Perfectly Japanese: Making Families in an Era of Upheaval Paperback - 2002

First line

An official at the Ministry of Health and Welfare listened as I asked about apparently "pronatalist" social policies, seeming to many to be strategies for increasing the birthrate.

From the rear cover

"White debunks the idealized image of the Japanese family held by many Americans as the exemplar of traditional family values--stable, dutiful, homogeneous, harmonious. This is also the 'official image' promoted by state, the media, and other institutions. Instead, White shows that families in Japan are as diverse, complex and contested as ours. She exposes the struggle of individuals and families as they negotiate the gap between the ideal and the realities of the post-industrial world of the twenty-first century."--Arlene Skolnick, author of Embattled Paradise: The American Family in an Age of Uncertainty

"Japanese politicians have pronounced the declining birthrate a national crisis. White gives us an enlightening bolt of reality, showing how Japanese families are really coping with the enormous changes surrounding them. Creative new patterns in dealing with the elderly, shopping, young people living at home, and married couples who continue to have an average of two or more children, are explored in depth."--Ezra Vogel, Henry Ford II Research Professor at Harvard and author of Is Japan Still Number One?