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University of California Press

Shinohata

A Portrait of a Japanese Village
by R. P. Dore (Author)
Paperback
Publication Date: Apr 1994
Edition: 1st Edition
Title Details:
Rights: Omit British Common; Include Canada
Pages: 332
ISBN: 9780520086289
Trim Size: 5.25 x 8
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About the Book

Ronald Dore offers the reader insight into the changing rural life of Japan in this fascinating study of a village some 100 miles from Tokyo where he lived first in 1955 and again in the early 1970s. A new Afterword reports on the acceleration of change to a once self-sufficient community most of whose young men now commute to city jobs instead of working the land. Dore comments on the effects of the 1993 election—Shinohata in a non-LDP-governed Japan.

About the Author

Ronald Dore is a Fellow of the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex and a Fellow of the British Academy. Among his many books is British Factory/Japanese Factory (California, updated edition 1990).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Preface

1. Town and Country
2. Time Past
3· Farmers of the Emperor
4· Better Off
5· Work
6. Modern Farming
7. The Silken Caterpillar
8. The Search for the Alchemist's Secret
9· Couples
10. Wives, Husbands and Mothers
11. Growing-Up
12. Brothers' Keepers
13. Pleasures Shared and Pleasures Solitary
14. In the Service of Community, Nation- and Self
15. Nature and the Numinous
16. Harmony and its Tensions:
The Day the Fire Brigade Went Fishing
17. Neighbours and Equals
18. Epilogue

Afterword: 1993
Index

Reviews

"This book presents a marvelously intimate view into the flood of little changes that lie behind the great transformations that have swept Japan in recent times. . . . It makes enlightening, fascinating, and often amusing reading for the casual reader as for the specialist."—Edwin O. Reischauer