The Japanese social structure: Its evolution in the modern century

By Tadashi Fukutake

Book Overview

Book has a few highlighted pages otherwise in average to good condition. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0860083160
• ISBN13: 9780860083160
• Release Date: January 1982
• Publisher: University of Tokyo Press
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Clarifies everything that didn't make sense about Japan

First-rate brief summary of the development of Japanese society since the 1870s, scholarly but accessible and readable. It'll change the way you look at Japan. Fukutake begins by observing that Japan's feudal structures, although crumbling by the mid nineteenth century, retained enough vitality to make a big difference in the development of Japan in the modern era -- unlike what happened in Europe where modern states arose out of the ashes of a feudalism which had almost entirely disintegrated. He shows how feudal conditions were reflected in the structure of Japanese families and commerce, and how this led to the development of a unique "familistic" state -- a state whose internal contradictions brought it to start a catastrophic war of unsustainable expansion in the 1930s. Following the war, Japan moved with unprecidented speed from this post-feudal familistic structure to a modern urban industrial mass society. The strains created by this transformation are, as he shows, still working themselves out in Japan's society. The book closes with an overview of modern Japanese society and its trends and prospects, pointing out some serious problems which Japan must solve. A masterful book -- a must for anyone who wants to understand Japan and its place in the world.