Kimono In The Boardroom

This book describes the little known world of Japanese women managers. Though largely unrecognized, women in Japan are moving into management positions in increasing numbers, and their importance to Japan's future competitiveness is becoming more understood.

Jean Renshaw challenges that perception in this book, showing readers where and how an "invisible evolution" is occurring in Japanese business."--BOOK JACKET.

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to chado, the Japanese tea ceremony. Unlike other books on the subject, which focus on practice or historical background or specific issues, this book considers the subject from multiple perspectives. It discusses Japanese aesthetics and philosophy, outlines how the tea ceremony has developed, emphasizing its strong links to Zen Buddhism and the impact of other religion influences, and examines how chado reflects traditional gender and social status roles in Japan. It goes on to set out fully the practice of chado, exploring dress, utensils, location – the garden and the tea house – and the tea itself and accompanying sweets. Throughout, the book is illustrated both with images and with examples of practice. The book will be of interest to a wide range of people interested in chado – university professors and students, tourists and people interested in traditional Japanese arts.

Three young women arrived in Tokyo from the small towns of rural Japan with nothing but a burning ambition and the vague knowledge that somehow, their lives would be different. With so many odds stacked against them, what were the chances that their ambitions would eventually be realized? And at what cost? The fourth woman, Emi is from an affluent family in Tokyo but her privileged life did nothing to lessen the odds stacked even higher against her. This is the tense, smoldering story of four young Japanese professional women from diverse backgrounds and a big score to settle with their female unfriendly society, whose lives converged in Tokyo where they met by chance and started the ‘four pillars.’ Well educated, vibrant and ambitious, the four women, Suzue, Sachi, Tomoko and Emi are bonded by their common struggle to break out of the system which traditionally placed Japanese women as the coffee and tea serving ladies of the corporate world. This gripping story is set against the backdrop of vibrant, contradictory and pulsating Tokyo, the capital and heartbeat of Japan and the way life is really led in a country where traditions and extreme modernity co exist in perplexing harmony. Through the stormy and sometimes racy maze of boozing at Tokyo’s many bars and discos to the string of men that weaved in and out of their lives to the tune of Suzue’s ‘expiry date’ song and quieter moments of just crashing out of the limelight and bonding with each other, the four self styled pillars depend on each other for the therapeutic support and healing from the spiritual and mental scars of constant corporate and societal warfare. They are truly “soulmates” in Tokyo. Together and yet apart, each woman has her own secret yearnings and dreams and having forced their way into the boardrooms of Japan, what lies ahead for them? Will and can the parallel lines of their ambitions and personal lives finally converge or travel forever, open ended and unresolved? Through the turbulent lives and experiences of these four women told with plenty of satire and bitter sweet humor, this book also gives the reader an honest look at modern Japanese society as it struggles to co exist with die hard traditional practices, prejudices and mindset. This book has a lot of insight into life in Japan as it actually is and in particular the growing number of young professional women who want more out of life than their traditional roles. It’s very real, it’s life in Japan and the fractious struggle of young women of modern desires against die hard traditional values.

This book describes industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology programs in action, showing how they are developed and implemented in a variety of organizational settings, using workers who differ by gender, age, culture, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status.

This is an updated edition of Conrad Totman’s authoritativehistory of Japan from c.8000 BC to the present day. The first edition was widely praised for combiningsophistication and accessibility. Covers a wide range of subjects, including geology, climate,agriculture, government and politics, culture, literature, media,foreign relations, imperialism, and industrialism. Updated to include an epilogue on Japan today andtomorrow. Now includes more on women in history and more on internationalrelations. Bibliographical listings have been updated and enlarged.

This book empirically explores how different linguistic resources are utilized to achieve appropriate workplace role inhabitance and to achieve work-oriented communicative ends in a variety of workplaces in Japan. Appropriate role inhabitance is seen to include considerations of gender and interpersonal familiarity, along with speaker orientation to normative structures for marking power and politeness. This uniquely researched edited collection will appeal to scholars of workplace discourse and Japanese sociolinguistics, as well as Japanese language instructors and adult learners of Japanese. It is sure to make a major contribution to the cross-linguistic/cultural study of workplace discourse in the globalized context of the twenty-first century.

The typical view of Korean women is not as managers. The stereotype is of Korean women serving and pleasing men, or more recently as aggressive shopkeepers and bar-owners. Very little has been written to challenge this misconception. This fascinating book reveals there have always been managers amongst Korean women, particularly in occupations like money lending, retail and fashion, and women continue to serve after the economic crash at the beginning of a new century. Korean Women Managers and Corporate Culture illuminates the many roles of women - from management, leadership and policy making, to the more traditional positions as homemaker and wife – and describes the distinctive Korean corporate culture and economy in order to evaluate the future of women as well as that of Korea itself.