Capturing Contemporary Japan : : Differentiation and Uncertainty / / ed. by Susan Orpett Long, Satsuki Kawano, Glenda S. Roberts.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Asian Studies Backlist (2000-2014) eBook Package
• MitwirkendeR: Cave, Peter,; Kawano, Satsuki,; Kurotani, Sawa,; Long, Susan Orpett,; Mathews, Gordon,; Miller, Laura,; Nakano, Lynne Y.,; Roberts, Glenda S.,; Rosenberger, Nancy,; Roth, Joshua Hotaka,; Whitelaw, Gavin Hamilton,
• HerausgeberIn: Kawano, Satsuki,; Long, Susan Orpett,; Roberts, Glenda S.,
• Place / Publishing House: Honolulu : : University of Hawaii Press, , [2014]; ©2014
• Year of Publication: 2014
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (376 p.) :; 14 b&w images

What are people's life experiences in present-day Japan? This timely volume addresses fundamental questions vital to understanding Japan in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Its chapters collectively reveal a questioning of middle-class ideals once considered the essence of Japaneseness. In the postwar model household a man was expected to obtain a job at a major firm that offered life-long employment; his counterpart, the "professional" housewife, managed the domestic sphere and the children, who were educated in a system that provided a path to mainstream success. In the past twenty years, however, Japanese society has seen a sharp increase in precarious forms of employment, higher divorce rates, and a widening gap between haves and have-nots. Contributors draw on rich, nuanced fieldwork data collected during the 2000s to examine work, schooling, family and marital relations, child rearing, entertainment, lifestyle choices, community support, consumption and waste, material culture, well-being, aging, death and memorial rites, and sexuality. The voices in these pages vary widely: They include schoolchildren, teenagers, career women, unmarried women, young mothers, people with disabilities, small business owners, organic farmers, retirees, and the elderly.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction: Differentiation and Uncertainty -- I. Change over Time -- Chapter 1. Work and Life in Challenging Times A Kansai Family Across the Generations -- 2. Being a Man in a Straitened Japan: The View from Twenty Years Later -- II. Work Conditions and Experiences -- 3. Working Women of the Bubble Generation -- 4. "Making an Ant's Forehead of Difference": Organic Agriculture as an Alternative Lifestyle in Japan -- 5. Shelf Lives and the Labors of Loss: Food, Livelihoods, and Japan's Convenience Stores -- III. Exploring New Roles and Identities -- 6. Single Women in Marriage and Employment Markets in Japan -- 7. The Aging of the Japanese Family: Meanings of Grandchildren in Old Age -- 8. Barrier-Free Brothels: Sex Volunteers, Prostitutes, and People with Disabilities -- IV. Making Social Ties -- 9. Recreating Connections: Nonprofit Organizations' Attempts to Foster Networking among Mothers of Preschoolers -- 10. The Divination Arts in Girl Culture -- V. Persisting Patterns and Continuities -- 11. Education after the "Lost Decade(s)": Stability or Stagnation? -- 12. Lightweight Cars and Women Drivers: The De/construction of Gender Metaphors in Recessionary Japan -- 13. The Story of a Seventy-Three-Year-Old Woman Living Alone: Her Thoughts on Death Rites -- Glossary -- Contributors -- index