In Pursuit of the Seikatsusha

In Pursuit of the Seikatsusha
Author: 天野正子
Publisher: Apollo Books
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2011
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781920901219

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. This book presents an extensive genealogy of the concept of seikatsusha, from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day. While examining the philosophy of such thinkers as Kiyoshi Miki, Nobuyuki Onuma, and Shunsuke Tsurumi, the book scrutinizes the debate over seikatsusha, which has been undertaken by a variety of political and intellectual movements, including Shiso no kagaku (Science of thought), Beheiren (Citizens for Peace in Vietnam), and the Seikatsu Club. The book points to the viability of the idea of seikatsusha in a sustainable welfare society in the 21st century and is the first in English to fully investigate the concept within Japan's historical and structural context.

Gender and Power

Gender and Power
Author: Mino Vianello
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 421
Release: 2016-09-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1137514167

Despite explicit commitments to gender equality, women experience complex modes of disadvantage and discrimination in all nations of the world. Offering sophisticated insights into the persistence of gendered differences in opportunities, roles, power, and rights in societies across the globe, this volume investigates factors that both enable and constrain women's advancement. From intimate relations within families, to social norms, relations, ideologies, and structures of power, to political institutions, electoral systems, and public policies, the chapters analyze possibilities for and obstacles to inclusive democratic practices and identify interventions essential to enable democratic values to take root. Contributors from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the USA provide detailed assessments of the social, economic, and political condition of women, their mobilizations to produce transform gendered power and authority in diverse nations, and their efforts to enhance the quality of their lives, their communities, and democratic governance.

An Introduction to Japanese Society

An Introduction to Japanese Society
Author: Yoshio Sugimoto
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 415
Release: 2020-11-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1108624324

An Introduction to Japanese Society provides a highly readable introduction to Japanese society by internationally renowned scholar Yoshio Sugimoto. Taking a sociological approach, the text examines the multifaceted nature of contemporary Japanese society with chapters covering class, geographical and generational variation, work, education, gender, ethnicity, religion, popular culture, and the establishment. This edition begins with a new historical introduction placing the sociological analysis of contemporary Japan in context, and includes a new chapter on religion and belief systems. Comprehensively revised to include current research and statistics, the text covers changes to the labor market, evolving conceptions of family and gender, demographic shifts in an aging society, and the emergence of new social movements. Each chapter now contains illustrative case examples, research questions, recommended further readings and useful online resources. Written in a lively and engaging style, An Introduction to Japanese Society remains essential reading for all students of Japanese society.

One Hundred Million Philosophers

One Hundred Million Philosophers
Author: Adam Bronson
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2016-03-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 0824855361

After the devastation of World War II, journalists, scholars, and citizens came together to foster a new culture of democracy in Japan. Adam Bronson explores this effort in a path-breaking study of the Institute for the Science of Thought, one of the most influential associations to emerge in the early postwar years. The institute's founders believed that the estrangement of intellectuals from the general public had contributed to the rise of fascism. To address this, they sought to develop a "science of thought" that would reconnect the world of ideas with everyday experience and thus reimagine Japan as a democratic nation, home to one hundred million philosophers. To tell the story of Science of Thought and postwar democracy, Bronson weaves together several strands of Japan's modern history that are often treated separately: the revival of interest in the social sciences and Marxism after the war, the appearance of new social movements that challenged traditional class and gender hierarchies, and the ascendance of a mass middle-class culture. This story is transnational in both connective and comparative senses. Most of the Science of Thought founders were educated in America, and they drew upon a network of American thinkers and institutions for support. They also derived inspiration from other efforts to promote a culture of democracy, ranging from thought reform campaigns in the People's Republic of China to the Mass Observation study of the British working classes. By tracing these sources of inspiration around the world, Bronson reveals the contours of a transnational intellectual milieu. Science of Thought embodied a vision of democratic experimentation that had to be re-articulated repeatedly in response to challenges that arose in connection with geopolitical events and social change, prompting the group's evolution from a small research circle in the 1940s into the standard-bearer for citizen activism in the 1960s. Through this history, Bronson argues that the significance of Science of Thought lay in the way it exemplified democracy in practice. The practical experience of the intellectuals and citizens associated with the group remains relevant to those who continue to grapple with the dilemmas of democracy today.

Rethinking Japanese Studies

Rethinking Japanese Studies
Author: Kaori Okano
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2017-08-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1351654950

Japanese Studies has provided a fertile space for non-Eurocentric analysis for a number of reasons. It has been embroiled in the long-running internal debate over the so-called Nihonjinron, revolving around the extent to which the effective interpretation of Japanese society and culture requires non-Western, Japan-specific emic concepts and theories. This book takes this question further and explores how we can understand Japanese society and culture by combining Euro-American concepts and theories with those that originate in Japan. Because Japan is the only liberal democracy to have achieved a high level of capitalism outside the Western cultural framework, Japanese Studies has long provided a forum for deliberations about the extent to which the Western conception of modernity is universally applicable. Furthermore, because of Japan’s military, economic and cultural dominance in Asia at different points in the last century, Japanese Studies has had to deal with the issues of Japanocentrism as well as Eurocentrism, a duality requiring complex and nuanced analysis. This book identifies variations amongst Japanese Studies academic communities in the Asia-Pacific and examines the extent to which relatively autonomous scholarship, intellectual approach or theories exist in the region. It also evaluates how studies on Japan in the region contribute to global Japanese Studies and explores their potential for formulating concrete strategies to unsettle Eurocentric dominance of the discipline.

