ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I present the background to the situation of C-Life that I explore in the rest of the book. I begin with a very brief account of the general situation in Japan during and after the ‘bubble’, before moving on to a more detailed look at the crisis facing the insurance industry in particular. None of this material is intended to be exhaustive or definitive; in particular, I do not seek to give an account of the structure or nature of the insurance industry. Rather, I aim to describe those factors that affected C-Life in particular. The purpose is simply to provide the backdrop of economic change against which the drama of C-Life was played out, and to set out the context for the fieldwork chapters which follow.
