Japan remains one of the most intriguing yet least understood nations. In a much needed, balanced and comprehensive analysis, among other remarkable revelations, this book presents for the first time a vital key to understanding the organisation of Japan's society and the behaviour of its people. The Japanese are not driven by a universal morality based on Good and Evil, but by broad aesthetic concepts based on Pure and Impure. What they include as 'impure' will surprise many readers.

Essential reading for students of Japanese society, An Introduction to Japanese Society now enters its third edition. Here, internationally renowned scholar, Yoshio Sugimoto, writes a sophisticated, yet highly readable and lucid text, using both English and Japanese sources to update and expand upon his original narrative. The book challenges the traditional notion that Japan comprises a uniform culture, and draws attention to its subcultural diversity and class competition. Covering all aspects of Japanese society, it includes chapters on class, geographical and generational variation, work, education, gender, minorities, popular culture and the establishment. This new edition features sections on: Japan's cultural capitalism; the decline of the conventional Japanese management model; the rise of the 'socially divided society' thesis; changes of government; the spread of manga, animation and Japan's popular culture overseas; and the expansion of civil society in Japan.

As Japan enters the 21st century with a new emperor, this title continues to be an indispensable guide through often enigmatic and historical idiosyncrasies of Japanese culture and politics that are often confusing to the outsider. This title includes information on the latest social developments, customs, rituals, business culture, medicine and arts.

Japan remains one of the most intriguing yet least understood nations. In a much needed, balanced and comprehensive analysis, among other remarkable revelations, this book presents for the first time a vital key to understanding the organisation of Japan's society and the behaviour of its people. The Japanese are not driven by a universal morality based on Good and Evil, but by broad aesthetic concepts based on Pure and Impure. What they include as 'impure' will surprise many readers.

"A brilliant wedding of 'national character' studies and analyses of small societies through the structural approach of British anthropology. One is of course reminded of Ruth Benedict's Chrysanthemum and the Sword which deals also with Japanese national culture. Studies by Margaret Mead and Geoffrey Gorer deal with other national cultures; however, all of these studies take off from national psychology. Professor Nakane comes to explanation of the behavior of Japanese through analysis rather of historical social structure of Japanese society, beginning with the way any two Japanese perceive each other, and following through to the nature of the Japanese corporation and the whole society. Nakane's remarkable achievement, which has already given new insight about themselves to the Japanese, promises to open up a new field of large-society comparative social anthropology which is long overdue." —Sol Tax "This is an important book!"--Robert E. Cole, Journal of Asian Studies "If you have time for just one book on Japan, try this one."--David Plath, Asian Student "Should be taken to heart by everyone who has dealings with Japan. . . .Even those--or, perhaps, most of all those--who know Japan intimately will be grateful to Professor Nakane for her brilliant study."--Times Literary Supplement

A compelling illustration of Japan's evolution into an industrial state, the only major industrial society to emerge outside of the Western tradition.

Situated Meaning adds a new dimension, both literal and metaphoric, to our understanding of Japan. The essays in this volume leave the vertical axis of hierarchy and subordination—an organizing trope in much of the literature on Japan—and focus instead on the horizontal, interpreting a wide range of cultural practices and orientations in terms of such relational concepts as uchi ("inside") and soto ("outside"). Evolving from a shared theoretical focus, the essays show that in Japan the directional orientations inside and outside are specifically linked to another set of meanings, denoting "self" and "society." After Donald L. Brenneis's foreward, Jane M. Bachnick, Charles J. Quinn, Jr., Patricia J. Wetzel, Nancy R. Rosenberger, and Robert J. Sukle discuss "Indexing Self and Social Context." "Failure to Index: Boundary Disintegration and Social Breakdown" is the topic of Dorinne K. Kondo, Matthews M. Hamabata, Michael S. Molasky, and Jane Bachnik. Finally, Charles Quinn explores "Language as a Form of Life." Jane M. Bachnik is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is presently pursuing research in Japan under a Senior Fellowship Grant from the Japan Foundation. Charles J. Quinn, Jr., is Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures at the Ohio State University. Originally published in 1994. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Seniority-based hierarchy (jouge kankei) is omnipresent in Japanese group dynamics. How one comports, depends on one’s status and position vis-à-vis others. To-date, no study shows what constitutes this hierarchy, where and when individuals growing up in Japan first come into contact with it, as well as how they learn to function in it. This book fills in the lacunae. Considering jouge kankei as a social institution and adopting a discourse analytic approach, this volume examines the ways in which institutional jouge kankei as an enduring feature of Japanese social life are created and reproduced. The monograph analyses how seniority-based relations are enacted, legitimised, transmitted, and reified by social actors through language use and paralinguistic discursive practices, such as the use of space, objects, signs, and symbols. It also looks at how established rules could be challenged. The empirical data on which findings are based are gathered through 10 months of ethnographic fieldwork from 2015 to 2018 in Japanese schools, with certain types of data (school club etiquette books and uniforms) being presented and analysed for the first time. This volume also shows continuity and change of jouge kankei from school to work.

The essays in this collection look at how the Japanese see themselves and others, in a variety of contexts, and challenge many Western assumptions about Japanese society. Through their own experiences and observations of Japanese life, the authors explain how the Japanese define themselves and how they communicate with those around them. They discuss what Westerners view as oppositions inherent within the Japanese community and demonstrate how the Japanese reconcile one with the other.

In recent decades Japan has changed from a strongly growing, economically successful nation regarded as prime example of social equality and inclusion, to a nation with a stagnating economy, a shrinking population and a very high proportion of elderly people. Within this, new forms of inequality are emerging and deepening, and a new model of Japan as 'gap society' (kakusa shakai) has become common-sense. These new forms of inequality are complex, are caused in different ways by a variety of factors, and require deep-seated reforms in order to remedy them. This book provides a comprehensive overview of inequality in contemporary Japan. It examines inequality in labour and employment, in welfare and family, in education and social mobility, in the urban-rural divide, and concerning immigration, ethnic minorities and gender. The book also considers the widespread anxiety effect of the fear of inequality; and discusses how far these developments in Japan represent a new form of social problem for the wider world.