Description: Lost in Transition tells the story of the "lost generation" that came of age in Japan's 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 country's 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 people's 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.
Brief description: Mary C. Brinton is Reischauer Institute Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. She has also held professorships at the University of Chicago and Cornell University. She is the author of Women and the Economic Miracle: Gender and Work in Postwar Japan, the editor of Women's Working Lives in East Asia, and the co-editor of The Declining Significance of Gender? Her work has appeared frequently in journals, including the American Journal of Sociology, the American Sociological Review, and Sociology of Education.
Review Quotes: "Mary Brinton's book tells a fascinating story of high school graduates who get lost in the transition from school to work. It provides a compelling account of an important failing in the Japanese system. Yet this is more than just a book on contemporary Japan. The book also reveals the tensions that any society faces when an economic structure changes. Brinton's book will be of great value to anyone interested in labor market adjustments in advanced industrial democracies. Brinton's first-rate scholarship combines rigorous empirical analysis with vivid personal narratives. This book sets a new standard for studies of labor market adjustments."
Margarita Estévez-Abe, Syracuse University