Jeff Kingston - Contemporary Japan: History, politics, and social change since the 1980s

A HISTORY OF THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD

General Editor: Keith Robbins

This series offers an historical perspective on the development of the contemporary world. Each of the books examines a particular region or a global theme as it has evolved in the recent past. The focus is primarily on the period since the 1980s but authors provide deeper context wherever necessary. While all the volumes offer an historical framework for analysis, the books are written for an interdisciplinary audience and assume no prior knowledge on the part of readers.

Published

In Preparation

This second edition first published 2013

2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Edition History: Blackwell Publishing Ltd (1e, 2011)

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kingston, Jeff, 1957

Contemporary Japan : history, politics, and social change since the 1980s / Jeff Kingston. 2nd ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-118-31507-1 (paper)

1. JapanHistoryHeisei period, 1989- 2. JapanSocial conditions1989- 3. JapanEconomic conditions1989- I. Title.

DS891.K538 2013

952.05dc23

2012008958

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover image: A shrine gate stands among debris in the quake-hit town of Otsuchi, Iwate Prefecture, on April 7, 2011 AP / Press Association.

Cover design by www.simonlevyassociates.co.uk

Series Editors Preface

The contemporary world frequently presents a baffling spectacle: new world orders come and go; clashes of civilizations seem imminent if not actual; peace dividends appear easily to vanish into thin air; terrorism and wars on terror occupy the headlines. Mature states live alongside failed states in mutual apprehension. The rules of the international game, in these circumstances, are difficult to discern. What international law is, or is not, remains enduringly problematic. Certainly it is a world in which there are still frontiers, borders, and boundaries, but both metaphorically and in reality they are difficult to patrol and maintain. Asylum occupies the headlines as populations shift across continents, driven by fear. Other migrants simply seek a better standard of living. The organs of the international community, though frequently invoked, look inadequate to deal with the myriad problems confronting the world. Climate change, however induced, is not susceptible to national control. Famine seems endemic in certain countries. Population pressures threaten finite resources. It is in this context that globalization, however understood, is both demonized and lauded.

Such a list of contemporary problems could be amplified in detail and almost indefinitely extended. It is a complex world, ripe for investigation in this ambitious new series of books. Contemporary, of course, is always difficult to define. The focus in this series is on the evolution of the world since the 1980s. As time passes, and as the volumes appear, it no longer seems sensible to equate the world since 1945 with contemporary history. The legacy of the Cold War lingers on but it is emphatically in the background. The fuzziness about the 1980s is deliberate. No single year ever carries the same significance across the globe. Authors are therefore establishing their own precise starting points, within the overall contemporary framework.

The series treats the history of particular regions, countries, or continents but does so in full awareness that such histories, for all their continuing distinctiveness, can only rarely be considered apart from the history of the world as a whole. Economic, demographic, environmental, and religious issues transcend state, regional, or continental boundaries. Just as the world itself struggles to reconcile diversity and individuality with unity and common purpose, so do the authors of these volumes. The concept is challenging. Authors have been selected who sit loosely on their disciplinary identity whether that be as historians, political scientists, or students of international relations. The task is to integrate as many aspects of contemporary life as possible in an accessible manner.

This volume on Japan rises to the challenge. The countrys history conspicuously illustrates the interactions that have been alluded to. The first half of the twentieth century saw its engagement with the world collapse in catastrophe. The country started thereafter on its new beginning under outside direction. Yet its proud and self-contained past still continued to send somewhat ambivalent messages into a Japan which proceeded to make itself a modern miracle. This account, however, is no bland narrative of a success story. It is, rather, an account of decades in which the reconciliations economic, cultural, demographic, political which appeared to have been solid achievements all began to unravel. The earthquake of March 2011, followed by the devastating tsunami and the impact of these natural disasters on the Fukushima nuclear reactors, brought these matters to crisis point. It is this process of renewed self-examination, visible across so many areas of both private and public life, which this book treats as an interconnected whole. There can be no better example, to begin this series, of a country seeking anxiously both to adjust and to retain its own culture and identity in a changing world.