The Emptiness of Japanese Affluence (Japan in the Modern World) [Paperback]

Gavan McCormack (Author), Norma Field (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1996 | ISBN-10: 1563247127 | ISBN-13: 978-1563247125

Make no mistake: While The Emptiness of Japanese Affluence is a critical examination of the dilemmas facing contemporary Japan, it is most emphatically not a work of Japan-bashing. Its scrupulous attention to history and to political economy makes clear that Japan's problems are the consequence not of putative Japanese peculiarities but of specific decisions and processes, on the one hand, and global structural forces, on the other...This book is indispensable for anyone interested in the implications of extraordinary economic success across the spectrum of social life anywhere in the world and therefore in the tantalizing possibilities of other East and Southeast Asian countries...As we stand at the threshold between the Cold War order and the twenty-first century, The Emptiness of Japanese Affluence exemplifies the thoughtful investigation we all need if we are to proceed with our eyes open, refusing to surrender the vision of a just and humanely livable world. Norma Field, University of Chicago, author of In the Realm of a Dying Emperor: A Portrait of Japan at Century's End. Gavan McCormack was ahead of the news on the Kobe earth

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

The author or editor of numerous books on Asia (e.g., Democracy in Contemporary Japan, M.E. Sharpe, 1986) and a professor at Australian National University, McCormack here scrutinizes the political economy, national identity, and war remembrances of Japan in an attempt to understand an apparently successful economic model with its own unique problems. The author has spent years studying and working in Japan, and it is evident that he knows the country well. Some of the more intriguing war legacies he relates are the "Shinjuku Bones Affair" (bones of prisoners tortured and killed at a military hospital during World War II are discovered years later) and the "left-behind children" of the Manchukuo area of China. Finally, we are left with a plea for zero population growth and more equitable economic distribution. Not a Japan-bashing book, McCormack's work is well documented, with extensive footnotes. Recommended for economics collections.?Lisa K. Miller Paradise Valley Community Coll. Lib., Phoenix
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 332 pages
• Publisher: M. E. Sharpe (March 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1563247127
• ISBN-13: 978-1563247125
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,472,885 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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