Customer Reviews

Molding Japanese Minds

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Like the other reviewer, William Pease, I managed the first half and the conclusion. I think this book is about the way the state calludes with certain segments of the population to produce social outcomes. Negotiation, agreement, and concensus, rather than totalitarianism. I think. Speaking as someone who generally enjoys academics and often chooses to read scholarly works for fun, I found Molding Japanese Minds excessively dry and obscure with an overabundance of superfluous if not exactly tangential details. It's as if the author set about creating a test for the reader: do you have the power to overcome the mind-numbing force of excessive detail and blase prose to understand the point of this book? Aside from the facts that my mind kept wandering and that I kept wishing I hadn't gone to the trouble of getting this book out from the library, I was disappointed in finding it difficult to extrapolate the work onto my own interests in Japan. I suspect this book could be very useful if you were interested in the specific topics the author uses as case studies. I won't be doing any searches on the author name Sheldon Garon, however.

Memorable. This review is for the first half and intro/concl. Four examples of the expanding cultural power of the state in Japan, primarily interwar with 19th century background. I found the case for state power in prostitution and cafe society an arresting topic. However, the section on cults contains good horror tales of gov. oppression, and the growth of Christian societies and welfare-type activity new to me.