Social Psychology Of Modern Japan

This study reveals the complex combination of cultural particularity and modern universality that underlies the reality of contemporary Japan. The work uses sources such as popular works of art, song, best-selling books and the advice columns of newspapers to draw a striking portrait of the Japanese public. Focussing on the four main phases of modernizing and modernized Japan beginning in the nineteenth century and continuing to today’s postmodern society, this groundbreaking work uses quantitative and qualitative data to show that the processes of modernization brought a coexistence of generational variation imbued with tensions, conflicts and synergies, that, taken together, provide the key to understanding the structure and dynamism of contemporary Japan.

現代日本社会を鋭く読み解いた好著『現代日本の「社会の心」-計量社会意識論』(有斐閣、2014年)の待望の英語翻訳版。

Since the late nineteenth century, religious ideas and practices in Japan have become increasingly intertwined with those associated with mental health and healing. This relationship developed against the backdrop of a far broader, and deeply consequential meeting: between Japan’s long-standing, Chinese-influenced intellectual and institutional forms, and the politics, science, philosophy, and religion of the post-Enlightenment West. In striving to craft a modern society and culture that could exist on terms with – rather than be subsumed by – western power and influence, Japan became home to a religion--psy dialogue informed by pressing political priorities and rapidly shifting cultural concerns. This book provides a historically contextualized introduction to the dialogue between religion and psychotherapy in modern Japan. In doing so, it draws out connections between developments in medicine, government policy, Japanese religion and spirituality, social and cultural criticism, regional dynamics, and gender relations. The chapters all focus on the meeting and intermingling of religious with psychotherapeutic ideas and draw on a wide range of case studies including: how temple and shrine ‘cures’ of early modern Japan fared in the light of German neuropsychiatry; how Japanese Buddhist theories of mind, body, and self-cultivation negotiated with the findings of western medicine; how Buddhists, Christians, and other organizations and groups drew and redrew the lines between religious praxis and psychological healing; how major European therapies such as Freud’s fed into self-consciously Japanese analyses of and treatments for the ills of the age; and how distress, suffering, and individuality came to be reinterpreted across the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, from the southern islands of Okinawa to the devastated northern neighbourhoods of the Tohoku region after the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disasters of March 2011. Religion and Psychotherapy in Modern Japan will be welcomed by students and scholars working across a broad range of subjects, including Japanese culture and society, religious studies, psychology and psychotherapy, mental health, and international history.

The question of ‘postmodernity’ that has swept Western academic and intellectual circles raises critical comparative questions. Do societies that have not experienced the same historical development as the West pass inevitably through modernity into postmodernity, or can they skip such stages altogether? Japan, the only non-Western society to develop independently a fully-fledged capitalist-industrialist economy, poses such fundamental questions to social theory. Is Japan in fact ‘unique’ and as such is it a society which escapes the net of conventional sociological abstractions? The book questions how special Japanese society really is, the limitations of Western social theory in grasping the fullness of this dynamic and a complex Asian society, and inquires as to how Japan in turn may speak to social theory and deepen and broaden the principles on which social theory attempts to explore and categorize the social and cultural worlds.

Is Japanese society essentially different from other modern industrialized societies, or not? This survey work with contributions from the leading scholars in this complicated field, presents a full overview of the most important aspects of Japanese society which may lead the reader to find an answer to these two often-asked questions. Japanese society, defined as those institutions shaping the life of individuals and groups, as well as being responsible for the dynamics of social development, is shown to be as modern as any other industrialized society; definitely distinct, though, are the ways in which institutions are defined and organised as a result of different social and historical roots of the process of modernization.

"A welcome addition to any reading list for those interested in contemporary Japanese society." - Roger Goodman, Nissan Professor of Modern Japanese Society, University of Oxford "I know no better book for an accessible and up-to-date introduction to this complex subject than The SAGE Handbook of Modern Japan Studies." - Hiroko Takeda, Associate Professor, Organization for Global Japanese Studies, University of Tokyo "Pioneering and nuanced in analysis, yet highly accessible and engaging in style." - Yoshio Sugimoto, Emeritus Professor, La Trobe University The SAGE Handbook of Modern Japanese Studies includes outstanding contributions from a diverse group of leading academics from across the globe. This volume is designed to serve as a major interdisciplinary reference work and a seminal text, both rigorous and accessible, to assist students and scholars in understanding one of the major nations of the world. James D. Babb is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University.

Through a focus on the contributions of pioneers such as Motora Yujiro (1858–1912) and Matsumoto Matataro (1865–1943), this book explores the origins of Japanese psychology, charting cross-cultural connections, commonalities, and the transition from religious–moralistic to secular–scientific definitions of human nature. Emerging at the intersection of philosophy, pedagogy, physiology, and physics, psychology in the late 19th and early 20th centuries confronted the pressures of industrialization and became allied with attempts to integrate individual subjectivities into larger institutions and organizations. Such social management was accomplished through Japan's establishment of a schooling system that incorporated psychological research, making educational practices both products of and the driving force behind changing notions of selfhood. In response to new forms of labor and loyalty, applied psychology led to or became implicated in personality tests, personnel selection, therapy, counseling, military science, colonial policies, and “national spirit.” The birth of Japanese psychology, however, was more than a mere adaptation to the challenges of modernity: it heralded a transformation of the very mental processes it claimed to be exploring. With detailed appendices, tables and charts to provide readers with a meticulous and thorough exploration of the subject and adopting a truly comparative perspective, The History of Japanese Psychology is a unique study that will be valuable to students and scholars of Japanese intellectual history and the history of psychology.

This book is about the development of psychoanalysis and modern subjectivity in Japan, and addresses three key questions: 'Why is there psychoanalysis in Japan?', 'What do we learn about Japan from its own forms of analysis?', and 'What do we learn about ourselves from Japan?'