The Japanese Trajectory: Modernization and Beyond

This wide-ranging and innovative collection of essays addresses the Japanese dimension of one of the major sociological issues of our time: the nature of socio-economic modernisation and the emergence or otherwise of 'post-modern' industrial society. The rise to economic supremacy of post-war Japan constitutes an enormous challenge to that western orthodoxy which posits an essentially unilinear process of modernisation from the seventeenth century to the present day in which national and regional diversity has been eroded by the gradual social convergence of the major industrial powers. How does a society of contrasting social and cultural traditions fit within this pattern? Can one sensibly speak of Japanese society as 'modern' when such usage is effectively defined by other, western, presuppositions? In this volume an international team of contributors assesses these questions and investigates the real impact of modernisation upon the Japanese themselves.