J

Japan The empire of Japan is made up of an archipelago of four large islands (Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku), and a large number of smaller ones, extending between Taiwan (Republic of China) in the south and the Russian island of Sakhalin in the north, with a total area of 378,000 square kilometers. The climate ranges from relatively cold in Hokkaido and Tohoku in the north, with temperate summers and harsh winters, to subtropical in Okinawa and the other islands in the south, but most of the other highly populated areas have similar temperate maritime climates, but with humid summers marked by occasional typhoons. The islands are seismically very active, with numerous volcanoes and a history of catastrophic earthquakes, including those in Tokyo and Yokohama in 1923, and Kobe in 1995. The majority of the population of over 127

million (2007) are concentrated in a chain of major cities extending from Tokyo on Honshu in the east to Fukuoka in Kyushu in the west. These also include Kawasaki, Yokohama, Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe, Hiroshima, Kitakyushu, and Fukuoka, all with populations of over a million. The other major cities are Sendai, in the Tohoku region of northern Honshu, and Sapporo, the main city in Hokkaido. Even though the population of Japan as a whole is relatively high, at 343 per square kilometre, the majority of the country consists of sparsely populated mountains, resulting in an extreme concentration of population in just four urban regions in the coastal plains: Kanto (around Tokyo), Kansai (around Osaka and Kyoto), Chubu (around

Nagoya), and northern Kyushu (around Fukuoka). The main administrative units are the forty-seven prefectures, and a series of local government amalgamations since 1945 have resulted in many of the villages and smaller towns being incorporated into cities, making Japan statistically one of the most highly urbanized nations on earth. The Greater Tokyo region, including Yokohama and Kawasaki, is one of the largest urban agglomerations anywhere. As a result, agriculture, traditionally based on rice production, has declined in importance, along with the rural population. Japanese society is one of the most rapidly ageing in the world, with the world’s longest expectation of life (79 for men, 85 for women), and a birth rate so low that the population is soon expected to start contracting rapidly, in the absence of large-scale immigration. Even though it is often pointed out that Japan

is relatively homogeneous both in terms of language and national identity (only around 2 percent of the population are foreigners), it is nevertheless the tenth largest country in the world, with a population twice the size of Britain and close to half of that of the United States, and the world’s second largest economy. It is therefore inevitably more diverse than many accounts would suggest, as a result of its tumultuous history in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These saw the Meiji Restoration of 1868, when the country opened up to the West; a period of rapid colonial expansion with the annexation of Taiwan and Korea and the invasion of China; the Second World War, which resulted in the loss of the empire and the devastation of most of Japan’s major cities; seven years of Western occupation, marked by imposed

constitutional and economic reforms; a long period of high-speed economic growth, from the 1950s to the 1970s; and the speculative ‘bubble economy’ of the 1980s, followed by prolonged recession in the 1990s as the bubble burst. These factors of historical disjuncture, increasing

urbanization, economic growth followed by stagnation, and the ageing society form the backdrop to much of the recent anthropological work on Japan. Early Western studies concentrated on village communities and the structure of the village household (ie), along with other aspects of village life such as agriculture and religion, based on the indigenous Shinto tradition, and the various Buddhist sects, imported from China from the sixth century onwards (Reader 1991). In contrast, many of the more recent studies of rural areas and smaller towns and cities (e.g. Traphagen 2000; Knight 2003; Knight and Traphagen 2003) have focused on the processes of ageing and population decline. They have also documented attempts to revitalize these areas through the promotion of tourism, either with rural-based sports (e.g. Moon 1989), or through promoting nostalgia for people’s ‘home villages’ (furu sato) and the rural past (Ivy 1995). There have been a number of classic studies of

urban communities, beginning with that of Dore (1999 [1958]), and reflecting the revival and rapid growth of the Japanese economy after 1945. Other genres represented are studies of traditional industries (Moeran 1997) and markets (Bestor 2004), companies (e.g. Rohlen 1974), new religions and religious cults (Reader 2000), education (Rohlen 1983; Goodman 1990; Cave 2007), casual laborers (Gill 2001), and organized crime (Hill 2003). The rise of feminism and gender studies in the West is reflected in similar monographs on Japan (e.g. McClelland 2000; Rosenberger 2001). The diversity of recent work is perhaps best reflected in two major publications, the handbook edited by Robertson (2005), and the four volumes of readings edited by Martinez (2007). But perhaps the most flourishing genres of anthropological research in recent years have been those dealing with popular culture and ethnic diversity in Japanese society. Japanese popular culture, particularly comic

books (manga), pop music and cartoon films (anime), has been extremely influential throughout China, Korea and Southeast Asia (Iwabuchi

2002). Many of the best studies of Japanese popular culture, leisure and consumption are in the massive Curzon/University of Hawaii ConsumAsiaN series edited by Brian Moeran and Lisa Skov (e.g. Skov and Moeran 1995), on topics including advertising, the media, weddings, department stores, and food. History, memory and gender have also provided important material for cultural studies in Japan, including imperial institutions (Fujitani 1998), the Second World War (Yoneyama 1999), and the Takarazuka women’s theatre (Robertson 1998). So have fantasy and foreign cultures, in the numerous theme parks to be found throughout Japan (Raz 1999; Hendry 2000) The other major genre has been the many

studies of minorities and foreigners in Japan, including not only the indigenous minorities of Hokkaido (the Ainu), Okinawa, and the burakumin (descendants of ancient groups with ‘defiling’ occupations who still encounter discrimination), but the new immigrants coming into Japan in the twentieth century (e.g. Weiner 1997). Many Koreans and Chinese arrived in Japan from Taiwan, Korea and China during the Japanese colonial period, and even though many left after 1945, new groups have arrived since. The Koreans (affiliated to both North and South) are perhaps the best documented group (e.g. Ryang 1996), but there is also a growing literature on other groups such as Latin Americans of Japanese descent (Nikkeijin) (Tsuda 2003), Chinese, Vietnamese and Filipinos, in what is an increasingly multicultural Japan (Douglass and Roberts 2000). Their presence is already generating a range of issues in areas such as education, welfare, and representation in local politics. With the ageing population and the shortage of labour in some sectors, both immigration (legal and illegal) and diversification in Japanese society seem set to continue.