Japan's changing generations : are young people creating a new society / edited by Gordon Mathews and Bruce White.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: changing generations in Japan today / Gordon Mathews and Bruce White -- 1. The generation gap in Japanese society since the 1960s / Tetsuo Sakurai -- 2. Why are Japanese youth today so passive? / Satoshi Kotani -- 3. The local roots of global citizenship: generational change in a Kyushu hamlet / Bruce White -- 4. How Japanese teenagers cope: social pressures and personal responses / Peter Ackermann -- 5. Youth fashion and changing beautification practices / Laura Miller -- 6. "Guiding" Japan's university students through the generation gap / Brian J. McVeigh -- 7. Seeking a career, finding a job: how young people enter and resist the Japanese world of work / Gordon Mathews -- 8. Mothers and their unmarried daughters: an intimate look at generational change / Lynne Nakano and Moeko Wagatsuma -- 9. What happens when they come back: how Japanese young people with foreign university degrees experience the Japanese workplace / Shunta Mori -- 10. Centered selves and life choices: changing attitudes of young educated mothers / Ayumi Sasagawa -- Epilogue: are Japanese young people creating a new society? / Bruce White and Gordon Mathews.

"This book argues that "the generation gap" in Japan is something more than young people resisting the adult social order before entertaining and comforming to that order. Rather, it signifies something more fundamental: the emergence of a new Japan, which may be quite different from the Japan of postwar decades. It argues that while young people in Japan in their teens, twenties and early thirties, are not engaged in overt social or political resistance, they are turning against the existing Japanese social order, whose legitimacy has been undermined by the past decade of economic downturn. The book shows how young people in Japan are thinking about their bodies and identities, their social relationships, and their employment and parenting, in a new and generationally contextual ways, that may help to create a future Japan quite different from Japan of the recent past."--Publisher description.

Machine converted from AACR2 source record.