Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Rethinking Locality in Japan
This book inquires what is meant when we say "local" and what "local" means in the Japanese context. Through the window of locality, it enhances an understanding of broader political and socio-economic shifts in Japan. This includes demographic change, electoral and administrative reform, rural decline and revitalization, welfare reform, as well as the growing metabolic rift in energy and food production. Chapters throughout this edited volume discuss the different and often contested ways in which locality in Japan has been reconstituted, from historical and contemporary instances of administrative restructuring, to more subtle social processes of making – and unmaking – local places. C...
Becoming a Farmer in Contemporary Japan
Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in an agricultural cooperative running a training programme for aspiring farmers, this book explores the possibilities of agrarian and land-based modes of livelihood in contemporary Japan. The book is organised around the four key hurdles faced by new agricultural entrants: the acquisition of land and housing, farming know-how, capital, and market outlets. New farmers look with fresh eyes at agricultural issues, and their experiences provide a vantage point over the institutions shaping rural and agricultural life. The book documents the mounting problem of land and house abandonment in regional Japan, the role of agriculture in the revitalisation of...
The Failure of Political Opposition in Japan
This book explores the party politics and political system of Japan, which since 1955 has been dominated by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), with a particular focus on the evolution of LDP governments between the 1990s and 2010s. Through its evaluation of the legacy of post-war opposition parties, the politics of electoral reform and the crucial importance of foreign policy (especially in relation to China), this volume argues that Japan has ‘lost its way’, and that for recovery it needs to move away from single-party dominance. Despite the failures of the Democratic Party (DPJ) government 2009-2012, the reasons for which are explored, the need to combat economic, social and political...
A Sociology of Journalism in Japan
This book represents an in-depth analysis of journalism in Japan during the golden era of the daily press and the gradual introduction of digital technology starting from the mid-1980s to the late 2010s. By presenting firsthand testimony from journalists and field notes collected from fieldwork in the newsroom of one of the country's largest newspapers, this book provides a unique insight into Japan's highly active yet relatively under-institutionalized journalistic profession. It also explores the changes experienced by the organizational development of Japanese journalism in response to broader changes in Japanese society, such as the emergence of social networks, the evolution of reading practices, the demographic situation, and the new aspirations of the Japanese youth. Based on an extensive ethnographic fieldwork carried out by the author over several years, this book will be of huge interest to students and scholars of Japanese society, journalism, and media studies.
Hokkaido Dairy Farm
Hokkaido Dairy Farm offers a historical and ethnographic examination of the rapid industrialization of the dairy industry in Tokachi, Hokkaido. It begins with a history of dairy farming and consumption in Hokkaido from a macro perspective, mapping the transition from survival to subsistence and then from mixed family farms to monoculture and "mega" industrial operations. It then narrows the focus to examine concrete changes in a Tokachi-area dairying community that has undergone rapid sociocultural upheaval over the last three decades, with shifts in human relationships alongside changes in human and cow connections through new technologies. In the final chapters, the scope is further narrow...
Japan Through the Lens of the Tokyo Olympics Open Access
This book situates the 2020 Tokyo Olympics within the social, economic, and political challenges facing contemporary Japan. Using the 2020 Tokyo Olympics as a lens into the city and the country as a whole, the stellar line up of contributors offer hidden insights and new perspectives on the Games. These include city planning, cultural politics, financial issues, language use, security, education, volunteerism, and construction work. The chapters then go on to explore the many stakeholders, institutions, citizens, interest groups, and protest groups involved, and feature the struggle over Tokyo’s extreme summer heat, food standards, the implementation of diversity around disabilities, sexual minorities, and technological innovations. Giving short glimpses into the new Olympic sports, this book also analyses the role of these sports in Japanese society. Japan Through the Lens of the Tokyo Olympics will be of huge interest to anyone attending the Olympic Games in Tokyo 2020. It will also be useful to students and scholars of the Olympics and the sociology of sport, as well as Japanese culture and society.
Japan’s New Ruralities
Seeking to challenge negative perceptions within Japanese media and politics on the future of the countryside, the contributors to this book present a counterargument to the inevitable demise of rural society. Contrary to the dominant argument, which holds outmigration and demographic hyper-aging as primarily responsible for rural decline, this book highlights the spatial dimension of power differences behind uneven development in contemporary Japan. Including many fi eldwork-based case studies, the chapters discuss topics such as corporate farming, local energy systems and public healthcare, examining the constraints and possibilities of rural self-determination under the centripetal impact...
Dōwa Policy and Japanese Politics
This book locates the development of Dōwa policy projects within their historical and political context, offering examples of human rights protection in a non-Western society. Charting Dōwa policy from its origins in the pre-war period to its revival after 1945 up to the turn of the 21st century, chapters in this study provide a social and historical review supplemented by detailed analyses of policy process and implementation at both national and local levels. No previous publication on the ‘Buraku Problem’ has focused on the direct impact of Dōwa policy in overcoming prejudice and economic inequalities. Topics covered range from left-wing Buraku Liberation League demands in the late...
Fall-out from Fukushima
This book shows how the Fukushima plaintiffs have challenged narratives of safety and risk containment produced by TEPCO and the Japanese government through offering new empirical data on risk perceptions and life choices of some nuclear evacuees. Considering the Fukushima evacuees’ disappearance from public discourse in Japan, the book engages with theoretical writings on risk, neoliberal governmentality and citizen science. Chapters draw on a wide range of anthropologically-related methodologies including socio-linguistics, participant observation, and qualitative interviews. Themes of self-governance, resistance, gender, kinship, class and social change surface throughout, setting the F...
Harvesting State Support
Agriculture has been among the toughest political battlegrounds in postwar Japan and represents an ideal case study in institutional stability and change. Inefficient land use and a rapidly aging workforce have long been undermining the economic viability of the agricultural sector. Yet vested interests in the small-scale, part-time agricultural production structure have obstructed major reforms. Change has instead occurred in more subtle ways. Since the mid-1990s, a gradual reform process has dismantled some of the core pillars of the postwar agricultural support and protection regime. Harvesting State Support analyzes this process by shifting the analytical focus to the local level. Drawing on extensive qualitative field research, Hanno Jentzsch investigates how local actors, including farmers, local governments, and local agricultural cooperatives, have translated abstract policies into local practice. Showing how local variants are constructed through recombining national reforms with the local informal institutional environment, Harvesting State Support reveals new links between agricultural reform and other shifts in Japan’s political economy.
