Shinohata : A Portrait of a Japanese Village

Ronald Dore offers the reader insight into the changing rural life of Japan in this fascinating study of a village some 100 miles from Tokyo where he lived first in 1955 and again in the early 1970s. A new Afterword reports on the acceleration of change to a once self-sufficient community most of whose young men now commute to city jobs instead of working the land. Dore comments on the effects of the 1993 election--Shinohata in a non-LDP-governed Japan. Not many foreigners have the chance to live in a Japanese village, certainly not foreigners who are sufficiently at home to do so as unobtrusively and intimately as the author of this book. Ronald Dore went to Shinohata twenty years ago when he was studying the land reform which broke the power of Japan's landlords. He went back many times thereafter to stay with friends.Now he has distilled his memories, field notes, diaries, and some recent forays with a tape recorder into a book which brings to life the village and its people, and vividly portrays the stunning transformation of Japanese village life. Shinohatais a story of extraordinary change from the traditional values and relationships to typically modern pursuits and aspirations that accompanied the post-war prosperity. Ronald Dore's gift for combining a sympathetic, and often humorous, response to unique individuals with the sociologist's ability to discern and analyze patterns make this an unusual and fascinating book.