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The Cambridge Companion to
Modern Japanese Culture
This Companion provides a comprehensive overview of the influences
that have shaped modern-day Japan. Covering topics such as technology,
food, nationalism and the rise of anime and manga in the visual arts, this
book traces the cultural transformation that took place over the course of
the 20th century, and paints a picture of a nation rich in cultural diversity.
With contributions from some of the most prominent scholars in the field,
The Cambridge Companion to Modern Japanese Culture is an
authoritative introduction to this subject.
Yoshio Sugimoto is Professor Emeritus in the School of Social Sciences,
La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia.
Cambridge Companions to Culture
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Edited by Eva Kolinsky and Wilfried Van Der Will
The Cambridge Companion to Modern Russian Culture
Edited by Nicholas Rzhevsky
The Cambridge Companion to Modern Spanish Culture
Edited by David T Gies
The Cambridge Companion to Modern Italian Culture
Edited by Zygmunt G Baranski and Rebecca J West
The Cambridge Companion to Modern French Culture
Edited by Nicholas Hewitt
The Cambridge Companion to Modern Latin American Culture
Edited by John King
The Cambridge Companion to Modern Irish Culture
Edited by Joe Cleary and Claire Connolly
The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Culture
Edited by Christopher Bigsby
The Cambridge Companion to Modern Chinese Culture

Japan—Social conditions—1945–
Sugimoto, Yoshio, 1939–
Cambridge University
952.04
isbn 978-0-521-70663-6 paperback
isbn 978-0-521-88047-3 hardback
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takashi inoguchi
10 Buraku culture 182
hideo aoki
11 Literary culture 199
toshiko ellis
12 Popular leisure 216
sepp linhart
13 Manga, anime and visual art culture 236
craig norris
14 Music culture 261
j u n ko k i tag awa
15 Housing culture 281
ann waswo
16 Food culture 300
naomichi ishige
17 Sports culture 317
miho koishihara
18 Globalisation and cultural nationalism 336
takashi inoguchi
19 Exporting Japan’s culture: From management style to manga 352
ross mouer and craig norris
Consolidated list of references
369
Index 401
Figures
0.1 Four-fold typology of competing cultural orientations to the state and
the market 17
3.1 The major dialect divisions of Japanese and Ryukyuan 64
10.1 Burakumin and ethnic minorities in Japan 185
10.2 Formation of burakumin identity 191

12.2 Participation rate in leisure activities by type, 1995–2004 225
12.3 Participation rate in domestic and foreign sightseeing travel by sex and
age (%) 229
13.1 Typology of six key manga forms 239
14.1 Concepts of h
¯
ogaku, y
¯
ogaku and ‘Japanese music’ in Japan 263
14.2 Musical genre and social stratum 273
15.1 An international comparison of housing by form of tenure 290
17.1 Changes in sports practice by age 322
19.1 Some indicators of change, 1986–2000 357
Contributors
hideo aoki, Institute on Social Theory and Dynamics, Hiroshima, is a
sociologist who specialises in studies of urban middle classes and
homelessness in Japan and the Philippines. He has published Japan’s
Underclass: Day Laborers and the Homeless (Trans Pacific Press
2006) and ‘Homelessness in Osaka: Globalization, yoseba and
disemployment,’ Urban Studies, 40(2), 2003, pp. 361–78.
harumi befu, Stanford University, is currently working in the areas of
globalisation, diaspora, kinship and community. His publications
include Hegemony of Homogeneity: An Anthropological Analysis of
Nihonjinron (Trans Pacific Press 2001)andIdeorog
¯
ı to Shite no
Nihon Bunkaron (Cultural Theories of Japan as Ideology), third
edition (Shis
¯
o no Kagakusha 1997).

anne e imamura, Georgetown University, specialises in urban
community, gender and family in Japan. She has published Urban
Japanese Housewives: At Home and in the Community (University
of Hawai’i Press 1987) and edited Re-imaging Japanese Women
(University of California Press 1996).
takashi inoguchi, President, University of Niigata Prefecture, and a
political scientist formerly with the University of Tokyo, has
authored, among other titles, Japanese Politics: An Introduction
(Trans Pacific Press 2005), and co-authored Citizens and the State:
Attitudes in Western Europe and East and Southeast Asia
(Routledge 2008) and co-edited Globalization, Public Opinion, and
the State (Routledge 2008).
naomichi ishige, National Museum of Ethnology, Japan, is an expert
on comparative studies of food culture and has published The
History and Culture of Japanese Food (Kegan Paul International
2001) and co-authored Fermented Fish Products in East Asia
(International Resources Management Institute 2005).
junko kitagawa, Osaka Kyoiku University, is an expert in the
sociology of music and has published OtonoUchiSoto(Inside and
Outside of Sound)(Keis
¯
o Shob
¯
o 1993) and ‘Some aspects of
Japanese popular music,’ Popular Music, 10(3), 1991, pp. 317–26,
and co-edited Gendai Nihon Shakai ni Okeru Ongaku (Music in
Modern Japanese Society)(H
¯
os
¯

