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Understanding Japanese Society
In this welcome brand new fifth edition of the best- selling textbook
Understanding Japanese Society, Joy Hendry takes the reader into the heart
of Japanese life.
Providing a clear and accessible introduction to Japanese ways of thinking,
which does not require any previous knowledge of the country, this book
explores Japanese society through the worlds of home, work, play, religion
and ritual, covering a full range of life experiences, from childhood to old
age. It also examines the diversity of people living in Japan, the effects of
a growing number of new immigrants, and the role of the longest-standing
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Fully updated, revised and expanded,
the fifth edition contains new material on:
• the continued effects of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters

of 2011
• local examples of care for nature and the environment
• new perspectives on the role of women
• Japan’s place in the context of globalisation.
Each chapter in this new edition also includes an exciting insert from scholars
in the field, based on new and emerging research. This book will be invalu-
able to all students studying Japan. It will also enlighten those travellers and
business people wishing to gain an understanding of Japanese people.
Joy Hendry is Professor Emerita of Oxford Brookes University, UK and has

held visiting associations with Tokyo, Dōshisha and Keio universities, carried
out fieldwork over 40 years, and published many books and articles on the
social anthropology of Japan. In 2017, she was awarded the Order of the
Rising Sun by the Japanese government.
ii
The Nissan Institute/Routledge Japanese Studies Series

Series Editors
Roger Goodman, Nissan Professor of Modern Japanese Studies, University of

Oxford, Fellow, St Antony’s College
J.A.A. Stockwin, formerly Nissan Professor of Modern Japanese Studies and
former Director of the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies, University of
Oxford, Emeritus Fellow, St Antony’s College
Reconstructing Adult Masculinities

Part-time work in contemporary Japan
Emma E. Cook
The Democratic Party of Japan in Power

Challenges and failures
Edited by Yoichi Funabashi and Koichi Nakano
Translated by Kate Dunlop
Life Course, Happiness and Well-being in Japan

Edited by Barbara Holthus and Wolfram Manzenreiter
Japan’s World Power

Assessment, outlook and vision
Edited by Guibourg Delamotte
Friendship and Work Culture of Women Managers in Japan

Tokyo after ten
Swee-Lin Ho
The Dilemma of Faith in Modern Japanese Literature

Metaphors of Christianity
Massimiliano Tomasi

Fifth edition
Joy Hendry
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/

asianstudies/series/SE0022
iii
Fifth edition
Joy Hendry
iv
Fifth edition published 2019

by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 Joy Hendry
The right of Joy Hendry to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Every effort has been made to contact copyright-holders. Please advise the publisher of any
errors or omissions, and these will be corrected in subsequent editions.
First edition published by Croom Helm 1987
Fourth edition published by Routledge 2013
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hendry, Joy, author.
Title: Understanding Japanese society / Joy Hendry ;
with John Breen [and twelve others].
Description: Fifth edition. | Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019. |
Series: The Nissan Institute/Routledge Japanese studies series |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019008086 (print) | LCCN 2019010331 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781351179911 (Ebook) | ISBN 9781351179904 (Adobe Reader) |
ISBN 9781351179898 (ePub) | ISBN 9781351179881 (Mobipocket Encrypted) |
ISBN 9780815385868 (hardback) | ISBN 9780815385875 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Japan–Social conditions.
Classification: LCC HN723.5 (ebook) |
LCC HN723.5 .H46 2019 (print) | DDC 306.0952–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019008086
ISBN: 978-0-8153-8586-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-8153-8587-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-351-17991-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Newgen Publishing UK
v
Contents
List of figures vii

From the Field x
Series editors’ preface xi
Acknowledgements for the fifth edition xiii
Glossary xvi
Introduction 1
1. Sources of Japanese identity: historical and mythological

foundations of Japan 6
2. The house and family system 31
3. Socialisation and classification 57
4. Community and neighbourhood 79
5. The education system 103
6. Status, hierarchy and ethnic diversity 127
7. Religious influences 157
8. Ritual and the life cycle 182
9. Opportunities for working life 206
10. Arts, entertainment and leisure 227

vi
vi Contents
11. Government and the craft of politics 253
12. The legal system and social control in a global world 277
Conclusion 300
Index 307
vii
Figures
All photographs were taken by the author except where otherwise

acknowledged in captions under the image.
1.1 Reconstruction of a Yayoi period house at Toro, Shizuoka 8

1.2 Some buildings of the Ise shrine, showing roof structure
characteristic of the Yayoi period 9
1.3 Haniwa figures at a site in Kyushu 12
1.4 Sengoku period historical theme park, Azuchi castle 16
1.5 Sengoku period historical theme park, Ninja with the author 17
1.6 Shuseikan museum, site of Japan’s first Western-style
machinery factory, in Kagoshima 18
1.7 Cover of Clinton Godart’s book 21
1.8 A miniature Leaning Tower of Pisa in Tobu World Square in
central Japan 25
2.1 ‘Imagining the ideal Japanese household in 2025.’ Digital
collage by Jennifer Robertson (2017) 32
2.2 Elements of the ie 33
2.3 Dōzoku hierarchical group 36
2.4 A Buddhist altar in the home 37
2.5 A Shinto ‘god-shelf’ above a large scroll to Amaterasu Ōmikami 39
2.6 A three-story two-family house, Tokyo home of
Takami Kuwayama 41
2.7 A grandfather of anthropologist Kaeko Chiba celebrates his
97th birthday 44
2.8 Takako Shimagami and her mother Mrs Akahori 44
3.1 Porch where shoes are removed 59
3.2 Shoes removed at the entrance to a kindergarten room 64
3.3 Children playing outside at a kindergarten 66
3.4 Cooperative creation with individual components from the class 67
3.5 Tug-of-war at a kindergarten sports event 67
4.1 Volunteer fire brigade practice 84
4.2 Fumihiko Makita in front of the Sakura care home in Tomonoura 86
4.3 Residents carry a portable shrine during community festivals 90
viii
viii List of figures

4.4 A roofing style granted World Heritage Status —for a
public toilet 93
4.5 A street in Komoro, conserved in the traditional style
for visitors 94
4.6 A city woman enjoying her country retreat 98
5.1 Schoolchildren working in small groups 106
5.2 Garden in the centre of a primary school in Akita 107
5.3 Calligraphy being studied from an early age 110
5.4 English class at a kindergarten 111
5.5 Ainu women learning traditional skills 122
6.1 The top seat in a Japanese room 130
6.2 Chinese and Japanese businesses in the streets of
West Ikebukuro 137
6.3 Inside the traditional Ainu house in Akan Kotan, Hokkaido 139
6.4 Shuri Castle, former home of the king of the Ryukyu Islands 141
6.5 Nakane’s basic model 147
6.6 Nakane’s elaborated model 147
7.1 A ceremony to protect a car and its occupants, Narita 160
7.2 Water for purification of hands and mouth on entering a
Shinto shrine 161
7.3 A nōkotsudō, which stores the physical remains of ancestors
in urns 164
7.4 A selection of protective charms and amulets 168
7.5 A tree in the Usa Shrine in Kyushu, designated as a ‘power
spot’ to bring good health 171
7.6 Decorative masks depicting the bad spirits to be chased away
at Setsubun 172
8.1 Two grandmothers carry a baby to a shrine to be presented
to the local deity 184
8.2 Huge cloth carp to celebrate the birth of a new baby boy 185
8.3 Display of dolls for Girls’ Day 186
8.4 Children of three, five and seven years dressed up to pray for
good fortune 188
8.5 A bride makes her way to her wedding at a Shinto shrine 192
8.6 Decorations for a home funeral 198
8.7 Notice on the door of a house in mourning 200
9.1 Statues in front of Tateyama hospital depict the family line 217
9.2 A young man carrying his baby on an underground train
in Tokyo 218
9.3 Housewives preparing to sell crafts at a kindergarten bazaar 222
9.4 Japan’s first female branch manager 223
10.1 Japanese housewives studying British ways of taking tea in
London 230
10.2 Drag queens: the Autumn Dance 233
10.3 Kaeko Chiba performing a tea ceremony 238
ix
List of figures ix
10.4 Scottish country dancing in Japan 239
10.5 Ballet teacher illustrates the principles of teaching 240
10.6 ‘Cute’ Japanese dolls 246
11.1 Visiting the politician Makiko Kikuta in Tokyo 254
11.2 The site of the Imperial Palace in the centre of Tokyo 258
11.3 The ‘Diet’ or Japanese parliament 259
11.4 Toshiyuki Nishie picking tea in the project his
initiative developed 267
11.5 Kuniyoshi Noda’s office in Kyushu 268
12.1 The former Ministry of Justice in Tokyo 280
12.2 Temporary accommodation set up for those displaced by
radiation in 2011 285
12.3 Weeds and stacks of irradiated topsoil in an area which used
to be rice fields 286
12.4 Toys abandoned in the room where grandchildren used to play 287
x
From the Field
1. Clinton Godart: The introduction of modern science

and technology 20
2. Ayumi Sasagawa: Views of housewives in contemporary Japan 50
3. Emma E. Cook: Food allergies, illness and personhood in Japan 72
4. Yukifumi Makita: Rebuilding community life in rural
Japan: the case of Tomonoura 96
5. Katsunobu Shimizu: Local government involvement
with education 114
6. Jamie Coates: New Chinese socialities in Japan 136
7. Sébastien Penmellen Boret: Buddhist lifelines during the
aftermath of the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake 166
8. Andrea De Antoni: Coping with the spirits of unsettled death 196
9. Swee-Lin Ho: Women with professional careers in Japan’s male-
dominated corporate world 208
10. Carmen Săpunaru Tămaș: A puff of fairy dust: drag queens
of the Osaka stage 232
11. John Breen: Contested emperorship 256
12. Tom Gill: The Great Eastern Japan Disaster of 2011:
how it damaged social control and social trust 288
Conclusion: Bruce White: The world in Japan 304

xi
Series editors’ preface
This is the fifth edition of Professor Joy Hendry’s widely known guide to
Japanese society, the first edition of which was published in 1987 with subse-
quent editions appearing in 1993, 2003 and 2013. Collectively, they chronicle
the changes that have taken place over a quarter of a century in all aspects of
Japanese society, in Japan’s views of the outside world and in the perceptions
of Japan from the outside world. They also demonstrate how anthropology, as
a discipline, has moved on in its approaches to studying society, demonstrated
best in this volume by the multiple insights (or notes ‘From the field’) of
observers close to the chalk face of contemporary society. Joy Hendry master-
fully chronicles the balance between change and continuity in Japan over the
past 25 years, which enables us to pick out some of the more enduring social
values and narratives in the society while constantly reminding ourselves that
none of these must be considered as immanent or ultimately determinative.
The continuing success of Understanding Japanese Society can largely be
related to the fact that it meets the needs of so many different audiences. The
accessible style in which it is written makes it the perfect guide for anyone
wanting to know how best to live in Japan or work with Japanese people or
learn the Japanese language or simply understand Japanese popular culture,
such as anime and manga. Its broad anthropological framework makes it not
only essential reading for any undergraduate studying Japanese society but
also an excellent comparative case study for an anthropologist looking for
a framework through which to understand any other society. The detailed
and up-to-date ethnography renders it a handbook for graduate students and
senior researchers wanting to stay on top of current changes in, and theories
about, Japanese society. Understanding Japanese Society is a compendium
of the leading writing on Japanese society available in English over the past
25 years. At points in the text, we are even pointed towards works that are not
yet published as this volume goes to press but will be forthcoming in the near
future.
Successive editions of Understanding Japanese Society provide a commen-
tary on the Nissan Institute/Japanese Studies Series, which produced its first
book in 1986 and has now published over 100 volumes in total. Work on
Japanese society often reflects the contemporary trends of the time, from an
xii
xii Series editors’ preface

interest in martial arts and Japanese religion in the 1960s and 1970s, to work
on Japanese companies and the economy in the 1980s, to studies of the devel-
opment of multiple new forms of popular culture in the 1990s, to concerns
about social fragmentation and growing disparities in the 2000s and Japan’s
response to the ‘triple disaster’ of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown
in the early 2010s. In her final two chapters, on politics and law, respectively,
Joy Hendry brings the picture up to date. She shows how quite radical changes
to the political system have occurred since the 1990s, giving enhanced power to
an energised central executive seeking to assert ‘Japanese values’ both domes-
tically and in international affairs. She posits that the next decade will see
an increased focus in Japan on the international world as it hosts the Rugby
World Cup in 2019 and the Olympics in 2020 and sees a new, Oxford-educated
Emperor ascend to the throne. If she is right about this, it will be interesting to
see how this new internationalism affects some of the core values of hierarchy,
consensus, group identity and reciprocity that have characterised her account
of what it means to be Japanese over the past 25 years. We look forward to
finding out in a future sixth edition of Understanding Japanese Society.
Roger Goodman
Arthur Stockwin
Oxford, February 2019
xiii
Acknowledgements for the fifth edition
New material for the fifth edition of this book was gathered during a very
pleasant visit to Japan in the autumn of 2017, when I was hosted and
entertained by a series of wonderful friends and former students, who also
responded to queries and comments as I wrote up my findings back in the UK.
This time, I decided to go beyond this informal help, which I also drew on for
the fourth edition, and asked 12 of these colleagues to write pieces about their
own fields for the 12 chapters of the book. Their names appear along with the
pieces, as well as in the contents headed ‘From the Field’, and I would like to
thank them first for adding their live, ongoing perspectives of life in Japan to
my own observations and updating research. In the end, I received one more
than the number of chapters, so the Conclusion also boasts an insert!
For hospitality and help while I was in Japan, which made the whole trip
much more enjoyable than I had expected, I would like first to thank Emma
Cook and her husband Kohei, who invited me to stay in and enjoy their beau-
tiful new house in Zenibako, Hokkaido. Emma has helped me in various ways
with this edition of the book, and she and her colleague Susanne Klien, also
invited me to speak at Hokkaido University, which was a great beginning to
the visit. Kaeko Chiba and her family hosted me in Akita, another splendid
few days, celebrating her grandfather’s 97th birthday (see Figure 2.7),
visiting the school and kindergarten of her children, joining a tea ceremony
with her mother, who is a long-term teacher and international ambassador,
and attending a performance of Nihon Buyo, which will be discussed in
Chapter 10. On to Sendai, where my former student Sébastien Boret took
good care of me and introduced me to his wife and new baby daughter. Many
other former students and advisees made me welcome: I enjoyed the kind
hospitality of Greg and Kumiko Poole and my former student Bruce White
in Hieidaira, of Andrea De Antoni in Kyoto, of Carmen and Adrian Tămaș
in Osaka, and of Yukifumi Makita in Tomonoura. Very useful meetings were
held with Ayumi Sasagawa and Nobuhiro Shimizu in Tokyo, where I was
also treated to splendid lunches with the families of Yutaka Kanomata and
Noriaki Hashimoto. In Kyoto, Shawn Tsujii and his wife Vicky invited me to
visit their respective businesses, and in Okinawa, Simeon Jones took care of
me, as always.
xiv
xiv Acknowledgements for the fifth edition

