Lost in Transition Youth, Work, and Instability in Postindustrial Japan [Paperback]

This book considers the issues facing contemporary Japan as it struggles to adapt its employment system to the global economy.This book is an up-to-date analysis of the issues facing twenty-first-century Japan as it struggles to find its place and adapt its time-honored employment system to the global economy. The book describes how young Japanese workers have lost out to the entrenched interests of older workers and tells the story of how they are struggling to gain a sense of identity and security.This book is an up-to-date analysis of the issues facing twenty-first-century Japan as it struggles to find its place and adapt its time-honored employment system to the global economy. The book describes how young Japanese workers have lost out to the entrenched interests of older workers and tells the story of how they are struggling to gain a sense of identity and security.Lost in Transition tells the story of the lost generation that came of age in Japans 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 countrys 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 peoples 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 thels9