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The idea that Japan is a socially homogenous, uniform society has been increasingly challenged in recent years. This book takes the resulting view further by highlighting how Japan, far from singular or monolithic, is socially and culturally complex.

Although Japan¿s economy is not growing, and its political system is similarly viewed as stagnating, there is a great deal of interest in Japan in studying and measuring happiness. This focus on happiness represents a refreshingly different view as to what is the purpose of government, and of life ¿ something other than achieving economic growth or political activism. This book, based on extensive original research, considers how the pursuit of happiness is viewed and is striven for in a variety of different situations in Japan. It examines relationships, family, identity, community and self-fulfilment among other subjects.

Written by the scholars in the field of Japan anthropology, this book examines, and attempts to move beyond the notion of an East-West divide in the study of Japan anthropology. It discusses specific fieldwork and ethnographic issues, the place of the person within the context of the dichotomy, and regional perspectives on the issue.

This book, based on extensive original research, explores the various ways in which Japanese people think about death and how they approach the process of dying and death. It shows how new forms of funeral ceremonies have been developed by the funeral industry, how traditional grave burial is being replaced in some cases by the scattering of ashes and forest mortuary ritual, and how Japanese thinking on relationships, the value of life, and the afterlife are changing. Throughout, it assesses how these changes reflect changing social structures and social values.

Relates the experiences of the zanryu-hojin - the Japanese civilians, mostly women and children, who were abandoned in Manchuria after the end of the Second World War when Japan's puppet state in Manchuria ended, and when most Japanese who has been based there returned to Japan.

This book makes the complete text of Seibutsu no Sekai available in English for the first time and provides an extensive introduction and notes to set the work in context.

In the Japanese language, the word 'ie' denotes both the materiality of homes and family relations within. This book addresses various aspects of family life and dwelling spaces, exploring how homes, household patterns and kin relations are reacting to social, economic and urban transformations.

Examines the complex relationship between class and gender dynamics among tea ceremony (chadAi) practitioners in Japan. Focusing on practitioners in a provincial city, Akita, this book surveys the rigid, hierarchical chadAi system at grass roots level.

Examines Japanese tourism and travel, showing how over hundreds of years a distinct culture of travel developed, and exploring how this has permeated the perceptions and traditions of Japanese society. This book considers the diverse dimensions of modern tourism, including appropriation and consumption of history, nostalgia, and identity.

Examines the making of heritage in contemporary Japan. This book investigates the ways in which particular objects, practices and institutions come to be seen as forms of heritage which are ascribed public recognition and political significance.

Argues that 'the generation gap' in Japan is something more than young people resisting the adult social order before entering and conforming to that order. This book shows how young people in Japan are thinking about their bodies and identities, their social relationships, and their employment and parenting, in generationally contextual ways.

Based on anthropological fieldwork, this book provides an ethnography of Naikan, a Japanese psychotherapeutic method. It discusses key issues such as the role of memory, autobiography and narrative in health care, and more. It is suitable for students of social and cultural anthropology, medical sociology, religious studies, and Japanese studies.

Challenges the perception of Japan as a 'copying culture' through a series of ethnographic and historical case studies. This title demonstrates diversity and creativity of copying in the Japanese context through the translation of a series of otherwise loosely related ideas and concepts into objects, images, texts and practices of reproduction.

Based on fieldwork in a Japanese institution for the elderly, this title explores the whole issue of aging and responses to it in Japan, and compares the Japanese approach in these matters with Western approaches.

In a variety of interesting dimensions in both historical and contemporary Japanese culture, this exciting new book examines pilgrimages in Japan, including the meanings of travel, transformation, and the discovery of identity through encounters with the sacred.

This book examines the phenomenon of social withdrawal in Japan, which ranges from school non-attendance to extreme forms of isolation and confinement, known as hikikomori.

Scholars have long recognised that "nature" is mediated, constructed and represented by culture, as also is technology, nature's "unnatural" counterpart. This book explores how changes, potential and actual, in conceptualizations of nature and technology are mediated and represented in Japan. It considers Japanese reactions to natural disasters, examines the tensions between traditional ways of life, rooted in nature, and the technologies of modernity, and discusses various art forms and literature which focus on nature and technology. Overall, the book assesses how far Japanese people see Japan itself as being in harmony with, or at odds with, nature.

The balance between individual independence and social interdependence is a perennial debate in Japan. This book, based on an extended, detailed study of two primary schools in the Kinki district of Japan, discusses these debates.