Lost in Transition
Youth, Work, and Instability in Postindustrial Japan

This book considers the issues facing contemporary Japan as it struggles to adapt its employment system to the global economy.

Mary C. Brinton (Author)

9780521126007, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 1 November 2010

228 pages, 24 b/w illus. 19 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.3 cm, 0.34 kg

'Mary Brinton's study of Japan's lost generation of young people is a must-read for Japan specialists and will also help other social scientists understand the social and cultural context that has shaped Japan's response to the economic challenges facing all post-industrial societies. Brinton traces a broad social and historical context to show how the rigidity of some existing institutional structures and social expectations, coupled with the unraveling of others, suddenly reduced the ability of ordinary, non-elite young Japanese men to find stable employment after high school graduation, with profound ramifications for their lives. Using a broad array of both qualitative and quantitative data … she explores the deep changes that are reshaping the Japanese society we thought we knew.' Patricia G. Steinhoff, University of Hawaii

Lost in Transition tells the story of the 'lost generation' that came of age in Japan's deep economic recession in the 1990s. The book argues that Japan is in the midst of profound changes that have had an especially strong impact on the young generation. The country's renowned 'permanent employment system' has unraveled for young workers, only to be replaced by temporary and insecure forms of employment. The much-admired system of moving young people smoothly from school to work has frayed. The book argues that these changes in the very fabric of Japanese postwar institutions have loosened young people's attachment to school as the launching pad into the world of work and loosened their attachment to the workplace as a source of identity and security. The implications for the future of Japanese society - and the fault lines within it - loom large.

1. The lost generation
2. The historical roots of Japanese school-work institutions
3. The importance of ba, the erosion of ba
4. Unraveling school-employer relationships
5. Networks of advantage and disadvantage for new graduates
6. Narratives of the new mobility
7. The future of the lost generation.

Subject Areas: Politics & government [JP], Sociology: work & labour [JHBL], Sociology [JHB]