Much of the hospitality I enjoyed was with very long-standing friends,
including Takako and Minoru Shimagami in Saitama prefecture, Laura and
Giichi Inoue in their charming home near Komoro, and Yasuro and Eiko
Takahara in Shitamachi, who introduced me to their new grandson, and with
whom, as usual, we spent time with our shared old friends, Takeshi Tamaru
and Kazuko Onishi. Kazuko carried living Ise-ebi (Japanese langoustines)
all the way by train from Ise itself, a great treat apparently, although a little
disconcerting to find them crawling about their box in the middle of the night
in the Tokyo bathroom! In Kyushu, I stayed as always with the Kumagai
family, who treat me as their own, but their medical son, who specialises in
the treatment of radiation sickness, has since the 2011 disaster been living in
Fukushima with his wife, Minhee, and beautiful baby, Haru, and they also
made me welcome in their home, as did their daughter Mutsuko and her
family in Otsu.
The people of the village in Kyushu where I did my longest period of
research over the years were, as always, collectively helpful and responsive
to my queries, as, indeed, were several new collaborators all over Japan. In
Kagoshima, for example, I was very well taken care of by Hideto (Henry)
Terada of the local tourist office, introduced by Simon Wright at Japan
House in London, and Alex Bradshaw during my visit to Sengan-en, site of
the Shuseikan museum of the oldest modern machinery factory in Japan (see
Figure 1.6 for a photo). In Tokyo, Sadaaki Numata, former Minister at the
Japanese Embassy in London and Ambassador to Okinawa, gave me some
interesting explanations about the present situation in the southern islands,
and through his introduction, I met Kazuhiko Nakamoto at the Okinawa
Prefectural Archive for another revealing discussion about the situation there.
Shinji Yamashita introduced me to his new campus in Nakano, and Makiko
Kikuta made possible a visit to the parliamentary offices by the government
buildings. Tom Gill gave up a day to take me out with his friend Masato
Takahashi and his wife for a visit to the still irradiated area of Tohoku,
described in Chapter 12, and with John Breen I shared a wonderfully early
breakfast appropriately (see Field insert in Chapter 11) beside the imperial
palace in Kyoto.
For getting this book through the process of rewriting and updating,
I would like to thank Alex Jacoby for not only suggesting new films for the
ends of the chapters but adding helpful notes about them, Ian Neary for giving
me access to the manuscript of his new book on Japanese politics before it
came out, Arthur Stockwin for checking and correcting some problems with
Chapter 11, Minister Shinichi Iida and Mr. Hiroshi Itakura of the Japanese
Embassy in London for a lovely lunch while we discussed some contemporary
issues, Consul General of Japan in Edinburgh, Nozomu Takaoka, for filling
me in on some of the background of the change in era name from Heisei
to Reiwa, Jamie Coates for coming up with ‘From the Field’ for the inserts
in each chapter, and Victoria Young for some advice on literary matters.
Thanks to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford for allowing me to reproduce
xv
Acknowledgements for the fifth edition xv

photographs I had donated to them and to which they now own the copyright,
and to Philip Grover for supplying the high-resolution versions. For other new
photographs, thanks to Clinton Godart, Jennifer Robertson, Jamie Coates,
Takami Kuwayama, Carmen Tămaș, Ruth Martin and Makiko Kikuta, and
to my son James for helping me to enhance my own new photographs.
Financial support for the two-month visit was provided by the Great
Britain Sasakawa Foundation, to whom I express my ongoing thanks, by an
advance from my publisher Taylor and Francis, organised by my ever-helpful
commissioning editor Stephanie Rogers, and by the university hosts who
invited me to speak as I made my way from north to south, largely following
the autumnal colours, and I thank them all. Thanks also to Georgina Bishop,
also ever-helpful assistant to Stephanie, Ruth-Anne Hurst, the production
editor at Newgen, and Sue Clements, the copy-editor.
xvi
Glossary
ai —love, p. 175
akarui —bright, p. 61
anime —cartoons, p. 2
be —hereditary occupationally specialised groups, p. 12
Bon —summer festival for the dead, p. 38
buraku —small community, but used for an area occupied by
burakumin, p. 134
burakumin —people regarded as outcaste, p. 131
bushidō —the way of the samurai, p. 159
butsudan —a Buddhist altar, p. 37
chōnai —neighbourhood, p. 81
daimyō —pre-modern local lord, p. 18
dōwa —literally, same Japanese, but reference to burakumin, p. 134
dōzoku —family group, p. 35
furusato —home town, p. 92
gagaku —ancient court music, p. 228
geisha —specialists in various Japanese arts, pp. 244–5ff
giri-ninjō —a system of duty and obligation, p. 290
go —a Japanese board game, p. 229
goningumi —a group of five people expected to keep an eye on one another
during wartime Japan, p. 292
habatsu —faction, p. 146
haniwa —terracotta figures of ancient Japan, p. 12
hara —stomach, p. 61
hinin —a name for outcaste people, literally ‘non-human’, p. 17
hitogomi —crowds, but see p. 59
honne —real feelings, as opposed to a public front, p. 60ff
hotoke —deceased person, literally buddha, p. 163
ie —house, household, p. 33ff
iemoto —(head of) household line, p. 228
ikumen —a man involved in child-rearing, p. 49
inkyō-ya —retirement house, p. 39
irori —hearth, see p. 99
xvi
Glossary xvii
jichikai —citizen’s action group, p. 88
juku —after-school class, p. 110
kagura —an ancient form of shrine dancing, pp. 228, 232
kami —god(s) or spirits, p. 159
kamikaze —literally, divine wind, p. 7, 201
kao —face, p. 61
karaoke —literally, empty orchestra!, p. 189
kejime —distinction between important concepts, p. 71
kendō —Japanese martial art, p. 110
ki —life force, p. 74
kōenkai —politicians’ support groups, p. 268
koi —physical attraction, love, p. 175
kojinshugi —selfish as in individualism, p. 70
kokoro —heart, as opposed to face, p. 61
konkatsu —activities to help find a marriage partner, p. 190
kosei —individuality, as opposed to individualism, p. 71
koto —a Japanese musical instrument, p. 239
kuchi —mouth, as opposed to hara, or stomach, p. 61
mama-san —bar-keeper, p. 241–2
manga —comic strip, p. 234ff
meirō —bright, p. 61 (same as akarui)
miai —arranged meeting with a view to finding a marriage partner, p. 48
miko —shrine maiden, p. 160
mina-san —address form for everyone, p. 65
mizu shōbai —literally ‘the water trade’, but work in traditional
entertainment, p. 241
mukōsangen ryōdonari —immediate neighbourhood, literally, ‘three houses
opposite and one on either side’, p. 80
mura hachibu —a form of ostracism, p. 85
naikan —a form of psychotherapy, p. 74
nanpa —‘cruising’, p. 191
nikkei —people of Japanese descent, usually born elsewhere, p. 142
nōkotsudō —place to keep the family ashes, p. 163
ogamiyasan —healing specialists, pp. 171, 196
okashii —strange, p. 61
omote —front, as opposed to ura (behind the scenes), p. 61
onsen —hot spring, p. 87
oya/ko —parent/child relation, p. 148
oyabun/kobun —parent/child relation, especially when used as a
model, p. 53, 145
paato —part-time worker, p. 211
pachinko —pinball machine, popular form of gambling in Japan, p. 243
ren’ai —‘love’, used in reference to a love marriage, as opposed to an
arranged one, p. 175
ritsuryō —ancient system of law in Japan, p. 13
xvi
xviii Glossary
sagemono —hanging decorations, p. 185
sanzan —the number 33, but also ‘difficult or troublesome’, p. 195
seishin —spirit, p. 165
Sengoku Jidai Mura —a theme park about the Warring Period in
Japan, p. 15ff
senpai/kohai —relations between seniors and juniors, p. 210
sento —a public bathhouse, p. 87
senzo —ancestor(s), p. 38
Setsubun —(Chinese) New Year festival, pp. 171–2
shamisen —a Japanese stringed instrument, p. 239
shini —42, but also literally ‘towards death’, p. 195
shinjinrui —literally, ‘new human species’, but see p. 212
shugendō —an ascetic religious practice, p. 168
soto —outside, as opposed to uchi, see below, p. 58ff
supirichuaru būmu —spiritual boom, p. 170
tai —sea bream, used in ritual, p. 202
tatemae —front, as opposed to honne, ‘real’ feelings, p. 60ff
tekiya —itinerant traders, p. 294
tokobashira —principal construction post in a Japanese house, p. 129
tokonoma —‘special place’ in a Japanese house, p. 129
uchi —inside or inside group, p. 58ff
uji —an ancient term for a local unit of related families, now a shrine
community, pp. 12ff, 159
ura —back or behind the scenes, as opposed to omote, p. 61
wa —‘harmony’, term for Japan or Japanese things vis-à-vis the outside, or
West, p. 290
wagamama —selfish, p. 62
yakudoshi —years of calamity, p. 194ff
yakuza —gangsters, p. 293ff
yome —wife, especially of the house, or ie, p. 35
yōshi —adopted son-in-law, p. 34
zaibatsu —big family corporations, p. 48
zazen —a form of meditation, p. 165
1
Introduction
This book goes into its fifth edition at an exciting time in Japanese history.
First, it coincides with the start of a new imperial era, and as you will see when
you read on, this is the way that Japanese history is recorded and remembered.
Each era is named after the Emperor of the time, and although emperors don’t
often have much in the way of political power, their periods are afterwards
noted for their characteristics, and the one just ended, Heisei (approximately
meaning ‘achieving peace’), has been the context for the previous editions of
this book. The Heisei Emperor, Akihito, who succeeded his father Hirohito,
worked hard to create a positive image to replace the previous wartime asso-
ciations, and he and his wife so endeared themselves to their people that polls
overwhelmingly supported his idea of abdicating due to age and ill health, des-
pite a lack of provision in the Japanese Constitution for the same.
That issue clashed with the stand of Japanese politicians in power at the
time, and we will discuss this too in a later chapter (11), but meanwhile, let
us welcome the new Emperor Naruhito and his wife Masako to the throne of
Japan for the period to be named Reiwa, approximately meaning Beautiful
Harmony, though with soft literary overtones. Naruhito was a student in
Oxford when I first started writing this textbook in that same city, so that is
an interesting coincidence for me. I had the pleasure and honour of meeting
him a couple of times, and he expressed an interest in the discipline of social
anthropology, which underpins the understanding I present to you in this
book. The Empress Masako is even more internationally educated, also
having studied in Oxford as well as Harvard. She speaks several languages,
and she was becoming a diplomat when she agreed —apparently after several
proposals —to marry the Crown Prince Naruhito. They have only one child,
a daughter, Aiko Princess Toshi, another issue that we will discuss in due
course, for the present Constitution insists that the heir be male.
Japan is the number one tourist destination at this time, and the second
and third exciting aspects of Japanese history with which our publication
coincides are likely to increase the number of foreign visitors even more. In
2020, Japan hosts the Summer Olympic Games, an event to recall, but def-
initely to outdo the 1964 Games, which eased the nation back into taking a
positive place in the world after the horrors of the Second World War. Interest
in Japan was again shocking after the 2011 earthquake/tsunami/radiation
2
2 Introduction
disaster thrust the nation unremittingly into the world’s view. At first, even
many foreigners already in Japan fled, and then there was a nervousness about
the aftershocks and lingering radiation threats, but outsiders have been grad-
ually returning, and the numbers of people I meet elsewhere who have at least
visited Japan, perhaps because they have relatives working there or simply as
tourists, have truly burgeoned in the last few years.
Hosting the rugby World Cup in 2019 is the other exciting sporting event,
nostalgic for me as I think back on the rugby my husband was persuaded to
play when we were the only foreigners living in our town in the southernmost
island of Kyushu. As an ex-captain of the Oxford University Rugby Blues
team, he was much in demand, but Japan was only just beginning to enter the
rugby world stage at that time, now more than 40 years ago, and the main inter-
national match was between Keio University in Tokyo and Oxford. Since then,
Japanese players have become stars in many international sports, and as many
Japanese travel abroad for business, study, pleasure and artistic performance
as are welcomed from abroad into Japan. This same year completes the 150th
anniversary of another important Japanese historical moment, namely the
start of the Meiji period, when the boy emperor of the time presided over an
official recognition that a relatively closed Japan was open to the wider world.
Japan could be said to have reached a pinnacle of internationalisation then,
and indeed, the English word has been used for some time within Japan to
mark this achievement, or aspiration. Apart from the many visitors to Japan,
others all over the world can watch splendid Japanese films and anime and read
translations of manga. They can visit exhibitions of Japanese art, attend live
concerts, theatre and shows, and watch television programmes about all aspects
of Japanese life. As there are also large numbers of Japanese people in almost all
the major cities of the world, many people elsewhere also have Japanese friends.
So, do we all, at last, understand Japanese society? Judging by the number of
sales this book still seems to make, along with the requests from friends for
copies, I fear that this may not yet be the case. How, then, can this be?
One of the problems is that we generally apply our own standards of
judgement when we look at other countries. It is, of course, difficult to do
anything else. The press is trained to report on matters that are of interest
to its consumers, and foreign correspondents may be summoned home when
their reporting becomes too ‘native’, wherever they are from. They need to be
tuned in to the perceived needs of their readers. Japanese people themselves
are extremely adept at presenting themselves and their country in the way they
think appropriate to a local audience, and they may also be keen to present a
good image of their country, even if they have private doubts. Many Japanese
people abroad actually spend considerable time comparing themselves with
other people, and they formulate ways to present aspects of their own society
that can be easily assimilated, even if they are somewhat stereotyped.
Academics spend years studying Japan. They learn the language, they visit
the country, they read Japanese books and they become experts in an area of
Japanese life that happens to appeal to them. They write accurate and inform-
ative books about their particular specialities, and these books are usually good
3
Introduction 3
sources for further study, but they are often written for other Japanese specialists
or for specialists in their own particular field. The field of social anthropology is
one such field, and one of our main aims is to understand people on their own
terms. We try to see the world as the people themselves see it and then to trans-
late this understanding back into language that our own colleagues can follow. It
is only a small step further to write our findings in language that the lay reader or
a student unfamiliar with Japan can understand, and this book aims to take that
step and to introduce the non-specialist to the anthropology of Japan.
Japanese society is here presented, therefore, according to a social anthropo-
logical approach. The subject of anthropology has in some areas become
tainted with a negative image of colonial arrogance, but Japan is a good case
to dispel that idea. The aim is simply to introduce the world as it is classified
and ordered by Japanese people. The reader is asked to suspend his or her
own judgements and assumptions about how people should or should not
order their lives and try to imagine how a Japanese person might see things
differently. There is, of course, great variety in Japanese society, as there is in
any society, but just as Japanese people learn Japanese as their first language,
they also learn to classify the world in a Japanese way, and they learn to per-
ceive things from a Japanese point of view. An attempt is made here to present
the world as it might be seen by someone growing up and living in Japan, at
the same time covering as much as possible of its rich diversity.
The chapters move from a discussion of small social units, such as the
family, school and neighbourhood, experienced by any member of Japanese
society in everyday and ceremonial life, to larger institutions like companies,
places of amusement, parliament and courts, which impinge in different
ways on people’s lives depending on their position in society. Towards the
end, we make a new assessment of the position of Japan and Japanese people
in the wider world and how this has changed over the last few years. There
are now many foreigners teaching English in schools and even kindergartens
all over Japan, for example, and some of the big global issues, such as care
for the environment and living more closely to nature, have their Japanese
proponents, in touch with partners elsewhere. New threads on these subjects
run throughout this updated version of the book: forest kindergartens in
Chapter 3, for example, people moving out to live in and take care of the
country in Chapter 4, Shinto as a ‘nature’ religion in Chapter 7 and ‘tree burial’
in Chapter 8, as well as an update on environmental politics in Chapter 11.
In earlier versions of the book, I made the point that women have not been
given a special, separate chapter, as the approach aims to include men, women
and children at all stages in proportion to their participation in the area of
society being discussed. This edition includes several mentions of new research
on women, however, and two of the first-hand pieces of field research focus on
women, one on the role and status of women in the household (Chapter 2) and
the other on women in professions ranked highly in male worlds (Chapter 9),
such as finance and management. For my own part, I interviewed a woman
who has been doing well in politics (see Chapter 11), but I was profoundly
shocked by the lonely position she occupies in that capacity. Even her secretary
4
4 Introduction
is a man. Threads about gender still run through the different chapters as they
did before, then, but a bit of bias may have crept in!
Another new thread this time reflects the fact that the 2011 triple disaster in
Japan seemed to attract a large number of researchers, sometimes also acting
as volunteers to help out, and there is mention here and there of the work they
have published. The Japanese anthropologist Numazaki Ichiro expressed a kind
of uncomfortable sense of inappropriateness in this interest in the suffering of
his friends and neighbours (see reference in Chapter 5), albeit academic, and
I have to say that I share his view, although the work of my own former student
Sébastien Boret, described in his fieldwork report in Chapter 6, seems appro-
priate, as he returned to the site where he had previously worked. There were
also many non-academic volunteers who helped out after the disasters, but
even some of those signed up with organisations that made their work a kind
of tourism, as reported in a paper entitled ‘From volunteers to voluntours’
(McMorran 2017), and there are still tourists heading to Tohoku, threatening
to trap local people in a permanent state of ‘post-disaster’. There is also some
good news, however, and that is that some of the former city dwellers who went
to heavily damaged country locations to join the rebuilding teams have also
helped to revitalise them, as they discovered advantages in the less stressful
life and decided to settle there (see Klien in Chapter 4). Again, I did a bit of
personal research and visited an area so badly irradiated that residents are still
living outside it, and this is reported in Chapter 12.
The sources for this book are, as far as possible, anthropological studies,
including those of the author and the new additions of 12 scholars who have
kindly contributed pieces of their own to each chapter and a further one to the
Conclusion. They are usually based on fieldwork, often carried out for long
periods in the same place with a circumscribed group of people, so that various
aspects of Japanese life have been experienced at an intimate ‘grass-roots’ level.
Some of the studies have even been conducted in a single home, some have
focused on one village or urban neighbourhood, and others have investigated
a single school, factory, nightclub or wedding parlour. Other studies take a
theme as a focus and examine its manifestation in different parts of Japan. The
detailed content of each of the chapters of this book has been designed to draw
on the rich fund of work available, for an understanding of these microcosmic
views of Japanese society is ultimately the best means of understanding the
macrocosmic view, which will emerge gradually towards the end of the book.
In the few areas that have been little investigated by anthropologists, but which
nevertheless add an important dimension to an understanding of contemporary
Japanese society, an attempt has been made to fill the gaps using other sources
available. Nothing has been barred, and I hope that the reader will benefit from
this broad approach. In fact, the book was originally based on a series of lectures,
which were designed for the modular course at Oxford Polytechnic, now Oxford
Brookes University. This course enabled students to combine two major fields
and several minor ones in the pursuit of their degrees, so it is particularly appro-
priate if they can relate the anthropological approach to the other disciplines in
5
Introduction 5
which they happen to be interested. One of our early students of whom I am par-
ticularly proud (Chris Perkins) now teaches politics and international relations
of Japan in the Department of East Asian Studies at Edinburgh University, but
I don’t think he has forgotten the value of anthropology!
Further reading, novels and some often quite classic films are recommended
at the ends of chapters with the aim of helping readers to pursue their own indi-
vidual interests. The book, as a whole, is intended to open a door, to provide
details about life in Japan, which all Japanese know because they were brought
up there. It explains the kinds of things that Japanese people probably wouldn’t
bother to tell you because they may not have noticed that everyone doesn’t think
like that. Or if they have, they just assume that only Japanese people would under-
stand these things anyway. As will be discussed in Chapter 1, Japanese people
(like many others) tend to think of themselves as rather special and unique. Once
the reader is armed with background information like this, it should be possible
to achieve a deeper understanding of specialist books in other areas.
The intended audience is fairly broad. There were no prerequisites for the
course at the Polytechnic for which the original lectures were designed. Many of
the students had some background in anthropology, others had taken a module
or two about Japan, but there were also students who knew nothing of either area.
In the same way, the book makes no assumptions about the readers’ knowledge.
It could be of value to anyone interested in Japan. It could form a useful com-
panion to someone planning a holiday, someone posted by his or her company,
someone hoping to set up a subsidiary there. It will not provide details about how
to do business in Japan, but it will give potential businessmen and women an
insight into the way their Japanese counterparts may be thinking about an issue.
This book will also help someone studying the Japanese language to put the
fruits of their learning into a social context. It will provide answers to questions
that may arise about why things are said in the way they are, why some things
don’t appear to have an equivalent in Japanese, and why there are several
different ways of saying apparently simple words like ‘come’, ‘go’ and ‘eat’. It
will also help to explain Japanese words that seem to have no clear translation
into English, and in some cases, the understanding of such words will open a
revealing window onto categories of thought fundamental to native speakers
who use the language in their everyday lives. Not many Japanese words have
been supplied in the chapters that follow. This is not a language textbook, but
without an understanding of the words that have been included, no one could
claim a good working knowledge of the Japanese language.
Considerable attention is given throughout to the symbolic aspects of
Japanese behaviour, the non-verbal ways in which members of Japanese culture
communicate with each other, and particularly to the ritual behaviour in which
they participate. Some principles will recur from one chapter to another, and the
conclusion tries to bring together features common to all the arenas discussed.
6
6 References
References
Introduction
McMorran, Chris, ‘From Volunteers to Voluntours: Shifting Priorities in Post-disaster
Japan’, Japan Forum, 29, 4 (2017), pp. 558–82.
Chapter 1
Allen, Matthew and Rumi Sakamoto, Popular Culture, Globalization and Japan
(Routledge, London and New York, 2006).
Asquith, Pamela and Arne Kalland, Japanese Images of Nature: Cultural Perspectives
(Curzon, Richmond, Surrey and University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1997).
Aston, W. G. (trans.), Nihongi: Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to AD 697
(Allen & Unwin, London, 1956).
Averbuch, Irit, The Gods Come Dancing: A Study of the Japanese Ritual Dance of
Yamabushi Kagura (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1995).
Barnes, Gina L., State Formation in Japan: Emergence of a 4th Century Ruling Elite
(RoutledgeCurzon, London, 2006).
Bartholomew, James, The Formation of Science in Japan (Yale University Press, New
Haven, CT, 1993).
Befu, Harumi, Hegemony of Homogeneity (Trans-Pacific Press, Melbourne, 2001).
Befu, Harumi and Sylvie Guichard-Anguis, Globalizing Japan: Ethnography of the
Japanese Presence in Asia, Europe and America (Routledge, London, 2001).
Bestor, Theodore C., ‘Washoku, Far and Near: UNESCO, Gastrodiplomacy, and
the Cultural Politics of Traditional Japanese Cuisine’, in Nancy K. Stalker (ed.),
Devouring Japan: Global Perspectives on Japanese Cultural Identity (Oxford
University Press, Oxford, 2018).
Breaden, Jeremy, Stacey Steele and Carolyn S. Stevens, Internationalising Japan:
Discourse and Practice (Routledge, London and New York, 2014).
Coaldrake, William H., Architecture and Authority in Japan (Routledge, London, 1995).
Cox, Rupert, The Zen Arts: An Anthropological Study of the Culture of Aesthetic Form
in Japan (RoutledgeCurzon, London, 2002).
Denoon, Donald, Mark Hudson, Gavin McCormack and Tessa Morris- Suzuki
(eds), Multicultural Japan: Paleolithic to Postmodern (Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1996).
Dower, John, Embracing Defeat (Penguin Books, London, 2000).
Dvorak, Greg, ‘Connecting the Dots: Teaching Pacific History in Japan from an
Archipelagic Perspective’, Journal of Pacific History, 46, 2 (2011), pp. 236–43.
Eades, J. S., Tom Gill and Harumi Befu, Globalization and Social Change in
Contemporary Japan (Trans-Pacific Press, Melbourne, 2000).
Fawcett, Clare, ‘Archaeology and Japanese Identity’, in Donald Denoon et al. (eds),
Multicultural Japan: Paleolithic to Postmodern (Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1996), pp. 60–77.
Frewer, Douglas, ‘Japanese Postage Stamps as Social Agents: Some Anthropological
Perspectives’, Japan Forum, 14, 1 (2002), pp. 1–19.
Funabiki, Takeo, Exploring the Anxiety of Being Japanese —A New Look at Nihonjinron
(Cam Rivers Publishing, Cambridge, 2018).
7
References 7
Gluck, Carol, Japan’s Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period (Princeton
University Press, Princeton, 1985).
Godart, Clinton, Darwin, Dharma and the Divine: Evolutionary Theory and Religion in
Modern Japan (Hawaii University Press, Honolulu, 2017).
Goodman, Roger, Ceri Peach, Ayumi Takenaka and Paul White (eds), Global Japan: The
Experience of Japan’s New Immigrant and Overseas Communities (RoutledgeCurzon,
London, 2003).
Guarné, Blai and Paul Hansen (eds), Escaping Japan: Reflections on Estrangement and
Exile in the Twenty-First Century (Routledge, London and New York, 2018).
Hall, John Witney and Richard K. Beardsley, Twelve Doors to Japan (McGraw-Hill,
New York, 1965).
Harding, Christopher, Japan Story: In Search of a Nation, 1850 to the Present (Allen-
Lane, London, 2018).
Hendry, Joy, The Orient Strikes Back: A Global View of Cultural Display (Berg, Oxford
and New York, 2000).
———‘Japan and Pacific Anthropology: Some Ideas for New Research’. Asia Pacific
World, 3, 1 (Spring 2012), pp. 6–17.
Hudson, Mark J., Ruins of Identity: Ethnogenesis in the Japanese Islands (University of
Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1999).
———‘For the People, by the People: Postwar Japanese Archaeology and the Early
Paleolithic Hoax’, Anthropological Science, 113 (2005), pp. 131–9.
Hutchinson, Rachel and Mark Williams, Representing the Other in Modern Japanese
Literature (Routledge, London and New York, 2007).
Imamura Keiji, Prehistoric Japan: New Perspectives on Insular East Asia (University
of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1996).
Johnson, H. M. and J. C. Jaffe (eds), Performing Japan: Contemporary Expressions of
Cultural Identity (Global Oriental, Folkestone, 2008).
Kawada Minoru, trans. Toshiko Kishida- Ellis, The Origin of Ethnography in
Japan: Yanagita Kunio and His Times (Kegan Paul International, London and
New York, 1993).
Kawano, Satsuki, Glenda S. Roberts and Susan Orpett Long (eds), Capturing
Contemporary Japan: Differentiation and Uncertainty (University of Hawaii Press,
Honolulu, 2014).
Ketelaar, James, Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan: Buddhism and Its Persecution
(Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1990).
Kirby, Peter Wynne, Troubled Natures: Waste, Environment, Japan (University of
Kobayashi, Tatsuo, edited by Simon Kaner with Oki Nakamura, Jomon Reflections:
Forager Life and Culture in the Prehistoric Japanese Archipelago (Oxbow Books,
Oxford, 2004).
Kreiner, Josef, ‘Brief Remarks on Paradigm Shifts in Japanese Anthropology during
the 20th Century’, Global Perspectives on Japan, 1 (2017), pp. 23–65.
Lancashire, Terence, Gods’ Music —the Japanese Folk Theatre of Iwami Kagura
(Florian Noetzel Verlag, Wilhelmshaven, 2006).
Marcon, Federico, The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early
Modern Japan (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2015).
Mathews, Gordon, Global Culture /Individual Identity: Searching for Home in the
Cultural Supermarket (Routledge, London, 2000).
8
8 References
Mathews, Gordon and Bruce White (eds), Japan’s Changing Generations: Are Japan’s
Young People Creating a New Society? (RoutledgeCurzon, London, 2004).
Mizoguchi, Koji, Archaeology, Society and Identity in Modern Japan (Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, 2006).
Morris, Ivan Ira, The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan (Oxford
Morris-Suzuki, Tessa, The Technological Transformation of Japan: From the Seventeenth
to the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994).
———‘A Descent into the Past: The Frontier in the Construction of Japanese Identity’,
in Donald Denoon et al. (eds), Multicultural Japan: Paleolithic to Postmodern
(Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996), pp. 81–94.
Oguma, Eiji, A Genealogy of Japanese Self-Images (Trans Pacific Press, Melbourne,
2002).
Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko, Rice as Self. Japanese Identities through Time (Princeton
Robertson, Jennifer, Robo Sapiens Japanicus: Robots, Gender, Family and the Japanese
Nation (University of California Press, Oakland, CA, 2018).
Saaler, Sven and Christopher W. A. Szpilman, Routledge Handbook of Modern
Japanese History (Routledge, London and New York, 2018).
Sasagawa, Ayumi, ‘Centred Selves and Life Choices: Changing Attitudes of Young
Educated Mothers’, in Gordon Mathews and Bruce White (eds), Japan’s Changing
Generations: Are Japan’s Young People Creating a New Society? (RoutledgeCurzon,
London, 2004), pp. 171–87.
Starrs, Roy (ed.), Politics and Religion in Modern Japan (Palgrave Macmillan,
Basingstoke, 2011).
Stefánsson, Halldór, ‘Media Stories of Bliss and Mixed Blessings’, in D. P. Martinez
(ed.), The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture: Gender, Shifting Boundaries and
Global Cultures (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998).
Totman, Conrad, A History of Japan (Blackwell, Oxford, 2005).
Tsunoda, Ryusaku (trans.) and L. C. Goodrich (ed.), Japan in the Chinese Dynastic
Histories (Perkins Asiatic Monographs, no. 2, South Pasadena, 1951).
Vlastos, Stephen, Mirror of Modernity: Invented Traditions of Modern Japan
(University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1998).
White, Bruce, ‘The Local Roots of Global Citizenship: Generational Change in a
Kyushu Village’, in Gordon Mathews and Bruce White (eds), Japan’s Changing
Generations: Are Japan’s Young People Creating a New Society? (RoutledgeCurzon,
London, 2004), pp. 47–63.
Yoshino, Kōsaku, Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary Japan (Routledge, London,
1992).
Related novels and lighter reading

