10/8 Thursday | Is 21st-century Japan neoliberal?
Reading assignment: Fu Huiyan (2012) “Working as a Haken in a Triangular Employment Relationship,” selections from her An Emerging Non-Regular Labour Force in Japan: The Dignity of Dispatched Workers, pages 1-3, 9-13, 17-23, and 40-56. Oxford: Routledge.
Reading assignment: Ihara Ryoji (2007) “Preface,” “Factory, Group, and Mode of Work” (Chapter 1, pp 9-19) and opening to “Work on the Factory Floor” (Chapter 2, pp. 20-27) in his Toyota’s Assembly Line: A View from the Factory Floor. Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press.
For further reading: Osawa Machiko, Kim Myoung Jung and Jeff Kingston (2013) “Precarious Work in Japan.” American Behavioral Scientist 57(3): 309-334.
For further reading: Erin Elizabeth Hatton (2013) “The Rise of the Permanent Temp Economy,” New York Times, January 27. Section SR, Page 3.
For further reading: Leo McCann, John Hassard and Jonathan Morris (2006) “Hard Times for the Salaryman: Corporate Restructuring and Middle Managers’ Working Lives.” In Perspectives on Work, Employment and Society in Japan, edited by Peter C. D. Matanle and Wim Lunsing, pages 98-118. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. SML HD5827.A6 P47X 2006
10/13 Tuesday | The new workers: Service, sales, and slackers [outline]
Reading assignment: Gavin Hamilton Whitelaw (2014) “Shelf Lives and the Labors of Loss: Food, Livelihoods, and Japan’s Convenience Stores.” In Capturing Contemporary Japan: Differentiation and Uncertainty, edited by Kawano Satsuki, Glenda S. Roberts and Susan O. Long. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, pages 135-159. SML HC 462.95 C365 2014
Reading assignment: Anne Stefanie Aronsson (2015) “Through the Labyrinth of Their Working Lives – Women in Their Forties,” Chapter 6 of her Career Women in Contemporary Japan: Pursuing Identities, Fashioning Lives, pages ADD. London: Routledge.
Media recommendation: Gavin Hamilton Whitelaw, ethnographic tour of a Daily Yamazaki convenience store, Tokyo [streaming version in Media Gallery of v-2 course site]
10/15 Thursday | Schooling in crisis [outline]
Reading assignment: Peter Cave (2014) “Education after the “Lost Decade(s)”: Stability or Stagnation?” In Capturing Contemporary Japan: Differentiation and Uncertainty, edited by Kawano Satsuki, Glenda S. Roberts and Susan O. Long. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, pages 271-299. SML HC 462.95 C365 2014
For further reading: David H. Slater (2010) “The “New Working Class” of Urban Japan: Socialization and Contradiction from Middle School to the Labor Market.” In Social Class in Contemporary Japan, edited by Ishida Hiroshi and David H. Slater. Oxford and New York: Routledge, pages 137-169. HN730.Z9S6756 2009
10/20 Tuesday | Universities in turmoil
Reading assignment: Roger Goodman (2009) “The Japanese Professoriate.” In Higher Education in East Asia: Neoliberalism and the Professoriate, edited by Gregory S. Poole and Ya-chen Chen. Amsterdam and Boston: Sense Publishers, pages 15-32. LSF LA1143; .H55 2009 (LC)
For further reading: Roger Goodman (2010) “The Rapid Redrawing of Boundaries in Japanese Higher Education.” Japan Forum 22(1-2): 65 – 87.
10/22 Thursday | FALL BREAK
10/27 Tuesday | Drop-outs and loners
Reading assignment: Marc Hairston (2010) “A Cocoon with a View: Hikikomori, Otaku, and Welcome to the NHK.” Mechademia 5: Fanthropologies 5: 311-324.
Viewing recommendation: Multiple episodes of the anime version of “Welcome to the NHK” have been English-subbed and are available on YouTube.
10/29 Thursday | Solo lives, young and old [Outline]
Reading assignment: Richard Ronald and Hirayama Yōsuke (2009) “Home Alone: The Individualization of Young, Urban Japanese Singles.” Environment and Planning A 41(12): 2836-2854
Reading assignment: Lynne Y. Nakano and Wagatsuma Moeko (2004) “Mothers and Their Unmarried Daughters: An Intimate Look at Generational Change.” In Japan’s Changing Generations: Are Young People Creating a New Society?, edited by Gordon Mathews and Bruce White. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, pages 137-154. SML HQ799/J3/J364X/2004
11/3 Tuesday | Families, from dating to divorce [Outline]
Reading assignment: Nemoto Kumiko (2008) “Postponed Marriage: Exploring Women’s Views of Matrimony and Work in Japan.” Gender and Society 22(2): 219-237.
Reading assignment: Emma E. Cook (2014) “Intimate Expectations and Practices: Freeter Relationships and Marriage in Contemporary Japan.” Asian Anthropology 13(1): 36-51.
For further reading: Allison Alexy (2010) “The Door My Wife Closed : Houses, Families, and Divorce in Contemporary Japan.” In Home and Family in Japan: Continuity and Transformation, edited by Richard Ronald and Allison Alexy, pages 236-253. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon and New York: Routledge. SML HQ682 .H588X 2011 (LC)
11/5 Thursday | Death, dying, and “McFunerals”
Reading assignment: Kawano Satsuki (2014) “The Story of a Seventy-Three-Year-Old Woman Living Alone: Her Thoughts on Death Rites.” In Capturing Contemporary Japan: Differentiation and Uncertainty, edited by Kawano Satsuki, Glenda S. Roberts and Susan O. Long. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, pages 316-338. SML HC 462.95 C365 2014
For further reading: Hikaru Suzuki, “McFunerals: The Transition of Japanese Funerary Services,” Asian Anthropology 2: 49-78 [2003]
11/10 Tuesday | Still second-class: Koreans in Japan [outline]
Reading assignment: Fukuoka Yasunori (2000) Selected profiles from his Lives of Young Koreans in Japan. Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press. Bass DS 832.7 K6 F83813 2000
Media recommendation: “Three Generations of Life as Zainichi Korean,” a 2009 Japanese television documentary. It is posted with English subtitles on YouTube in four parts. Part One begins HERE.
11/12 Thursday | Is Japan becoming multi-ethnic? The case of Brazilian-Japanese [outline]
Reading assignment: Sarah LeBaron von Baeyer (2015) “One Family Two Decades: Life in and of Japan and Brazil,” Chapter 2 of her National Worlds, Transnational Lives: Nikkei-Brazilian Migrants in and of Japan and Brazil. Ph.D. dissertation, pages 47-94. New Haven: Yale University, Department of Anthropology.
For further reading: Joshua Hotaka Roth (2002) “On the Line at Yusumi Motors,” Chapter 3 of his Brokered Homeland: Japanese Brazilian Migrants in Japan, pages 37-63. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. DS832.7/B73/R68/2002