This anthology analyzes societal and cultural aspects of modern Japan. It identifies the dynamic trend and undercurrent in Japan by addressing three key areas: modernization, internationalization, and memory and imagination. Using interdisciplinary and multi-language approaches, it discusses topics such as religion, ethnicity, civil society, art, public health, popular culture, war, identity and education. It is a valuable resource for scholars and graduate students with an interest in cutting-edge research analyses of Japanese / Asian studies.

Autorentext

Yoneyuki Sugita is professor of history at Osaka University, Japan. His major works include The Symbiotic Relationship between Japan's Status in the World and Changes in the Nature of Medical Insurances from the 1920s to the Early 1940s, in Yoneyuki Sugita ed., Japan Viewed from Interdisciplinary Perspectives: History and Prospects (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015);The Beveridge Report and Japan, Social Work in Public Health 29:1 (2014); and "Japan's epoch-making health-insurance reforms, 19371945," Japan Forum, Vol. 25, Issue 1 (2013).

Inhalt
Chapter 1: Introduction.- Part I: Modernization and Japan.- Chapter 2: Civil Religion and Second Modernity in Japan: A Sociological Analysis.- Chapter 3: Japan and the Rise of the Idea of Race: The Meiji-Era Fusion of Foreign and Domestic Constructions.- Chapter 4: The 1922 Japanese Health Insurance Law: Toward a Corporatist Framework.- Chapter 5: Public Health in Occupied Japan Transformed by Statistical Quality Control.- Part II: Identity and Globalization.- Chapter 6: International Issues: Japanese Artists and the Problems with Borders.- Chapter 7: Discourses on Democracy and the (Re)birth of Civil Society, 19451952: Mutual Aid and Cooperatist Modernity in Kitakyushu.- Chapter 8: Imagining America: The Origins of Japanese Public Opinion toward the United States in the Cold War.- Chapter 9: Soft Powering Popular Culture: Discourse and Policy Making in Japan's Content Industries.- Chapter 10: Blending Ethnicities: Perceptions of East Asian Identities Today.