Anne Allison Precarious J
Precarious Japan Paperback – November 22, 2013
by Anne Allison (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars 18 ratings
Kindle
from AUD 35.33Read with Our Free App
Paperback
AUD 12.83
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.
256 pages
Language
English
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Precarious Japan is a forward-thinking commentary on the current state of Japan, detailing a progressive history from the economic collapse in 1991 to how the country functions today in a modern, post-earthquake society. . . . For those wondering just how precarious Japan’s future really is, this book is a good place to start.”-- Jordan Sievers ― Japan Times
“The only reason that I didn't burst into tears while reading this book is because of extreme self-control.”-- Eustacia Tan ― With Love from Japan blog
"Allison’s book is an impressive tour through important public discourses in Japan today, rooted in extensive discussion of contemporary popular literature and media."
-- Kathryn E. Goldfarb ― Somatosphere Published On: 2014-05-29
“[A]n important, thoughtful, and moving ethnography that deserves the attention of a wide audience.”-- Carla Nappi ― New Books in East Asian Studies
" . . . Allison's work reminds us of why ethnographic work is important. She skillfully weaves recent theories of the 'precarious' between personal accounts, interviews, statistics and textual analyses, making Precarious Japan as much an exemplar of the ethnographic methodology as an account of the vicissitudes of life in post-bubble, post-crisis and post-Fukushima Japan."-- Jamie Coates ― Social Anthropology
“Precarious Japan is a compelling collection of examples and theories that connect overwhelming or shocking social problems in contemporary Japan with the realm of labor. . . . Although many of the examples are emotionally difficult to read, I am sure they will be very hard to forget.”-- Allison Alexy ― Anthropological Quarterly
“Allison’s book announces a paradigm change. . . . The book is a valuable provocation. . . . Precarious Japan is a valuable incitement to imagine new narratives for Japan’s present and future—and to locate Japan’s experience in the context of global precarity. . . .”-- Amy Borovoy ― American Ethnologist
"Allison’s ethnography of contemporary Japan, framed in terms of instability, poverty, hope, mud and the desire for belonging, is a compelling and timely work."-- Laura Dales ― Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology
“Precarious Japan has implications far beyond Japan not only because similar problems exist in other market-dominated countries but also because she draws on the relevant theoretical literature to analyze Japan from a broader perspective. The breadth and depth of Allison’s scholarship—and her insight into Japanese culture—are impressive. … I highly recommend Precarious Japan for those interested in contemporary societies, especially Japan. It is also a good textbook for social sciences and humanities courses, inspiring students and generating fruitful discussions.”-- Yohko Tsuji ― American Anthropologist
“[A]n impressive ethnographic study of exclusion, precariousness and struggle that will leave no reader untouched. . . . Allison’s new book will surely be highly impressive for many readers and a good resource for discussions in courses on contemporary Japan.”-- David Chiavacci ― Pacific Affairs
Review
"Precarious Japan is a model of new modes of conceptualizing sociocultural theory. Here the theory is sober, mature, aspirational, hopeful, gracious. It pushes up against the limits of thinking categorically, of thinking that lived phenomena simply, magically, derive their force from the categorical—from identities, borders, inclusions and exclusions, ideals writ large. It will be important to scholars trying to get a better handle on what is going on in the historical present."-- Kathleen Stewart, author of ― Ordinary Affects
Read more
Product details
Publisher : Duke University Press Books (November 22, 2013)
Language : English
Paperback : 256 pages
Customer Reviews:
4.2 out of 5 stars 18 ratings
Anne Allison
Customer reviews
4.2 out of 5 stars
Top reviews from the United States
Bucky K
5.0 out of 5 stars One of my favorite books about modern JapanReviewed in the United States on July 30, 2016
Verified Purchase
One of my favorite books about modern Japan. I own Anne Allison's other titles as well. She's an academic but writes well for the lay reader. Straight up no-nonsense look at the real Japan. It is very rare to find this type of insight and substance in the English language.
To properly appreciate the Allison niche, consider: English-language writing about Japan falls into a few horrible camps: (a) insubstantial "Monocle magazine"-type coverage about bright and shiny Japan; (b) young-at-heart otaku gushing about the holy trinity of ninja, geisha, samurai; (c) postwar male travelers who write with misty-eyed nostalgia about the Japan they knew that no longer exists; (d) professors with specialist books that have a mausoleum feel. Oh, let me not forget (e), the American expatriate who just happens to be in Japan, who is NOT a writer, but because of his (usually it is a he) unique position of being there (usually through acquisition, however briefly, of a Japanese girlfriend or wife), thinks he can write books about Japan that are just poorly-written and unreadable.
So, to really see Japan properly, you have to turn to academics who know how to pitch their books to the lay reader, like Ms. Allison. Get her books if you travel to Japan often and want to understand it better. Beautiful paperback edition and cover design, too.
5 people found this helpful
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Etienne RP
3.0 out of 5 stars War, Grief, MudReviewed in the United States on June 6, 2015
Verified Purchase
If we include Japanese sources, there is such an extensive literature on Japan’s economy and society that the bilingual observer is often at a loss. She can make this literature accessible to non-Japanese readers—by translating, summarizing, contextualizing. Or she can collect her own primary data—especially in the field of ethnography, where the main insights are supposed to originate from fieldwork. Anne Allison's book does both, but in an unsatisfactory manner. Its topic—precarity and precariousness—doesn't lend itself easily to fieldwork. How do you observe a feeling, a mood, a sentiment, or a lack thereof? How do you assess the way—as Allison defines her topic— "relations with others—of care, belonging, recognition—are showing strain but also, in a few instances, getting reimagined and restitched in innovative new ways"? Having had limited time to conduct fieldwork, Allison had to rely on other people's observations: activists, commentators, social workers, or critics. But she fails to give proper credit to these domestic observers of precariousness—and in particular to build a theory informed by local categories and debates. Instead, she imports the latest fads in social critique and peppers them with Japanese terms to add local flavor, without engaging Japanese thought seriously.
How do you observe precariousness? The answer, for anyone living in Japan, is pretty straightforward: open a newspaper, and you will read many accounts of life at the edge. The "shakai" (society) section of newspapers is full of reports on precarious employment (dispatch, contract, day labor), on elderly people living and dying alone (kodokushi), on young people withdrawing from society (hikikomori), on poverty gnawing at the life of the most vulnerable: single mothers, school dropouts, foreign workers, social outcasts, laid-out salarymen, etc. "Life, tenuous and raw, disconnected from others and surviving or dying alone: such stories cycle through the news these days," remarks the author. Next to the serious reporting on social ills come the sensationalized news items making headlines: "mothers beheaded, strangers killed, children abandoned, adults starved." Japan is the country where social pathologies bear indigenous names: "otaku" live in a fantasy world of anime characters and online chatrooms; "hikikomori" retreat in the private space of their room, withdrawing from school or workplace and avoiding social contact; "netto kafe nanmin" are mainly flexible or irregular workers who, with unsteady paychecks and no job security, are unable to afford more permanent housing and dwell in PC cafes for a low fee.
Likewise, there is not a lack of social commentary, of people analyzing these trends to draw general lessons or recommendations for Japan's future. According to observers, "Japan is becoming an impoverished country, a society where hope has turned scarce and the future has become bleak or inconceivable altogether." Precarity not only affects labor conditions but life as well: it is "a state where one's human condition has become precarious as well." There is a rich vocabulary that describes the difficulties of life (ikizurasa) in contemporary Japan: the insecurity (fuan, fuantei), dissatisfaction (fuman), the lack of a place or space where one feels comfortable and "at home" (ibasho ga nai), the connections (tsunagari) and sense of belonging disappearing from society (muen shakai), the poverty of human relations (ningenkankei no hinkon), the withering of social links (kizuna), the incapacity to achieve an "ordinary lifestyle" (hitonami no seikatsu), the absence of hope (kibô ga nai), the despair (zetsubô). For the Japanese, these terms are highly evocative, and together they paint a bleak picture of a society that has lost its balance. For non-Japanese speakers, the Japanese words add a new repertoire of social conditions that may help put their own society into perspective.
