Scholars of history, anthropology, literature, and film explore the transformations in Japanese politics, culture, and society since Japans recession of the early 1990s.

In spring of 1960, Japan’s government passed Anpo, a revision of the postwar treaty that allows the United States to maintain a military presence in Japan. This move triggered the largest popular backlash in the nation’s modern history. These protests, Nick Kapur argues in Japan at the Crossroads, changed the evolution of Japan’s politics and culture, along with its global role. The yearlong protests of 1960 reached a climax in June, when thousands of activists stormed Japan’s National Legislature, precipitating a battle with police and yakuza thugs. Hundreds were injured and a young woman was killed. With the nation’s cohesion at stake, the Japanese government acted quickly to quell tensions and limit the recurrence of violent demonstrations. A visit by President Eisenhower was canceled and the Japanese prime minister resigned. But the rupture had long-lasting consequences that went far beyond politics and diplomacy. Kapur traces the currents of reaction and revolution that propelled Japanese democracy, labor relations, social movements, the arts, and literature in complex, often contradictory directions. His analysis helps resolve Japan’s essential paradox as a nation that is both innovative and regressive, flexible and resistant, wildly imaginative yet simultaneously wedded to tradition. As Kapur makes clear, the rest of the world cannot understand contemporary Japan and the distinct impression it has made on global politics, economics, and culture without appreciating the critical role of the “revolutionless” revolution of 1960—turbulent events that released long-buried liberal tensions while bolstering Japan’s conservative status quo.

This is the first book in English to examine the reconstruction of Japan's bombed cities after World War II, and it is a must-read not only for Japan specialists but also for those interested in urban history and planing anywhere. Five case studies (of Tokyo, Hiroshima, Osaka, Okinawa and Nagaoka) are framed by broader essays on the evolution of Japanese planning and architecture, Japan's urban policies in Manchuria and comparisons between Japanese and European reconstruction.

Examines the social, cultural, and political underpinnings of Japan's postwar and post-industrial trajectories.

No nation was more deeply affected by America’s rise to world power than Japan. President Franklin Roosevelt’s uncompromising policy of unconditional surrender led to the catastrophic finale of the Asia-Pacific War and the most intrusive international reconstruction of another nation in modern history. Japan in the American Century examines how Japan, with its deeply conservative heritage, responded to the imposition of a new liberal order. The price Japan paid to end the occupation was a cold war alliance with the United States that ensured America’s dominance in the region. Still traumatized by its wartime experience, Japan developed a grand strategy of dependence on U.S. security guarantees so that the nation could concentrate on economic growth. Yet from the start, despite American expectations, Japan reworked the American reforms to fit its own circumstances and cultural preferences, fashioning distinctively Japanese variations on capitalism, democracy, and social institutions. Today, with the postwar world order in retreat, Japan is undergoing a sea change in its foreign policy, returning to an activist, independent role in global politics not seen since 1945. Distilling a lifetime of work on Japan and the United States, Kenneth Pyle offers a thoughtful history of the two nations’ relationship at a time when the character of that alliance is changing. Japan has begun to pull free from the constraints established after World War II, with repercussions for its relations with the United States and its role in Asian geopolitics.

REMINGINING JAPAN: Contributors to this volume include some of the world’s most brilliant thinkers from fields as diverse as business, politics, academia, science and technology, journalism and art and design. In the aftermath of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis of March 2011, Japan has become a bigger part of the world’s consciousness than it has been for years. But Japan also is grappling with other problems that, over the long run, pose a much greater challenge to its national well-being than the devastation in Tohoku.... How can the country compete with a rising China? Cope with a fast-aging society? Deal with its enormous debt? Rediscover its entrepreneurial verve? Regain its position as a leader in technology and innovation? In Reimagining Japan, McKinsey & Company, the world’s top management consulting firm, asked more than 80 global leaders and experts to consider these questions. In essays brimming with insight, affection and occasional humor, the authors offer their assessments of Japan’s past, present and --most important -- future. What sets Reimagining Japan apart is the breadth and diversity of its contributors. They range from Fortune 500 CEOs to acclaimed writers (including three Pulitzer Prize winners) to a star videogame creator, a soccer coach, a school principal and a manga artist. There has not been such a comprehensive book about Japan in the past generation - and perhaps ever. NOTABLE CONTRIBUTORS Bernard Arnault, Ian Buruma, Gerald Curtis, John Chambers, Steven Covey, John Dower, Bill Emmott, Victor Fung, Carlos Ghosn, Pico Iyer, Bob McDonald, Stephen Roach, Masahiro Sakane, Masayoshi Son, Howard Schultz, Klaus Schwab, Bobby Valentine, Steve Van Andel, Ezra Vogel, Robert Whiting, Tadashi Yanai and more than 50 others.

With little domestic fanfare and even less attention internationally, Japan has been reinventing itself since the 1990s, dramatically changing its political economy, from one managed by regulations to one with a neoliberal orientation. Rebuilding from the economic misfortunes of its recent past, the country retains a formidable economy and its political system is healthier than at any time in its history. Japan Transformed explores the historical, political, and economic forces that led to the country's recent evolution, and looks at the consequences for Japan's citizens and global neighbors. The book examines Japanese history, illustrating the country's multiple transformations over the centuries, and then focuses on the critical and inexorable advance of economic globalization. It describes how global economic integration and urbanization destabilized Japan's postwar policy coalition, undercut the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's ability to buy votes, and paved the way for new electoral rules that emphasized competing visions of the public good. In contrast to the previous system that pitted candidates from the same party against each other, the new rules tether policymaking to the vast swath of voters in the middle of the political spectrum. Regardless of ruling party, Japan's politics, economics, and foreign policy are on a neoliberal path. Japan Transformed combines broad context and comparative analysis to provide an accurate understanding of Japan's past, present, and future.