Product Description: The volume takes four key themes related to ageing – the experience of old age; intergenerational relations; economics of and social policy for ageing; longevity and the culture of ageing - and examines how these issues are emerging in different regions of Asia, specifically, the former Soviet Union, South Asia, China, Japan and South-East Asia...read more

Takes four key themes related to ageing - the experience of old age; intergenerational relations; economics of and social policy for ageing; longevity and the culture of ageing - and examines how these issues are emerging in different regions of Asia, specifically, the former Soviet Union, South Asia, China, Japan and South-East Asia.

Product Description: The Japanese have long regarded themselves as a homogenous nation, clearly separate from other nations. However, this long-standing view is being undermined by the present international reality of increased global population movement...read more

Product Description: Social policies reflect important ideas about the relationship between the state and the individual. This book examines this relationship in a number of unexplored areas in Japanese society, including policies relating to fertility, perinatal care, child care, sexuality and elder care...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

The issue of how Japanese society operates, and in particular why it has `succeeded', has generated a wide variety of explanatory models, including the Confucian ethic, classlessness, group consciousness, and `uniqueness' in areas as diverse as body images and language patterns.In Ideology and Practice in Modern Japan the contributors examine these models and the ways in which they have sometimes been used to create a sense of `Japaneseness', that obscures the fact that Japan is actually an extremely complex and heterogenous society. In particular, `practice' at the micro-level of society is explored to illuminate or express a broader ideology. The contributors investigate a wide variety of subjects - from attitudes to death to the role of education, from film making to gender segregation - to see what can be said about the phenomenon in particular, what it tells us about Japan in general, and what conclusions can be drawn for our understanding of society in the broadest sense.

There is increasing interest in East Asian welfare models as many politicians in both East and seek out examples to underpin their own ideas for reform. In this, the first broad ranging study of the East Asian welfare, the contributors explore the experiences of six societies in East Asia and make clear the realities behind the political rhetoric. They examine the role of the state within welfare systems using case studies of pensions, health insurance, housing and personal social services. The result is the only up-to-date detailed analysis in English of how these various systems have developed and will continue to develop in the future. It will be a valuable and wide ranging resource for both students and policy-makers alike.

Product Description: In Japan today, over 30,000 children are in the care of the state. Drawing on his long-term fieldwork in an institution for such children, Roger Goodman describes what happens to them in a country with no professional social workers and little tradition of adopting or fostering children in need of care...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Japanese society is often referred to as an example of a homogeneous culture moderated by an ethos of groupism. Yet often enough homogeneity is its own worst enemy as norms are required and enforced at the centre of power to the detriment of individual and human rights.

Product Description: This new study challenges the idea that Japanese children who lived abroad are stigmatized on their return home, arguing that today's returnee children are the vanguard of a new social elite.