ABSTRACT
The chapters of this volume draw a comprehensive picture of the tremendous transformations Japan underwent throughout what has become to be known as the ‘two lost decades’ (ushinawareta nijūnen). They demonstrate how structural and institutional changes are interrelated with political and public discourses, and how both can enable or constrain the agency of social actors (as discussed by Sato in the previous chapter). Accounts of (re-)actions of social actors presented in this book focus mainly on specific groups, active within a certain inequality dimension. To fully comprehend, however, how members of the population at large perceive social changes and evaluate their own position in face of them, a broader approach seems necessary as well. This chapter tries to provide this kind of backdrop by investigating how social risks are evaluated and how the realization that Japan is not as equal a society as was generally suggested reverberates within different social strata.
