Japan's Demographic Revival shifts discussions about employing immigration as the 'best' or 'sole' solution to assuaging Japan's demographic quagmire to a more systematic approach that identifies structural, organizational and cultural impediments that contribute to Japan's (and other countries') declining demographic situations. This edited volume also sheds light on the plethora of changes required to produce a demographically sustainable Japan.Part One includes chapters explaining the endogenous, ethnocultural and structural obstacles that link ethnocultural understandings of citizenship and nationality. Part Two consists of chapters that provide insight into the societal barriers that exist in Japan to address demographic issues. Part Three shifts its focus away from identifying and analyzing the structural, organizational and cultural factors towards chapters that are policy oriented, linking existing policies as contributing factors behind Japan's demographic challenge.

Japan's Demographic Revival shifts discussions about employing immigration as the 'best' or 'sole' solution to assuaging Japan's demographic quagmire to a more systematic approach that identifies structural, organizational and cultural impediments that contribute to Japan's (and other countries') declining demographic situations. This edited volume also sheds light on the plethora of changes required to produce a demographically sustainable Japan.Part One includes chapters explaining the endogenous, ethnocultural and structural obstacles that link ethnocultural understandings of citizenship and nationality. Part Two consists of chapters that provide insight into the societal barriers that exist in Japan to address demographic issues. Part Three shifts its focus away from identifying and analyzing the structural, organizational and cultural factors towards chapters that are policy oriented, linking existing policies as contributing factors behind Japan's demographic challenge.

2020 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Urban Migrants in Rural Japan provides a fresh perspective on theoretical notions of rurality and emerging modes of working and living in post-growth Japan. By exploring narratives and trajectories of individuals who relocate from urban to rural areas and seek new modes of working and living, this multisited ethnography reveals the changing role of rurality, from postwar notions of a stagnant backwater to contemporary sites of experimentation. The individual cases presented in the book vividly illustrate changing lifestyles and perceptions of work. What emerges from Urban Migrants in Rural Japan is the emotionally fraught quest of many individuals for a personally fulfilling lifestyle and the conflicting neoliberal constraints many settlers face. In fact, flexibility often coincides with precarity and self-exploitation. Susanne Klien shows how mobility serves as a strategic mechanism for neophytes in rural Japan who hedge their bets; gain time; and seek assurance, inspiration, and courage to do (or further postpone doing) what they ultimately feel makes sense to them.

The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Japan presents a synthesized, interdisciplinary study of contemporary Japan based on up-to-date theoretical models designed to provide readers with a comprehensive and full understanding of the dynamics of contemporary Japan. In order to achieve this, the Handbook is organized into two parts. Part I, ‘Foundations’, clarifies the state of contemporary Japan topic by topic by referring to the latest theoretical developments in the relevant disciplinary fields of politics, international relations, economy, society, culture and the personal. Part II, ‘Issues’, then offers a series of concrete analyses building upon the theoretical discussions introduced in Part I to help undergraduate and postgraduate students learn how to conduct independent analysis. Locating Japan in a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective, this Handbook is an essential resource for students and scholars interested in Japanese studies, Asian studies and global studies.

This major new volume presents innovative recent scholarship on Japan's modern history, including its imperial past and transregional entanglements. An international team of leading scholars offer accessible and thought-provoking essays that present an expansive global vision of the archipelago's history from c. 1868 to the twenty-first century. Japan was the first non-Western society to become a modern nation and empire, to industrialize, and to deliver a high standard of living to virtually all its citizens, capturing international attention ever since. These Japanese efforts to reshape global hierarchies powered a variety of debates and conflicts, both at home and with people and places beyond Japan's shores. Drawing on the latest Japanese and English-language scholarship, this volume highlights Japan's distinctive and fast-changing history.

What happens when local unions begin to advocate for the rights of temporary migrant workers, asks Michele Ford in her sweeping study of seven Asian countries? Until recently unions in Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand were uniformly hostile towards foreign workers, but Ford deftly shows how times and attitudes have begun to change. Now, she argues, NGOs and the Global Union Federations are encouraging local unions to represent and advocate for these peripheral workers, and in some cases succeeding. From Migrant to Worker builds our understanding of the role the international labor movement and local unions have had in developing a movement for migrant workers' labor rights. Ford examines the relationship between different kinds of labor movement actors and the constraints imposed on those actors by resource flows, contingency, and local context. Her conclusions show that in countries—Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Thailand—where resource flows and local factors give the Global Union Federations more influence local unions have become much more engaged with migrant workers. But in countries—Japan and Taiwan, for example—where they have little effect there has been little progress. While much has changed, Ford forces us to see that labor migration in Asia is still fraught with complications and hardships, and that local unions are not always able or willing to act.

Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History 16 is about relations between the two faiths in North America, South-East Asia, China, Japan and Australasia from 1800 to 1914. It gives descriptions, assessments and bibliographical details of all known works from this period.