This book provides undergraduate and graduate students with an interdisciplinary compendium written by a number of leading specialists on contemporary Japan. Chapters reflect the standards of rigorous scholarly work, but also exceed them in their accessibility of language and engagement with concerns relevant to non-specialists.

Table of Contents

• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Introduction - JEFF KINGSTON
• PART I Political environment
• 1 Japanese politics: mainstream or exotic? - ARTHUR STOCKWIN
• 2 The politics of trade policy - AURELIA GEORGE MULGAN
• 3 Limiting fundamental rights protection in Japan: the role of the Supreme Court - LAWRENCE REPETA
• 4 Civil society: past, present, and future - AKIHIRO OGAWA
• 5 Japan's contemporary media - DAVID MCNEILL
• PART II Nuclear and renewable energy
• Map of Nuclear Power Plant operational Status Map, July 2011
• 6 Revisiting the limits of flexible and adaptive institutions: the Japanese government's role in nuclear power plant siting over the post-war period - DANIEL P. ALDRICH
• 7 Who controls whom? Constraints, challenges and rival policy images in Japan's post-war energy restructuring - PAUL J. SCALISE
• 8 Japan's nuclear village: power and resilience - JEFF KINGSTON
• 9 Japan's renewable power prospects - ANDREW DEWIT
• PART III International dynamics
• 10 Bad war or good war? History and politics in post-war Japan - SVEN SAALER
• 10 Territorial disputes with Korea and China: small islets, enduring conflicts - MARK SELDEN
• 12 An inconvenient truce: domestic politics and the Russo-Japanese Northern Territories dispute - TINA BURRETT
• 13 Okinawa today: spotlight on Henoko - ALEXIS DUDDEN
• PART IV Social dilemmas
• 14 Demographic dilemmas, women and immigration - JEFF KINGSTON
• 15 Reproductive rights in Japan: where do women stand? - TIN TIN HTUN
• 16 Hiding in plain sight: minority issues in Japan - KYLE CLEVELAND
• 17 Mental health and therapy in Japan: conceptions, practices, and challenges - SACHIKO HORIGUCHI
• 18 Violence in schools: tensions between “the individual” and “the group” in the Japanese education system - ROBERT ASPINALL
• 19 Hidden behind Tokyo: observations on the rest of Japan - JOHN MOCK
• PART V Reforming Japan?
• 20 Seeking to change Japanese society through legal reform - MATTHEW J. WILSON
• 21 Parochialism: Japan's failure to internationalize - ROBERT DUJARRIC AND AYUMI TAKENAKA
• 22 What's behind what ails Japan - DAVID LEHENY