Voluntary Sector and Rural Development: Concept, Practice, and a New Approach to Remove Rural Poverty Book

The main focus is well done - you can really follow the development of the country and its people very well and it is quite interesting and the text flows very well.

This is quite a contrast to the one thing that is not well executed at all, that is the section (one in each chapter, unfortunately) on women and family - because those sections are written as someone has jotted down their notes they gathered when they studied up on the subject. You can still pick up information from those parts, but they are not very fun to read.

(On a more personal note, the author seems to have a personal crusade on when to start calling shinto "shinto". Let's just say he is not in agreement with other books I have picked up, including The Cambridge History of Japan, so I take the liberty of not agreeing that the term can only be used on the religion not being Buddhism in Japan some time around 1300.)

The book also wins the price for weirdest sentence. This gem could be found after a discussion on infant mortality: "If the infant survived, for the first few years mother and child were united in a love free from the guilt inherent in sexual love." (p. 162) (Not is it just weird in its own right, which it IS, but it is also rather a contrast to the rest of book, that can show that Japan had a rather relaxed view on sex at this time...)

Still, the book on the whole is worth recommending!