Download or read book Japanese Working Class Lives written by James Roberson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This ethnographic study examines the lives of Japanese workers in small firms and analysis their experiences of working life, leisure and education. This unique case study of the Shintani Metals Company illustrates the ways in which employees lives extend beyond their work. Japanese Working Class Lives provides a valuable alternative view of working life outside the large corporations. Roberson demonstrates that the Japanese working class is more diverse than Western stereotypes of be-suited salary-men would suggest.
Download or read book Chinese Working Class Lives written by Hill Gates and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-15 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taiwan’s working class has been shaped by Chinese tradition, by colonialism, and by rapid industrialization. This book defines that class, explores that history, and presents with sensitive honesty the life experiences of some of its women and men. Hill Gates first provides a solid and informative introduction to Taiwan’s history, showing how mainland China, Japan, the convulsions of twentieth-century wars, and the East Asian economic expansion interacted in forming Taiwanese urban life. She introduces nine individuals from Taiwan’s three major ethnic groups to tell the stories of their lives in their own words. The narrators include a fortuneteller, a woman laborer, and a retired air force mechanic. A former spirit medium and a janitor are among the others who speak.
Download or read book This Japanese Life written by Eryk Salvaggio and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2013-07-25 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most books about Japan will tell you how to use chopsticks and say "konnichiwa!" Few honestly tackle the existential angst of living in a radically foreign culture. The author, a three-year resident and researcher of Japan, tackles the thousand tiny uncertainties of living abroad. -- Adapted from back cover
Download or read book Yokohama Street Life written by Tom Gill and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2015-03-06 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yokohama Street Life: The Precarious Career of a Japanese Day Laborer is a one-man ethnography, tracing the career of a single Japanese day laborer called Kimitsu, from his wartime childhood in the southern island of Kyushu through a brief military career to a lifetime spent working on the docks and construction sites of Tokyo, Osaka and Yokohama. Kimitsu emerges as a unique voice from the Japanese ghetto, a self-educated philosopher whose thoughts on life in the slums, on post-war Japanese society and on more abstract intellectual concerns are conveyed in a series of conversations with British anthropologist Tom Gill, whose friendship with Kimitsu spans more than two decades. For Kimitsu, as for many of his fellow day laborers at the bottom of Japanese society, offers none of the comforting distractions of marriage, family life, or a long-term career in a settled workplace. It leads him through existential philosophy towards Buddhist mysticism as he fills the time between days of hard manual labor with visits to second-hand bookshops in search of enlightenment. The book also portrays Kimitsu’s living environment, a Yokohama slum district called Kotobuki. Kotobuki is a ‘doya-gai’—a slum inhabited mainly by men, somewhat similar to the skid row districts that used to be common in American cities. Traditionally these men have earned a basic living by working as day laborers, but the decline in employment opportunities has forced many of them into welfare dependence or homelessness. Kimitsu’s life and thought are framed by an account of the changing way of life in Kotobuki, a place that has gradually been transformed from a casual laboring market to a large, shambolical welfare center. In Kotobuki the national Japanese issues of an aging workforce and economic decline set in much earlier than elsewhere, leading to a dramatic illustration of the challenges facing the Japanese welfare state.
Download or read book Work Hard Play Hard written by James Earl Roberson and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation discusses the labor related lifecourse experiences and the leisure activities and relationships among the people working at a small subcontracting firm in Tokyo, Japan. I contend that work and play among these men and women manifest greater diversity than has been described for the employees of larger Japanese enterprises. I argue that such diversity is structured by and constructed in inter-relationship to both proximate lifecourse, educational and company contexts and broader mediate economic and cultural class contexts. I first introduce the academic and interpretive contexts of the dissertation, pointing out the large enterprise and white-collar biases of the dominant discourses on Japanese companies and employees.