Clavell, James, Shōgun (Dell Publishing Co., New York, 1975).
——— Gaijin (Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1993).
Downer, Lesley, The Last Concubine (Transworld Publishers, London, 2008).
——— The Shogun’s Queen (Transworld Publishers, London, 2016).
Endō Shūsaku, The Samurai (Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1986).
Hearn, Lian, Across the Nightingale Floor: Tales of the Otori (Riverhead Books,
Penguin Putnam, New York, 2002).
9
References 9
Mitchell, David, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (Hodder and Stoughton,
London, 2010).
Shiba, Ryotaro, trans. Juliet Winters Carpenter, The Last Shogun: The Life of Tokugawa
Yoshinobu (Kodansha International, New York, Tokyo and London, 1998).
Spence, Alan, The Pure Land (Canongate, Edinburgh, 2006).
Suzuki, David and Keibo Ozawa, The Other Japan: Voices beyond the Mainstream
(Fulcrum Publishing, Golden, Colorado, 1996).
Films
Birth of Japan (Nippon Tanjō) (1959 Hiroshi Inagaki): An account of the god Susano-
o drawn from the written sources of Shinto mythology.
Profound Desire of the Gods (Kamigami no Fukaki Yokubō) (1968 Shōhei Imamura): An
epic film set on a remote island where modernity comes into conflict with ancient
religious customs.
Himiko (1974 Masahiro Shinoda): A retelling of the life of the legendary shamaness
and ruler.
The 47 Loyal Samurai (Genroku Chūshingura) (1941–2 Kenji Mizoguchi): One of many
film versions of this most celebrated narrative of bushidō values.
The Passage to Japan (Fukuzawa Yukichi) (1991 Shin’ichirō Sawai): A biopic of Meiji-
era moderniser and educator Yukichi Fukuzawa.
Chapter 2
Bethel, Diana, ‘Alienation and Reconnection in a Home for the Elderly’, in Joseph Tobin
(ed.), Re-made in Japan (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1992).
Brown, Naomi, ‘Under One Roof: The Evolving Story of Three Generation Housing
in Japan’, in John Traphagan and John Knight (eds), Demographic Change
and the Family in Japan’s Aging Society (State University of New York Press,
New York, 2002).
Bullock, Julia C., Ayako Kano and James Welker, Rethinking Japanese Feminisms
(University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu, 2018).
Castro-Vázquez, Genaro, Intimacy and Reproduction in Contemporary Japan (Routledge,
London and New York, 2017).
Cook, Emma E., ‘Still a Child? Liminality and the Construction of Youthful
Masculinities in Japan’, in Karen Brison and Susan Dewey (eds), Super Girls,
Gangstas, Freeters, and Xenomaniacs: Gender and Modernity in Youth Cultures
(Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, 2011).
——— Reconstructing Adult Masculinities: Part-time Work in Contemporary Japan
(Routledge, London, 2016).
Dahl, Niels, ‘Social Inclusion of Senior Citizens in Japan: An Investigation into the
“Community-based Integrated Care System”’, Contemporary Japan, 30, 1 (2018),
pp. 43–59.
Dales, Laura, Feminist Movements in Contemporary Japan (Routledge, London and
New York, 2009).
Dore, R. P., City Life in Japan (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1971),
section III.
FFJ —Facts and Figures of Japan (Foreign Press Centre, Japan, 2007).
10
10 References
Gill, Tom, Men of Uncertainty: The Social Organization of Day Laborers in
Contemporary Japan (State University of New York Press, New York, 2001).
——— Yokohama Street Life: The Precarious Career of a Japanese Day Laborer
(Lexington Books, Lanham, MD, 2015).
Goldstein-Gidoni, Ofra, Housewives of Japan: An Ethnography of Real Lives and
Consumerized Domesticity (Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2012).
———‘The Japanese Corporate Family: The Marital Gender Contract Facing New
Challenges’, Journal of Family Issues, 40, 7 (2019), pp. 835–64.
Goodman, Roger, Children of the Japanese State: The Changing Role of Child
Protection Institutions in Contemporary Japan (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2000).
Hamabata, Matthews Masayuki, Crested Kimono: Power and Love in the Japanese
Business Family (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1990).
Hendry, Joy, ‘The Role of the Professional Housewife’, in Janet Hunter (ed.), Japanese
Women Working (Routledge, London, 1993).
———‘Order, Elegance and Purity: The Life of the Professional Housewife’, in Joy
Hendry (ed.), An Anthropological Lifetime in Japan: The Writings of Joy Hendry
(Brill, Leiden, 2018), p. 321.
Hertog, Ekaterina, Tough Choices: Bearing an Illegitimate Child in Japan (Stanford
University Press, Stanford, 2009).
Ishii-
Kuntz, Masako, ‘Balancing Fatherhood and Work: Emergence of Diverse
Masculinities in Contemporary Japan’, in James E. Roberson and Nobue Suzuki
(eds), Men and Masculinities in Contemporary Japan: Dislocating the Salaryman
Doxa (Routledge, London, 2002).
Japan Statistical Yearbook, edited by the Statistical Research and Training Institute,
and published by the Statistics Bureau, both under the Ministry of Internal Affairs
and Communications (2018).
Jolivet, Muriel, Japan: The Childless Society (Routledge, London and New York, 1997).
Kinoshita, Yasuhito and Christie W. Kiefer, Refuge of the Honored: Social
Organization in a Japanese Retirement Community (University of California Press,
Berkeley, 1993).
Kuwayama, Takami, ‘The Discourse of Ie (Family) in Japan’s Cultural Identity and
Nationalism: A Critique’, Japanese Review of Cultural Anthropology, 2 (2001),
pp. 3–38.
Lebra, T. S., Above the Clouds: Status Culture of the Modern Japanese Nobility
(University of California Press, Berkeley, 1993).
Lunsing, Wim, Beyond Common Sense: Sexuality and Gender in Contemporary Japan
(Kegan Paul, London, New York and Bahrain, 2001).
Marshall, Robert, ‘Gender Inequality and Family Formation in Japan’, Asian
Anthropology, 16, 4 ( 2017), pp. 261–78.
Moon, Okpyo, ‘Is the Ie Disappearing in Rural Japan? The Impact of Tourism on a
Traditional Japanese Village’, in Joy Hendry (ed.), Interpreting Japanese Society
Nakatani, Ayami, ‘The Emergence of “Nurturing Fathers”: Discourses and Practices
of Fatherhood in Contemporary Japan’, in Marcus Rebick and Ayumi Takenaka
(eds), The Changing Japanese Family (Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2006).
New Yorker, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/30/japans-rent-a-family-industry
Noguchi, Paul H., Delayed Departures, Overdue Arrivals: Industrial Familialism and
the Japanese National Railways (University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1990).
11
References 11
Numazaki, Ichiro, ‘To Change or Not to Change Surname on Marriage: An Analysis
of the Fufu Betsusei Controversy’, Japanese Society, 2 (1997), pp. 21–41.
Ochiai, Emiko, The Japanese Family System in Transition: A Sociological Analysis
of Family Change in Postwar Japan (LTCB International Library Foundation,
Tokyo, 1997).
Rebick, Marcus and Ayumi Takenaka (eds), The Changing Japanese Family (Routledge,
Abingdon and New York, 2006).
Roberts, Glenda, ‘Between Policy and Practice: Silver Human Resource Centers as
Viewed from the Inside’, Journal of Aging and Social Policy, 8, 2/3 (1996), pp. 115–32.
——— Japan’s Evolving Family: Voices from Young Urban Adults Navigating Change
(East-West Centre, Honolulu, Hawaii, 2016).
Robertson, Jennifer, ‘Looking Ahead by Going Back’, Anthropology News website, 18
July 2018. DOI: 10.1111/AN.921
Røkkum, Arne, Goddesses, Priestesses and Sisters: Mind, Gender and Power in the
Monarchic Tradition of the Ryukyus (Scandinavian University Press, Oslo, 1998).
Ronald, Richard and Allison Alexy, Home and Family in Japan: Continuity and
Transformation (Routledge, London, 2010).
Stevens, Carolyn, On the Margins of Japanese Society: Volunteers and the Welfare of
the Urban Underclass (Routledge, London, 1997).
Świtek, Beata, ‘Representing the Alternative. Demographic Change, Migrant
Eldercare Workers and National Imagination in Japan’, Contemporary Japan, 26,
2 (2014), pp. 263–80.
———, Reluctant Intimacies. Japanese Eldercare in Indonesian Hands (Berghahn
Books, New York and Oxford, 2016).
Thang, Leng Leng, ‘The Dancing Granny: Linking the Generations in a Japanese
Age-integrated Welfare Centre’, Japanese Studies, 19, 2 (1999), pp. 151–62.
——— Generations in Touch: Linking the Old and Young in a Tokyo Neighbourhood
(Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2001).
———‘Touching of the Hearts: An Overview of Programs to Promote Interaction
between the Generations in Japan’, in Roger Goodman (ed.), Family and Social
Policy in Japan: Anthropological Approaches (Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 2002).
Tokuhiro, Yoko, Marriage in Contemporary Japan (Routledge, Abingdon, 2010).
Traphagan, John W. and John Knight (eds), Demographic Change and the Family in
Japan’s Aging Society (State University of New York Press, New York, 2003).
Umeda, Yoshimi, ‘Filipina Intermarriage in Rural Japan: An Anthropological
Approach’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, London School of Economics, 2010.
Vassallo, Hannah, ‘Ideologies and Realities of Japan’s “New Papas”’, in Brigitte
Steger and Angelika Koch (eds), Cool Japanese Men: Studying New Masculinities
at Cambridge (LIT Verlag, Wien, 2017).
Wright, James, ‘Tactile Care, Mechanical Hugs: Japanese Caregivers and Robotic
Lifting Devices’, Asian Anthropology, 17, 1 (2018), pp. 24–39.
Wu, Yongmei, The Care of the Elderly in Japan (Routledge, Abingdon and New York,
2004).
Related novels
Ariyoshi, Sawako, The Twilight Years (Peter Owen, London, 1972).
——— The River Ki (Kodansha International, Tokyo, 1981).
12
12 References
Enchi, Fumiko, The Waiting Years (Kodansha International, Tokyo, 1986).
Futabatei, Shimei, An Adopted Husband (Greenwood Press, New York, 1969).
Tanizaki, Junichiro, The Makioka Sisters (Picador, London, 1979).
Films
The Ballad of Narayama (Narayama Bushiko) (1983 Shōhei Imamura, and an earlier
version by Keisuke Kinoshita, 1958): Depiction of an imagined community where
the elderly are taken to a mountain to die.
The Family Game (Kazoku Geemu) (1983 Yoshimitsu Morita): A scabrous satire on the
1980s family and the education system.
The Makioka Sisters (Sasame Yuki) (1983 Kon Ichikawa): Based on Tanizaki’s famous
novel, a study of sisterhood in pre-war Osaka.
Muddy River (Doro no Kawa) (1981/2 Kōhei Oguri): In post-war Osaka, two families
earn their living respectively through running a restaurant and through prostitution.
My Stiff-Necked Daddy and Me (Boku no oyaji to Boku) (1983 Shun Nakahara): A
father, mother and son seek a treasure under their house.
Still Walking (Aruitemo Aruitemo) (2008 Hirokazu Koreeda): A twenty-first-century
response to Tokyo Story (see next), dramatising the generation gap and new models
of being part of a family.
Tokyo Story (Tōkyō Monogatari) (1953 Yasujirō Ozu): Through the story of an elder
couple visiting their family in Tokyo, Ozu charts the post-war transformation in
family structures.
Torasan series (Yōji Yamada): Japan’s most popular film series charts the misadventures
of the black sheep of a family in a close-knit suburb.
Chapter 3
Allison, Anne, ‘Japanese Mothers and Obentōs: The Lunch-Box as Ideological State
Apparatus’, Anthropological Quarterly, 64, 4 (1991), pp. 195–208.
Bachnik, Jane, ‘Kejime: Defining a Shifting Self in Multiple Organizational Modes’,
in Nancy Rosenberger (ed.), Japanese Sense of Self (Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1992), pp. 152–72.
Bachnik, Jane and Charles J. Quinn (eds), Situated Meaning: Inside and Outside in
Japanese Self, Society and Language (Princeton University Press, Princeton,
1994).
Ben-Ari, Eyal, Body Projects in Japanese Childcare: Culture, Organization and
Emotions in a Preschool (Curzon, Richmond, Surrey, 1997).
Bonaventura, Ruperti, Silvia Vesco and Carolina Negri (eds), Rethinking Nature in
Japan from Tradition to Modernity (Edizioni Ca’Foscari, Venice, 2017).
Chenhall, Richard D. and Tomofumi Oka, ‘An Initial View of Self-help Groups for
Japanese Alcoholics: Danshukai in its Historical, Social, and Cultural Contexts’,
International Journal of Self-Help & Self-Care, 5, 2 (2006–7), pp. 111–52.
Counihan, Carole and Penny Van Esterik (eds.), Food and Culture: A Reader
Doi, Takeo, trans. Mark Harbison, The Anatomy of Self: The Individual versus Society
(Kodansha International, Tokyo, 1986).
Douglas, Mary, Purity and Danger (Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1970).
13
References 13
Gill, Tom, ‘Transformational Magic: Some Japanese Super-heroes and Monsters’,
in D. P. Martinez (ed.), The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture: Gender, Shifting
Boundaries and Global Cultures (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
1998).
Hendry, Joy, Becoming Japanese: The World of the Pre-school Child (University of
Ivry, Tsipy, Embodying Culture: Pregnancy in Japan and Israel (Rutgers University
Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey and London, 2010).
Kuroyanagi, Tetsuko, trans. D. Britten, Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window
(Kodansha, Tokyo, 1982).
Lebra, Takie Sugiyama, The Japanese Self in Cultural Logic (University of Hawaii
Press, Honolulu, 2004).
Lock, Margaret M., East Asian Medicine in Urban Japan: Varieties of Medical
Experience (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1980).
——— Encounters with Aging: Mythologies of Menopause in Japan and North America
——— Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death (University of
California Press, Berkeley, 2002).
Long, Susan Orpett, Lives in Motion: Composing Circles of Self and Community in
Japan (Cornell East Asia Series, Ithaca, New York, 1999).
Mathews, Gordon, What Makes Life Worth Living? How Japanese and Americans
Make Sense of their Worlds (University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles
and London, 1996).
Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko, Illness and Culture in Contemporary Japan (Cambridge
Onabe, Tomoko, ‘Bentō: Boxed Love, Eaten by the Eye’, in Eric C. Rath and Stephanie
Assmann (eds), Japanese Foodways, Past and Present (University of Illinois Press,
Urbana, Chicago, 2010).
Ozawa da Silva, Chikako, Psychotherapy and Religion in Japan: The Japanese
Introspection Practice of Naikan (Routledge, London and New York, 2009).
Peak, Lois, Learning to Go to School in Japan: The Transition from Home to Preschool
Life (University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1991).
Piaget, J., The Moral Judgement of the Child (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1932).
Rosenberger, Nancy, Gambling with Virtue: Japanese Women and the Search for Self in
a Changing Nation (University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 2001).
——— (ed.), Japanese Sense of Self (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992).
Tahhan, Diana, The Japanese Family: Touch, Intimacy and Feeling (Routledge,
London, 2014).
Tobin, Joseph, ‘Japanese Preschools and the Pedagogy of Selfhood’, in Nancy
Rosenberger (ed.), Japanese Sense of Self (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
1992), pp. 21–39.
Tobin, Joseph J., David Y. H. Wu and Dana H. Davidson, Preschool in Three Cultures:
Japan, China and the United States (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1989).
Traphagan, John W., Taming Oblivion: Aging Bodies and the Fear of Senility in Japan
(State University of New York Press, Albany, 2000).
Yamamoto, Yoko, ‘Gender and Social Class Differences in Japanese Mothers’ Beliefs
about Children’s Education and Socialisation’, Gender and Education 28, 1 (2016),
pp. 72–88.
14
14 References
Related novels
Ishiguro, Kazuo, A Pale View of Hills (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1983).
Murakami, Haruki, trans. Jay Rubin, Norwegian Wood (The Harvill Press, London,
2000).
Films
Margaret Lock (talks about Encounters with Aging —Asian Educational Media
Service, 1998).
Being Good (Kimi wa Ii Ko) (2015 Mipa Ō): The work of an idealistic primary school
teacher is juxtaposed with accounts of child abuse.
Nobody Knows (Daremo Shiranai) (2004 Hirokazu Koreeda): A mother abandons her
four children in a Tokyo apartment.
Chapter 4
Ben-Ari, Eyal, Changing Japanese Suburbia: A Study of Two Present-Day Localities
(Kegan Paul International, Tokyo, 1991).
Bestor, Theodore C., Neighborhood Tokyo (Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1989).
Bestor, Victoria Lyon, ‘Toward a Cultural Biography of Civil Society in Japan’,
in Roger Goodman (ed.), Family and Social Policy in Japan: Anthropological
Approaches (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002).
Carle, Ronald D., ‘The Way of the Roof: Heritage Preservation and Tourism
Development in the Heart of Japan’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2002,
pp. 136–9.
Clammer, John, Contemporary Urban Japan: A Sociology of Consumption (Blackwell,
Oxford, 1997).
Clark, Scott, Japan: A View from the Bath (University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1994).
Cwiertka, Katarzyna J. and Ewa Machotka (eds.), Consuming Life in Post-bubble
Japan (Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2018).
Dore, R. P., City of Life in Japan: A Study of a Tokyo Ward (University of California
Press, Berkeley, 1958).
Embree, John, Suye Mura: A Japanese Village (University of Chicago Press,
Chicago, 1939).
Fielding, Tony, ‘Japan: Internal Migration Trends and Processes since the 1950s’,
in Tony Champion et al., Internal Migration in the Developed World (Routledge,
Fukutake, Tadashi, Japanese Rural Society (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1972).
Ivy, Marilyn, Discourses of the Vanishing: Modernity, Phantasm, Japan (Chicago
University Press, Chicago, 1995).
Kalland, Arne, Shingu, a Japanese Fishing Community (Curzon Press, London and
Malmo, 1980).
Kalland, Arne and B. Moeran, Endangered Culture: Japanese Whaling in a Cultural
Perspective (Curzon Press, London and Malmo, 1992).
Klien, Susanne, ‘Reinventing Ishinomaki, Reinventing Japan? Creative Networks,
Alternate Lifestyles and the Search for Quality of Life in Post-growth Japan’,
Japanese Studies, 36, 1 (2016), pp. 39–60.
15
References 15
———‘Living and Working for the Moment: Motivations, Aspirations and
Experiences of Disaster Volunteers in Tōhoku’, in Wolfram Manzenreiter and
Barbara Holthus (eds), Happiness and the Good Life in Japan (Routledge, London
Knight, John, ‘The Soil as Teacher: Natural Farming in a Mountain Village’, in Pamela
Asquith and Arne Kalland, The Culture of Nature in Japan (Curzon, Richmond,
Surrey and University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1997), pp. 236–56.
———‘Selling Mother’s Love: Mail Order Village Food in Japan’, Journal of Material
Culture, 3, 2 (1998), pp. 153–73.
———‘Hunters and Hikers: Rival Recreations in the Japanese Forest’, in Joy Hendry
and Massimo Raveri, Japan at Play: The Ludic and the Logic of Power (Routledge,
London, 2002), pp. 268–84.
———‘Repopulating the Village’, in John W. Traphagan and John Knight (eds),
Demographic Change and the Family in Japan’s Aging Society (State University of
New York Press, New York, 2003) (see Chapter 2).
MacPherson, Kerrie L. (ed.), Asian Department Stores (Curzon, Richmond,
Surrey, 1998).
Manzenreiter, Wolfram (ed.), ‘Rural Japan Revisited: Exploring Japan beyond the
Country’s Metropolitan Areas’, Contemporary Japan, 2017. Virtual Special Issue.
Martinez, D. P., ‘Tourism and the Ama: The Search for a Real Japan’, in Eyal Ben
Ari, Brian Moeran and James Valentine (eds), Unwrapping Japan (Manchester
University Press, Manchester, 1990), pp. 97–116.
——— Making and Becoming: Identity and Ritual in a Japanese Village (Hawaii
University Press, Honolulu, 2003).
Moeran, Brian, Lost Innocence (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1984).
——— A Far Valley: Four Years in a Japanese Village (Kodansha International, Tokyo,
New York and London, 1998).
Moon, Okpyo, From Paddy Field to Ski Slope (Manchester University Press,
Manchester, 1989).
———‘Tourism and Cultural Development: Japanese and Korean Contexts’, in
Yamashita Shinji, Kadin H. Din and J.S. Eades (eds), Tourism and Cultural
Development in Asia and Oceania (Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan, Bangi,
Malaysia, 1997), pp. 178–93.
———‘Countryside Reinvented for Urban Tourists: Rural Transformation in the
Japanese Muraokoshi Movement’, in Joy Hendry and Massimo Raveri (eds), Japan
at Play: The Ludic and the Logic of Power (Routledge, London, 2002), pp. 228–44.
Nagashima, Nobuhiro and Hiroyasu, Tomoeda (eds), Regional Differences in Japanese
Rural Culture (Senri Ethnological Studies no. 14, National Museum of Ethnology,
Osaka, 1984).
Nakane, Chie, Kinship and Economic Organisation in Rural Japan (Athlone Press,
London, 1967).
Nakano, Lynne Y., ‘Volunteering as a Lifestyle Choice: Negotiating Self-Identities in
Japan’, Ethnology, 39, 2 (2000), pp. 93–107.
Nennsteil, Ulrike, ‘Illegal Fishing and Power Games’, in Joy Hendry and Massimo
Raveri (eds), Japan at Play: The Ludic and the Logic of Power (Routledge, London,
2002), pp. 259–67.
Norbeck, Edward, Takashima: A Japanese Fishing Community (University of Utah
Press, Salt Lake City, 1954).
16
16 References
——— From Country to City: The Urbanisation of a Japanese Hamlet (University of
Utah Press, Salt Lake City, 1978).
Robertson, Jennifer, Native and Newcomer: Making and Remaking a Japanese City
(University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford, 1991).
Rosenberger, Nancy, ‘Young Organic Farmers in Japan: Betting on Lifestyle, Locality,
and Livelihood’, Contemporary Japan, 29, 1 (2017), pp. 14–30.
Schnell, Scott, The Rousing Drum: Ritual Practice in a Japanese Community (University
Smith, Robert, Kurusu: The Price of Progress in a Japanese Village 1951– 1975
(Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1978).
Smith, Robert J. and Ella Lury Wiswell, The Women of Suye Mura (University of
Chicago Press, Chicago, 1982).
Statistical Handbook of Japan (Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs and
Communications, Japan, 2018).
Traphagan, John W., ‘Entrepreneurs in Rural Japan: Gender, Blockage, and the Pursuit
of Existential Meaning’, Asian Anthropology, 16, 2 (2017), pp.77–94.
Wood, Donald C., Ogata-Mura: Sowing Dissent and Reclaiming Identity in a Japanese
Farming Village (Berghahn, New York and Oxford, 2012).
Films
As Iwate Goes: Is Culture Local? (Asian Educational Media Service, 1998 and 2001):
Shows how two small Japanese towns have manifested in various ways the tension
between local culture and traditions and the modern industrial society of Japan
and the wider world.
Ella’s Journal (documentary by Robert J. Smith and Ella Lury Wiswell about Suye
Mura —Asian Educational Media Service, 1998).
Fit Surroundings (David Plath and Jacquetta Hill, colour, 30 min, 1993: an anthropo-
logical film about the Ama women divers on the Ise peninsula).
My Neighbour Totoro (1988 Hayao Miyazaki): After a move to a close-knit rural com-
munity, two girls begin to encounter benign spirits.
Neighborhood Tokyo (documentary by Ted Bestor about his community —Asian
Educational Media Service, 1988) .
The Tale of Iya (Iya Monogatari: Oku no Hito) (2013 Tetsuichirō Tsuta): A study of a
remote farming community now facing depopulation and degradation.
Wood Job! (2014 Shinobu Yaguchi): A comic account of the rediscovery of com-
munity values by a young man who moves to the countryside to become a
lumberjack.
65+ Being Old in Rural Japan (2014 documentary made by Pia Kieninger and Isabelle
Prochaska-Meyer in German and Japanese with English subtitles).
Website
www.univie.ac.at/vsjf2017/video-recordings/. More than 20 Japan scholars addressed
the issue of living in the peripheries and the power of regions to mitigate the
challenges of depopulation, infrastructural hollowing- out and political heter-
onomy. Nearly all the presentations were video-recorded and are available online
at this website.
17
References 17
Chapter 5
Bamkin, Sam, ‘Reforms to Strengthen Moral Education in Japan: A Preliminary Analysis
of Implementation in Schools’, Contemporary Japan, 30, 1 (2018), pp. 78–96.
Cave, Peter, Primary School in Japan: Self, Individuality and Learning in Elementary
Education (Routledge, London and New York, 2007).
———‘Explaining the Impact of Japan’s Educational Reform: Or, Why Are Junior
High Schools So Different from Elementary Schools?’ Social Science Japan Journal,
14, 2 (2011), pp. 145–63.
——— Schooling Selves: Autonomy, Interdependence and Reform in Japanese Junior
High Education (Chicago University Press, Chicago, 2016).
Cummings, William K., Education and Equality in Japan (Princeton University Press,
Princeton, NJ, 1980).
Dore, Ronald, The Diploma Disease (Allen & Unwin, London, 1976), c hapter 3.
——— Education in Tokugawa Japan (Athlone Press, London, 1984).
Eades, J.S., Roger Goodman and Yumiko Hada, The ‘Big Bang’ in Japanese Higher
Education: The 2004 Reforms and the Dynamics of Change (Trans Pacific Press,
Melbourne, 2005).
Fukuzawa, Rebecca Erwin and Gerald K. LeTendre, Intense Years: How Japanese
Adolescents Balance School, Family and Friends (RoutledgeFalmer, New York and
London, 2001).
Goodman, Roger, ‘The Fifty-year Story of the Changing Perception and Status of
Japan’s Returnee Children’, in Roger Goodman, Yuki Imoto and Tuukka Toivonen
(eds), A Sociology of Japanese Youth: From Returnees to NEETs (Routledge,
Goodman, Roger, Yuki Imoto and Tuukka Toivonen, A Sociology of Japanese
Youth: From Returnees to NEETs (Routledge, London and New York, 2011).
Hendry, Joy, ‘St. Valentine and St. Nicholas in Japan: Some Less Academic Aspects of
Japanese School Life’, Japan Forum, 3, 2 (1991), pp. 313–23.
Hood, Christopher, Japanese Educational Reform: Nakasone’s Legacy (Routledge,
London, 2001).
Horiguchi, Sachiko, ‘Hikikomori: How Private Isolation Caught the Public Eye’, in Roger
Goodman, Yuki Imoto and Tuukka Toivonen (eds), A Sociology of Japanese Youth:
From Returnees to NEETs (Routledge, London and New York, 2011), pp. 122–38.
———‘ “Unhappy” and Isolated Youth in the Midst of Social Change: Representations
and Subjective Experiences of Hikikomori in Contemporary Japan’, in Barbara
Holhus and Wolfram Manzanreiter (eds), Life Course, Happiness and Well-being in
Japan (Routledge, London and New York, 2017), pp. 57–71.
Japan Statistical Yearbook, edited by the Statistical Research and Training Institute
and published by the Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs and
Communications, Japan. www.stat.go.jp/english/data/nenkan/index.htm
Kinsella, Sharon, ‘Narratives and Statistics: How Compensated Dating (enjo kōsai)
Was Sold’, in Roger Goodman, Yuki Imoto and Tuukka Toivonen (eds), A Sociology
of Japanese Youth: From Returnees to NEETs (Nissan Institute/Routledge, London
and New York, 2011), pp. 54–80.
Lock, Margaret, ‘A Nation at Risk: Interpretations of School Refusal in Japan’, in M.
Lock and D. Gordon (eds), Biomedicine Examined (Kluwer Academic Publishers,
Dordrecht and Boston, 1988), pp. 377–414.
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18 References
McConnell, David L., Importing Diversity: Inside Japan’s JET Programme (University
of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 2000).
McVeigh, Brian, Life in a Japanese Women’s College: Learning to be Ladylike
——— Wearing Ideology: State, Schooling and Self- Presentation in Japan (Berg,
Oxford, 2000).
Numazaki, Ichiro, ‘Too Wide, Too Big, Too Complicated to Comprehend: A Personal
Reflection on the Disaster That Started on March 11, 2011’, Asian Anthropology,
11:1 (2012), pp. 27–38.
Ohki, Emiko, ‘Pre-kindergarten “Education” is Flourishing in Tokyo’, Japan Education
Journal, 27 (1986), p. 10.
Okano, Kaori and Motonori Tsuchiya, Education in Contemporary Japan: Inequality
and Diversity (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999).
Poole, Gregory, The Japanese Professor: An Ethnography of a University Faculty (Sense
Publishers, Rotterdam, 2010).
Roesgaard, Marie H., Japanese Education and the Cram School Business: Functions,
Challenges and Perspectives of the Juku (NIAS Press, Copenhagen, 2006).
Rohlen, Thomas P., Japan’s High Schools (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1983).
Shimahara, Nobuo K., Teaching in Japan: A Cultural Perspective (RoutledgeFalmer,
New York, 2002).
Shimizu, Katsunobu, ‘Defining and Interpreting Absence from School in Contemporary
Japan’, Social Science Japan Journal, 14, 2 (Summer 2011), pp. 165–87.
Statistical Handbook of Japan (Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs and
Communications, Japan, 2018).
Steger, Brigitte and Angelika Koch (eds), Manga Girls and Herbivore Boys: Studying
Japanese Gender at Cambridge (LitVerlag, Wien and Zurich, 2013).
Steinhoff, Patricia G., ‘Student Conflict’, in Ellis S. Krauss, Thomas P. Rohlen
and Patricia G. Steinhoff (eds), Conflict in Japan (University of Hawaii Press,
Honolulu, 1984).
Takada, Shunsuke, ‘The relationship between education and child welfare in Japanese
children’s self-
reliance support facilities’, Contemporary Japan, 30, 1 (2018),
pp. 60–77.
Tsuneyoshi, Ryoko, Kaori H. Okano and Sarene Spence Boocock, Minorities and
Education in Multicultural Japan: An Interactive Perspective (Routledge, London
White, Merry, The Japanese Educational Challenge: A Commitment to Children (The
Free Press, New York, 1987).
——— The Material Child: Coming of Age in Japan and America (The Free Press,
New York, 1993).
Yoder, Robert Stuart, Youth Deviance in Japan (Transpacific Press, Melbourne, 2004).
Yoneyama, Shoko, Japanese High School: Silence and Resistance (Routledge,
London, 2007).
Films
Flying Colours (Biri Gyaru) (2015 Nobuhiro Doi): Heart-warming film about a failing
high school student who wins access to an elite university through the intervention
of a private tutor.
19
References 19
Schools (Gakkō series) (Yōji Yamada): A sequence of films about a teacher in a night
school for adults.
The Games Teachers Play (Za Chugaku Kyoshi) (1992 Hideyuki Hirayama): An
account of a junior high school teacher seeking a solution to delinquency.
Twenty-four Eyes (Nijushi no Hitomi) (1954 Keisuke Kinoshita): A celebrated weepie
about a pre-war teacher on a remote island and the various fates of her charges.
Typhoon Club (Taifū Club) (1985 Shinji Somai): A haunting study of the tensions and
anxieties within a high school class.
Chapter 6
Allen, Matthew, Identity and Resistance in Okinawa (Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham,
MD, 2002).
Bardsley, Jan and Laura Miller (eds), Manners and Mischief: Gender, Power and
Etiquette in Japan (University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles and
London, 2011).
Benedict, Ruth, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (Routledge & Kegan Paul,
London, 1967).
Chapman, David, Zainichi Korean Identity and Ethnicity (Routledge, London and
New York, 2008).
Chiavacci, David and Carola Hommerich (eds), Social Inequality in Post- growth
Japan: Transformation during Economic and Demographic Stagnation (Routledge,
Coates, Jamie, ‘“Unseeing” Chinese Students in Japan: Understanding Educationally
Channelled Migrant Experiences’, Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, 44, 3 (2015),
pp. 125–54.
—— —‘Ikebukuro In- between: Mobility and the Formation of the Yamanote’s
Heterotopic Borderland’, Japan Forum, 30, 2 (May 2018), pp. 163–85.
Creighton, Millie, ‘Emergent Japanese Discourses on Minorities, Race, Culture, and
Identity’, Global Ethnographic, 2 (2014), pp. 1–17.
Davis, John H. Jr, ‘Blurring the Boundaries of the Buraku(min)’, in J.S. Eades, Tom
Gill and Harumi Befu (eds), Globalization and Social Change in Contemporary
Japan (Trans-Pacific Press, Melbourne, 2000), pp. 110–22.
Dore, R.P., City Life in Japan (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1958).
Dumont, Louis, Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and its Implications (University
of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1980).
Ertl, John, John Mock, John McCreery and Gregory Poole (eds), Reframing Diversity
in the Anthropology of Japan (Kanazawa University Center for Cultural Resource,
Kanazawa, 2015).
Fitzhugh, William W. and Chisato O. Dubreuil, Ainu: Spirit of a Northern
People (Smithsonian Institute and University of Washington Press, Washington,
1999).
Fukuoka, Yasunori, trans. Tom Gill, Lives of Young Koreans in Japan (Trans-Pacific
Press, Melbourne, 2000).
Gottlieb, Nanette, Linguistic Stereotyping: Minority Groups in Japan (Routledge,
Graburn, Nelson H.H., John Ertl and R. Kenji Tierney, Multiculturalism in the New
Japan: Crossing the Boundaries Within (Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books, 2008).
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20 References
Hanazaki, Kōhei, ‘Ainu Moshir and Yaponesia: Ainu and Okinawan Identities in
Contemporary Japan’, in Donald Denoon, Mark Hudson, Gavin McCormack
and Tessa Morris-Suzuki (eds), Multicultural Japan: Paleolithic to Postmodern
(Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996).
Hankins, Joseph Doyle, ‘Maneuvers of Multiculturalism: Reconceptualizing the
Politics of Difference in Japan’, Japanese Studies 32, 1 (2012), pp. 1–19.
——— Working Skin: Making Leather, Making a Multicultural Japan (University of
California Press, San Diego, California, 2014).
Hein, Laura and Mark Seldon, Islands of Discontent: Okinawan Responses to Japanese
and American Power (Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, Boulder, New York and
Oxford, 2003).
Hendry, Joy, Wrapping Culture: Politeness, Presentation and Power in Japan and Other
Societies (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1993).
Inoue, Masamichi S., Okinawa and the U.S. Military: Identity Making in the Age of
Globalization (Columbia University Press, New York, 2007).
Ishida, Hiroshi and David Slater (eds), Social Class in Contemporary Japan: Structure,
Sorting and Categories (Routledge, London and New York, 2010).
Kharel, Dipesh, ‘From Lahures to Global Cooks: Network Migration from the Western
Hills of Nepal to Japan’, Social Science Japan Journal 19, 2 (2016), pp. 173–92.
Kim-Wachutka, Jackie, Zainichi Korean Women in Japan: Voices (Routledge, London
Komai, Hiroshi, Foreign Migrants in Contemporary Japan (Trans Pacific Press,
Melbourne, 2001).
Law, Jane Marie, Puppets of Nostalgia: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of the Japanese
Awaji Ningyō Tradition (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1997).
Lebra, Takie Sugiyama, Above the Clouds: Status Culture of the Modern Japanese
Nobility (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1993).
Lee, Sooim, Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu and Harumi Befu (eds), Japan’s Diversity
Dilemmas: Ethnicity, Citizenship and Education (Universe Books, Lincoln, NE,
2006).
Linger, Daniel Touro, No One Home: Brazilian Selves Remade in Japan (Stanford
University Press, Stanford, CA, 2001).
Liu-Farrer, Gracia, Labour Migration from China to Japan: International Students,
Transnational Migrants (Routledge, London, 2011).
Lunsing, Wim, Beyond Common Sense: Sexuality and Gender in Contemporary Japan
(Kegan Paul, London, New York and Bahrain, 2001).
———‘What Masculinity? Transgender practices among Japanese “men”’, in James
Roberson and Nobue Suzuki (eds), Men and Masculinities in Contemporary Japan
(RoutledgeCurzon, London and New York, 2003).
McLauchlan, Alastair, Prejudice and Discrimination in Japan: The Buraku Issue (Edwin
Mellen Press, Lewiston, NY, Queenston, Ontario, and Lampeter, Wales, 2003).
McLelland, Mark, Male Homosexuality in Modern Japan: Cultural Myths and Social
Realities (Curzon, Richmond, Surrey, 2000).
——— Queer Japan from the Pacific War to the Internet Age (Rowman and Littlefield,
Lanham, MD, 2005).
McLelland, Mark, Katsuhiko Suganuma and James Welker (eds), Queer Voices from
Japan: First-person Narratives from Japan’s Sexual Minorities (Lexington Books,
Lanham, MD, 2007).
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Matsunaga, Louella, The Changing Face of Japanese Retail: Working in a Chain Store
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Gaijin Tarento in Japan’, in J.A. Lent (ed.), Asian Popular Culture (Westview Press,
Boulder, CO, 1995).
Morris-Suzuki, Tessa, Borderline Japan: Foreigners and Frontier Controls in the Post-
War Era (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2010).
———‘Performing Ethnic Harmony: The Japanese Government’s Plans for a New
Ainu Law’, Asia Pacific Journal, 16, 21/2 (2018), pp. 1–18.
Murray, Andrea, Footprints in Paradise: Ecotourism, Local Knowledge, and Nature
Therapies in Okinawa (Berghahn, Oxford and New York, 2017).
Nakane, Chie, Japanese Society (Pelican, Harmondsworth, 1973).
Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko, The Monkey as Mirror: Symbolic Transformations in Ritual
and History (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1987).
Raz, Jacob, Aspects of Otherness in Japanese Culture (Institute for the Study of
Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo, 1992).
Refsing, Kirsten, The Ainu Library. Early European Works on the Ainu Language, vol.
1–10 (Curzon Press, Surrey, 1996).
——— The Ainu Library: The Indo-European Controversy, vol. 1–5 (Curzon Press,
Surrey, 1998).
——— The Ainu Library: Travelogues and General Descriptions, vol. 1–5 (Curzon
Press, Surrey, 2000).
——— The Ainu Library: Religion and Folklore, vol. 1–5 (Curzon Press, Surrey, 2002).
Roberson, James, ‘Uchinaa Pop: Place and Identity in Contemporary Okinawan
Popular Music’, Critical Asian Studies, 33, 2 (2001), pp. 211–42.
———‘Songs of War and Peace: Music and Memory in Okinawa’, The Asia-Pacific
Journal, 8, 31 (2010).
Roberts, Glenda S, ‘An Immigration Policy by Any Other Name: Semantics of
Immigration to Japan’, Social Science Japan Journal, 21, 1 (2018), pp. 89–102.
Roche, Gerald, Hiroshi Maruyama and Åsa Virdi Kroik, Indigenous Efflorescence
beyond Revitalisation in Sapmi and Ainu Mosir (ANU Press, Canberra, 2018).
Røkkum, Arne, Nature, Ritual and Society in Japan’s Ryukyu Islands (Routledge,
Roth, Joshua Hotaka, Brokered Homeland: Japanese Brazilian Migrants in Japan
(Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, 2002).
Ryang, Sonia, North Koreans in Japan: Language, Knowledge and Identity (Westview
Press, Boulder, CO, 1997).
——— (ed.), Koreans in Japan: Critical Voices from the Margin (Routledge,
London, 2000).
Salazar Parreñas, Rhacel, Illicit Flirtations: Labor, Migration, and Sex Trafficking in
Tokyo (Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA, 2011).
Siddle, Richard, Race, Resistance and the Ainu of Japan (Routledge, London and
New York, 1996).
Sjöberg, Katarina, The Return of the Ainu: Cultural Mobilization and the Practice of
Ethnicity in Japan (Harwood Academic Publishers, Chur, Switzerland, 1993).
Suzuki, Nobue, ‘Between Two Shores: Transnational Projects and Filipina Wives in/
from Japan’, Women’s Studies International Forum, 23, 4 (2000), pp. 431–44.
22
22 References
Takenaka, Ayumi, ‘Transnational Community and its Ethnic Consequences: The
Return Migration and the Transformation of Ethnicity of Japanese Peruvians’,
American Behaviorist Scientist, 42, 9 (2000), pp. 1459–74.
Tsu, Timothy, ‘From Ethnic Group to “Gourmet Republic”: The Changing Image of
Kobe’s Chinatown in Modern Japan’, Japanese Studies, 19, 1 (1999), pp. 17–32.
Tsuda, Takeyuki (Gaku), ‘Acting Brazilian in Japan: Ethnic Resistance among Return
Migrants’, Ethnology, 39, 1 (2000), pp. 51–71.
Valentine, James, ‘On the Borderlines: The Significance of Marginality in Japanese
Society’, in Eyal Ben-Ari, Brian Moeran and James Valentine (eds), Unwrapping
Japan (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1990), pp. 36–57.
———‘Skirting and Suiting Stereotypes: Representations of Marginalized Sexualities
in Japan’, Theory, Culture and Society, 14, 3 (1997), pp. 57–85.
———‘Disabled Discourse: Hearing Accounts of Deafness Constructed through
Japanese Television and Film’, Disability and Society, 16, 5 (2001), pp. 707–27.
Watson, Mark, Japan’s Ainu Minority in Tokyo: Urban Indigeneity and Cultural Politics
Weiner, Michael (ed.), Japan’s Minorities: The Illusion of Homogeneity (2nd edition)
Willis, David and Murphy-Shigematsu, Stephen (eds), Transcultural Japan: At the
Borderlands of Race, Gender and Identity (Routledge, London and New York, 2008).
Yamada, Takako, The World View of the Ainu (Kegan Paul, London, 2001).
Related novels and lighter reading

