9/15 Tuesday | Workers and workplaces: The “Japanese company” and the Toyota assembly line

Reading assignment: Finish Jeannie Lo (1990), Office Ladies and Factory Women: Life and Work at a Japanese Company. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.  Bass HD6197/L6/1990 [See my reading notes]

Reading assignment: Begin Thomas P. Rohlen, (1974) selections from his For Harmony and Strength: Japanese White-collar Organization in Anthropological Perspective. Berkeley: University of California Press. [See my reading notes]

For further reading, if interested: William W. Kelly (1993) “Finding a Place in Metropolitan Japan: Ideologies, Institutions, and Everyday Life.” In Postwar Japan as History, edited by Andrew Gordon. Berkeley: University of California Press, pages 189-216.

Media recommendations: “Reinventing Japan” and “Living through a Miracle”

9/17 Thursday | The “salaryman” and the “office lady”

Reading assignment: Finish Thomas P. Rohlen, (1974) selections from his For Harmony and Strength: Japanese White-collar Organization in Anthropological Perspective. Berkeley: University of California Press. [See my reading notes]

Media assignment: ”Being Japanese.” This documentary is a profile of Fuji Film Corporation, a representative large manufacturing company in the late 1980s. The documentary is also available on YouTube.

9/22 Tuesday | Workers and workplaces: The cushions around the core

Reading assignment: Tom Gill (2000) “Yoseba and Ninpudashi: Changing Patterns of Employment on the Fringes of the Japanese Economy.” In Globalization and Social Change in Contemporary Japan, edited by J. S. Eades, Tom Gill and Harumi Befu. Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, pages 123-143.

Reading assignment: Ronald O. Haak (1975) “The Zesty, Structured World of a Weaver.” In Adult Episodes in Japan, edited by David W. Plath. Leiden: E. J. Brill, pages 51-63.

Note: The video clip that I showed at the beginning of class (early television show satire of the assembly line) may be viewed on YouTube.

9/24 Thursday | Japan as a “school credential society”

Reading assignment: Catherine C. Lewis, “Learning and Caring,” chapter 7 in her Educating Hearts and Minds, pp.149-177 (Cambridge University Press, 1994) LB1140.25/J3/L48/1994

Reading assignment: Rebecca Fukuzawa, “The Path to Adulthood According to Japanese Middle Schools,” Journal of Japanese Studies 20(1):61-86 [1994]

Media recommendation: “Preschool in Three Cultures: Japan”

9/29 Tuesday | Schooling: Tracks and levels

Media assignment: “The Learning Machine”

Media recommendation: “Cram School” [A more recent documentary on Cram Schools, produced by Japanese public television, NHK, is on YouTube here

10/1 Thursday | Match-making and marriage

Reading assignment: Ofra Goldstein-Gidoni (1997) “A Day at the Kobe Princess Palace Wedding Parlour,” chapter 1 of her Packaged Japaneseness: Weddings, Business and Brides, pages 12-32. London: Curzon Press.

Media recommendation: “Full Moon Lunch”

Media recommendation: “The Story of Noriko”

10/6 Tuesday | Family matters

Reading assignment: Sasagawa Ayumi (2006) “Mother-Rearing: The Social World of Mothers in a Japanese Suburb.” In The Changing Japanese Family, edited by Marcus Rebick and Takanaka Ayumi. London and New York: Routledge, pages 129-147.  SML HQ682/C473X/2006

Reading assignment: Hoshino Ikumi (1964) “Apartment Life in Japan.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 26(3): 312-317.

Media recommendations: “Dream Girls“