lower crime rates and more pronounced use of informal social control. Thus, it offers a useful research site for examining how families in a low-crime society experience criminal justice contact and how they function as an integral part of the nation’s crime control mechanism. This book considers the role of the family in the lives of offenders and the criminal justice system in Japan. Looking particularly at gender and patriarchal power relations, it reveals how cultural notions of femininity prompt the criminal justice system to rely on women as its proxy. This book explores how families of offenders often step in to fill the voids left by criminal justice institutions and social services to provide offenders with all-inclusive care. The burden of supervising and rehabilitating offenders on top of the expectation to atone for the crimes also renders families ambivalent and ashamed. Whereas the state and criminal justice authorities tend to see offenders’ families as a crucial resource for prisoner reentry, this book highlights the necessity for addressing families’ needs before automatically assuming their support. It also pushes the boundaries of feminist criminology by showing how women can be affected by male criminality and male-dominated criminal justice institutions, other than as victims and offenders. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, gender studies, Japanese culture and all those interested in learning more about the criminal justice system in Japan.
NihonGO NOW! is a beginning-level courseware package that takes a performed-culture approach to learning Japanese. This innovative approach balances the need for an intellectual understanding of structural elements with multiple opportunities to experience the language within its cultural context. From the outset, learners are presented with samples of authentic language that are context-sensitive and culturally coherent. Instructional time is used primarily to rehearse interactions that learners of Japanese are likely to encounter in the future, whether they involve speaking, listening, writing, or reading. Level 1 comprises two textbooks with accompanying activity books. These four books in combination with audio files allow instructors to adapt a beginning-level course, such as the first year of college Japanese, to their students’ needs. They focus on language and modeled behavior, providing opportunities for learners to acquire language through performance templates. Online resources provide additional support for both students and instructors. Audio files, videos, supplementary exercises, and a teachers’ manual are available at www.routledge.com/9781138304147. NihonGO NOW! Level 1 Volume 2 Activity Book provides a wealth of communicative exercises and assessment tools for students working through the second semester of the NihonGO NOW! course.
Students who have completed a year of German read Brecht in their second year, those of Spanish read Cervantes. Teachers of first and second-year Japanese can often find nothing comparable. "Why aren't your students reading literature?" they are asked. "Why not Soseki? Or Murakami?" What are instructors of Japanese doing wrong? Nothing, according to the authors of this volume. Rather, they argue, such questions exemplify the gross misunderstandings and unreasonable expectations of teaching reading in Japanese. In Acts of Reading, the authors set out to explore what reading is for Japanese as a language, and how instructors should teach it to students of Japanese. They seek answers to two questions: What are the aspects of reading in Japan as manifested in Japanese society? What L2 (second-language) reading problems are specific to Japanese? In answering the first and related questions, the authors conclude that reading is a socially motivated, purposeful act that is savored and becomes a part of people's lives. Reading instruction in Japanese, therefore, should include teaching students how to work with text as the Japanese do in Japanese society. The second question relates more directly to traditional concerns in L2 reading. The authors begin with a general theory of reading. They then offer a welcome glimpse into the rich and complex perspectives-sometimes conflicting, other times symbiotic-on what reading is and how it is performed in L1 and L2, and, most importantly, on the web of interconnections between the phenomenology of reading and the demands it places on teaching approaches to reading in Japanese. With essays by Charles J. Quinn, Jr., Fumiko Harada, and Chris Brockett Foreword by J. Marshall Unger
In Pursuit of Composite Beauty is a study of the life and thought of Yanagi Soetsu (1889-1961), known primarily as the founder of Japan's mingei (folk crafts) movement. Mr. Yanagi was a thinker who believed that world peace could not be achieved by 'painting the world in one single color.' Before and during World War II, when Japan was invading Asia and enforcing its cultural assimilation policy in its colonies and occupied territories, Yanagi aspired to realize a world in which multiple races and cultures could coexist. His pacifist thought rests on the idea of 'composite beauty, ' an ideal of creating a world in which heterogeneous entities can accept their differences and learn from each other. Tracing Yanagi's intellectual development, this insightful and comprehensive book presents a positive reevaluation of the contemporary significance of his thought from the viewpoint of international relations, shedding light on the ways to achieve interdependence and mutual respect
This book argues the crucial role of culture and cultural policies in defining the notion of urban citizenship in Barcelona since 1979. Through analysis of official documents, municipal publicity campaigns, sport – including the Olympic Games and Barcelona F.C – and film, Balibrea makes sense of the city as a global cultural destination and reveals how such transformation impacts local inhabitants. Scrutinizing municipal discourses on culture from the late 1970s, this interdisciplinary work unveils how ideas of the function and nature of citizenship articulate changing definitions of the city, from model to brand. Over the course of topics such as: tourism, social democracy and urban regeneration, Balibrea constructs an original argument for how the Barcelona image mobilizes neoliberal fantasies of subject transformation. A wide-ranging study, this book will be of great interest to scholars of urban geography, sociology and cultural studies.
Over the last twenty years, type 2 diabetes skyrocketed to the forefront of global public health concern. In this book, Mari Armstrong-Hough examines the rise in and response to the disease in two societies: the United States and Japan. Both societies have faced rising rates of diabetes, but their social and biomedical responses to its ascendance have diverged. To explain the emergence of these distinctive strategies, Armstrong-Hough argues that physicians act not only on increasingly globalized professional standards but also on local knowledge, explanatory models, and cultural toolkits. As a result, strategies for clinical management diverge sharply from one country to another. Armstrong-Hough demonstrates how distinctive practices endure in the midst of intensifying biomedicalization, both on the part of patients and on the part of physicians, and how these differences grow from broader cultural narratives about diabetes in each setting.
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