Download or read book The Stories Clothes Tell written by Tatsuichi Horikiri and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-04-15 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spanning decades of research, this compelling social history tells the stories of ordinary people in modern Japan. Tatsuichi Horikiri spent a lifetime searching out old items of clothing—ranging from everyday kimono, work clothes, uniforms, and futons to actor’s costumes, diapers, hats, aprons, and bags. Simultaneously he collected oral history accounts to shed light on those who used these items. Horikiri reveals not only the difficult and sometimes desperate lives of these people, most from the lower strata in early twentieth-century Japan, he illuminates their hopes, aspirations, and human values. He also explores such topics as textile techniques, the history of fashion, and the ethnography of clothing and related cultural phenomena. Having been wrongly accused and tortured by the Japanese military police in China during World War II, Horikiri takes a deeply empathetic view of all those who struggle—from peasants and coal miners to traveling salesmen and itinerant performers. This personal connection sets his account apart, giving his writing great power and immediacy. Students and scholars of Japanese history, as well those interested in material culture, labor history, and feminist history, will find this book deeply illuminating.
Download or read book Life Course Happiness and Well being in Japan written by Barbara Holthus and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-04-21 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the connections between socio-structural aspects, individual agency and happiness in contemporary Japan from a life course perspective. The contributors examine empirical data on the processes which impact how happiness and well-being are envisioned, crafted and debated in Japan across the life-cycle. The book discusses the shifting notions of happiness during people’s lives from birth to death, analyzing the age group-specific experiences while taking into consideration people's life trajectories and historical changes. It points also out recent developments in regards to demographic change, late marriage, and the changing labor market.
Download or read book Work Hard Play Hard written by and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A History of American Working Class Literature written by Nicholas Coles and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-02 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A History of American Working-Class Literature sheds light not only on the lived experience of class but the enormously varied creativity of working-class people throughout the history of what is now the United States. By charting a chronology of working-class experience, as the conditions of work have changed over time, this volume shows how the practice of organizing, economic competition, place, and time shape opportunity and desire. The subjects range from transportation narratives and slave songs to the literature of deindustrialization and globalization. Among the literary forms discussed are memoir, journalism, film, drama, poetry, speeches, fiction, and song. Essays focus on plantation, prison, factory, and farm, as well as on labor unions, workers' theaters, and innovative publishing ventures. Chapters spotlight the intersections of class with race, gender, and place. The variety, depth, and many provocations of this History are certain to enrich the study and teaching of American literature.
Download or read book Japan s New Middle Class written by Ezra F. Vogel and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2013-07-18 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This classic study on the sociology of Japan remains the only in-depth treatment of the Japanese middle class. Now in a fiftieth-anniversary edition that includes a new foreword by William W. Kelly, this seminal work paints a rich and complex picture of the life of the salaryman and his family. In 1958, Suzanne and Ezra Vogel embedded themselves in a Tokyo suburb, living among and interviewing six middle-class families regularly for a year. Tracing the rapid postwar economic growth that led to hiring large numbers of workers who were provided lifelong employment, the authors show how this phenomenon led to a new social class—the salaried men and their families. It was a well-educated group that prepared their children rigorously for the same successful corporate or government jobs they held. Secure employment and a rising standard of living enabled this new middle class to set the dominant pattern of social life that influenced even those who could not share it, a pattern that remains fundamental to Japanese society today.
Download or read book Men and Masculinities in Contemporary Japan written by James E. Roberson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-06-29 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first comprehensive account of the changing role of men and the construction of masculinity in contemporary Japan. The book moves beyond the stereotype of the Japanese white-collar businessman to explore the diversity of identities and experiences that may be found among men in contemporary Japan, including those versions of masculinity which are marginalized and subversive. The book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of contemporary Japanese society and identity.
Download or read book Cost of Living of the Working Classes written by Great Britain. Board of Trade and published by . This book was released on 1913 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Home and Family in Japan written by Richard Ronald and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-12-04 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Japanese language the word ‘ie’ denotes both the materiality of homes and family relations within. The traditional family and family house - often portrayed in ideal terms as key foundations of Japanese culture and society - have been subject to significant changes in recent years. This book comprehensively addresses various aspects of family life and dwelling spaces, exploring how homes, household patterns and kin relations are reacting to contemporary social, economic and urban transformations, and the degree to which traditional patterns of both houses and households are changing. The book contextualises the shift from the hegemonic post-war image of standard family life, to the nuclear family and to a situation now where Japanese homes are more likely to include unmarried singles; childless couples; divorcees; unmarried adult children and elderly relatives either living alone or in nursing homes. It discusses how these new patterns are both reinforcing and challenging typical understandings of Japanese family life.