Anne Allison uses several metaphors to describe the current state of Japan under precarity. The first is a bellicose one, a paradox in a country that has banned war in its constitution. Japan is a society at war with itself. More specifically, the country is at war with its own youths, sacrificing them as refugees. According to human rights activists, it is a war that the state is waging by endangering and not fulfilling its commitment to the people—that of ensuring a "healthy and culturally basic existence" that all citizens are entitled to under Article 25 of the Constitution. When the outside world is seen as a war zone, people take refuge at home or in an imaginary world. In 2007, the monthly magazine Ronza published an essay titled "Kibô wa sensô" (Hope is War), in which a young part-time worker described all the humiliations his generation had to endure and concluded by placing his hope in a nationalist war that would restore his sense of masculine dignity and pride. Nobody really advocates war and the return to militarism in Japan; but nationalism is clearly on the rise, and right-wing extremism has found in Internet forums and discussion channels a new venue to vent its regressive agenda. Social scientists describe this reaction as paranoid nationalism: "when, feeling excluded from nation or community, one attempts, sometimes violently, to exclude others as well." The most extreme form of this self-destructing drive is given in the random murder incidents by demented youths who kill passersby as a form of protest.
The second metaphor that runs through the text is the idea of grief and mourning. Here the author draws from Judith Butler, the famous feminist scholar who, drawing herself from Jacques Derrida, has written about the grievability of all life and lives. As Butler writes, "there can be no recognition of a person's life without an implicit understanding that the life is grievable, that it would be grieved if it were lost, and that this future anterior is installed as the condition of its life." Without grievability, there is no life or, rather, there is something living that is other than life. But not all lives are equally grievable: when people live and die alone, nobody is there to register their death (as in the case of the "missing centenarians", who were found to be deceased and unreported by their families who kept the pension payments for themselves.) What counts and who counts as having a grievable life is increasingly dependent on economic calculation and state action. It is the prerogative of the modern state to "make live and let die" (Foucault), and never is this new biopolitical landscape more apparent than in the neoliberal injunction to pursue self-reliance, self-independence, and self-responsibility (jikô sekinin) as a positive agenda.
The third metaphor that creeps in the last chapter is the invasion of mud. The author was knee-deep in it when she volunteered to clean ditches in Ishinomaki after the earthquake and tsunami that hit the Tôhoku region on March 11th, 2011. As Allison aptly describes it, "the tsunami rendered the entire northeast coastline a cesspool of waste: dead remains and dying life entwined—animals, humans, boats, cars, oil, hours, vegetation, and belongings." Cleaning up the mess was devoted to the Self-Defense Forces—whose members in uniform had never been so conspicuous in Japanese society—, assisted by the US Armed Forces engaged in Operation Tomodachi and other, smaller contingents dispatched by friendly nations. Then a slew of NGOs, volunteers, and private cleanup operations (many of them employing precariat workers) took on the job in a great upsurge of solidarity. Cleaning the mud from homes and ditches, sweeping it from photographs and personal belongings, is described by the author as an exhilarating experience, a kind of return to a primal scene where social barriers disappear and a new sense of community emerges. This regression to an infantile stage of scatological pleasure is also a move away from the political. The author recognizes it herself: "while tremendously moving, the work we do moves little in fact." But the important thing is "being there": "stress is placed on the immediacy of the action and on the ethics of care." Riding a bus to Ishinomaki, an NGO team leader wondered why people made street protests against the government's nuclear policy: "why not come here and shovel mud instead?"
But there is a politics in shoveling mud, grieving lives, and opposing social warfare. Anne Allison never discusses her adherence to a progressive agenda broadly aligned with the Japanese left. The media she relies on (the Asahi newspaper, mostly), the intellectuals she quotes, the social activists she associates with, and the activities she participates in, are all identified with a segment of Japanese politics. Like it or not, this segment has been on the decline in Japan for the last two decades at least. The moment Allison did her fieldwork, which corresponded to the time politicians from the Democratic Party of Japan were in power, was only a parenthesis in an era dominated by the conservative Liberal-Democratic Party. Japanese conservatives of various stripes have themselves offered comments and remedies about the rise of precariousness and exclusion in contemporary Japan. These views fill the pages of right-wing magazines such as Shokun!, Seiron, Voice, or WiLL. Reflecting these views, which also find echoes among members of the precariat (remember the Ronza article praising war as a solution to poverty), would have provided ethnographic value: we don't need to be reminded about what people like us think. It would also have helped us understand the future: as mentioned, these people are winning the day in contemporary Japan.
Indeed, the range of sources Allison uses and the scope of her fieldwork appear limited. Although the book claims to be based on participant observation, one has to wait until page 124 to begin to see real ethnographic work. And fieldwork is mostly limited to on-site interviews with well-known social activists: Yuasa Makoto, one of the leading figures advocating rights for precarious workers, dispatch workers, the homeless, and working poor; Amamiya Karin, a former suicidal freeter and author in her mid-thirties who dresses in goth; Genda Yûji, the founder of "hope studies" (kibôgaku) at Tokyo University; Tsukino Kôji, a performer and founder of Kowaremono, a music band where each member self-identifies as having a handicap; etc. The Japanese books that are quoted—and there are quite a few in the bibliography—are only scanned in a superficial way, and there are no close readings of key texts that would have given a conceptual framework to the topic at hand. Indeed, it is significant that when Allison needs theoretical references, she turns to English sources and authors like Judith Butler, Lauren Berlant, Michel Foucault, etc. There is a division of labor by which Japanese sources provide first-hand observation and commentary, but the real concept work—the theory of the theory—is done by Western authors. Allison quotes in passing a few Japanese philosophers who have tried to address issues of social justice and identity politics in innovative ways: Azuma Hiroshi, Asada Akira, Kayano Toshihito, and others. She could have relied more on them to provide a locally-grounded, theoretically relevant and ethnographically innovative account of the rise of precariousness in Japan.
13 people found this helpful
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Kundry
5.0 out of 5 stars Well-written, thoroughly researched alternative view of JapanReviewed in the United States on April 5, 2015
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Fascinating information about Japanese society that most people in the West would not know! How are people coping with the damage from the tsunami and the subsequent radiation released by the damaged reactor? Is the formerly dependable, predictable organization of the family and the word of the salaryman holding together under new, unexpected pressures? You will find out if you read PRECARIOUS JAPAN.
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Sajed and Rosie Kamal
5.0 out of 5 stars Five StarsReviewed in the United States on May 2, 2015
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Thanks.
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A.G.
4.0 out of 5 stars Good readReviewed in the United States on December 15, 2014
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This was a good read on Japanese culture and society's current problems. Well written and captivating subject matter, definitely worth looking into.
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Precarious Japan Paperback – November 22, 2013
by Anne Allison (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars 18 ratings
Kindle
from AUD 35.33Read with Our Free App
Paperback
AUD 12.83
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.
256 pages
Language
English
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Precarious Japan is a forward-thinking commentary on the current state of Japan, detailing a progressive history from the economic collapse in 1991 to how the country functions today in a modern, post-earthquake society. . . . For those wondering just how precarious Japan’s future really is, this book is a good place to start.”-- Jordan Sievers ― Japan Times
“The only reason that I didn't burst into tears while reading this book is because of extreme self-control.”-- Eustacia Tan ― With Love from Japan blog
"Allison’s book is an impressive tour through important public discourses in Japan today, rooted in extensive discussion of contemporary popular literature and media."
