This award-winning book brings together Chizuko Ueno's groundbreaking essays on the rise and fall of the modern family in Japan. Combining historical, sociological, anthropological, and journalistic methodologies, Ueno - who is arguably the foremost feminist theoretician in Japan - delineates in vivid detail how the family has been changing in form and function in the last hundred years. In each chapter, Ueno introduces the reader to a different facet of modern Japanese family life, ranging from children who fantasize about being orphans to the elderly who confront 'pre-senescence.' The central focus is on the housewife - her history, her ever-changing responsibilities, her ways of surviving mid-life crisis. This is an indispensable book for students and scholars seeking to understand modern Japan.

Awards

Suntory Culture Award for Social Sciences and Humanities

About Editors and Authors

UENO Chizuko is a leading Japanese feminist scholar and Professor Emeritus at the University of Tokyo. Her areas of specialization include gender theory, women’s studies and family sociology. After graduating from the Graduate School of Kyoto University, she served as Associate Professor at Heian Jogakuin Junior College, Visiting Researcher at the University of Chicago and Associate Professor at Kyoto Seika University. Her overseas appointments include Visiting Professor at the University of Bonn and at the University of Mexico. She became Associate Professor at the Faculty of Letters, University of Tokyo, in 1993, and then Professor in the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tokyo, in 1995. In recent years, she has been involved in research on aged care.

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