Hiroko Takeda is Professor of Political Analysis at Nagoya University, Japan.

Mark Williams is Vice President for International Academic Exchange at the International Christian University Tokyo, Japan.

Introduction Part I Foundations 1. History: War Memory and Japan's "Postwar" 2. Politics: after the Demise of the "1955 System" 3. The Law in Japan 4. The Japanese Economy 5. Work and Employment: Inside, outside and beyond the Lifetime Employment Model 6. Civil Society in Japan 7. Structures and Dynamics of Japan's Urban-Rural Relationship 8. Japan's New Immigration: Gap in Admission Policy and Diversity in Socio-economic Integration' 9. Discursive Politics of Gender in Japan 10. Family and Demographic Issues in Japan 11. Popular Imagination in Japan 12. Japan's International Relations Part II Issues 13. Democracy in Japan 14. Japan's Territorial Problems: Continuing Legacies of the San Francisco System 15. The Politics of Nationalism and Identity in Contemporary Japan 16. Employment Regulation and Practices: The Production and Consumption of Non-Regular Work 17. Energy Issues in Japan 18. Japan and the Environment: Industrial Pollution, Biodiversity Loss, and Climate Change 19. Japan's Post Catch-up Modernity: Educational Transformation and its Unintended Consequences 20. University Reform in Japan 21. Studying Japan's Generations 22. Gender Equality in Japan 23. Femininity and Masculinity 24. LGBT 25. Consumerism 26. Food 27. Tourism 28. Young Urban Migrants in the Japanese Countryside between Self-Realization and Slow Life? The Quest for "Small-scale Happiness" and Alternative Lifestyles in Post-growth Japan 29. The 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games: The Political Economy of Tokyo Hosting the World 30. Social Malaise in Japan 31. Media in Japan 32. Mobile Reflections: Rethinking Digitality in a post 3/11 Japan 33. Okinawa: Rooting and routing of Uchin¿nchu and Shim¿ 34. The Great East Japan Earthquake and Post-Disaster Japan