Routledge Contemporary Japan Series
About the Book Series
The aim of this series is to publish original, high-quality work by both new and established scholars on all aspects of contemporary Japan.
Critical Review of the Abe Administration: Politics of Conservatism and Realism
1st Edition
Edited
By Yoichi Funabashi, Koji Nakakita
May 27, 2025
The second Abe administration, which lasted for seven years and eight months, turned out to be the longest administration in Japan’s constitutional history. What factors contributed to its remarkable longevity? What accomplishments and enduring legacies did this administration achieve during its ...
Migration, Aging and Japan's Sustainable Society
1st Edition
Edited
By Igor Saveliev, Natalie-Anne Hall
May 09, 2025
This book analyzes the relationship between migration and social sustainability in Japan and examines the transformation of its foreign-national and ethnic minority population over the past thirty years while critically assessing Japan’s immigration and integration policies and their domestic and ...
Civil Defense in Japan: Issues and Challenges
1st Edition
Edited
By Yasuhiro Takeda, Jun Ito, Yusuke Kawashima
May 06, 2025
In 2004, Japan instituted a system to protect citizens against military attacks and terrorism for the first time after World War II. Faced with the Tokyo subway attack (1995), the 9/11 terrorist attacks (2001), and the changing security environment in East Asia, the Japanese government was forced ...
Lay Zen in Contemporary Japan: Tradition, Interpretation, and Invention
1st Edition
By Erez Joskovich
May 06, 2025
This book explores the emergence and growth of Zen as a non-monastic spiritual practice in modern Japan. Focusing on several prominent lay Zen associations, most notably Ningen Zen, it explores different aspects of lay Zen as a lived religion, such as organization, ideology, and ritual. Through a ...
Mobile Japanese Migrants to the Pacific West and East: Self-searching, Work, and Identification
1st Edition
By Etsuko Kato
May 06, 2025
This book explores “self-searching migrants,” a new group of indefinitely globally mobile people whose purpose of overseas stay is the search of true self and the work they really want to do, using Japanese trans-Pacific sojourners as the case study. Utilizing testimonies collected from interviews ...
Challenging Nuclear Pacifism in Japan: Hiroshima's Anti-nuclear Social Movements
1st Edition
By Masae Yuasa
January 30, 2025
Is Japan abandoning its pacifism? The Japanese government has claimed it is doubling its defense spending and has announced a plan to equip itself with the capability to “counterattack” enemy bases overseas, a departure from the nation’s postwar consensus. Shedding new light on Japan’s pacifism and...
The Crisis in Pro Baseball and Japan’s Lost Decade: The Curious Resilience of Heisei Japan
1st Edition
By Paul Dunscomb
January 30, 2025
This book examines Japan’s Heisei era through the lens of the crisis in Japanese professional baseball of 2004, challenging the narrative of decline that dominates the discourse on the period. The story of this crisis reveals much about the Japanese psyche during the “Lost Decade,” about the nature...
The Origin of Japan’s Protectionist Agricultural Policy: Agricultural Administration in Modern Japan
1st Edition
By Hironori Sasada
January 30, 2025
This book explores the origins of Japan’s protectionist agricultural policies through an in-depth historical analysis of Japanese agricultural policies between the Meiji period and the end of WWII. It offers a constructivist account for the rise of protectionism, examining the policies of prewar ...
The Coronavirus Pandemic in Japanese Literature and Popular Culture
1st Edition
Edited
By Mina Qiao
December 18, 2024
This volume is the first book-length collection on Japanese literary and popular cultural responses to the coronavirus pandemic in English. Disrupting the narrative of COVID-19 as a catastrophe without precedent, this book contextualizes the COVID-19 global public health crisis and ...
The Japanese Restaurant: Tasting the New Exotic in Australia
1st Edition
By Iori Hamada
December 18, 2024
This book explores the growth and operations of the Japanese restaurant in Australia since the early 2000s from perspectives of both restaurant workers and consumers. Through first-hand testimonies, collected from chefs, restaurateurs, gourmets and casual diners, it demonstrates how Japanese ...
Alternative Virtues: Japanese Perspectives on Christian and Confucian Traditions
1st Edition
Edited
By Koji Tachibana
December 16, 2024
Incorporating various perspectives on the Japanese notion of virtue, Alternative Virtues investigates and expands our current understanding of virtue and presents a foundational case study of an alternative approach to virtues. The study of virtue has long been dominated by Western (i.e., Christian...
Japan’s Triple Disaster: Pursuing Justice after the Great East Japan Earthquake, Tsunami, and Fukushima Nuclear Accident
1st Edition
Edited
By Natalia Novikova, Julia Gerster, Manuela G. Hartwig
November 29, 2024
The authors of this volume discuss questions of disaster and justice from various interdisciplinary vantage points, including public policy, science and technology studies, law, gender, sociology and psychology, social and cultural anthropology, town planning and tourism. The term "natural" ...