Social Mentality in Contemporary Japan

内容紹介

“Japanese have come to treasure the bonds among people.”
“No, the connections among people have been lost and everyone feels alone.”
“Today’s young people have lost hope.”
“No, young people in fact seem to be pretty satisfied with their daily lives.”


How do people see the world around them, and what feelings do the things they see arouse? In the broadest sense, the answers to these questions offer us a glimpse of what I call the “social mentality”. Social mentality constitutes the software, so to speak, that controls how the social system works. The idea that such a social mentality exists and can be apprehended is attracting renewed interest for its potential as a key to help us unlock the riddles of Japanese society today.
. . .
Metaphorically speaking the ship of Japanese society on which we are passengers is going to be steered solely by experience and gut reaction with no one checking the instrument panel. Social consciousness studies that are based on survey data analysis can establish the necessary “oppositional complementarity” to put forth sound arguments about the direction in which the social mentality is headed.


日本人の心のあり方、社会意識を計量的に分析し、現代日本社会を鋭く読み解いた好著『現代日本の「社会の心」－計量社会意識論』（有斐閣、2014年）の英語版。海外在住の日本学研究者、日本社会に関心のある読者に向け、待望の翻訳刊行。

（原書名）『現代日本の「社会の心」－計量社会意識論』（有斐閣、2014年）　

目次

About the Author
Translator’s Note

INTRODUCTION: Quantifying Social Mentality
A Crucial Thing Invisible to the Eye
Survey Data Analysis as Brake
The Structure of This Book

PART I REBUILDING SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS STUDIES

CHAPTER 1
Approaches to Apprehending Social Consciousness

Positioning the Field within the Social Sciences
General Concepts of Social Consciousness
Stratification, Education, and the Formation of Social Consciousness
Social Consciousness Studies in the Postwar Period
Establishing Contemporary Social Consciousness Studies
Unexpectedly Idled
Stratification Consciousness Studies
The Pedigree of Social Consciousness Studies

CHAPTER 2
The Conduct of Quantitative Social Consciousness Studies

The Social Structure Sets Social Consciousness in Motion
Observing Contemporary Japanese Society
The Horizons Set by Trends and Status-Relatedness
Focusing on Society’s Middle Ranges
Public Opinion Statistics and Quantitative Social Consciousness Studies
Analytical Monographs
“The Angels’ Share”


PART II THE TRAJECTORY OF IDENTIFICATION

CHAPTER 3
Japan in 1985

An Age of Subtle Changes
Capturing the Eve of Reflexive Modernity
The Pinnacle for Sh.wa Japan
Generational Change and the Human Life-Cycle
Positive Reevaluations of the Uniqueness of Japan’s Culture: The Age of “Exotic Japan”
Social Mentality in the First Modernity
Homologies between Nihonjinron and the Mass-Middle-Class Phenomenon

CHAPTER 4
The Real Nature of the Mass-Middle-Class Phenomenon

The Catalyst that Changed the Debate about Stratification into One about Eras
Curious Consequences
A Point of Debate Consigned to “Galapagos”
The “Phony” Rise of the Mass Middle Class: The Case of the SSM Survey
The “Phony” Rise of the Mass Middle Class: The Case of the Life of the People Survey
The Fiction and Reality of the Mass Middle Class

CHAPTER 5
From Mass-Middle-Class Society to Mass-Inequality Society 81

Redefining Mass Middle Class
Enhancing Causal Explanatory Power
The Quiet Transformation of Status Identification
The Mechanism behind Era Change
What Is the Era of the Mass-Inequality Society Like?


PART III WHAT HAPPENED TO ORIENTATION?

CHAPTER 6
The Quiet Retirement of Traditionalism.Modernism

Modern Society and Traditionalism
What Is Authoritarianism?
Self-Direction
The Trajectory of the Authoritarian Attitude
Post-Modernization in Attitudes toward Gender-Role Segregation
Disappearance of the Gradient of Social Mentality

CHAPTER 7
The Doctrineless Age

The “Misfire” of Equity Studies
Perception of Inequality Driven by Personal Interest
A Ubiquitous Prosocial Nature
A Meltdown Caused by the Acceptance of Diversity
Searching for a Gradient in the Frequency of Daily Activities
The Consummatory Nature of the Doctrineless Age

CHAPTER 8
A Hidden Era-Change in Quality of Life Orientations

Attitudes to Health and the Environment in Contemporary Japan
The Influence of Social Consciousness on the QOL Orientation
Comparative Survey Data from 18 Years Later
An Era Change in the Determinant Structure
From Modernity to Reflexive Modernity


EPILOGUE
Status Literacy, Consummatory, and Reflexivity

The Described Shape of the Social Mentality
Disembedding from the Collective Consciousness
The Social Mentality of the 1980s
The Social Mentality of Contemporary Japan
The Frayed Influence of Social Attributes
Disembedding from Occupation
Re-embedding into Education
Concluding Remarks


Afterword
Works Cited
Index 　　

著者略歴

Toru Kikkawa　（吉川徹）(著)（キッカワトオル）
About the Author
Toru Kikkawa (Ph.D., Osaka University, 1994) is a professor of sociology in the Graduate School of Human Sciences at Osaka University. He leads the Stratification and Social Psychology (SSP) Project based also at Osaka University.
He is the author of Kaisō kyōiku to shakai ishiki no keisei: Shakai ishiki ron no jikai [Stratification, education, and the formation of social consciousness: The magnetic field in social consciousness studies] (1998) and Gakureki bundan shakai [Society of educational disparity] (2009), among other works in Japanese, and has also published several articles in English-language journals. He includes quantitative sociology, social research methodology, sociology of education, social psychology, and social stratification studies among his areas of research, and has a special interest in contemporary Japanese society.

（上記内容は本書刊行時のものです。）