Contributors xi
Texts: Woodblock-printed Media in Early Modern Japan (Hotei
Publishing 2005).
morris low, University of Queensland and Johns Hopkins University,
researches the history of Japanese science and technology and
Japanese visual culture. He has authored Japan on Display:
Photography and the Emperor (Routledge 2006)andScience and the
Building of a New Japan (Palgrave Macmillan 2005) and edited
Building a Modern Japan: Science, Technology, and Medicine in the
Meiji Era and Beyond (Palgrave Macmillan 2005).
ross mouer, Monash University, is a comparative sociologist who
specialises in the sociology of work in Japan. He co-authored A
Sociology of Work in Japan (Cambridge University Press 2006)and
Images of Japanese Society (Kegan Paul International 1986).
craig norris, University of Tasmania, specialises in new media and
new knowledge economies and has published ‘Girl power: the
female cyborg in Japanese anime,’ in Haslem, Ndalianis and Mackie
(eds), Super/Heroes: From Hercules to Superman, (New Academia
Publishing 2007), pp. 347–61 and ‘Australian fandom of Japanese
anime (Animation),’ in Ang (ed.), Alter/Asians: Asian-Australian
Identities in Art, Media and Popular Culture (Pluto Press 2000),
pp. 218–31.
kaori h okano, La Trobe University, specialises in studies of
education and social inequality and researches minorities and
ethnicity in Japan and Asia. Her publications include Education in
Contemporary Japan (co-author, Cambridge University Press 1999)
and she has edited Language and Schools in Asia: Globalization and
Local Forces (Multilingual Matters 2006).
yoshio sugimoto, La Trobe University, studies Japanese society and
comparative sociology. His books include An Introduction to

1879 The Asahi Shimbun starts publication in Osaka.
1879 The Okinawa Kingdom is incorporated as Japan’s Okinawa
prefecture.
1889 The Imperial Constitution is promulgated.
1894–5 The Sino-Japanese War. China surrenders.
1895 Colonisation of Taiwan. The Government-General of Taiwan
is established.
1899 The Law to Protect the Former Savage in Hokkaid
¯
o is
promulgated to deal with the Ainu.
1902 The Anglo-Japanese Alliance Agreement is concluded.
1903 The system of government-approved school textbooks begins.
1904–05 The Russo-Japanese War.
1910–45 Annexation of Korea.
1915 The first national middle-school baseball championship is
held.
1918 Rice riots spread throughout the nation.
1925 Public radio broadcasting commences in Tokyo, Osaka and
Nagoya.
xiv Chronology
1931 The Mukden incident marks the beginning of Japan’s invasion
of Manchuria and the start of the Fifteen Year War, which
ends in 1945.
1932 The state of Manchukuo is established in Manchuria under
Japan’s puppet government.
1936 The Japan Professional Baseball League is established.
1937 The Japanese military occupies the Chinese city of Nanking
and carries out the Nanking massacre.
1940 The Imperial Rule Association is established to organise the

1964 The Tokyo Olympics.
1964 The Shinkansen Bullet Train system starts operation between
Tokyo and Osaka.
1965 Ratification of the Basic Treaty between Japan and South
Korea.
1968–70 New Left student movements spread on university campuses.
Chronology xv
1970s The heyday of Nihonjinron (theories on the Japanese) and the
rise of cultural nationalism.
1972 The US returns Okinawa to Japan, which becomes the
nation’s 47
th
prefecture.
1978 Narita International Airport opens.
1980s The decade of the so-called ‘bubble economy’. The peak of
the postwar economic boom.
1985 The Equal Opportunity Law comes into effect.
1990s The so-called ‘lost decade’. The Japanese economy enters into
stagnation and recession.
1991 Zainichi Korean residents given special permanent residency
status.
1993 The Liberal Democratic Party loses government after four
decades of uninterrupted reign. The coalition government of
opposition parties gains power.
1994 The first Ainu parliamentarian attends the House of
Councillors.
1996 The Liberal Democratic Party regains power.
2000s The intensification of the campaign to establish Japan as a ‘soft
power’ nation based on the export of manga and animation.
2001 Prime Minister Junichir

