Despite Japan's importance in the modern world, much about Japan remains unknown outside the country. This series provides informative, original, detailed studies on a variety of aspects of modern Japan.
It has established itself as an authoritative available source of scholarship on all aspects of Japan. Publishing policy is directed by some of the most respected names in Japanese studies.
By Hiroaki Richard Watanabe
May 25, 2017
Japan and Italy encountered severe economic problems in the early 1990s, and the governments had to deal with those issues effectively under the increasing neoliberal pressures of globalisation. In this context, labour market deregulation was considered an effective tool to cope with those economic...
By Robert J. Pekkanen, Yutaka Tsujinaka, Hidehiro Yamamoto
May 25, 2017
Although local neighborhood associations are found in many countries, Japan’s are distinguished by their ubiquity, scope of activities, and very high participation rates, making them important for the study of society and politics. Most Japanese belong to one local neighborhood association or ...
By Jeremy Breaden
May 24, 2017
For several decades internationalisation has been a cornerstone of both Japanese government higher education policy and approaches to reform at an institutional level, but Japan has still not managed to lose its reputation as a somewhat reclusive member of the global academic community. Consensus ...
Edited
By Barbara Holthus, Wolfram Manzenreiter
April 20, 2017
Much of the existing literature on happiness in Japan has been produced in the field of economics and psychology and is quantitative in nature. Here, for the first time, a group of anthropologists and sociologists jointly analyze the state of happiness and unhappiness in Japan among varying social ...
Edited
By Yoichi Funabashi, Koichi Nakano
September 19, 2016
When the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) came to power in September 2009, Japanese citizens expected the imminent arrival of a new political era, characterized by a two-party system. However, in addition to the triple disasters of March 2011, the DPJ faced numerous difficulties arising from its ...
By Glenn D. Hook
August 03, 2016
The intertwined issues of Japanese `identity' and `normality' are at the centre of the tension between internal and external pressures on Japanese defence and security policies. With chapters on peace thought, the militarisation and demilitarisation of language as well as the `hard' aspects of the ...
By Leonard James Schoppa
April 19, 1993
The Japanese education system, while widely praised in western countries, is subject to heavy criticism within Japan. Education Reform in Japan analyses this criticism, and explains why proposed reforms have failed. The author shows how the Japanese policy-making process can become paralysed when ...
Edited
By Tomoko Aoyama, Laura Dales, Romit Dasgupta
June 17, 2016
The middle-class nuclear family model has long dominated discourses on family in Japan. Yet there have always been multiple configurations of family and kinship, which, in the context of significant socio-economic and demographic shifts since the 1990s, have become increasingly visible in public ...
By Junji Banno
June 17, 2016
Over the course of the period 1857 to 1937 in Japan, six distinct stages can be identified as the country moved from Shogun rule and its subsequent overthrow, from industrialisation and investment to the Meiji Constitution and then from Taishō democracy to Shōwa fascism. In this book, Junji Banno ...
By James W. Dearing
June 03, 2016
Tsukuba Science City is the world's most ambitious attempt to `turbocharge' scientific collaboration. James W. Dearing looks at the political and economic context within which the plans for Tsukuba were laid, how those plans changed during the process of implementation, and at the functioning of ...
By Tuukka Toivonen
May 31, 2016
From the 1960s onwards, Japan’s rapid economic growth coincided with remarkably smooth transitions from school to work and with internationally low levels of youth unemployment. However, this changed dramatically in the 1990s, and by the 2000s, youth employment came to be recognized as a serious ...
By Andrew Fraser, R. H. P. Mason, Philip Mitchell
May 20, 2016
Japan's Early Parliaments, 1890-1905 is the first detailed study of the early history of the Japanese Diet, providing a thorough discussion of the origins of the Japanese parliament, still the central institution of Japanese politics, and its development during this formative period. Drawn from ...