Ghosn, Carlos and Philippe Ries, Shift: Inside Nissan’s Historical Revival (Doubleday,
New York, 2005).
Hearn, Lian, Across the Nightingale Floor: Tales of the Otori (Riverhead Books,
Penguin Putnam, New York, 2002).
Honda, Katsuichi, trans. Kyoko Selden, Harakur, an Ainu Woman’s Tale (Cambridge
Keyso, RuthAnn, Women of Okinawa: Nine Voices from a Garrison Island (Cornell
University Press, Ithaca and London, 2000).
Ma, Karen, Excess Baggage (China Books, San Francisco, CA, 2013) (a memoir novel
about Chinese women studying in Japan).
Medoruma, Shun, Droplets (trans. Michael Molasky) in Michael Molasky and Steve
Rabson (eds), Southern Exposure: Modern Japanese Literature from Okinawa
(University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 2000).
Shimazaki, Tōson, The Broken Commandment (Tokyo University Press, Tokyo, 1974).
Films
All under the Moon (Tsuki wa Dotchi ni Deteiru) (1993 Yōichi Sai): A comic account of
the life of a Zainichi Korean taxi driver, by a director of Korean ethnicity.
Go (2001 Isao Yukisada): A popular drama chronicling the life of an alienated Zainichi
Korean teenager.
Hush (2001 Ryōsuke Hashiguchi): A drama about a gay couple and a single straight
woman who contemplate raising a family.
Osaka Story: A Documentary (1994 Tōichi Nakata).
23
References 23
The Outcast (Hakai) (1962 Kon Ichikawa) (film of The Broken Commandment by
Tōson Shimazaki): A critique of discrimination against the burakumin underclass.
Playing with Naan (2014 Dipesh Kharel film about Nepali workers in Japan).
So Long Asleep: Waking the Ghosts of a War (David Plath, colour, 60 min, 2016, in
English, Korean and Japanese with English subtitles).
Sour Strawberries (2013 Daniel Schremers film about trainee workers in Japan).
Takie Sugiyama Lebra (talks about Above the Clouds —Asian Educational Media
Service, 1998).
Tokyo Pengyou (2018 Jamie Coates film about Chinese students in Tokyo).
Websites
Coates, Jamie, ‘Not Multicultural, but a More Diverse Japan?’ East Asia Forum
(blog). 3 December 2016. www.eastasiaforum.org/2016/12/03/not-multicultural-
but-a-more-diverse-japan/.
Chapter 7
Andreeva, Anna, Assembling Shinto: Buddhist Approaches to Kami Worship in Medieval
Japan (Harvard University Press, Asia Center, 2017).
Baffelli, Erica and Ian Reader, ‘Aftermath: Religion in the Wake of Aum’, Japanese
Journal of Religious Studies, 39, 1 (April 2012).
Baffelli, Erica, Ian Reader and Birgit Staemmler (eds), Japanese Religions on the
Internet: Innovation, Representation and Authority (Routledge, New York, 2011).
Bellah, Robert, Tokugawa Religion: The Values of Pre-industrial Japan (Free Press,
Glencoe, IL, 1957, reprint: Beacon Press, Boston, 1970).
Blacker, Carmen, The Catalpa Bow: A Study of Shamanistic Practices in Japan (George
Allen & Unwin, London, 1975).
Bocking, Brian, A Popular Dictionary of Shintō (Curzon, Richmond, Surrey, 1996).
Breen, John (ed.), Yasukuni, the War Dead and the Struggle for Japan’s Past (Columbia
University Press, New York, 2008).
Breen, John and Mark Teeuwen, A New History of Shinto (Wiley Blackwell, Chichester
and Malden, VA, 2010).
Capra, Fritjof, The Tao of Physics (Flamingo, London, 1983).
Clarke, Peter B., Japanese New Religions in Global Perspective (Curzon, Richmond,
Surrey, 2000).
Davis, Winston, Dōjō: Magic and Exorcism in Modern Japan (Stanford University
Press, Stanford, 1980).
——— Japanese Religion and Society: Paradigms of Structure and Change (State
University of New York Press, Albany, 1992).
Dehn, Ulrich and Birgitt Staemmler (eds), Establishing the Revolutionary: An
Introduction to New Religions in Japan (LIT Verlag, Münster-Hamburg-Berlin-Wien-
London-Zürich, 2012).
Eades, Carla, Jerry Eades, Yuriko Nishiyama and Hiroko Yanase, ‘Houses of
Everlasting Bliss: Globalization and the Production of Buddhist Altars in Hikone’,
in J.S. Eades, Tom Gill and Harumi Befu (eds), Globalization and Social Change in
Contemporary Japan (Trans Pacific Press, Melbourne, 2000), pp. 159–79.
24
24 References
Earhart, H. Byron, The New Religions of Japan, Michigan Papers in Japanese Studies
no. 9 (Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1983).
Fitzgerald, Timothy, ‘Japanese Religion and the Ritual Order’, Religion, 23 (1993),
pp. 315–41.
Gaitanidis, Ioannis, ‘Socio-economic Aspects of the “Spiritual Business” in Japan: A
Survey of Professional Spiritual Therapists’, Religion and Society, 16 (2010), pp.
143–60 .
———‘At the Forefront of a “Spiritual Business”: Independent Professional Spiritual
Therapists in Japan’, Japan Forum, 23, 2 (2011), pp. 185–206.
Graf, Tim, ‘Buddhist Responses to the 3.11 Disasters in Japan’, in Mark Mullens and
Nakano Koichi (eds), Disasters and Social Crises in Contemporary Japan: Political,
Religious and Cultural Responses (Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2016), pp.
156–81.
Hardacre, Helen, Lay Buddhism in Contemporary Japan (Princeton University Press,
Princeton, 1984) .
——— Kurozumikyō and the New Religions of Japan (Princeton University Press,
Princeton, 1986).
——— Shintō and the State 1868–1988 (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1989).
——— Marketing the Menacing Fetus in Japan (University of California Press,
Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1997).
——— Shinto: A History (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2017).
Hendry, Joy, ‘The Sacred Power of Wrapping’, in P. F. Kornicki and I. J. McMullen
(eds), Japanese Religion: Arrows to Heaven and Earth (Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1996).
Ionescu, Sanda, ‘Sōka Gakkai in Germany: The Story of a Qualified Success’, in
Harumi Befu and Sylvie Guichard-Anguis (eds), Globalizing Japan: Ethnography
of the Japanese Presence in Asia, Europe and America (Routledge, London,
2001).
Kisala, Robert J. and Mark R. Mullins (eds), Religion and Social Crisis in Japan:
Understanding Japanese Society through the Aum Affair (Palgrave, Basingstoke and
New York, 2001).
Kornicki, P. F. and I. J. McMullen (eds), Japanese Religion: Arrows to Heaven and
Earth (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996).
LaFleur, William R., Liquid Life: Abortion and Buddhism in Japan (Princeton
Lewis, David, Religion in Japanese Daily Life (Routledge, London, JAWS series, 2018).
Lobetti, Tullio Federico, Ascetic Practices in Japanese Religion (Routledge, London,
JAWS series, 2014).
Matsunaga, Louella, ‘Spirit First, Mind Follows, Body Belongs: Notions of Health,
Illness and Disease in Sukyō Mahikari UK’, in Peter B. Clarke (ed.), Japanese New
Religions in Global Perspective (Curzon, Richmond, Surrey, 2000), pp. 198–239.
Miyake, Hitoshi, Shugendō: Essays on the Structure of Japanese Folk Religion (Center
for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2001).
——— The Mandala of the Mountain: Shugendō and Folk Religion, edited with an
introduction by Gaynor Sekimori (Keio University Press, Tokyo, 2005).
Mullins, Mark R., Christianity Made in Japan (University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu,
2000).
——— (ed.), Handbook of Christianity in Japan (Brill, Leiden and Boston, MA, 2003).
25
References 25
Mullins, Mark R., Shimazono Susumu and Paul L. Swanson (eds), Religion and
Society in Modern Japan (Asian Humanities Press, Berkeley, CA, 1993).
Needham, Rodney, Belief, Language and Experience (Blackwell, Oxford, 1972).
Nelson, John K., Enduring Identities: The Guise of Shinto in Contemporary Japan
Newell, William H. (ed.), Ancestors (Mouton, The Hague, 1976).
Peat, F. David, ‘Traditional Knowledge and Western Science’, in Joy Hendry and
Laara Fitznor (eds), Anthropologists, Indigenous Scholars and the Research
Endeavour: Seeking Bridges towards Mutual Respect (Routledge, New York and
London, 2012), pp. 118–27.
Picone, Mary, ‘Science and Religious Movements in Japan: High-tech Healers and
Computerized Cults’, in Joy Hendry (ed.), Interpreting Japanese Society (Routledge,
London and New York, 1998), pp. 222–8.
Reader, Ian, Religion in Contemporary Japan (Macmillan, Basingstoke and University
——— Religious Violence in Contemporary Japan: The Case of Aum Shinrikyō
(Curzon, Richmond, Surrey, 2000).
Reader, Ian and George Tanabe, Practically Religious: Worldly Benefits and the
Common Religion of Japan (University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1998).
Rots, Aike P., Shinto, Nature and Ideology in Contemporary Japan: Making Sacred
Forests (Bloomsbury, London, 2017).
Rowe, Mark Michael, Bonds of the Dead: Temples, Burial and the Transformation of
Contemporary Japanese Buddhism (Chicago University Press, Chicago, 2011).
Shackleton, Michael, ‘The Great Forest Wall: A Plan to Protect Japan from Future
Mega-Tsunami’, Global Perspectives on Japan (Japanese Studies Association of
Turkey, Istanbul), No. 1, 2017.
Shimazono, Susumu, ‘New Religious Movements: Introduction’, in Mark R. Mullins,
Shimazono Susumu and Paul L. Swanson (eds), Religion and Society in Modern
Japan (Asian Humanities Press, Berkeley, CA, 1993), pp. 221–30.
Smith, Robert, Ancestor Worship in Contemporary Japan (Stanford University Press,
Stanford, 1974).
Smyers, Karen, The Fox and the Jewel: Shared and Private Meanings in Contemporary
Japanese Inari Worship (University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1999).
Staemmler, Birgit, Chinkon kishin: Mediated Spirit Possession in Japanese New
Religions (Lit. Verlag, Berlin, and Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick and
London, 2009).
Swanson, Paul L. and Clark Chilson (eds), Nanzan Guide to Japanese Religions
Teeuwen, Mark and John Breen, A Social History of the Ise Shrines: Divine Capital
(Bloomsbury, London, 2017).
Related novel and lighter reading