-- Kathryn E. Goldfarb ― Somatosphere Published On: 2014-05-29
“[A]n important, thoughtful, and moving ethnography that deserves the attention of a wide audience.”-- Carla Nappi ― New Books in East Asian Studies
" . . . Allison's work reminds us of why ethnographic work is important. She skillfully weaves recent theories of the 'precarious' between personal accounts, interviews, statistics and textual analyses, making Precarious Japan as much an exemplar of the ethnographic methodology as an account of the vicissitudes of life in post-bubble, post-crisis and post-Fukushima Japan."-- Jamie Coates ― Social Anthropology
“Precarious Japan is a compelling collection of examples and theories that connect overwhelming or shocking social problems in contemporary Japan with the realm of labor. . . . Although many of the examples are emotionally difficult to read, I am sure they will be very hard to forget.”-- Allison Alexy ― Anthropological Quarterly
“Allison’s book announces a paradigm change. . . . The book is a valuable provocation. . . . Precarious Japan is a valuable incitement to imagine new narratives for Japan’s present and future—and to locate Japan’s experience in the context of global precarity. . . .”-- Amy Borovoy ― American Ethnologist
"Allison’s ethnography of contemporary Japan, framed in terms of instability, poverty, hope, mud and the desire for belonging, is a compelling and timely work."-- Laura Dales ― Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology
“Precarious Japan has implications far beyond Japan not only because similar problems exist in other market-dominated countries but also because she draws on the relevant theoretical literature to analyze Japan from a broader perspective. The breadth and depth of Allison’s scholarship—and her insight into Japanese culture—are impressive. … I highly recommend Precarious Japan for those interested in contemporary societies, especially Japan. It is also a good textbook for social sciences and humanities courses, inspiring students and generating fruitful discussions.”-- Yohko Tsuji ― American Anthropologist
“[A]n impressive ethnographic study of exclusion, precariousness and struggle that will leave no reader untouched. . . . Allison’s new book will surely be highly impressive for many readers and a good resource for discussions in courses on contemporary Japan.”-- David Chiavacci ― Pacific Affairs
Review
"Precarious Japan is a model of new modes of conceptualizing sociocultural theory. Here the theory is sober, mature, aspirational, hopeful, gracious. It pushes up against the limits of thinking categorically, of thinking that lived phenomena simply, magically, derive their force from the categorical—from identities, borders, inclusions and exclusions, ideals writ large. It will be important to scholars trying to get a better handle on what is going on in the historical present."-- Kathleen Stewart, author of ― Ordinary Affects
Read more
Product details
Publisher : Duke University Press Books (November 22, 2013)
Language : English
Paperback : 256 pages
Customer Reviews:
4.2 out of 5 stars 18 ratings
Anne Allison
Customer reviews
4.2 out of 5 stars
Top reviews from the United States
Bucky K
5.0 out of 5 stars One of my favorite books about modern JapanReviewed in the United States on July 30, 2016
Verified Purchase
One of my favorite books about modern Japan. I own Anne Allison's other titles as well. She's an academic but writes well for the lay reader. Straight up no-nonsense look at the real Japan. It is very rare to find this type of insight and substance in the English language.
To properly appreciate the Allison niche, consider: English-language writing about Japan falls into a few horrible camps: (a) insubstantial "Monocle magazine"-type coverage about bright and shiny Japan; (b) young-at-heart otaku gushing about the holy trinity of ninja, geisha, samurai; (c) postwar male travelers who write with misty-eyed nostalgia about the Japan they knew that no longer exists; (d) professors with specialist books that have a mausoleum feel. Oh, let me not forget (e), the American expatriate who just happens to be in Japan, who is NOT a writer, but because of his (usually it is a he) unique position of being there (usually through acquisition, however briefly, of a Japanese girlfriend or wife), thinks he can write books about Japan that are just poorly-written and unreadable.
So, to really see Japan properly, you have to turn to academics who know how to pitch their books to the lay reader, like Ms. Allison. Get her books if you travel to Japan often and want to understand it better. Beautiful paperback edition and cover design, too.
5 people found this helpful
HelpfulReport abuse
Etienne RP
3.0 out of 5 stars War, Grief, MudReviewed in the United States on June 6, 2015
Verified Purchase
If we include Japanese sources, there is such an extensive literature on Japan’s economy and society that the bilingual observer is often at a loss. She can make this literature accessible to non-Japanese readers—by translating, summarizing, contextualizing. Or she can collect her own primary data—especially in the field of ethnography, where the main insights are supposed to originate from fieldwork. Anne Allison's book does both, but in an unsatisfactory manner. Its topic—precarity and precariousness—doesn't lend itself easily to fieldwork. How do you observe a feeling, a mood, a sentiment, or a lack thereof? How do you assess the way—as Allison defines her topic— "relations with others—of care, belonging, recognition—are showing strain but also, in a few instances, getting reimagined and restitched in innovative new ways"? Having had limited time to conduct fieldwork, Allison had to rely on other people's observations: activists, commentators, social workers, or critics. But she fails to give proper credit to these domestic observers of precariousness—and in particular to build a theory informed by local categories and debates. Instead, she imports the latest fads in social critique and peppers them with Japanese terms to add local flavor, without engaging Japanese thought seriously.
How do you observe precariousness? The answer, for anyone living in Japan, is pretty straightforward: open a newspaper, and you will read many accounts of life at the edge. The "shakai" (society) section of newspapers is full of reports on precarious employment (dispatch, contract, day labor), on elderly people living and dying alone (kodokushi), on young people withdrawing from society (hikikomori), on poverty gnawing at the life of the most vulnerable: single mothers, school dropouts, foreign workers, social outcasts, laid-out salarymen, etc. "Life, tenuous and raw, disconnected from others and surviving or dying alone: such stories cycle through the news these days," remarks the author. Next to the serious reporting on social ills come the sensationalized news items making headlines: "mothers beheaded, strangers killed, children abandoned, adults starved." Japan is the country where social pathologies bear indigenous names: "otaku" live in a fantasy world of anime characters and online chatrooms; "hikikomori" retreat in the private space of their room, withdrawing from school or workplace and avoiding social contact; "netto kafe nanmin" are mainly flexible or irregular workers who, with unsteady paychecks and no job security, are unable to afford more permanent housing and dwell in PC cafes for a low fee.
Likewise, there is not a lack of social commentary, of people analyzing these trends to draw general lessons or recommendations for Japan's future. According to observers, "Japan is becoming an impoverished country, a society where hope has turned scarce and the future has become bleak or inconceivable altogether." Precarity not only affects labor conditions but life as well: it is "a state where one's human condition has become precarious as well." There is a rich vocabulary that describes the difficulties of life (ikizurasa) in contemporary Japan: the insecurity (fuan, fuantei), dissatisfaction (fuman), the lack of a place or space where one feels comfortable and "at home" (ibasho ga nai), the connections (tsunagari) and sense of belonging disappearing from society (muen shakai), the poverty of human relations (ningenkankei no hinkon), the withering of social links (kizuna), the incapacity to achieve an "ordinary lifestyle" (hitonami no seikatsu), the absence of hope (kibô ga nai), the despair (zetsubô). For the Japanese, these terms are highly evocative, and together they paint a bleak picture of a society that has lost its balance. For non-Japanese speakers, the Japanese words add a new repertoire of social conditions that may help put their own society into perspective.
Anne Allison uses several metaphors to describe the current state of Japan under precarity. The first is a bellicose one, a paradox in a country that has banned war in its constitution. Japan is a society at war with itself. More specifically, the country is at war with its own youths, sacrificing them as refugees. According to human rights activists, it is a war that the state is waging by endangering and not fulfilling its commitment to the people—that of ensuring a "healthy and culturally basic existence" that all citizens are entitled to under Article 25 of the Constitution. When the outside world is seen as a war zone, people take refuge at home or in an imaginary world. In 2007, the monthly magazine Ronza published an essay titled "Kibô wa sensô" (Hope is War), in which a young part-time worker described all the humiliations his generation had to endure and concluded by placing his hope in a nationalist war that would restore his sense of masculine dignity and pride. Nobody really advocates war and the return to militarism in Japan; but nationalism is clearly on the rise, and right-wing extremism has found in Internet forums and discussion channels a new venue to vent its regressive agenda. Social scientists describe this reaction as paranoid nationalism: "when, feeling excluded from nation or community, one attempts, sometimes violently, to exclude others as well." The most extreme form of this self-destructing drive is given in the random murder incidents by demented youths who kill passersby as a form of protest.
The second metaphor that runs through the text is the idea of grief and mourning. Here the author draws from Judith Butler, the famous feminist scholar who, drawing herself from Jacques Derrida, has written about the grievability of all life and lives. As Butler writes, "there can be no recognition of a person's life without an implicit understanding that the life is grievable, that it would be grieved if it were lost, and that this future anterior is installed as the condition of its life." Without grievability, there is no life or, rather, there is something living that is other than life. But not all lives are equally grievable: when people live and die alone, nobody is there to register their death (as in the case of the "missing centenarians", who were found to be deceased and unreported by their families who kept the pension payments for themselves.) What counts and who counts as having a grievable life is increasingly dependent on economic calculation and state action. It is the prerogative of the modern state to "make live and let die" (Foucault), and never is this new biopolitical landscape more apparent than in the neoliberal injunction to pursue self-reliance, self-independence, and self-responsibility (jikô sekinin) as a positive agenda.
