Introduction / Hiroko Takeda & Mark Williams -- Part I Foundations. 1. History: War Memory and Japan's "Postwar" / Elyssa Faison -- 2. Politics: after the Demise of the "1955 System" / Gill Steel -- 3. The Law in Japan / Giorgio Fabio Colombo -- 4. The Japanese Economy / Franz Waldenberger -- 5. Work and Employment: Inside, outside and beyond the Lifetime Employment Model / Steffen Heinrich & Jun Imai -- 6. Civil Society in Japan / Mary Alice Haddad -- 7. Structures and Dynamics of Japan's Urban-Rural Relationship / Thomas Feldhoff -- 8. Japan's New Immigration: Gap in Admission Policy and Diversity in Socio-economic Integration' / David Chiavacci -- 9. Discursive Politics of Gender in Japan / Hiroko Takeda -- 10. Family and Demographic Issues in Japan / Mary C. Brinton -- 11. Popular Imagination in Japan / Rumi Sakamoto -- 12. Japan's International Relations / Christopher W. Hughes & Misato Matsuoka -- Part II Issues. 13. Democracy in Japan / Sherry L. Martin -- 14. Japan's Territorial Problems: Continuing Legacies of the San Francisco System / Kimie Hara -- 15. The Politics of Nationalism and Identity in Contemporary Japan / Jeff Kingston -- 16. Employment Regulation and Practices: The Production and Consumption of Non-Regular Work / Huiyan Fu -- 17. Energy Issues in Japan / Andrew DeWit -- 18. Japan and the Environment: Industrial Pollution, Biodiversity Loss, and Climate Change / Peter Matanle -- 19. Japan's Post Catch-up Modernity: Educational Transformation and its Unintended Consequences / Takehiko Kariya -- 20. University Reform in Japan / Takamichi Mito -- 21. Studying Japan's Generations / Agata Kapturkiewicz & Tuukka Toivonen -- 22. Gender Equality in Japan / Priscilla Lambert -- 23. Femininity and Masculinity / Laura Dales & Futoshi Taga -- 24. LGBT / Hiroyuki Taniguchi -- 25. Consumerism / Alexandra Hambleton -- 26. Food / Nicolas Sternsdorff-Cisterna -- 27. Tourism / Takayoshi Yamamura and Philip Seaton -- 28. Young Urban Migrants in the Japanese Countryside between Self-Realization and Slow LifeThe Quest for "Small-scale Happiness" and Alternative Lifestyles in Post-growth Japan / Susanne Klien -- 29. The 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games: The Political Economy of Tokyo Hosting the World / Wolfram Manzenreiter -- 30. Social Malaise in Japan / Roman Rosenbaum -- 31. Media in Japan / Yoshitaka Mōri -- 32. Mobile Reflections: Rethinking Digitality in a post 3/11 Japan / Larissa Hjorth -- 33. Okinawa: Rooting and routing of Uchinānchu and Shimā / Ayano Ginoza -- 34. The Great East Japan Earthquake and Post-Disaster Japan / Allison Kwesell & Joo-Young Jung.