Description
Book SynopsisReworking Japan examines how the past several decades of neoliberal economic restructuring and reforms have challenged Japan''s corporate ideologies, gendered relations, and subjectivities of individual employees. With Japan''s remarkable economic growth since the 1950s, the lifestyles and life courses of salarymen came to embody the New Middle Class family ideal. However, the nearly three decades of economic stagnation and reforms since the bursting of the economic bubble in the early 1990s has intensified corporate retrenchment under the banner of neoliberal restructuring and brought new challenges to employees and their previously protected livelihoods. In a sweeping appraisal of recent history, Gagné demonstrates how economic restructuring has reshaped Japanese corporations, workers, and ideals, as well as how Japanese companies and employees have resisted and actively responded to such changes.
Gagné explores Japan''s fraught and problematic transition from the pos
Trade Review
The book's main value lies in its detailed accounts of men's careers and life courses, which provide some instructive illustrations of typical (successful) white-collar career arcs.
* ILR Review *
The combination of sites enabled the author to construct multidimensional portraits which would have been difficult with a single-site method. Indeed, these portraits are very vibrant. The second part offers a fascinating account of the informants outside work. The strengths of the book lie in the genuineness of the men's accounts, which undoubtedly reflect a rapport the author was able to create with them.
* The Journal of Japanese Studies *
Table of ContentsIntroduction
Part 1. LOCATING SALARYMEN, CAPITALISM, AND NEOLIBERALISM IN JAPAN
1. Historicizing Japanese Workers and Japanese Capitalism
2. Working in and Working on Neoliberalism
Part 2. AFTER WORK, BEYOND LEISURE, AND INDIVIDUAL DESIRES
3. The Business of Leisure, the Leisure of Business
4. Working Hard at Having Fun through Hobbies and Community
Part 3. MULTIPLICITIES OF MEN
5. Escaping the Corporate Shackles
6. Navigating the Waves of Work and Life
7. Weathering the Storms of Corporate Restructuring
Conclusion
