How does a nation, defeated in war, respond to externally imposed reforms that set that nations family system upside down, completely eliminating the familys modus operandi At least that is what the elimination of family kinship and single inheritance in reforms by the Supreme Command for the Allied Powers (SCAP) in the 1948 Civil Code was meant to do. How did the Japanese respond to these reforms in Family Law that many believed would result in the destruction of the family? This study looks at succession and adoption in the years following the reform to understand how the Japanese were able to circumvent the Code and shape the family to meet their evolving needs.

As Japan moved from the devastation of 1945 to the economic security that survived even the boom and bust of the 1980s and 1990s, its literature came to embrace new subjects and styles and to reflect on the nation's changing relationship to other Asian countries and to the West. This volume will help instructors introduce students to novels, short stories, and manga that confront postwar Japanese experiences, including the suffering caused by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the echoes of Japan's colonialism and imperialism, new ways of thinking about Japanese identity and about minorities such as the zainichi Koreans, changes in family structures, and environmental disasters. Essays provide context for understanding the particularity of postwar Japanese literature, its place in world literature, and its connections to the Japanese past.

This book, which updates and expands the third edition published by Springer in 2015, explains, compares and evaluates the social and legal functions of adoption within a range of selected jurisdictions and on an international basis. From the standpoint of the development of adoption in England & Wales, and the changes currently taking place there, it considers the process as it has evolved in other countries. It also identifies themes of commonality and difference in the experience of adoption in a common law context, comparing and contrasting this with the experience under civil law and in Islamic countries and with that of indigenous people. This book includes new chapters examining adoption in Russia, Korea and Romania. Further, it uses the international conventions and the associated ECtHR case law to benchmark developments in national law, policy and practice and to facilitate a cross-cultural comparative analysis.

The first book-length study of adoption in Japan, this impressive work tackles the innovative and sometimes controversial subject of the policies of adoption agencies in Japan. The book places special adoption in the context of a liberal reformist agenda that has challenged traditional concepts of the family through the efforts to place children with difficult family backgrounds, including mixed and minority ethnic backgrounds. Drawing on empirical source material gathered since the late 1980s, the authors consider the central policy issue of whether agencies should be given a free hand to create their own policies, or whether they should be more tightly regulated. Finally, the book analyzes how different agency strategies for finding homes for hard to place children are related to different assumptions about the psychology and reasoning of prospective parents. Adoption in Japan makes a significant contribution to the academic literature in the fields of Japanese studies, public policy, social work and sociology. It will also be of interest to professionals involved in adoption agencies, specialist social work and adoption panels.

As they examine three related themes of postwar history, the authors describe an ongoing historical process marked by unexpected changes, such as Japan's extraordinary economic growth, and unanticipated continuities, such as the endurance of conservative rule. --From publisher's description.

How do couples build intimacy in an era that valorizes independence and self-responsibility? How can a man be a good husband when full-time jobs are scarce? How can unmarried women find fulfillment and recognition outside of normative relationships? How can a person express their sexuality when there is no terminology that feels right? In contemporary Japan, broad social transformations are reflected and refracted in changing intimate relationships. As the Japanese population ages, the low birth rate shrinks the population, and decades of recession radically restructure labor markets, Japanese intimate relationships, norms, and ideals are concurrently shifting. This volume explores a broad range of intimate practices in Japan in the first decades of the 2000s to trace how social change is becoming manifest through deeply personal choices. From young people making decisions about birth control to spouses struggling to connect with each other, parents worrying about stigma faced by their adopted children, and queer people creating new terms to express their identifications, Japanese intimacies are commanding a surprising amount of attention, both within and beyond Japan. With ethnographic analysis focused on how intimacy is imagined, enacted, and discussed, the volume's chapters offer rich and complex portraits of how people balance personal desires with feasible possibilities and shifting social norms. Intimate Japan will appeal to scholars and students in anthropology and Japanese or Asian studies, particularly those focusing on gender, kinship, sexuality, and labor policy. The book will also be of interest to researchers across social science subject areas, including sociology, political science, and psychology.

This collection makes available key articles on the Japan-North American relationship from the Meiji era to the present. Volume one focuses on the necessity of Japanese modernization post-1868 and examines the build-up to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour. Volume two looks at the post-war period, in which US forces occupied Japan and were instrumental in its rebuilding as an economic superpower. In the years following this Japan and North America enjoyed a close yet occasionally fraught relationship, as competitors and allies. Volume two also examines the cultural ramifications of the influence of North America on Japan, and vice versa. Titles also available in this series include, Japan and South East Asia: International Relations (2001, 2 volumes, 295) and the forthcoming title Japanese Linguistics (2005, 3 volumes, c.425).

Child Protection and Child Welfare draws on the knowledge of child protection experts and social care professionals to provide an authoritative international overview of child protection strategy and policy. Devoting particular attention to the role played by culture in determining child welfare issues and child protection responses, this book illustrates the impact of both long-term influences, such as the legacy of the caste system in India, and more recent global events, such as the development of international trade in Ghana and shrinking budgets in Italy on national approaches to supporting families and children. The international perspective aims to enhance our understanding of the range of possible approaches, encouraging researchers, policymakers and practitioners to think critically about current models, and providing insights for developing practice. This important book will be essential reading for social workers, policy makers, child protection service workers, commissioners and managers across child and family welfare services, as well as researchers and academics in the field.

In Anthropology of Childhood and Youth, author Geoffrey Vitale shows the ways in which people understand, raise, and educate children and youth differently from century to century and from country to country according to the culture, lifestyle, politics, and economics of their place of origin. He also introduces the reader to the manner in which professionals relate to these matters, with a focus on an anthropological perspective. Vitale discusses similar problems and matters for inquiry a thousand years apart, and separated by oceans. The adoption or abandonment of children, for instance, created problems of inheritance, sexual relationship, and family support and integration in Ancient Greece, just as it does today in contemporary Japan. The author therefore, proposes a flexible tour of human society, intended essentially to introduce the reader to points of view, strategies, and approaches that go beyond the purely domestic, both in place and time—which may introduce new ideas and present new theories and diverse understandings. Anthropology of Childhood and Youth establishes the work of a wide range of specialists and familiarizes readers both with their skills and their writings.

This book relates the experiences of the zanryu-hojin - the Japanese civilians, mostly women and children, who were abandoned in Manchuria after the end of the Second World War when Japan’s puppet state in Manchuria ended. It examines their eventual repatriation, alongside issues of war memory and war guilt, and the worldviews of the zanryu-hojin, alongsideJapanese society and its anti-war social movements.