Endo, Shūsaku, Silence (Kodansha International, Tokyo, 1982).
Murakami, Haruki, trans. Alfred Birnbaum and Philip Gabriel, Underground: The
Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche (Harvill Press, London, 2001).
26
26 References
Films
A and A2, documentaries about Aum and Aleph (1998, 2001 Tatsuya Mori).
Abraxas (Aburakusasu no matsuri) (2010 Naoki Katō): Account of a very modern reli-
gion: Buddhist monk decides to give a live punk concert!
The Birth of the Founder of Religion (Kyōso Tanjō) (1993 Toshihirō Tenma): The story
of a young man who joins a religious cult.
Fancy Dance (1989 Masayuki Suo): Again, music versus religion: a punk-rock singer is
obliged to become a Buddhist novice.
Fire Festival (Himatsuri) (1985 Mitsuo Yanagimachi): A drama about the clash
between mystical belief and modern development.
Shugendō Now (2009 Jean-Marc Abela and Mark Patrick McGuire).
Silence (2016 Martin Scorsese): Feature film, based on the Endō Shūsaku novel above,
about two seventeenth-century Portuguese missionaries to Japan, which includes
much about why Christians went into hiding in Japan at the time.
Souls of Zen (2013 Tim Graf and Jacob Montrasio).
Where Mountains Fly (2008 Sandra and Karina Roth).
Zen (2009 Banmei Takahashi): A biopic of medieval Buddhist scholar Dogen.
Chapter 8
Ambros, Barbara, Bones of Contention: Animals and Religion in Contemporary Japan
(University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu, 2012).
Bloch, Maurice and Jonathan Parry, Death and the Regeneration of Life (Cambridge
———‘From Cognition to Ideology’, in Ritual, History and Power: Selected Papers in
Anthropology (Athlone Press, London, 1989), pp.106–36.
Boret, Sébastien Penmellen, Japanese Tree Burial: Ecology, Kinship and the Culture of
Death (Abingdon, Routledge, 2014).
van Bremen, Jan, ‘Death Rites in Japan in the Twentieth Century’, in Joy Hendry (ed.),
Interpreting Japanese Society: Anthropological Approaches (Routledge, London
and New York, 1998), pp. 131–44.
van Bremen, Jan and D. P. Martinez (eds), Ceremony and Ritual in Japan: Religious
Practices in an Industrialized Society (Routledge, London and New York, 1995) .
Crump, T., The Japanese Numbers Game (Routledge, London, 1992).
———‘The Pythagorean View of Time and Space in Japan’, in Joy Hendry (ed.),
Interpreting Japanese Society: Anthropological Approaches (Routledge, London
and New York, 1998), pp. 42–56.
De Antoni, Andrea and Massimo Raveri (eds), Death and Desire in Contemporary
Japan: Representing, Practicing, Performing (Ca’Foscari Japanese Studies, 6, 2017),
open access at http://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/libri/978-88-6969-150-8/.
Edwards, Walter, Modern Japan through its Weddings: Gender, Person and Society in
Ritual Perspective (Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1989).
Fuess, Harald, Testing a Spouse: Japan the Country of Divorce 1600–2000 (Stanford
University Press, Stanford, 2003).
van Gennep, Arnold, The Rites of Passage (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London and
Henley, 1977).
27
References 27
Goldstein-Gidoni, Ofra, Packaged Japaneseness: Weddings, Business and Brides
Hendry, Joy, Becoming Japanese (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1986).
——— Marriage in Changing Japan (Routledge, Abingdon, 2010).
Hertz, Robert, Death and the Right Hand (Free Press, New York, 1960).
Kawano, Satsuki, Ritual Practice in Modern Japan: Ordering Place, People and Action
——— Nature’s Embrace: Aging Urbanites and New Death Rites (University of Hawaii
Kellehear, Allan, A Social History of Dying (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
New York, 2007).
Kim, Hyunchul, ‘The Purification Process of Death: Mortuary Rites in a Japanese
Rural Town’, Asian Ethnology, 71, 2 (2012), pp. 225–57.
Lewis, David, ‘Years of Calamity: Yakudoshi Observances in Urban Japan’, in
Joy Hendry (ed.), Interpreting Japanese Society: Anthropological Approaches
(Routledge, London and New York, 1998), pp. 196–212.
Matsunaga, Kazuto, ‘The Importance of the Left Hand in Two Types of Ritual
Activity in Japanese Villages’, in Joy Hendry (ed.), Interpreting Japanese
Society: Anthropological Approaches (Routledge, London and New York, 1998),
pp. 182–93.
Nakamaki, Hirochika, ‘Memorial Monuments and Memorial Services of Japanese
Companies’, in Jan van Bremen and D. P. Martinez (eds), Ceremony and Ritual
in Japan: Religious Practices in an Industrialized Society (Routledge, London and
New York, 1995), pp. 146–58.
Nakamatsu, Tomoko, ‘“Conventional Practice, Courageous Plan”: Women and the
Gendered Site of Death Rituals in Japan’, Journal of Gender Studies, 18, 1 (2009),
pp. 1–11.
Norbeck, Edward, ‘Yakudoshi: A Japanese Complex of Supernaturalistic Beliefs’,
Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, XI (1955), pp. 105–20.
——— Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in
Japanese History (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2002).
Papp, Melinda, Shichigosan: Change and Continuity of a Family Ritual in Contemporary
Urban Japan (Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2016).
Sawkins, Philip, ‘Playful Attraction: Examining the Nature of Japanese “Cruising” ’,
M.A. dissertation, Oxford Brookes University, 2001.
Sofue, Takao, ‘Childhood Ceremonies in Japan’, Ethnology, 4 (1965), pp. 148–64.
Stefánsson, Halldór, ‘On Structural Duality in Japanese Conceptions of Death’, in
Jan van Bremen and D. P. Martinez (eds), Ceremony and Ritual in Japan: Religious
Practices in an Industrialized Society (Routledge, London and New York, 1995),
pp. 83–107.
Suzuki, Hikaru, The Price of Death: The Funeral Industry in Contemporary Japan
(Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA, 2001).
——— Death and Dying in Contemporary Japan (Abingdon, Routledge, 2012).
Traphagan, John, The Practice of Concern: Ritual, Well-Being, and Aging in Rural
Japan (Carolina Academic Press, Durham, NC, 2004).
28
28 References
Tsuji, Yohko, ‘Evolving Mortuary Rituals in Contemporary Japan’, in Antonius C. G.
M. Robben (ed.), A Companion to the Anthropology of Death (Wiley Blackwell,
Malden, Massachusetts, 2018), pp. 17–30.
Turner, Victor, ‘Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage’, in
The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Cornell University Press,
Ithaca, 1967).
Related novels
Tanizaki, Junichiro, The Makioka Sisters (Picador, London, 1979).
Films
Departures (Okuribito) (2008 Yōjirō Takita): A bittersweet story of a musician who,
made redundant, finds a new career as a mortician.
The Funeral (Osōshiki) (1984 Jūzō Itami): A straight-faced comedy about the meaning
or lack of meaning of ritual in modern, secular Japan.
Hell, or The Inferno (Jigoku) (1960 Nobuo Nakagawa): A chilling visualisation of the
Buddhist underworld.
A Japanese Funeral (2011 Karen Nakamura).
The Makioka Sisters (Sasame Yuki) (1983 Kon Ichikawa): Based on Tanizaki’s famous
novel, a study of sisterhood in pre-war Osaka.
Our Little Sister (Umimachi Diary) (2015, Hirokazu Koreeda): The experiences of an
unorthodox family of sisters highlight the cycle of life and death.
Chapter 9
Abegglen, James C. and George Stalk Jr, Kaisha: The Japanese Corporation (Tuttle,
Tokyo, 1985).
Aspinall, Robert, Teachers’ Unions and the Politics of Education in Japan (State
University of New York Press, Albany, 2001).
Brinton, Mary, Lost in Transition: Youth, Work and Instability in Postindustrial Japan
Clark, Rodney, The Japanese Company (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1979).
Dasgupta, Romit, ‘Performing Masculinities? The “Salaryman” at Work and Play’,
Dore, R. P., British Factory, Japanese Factory (University of California Press, Berkeley,
1973).
Frühstück, Sabine and Anne Walthall (eds), Recreating Japanese Men (University of
California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 2011).
Goodman, Roger (ed.), Family and Social Policy in Japan: Anthropological Approaches
Ho, Swee-Lin, ‘“License to Drink”: White-Collar Female Workers and Japan’s Urban
Night Space’, Ethnography, 16, 1 (2015), pp. 25–50.
——— Friendship and Work Culture of Women Managers in Japan: Tokyo after Ten
(Routledge, New York and London, 2018).
29
References 29
—— —‘“Playing Like Men”: The Extramarital Experiences of Women in
Contemporary Japan’, Ethnos, 77, 3 (2012), pp. 321–43.
JILPT, Japanese Working Life Profile 2016/ 2017 —Labor Statistics (The Japan
Institute for Labour Policy and Training, Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare,
Japan, 2017).
Japan Times Online, 10 July 2010, www.japantimes.co.jp
Kalland, Arne, Shingu: A Study of a Japanese Fishing Community, Scandinavian
Institute of Asian Studies Monograph Series no. 44 (Curzon Press, London,
1981).
Kondo, Dorinne, Crafting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a
Japanese Workplace (University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1990).
Lam, Alice, Women and Japanese Management: Discrimination and Reform (Routledge,
London, 1992).
———‘Equal Employment Opportunities for Japanese Women: Changing Company
Practice’, in Janet Hunter (ed.), Japanese Women Working (Routledge, London,
1993).
Lo, Jeannie, Office Ladies, Factory Women: Life and Work at a Japanese Company
(M.E. Sharpe, New York, 1990).
McLendon, James, ‘The Office: Way Station or Blind Alley’, in David Plath
(ed.), Work and Lifecourse in Japan (State University of New York Press,
Albany, 1983).
Martinez, D. P., Making and Becoming: Identity and Ritual in a Japanese Diving Village
Matanle, Peter C. D., Japanese Capitalism and Modernity in a Global Era: Re-fabricating
Lifetime Employment Relations (RoutledgeCurzon, London and New York, 2003).
Matanle, Peter and Wim Lunsing, Perspectives on Work, Employment and Society in
Japan (Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke and New York, 2006).
Matsunaga, Louella, The Changing Face of Japanese Retail: Working in a Chain Store
Moeran, Brian, A Japanese Advertising Agency: An Anthropology of Media and
Markets (Curzon, Richmond, Surrey, 1996).
Noguchi, Paul H., Delayed Departures, Overdue Arrivals: Industrial Familialism and
the Japanese National Railways (University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1990).
Ogasawara, Yuko, Office Ladies and Salaried Men: Power, Gender and Work in
Japanese Companies (University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles and
London, 1998).
Oyama, Shiro, A man with no talents: Memoirs of a Tokyo Day Labourer, trans. Edward
Fowler (Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, 2005).
Roberson, James, Japanese Working Class Lives: An Ethnographic Study of Factory
Workers (Routledge, London, 1998).
Roberson, James E. and Nobue Suzuki, Men and Masculinities in Contemporary
Japan: Dislocating the Salaryman Doxa (Routledge, London, 2002).
Roberts, Glenda, Staying on the Line: Blue Collar Women in Contemporary Japan
———‘Pinning Hopes on Angels: Reflections from an Aging Japan’s Urban Landscape’,
Rohlen, Thomas P., For Harmony and Strength: Japanese White-collar Organization in
Anthropological Perspective (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1974).
30
30 References
Saso, Mary, Women in the Japanese Workplace (Hilary Shipman, London, 1990).
Sedgwick, Mitchell W., ‘Do Japanese Business Practices Travel Well? Managerial
Technology Transfer to Thailand’, in D. J. Encarnation (ed.), Japanese
Multinationals in Asia: Regional Operations in Comparative Perspective (Oxford
———‘The Globalizations of Japanese Managers’, in J. S. Eades, Tom Gill and
Harumi Befu (eds), Globalization and Social Change in Contemporary Japan (Trans
Pacific Press, Melbourne, 2000), pp. 41–54.
Sellek, Yoko, Migrant Labour in Japan (Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2001).
Shimada, Haruo, Japan’s ‘Guest Workers’: Issues and Public Policies (University of
Tokyo Press, Tokyo, 1994).
Social Science Japan Journal, special issue on ‘Atypical’ and ‘Irregular’ Labour in
Contemporary Japan, 4, 2 (2001).
Tsuji, Yohko, ‘Death Policies in Japan: The State, the Family, and the Individual’,
Turner, Christena L., Japanese Workers in Protest: An Ethnography of Consciousness
and Experience (University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles and
London, 1995).
Yamada, Masahiro, Parasito Shinguru no Jidai (The Age of Parasite Singles) (Chikuma
Shobo, Tokyo, 1999).
Lighter reading
Kamata, Satoshi, trans. Tatsuru Akimoto, Japan in the Passing Lane: An Insider’s
Account of Life in a Japanese Auto Factory (Allen & Unwin, London, 1983).
Films
Tokyo Chorus (Tōkyō no Kōrasu) (1931 Yasujirō Ozu): A tragicomic study of a sal-
aryman facing unemployment during the Depression.
Early Spring (Sōshun) (1956 Yasujirō Ozu): Ozu’s account of ‘the pathos of the white-
collar life’ in the post-war era.
Salaryman Kintaro (1999 Takashi Miike): The story of a former biker, now a non-
conformist salaryman.
Vibrator (2003 Ryuichi Hiroki): A romance set in the context of twenty-first-century
freelance working patterns.
Tokyo Sonata (2008 Kiyoshi Kurosawa): A bleak account of a salaryman and his reac-
tion to being made redundant.
Chapter 10
Allison, Anne, Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo
Hostess Club (University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1994).
Atkins, A. Taylor, Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz in Japan (Duke University Press,
Durham, NC and London, 2002).
Ben-Ari, Eyal, ‘Golf, Organization and “Body Projects”: Japanese Business Executives
in Singapore’, in Sepp Linhart and Sabine Frühstück (eds), The Culture of Japan
31
References 31
as Seen through its Leisure (State University of New York Press, New York, 1998),
pp. 139–61.
Brandon, James R., Nō and Kyōgen in the Contemporary World (University of Hawaii
Brown, Steven, Theatricalities of Power: The Cultural Politics of Noh (Stanford
Buruma, Ian, A Japanese Mirror (Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1985).
Chaplin, Sarah, Japanese Love Hotels: A Cultural History (Routledge, Abingdon and
New York, 2007).
Chiba, Kaeko, Japanese Women, Class and the Tea Ceremony: The Voices of Tea
Practitioners in Northern Japan (Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2010).
Clements, Jonathan and McCarthy, Helen (eds), The Anime Encyclopedia: A Century
of Japanese Animation (Stone Bridge Press, Berkeley, 2015).
Coaldrake, A. Kimi, Women’s Gidayū and the Japanese Theatre Tradition (Routledge,
London, 1997).
Coaldrake, William H., The Way of the Carpenter (Weatherhill, New York and
Tokyo, 1990).
Condry, Ian, Hip-hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization (Duke
University Press, Durham, NC, 2006).
Cox, Rupert (ed.), The Culture of Copying in Japan: Critical and Historical Perspectives
Creighton, Millie, ‘Through the Korean Wave Looking Glass: Gender, Consumerism,
Transnationalism, and Tourism Reflecting Japan-Korea Relations in Global East
Asia’, Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 14, 7, 7 (2016), pp. 1–15.
———‘Japanese Surfing the Korean Wave: Drama Tourism, Nationalism and Gender
via Ethnic Eroticisms’, Southeast Review of Asian Studies (SERAS), 31 (2009),
pp. 10–38.
Dalby, Liza Crichfield, Geisha (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1983, with a
new preface, 1998).
Daliot-Bul, Michal, License to Play: The Ludic in Japanese Culture (University of
Hawai’i Press, Honolulu, 2014).
Dalla Chiesa, Simone, ‘When the Goal Is Not a Goal: Japanese School Football
Players Working Hard at their Game’, in Joy Hendry and Massimo Raveri (eds),
Japan at Play: The Ludic and the Logic of Power (Routledge, London, 2002), pp.
186–98.
Ergül, Hakan, Popularizing Japanese TV: The Cultural, Economic, and Emotional
Dimensions of Infotainment Discourse (Routledge, London and New York, 2019).
Foreman, Kelly M., The Gei of Geisha: Music, Identity and Meaning (Ashgate,
Aldershot, 2008).
Gabriel, Philip, Spirit Matters: The Transcendent in Modern Japanese Literature
Galbraith, Patrick W., Thiam Huat Kam and Björn-Ole Kamm, Debating Otaku
in Contemporary Japan: Historical Perspectives and New Horizons (Bloomsbury
Academic, London and New York, 2015).
Gerow, Aaron, ‘Recognising “Others” in a New Japanese Cinema’, The Japan
Foundation Newsletter, XXIX, 2 (2002), pp. 1–6.
Hendry, Joy and Massimo Raveri (eds), Japan at Play: The Ludic and the Logic of
Power (Routledge, London, 2002).
32
32 References
Hori, G. Victor Sogen, ‘Teaching and Learning in the Rinzai Zen Monastery’, Journal
of Japanese Studies, 20, 1 (1994), pp. 5–35.
Horne, John and Wolfram Manzenreiter (eds), Japan, Korea and the 2002 World Cup
Hosokawa, Shūhei, ‘Popular Entertainment and the Music Industry’, in Jennifer
Robertson (ed.), A Companion to the Anthropology of Japan (Blackwell, Malden,
MD, Oxford and Carlton, Australia, 2005).
Ishikawa, Satomi, Seeking the Self: Individualism and Popular Culture in Japan (Peter
Lang, Bern, 2007).
Iwabuchi, Koichi, Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese
Transnationalism (Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2002).
Johnson, Henry, The Koto: A Traditional Instrument in Contemporary Japan (Hotei,
Amsterdam, 2004).
——— The Shamisen: Tradition and Diversity (Brill, Leiden and Boston, 2010).
——— The Shakuhachi: Roots and Routes (Brill, Leiden, 2014).
Kelly, William W., ‘Blood and Guts in Japanese Professional Baseball’, in Sepp Linhart
and Sabine Frühstück (eds), The Culture of Japan as Seen through its Leisure (State
University of New York Press, New York, 1998), pp. 95–111.
——— ‘Training for Leisure: Karaoke and the Seriousness of Play in Japan’, in Joy
Hendry and Massimo Raveri (eds), Japan at Play: The Ludic and the Logic of
Power (Routledge, London, 2002), pp. 152–68.
——— Fanning the Flames: Fans and Consumer Culture in Contemporary Japan (State
University of New York Press, Albany, New York, 2004).
——— with Atsuo Sugimoto, This Sporting Life: Sports and Body Culture in Modern
Japan (Yale University Council on East Asian Studies, New Haven, CT, 2007).
Kimbrough, Keller and Haruo Shirane (eds.), Monsters, Animals, and Other
Worlds: A Collection of Short Medieval Japanese Tales (Columbia University Press,
New York, 2018).
Kinsella, Sharon, Adult Manga: Culture and Power in Contemporary Japanese Society
Kondo, Dorinne, ‘The Way of Tea: A Symbolic Analysis’, Man, 20, 2 (1985), pp.
287–306.
Lancashire, Terence A., An Introduction to Japanese Folk Performing Arts (Ashgate,
Aldershot, 2011).
Leiter, Samuel L. (ed.), A Kabuki Reader. History and Performance (M. E. Sharpe,
New York, 2002).
Linhart, Sepp, ‘Sakariba: Zone of “Evaporation” between Work and Home’, in
Joy Hendry (ed.), Interpreting Japanese Society: Anthropological Approaches
(Routledge, London, 1998), pp. 231–42.
Linhart, Sepp and Sabine Frühstück (eds), The Culture of Japan as Seen through Its
Leisure (State University of New York Press, New York, 1998).
Lunsing, Wim, ‘Kono Sekai (The Japanese Gay Scene): Communities or Just Playing
Around?’, in Joy Hendry and Massimo Raveri (eds), Japan at Play: The Ludic and
the Logic of Power (Routledge, London, 2002), pp. 57–71.
Manzenreiter, Wolfram, ‘Time, Space and Money: Cultural Dimensions of the
“Pachinko” Games’, in Sepp Linhart and Sabine Frühstück (eds), The Culture of
Japan as Seen through Its Leisure (State University of New York Press, New York,
1998), pp. 359–81.
33
References 33
Martinez, D. P., The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture: Gender, Shifting Boundaries
and Global Cultures (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998).
Martinez, Dolorez, Remaking Kurosawa: Translations and Permutations in Global
Cinema (Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2009).
McLelland, Mark, The End of Cool Japan: Ethical, Legal and Cultural Challenges to
Japanese Popular Culture (Routledge, London and New York, 2017).
Milioto Matsue, Jennifer, Making Music in Japan’s Underground: The Tokyo Hardcore
Scene (Routledge, New York and Abingdon, 2009).
Mitsui, Tōru and Shūhei Hosokawa, Karaoke around the World: Global Technology,
Local Singing (Routledge, London and New York, 1998).
Moeran, Brian, Folk Art Potters of Japan: Beyond an Anthropology of Aesthetics
Molasky, Michael, The American Occupation of Japan and Okinawa: Literature and
Memory (Routledge, London, 1999).
Murakami, Fuminobu, Postmodern, Feminist and Postcolonial Currents in
Contemporary Japanese Culture (Routledge, London and New York, 2005).
Nagashima, Nobuhiro, in Sepp Linhart and Sabine Frühstück (eds), The Culture of
Japan as Seen through Its Leisure (State University of New York Press, New York,
1998), pp. 345–58.
Nornes, Abé Marc and Aaron Gerow, Research Guide to Japanese Film Studies (The
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2009).
O’Neill, P. G., ‘Organization and Authority in the Traditional Arts’, Modern Asian
Studies, 18, 4 (1984), pp. 631–45.
Ortolani, Benito, The Japanese Theatre. From Shamanistic Ritual to Contemporary
Pluralism (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1995).
Papp, Zília, Anime and its Roots in Early Japanese Monster Art (Global Oriental,
Folkestone, 2010).
Pellitteri, Marco, The Dragon and the Dazzle: Models, Strategies, and Identities
of Japanese Imagination. A European Perspective (John Libbey & Co. Ltd,
Bloomington, IN, 2011).
Powell, Brian, Japan’s Modern Theatre: A Century of Change and Continuity
Powell, Irena, Writers and Society in Modern Japan (Macmillan, London, 1983).
Raz, Jacob, Audience and Actors: A Study of their Interaction in the Japanese Traditional
Theatre (E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1983).
Robertson, Jennifer, Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan
(University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1998).
Rodriguez del Alisal, Maria- Dolores, ‘Ludic Elements in Japanese Attitudes to
Tsukuru’, in Joy Hendry and Massimo Raveri (eds), Japan at Play: The Ludic and
the Logic of Power (Routledge, London, 2002), pp. 84–98.
Salz, Jonah, A History of Japanese Theatre (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
2018).
Singleton, John (ed.), Learning in Likely Places: Varieties of Apprenticeship in Japan
Smith, Robert J., ‘Transmitting Tradition by the Rules: An Anthropological
Interpretation of the Iemoto System’, in John Singleton (ed.), Learning in
Likely Places: Varieties of Apprenticeship in Japan (Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1998), pp. 23–34.
34
34 References
Sterling, Marvin D., Babylon East: Performing Dancehall, Roots Reggae and Rastafari
in Japan (Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2010).
Stevens, Carolyn S., Japanese Popular Music: Culture, Authenticity and Power
——— The Beatles in Japan (Routledge, London and New York, 2018).
Surak, Kristin, Making Tea, Making Japan: Cultural Nationalism in Practice (Stanford
Suzuki, Toshio, Mixing Work with Pleasure: My Life at Studio Ghibli, translated by
Roger Speares (Japan Library, Tokyo, 2018).
Takeyama, Akiko, Staged Seduction: Selling Dreams in a Tokyo Host Club (Stanford
Tokita, Alison McQueen and David Hughes, The Ashgate Research Companion to
Japanese Music (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2008).
Toman Mori, Maryellen (introduction and translations), Mirror, Gems, and Veil: The
Life and Writings of Takahashi Takako (1932– 2013) (Edwin Mellen Press,
Lewiston, New York and Lampeter, Wales, 2018).
Treat, John, The Rise and Fall of Japanese Literature (University of Chicago Press,
Chicago, 2018).
White, Merry, Coffee Life in Japan (University of California Press, Oakland,
CA, 2013).
Yamanashi, Makiko: A History of the Takarazuka Revue since 1914: Modernity, Girls’
Culture, Japan Pop (Global Oriental, Folkestone, 2012).
Novels and lighter reading