The third metaphor that creeps in the last chapter is the invasion of mud. The author was knee-deep in it when she volunteered to clean ditches in Ishinomaki after the earthquake and tsunami that hit the Tôhoku region on March 11th, 2011. As Allison aptly describes it, "the tsunami rendered the entire northeast coastline a cesspool of waste: dead remains and dying life entwined—animals, humans, boats, cars, oil, hours, vegetation, and belongings." Cleaning up the mess was devoted to the Self-Defense Forces—whose members in uniform had never been so conspicuous in Japanese society—, assisted by the US Armed Forces engaged in Operation Tomodachi and other, smaller contingents dispatched by friendly nations. Then a slew of NGOs, volunteers, and private cleanup operations (many of them employing precariat workers) took on the job in a great upsurge of solidarity. Cleaning the mud from homes and ditches, sweeping it from photographs and personal belongings, is described by the author as an exhilarating experience, a kind of return to a primal scene where social barriers disappear and a new sense of community emerges. This regression to an infantile stage of scatological pleasure is also a move away from the political. The author recognizes it herself: "while tremendously moving, the work we do moves little in fact." But the important thing is "being there": "stress is placed on the immediacy of the action and on the ethics of care." Riding a bus to Ishinomaki, an NGO team leader wondered why people made street protests against the government's nuclear policy: "why not come here and shovel mud instead?"
But there is a politics in shoveling mud, grieving lives, and opposing social warfare. Anne Allison never discusses her adherence to a progressive agenda broadly aligned with the Japanese left. The media she relies on (the Asahi newspaper, mostly), the intellectuals she quotes, the social activists she associates with, and the activities she participates in, are all identified with a segment of Japanese politics. Like it or not, this segment has been on the decline in Japan for the last two decades at least. The moment Allison did her fieldwork, which corresponded to the time politicians from the Democratic Party of Japan were in power, was only a parenthesis in an era dominated by the conservative Liberal-Democratic Party. Japanese conservatives of various stripes have themselves offered comments and remedies about the rise of precariousness and exclusion in contemporary Japan. These views fill the pages of right-wing magazines such as Shokun!, Seiron, Voice, or WiLL. Reflecting these views, which also find echoes among members of the precariat (remember the Ronza article praising war as a solution to poverty), would have provided ethnographic value: we don't need to be reminded about what people like us think. It would also have helped us understand the future: as mentioned, these people are winning the day in contemporary Japan.
Indeed, the range of sources Allison uses and the scope of her fieldwork appear limited. Although the book claims to be based on participant observation, one has to wait until page 124 to begin to see real ethnographic work. And fieldwork is mostly limited to on-site interviews with well-known social activists: Yuasa Makoto, one of the leading figures advocating rights for precarious workers, dispatch workers, the homeless, and working poor; Amamiya Karin, a former suicidal freeter and author in her mid-thirties who dresses in goth; Genda Yûji, the founder of "hope studies" (kibôgaku) at Tokyo University; Tsukino Kôji, a performer and founder of Kowaremono, a music band where each member self-identifies as having a handicap; etc. The Japanese books that are quoted—and there are quite a few in the bibliography—are only scanned in a superficial way, and there are no close readings of key texts that would have given a conceptual framework to the topic at hand. Indeed, it is significant that when Allison needs theoretical references, she turns to English sources and authors like Judith Butler, Lauren Berlant, Michel Foucault, etc. There is a division of labor by which Japanese sources provide first-hand observation and commentary, but the real concept work—the theory of the theory—is done by Western authors. Allison quotes in passing a few Japanese philosophers who have tried to address issues of social justice and identity politics in innovative ways: Azuma Hiroshi, Asada Akira, Kayano Toshihito, and others. She could have relied more on them to provide a locally-grounded, theoretically relevant and ethnographically innovative account of the rise of precariousness in Japan.
13 people found this helpful
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Kundry
5.0 out of 5 stars Well-written, thoroughly researched alternative view of JapanReviewed in the United States on April 5, 2015
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Fascinating information about Japanese society that most people in the West would not know! How are people coping with the damage from the tsunami and the subsequent radiation released by the damaged reactor? Is the formerly dependable, predictable organization of the family and the word of the salaryman holding together under new, unexpected pressures? You will find out if you read PRECARIOUS JAPAN.
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Sajed and Rosie Kamal
5.0 out of 5 stars Five StarsReviewed in the United States on May 2, 2015
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A.G.
4.0 out of 5 stars Good readReviewed in the United States on December 15, 2014
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This was a good read on Japanese culture and society's current problems. Well written and captivating subject matter, definitely worth looking into.
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Books May 29, 2014
Anne Allison’s Precarious Japan
By Kathryn Goldfarb
Precarious Japan
by Anne Allison
Duke University Press, 2013. 246 pages
The March 11, 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and subsequent nuclear disaster in Northern Japan illuminated and deepened a sense of vulnerability for people across the nation that, as Anne Allison argues in Precarious Japan, significantly predated this “triple disaster.” Author of three other major books on the cultural anthropology of Japan, Allison’s work draws connections between political economy, affective experience, and gendered, sexualized, and irregular labor, all topics that are highlighted in this present monograph. In Precarious Japan, Allison argues that the vulnerability of twenty-first century Japan, made suddenly stark in the wake of 3/11, disproportionately affected people who were already members of “the precariat”: people who experience themselves as “being out of place, out of sorts, disconnected,” those who have “a life that no one grieves upon death,” who live “a precariousness that no one cares to share” (14-15). Allison’s examinations of precarity struck a particular chord for me, as an ethnographer of Japan who focuses on the well-being of people who grew up in Japan’s extensive network of child welfare institutions (children’s homes): quintessential members of “the precariat,” disconnected from legible social ties of family and community and thus in many ways socially and politically invisible.
Being an ethnographer, however, sometimes affords the opportunity to share—at a distance—some of this precarity, to bear witness to and also grieve it. I had returned from fieldwork to the United States three months before the 3/11 disasters, after which I exchanged text messages with one of my interlocutors, a young man I will call Naoki. Raised in a large rural children’s home, Naoki had traveled to Tokyo upon graduation from high school. He had spent the past decade and a half moving from job to job; after being injured at work, he scraped by on welfare payments. I had met him at a Tokyo support group for youth who had aged out of Japanese children’s homes, during what I learned was a rare social period for him. After a few months, he fell out with the group members and returned to his customary isolation. He stayed in his apartment all day, generally meeting no one, leaving only occasionally to buy inexpensive food at convenience stores and to purchase cans of Coke, which seemed to be the chief pleasure in his daily life. After 3/11, there was a run on prepared food and beverages. Naoki’s isolation, increasing depression, and mounting desperation were evident in the sometimes-fevered text messages he sent me in those days of aftershocks, days where food was in short supply and there was no Coke. He had considered, he wrote, traveling to Fukushima: throwing his life away in the clean-up effort might have some social meaning. He decided against this course, he explained, because his old injury would make physical labor difficult. As Allison writes, the 3/11 disasters threw into relief “aspects of life that were precarious already; the fact, for example, that so many of the workers in the Fukushima nuclear plants were, both before and after 3/11, part of the precariat (close to 88 percent)—disposable workers for whom the safety of other Japanese . . . are now so intimately intertwined” (8).
Allison’s book tracks some of the experiential, affective dimensions of precarity in contemporary Japan, bracketed by accounts of the collective trauma—and the muted hope for future change—engendered by 3/11. In a society where social welfare has long been understood as the responsibility of the family, the corporation, and local neighborhood networks, contemporary discourses of “crisis” in Japan generally center on these very social organizations. These discourses are an anxious litany of putative collapse: declining birthrates; increasing divorce; high suicide rates; the increase of “flexible” part-time labor; youth not in education, employment, or training (NEETs); increasingly visible homelessness; and the “social problem” of hikikomori, young people who isolate themselves within their homes, often cared for by their mothers. Discussing a truly impressive number of contemporary media, Allison focuses particularly on the public discourses of disconnection (muen) and lack of belonging (ibasho ga nai) that have characterized popular analyses of two major demographics. These demographics are elderly people who die unnoticed and alone, and young people who lack the assurance of their parents’ generation of successful schooling leading to lifetime employment and (presumably) steady family lives.