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28

Tokyo
Saitama
Yamanashi
Shizuoka
Nagano
Toyama
Ishikawa
Fukui
Gifu
Aichi
Prefectures
East Japan West Japan
Shiga
Mie
Nara
Wakayama
Osaka
Kyoto
Hyogo
Tottori
Okayama
Kagawa
Tokushima
Kochi
Ehime
Hiroshima
Shimane
Yamaguchi
Fukuoka
Saga

25
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–
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–
–
Okinawa
47
yoshio sugimoto

definition of Japanese culture.
The second abrupt transformation of public perceptions concerns the
way in which Japan’s class structure is defined. The prevailing majority
view of Japan as an egalitarian, equitable and relatively classless society
swiftly collapsed in the early 2000s with many influential publications
2
asserting that Japan is now a highly stratified, inequitable and class-based
society with significantly unequal distributions of socioeconomic resources
and rewards. The label kakusa shakai (disparate society or socially divided
society) is now frequently attached to Japanese society. The rise of such
discourse reflects the growing splits in the labour force between the priv-
ileged minority of full-time regular employees with occupational security
and the deprived majority of part-timers, casuals and day labourers with lit-
tle job protection.
3
Though applicable to only a quarter of the workforce at
its peak, the three treasures of Japan’s corporate culture – lifetime employ-
ment, seniority-based wage structure and enterprise unionism – which once
were celebrated as the cornerstone of Japan’s rise to economic superpower
status are now under threat. Organised labour based mainly on the advan-
taged sector tends to prioritise its own interests at the expense of temporary,
irregular and outsourced workers. In this milieu, the image that Japan is a
society of sharp class distinction has taken root and will not easily fade
away.
Not only have occupational classes received serious public attention
but regional, gender-based, generational and other forms of inequality are
also under the spotlight. The growing economic gap between urban and
rural areas, between the relatively prosperous metropolitan centres and the
underperforming periphery in particular, has exasperated the electorates
in the countryside and generated inter-prefectural political confrontation.

classless
Competing class groups,
much class division
Regional differences Minimal Significant
Holders of high literacy in
Japanese culture
Ware ware Nihonjin
(We the Japanese)
Depends upon which
Japanese culture
symbols, produced and consumed by ethnic and class groups with dif-
ferent levels of access to privilege, power and prestige. With the conver-
gence of the ethnic and class turns, Japanese public discourse has achieved a
cultural turn: a paradigm transformation that has inspired many recent stud-
ies on Japanese culture. The present volume reflects the new framework,
the ‘multicultural model’ of Japanese society, and highlights the ways in
which Japanese culture is diversified and stratified along class, regional,
generational and gender lines, among others. Table 0.1 contrasts the two
orientations – monocultural versus multicultural.
These developments must be observed with caution. The two models
coexist in rivalry rather than one completely overwhelming the other. The
monocultural model is still firmly entrenched and thriving in some parts of
the social science community in Japan. Moreover, whether or not Japanese
society recorded a sudden increase in social variation and stratification is a
moot point. Some analysts argue that Japan has always been a diversified and
stratified society, that there is no evidence of abrupt mutation in this regard.
4
Others maintain that it is public perception rather than empirical reality
that has undergone drastic changes. Either way, the Japanese perception of
‘Japanese culture’ has lost the stability that it enjoyed during the heyday of

Second, while the cultural differences betweentheresidentsof eastern
Japan (whose centres are Tokyo and Yokohama) and those of western Japan
(Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe) are widely acknowledged, this does not appear
to have had a significant impact on Nihonjinron. Finally, and more con-
cretely, though the promoters of Japan’s whaling activities in the Antarctic
Ocean attribute them to Japan’s food culture, one out of three Japanese
are against eating whale meat, and only about half of the population are
in favour of the practice at all.
11
This means that Japan has two competing
cultural groups, though only one is acknowledged to exist in that country.
Given that Japanese culture is what the Japanese produce and consume,
who the Japanese are ought to be spelt out prior to the examination of
the qualities of Japanese culture. The formulation of the Japanese necessar-
ily precedes that of Japanese culture. To put it technically, the definition
of the Japanese is the independent variable; that of Japanese culture the
dependent.
The criteria for judging who the Japanese are can range from citizenship,
‘biological pedigree’, language competence and cultural literacy, to sub-
jective identification.
12
We can use a restrictive and exclusive yardstick and
define the Japanese, for instance, as only those persons who possess Japanese
passports, have ‘Japanese blood’ and are native speakers of the Japanese lan-
guage. Using a more liberal and inclusive benchmark, we can designate as
Japanese those individuals possessing at least one of these attributes. It is
possible to identify a middle position between the two frameworks, where
certain attributes – for instance, citizenship and ‘pedigree’ – are seen as
indispensable criteria for someone to be classified as Japanese.
Overview 5

