UNMASKING JAPAN: Myths and Realities About the Emotions of the Japanese [Hardcover]

David Matsumoto (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0804727198 | ISBN-13: 978-0804727198 | Publication Date: November 1, 1996 | Edition: No Edition Stated

The indisputable fact of Japan's rapidly aging population has been known for some time. But beyond statistics and implications for the future, we do not know much about the actual aging process. Senior citizens and their varied experiences have, for the most part, been obscured by stereotypes. This fascinating new collection of research on the elderly works to put a human face on aging by considering multiple dimensions of the aging experience in Japan.

Faces of Aging foregrounds a spectrum of elder-centered issues—social activity, caregiving, generational bias, suicide, sexuality, and communication with medical professionals, to name a few—from the perspective of those who are living them. The volume's diverse contributors represent the fields of sociology, anthropology, medicine, nursing, gerontology, psychology, film studies, gender studies, communication, and linguistics, offering a diverse selection of qualitative studies of aging to researchers across the social sciences.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"An outstanding addition to the literature on an increasingly visible and growing segment of the Japanese population that enriches our understanding of the aging process as it is lived by real people, rather than as it is conceptualized by policy makers."
—Janet S. Shibamoto-Smith, Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Davis

From the Inside Flap

The last twenty years has seen a growth of interest and fascination with the Japanese, and the emergence of Japan as a world economic power has stimulated many works that have attempted to understand Japanese culture. The focus of this book is not on Japanese culture or society per se: rather, it is on how Japanese culture and society structure, shape, and mold the emotions of the Japanese people. All cultures shape and mold emotions, but the degree to which the Japanese culture shapes emotion has led to several misunderstandings about the emotional life of the Japanese, which this book attempts to correct.
Describing the findings of over two decades of research, this book presents the Japanese as human beings with real feelings and emotions rather than as mindless pawns caught in the web of their own culture. In the process, it unmasks many myths that have grown around the subject and reveals important similarities as well as differences between the emotional life of the Japanese and that of people of other cultures.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 179 pages
• Publisher: Stanford University Press; No Edition Stated edition (November 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0804727198
• ISBN-13: 978-0804727198
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,871,912 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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