Allison situates this state of affairs within a critical historical framework, illustrating the ways that the “stability” of post-World War II Japan’s social contract has collapsed under its own contradictions. Japan’s postwar economic success depended on the family-corporate system of the late 1950s, with its middle-class gendered division of labor. The salaryman labored long hours outside the home, and the housewife as “education mama” raised children inside the home—each supporting the corporate welfare system in which the workplace was intended to care for workers for a lifetime. The ideal of the heteronormative nuclear family, which Allison describes as “aspirational normativity,” borrowing Berlant’s (2011) term, became “what people came to desire and what they received in return for working hard, for sticking to a normative life course” (22). Now, after decades of declining economic power and increasing neoliberalization of social policies, the contemporary sense of “pain in life (ikizurasa)” that Allison examines can be understood as symptomatic “of a capitalism that had attached so much to, and was now festering around, a complex of belonging to work, family, and state” (17). If the image of Japanese society as uniformly and rigorously middle-class produced such durable aspirational models, and this model was so tied to the family-corporate system where jobs became (men’s) identities—no wonder, then, that contemporary declining employment, along with “failures” in reproduction evidenced by the declining birthrate, have caused a pervasive sense of crisis. “Japan remains a ‘work-like society’ (shigoto teki na shakai),” Allison writes, “where work, and the kind of work one performs, remains the currency of value: how people get calibrated as having social worth, which, in turn, converts into the means and reserves to live a safe life” (155). In Allison’s account, capitalism first drove a corporate-family model doomed to collapse (too much interdependency), resulting in a neoliberal backlash (too little interdependency). For Allison, capitalism, along with retrenched welfare policies, is inherently ill-suited to care for and to create a caring populous, even as the work ethic it requires continues to define social recognition and worth.
An important part of Allison’s argument is that contemporary precarity exists precisely because of that collective memory of Japan’s postwar ebullience. “For many,” Allison writes, “the present seems fraught, particularly when the reference point is a past remembered, or reinvented, as idyllically stable: a time when jobs and marriage were secure and a future—of more of the same—could be counted on. But belonging, even then, came at a price: an extraction of a particular kind of—constant, competitive, intense—labor. A sacrifice, some say, of everything else, even (or particularly) the soul . . . .” (118). Allison explains Japan’s contemporary malaise—the pervasive sense of precariousness that people cite in conversation, popular press, and the media—as a result of the persistent memory or imagination of postwar economic success and stability, even as this success of capital resulted in the economic and social collapses Japan struggles with today. What is less evident is the degree to which this collective memory is itself specific to members of the middle and upper-middle classes. Does contemporary Japan seem quite so fraught for members of the working classes? Does “aspirational normalcy” appear the same everywhere in Japan, and with the same effects?
While Allison exhaustively documents public discourses of shock and crisis, there is less discussion of the stakes of this shock itself. Representations of poverty as “new” in Japan participate in eliding those who were never part of the “miracle” of post-war Japanese growth, a distinction that also often maps onto urban-rural divides. Similar elisions have been analyzed in the context of family “break-down,” like Roger Goodman’s (2002) discussion of the “discovery” of child abuse in Japan during the 1980s. Child abuse had always existed; it was merely the social recognition of child abuse that was new. And yet the representations of these “crises” as new to Japan do important political work, drawing distinctions between Japan—as (supposedly) lacking these endemic social problems—and other countries, which (supposedly) have always suffered from them. Reframing poverty as “ordinary” is itself a loaded claim, a fact not lost on the social activists who are Allison’s interlocutors. I wondered whether the politics of these activists’ own projects—highlighting the ordinariness of precarity in Japan—could be interrogated further, exploring the social stakes of the discourses of “collapse” that Allison so thoroughly documents.
Allison’s book raises important questions regarding the precise relationship between these public discourses and experience. Critical scholarship on Japan has interrogated the ways that Japanese discourses of self (nihonjinron) emerge, are taken up, and feed back into commonsense notions of what it means to be Japanese (Harootunian 1989, Ivy 1995, Sakai 1997). Discourses of Japaneseness have long been co-constructed in dialogue with foreign and native scholars (for example, Benedict 1946, Vogel 1979, Nakane 1967, Yanagita 1988), and have informed narratives of Japanese history and politics, shaping everything from Japan’s immigration policies to its social welfare structures. Many of the examples Allison cites might be productively considered as types of discourses of Japaneseness, and analyzed as such. For instance, Allison begins her third chapter discussing the discovery of crises at the heart of Japanese families rooted in poverty. This comes as a shock to a reporter that Allison cites, a shock mirrored in widespread public discourses, because Japan is “supposed” to be middle-class. In Allison’s account, many in Japan experience the “ordinariness” of poverty and day labor, associated “with temporal and spatial otherness” (46), as a disjuncture. But poverty shocks precisely because it has been so under recognized as a social problem in Japan.
I take seriously Allison’s project to illustrate how affective experience is itself a result of the ways discourses of self and “reality” are in many ways co-constituting. Stories of Japanese self, like the celebration of postwar middle class society, have become powerful realities for contemporary Japanese people, to the degree that many people experience the lack of middle class security as a loss, a loss that results in a real decline in well-being. Allison vividly illustrates the ways this tension—between a perceived possible way of living and the brutal reality of those who cannot obtain this aspirational normalcy—can result in existential crises (for instance, her discussion of the 2007 stabbings in the Akihabara neighborhood of Tokyo (64)). In this context, I was struck anew by what I see as the lasting damage of the highly normative discourses of Japaneseness, as they continue to shape peoples’ desires and their perceptions of loss. By that token, Allison’s data support both the difficulty and the importance of attempting to parse the relationship of stories of Japanese self from the lived experiences of hardship.
While the first half of Allison’s book focuses most on discourses of crisis and loss in contemporary Japan, the second half introduces the reader to non-governmental projects of community care provisioning, building a sense of burgeoning energy and hope for the future, in which members of the precariat are increasingly made visible, recognizable, and grievable upon death. In my own research, too, it was clear that people in Japan place hope in non-governmental, community networks of volunteers and activists to care for those in need, and Allison does a beautiful job elaborating the stirring of these grassroots movements. In fact, as I read Allison’s monograph, I wished that the text had been weighted toward a thicker focus on these movements and away from the rather dire descriptions of public panic. Those of us who have spent time in Japan are familiar with the discourses Allison catalogues, but perhaps less so with the quiet counterculture projects Allison introduces. If there is the sense in Japan that precarity is new or not “native”—in contradistinction to the ways inequality and social exclusion can be often taken-for-granted in other parts of the world—there is also a commitment on the part of local groups in Japan to provide services for needs that would not otherwise be met. Although these engagements are rarely politicized, they do point hopefully to a “revaluing of life as wealth of a different kind, based on the humanness of a shared precariousness and shared efforts to do something about it” (179).
All together, Allison’s book is an impressive tour through important public discourses in Japan today, rooted in extensive discussion of contemporary popular literature and media.
Kathryn E. Goldfarb is an Assistant Professor of Social-Cultural Anthropology at McMaster University. She examines the impacts of social exclusion on well-being, particularly through research with people involved in child welfare institutions and foster care in Japan and North America. Her interests include embodiment, kinship, mental health and trauma, and neuroscience and child development.
Works cited
Benedict, Ruth. 1946. The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.
Berlant, Lauren. 2011. Cruel Optimism. Durham: Duke University Press.
Goodman, Roger. 2002. Child Abuse in Japan: ‘Discovery’ and the Development of Policy. In Family and Social Policy in Japan. Roger Goodman, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 131-155.
Harootunian, Harry. 1989. Visible Discourses/Invisible Ideologies. In Postmodernism and Japan, Masao Miyoshi and H.D. Harootunian, eds. Durham: Duke University Press. 63-92.
Ivy, Marilyn. 1995. Discourses of the Vanishing: Modernity, Phantasm, Japan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Nakane, Chie. 1967. Kinship and Economic Organization in Rural Japan. New York: Humanities Press.
Sakai, Naoki. 1997. Translation and Subjectivity: On “Japan” and Cultural Nationalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Vogel, Ezra. 1979. Japan as Number One: Lessons for America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Yanagita, Kunio. 1988. About Our Ancestors: The Japanese Family System. New York: Greenwood Press.
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Precarious Japan
Precarious Japan
by Anne Allison
3.73 · Rating details · 154 ratings · 19 reviews
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. (less)
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Paperback, 256 pages
Published November 22nd 2013 by Duke University Press Books (first published January 1st 2013)
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BlackOxford
May 24, 2018BlackOxford rated it really liked it
Shelves: japanese, economics, sociology
The Pressures of Precarity In a Land Of Lost Hope
Before reading this book I had never encountered the word ‘precarity’. Precarious, yes; precariousness, of course; but precarity hit me not only as a linguistic novelty but an entirely new social condition, a ‘thing’ as popular culture has it, that I have known about sub-consciously but never bothered to articulate. Once identified this condition is obvious and disturbing. I take it from Allison’s text that the term is commonplace among sociologists and therefore will creep, or seep, into popular and political consciousness. So it seems to me likely precarity could well become a central political issue common to all democracies.
