Japanese Encounters with Postmodernity

de Yoshio Sugimoto, Johann P. Arnason

This is the first systematic study of the sociological debate on postmodernity in the Japanese context. The volume consists of a collection of twelve papers that explore the idea of postmodernity primarily from sociological perspectives, covering a wide range of domains including work, feminism, communication, science and technology, social stratification, fine arts and literature. The contributors come from diverse disciplines ranging from sociology and history to political science and linguistics. They include advocates of postmodern theories and postmodernist analyses of Japanese society, as well as critics who argue that a suitably revised theory of modernity is still the most adequate framework for comparing Japan and the West. Others take the view that an intermediate position might be more productive and that a qualified or provisional version of postmodernism can throw new light on issues traditionally neglected by social theory. . While the postmodernity debate has been carried out chiefly in the context of European and American experiences, this book paves the way for the postmodernity question to be explored in the non-western but highly industrialised setting of Japan, and brings forward a series of open-ended questions about the bias in the debate. Written by academics based in universities in Japan and Australia, the volume itself is postmodern in its internal diversity and multicultural orientation.