Downer, Lesley, Geisha: The Secret History of a Vanishing World (Headline,
London, 2000).
Godoy, Tiffany, Style Deficit Disorder: Harajuku Street Fashion Tokyo (Chronicle
Books, San Francisco, 2008).
Golden, Arthur, Memoirs of a Geisha (Vintage, London, 1998).
Greenfeld, Karl Taro, Speed Tribes: Days and Nights with Japan’s Next Generation
(HarperCollins, London, 1995).
Ichida, Hiromi (ed.), An Illustrated Guide to Japanese Traditional Clothing and
Performing Arts (Takosha, Kyoto, Tokyo, 2017).
Ishiguro, Kazuo, An Artist of the Floating World (Faber & Faber, London, 1985).
Kawabata, Yasunari, Snow Country (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1956).
——— Beauty and Sadness (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1979).
Kawamura, Genki, trans. Eric Selland, If Cats Disappeared from the World (Picador,
London, 2018).
Masuda, Sayo, trans. G. G. Rowley, Autobiography of a Geisha (Columbia University
Press, New York, 2003).
Morley, John David, Pictures from the Water Trade (Andre Deutsch, London, 1985;
Flamingo, London, 1985).
Murata, Sayaka, trans. Ginny Tapley Takemori, The Convenience Store Woman
(Granta, London, 2018).
Twigger, Robert, Angry White Pyjamas: A Scrawny Oxford Poet Takes Lessons from
the Tokyo Riot Police (It Books, 2000).
35
References 35
Films and photo album

