Housing and Social Transition in Japan

The value of edited collections is particularly apparent in the case of complex, multifaceted socioeconomic issues, where the juxtaposition of multiple theoretical and empirical perspectives can provide a deeper understanding than a single-author monograph. Housing is certainly such an issue, as it has fundamental impacts on issues as diverse as family life and gender roles, social justice and the distribution of wealth, community dynamics, social cohesion, public health and patterns of daily life. Housing policies are also often key economic development levers, housing construction and maintenance is a major employer, and housing usually occupies a majority of valuable urban land. This volume edited by Yosuke Hirayama and Richard Ronald displays many of the advantages of the edited collection in a well conceived and tightly focused 216 pages. Housing and Social Transition in Japan not only provides a thorough introduction to housing issues in Japan but also makes an important contribution to the understanding of postwar Japanese society, politics and economy. While it is widely agreed that the construction industry has been central to the Japanese political economy in the postwar period, to date most attention has been paid to the often-criticized practice of large-scale public works construction (cf. McCormack 1996; Woodall 1996). Less attention has been paid in the English language literature on Japan to housing policy issues. The major recent works are an edited volume by (Noguchi and Poterba 1994) comparing housing markets in the US and Japan, that is primarily economic in focus and covers the period before the lost decade of the 1990s, and Ann Waswo’s Housing in Postwar Japan (2002) that is more social and historical in focus. This volume is particularly timely, as the last decade has seen a global shift of policy attention to the physical environment of cities for economic, social, political and health reasons, and housing policy is clearly a central institutional structure shaping urban life.