Japan in the Heisei Era (1989–2019): Multidisciplinary Perspectives

Description

Japan in the Heisei Era (1989–2019) provides a retrospective and multidisciplinary account of a society in flux. Featuring analyses from leading scholars around the globe, this textbook examines the evolving contexts of Japan throughout the Heisei era and how longstanding verities and values have been called into question. Asking what this holds for Japan’s future relations with the world and within its own communities, chapters delve beneath the layers of a complex and increasingly diverse society, exploring topics including simmering ethnonationalism, economic torpor, political stagnation, and cultural dynamics. Features of this textbook include: • Analysis of key social issues ranging from immigration, civil society, press freedom, politics, labour and the economy, to diversity, the marginalisation of women, Shinto, and Aum Shinrikyo • Evaluation of the legacy of Emperor Akihito on war memory, the imperial institution, art, regional relations, and constitutional revision • Multidisciplinary insights from both the social sciences and humanities • Rich illustrations for visual analysis of developments in contemporary Japanese literature, film, art, and pop culture Providing students with dynamic analyses of how contemporary Japanese society continues to transform, this textbook is essential reading for students of Japanese Studies, including Japanese culture, society, history, and politics. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Contents List of figures and tables List of contributors (listed alphabetically) and short bios Foreword: Where is Heisei? Introduction PART 1: Symbol emperor 1. The people’s imperial couple 2. Contemporary goshin’ei: The Emperor, art, and the anus PART 2: Government and politics 3. The rightward shift of Japanese politics: Interest, reform, and identity 4. Prime ministers, power and leadership in Heisei Japan 5. Heisei Okinawa: What changed? 6. The fight for open government in the Heisei era PART 3: Civil society 7. Civil society and neoliberalism: Heisei’s historic convergence 8. Still half free: The Japanese media in the Heisei era PART 4: Economy and work 9. The Heisei economy: Explaining the lost decades 10. Precaritization of work in Japan 11. Japan’s immigration in the Heisei era: Population, policy, and the ethno-nationalist dilemma PART 5: Diversity 12. Women’s leadership and gender equality 13. Preserving the status quo: Japan’s laws and policies on ethnic and sexual minorities 14. From tiramisù to #MeToo: Triangulations of sex, gender, and sexuality in Heisei Japan PART 6: Religion 15. Shinto during the Heisei era 16. The life and death of a Heisei religious movement: What the Aum Shinrikyō affair revealed about Japanese society PART 7: Cool Japan? 17. Heisei high architecture as soft power 18. The Evangelion boom: On the explosion of fan markets and lifestyles in Heisei Japan 19. The genealogy of kawaii PART 8: Multivoiced narratives 20. A false peace: Literature in the age of Heisei 21. Cinema’s uneasy social critique: The Heisei era onscreen PART 9: History and memory 22. Heisei historiography: Academic history and public commemoration in Japan, 1990–2020 23. Implicated photographs: Wartime postmemory and the photographic unconsciousness in the Heisei era 24. The loss of nostalgia, not the nostalgia of loss: Or, what happens in Heisei stays in Heisei 25. The tumultuous finale: 2009–2019 Index