Every Day a Good Day (Nichinichi Kore Kojitsu) (2018 Tatsushi Omori): A drama
about a student pursuing classes on the tea ceremony with an elderly teacher.
Miyamoto Musashi series (Tomu Uchida): An epic account of a celebrated swordsman
accomplished in the arts of both war and peace.
The Night Is Still Young (2010 Tomoaki Hata), AKAAKA Art Publishing, Singapore,
a photo album.
Rikyū (1990 Hiroshi Teshigawara): A biopic of the sixteenth-century tea master who
shaped the form of the tea ceremony.
Shall We Dance? (1996 Masayuki Suo): A bittersweet comic drama about a salaryman
who takes ballroom dancing lessons.
Street of Shame (Akasen Chitai) (1956 Kenji Mizoguchi): A trenchant critique of pros-
titution in post-war Tokyo.
Tampopo (1985 Jūzō Itami): A comic account of the importance of food and the rit-
uals surrounding its preparation and consumption.
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (Onna ga kaidan o agaru toki) (1960 Mikio
Naruse): A classic account of a bar hostess and the post-war mizu shobai.
Chapter 11
Beardsley, Richard K., John W. Hall and Robert E. Ward, Village Japan (University of
Chicago Press, Chicago, 1959), Chapters 12 and 13.
Ben-Eyal, Ari, Changing Japanese Suburbia: A Study of Two Present-Day Localities
(Kegan Paul International, Tokyo, 1991).
Bestor, Theodore, Neighbourhood Tokyo (Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA,
1989), especially Chapter 3.
Broadbent, Jeffrey, Environmental Politics in Japan: Networks of Power and Protest
Creighton, Millie, ‘Civil Society Volunteers Supporting Japan’s Constitution,
Article 9 and Associated Peace, Diversity, and Post 3.11 Environmental Issues’,
Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 26, 1
(2015), pp. 121–43.
Curtis, Gerald L., The Japanese Way of Politics (Columbia University Press, New York,
1988).
Fisker-Nielson, Anne Mette, Religion and Politics in Contemporary Japan: Sōka
Gakkai Youth and Kōmeito (Routledge, London and New York, 2012).
———‘Has Komeito Abandoned Its Principles? Public Perception of the Party’s Role
in Japan’s Security Legislation Debate’, The Asia Pacific Journal, 14, 21, 3, pp. 1–
28, November (2016).
Flanagan, Scott C., S. Kohei, I. Miyake, B. M. Richardson and J. Watanuki, The
Japanese Voter (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1991).
Gaunder, Alisa, Political Reform in Japan: Leadership Looming Large (Routledge,
Hyde, Sarah, The Transformation of the Japanese Left: From Old Socialists to New
Democrats (Routledge, London and New York, 2009).
Kingston, Jeff, Natural Disaster and Nuclear Crisis in Japan: Response and Recovery
after Japan’s 3/11 (Routledge, London and New York, 2012).
36
36 References
Kolmas, Michal, National Identity and Japanese Revisionism: Abe Shinzo’s Vision of a
Beautiful Japan and Its Limits (Routledge, London and New York, 2018).
Lam, Peng-Er, Green Politics in Japan (Routledge, London, 1999).
Leblanc, Robin, Bicycle Citizens (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1999).
Lechevalier, Sébastien and Brieuc Monfort, ‘Abenomics: Has It Worked? Will It
Ultimately Fail?’ Japan Forum, 30, 2 (2017), pp. 277–302.
Moeran, Brian, ‘One Over the Seven: Sake Drinking in a Japanese Potting Community’,
in Joy Hendry (ed.), Interpreting Japanese Society: Anthropological Approaches
(Routledge, London, 1998), pp. 243–58.
Neary, Ian, The State and Politics in Japan (Polity Press, Cambridge, 2018).
Ogawa, Akihiro, The Failure of Civil Society? The Third Sector and the State in
Contemporary Japan (State University of New York Press, New York, 2009).
Pekkanen, Robert, ‘Japan’s New Politics: The Case of the NPO Law’, Journal of
Pharr, Susan J., Political Women in Japan: The Search for a Place in Political Life
Shipper, Apichai W., Fighting for Foreigners: Immigration and Its Impact on Japanese
Democracy (Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, 2008).
Sternsdorff-Cisterna, Nicolas, Food Safety after Fukushima: Scientific Citizenship and
the Politics of Risk (Hawaii University Press, Honolulu, 2018).
Stockwin, J. A. A., Dictionary of the Modern Politics of Japan (RoutledgeCurzon,
——— Governing Japan (4th edition) (Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 2008).
——— and Kweku Ampiah, Rethinking Japan: The Politics of Contested Nationalism
(New Studies in Modern Japan) (Lexington Books, Lanham, MA, 2017).
Yasuo, Takao, Reinventing Japan: From Merchant Nation to Civic Nation (Palgrave
Macmillan, New York and Basingstoke, 2007).
Related novels
Eisler, Barry, Rain Fall (Penguin Putnam, New York, 2002).
Mishima, Yukio, After the Banquet (Charles E. Tuttle, Tokyo, 1967).
Films
Total Eclipse (Kinkanshoku) (1975 Satsuo Yamamoto): A scathing study of political
corruption.
As Iwate Goes: Is Politics Local? (1998 Asian Educational Media Services): An
anthropological study of a village in Iwate prefecture.
Campaign (Senkyo) (2007 Kazuhiro Soda): A documentary about an election in
Kawasaki.
The Bad Sleep Well (Warui Yatsu hodo Yoku Nemuru) (1960 Akira Kurosawa): A
drama following a man’s quest to expose corporate corruption.
Sinking of Japan (Nihon Chinbotsu) (1973 Shirō Moritani): A disaster movie in which
Japan faces environmental catastrophe.
A Taxing Woman (Marusa no Onna) (1987 Jūzō Itami): A female inspector tackles tax
evasion.
37
References 37
Chapter 12
Aldous, C. and F. Leishman, ‘Policing in Post-war Japan: Reform, Reversion
and Reinvention’, International Journal of Sociology of Law, 25, 3 (1997), pp.
135–54.
———‘Worlds Apart? Policing in Japan and Britain’, Criminal Justice Matters, 44, 1
(2008), pp. 20–1.
Allan, Jeff, Japanese Conflict Resolution: Cultural Differences, Contrasts, and Styles
(2015), DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.3932.3043.
Ames, Walter L., Police and Community in Japan (University of California Press,
Berkeley, 1981).
Benson, John, ‘Conflict Resolution in Japan’, in William K. Roche, Paul Teague, and
Alexander J. S. Colvin (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Conflict Management in
Organizations (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014).
Eisenstadt, S. N. and Eyal Ben-Ari (eds), Japanese Models of Conflict Resolution
(Kegan Paul International, London and New York, 1990).
Evans-Pritchard, E. E., Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande (Clarendon
Press, Oxford, 1937).
Feeley, Malcolm M. and Setsuo Miyazawa, The Japanese Adversary System in
Context: Controversies and Comparisons (Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke and
New York, 2002).
Feldman, Eric A., The Ritual of Rights in Japan: Law, Society and Health Policy
FFJ — Facts and Figures of Japan (Foreign Press Centre, Japan, 2006).
Field, Norma, In the Realm of the Dying Emperor (Pantheon Books, New York, 1991).
Foote, Daniel H., Law in Japan: A Turning Point (University of Washington Press,
Seattle and London, 2007).
Gill, Tom, Brigitte Steger and David H. Slater (eds.), Japan Copes with
Calamity: Ethnographies of the Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Disasters of
March 2011 (Peter Lang, Bern, Switzerland, 2013).
Haley, John O., ‘The Myth of the Reluctant Litigant’, Journal of Japanese Studies, 4,
2 (1978), pp. 359–90.
——— Authority without Power: Law and the Japanese Paradox (Oxford University
Press, New York and Oxford, 1991).
Henderson, Dan Fenno, Conciliation and Japanese Law (2 vols.) (University of
Washington Press, Seattle, 1965).
Herbert, Wolfgang, ‘The Yakuza and the Law’, in J. S. Eades, Tom Gill and Harumi
Befu (eds), Globalization and Social Change in Contemporary Japan (Trans Pacific
Press, Melbourne, 2000), pp. 143–58.
Hill, Peter, The Japanese Mafia (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006).
Ishida, Takeshi, ‘Conflict and Its Accommodation: omote–ura and uchi–soto Relations’,
in E. S. Krauss, T. P. Rohlen and P. G. Steinhoff (eds), Conflict in Japan (University
of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1984), pp. 16–38.
Itō, Kimio, ‘The Invention of Wa and the Transformation of the Image of Prince
Shōtoku in Modern Japan’, in Stephen Vlastos (ed.), Mirror of Modernity: Invented
Traditions of Modern Japan (University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles
and London, 1998).
Iwasawa, Yuji, International Law, Human Rights and Japanese Law: The Impact of
International Law on Japanese Law (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1998).
38
38 References
Johnson, Elmer H. with Carol H. Johnson, Linking Community and Corrections in
Japan (Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale and Edwardsville, 2000).
Kawamura, Hiroki, ‘The Relation between Law and Technology in Japan: Liability
for Technology-related Mass Damage in the Cases of Minamata Disease, Asbestos,
and the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster’, Contemporary Japan, 30, 1 (2018),
pp. 3–27.
Kawashima, Takeyoshi, ‘Dispute Resolution in Contemporary Japan’, in A. von
Mehren (ed.), Law in Japan (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1963),
pp. 41–72.
———‘The Status of the Individual in the Notion of Law, Right, and Social Order in
Japan’, in Charles A. Moore (ed.), The Japanese Mind (University of Hawaii Press,
Honolulu, 1967).
Kingston, Jeff, Contemporary Japan: History, Politics and Social Change since
the 1980s (2nd edition) (Wiley Blackwell, Chichester, Oxford and Malden,
MA, 2013).
Leishman, Frank, ‘Koban: Neighbourhood Policing in Contemporary Japan’,
Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, 1, 2 (2007), pp. 196–202.
Miyazawa, Setsuo, trans. Frank G. Bennett Jr, with John O. Haley, Policing
in Japan: A Study on Making Crime (State University of New York Press,
New York, 1992).
Neary, Ian, Human Rights in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan (Routledge, London, 2002).
Noda, Yosiyuki, trans. and ed. Anthony H. Angelo, Introduction to Japanese Law
(University of Tokyo Press, Tokyo, 1976).
Oda, Hiroshi, Japanese Law (3rd edition) (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011).
Parker, L. Craig, The Japanese Police System Today: An American Perspective
(Kodansha International, Tokyo, 2001).
Pharr, Susan, Losing Face: Status Politics in Japan (University of California Press,
Berkeley, 1990).
Raz, Jacob, Aspects of Otherness in Japanese Culture (Institute for the Study of
Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo, 1992a).
———‘Self-presentation and Performance in the Yakuza Way of Life’, in Roger
Goodman and Kirsten Refsing (eds), Ideology and Practice in Modern Japan
(Routledge, London, 1992b).
Roberts, Simon, Order and Dispute (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1979).
Shinomiya, Satoru, ‘Adversarial Procedure without a Jury: Is Japan’s System
Adversarial, Inquisitorial or Something Else?’, in Malcolm M. Feeley and Setsuo
Miyazawa (eds), The Japanese Adversary System in Context: Controversies and
Comparisons (Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke and New York, 2002), pp.
114–27.
Upham, Frank, Law and Social Change in Postwar Japan (Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, MA, 1987).
Vanoverbeke, Dimitri, Juries in the Japanese Legal System: The Continuing Struggle
for Citizen Participation and Democracy (Routledge Law in Asia series, Routledge,
London, 2015).
Von Mehren, A. (ed.), Law in Japan: The Legal Order in a Changing Society (Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1963).
West, Mark D., Law in Everyday Japan: Sex, Sumo, Suicide, and Statutes (Chicago
University Press, Chicago and London, 2005).
39
References 39
Lighter reading
Adelstein, Jake, Tokyo Vice (Constable and Robinson, London 2009/10).
Crichton, M., Rising Sun (Century Arrow, London, 1992).
Kaplan, David and Alex Dubro, Yakuza: Japan’s Criminal Underworld, 25th Anniversary
Edition (University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 2012).
Lee, Don, Country of Origin (W.W. Norton & Co., New York and London, 2004).
Saga, Junichi, The Gambler’s Tale (Kodansha International, Tokyo, 1989), republished
as Confessions of a Yakuza in 2013.
Films
Hana-bi (1997 Takeshi Kitano): A fatalistic study of a former police detective who
turns to crime.
I Just Didn’t Do It (Soredemo Boku wa Yattenai) (2006 Masayuki Suo): A courtroom
drama that explores Japan’s legal system and its presumption of guilt.
The Third Murder (Sandome no Satsujin) (2017 Hirokazu Koreeda): An ambiguous
study of the uncertainties of legal judgement.
I Just Didn’t Do It and The Third Murder are two courtroom dramas that explore
Japan’s legal system and its presumption of guilt.
The Gentle Twelve (12 nin no Yasashii Nihonjin) (1991 Shun Nakahara): A parody of
12 Angry Men, imagining a Japan with a jury system.
Yakuza Graveyard (Yakuza no hakaba: Kuchinashi no hana) (1976 Kinji Fukasaku,
in Japanese with English subtitles): An action thriller exploring links between
gangsters and the police.
Chapter Conclusion
Hendry, Joy (ed.), Interpreting Japanese Society (Routledge, London, 1998).
———‘Japan and Pacific Anthropology: Some Ideas for New Research’, Asia Pacific
World, 3, 1 (Spring 2012), pp. 6–17.