According to Allison, “Japan is becoming a place where hope has become a privilege of the socioeconomically secure. For the rest of them— the widening pool of “losers”—even the wherewithal to imagine a different there and then beyond the precarious here and now stretches thin.” This is the existential condition of the “precariat” who have replaced the 19th century proletariat. This precarious proletariat has lost even the hope of improvement in their condition: “This social and human garbage pit is precarity. And, as the sensory nature of precarious living, it is pain and unease. Life that doesn’t measure up: a future, and everydayness, as secure as a black box.”
The fact that precarity is an issue in Japan reflects something important about Japanese culture for consideration by the rest of the world. The intensity and rapidity with which the phenomenon of precarity has swept through the country make it a sort of canary in the mineshaft of 21st century global capitalism. The effects of precarity are also more visible in Japan because the country’s post-war economic policies, corporate structure, and social cohesion had more or less eliminated it before the 1990’s and the bursting of the country’s property bubble. Japan started the process of increasing precarity from an apparently solid and stable familial and civil society. The lesser social cohesion in countries like the USA therefore seem even more vulnerable to its effects.
Precarity brings together a number of social and economic conditions: the increasingly disproportionate distribution of income and wealth around the world, the growth in under employment among the educated and unemployment among those with minimal education, the sharp rise in zero-hours contracts for relatively unskilled work in the internet economy, the increasing pressure on national welfare provision brought about by an aging population and international tax competition, and the dominance of self-employment in some high-tech sectors (the “cognitariat” as a sort of intelligentsia among the precarious proletariat). These issues are a far more concrete focus for the vaguely defined populism so obvious in Europe and North America. And they affect not just the certifiably impoverished but also those of what used to be called the middle class - enough of the population in most countries to form a substantial electoral coalition.
I look forward to what the currently shapeless rhetoric of the British Labour Party and the American Democrats might become if either group can find the courage, as well as the language, to form a coalition of the precarious. Allison quotes the sociologist Lee Edelman on what he calls the demise of “reproductive futurism... the notion that hard work today yields a better tomorrow: the modernist in progress staked on the child as the obligatory token of futurity.” This is the global version of the American Dream, which if it can’t be recovered, doesn’t augur well for the future of democracy, perhaps even of responsible government. (less)
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Trevor (I sometimes get notified of comments)
Aug 15, 2013Trevor (I sometimes get notified of comments) rated it it was amazing
Shelves: social-theory
Now this is a remarkably interesting book. I’ve become increasingly interested in precariousness – especially since reading Bauman on the ‘precariat’, a cross between proletariat and precarious. That is, those who live lives that are almost completely devoid of security, that is, increasingly large numbers of us today. And that is what this book is about in spades.
We in the west have a particularly interesting view of ‘the East’ and of the Japanese in particular. We think of them as insects in many ways, as either ants or bees. Although, perhaps bees mostly – with that kamikaze notion of bees killing themselves to protect the hive. But westerners are prone to talking about Japan as if, unlike our stressing of the individual which we assume ought to be the universal human trait, that the proof that those from Asia are somewhat less than human is their dedication to a kind of collective existence. This book makes that view of Japan very hard to sustain. In fact, overwhelmingly, the reader is left thinking that what Japan needs now, more than just about anything else, is a sense of its collective self.
Late modern capitalism is socially fragmentary. I mean, almost everything about late capitalism increases the atomisation of people so that they need to become self-reliant. Even families become something composed of individuals, rather than of something deeper and more collective. In a society such as late modern capitalism, where success is completely decided by how you fit within various status structures with their performative measures – the right education, the right job, the right clothes and car and address – not fitting within those structures places an incredible stress on people as 'failures'. And this stress manifests in some remarkable ways in all of our societies. One of the most interesting manifestations in Japanese culture is that of the ‘hikkomori’ – young people who literally lock themselves away in their rooms, often for years, and are often treated by their families as if they had disappeared. Clearly, such children are the source of a lot of shame, but such withdrawals are not uncommon in the west either – even if we don’t have a name for such people (although ‘agoraphobia’ I guess is something of a misnomer that might be used). The need to perform, to match increasingly unrealistic expectations, the shame of failing to meet those expectations, of living in a culture that blames the individual for not meeting expectations or be able to make the right displays of achievement, all of this feeds our high-anxiety cultures.
All of this was made worse in Japan after the bubble burst on the Japanese economy in the 1990s and Japan went through employment insecurity in ways we are only now starting to catch up with. This is a particularly harsh fact, as the other myth we have in the west about Japan is that their businesses demand and provide loyalty in ways we in the west can hardly understand. But this ‘job for life’ expectation has stopped being realised. Not only that, but educational success today often doesn’t lead to employment success (something else that the west is learning to deal with too - in reality even if our myths are still in denial). This breaking of the social contract is causing massive social dislocation in Japan. Not only has the promise been broken, but those able to ‘live the myth’ of the company man often find that it is not a life that matches the myth either. Long hours, limited actual financial or other rewards, alienation from family and friends - all end up the price of such ‘success’.
It would be all too easy to read this book as one of ‘those’ books on Japan that presents the country as the incomprehensible other. But we too live in this increasingly precarious world. The young people in Japan struggle to ever ‘grow up’. Why? Well, as Johanna Wyn says in Rethinking Youth, youth is a period of transition. But transition means moving from one defined stage or state to an equally defined end point (adulthood). In Japan (and in Australia too) that end point has mostly been defined as a full-time, secure job and a marriage with children. Yes, it is all very heteronormative, but be that as it may. There was a pathway – but today that pathway is blocked. Very few young people can move along that path. But the end point still defines what it means to be an adult – and since so few can make that particular journey, they have stopped being defined as ‘adults’. There is a fascinating part of this where young people are defined as parasites living off their parents and never really growing up. Victim blaming in Japan is clearly as prevalent as it is in the west.
This book was written after the tsunami and nuclear accidents and as such looks at how these have helped to both make Japan feel more precarious, but also less precarious in a sense too, as people have started to re-appraise what it means to live in a society. This book starts by talking about those who die alone and are only found months later. The question of death pervades this book, but death in very many different forms. I was particularly taken by the distancing and isolation of people in what I had always taken to be a highly socially integrated society. This really is an interesting book, but it is also damn depressing one – don’t read this if you are feeling in the least bit down.
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Yuuki Nakashima
Sep 24, 2013Yuuki Nakashima rated it really liked it
Shelves: culture, nonfiction, won-a-giveaway
The author researched on Japanese current conditions and issues in great detail and this book shows real situations (the minus side) of Japan, so it was kinda depressing book for me. However, I think Japanese people should read it (if it was written in Japanese.) Japanese people tend to conceal avert our eyes from some bad things, especially the issues that are mentioned in this book, so I guess it's tough to know the real situation of our own country here. I want Japanese people to read it and consider what we should do or how we can resolve the issues, but honestly, I'm afraid that foreign readers thinking THIS is Japan. I mean the bad situation in this book is true, but there are many good conditions, new social systems and also people who are trying to solve the issues in Japan, too. I hope the readers in other countries know the both sides of Japan.
One thing that I want to correct about this book is some Japanese words in italics. I found many small mistakes and some big mistakes. I read this book as a first reader before it is published, so I do hope the big mistakes at least were/will be corrected before it is published.
Anyway, I liked this book. The author's legwork is impressive. (less)
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Trevor Pearson
Aug 22, 2013Trevor Pearson rated it really liked it
Shelves: giveaways, blogged
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James
Mar 10, 2016James rated it it was ok
Shelves: non-fiction, japan
If you're in academia you can skip this review, it's aimed at the general reader.
First off there are some great stories and anecdotes about what's happened to workers, the elderly and the young after the crash of the boom economy. It's an ugly picture with a mostly austerity government throwing the 'useless' people out of the lifeboat. Since the US's welfare and medical system is close to Japan's, i.e. not much and premium based, it serves as a warning since there are more seniors in Japan than in the US. The author lived, visited and interviewed in Japan, so it's not some second-hand information like some of the 80's books on Japan. If written for a broader audience I would rate the book based on just this content as a 3 (liked it).
