Reviews for Family and Social Policy in Japan (Contemporary Japanese Society Series): Anthropological Approaches

The average rating for Family and Social Policy in Japan (Contemporary Japanese Society Series): Anthropological Approaches based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-08-12 00:00:00 Lee Lipton I lived in Japan almost 10 years after the research used in this book was written and I could observe the results of those experimental parental leave policies, child abuse prevention and harrassment prevention policies in action. After a dramatic rise in 2000-2003, there was some leveling off in the equal opportunity employment field, still the pay rate and the number of permanent contracts attributed to women worker is lacking. The enduring recession didn't help of course to promote secure employment for women, but instead gave a rise to a new class of non-permanent male employees, that didn't exist properly speaking at the time of research projects mentioned there. Parental equality and child care by the fathers have advanced greatly, though and I have witnessed many fathers picking up their children at school or at the kindergarten, a scene unimaginable in the 1980ies and hardly prevalent in 1998. The number of welfare installations and pre-school institution increased, as well, not due to the governmental intervention, but mainly following a great demand on third-person child-care propelled by the modern requirement for both parents to work in order to maintain even an ordinary lifestyle. For some foreign workers, though not all categories mentioned in this book, it meant a great improvement in personal job flexibility, as my Mongolian colleague's wife and mother of 3 children from 3 to 7 could still work in the her chosen field of microbiology. Overall, it is interesting to read as a historical account on the Japanese social development, but if you want cutting edge information, you are better off learning Japanese and reading editorials in major newspapers.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-05-28 00:00:00 Carolyn Brown This is an eclectic collection of stories, anecdotes, essays and journal entries. The stories tend to the melancholic, which is well served by Hearn's elegant, atmospheric style. They've probably aged better then the essays, which are quite of their time. References to racial type, which might be quite reasonable in other words, grate. And the Japan that Hearn describes is quite different from Japan now, certainly when it comes to the cityscape. You wonder what he'd think of how things have changed. But most of the essays are actually rather metaphysical, being on Buddhism, or the Japanese concept of the soul. Some of them are better than others, but they all paint an intriguing picture of another world - a world now distant in time, and not just space.