Against the powerful image of Japan as a rising economic superpower, or even, in Ezra Vogel's influential formulation a deade ago, "Japan as number 1", this book explores the fragility, hubris and human and environmental costs of Japan's desperate drive for hyperdevelopment. As this economic superpower finds itself drifting, rudderless, through the decade, four seminal events seem to emblemise the enveloping crisis: the Kobe Earthquake, which the author shows to be no mere act of nature, but an event whose consequences are intimately bound up with desperate hypergrowth; The Ayum Rikyo poison gas attack, which struck at Japan's sense of security in its deepest senses (psychological and moral, as well as physical); the collapse of the LDP single-party rule after nearly 40 years, plunging Japan's superstable political system into crises manifested by implausible coalition with little more than a thirst to rule in common; and Japan's inability to come to terms with war respnsibility ever after 50 years, best symbolised by the Comfort Women issue and the government's hapless attempt to come up with an appropriate formula for recognising, apologising and making amends for wartime aggression and crimes. Gavan McCormack addresses these issues - which are political, economic, social cultural and moral in the most profound sense - directly in this book.

This work aims to show that Japan even at it's height of success, while the successful version of capitalism was blighted at it's core, being unsustainable. This revised edition features n introduction which gives an analysis of Japan's contemporary crisis.

Against the powerful image of Japan as a rising economic superpower, or even, in Ezra Vogel's influential formulation a deade ago, "Japan as number 1", this book explores the fragility, hubris and human and environmental costs of Japan's desperate drive for hyperdevelopment. As this economic superpower finds itself drifting, rudderless, through the decade, four seminal events seem to emblemise the enveloping crisis: the Kobe Earthquake, which the author shows to be no mere act of nature, but an event whose consequences are intimately bound up with desperate hypergrowth; The Ayum Rikyo poison gas attack, which struck at Japan's sense of security in its deepest senses (psychological and moral, as well as physical); the collapse of the LDP single-party rule after nearly 40 years, plunging Japan's superstable political system into crises manifested by implausible coalition with little more than a thirst to rule in common; and Japan's inability to come to terms with war respnsibility ever after 50 years, best symbolised by the Comfort Women issue and the government's hapless attempt to come up with an appropriate formula for recognising, apologising and making amends for wartime aggression and crimes. Gavan McCormack addresses these issues - which are political, economic, social cultural and moral in the most profound sense - directly in this book.

Japan is the world's No. 2 economy, greater in GDP than Britain and France together and almost double that of China. It is also the most durable, generous, and unquestioning ally of the US, attaching priority to its Washington ties over all else. In Client State, Gavan McCormack examines the current transformation of Japan, designed to meet the demands from Washington that Japan become the "Great Britain of the Far East." Exploring postwar Japan's relationship with America, he contends that US pressure has been steadily applied to bring Japan in line with neoliberal principles. The Bush administration's insistence on Japan's thorough subordination has reached new levels, and is an agenda heavily in the American, rather than the Japanese, national interest. It includes comprehensive institutional reform, a thorough revamp of the security and defense relationship with the US, and-alarmingly-vigorous pursuit of Japan's acquisition of nuclear weapons.

Now in a thoroughly updated edition, Resistant Islands offers the first comprehensive overview of Okinawan history from earliest times to the present, focusing especially on the recent period of colonization by Japan, its disastrous fate during World War II, and its current status as a glorified US military base. The base is a hot-button issue in Japan and has become more widely known in the wake of Japan’s 2011 natural disasters and the US military role in emergency relief. Okinawa rejects the base-dominated role allocated it by the US and Japanese governments under which priority attaches to its military functions, as a kind of stationary aircraft carrier. The result has been to throw US-Japan relations into crisis, bringing down one prime minister who tried to stop construction of yet another base on the island and threatening the incumbent if he is unable to deliver Okinawan approval of the new base. Okinawa thus has become a template for reassessing the troubled US-Japan relationship—indeed, the geopolitics of the US empire of bases in the Pacific.

A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY TIME , NPR, INSTYLE, AND GOOD HOUSEKEEPING “A sensational new book [that] tries to figure out whether it’s possible to live an ethical life in a capitalist society. . . . The results are enthralling.” —Associated Press A timely and arresting new look at affluence by the New York Times bestselling author, “one of the leading lights of the modern American essay.” —Financial Times “My adult life can be divided into two distinct parts,” Eula Biss writes, “the time before I owned a washing machine and the time after.” Having just purchased her first home, the poet and essayist now embarks on a provocative exploration of the value system she has bought into. Through a series of engaging exchanges—in libraries and laundromats, over barstools and backyard fences—she examines our assumptions about class and property and the ways we internalize the demands of capitalism. Described by the New York Times as a writer who “advances from all sides, like a chess player,” Biss offers an uncommonly immersive and deeply revealing new portrait of work and luxury, of accumulation and consumption, of the value of time and how we spend it. Ranging from IKEA to Beyoncé to Pokemon, Biss asks, of both herself and her class, “In what have we invested?”