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<P>Using qualitative research methods and evidence gathered from interviews, this work explores and highlights contradictions between Japanese immigration and immigrant policies as they relate to ethnic Japanese "returnees."</P>

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This is an authoritative and ground-breaking assessment of an important but little-studied facet of Japanese politics.

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The first book of its kind to examine images of women in Japanese consumerism, Women, Media and Consumption in Japan explores a variety of media targeted at women - in particular magazines, but also television, popular literature and consumer trends. Written by anthropologists, sociologists and literary scholars who draw on and analyse Japanese marketing materials, the essays in this book cover visual and print media for middle-aged women, housewives, and single women in their 20s, as well as the vast market for those in their teens. From Oshin to Yoshimoto Banana and other media heroines popular all over the world, Japanese women finally stop 'hiding in the light'.

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Japan is one of the most media-saturated societies in the world. The circulations of its "big five" national newspapers dwarf those of any major American newspaper. NHK, its public service broadcasting agency, is second only to the BBC in size. And it has a full range of commercial television stations, high-brow and low-brow magazines (from widely read intellectual journals to the ubiquitous manga, or adult comic books), and a large antimainstream media and mini-media. Japanese elites, surveys show, rate the mass media as the most influential group in Japanese society. But what role do they play in political life? Whose interests do the media serve? As Japan's critics often hold, are they mainly servants of the state? Or are they watchdogs on behalf of the public, as the media themselves claim and as suggested by their role in uncovering late eighties and early nineties political scandals and in triggering political change in the summer of 1993? And what effects do the media have on the political beliefs and behavior of ordinary Japanese people? These questions, central for interpreting the media's role in any industrial society, are the focus of this collection of essays by leading political scientists, sociologists, social psychologists, and journalists. Japan's unique kisha (press) club system, its powerful media business organizations, the uses of the media by Japan's wily bureaucrats, and the role of the media in everything from political scandals to shaping public opinion, are among the many subjects of this insightful and provocative book.

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<P><i>Contested Governance in Japan</i> extends the analysis of governance in contemporary Japan by exploring both the sites and issues of governance above and below the state as well as within it. All contributors share a common perspective on governance as taking place in different sites of activity, and as involving a range of issues related to the norms and rules for the management, coordination and regulation of order, whether within Japan or on the regional or global levels. This volume discusses the contested nature of governance in Japan and the ways in which a range of actors are involved in different sites and issues of governance at home, in the region and the globe. Including chapters on global governance, local policy-making, democracy, environmental governance, the Japanese financial system, corruption, the family and corporate governance, this collection will be of interest to anyone studying Japanese politics and governance.</P>