Dimensions of Japanese Society : Gender, Margins and Mainstream

Japan remains one of the most intriguing yet least understood nations. In a much needed, balanced and comprehensive analysis, among other remarkable revelations, this book presents for the first time a vital key to understanding the organisation of Japan's society and the behaviour of its people. The Japanese are not driven by a universal morality based on Good and Evil, but by broad aesthetic concepts based on Pure and Impure. What they include as 'impure' will surprise many readers. For all the attention it has drawn, Japan remains a mystery to most westerners. Understanding has not always been helped by books that have focused too much on its exotic otherness, or made sweeping generalizations, or in recent years 'deconstructed' it and over-emphasized diversity and universality. Dimensions provides a much-needed balanced and comprehensive analysis, examining both diversity and uniformity, the particular and the universal, the normal and the abnormal. Among other remarkable revelations, it presents for the first time a vital key to understanding the organization of Japan's society and the behaviour of its people. The Japanese are not driven by a universal morality based on Good and Evil, but by broad aesthetic concepts based on Pure and Impure. What is included in these categories will surprise many readers. Combined with the legacy of an authoritarian regime from the seventeenth century, they underlie many of the supposed paradoxes of modern Japan Front Matter....Pages i-xxi The Essentials of Society: Men and Women....Pages 1-47 On the Fringes of Society: Minorities and Other Marginals....Pages 48-107 The Mainstream of Society: Being a Normal Japanese....Pages 108-176 Conclusion: Japan as Itself, and the Aesthetics of Purity....Pages 177-182 Back Matter....Pages 183-249 This work presents a key to understanding the organization of Japan's society and the behaviour of its people. The author reveals that the Japanese are not driven by a universal morality based on good and evil, but by broad aesthetic concepts based on pure and impure Japan remains one of the most intriguing yet least understood nations. This balanced and comprehensive analysis includes among its revelations that the Japanese are driven not by a morality based on good and evil, but by what is pure and impure