Description
Book SynopsisThis classic study on the sociology of Japan remains the only in-depth treatment of the Japanese middle class. Now in a fiftieth-anniversary edition that includes a new foreword by William W. Kelly, this seminal work paints a rich and complex picture of the life of the salaryman and his family. In 1958, Suzanne and Ezra Vogel embedded themselves in a Tokyo suburb, living among and interviewing six middle-class families regularly for a year. Tracing the rapid postwar economic growth that led to hiring large numbers of workers who were provided lifelong employment, the authors show how this phenomenon led to a new social classthe salaried men and their families. It was a well-educated group that prepared their children rigorously for the same successful corporate or government jobs they held. Secure employment and a rising standard of living enabled this new middle class to set the dominant pattern of social life that influenced even those who could not share it, a pattern that remains f
Table of ContentsForeword: Looking Backward at a Book That Looked Forward William W. Kelly Part I: The Significance of Salary Chapter 1: The Problem and Its Setting Chapter 2: The Bureaucratic Setting in Perspective Chapter 3: The Gateway to Salary: Infernal Entrance Examinations Part II: The Family and Other Social Systems Chapter 4: The Consumer’s “Bright New Life” Chapter 5: Families View Their Government Chapter 6: Community Relationships Chapter 7: Basic Values Part III: Internal Family Processes Chapter 8: The Decline of the Ie Ideal Chapter 9: The Division of Labor in the Home Chapter 10: Authority in the Family Chapter 11: Family Solidarity Chapter 12: Child-Rearing Part IV: Mamachi in Perspective Chapter 13: Order Amidst Rapid Social Change Part V: Mamachi Revisited Chapter 14: Beyond Salary Chapter 15: Beyond Success: Mamachi Thirty Years Later Afterword Ezra F. Vogel Appendix: A Report on the Field Work Selected Bibliography
