Joy Hendry

Emma E. Cook

In this welcome new sixth edition of the bestselling textbook Understanding Japanese Society, Joy Hendry and Emma E. Cook take 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, health, religion, and ritual, covering a full range of life experiences, from childhood to old age. Fully updated, revised, and expanded with a brand new chapter on health and ageing, the sixth edition contains new material on: Experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic Changes in the family and LGBTQ experiences Increased interest in rural areas, the problems and opportunities of empty houses Use of technology and AI in different areas of life Discussion of new kinds of criminal activity and an increase in elderly offenders 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 invaluable to all students studying Japan. It will also enlighten tourists, travellers, and business people wishing to gain an understanding of Japanese people.

Understanding Japanese Society

Allison Alexy

How do couples build intimacy in an era that valorizes independence and self-responsibility? How can a man be a good husband when full-time jobs are scarce? How can unmarried women find fulfillment and recognition outside of normative relationships? How can a person express their sexuality when there is no terminology that feels right? In contemporary Japan, broad social transformations are reflected and refracted in changing intimate relationships. As the Japanese population ages, the low birth rate shrinks the population, and decades of recession radically restructure labor markets, Japanese intimate relationships, norms, and ideals are concurrently shifting. This volume explores a broad range of intimate practices in Japan in the first decades of the 2000s to trace how social change is becoming manifest through deeply personal choices. From young people making decisions about birth control to spouses struggling to connect with each other, parents worrying about stigma faced by their adopted children, and queer people creating new terms to express their identifications, Japanese intimacies are commanding a surprising amount of attention, both within and beyond Japan. With ethnographic analysis focused on how intimacy is imagined, enacted, and discussed, the volume's chapters offer rich and complex portraits of how people balance personal desires with feasible possibilities and shifting social norms. Intimate Japan will appeal to scholars and students in anthropology and Japanese or Asian studies, particularly those focusing on gender, kinship, sexuality, and labor policy. The book will also be of interest to researchers across social science subject areas, including sociology, political science, and psychology.

Ethnographies of Closeness and Conflict

Intimate Japan

Over the past two decades, Japan’s socioeconomic environment has undergone considerable changes prompted by both a long recession and the relaxation of particular labour laws in the 1990s and 2000s. Within this context, "freeters", part-time workers aged between fifteen and thirty-four who are not housewives or students, emerged into the public arena as a social problem. This book, drawing on six years of ethnographic research, takes the lives of male freeters as a lens to examine contemporary ideas and experiences of adult masculinities. It queries how notions of adulthood and masculinity are interwoven and how these ideals are changing in the face of large-scale employment shifts. Highlighting the continuing importance of productivity and labour in understandings of masculinities, it argues that men experience and practice multiple masculinities which are often contradictory, sometimes limiting, and change as they age and in interaction with others, and with social structures, institutions, and expectations. Providing a fascinating alternative to the stereotypical idea of the Japanese male as a salaryman, this book will be of huge interest to students and scholars of Japanese culture and society, social and cultural anthropology, gender and men's studies.

Emma E. Cook

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