Full Description
In an era of irregular labor, nagging recession, nuclear contamination, and a shrinking population, Japan is facing precarious times. How the Japanese experience insecurity in their daily and social lives is the subject of Precarious Japan. Tacking between the structural conditions of socioeconomic life and the ways people are making do, or not, Anne Allison chronicles the loss of home affecting many Japanese, not only in the literal sense but also in the figurative sense of not belonging. Until the collapse of Japan's economic bubble in 1991, lifelong employment and a secure income were within reach of most Japanese men, enabling them to maintain their families in a comfortable middle-class lifestyle. Now, as fewer and fewer people are able to find full-time work, hope turns to hopelessness and security gives way to a pervasive unease. Yet some Japanese are getting by, partly by reconceiving notions of home, family, and togetherness.
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
1. Pain of Life 1
2. From Lifelong to Liquid Japan 21
3. Ordinary Refugeeism: Poverty, Precarity, Youth 43
4. Home and Hope 77
5. The Social Body-In Life and Death 122
6. Cultivating Fields From the Edges 166
7. In the Mud 180
Notes 207
References 219
Index 231
