ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the relationship between economic development and social welfare in East Asia. It provides a hermeneutic-critical approach, assuming that social science comprises a variety of context-dependent ways of making arguments, each of which will construe any particular issue differently. The historical particularity of the route to the modern world undertaken by the countries of East Asia is noted; as is the historical particularity of the patterns of social welfare deployed within the societies of the countries of East Asia. The hermeneutic-critical line of work within the social sciences stresses the role played by the context-dependent theoretical machineries deployed by the theorist to make sense of the world. The standard story in respect of Japan stresses that the country has a conformist character, that Japanese people are happiest in groups. The Japanese decentered self is located in community and everyday life is humanistic.
