The Emptiness of Japanese Affluence / Edition 1

by Gavan McCormack, Norma Field

Overview

This work aims to show that Japan even at it's height of success, while the successful version of capitalism was blighted at it's core, being unsustainable. This revised edition features n introduction which gives an analysis of Japan's contemporary crisis.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780765607683
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	05/31/2001
Series:	Japan in the Modern World Series
Edition description:	REV
Pages:	358
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Gavan McCormack, Norma Field

Table of Contents

Tilting Toward the Millennium: Kobe and Beyond; 1: Political Economy; 1: The Construction State: The Pathology of the Doken Kokka; 2: The Leisure State: Work, Rest, and Consumption; 3: The Farm State: GATTing Japan; 2: Identity; 4: The Regional State: Asia and the Dilemmas of National Identity; 5: The Peace State:Dilemmas of Power; 3: Memory; 6: Remembering and Forgetting: The War, 1945–95; Concluding Remarks; Japan at Century's End

Editorial Reviews

The author or editor of numerous books on Asia (e.g., Democracy in Contemporary Japan, M.E. Sharpe, 1986) and a professor at Australian National University, McCormack here scrutinizes the political economy, national identity, and war remembrances of Japan in an attempt to understand an apparently successful economic model with its own unique problems. The author has spent years studying and working in Japan, and it is evident that he knows the country well. Some of the more intriguing war legacies he relates are the "Shinjuku Bones Affair" (bones of prisoners tortured and killed at a military hospital during World War II are discovered years later) and the "left-behind children" of the Manchukuo area of China. Finally, we are left with a plea for zero population growth and more equitable economic distribution. Not a Japan-bashing book, McCormack's work is well documented, with extensive footnotes. Recommended for economics collections.Lisa K. Miller Paradise Valley Community Coll. Lib., Phoenix

Library Journal

This analysis shows that even at its height, Japan's economic success was blighted at its core due to its unsustainability, and argues that the US model of capitalism, now presented as the global model, is no alternative to the practices that produced Japanese affluence. It addresses political, economic, fiscal, and historical topics, and provides access to the views of Japanese who have resisted the terms of the consensus society. For anyone interested in the implications of extraordinary economic success across the spectrum of social life. McCormack teaches Japanese history in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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