Reworking Japan

Okura Gagne Nana

Description

Reworking Japan examines how the past several decades of neoliberal economic restructuring and reforms have challenged Japan's corporate ideologies, gendered relations, and subjectivities of individual employees. With Japan's remarkable economic growth since the 1950s, the lifestyles and life courses of "salarymen" came to embody the "New Middle Class" family ideal. However, the nearly three decades of economic stagnation and reforms since the bursting of the economic bubble in the early 1990s has intensified corporate retrenchment under the banner of neoliberal restructuring and brought new challenges to employees and their previously protected livelihoods. In a sweeping appraisal of recent history, Gagne demonstrates how economic restructuring has reshaped Japanese corporations, workers, and ideals, as well as how Japanese companies and employees have resisted and actively responded to such changes.Gagne explores Japan's fraught and problematic transition from the postwar ideology of "companyism" to the emergent ideology of neoliberalism and the subsequent large-scale economic restructuring. By juxtaposing Japan's economic transformation with an ethnography of work and play, and individual life histories, Gagne goes beyond the abstract to explore the human dimension of the neoliberal reforms that have impacted the nation's corporate governance, socioeconomic class, workers' subjectivities, and family relations. Reworking Japan, with its firsthand analysis of how the supposedly hegemonic neoliberal regime does not completely transform existing cultural frames and social relations, will shake up preconceived ideas about Japanese men and the social effects of neoliberalism.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Industrial relations
• History of Asia
• Japan

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 15 janvier 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781501753053
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 7 Mo

Extrait

REWORKING JAPAN

REWORKING JAPAN Changing Men at Work and Play underNeoliberalism

Nana OKURa Gagné

ILR PRESS AN IMPRINT OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON

Copyright © 2020 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu.

First published 2020 by Cornell University Press

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Names: Gagné, Nana Okura, author. Title: Reworking Japan : changing men at work and play under neoliberalism / Nana Okura Gagné. Description: Ithaca [New York] : ILR Press, an imprint of Cornell University Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020012046 (print) | LCCN 2020012047 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501753039 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781501753053 (pdf) | ISBN 9781501753046 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Men—Japan—Social conditions. | Masculinity—Japan. | Men—Japan—Identity. | Corporate culture—Japan. | Leisure—Social aspects—Japan. | Japan—Economic conditions—1989 Classification: LCC HQ1090.7.J3 G34 2020 (print) | LCC HQ1090.7.J3 (ebook) | DDC 305.310952—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020012046 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020012047

To Japanese workers, for their passion, challenges, and humor To Sumie Okura and Kinya Okura

Contents

Acknowledgments Note on Translations, Transliterations, and Names Prelude

Introduction

Par t 1SALARYMEN, CAPITALISM, LOCATING  AND NEOLIBERALISM IN JAPAN  1.  Historicizing Japanese Workers and Japanese Capitalism  2.  Working in and Working on Neoliberalism

Par t 2 AFTER WORK, BEYOND LEISURE,  AND INDIVIDUAL DESIRES  3.  The Business of Leisure, the Leisure of Business  4.  Working Hard at Having Fun through Hobbies and Community

Par t 3 MULTIPLICITIES OF MEN  5.  Escaping the Corporate Shackles  6.  Navigating the Waves of Work and Life  7.  Weathering the Storms of Corporate Restructuring

Conclusion

Notes References Index

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1

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242

259 267 283

Acknowledgments

This book is about Japanese men who are working men, family men, aging men, and complexindividual menin twentyfirst century Japan. While salarymen and hostesses have taught me the importance of their dynamic “giveandtake” rela tionship (mochitsu motaretsu no kankei) for enablingandsustaining each other in contemporary Japanese society, not only my fieldwork but also my writing pro cess itself has been supported—often unilaterally—by many people, sometimes making me feel that I have been on the receiving end of an entirelytakingrela tionship (motaretsu no kankei). This book would never have been possible without the help of many people who were involved in my research, whose support I can never fully reciprocate. First and foremost, I owe my deepest intellectual debt and sincerest gratitude to William Kelly, for his continuous support with critical and thoughtful feedback and invaluable insights at Yale and beyond, and who challenged me to think and analyze holistically, historically, and theoretically. The seeds of his wisdom con tinue to bear fruit in my work and have continuously helped me to grow my pas sion for anthropology. My path to anthropology is something I can never take for granted. I am tre mendously grateful for the positive influences through anthropology and history and the intellectual encouragement that made it possible for me to find my home in anthropology. I wish to thank Linda Angst, Tianshu Pan, Peter Perdue, Jordan Sand, David Sutton, and Yuka Suzuki. Without their positive encouragement, my journey to anthropology would never have begun. At Yale, I have been intellectually guided by Kamari Clark, William Kelly, Karen Nakamura, LindaAnne Rebhun, Katherine Rupp, Harold Scheffler, and Helen Siu. During my years at Yale, I have benefited not only from faculty members but also from my colleagues who shared their thoughts, ideas, and support with me. TheseincludeAllisonAlexy,AnneAronsson,DominikBartmanski,YaoCheng, Seth Curley, Isaac Gagné, Joseph Hill, Hansun Hsiung, Brenda Kombo, Minhua Ling, Molly Margaretten, Richard Payne, Christian Ratcliff, Ryan Sayre, Colin Smith, Nathaniel Smith, Angélica Torres, Gavin Whitelaw, Jun Zhang, and Tian tian Zheng. Second, this book would not have been possible without the many Japanese workers who spent time with me and shared their lives, emotions, and thoughts. Their experiences and reflections reveal how our understanding of events and

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