Reviews for Social Psychology of Modern Japan

The average rating for Social Psychology of Modern Japan based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-09-20 00:00:00 Douglas Dodd Almost any book has its strengths and weaknesses. So does this one. As a PhD dissertation turned into a book it offers a review of other books and articles written on the topic of when, how, why Japanese women have looked to the West, the USA in particular, for inspiration and escape from the longstanding, powerful, and, according to some, terribly repressive patriarchal dynamics of the Japanese society and economy. The author provides a very comprehensive and well written summary of various Japanese and English language sources on this topic. These cover Japan's initial contacts with the West in the mid/late 19th century, the pre WWII era, the post WW II years, and right up until the time of her own research which was done in the mid 1990's. I lived in Japan many years ago; have pursued my own interest in the country by having audited some university courses and some fairly extensive reading on it in recent years; and have kept up with its social, political, and economic events through an ongoing reading of the news. Thus, I can say with confidence that Kelsky did a skillfully thorough job with her review of the literature on this topic. I readily acknowledge that I still learned a great deal through her review, especially because I do not read Japanese. When writing for a committee of academic scholars a dissertation typically involves the use of abstract, theoretical terms. After all, the student has to demonstrate to the scholarly members of her committee that she can grasp and apply sophisticated social science concepts used to explain a phenomena like this. On the one hand, Kelsky demonstrated that she clearly understands the how and why of this process in Japan in the context of anthropology, sociology, economics, psychology, and feminism. Unfortunately, for the reader who is unfamiliar with some of the terminology she used to explain these processes this can get pretty unwieldy at times. It gets further complicated by the fact that Kelsky sometimes writes in long complex, compound sentences. For example, "Rather, women's subject position as internationalized, cosmopolitan, or flexible is itself dependent on and derivative of a larger Eurocentric discourse of modernity and progress, that under the conditions of transnational capitalism, has become a mode for absorption of mobile, elite, global subjects into a now shared, multicultural imaginary emanating from the West." "A humanist resolution to the tensions of internationalism in an invocation of hybridity and multiplicity does not account for the continuing (post) colonial hierarchies of legitimacy and power that fix internationalist women in a relationship to the West and appropriate their narratives for purposes other than their own." I found myself having to slow down, read very carefully, and ask myself "what is she trying to say here?" On occasion, I had to Google a term and/or re-read a sentence more than once. Some more active editing aimed at simplifying and reformulating these very long and at times convoluted sentences into 'everyday English' would have made the book much easier to comprehend. If only Kelsky had stopped and thought more about who might read this book, it could have been far more readily edifying than it was. Despite these deficits this is still a book worth reading for anyone interested in Japanese society. And, as with most any good book, I came away with a list of other books noted in her bibliography which I will try to read in the coming months. But I would suggest the reader take up this book only under certain conditions First, one must be willing to plough some parts where the language and the prose style make it a challenge, to say the least. Second, it is preferable if the reader already has some knowledge of the history and of the social, economic, and political dynamics of post WW II Japan. It was difficult for me to rate this book as either a 3 or a 4. Thus, I'd give it a 3.5.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-05-11 00:00:00 David Obrien This book helped me understand Sach's irresistible appeal to Japanese women.