Download or read book Capturing Contemporary Japan written by Satsuki Kawano and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2014-08-31 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are people’s life experiences in present-day Japan? This timely volume addresses fundamental questions vital to understanding Japan in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Its chapters collectively reveal a questioning of middle-class ideals once considered the essence of Japaneseness. In the postwar model household a man was expected to obtain a job at a major firm that offered life-long employment; his counterpart, the “professional” housewife, managed the domestic sphere and the children, who were educated in a system that provided a path to mainstream success. In the past twenty years, however, Japanese society has seen a sharp increase in precarious forms of employment, higher divorce rates, and a widening gap between haves and have-nots. Contributors draw on rich, nuanced fieldwork data collected during the 2000s to examine work, schooling, family and marital relations, child rearing, entertainment, lifestyle choices, community support, consumption and waste, material culture, well-being, aging, death and memorial rites, and sexuality. The voices in these pages vary widely: They include schoolchildren, teenagers, career women, unmarried women, young mothers, people with disabilities, small business owners, organic farmers, retirees, and the elderly.
Download or read book Passages to Modernity written by Kathleen S. Uno and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 1999-04-01 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary Japanese women are often presented as devoted full-time wives and mothers. At the extreme, they are stereotyped as "education mothers" (kyoiku mama), completely dedicated to the academic success of their children. Children of working mothers are pitied; day-care users, both children and mothers, are faintly disparaged for their inadequate home lives; hired babysitters are virtually unknown. Yet historical evidence reveals a strikingly different picture of Japanese motherhood and childcare at the beginning of the twentieth century. In contrast to today, child tending by non-maternal caregivers was widely accepted at all levels of Japanese society. Day-care centers flourished, and there was virtually no expectation of exclusive maternal care of children, even infants. The patterns of the formation of modern Japanese attitudes toward motherhood, childhood, child-rearing, and home life become visible as this study traces the early twentieth-century rise of Japanese day-care centers, institutions established by middle-class philanthropists and reformers to provide for the physical well-being and mental and moral development of urban lower-class preschool children. Day-care gained broad support in turn-of-the-century Japan for several reasons. For one, day-care did not clash with widely accepted norms of child care. A second factor was the perception of public and private policymakers that day-care held the promise of social and national progress through economic and moral betterment of the urban lower classes. Finally, day-care offered working mothers the opportunity to earn a better livelihood with fewer worries about their children. In spite of emerging notions that total devotion to child-rearing was a woman's highest calling, Japanese nationalism, a signal force in the genesis of the modern Japanese state, economy, and middle-class culture, fed a deep wellspring of support for day-care and fostered significant reshaping of motherhood, childhood, home life, and view of the urban lower classes. Passages to Modernity is an important and original contribution to our understanding of the institutional and ideological reach of the early twentieth-century state and the contested emergence of a striking new discourse about woman as domestic caregiver and homemaker.
Download or read book Understanding Japanese Society written by Joy Hendry and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new edition provides a clear introduction to Japanese society which does not require any previous knowledge of the country. It contains new material on the effects of the Asian crisis and recession in Japan, the changes to the Japanese ruling political elite and more.
Download or read book Re reading the Salaryman in Japan written by Romit Dasgupta and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-09-10 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Japan, the figure of the suited, white-collar office worker or business executive ‘salaryman’ (or, sarariiman), came to be associated with Japan’s economic transformation following World War Two. The ubiquitous salaryman came to signify both Japanese masculinity, and Japanese corporate culture, and in this sense, the salaryman embodied ‘the archetypal citizen’. This book uses the figure of the salaryman to explore masculinity in Japan by examining the salaryman as a gendered construct. Whilst there is a considerable body of literature on Japanese corporate culture and a growing acknowledgement of the role of gender, until now the focus has been almost exclusively on women in the workplace. In contrast, this book is one of the first to focus on the men within Japanese corporate culture through a gendered lens. Not only does this add to the emerging literature on masculinity in Japan, but given the important role Japanese corporate culture has played in Japan’s emergence as an industrial power, Romit Dasgupta’s research offers a new way of looking both at Japanese business culture, and more generally at important changes in Japanese society in recent years. Based on intensive interviews carried out with young male private sector employees in Japan, this book makes an important contribution to the study of masculinity and Japanese corporate culture, in addition to providing an insight into Japanese culture more generally. As such it will be of great interest to students and scholars of Japanese studies, Japanese society and gender studies.