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i

Understanding Japanese Society

• the continued effects of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters

Joy Hendry is Professor Emerita of Oxford Brookes University, UK and has

The Nissan Institute/​Routledge Japanese Studies Series

Roger Goodman, Nissan Professor of Modern Japanese Studies, University of

Reconstructing Adult Masculinities

The Democratic Party of Japan in Power

Life Course, Happiness and Well-​being in Japan

Japan’s World Power

Friendship and Work Culture of Women Managers in Japan

The Dilemma of Faith in Modern Japanese Literature

Understanding Japanese Society

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/​

Understanding Japanese Society

Fifth edition published 2019

List of figures vii

1. Sources of Japanese identity: historical and mythological

2. The house and family system 31

3. Socialisation and classification 57

4. Community and neighbourhood 79

5. The education system 103

6. Status, hierarchy and ethnic diversity 127

7. Religious influences 157

8. Ritual and the life cycle 182

9. Opportunities for working life 206

10. Arts, entertainment and leisure 227

All photographs were taken by the author except where otherwise

1.1 Reconstruction of a Yayoi period house at Toro, Shizuoka 8

viii List of figures

From the Field

1. Clinton Godart: The introduction of modern science

Conclusion: Bruce White: The world in Japan 304

Series editors’ preface

xii Series editors’ preface

Acknowledgements for the fifth edition

xiv Acknowledgements for the fifth edition

Acknowledgements for the fifth edition xv

Related novels and lighter reading

Related novels and lighter reading

Related novel and lighter reading

Novels and lighter reading

Films and photo album

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The Nissan Institute/Routledge Japanese Studies Series

Life Course, Happiness and Well-being in Japan

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/

Conclusion: Bruce White: The world in Japan 304