reality, it should not be taken to refer to any bounded entity.
15
Instead of
a short summary of each chapter of this volume, the ensuing discussion
presents a brief schematic sketch of three dimensions: (1) a few unresolved
debates over concept and theory formation in studies of modern Japanese
culture; (2) the two dominant forces – the state and the market – that
shape the realm of Japanese culture; and (3) how various demographic
groups consume Japanese culture in response to these two constraints. In
short, this volume considers both the conceptual and theoretical issues of
Japan’s modern culture and the substantive configurations of its shapers and
consumers, recognising that modern Japanese culture is not only diverse and
hybrid but also subject to constraints that are global and internal, material
and immaterial, socioeconomic and geo-political. In this sense, we will not
move away ‘from class to culture’ but attempt to sharpen our focus on the
6 Yoshio Sugimoto
importance of broadly defined, multiple class variables in the investigation
of culture.
Dilemmas of cultural relativism
While the monocultural model has been roundly criticised in the last few
decades, such critique raises some intriguing issues. In particular, questions
about the extent to which the culture of each individual ethnic minor-
ity group within Japanese society tends to be constructed as a uniform
entity in a monocultural way. The generations of Korean residents in Japan,
for example, have attempted to defend and maintain what they regard as
Korean culture within the mainstream culture of Japan. But ‘Korean cul-
ture’ is neither uniform nor homogeneous. Which Koreans are taken here
as the demographic basis of Korean culture? Is the argument about the
preservation of the Korean tradition within Japan based on a kind of
Kankokujinron (theories on the Koreans) – a Korean counterpart of Nihon-

gious universities were clustered in Africa and the language of international
communication were Hindi or Thai.
These considerations for cultural relativity draw attention to two types
of cultural relativism. On one hand, one has to be mindful of cultural
diversity and stratification within Japanese society: domestic multicultural
realities that are relative to each other. On the other hand, one must also
be conscious of cultural relativity between Japan and other societies and
consider the extent to which Japan is peripheral in the global cultural sys-
tem. However, these two dimensions of cultural relativism pose a thorny
dilemma. If one overemphasises intra-cultural relativism, inter-societal
cultural relativity tends to be diluted. If one underscores inter-societal cul-
tural relativism, oneis often trapped ina pitfall where intra-societal diversity
is attenuated and national stereotypes are apt to prevail. There appears to
be an unavoidable negative correlation between the two types of cultural
relativism.
Social science concepts and theories produced in the West are dissemi-
nated and studied in Japanese academia, not the other way around. Little
is known outside Japan about the concepts or cultural categories that have
been developed in the Japanese context and that cannot be translated into
Western languages in a straightforward manner. One such notion, seikatsu,
illustrates this point.
Seikatsu generally means livelihood, everyday life or a wide range of life
activities.
16
The agents of seikatsu are seikatsusha, the ordinary, nameless
and common men and women who actively construct their living condi-
tions. Seikatsusha constitute the core of Japan’s civil society, independent
of powers of the state and the market. The narrow definition of seikatsu
focuses upon the world of consumption, in which seikatsusha consciously
carve their independent life activities, not simply as passive and submissive

16, Naomichi Ishige derives much of his analysis of food culture from the
work he has done in the above-mentioned field of seikatsu-gaku.Further,
Okano’s chapter on school culture (chapter 5) details aspects of gakk
¯
o
seikatsu (school life). There are many other cultural categories that require
attention not only for the interpretation of Japanese culture but also as tools
of comparative analysis. In chapter 4, for instance, Anne Imamura analyses
the notion of ie (household), while in chapter 6 Ross Mouer discusses the
concept of sh
¯
ushoku (obtaining lifetime full-time employment). In chapter
8, Covell points to the disparity between the Japanese notion of sh
¯
uky
¯
o
and the English term ‘religion’ and the importance of cultural sensitivity in
comparative studies of spiritual life.
These conceptual concerns stem from Japan’s perceived duality in the
international community: as an economic centre and technological super-
power; yet as culturally peripheral and a part of Asia. With Japanese culture
viewed in relative and comparative terms, one might have to revisit the
‘convergence’ debate over the extent to which all industrial societies tend
to demonstrate analogous characteristics due to the imperatives of indus-
trialisation, not only in social structures and institutions but also in value
orientations and lifestyles. Japan has been the prime testing ground for
the debate because it is the foremost industrial power outside the Western