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Book Review
| Japan in the 21st Century: Environment, Economy, and Society. By Pradyumna P. Karan. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2005. 416 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, index. $75.00, cloth; $45.00, paper.
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| The appearance of a text meant to introduce American undergraduate students to Japan from a geographic perspective is a most welcome event, and for this alone Pradyumna P. Karan's Japan in the 21st Century is to be lauded. While Karan provides a sweeping account of Japan—including its history, postwar political system, and modern economy—it is the many chapters with an explicitly spatial focus that prove to be the book's greatest strength. Discussions of such subjects as Japan's natural environment and geologic structure, its regional variation, and its demographic trends provide a thorough introduction to the physical and social geography of the country. Particularly helpful is Karan's inclusion of dozens of well-produced, thematically diverse maps that collectively imbue the book with the texture of a social atlas. |
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When Karan attempts to navigate waters outside of his specialization, however, he does so at the risk of the capsizing the project. Particularly unsettling is Karan's treatment of Japanese history. His claim, for example, that merchants "provided the driving force that pushed development" (p. 59) during the Tokugawa period is contestable, given that entrepreneurial farmers played a central role in the proto-industrialization of the country. Likewise, historians will be befuddled by the assertion that the "long tradition of passive submission to authority on the part of the masses" (p. 64) inhibited liberal reforms in the 1920s. Additionally, although Karan contests popular images of Japan as a nation whose inhabitants' defining characteristics are conformity and passivity (p. 364), he himself makes claims that reinforce stereotypes and reproduce arguments that posit an essential uniqueness among the Japanese. Karan asserts, for example, that "honor for nature is so ingrained in the Japanese that they would not fail to pause and contemplate the colors of leaves and blossoms" (p. 79), that the people "have always been fond of cleanliness" (p. 91), and that "community and family, as opposed to individualism, are exalted in Japanese culture" (p. 102). Unfortunately, these stereotypical brushstrokes do little to paint a realistic picture of Japanese society. Also, while a certain amount of generalization is necessary for an introductory text, Karan occasionally goes too far, as when he states that the so-called "furita"—young adults who work part-time—have "no children, no dreams, no hope, and no job skills" (p. 384). |
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Careful editing could have prevented the unnecessary reiteration of facts (we are repeatedly told that Japan is mostly mountainous) and the addition of inconsequential information (such as a listing of each town in which Francis Xavier preached or mention of how the Taisho period emperor had concubines in the middle of a discussion about Japan's rise as a military power). Spelling and typographical errors—such as "rinkai funu-toshin" (p. 267); "kabikicho" (p. 271); and "Koishikawa Korakoen Teien" (p. 276)—are bothersome, and certain photographs are either substandard or superfluous. The reader, for example, fails to understand how a photo of a sundries shop in Tokyo's Shibuya ward augments a discussion of that district's role in Japan's internet economy. |
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Even with the above drawbacks, Japan in the 21st Century is a thorough introduction to Japan, and hopefully represents the beginning of a greater geographic focus on the country at the undergraduate level. |
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Cary Karacas is a PhD candidate in geography at the University of California, Berkeley. He specializes in Japan and urban East Asia. |
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