Why did I give it a 2, and thought about a 1? Firstly it's written in an academic version of purple prose that's close to unreadable in spots, a mercifully short example, Is a temporality of the forever-present precarious?. Ughh, say it aloud and try not to feel pompous or embarrassed. If the target audience expects this, I feel sorry for the author. The excessive use of buzzwords and bafflegab is annoying. Buzzwords I can understand, all professions have their own, but words like grievability seem to be the latest in words for a fairly small group. And there's also the adverbial form of existential, does that have any real meaning? That's just a few examples. The citation style combined with overuse of parenthesis makes reading even more of a chore, it reads more like software at times. Since the author also edits journals, they might be part of the problem.
One other problem is the missing charts, this book has no numeric tables, graphs or charts, instead figures are thrown at you in a catch as catch can fashion in the text. I think this is inexcusable for a book on socioeconomic trends and dropped a point off just for that. Has temp employment, if you count job shops as temp work, really increased that much in Japan? I can't tell based on this book, the author cites numbers but doesn't crunch them.
This book is aimed at a specific circle of cultural anthropologists and unless you're a bit of a Japan nerd, probably not good read.
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Eustacia Tan
Oct 31, 2013Eustacia Tan rated it it was amazing
The only reason that I didn't burst into tears while reading this book is because of extreme self-control. And considering this is a non-fiction book, that is definitely a huge statement that I'm making about this book. If you need me to write it down, here it is: this book is that moving that it will make you want to cry. Repeatedly. It will rip your heart out and make you feel guilt for taking money from the Japanese government.
For such a gut-wrenching book, the subject matter is curiously simple. Japan is balanced on the edge - i.e. it's in a precarious position. The book aims to explore the ways that Japanese people experience instability in their lives, and how it's affecting Japanese society.
To be honest, this book was a real eye-opener. All, if not most, of my friends are 'normal'. Normal in the sense that their families are stable and that they have hopes and dreams that are quite conventional. But after reading this book, I can't help thinking that this version of typical may not be so typical after all.
I mean, if we think about it, we're so privileged to be given money to study and live here. When you read of people who can't even get married because they don't have enough money, I don't know, my heart broke. And if you love your family, well, reading about Japan's aging society and how some elderly have resorted to renting a family just to fill their emotional needs, I wanted to run out and start helping. It reminds me of the poor in one-room flats in Singapore. I used to volunteer at an organisation that helps them, and every time I saw their flats, I'd want to cry.
The only thing that annoyed me was the overuse of romaji (but I also do that on this blog, so I guess I'm guilty of the same thing). Plus, I think some of them were written wrongly. But the main problem was that it interrupted the flow and I started trying to mentally soundout the words in my mind.
Read this book. I mean it. Read it, and realise how lucky you are. Then next time, when a volunteer opportunity (or really just an opportunity to help someone) comes up, grab it. Or even if it doesn't come up, remember to call your family and tell them how much you love them.
Disclaimer: I got a free copy of this book from the publishers via NetGalley in exchange for a free and honest review.
This review first appeared at With love from Japan, Eustacia (less)
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University of Chicago Magazine
Nov 01, 2013University of Chicago Magazine added it
Shelves: ssd
Anne Allison, AM'80, PhD'86
Author
From our pages (Mar–Apr/14): "Until the collapse of Japan's economic bubble in 1991, most Japanese men were able to secure lifelong employment and a middle-class lifestyle. Today fewer and fewer people are able to find full-time work and buy the homes that afford a comfortable family lifestyle. As the country's birth rate has declined, so has morale, but Anne Allison chronicles how some modern Japanese are finding fulfillment in unconventional work and reconceived notions of home, family, and togetherness." (less)
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Adrienne
Aug 22, 2015Adrienne rated it really liked it
Shelves: academic
I see where people may criticize Allison's over-reliance on very specific and sporadic case studies, but I still think that this is a worthwhile read and full of useful information. (less)
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Katie/Doing Dewey
Nov 25, 2013Katie/Doing Dewey rated it liked it
Currently in Japan regular employment is becoming scarcer, the population is aging, and recovery from the nuclear disaster of 3/11 is still underway. All of these factors have made life more uncertain in Japan. Many people feel a lack of belonging and connection to other people. The author, Anne Allison, addresses these issues both through social theories about Japan and her extensive interviews with Japanese citizens.
This is one of those books that is a three star book because there were four star bits and two star bits. I loved when the author shared interviews with individuals, her personal experiences, and news stories. I also enjoyed learning about the history of Japan and how it impacts the way people feel now. The theories the author had about current events were fascinating, as were her tentative suggestions for ways the Japanese might recover a feeling of security. Despite being full of facts and clearly well researched, parts of this book were very profound and emotionally moving.
The only bad bits were places where the language got too dense for me to follow. There were some bits where I would google word definitions (because not all of them were in my kindle dictionary) and re-read a sentence several times without ever feeling like I really understood what they were saying. Sometimes I felt like it was some academic just trying to sound smart without saying much, but I think it’s more likely that these words have different meanings within the field of sociology. This happened the most when the author was integrating ideas from other scholars. It was almost as though there was a dissertation mixed in with my narrative non-fiction.
Overall, this was a good book and I think there were far more interesting, understandable bits than bits that were hard to follow. If, like me, you’d like to know more about different cultures and current events, I’d recommend giving this a try. The published version might even add some clarification at which point I would highly recommend it.
This review first published on Doing Dewey. (less)
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Charles
Jun 18, 2021Charles rated it did not like it
This book was a hard slog.
Having spent over 30 years in Japan and involved in the day-laborer movement and poverty-related NPOs I found her take on Japan to be not the one I have experienced. Moreover, I found it extremely problematic she took whatever Yuasa said at face value without actually providing data. For example, the claim more young people are entering the Self-Defense Forces is not supported by any data. Moreover, the Self-Defense Forces are not the same as the US military.
The author misses the irony of Yuasa asking someone seeking assistance at Moyai if they have family that can support them. This is the precise question welfare officials ask and one that those in need dread the most. Of course if they had family they would not be seeking Moyai for help.
I would have liked to seen the author go more in depth with the anti-poverty movement and hear why they specifically did not address food security as a pillar. Or, why the Hibiya Park encampment was more about performance than anything else.
The author's description of Tohoku is believable, but highly inaccurate. I say this as one who arrived Match 13th as an interpreter for CNN. Yes, cities were washed away. Yes it was very traumatic. Yet, if you go inland 1-2km, there was almost no damage. In fact, you would hardly know anything happened. My point is that the coastline is not all of Tohoku.
The book is more musings of the author's various trips to Japan. And just like anyone who parachutes in they are not going to get a full picture. Moreover, they are unlikely to go about doing the dirty work of looking for data to back up what people tell them. (less)
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Rachael
Sep 23, 2013Rachael rated it really liked it
Shelves: first-reads
Really good book. It is overall eye opening as to what is going on outside of the personal bubble of an everyday person. I highly recommend this book for everyone, especially for those who love culture and reading about how other societies function.
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Claudette
Dec 19, 2015Claudette rated it really liked it
Shelves: non-fiction, japan
(Audiobook) If you study Japanology, it is a very interesting book on present day Japanese culture and how the social welfare system is letting society down. How society is currently changing and the insecurities Japanese people face.
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Danielle
Jan 01, 2018Danielle rated it liked it
Shelves: asia
The argument that Japanese society is currently experiencing acute vulnerability and the examples provided were a good framework for looking at the country and its people, but I had a hard time committing to reading this book, and that's why it took me over a year to actually finish it. (less)
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Liujayn Al-matarneh
Jul 08, 2014Liujayn Al-matarneh rated it really liked it
I take a long time to finish it but I don't regret it its open a window for me to the Japanese cultures (less)
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Bill
Oct 31, 2013Bill rated it liked it
Extremely interesting subject matter but the book was too academic and too long. Would have been better as a serialized magazine piece.
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ukuklele
Aug 11, 2021ukuklele rated it liked it · review of another edition
Gara-gara menonton video YouTube tentang pengangguran di Eropa yang menyebut-nyebut kata "precarious" ("Poverty in Europe | 'Poor Europe'" di wocomoDOCS), saya jadi teringat kepada buku ini dan langsung saja membacanya.
Dalam buku ini terdapat banyak cuplikan kisah nyata mengenai berbagai fenomena suram yang terjadi di Jepang belakangan, mulai dari net cafe refugee, kodokushi, hikikomori, sampai tragedi nuklir Fukushima 3/11. Memang saya penggemar yang suram-suram tentang Jepang.