The Boundaries of "the Japanese".

The Boundaries of
Author: Eiji Oguma
Publisher: Apollo Books
Total Pages: 594
Release: 2017
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781925608953

In this the parallel volume to The Boundaries of 'the Japanese': Volume 1: Okinawa 1818-1972 (2014), renowned historical sociologist Eiji Oguma further explores the fluctuating political, geographical, ethnic, and sociocultural borders of 'Japan' and 'the Japanese' from the latter years of the Tokugawa shogunate to the mid-20th century. Focus is placed first upon the northern island of Hokkaido with its indigenous Ainu inhabitants, and then upon the mainstays of Japan's colonial empire-Taiwan and Korea. In continuing to elaborate his theme of inclusion and exclusion, the author comprehensively recounts and analyzes the events, actions, campaigns and attitudes of both the rulers and the ruled as Japan endeavoured both to be seen as a strong, civilized nation by the wider world, and to 'civilize' its disparate subjects on its own terms. (Series: Japanese Society Series) [Subject: Sociology, Cultural Anthropology, Asian Studies, Japanese Studies, Cultural Studies, History]

Bringing Forth a World

Bringing Forth a World
Author: Joff P.N. Bradley
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2019-12-30
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9004421785

Offering a critical yet constructive response to the perceived crises in tertiary foreign language education in the Japanese university, the contributors to Bringing Forth a World provide theoretical and practical solutions which together act as a prolegomena to bringing forth a world. Theirs is an ecology of contribution in liberal arts education which takes responsibility for the care for youth, and contests intellectual passivity and indifference in foreign language instruction. The editors proffer a transformative, engaged and multidisciplinary liberal arts pedagogy, one at odds with forms of lowest common denominator, one-size-fits-all, and standardized provision. In response to the prevalent business-dominated model, they demonstrate an applied format of multiliteracy theory—one with semiotic, multimodal, feminist dimensions—which is regionally specific and better accounts for divergent forms of human expression and perception. The writers not only take account of the intellectual and mental issues in the student demographic but also in the teaching profession which suffers from widespread anxiety, job insecurity and a lack of autonomy, experimentation and innovation. Philosophically, the contributors to this book demand a form of meaning-making which is fundamentally social and creative, and which celebrates processes of ‘becoming-other’ in-between the student and teacher that seldom, if ever, follow a predictable trajectory. It is hoped that readers will embrace the spirit of the book, pick up its philosophical gauntlet to think otherwise than prevalent standardized models of teaching and learning, and therefore will use its core tenets to experiment with different ways of educating the youth of today.

A New World Order

A New World Order
Author: Paul Ekins
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 181
Release: 1992
Genre: Right Livelihood Award
ISBN: 1134910886

Examines such global problems as war, insecurity and militarization, the persistence of poverty, the denial of human rights and environmental destruction. Elkins analyzes policy approaches to the problems through a critique of three UN reports - the Brandt, Palme and Bruntland Commissions.

Making Japanese Citizens

Making Japanese Citizens
Author: Simon Andrew Avenell
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2010
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520262700

Making Japanese Citizens is an expansive history of the activists, intellectuals, and movements that played a crucial role in shaping civil society and civic thought in postwar Japan. Weaving his analysis around the concept of shimin (citizen), Simon Andrew Avenell traces the development of a new vision of citizenship based on political participation, self-reliance, popular nationalism, and commitment to daily life. This rich portrayal of activists and their ideas illuminates questions of democracy, citizenship, and political participation not only in contemporary Japan but also, more generally, in other industrialized nations. --

In Pursuit of the Seikatsusha

In Pursuit of the Seikatsusha
Author: 天野正子
Publisher: Apollo Books
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2011
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781920901271

Now available in paperback, this book explores 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. The book presents an extensive genealogy of the concept of seikatsusha, from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day. While examining the philosophy of such thinkers as Kiyoshi Miki, Nobuyuki Onuma, and Shunsuke Tsurumi, the book scrutinizes the debate over seikatsusha, which has been undertaken by a variety of political and intellectual movements, including Shiso no kagaku (Science of thought), Beheiren (Citizens for Peace in Vietnam), and the Seikatsu Club. It points to the viability of the idea of seikatsusha in a sustainable welfare society in the 21st century and is the first in English to fully investigate the concept within Japan's historical and structural context. (Series: Japanese Society)