Cuplikan tersebut diselingi analisis penulis. Katanya masyarakat Jepang terlalu menjunjung self responsibility. Sampai-sampai, kalau mengetahui ada orang susah, mereka berpikir adalah tanggung jawab pribadi untuk membantu diri sendiri sehingga mereka pun tidak merasa tergerak untuk membantunya. Karena itulah, banyak orang mati kelaparan di rumahnya sendiri dan baru ditemukan berhari-hari, berminggu-minggu, sampai berbulan-bulan kemudian saat tetangganya sudah terganggu oleh bau yang tak enak. Di antara orang yang mati sendirian itu padahal masih memiliki sanak saudara yang tinggal terpisah, entahkah anak atau saudara kandung. Namun ikatan keluarga telah renggang, di antaranya karena orang tua lebih mementingkan prestasi daripada membangun hubungan yang berkualitas dengan anaknya. Belum lagi kasus anak membunuh orang tua atau sebaliknya. Jepang telah kehilangan rasa kemanusiaan.
Tentu tak melulu yang suram yang dipaparkan. Penulis mengimbanginya dengan menampilkan contoh berbagai inisiatif yang dilakukan warga Jepang sendiri untuk membantu sesamanya, misal dengan mengadakan acara atau ruang pertemuan bagi orang-orang yang kesepian, mendirikan badan yang membantu tunawisma mengajukan permohonan tunjangan sosial, hingga menarik sukarelawan untuk membereskan sisa-sisa bencana nuklir. Ini menunjukkan bahwa betapapun precarious-nya keadaan, masih ada harapan.
Selain itu, menurut reviewer ini, isi buku ini memang nyata dan orang Jepang sendiri patut membacanya tetapi jangan berpikir untuk menggeneralisasikannya tentu saja.
Narasi buku ini nikmat dibaca seperti fiksi walau kadang-kadang melelahkan. Saya membacanya tanpa timer dan mencatat seperti biasanya. Maka begitu saja yang saya ingat dan dapat tuliskan untuk review ini, hehehe. (less)
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Vasilina Orlova
Nov 20, 2019Vasilina Orlova added it
Solid work.
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solo
Sep 23, 2021solo rated it it was ok
Shelves: non-fic, world
quite excruciating, really... from Allison's background i can kind of extrapolate why things ended up being that way, but still... ...more
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Samar
Nov 12, 2017Samar rated it really liked it
Shelves: anthropology
A mind-blowing book that will change your perspective on "Japan's claimed paradise". The book was recommended for us in an anthropology class about work and precarity. I find it useful, eye-opening and sad. (less)
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Book Review: Precarious Japan by Anne Allison
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Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
In an era of irregular labour, 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. Moving 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. Sneha Krishnan finds that this is an excellent primer not only on contemporary politics and society in Japan but also in the study of socio-economic instability around the world.
Precarious Japan. Anne Allison. Duke University Press. 2013.
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The acknowledgements section of Anne Allison’s book Precarious Japan begins with the words: ‘This book – on pain and precariousness, struggle and hope’, and this is perhaps the best summary of the book’s complex and affectively examined themes. Allison’s book examines the empirical context of ongoing socio-political struggles in Japan since the move in the early 2000s from an economy centred on job security and stability to a focus on individualism and competition. Allison uses the theoretical lens of precarity to explore the sense of ever-present danger and of being on edge that can be observed not only in daily news reports and the mood of public culture in Japan, but also in people’s own accounts of their lives.
The book begins on a sensational note with a study of the reportage of a shocking event: the death by starvation of a fifty-two year old man, and almost worse, the discovery of his “mummifying” body a month later. From this Allison goes on to an account of hikikomori – those who have socially withdrawn, estimated to number a million people in Japan – and to the vast increase in the number of seemingly unexplained violent attacks in conspicuously public places in Japanese cities, usually by homeless men, living without families, and leading a “precarious existence” (p.3). Following in the line of scholars like Butler rather than seeking to explain these events through any accounts of individual agency that would then require a binary condemnation or condoning of them, in the six ethnographic chapters that follow Allison instead studies what these events have in common: “the collapse of mundane everydayness – of lives at once obsessed with and then left unfulfilled by food, human connection, home” (p.2).
As Allison notes, precarity is a ‘word of the times’ (p.6). It has come into social science usage most noticeably with the publication of Guy Standing’s 2011 book, The Precariat. A portmanteau of precarious and proletariat, Standing examines contemporary youth struggling with an increasingly volatile economic situation, and argues that a new, vulnerable class of those poised on the brink of falling into poverty has emerged from the gradual shift over the late 1980s and early 1990s to less secure and more contingent forms of work, and the increasing spread of neoliberal values of competition, austerity, and responsibility over state support. Standing’s argument has had resonance with many other researchers’ work, and itself draws from the arguments made by scholars like Ulrich Beck on the emergence of a risk society. These studies critically examine modernity, and its contemporary global iteration, in the context of everyday life and its gradual, but palpable transformation.
The study of risk and precarity also draws from Foucauldian studies of governmentality to discuss the construction and management of risk, as instrumental practices in regimes of power. This strand of work is dominated by queer and feminist scholarship, which has highlighted the discursive construction of anti-normative or subversive practices as risky and their making as subjects of surveillance and policing, for instance in public health discourses that stigmatise gay men and sex workers (see Butler and Halberstam. Norms, these scholars suggest, emerge as frames of reference, in the discursive construction of what counts as life, worthy of protection, and what might be allowed to be destroyed, thus producing schema that render the lives of some – youth, the working classes, queers etc. for instance – more precarious than others.
A homeless person in Tokyo, Japan. Credit: jamesfische.CC BY 2.0
The great strength of this book is that it brings together these different strands of theory in her analysis of precarity – as embodied affect – and precariousness – as the wider socio-political context of instability, that transforms everyday life. The first ethnographic chapter builds on much of Allison’s previous work to trace a history of home, work and the ‘everyday’ in Japan. In the second and third chapters, she addresses intimate spaces – the home, and what becomes ‘home’ when one is homeless – and their transformation, through a study of youth lives in contemporary Japan and what she terms “ordinary refugeeism” (p.43), or the increasing ordinariness of homelessness; and motherhood and emerging modes of care, and hope as the meanings of ‘home’ change radically.
This third chapter on the existential struggles over ‘home’ and its meanings is perhaps the most interesting in the book, as well as the one that links most directly to Allison’s previous work on motherhood, sexuality and the politics of gender at home and work in Japan. Tracing the evolution of the nuclear family in Japan in the post-war period’s rapid economic recovery, Allison describes what she introduces before as ‘the family corporate system’ (pp.28-30). In this set up, men tended to work in cities in ‘lifelong’ jobs, reached by a long commute from the suburbs, while women performed the role of keeping the home and managing the education of children. Increasingly, with precaritised work, Allison describes forms of ‘homelessness’ that have set in different ways. For some this is literal; they have lost their homes, and live in parks, their ‘normal’ everydays having come to be drastically redefined. For others, ‘homelessness’ occurs because of their inability to find good jobs, marry and settle down: leading increasingly to lonely, unsatisfied lives. This chapter is ethnographically rich and engaging, sketching intimate accounts both of the despair of homelessness and the everyday ways in which people cope with it.
Allison then moves on to a study of ageing, death and pain, and everyday strategies used to mitigate the risks of these. She concludes the book with a chapter that recuperates practices of hope and belonging that have emerged since the Fukushima explosion in 2011. This chapter highlights the sheer bleakness of this situation, whilst also examining the forms of community, and collective responsibility that have come to being in response to it. She ends on an ambiguous albeit rigorously critical note: “There are some youths shovelling mud in Ishinomaki, others are becoming mayors of towns, and still others are happy to live with their parents and hang out online with their friends. Is a temporality of the forever-present precarious?”
If a criticism can be made of this book, it is primarily that it is at first relentlessly bleak, in a way that Allison’s previous books are not. However, the book gradually develops accounts of hope, agency, and collectivisation among those most starkly precarious. Allison’s book is comprehensive, and an excellent primer not only on contemporary politics and society in Japan but also in the study of socio-economic instability around the world.
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Sneha Krishnan is a doctoral student reading International Development at Wolfson College, Oxford. Her current research examines practices of pleasure and the constitution of urban subjectivities among college-going women in South India. She is also interested more broadly in interrogating themes of youth spaces, class, gender and sexuality in Urban India. Sneha has a previous graduate degree in Area Studies also from Oxford and was at Stella Maris College in Chennai, India for her BA in History. Her previous research has interrogated narratives of masculinity in post-colonial nationalism and sexual citizenship. Read more reviews by Sneha.
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