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The I-House Press is the commercial book imprint of the International House of Japan. It publishes in English various works, including the fruits of the House's program activities as well as revised editions of selected works from the LTCB International Library series, for the purpose of promoting understanding of Japan abroad.

New books

Japan in Trade Isolation, 1926-37 and 1948-85
By Ikeda Michiko (Ph.D. Economics, Harvard University)

First English edition, 2008. 378 pages, hardcover.
¥3,000 (¥2,858+tax) ISBN 978-4-903452-07-4

 

 

 

 

The 1920s and 1930s were a turbulent era for the world economy—a time of shifting monetary policies, trade protectionism, and the Great Depression. Emerging on the world stage as the first non-Western industrial power, Japan faced charges of dumping and protectionism. This groundbreaking work by Michiko Ikeda examines the harsh environment faced by Japan in the years 1926 to 1937 and again in the years from 1948 to 1985. It draws on original study of League of Nations reports and of declassified government documents in Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

<From the foreword>
“The great advantage of this careful historical study is that it puts in perspective what trade discrimination around the world often entails. Many of the arguments that one hears today about the problems created by the rise of the Chinese economy have a familiar ring to anyone knowledgeable about this earlier Japanese story. By looking at this historical Japanese experience, we can see these issues stripped of the emotions and politics of the present.”
—Dwight H. Perkins, Research Professor of Economics, Harvard University

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Learning for Life—The Kumon Way
By Kinoshita Reiko (Journalist)

First English edition, 2008. 250 pages, hardcover.
¥3,000 (¥2,858+tax)  ISBN 978-4-903452-13-5
Originally published in Japanese in 2006 by Iwanami Shoten Publishers as Terakoya Globalization.

 

Education is under pressure throughout the world as globalization and technological revolution create a new Learning Society in which citizens can never stop learning new skills in work and life. In this volume, the journalist Reiko Kinoshita examines how a Japanese learning program, the Kumon Method, has quietly spread worldwide in response to this changed environment.
　　What is the secret of the Kumon Method, now in use by over four-million students in forty-five different countries? It developed out of the math worksheets that a teacher, Toru Kumon, made for his own son, but Kinoshita sees its roots in the self-study methods used in the terakoya, temple schools in Japan in the Edo Period (1600–1868), in which the children of commoners learned reading, writing, and arithmetic. Kumon students work at their own pace, learning new skills but also learning new attitudes of  self-confidence and autonomy.
　　But perhaps the real secret to the worldwide success of the Kumon Method can be found in the belief of Toru Kumon that there are no borders in learning, that we continue to grow by striving to be better.

<from in this volume’s blurb>
“Reiko Kinoshita, one of Japan’s most sensitive journalists, has visited 17 countries to explore the success of the Kumon way of home education. She tells the story of a fascinating educational pioneer and his accomplishments in making learning fun as well as fruitful.”
—Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Professor at Harvard and author of Soft Power.

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Escape from Impasse: The Decision to Open Japan
By Mitani Hiroshi (Professor, University of Tokyo)

Translated by David Noble
Revised and expanded edition, 2008. 388 pages, hardcover. ¥3,000 (¥2,858+tax)
ISBN 978-4-903452-03-7 
Originally published in Japanese in 2003 by Yoshikawa Kobunkan as Perii Raiko

This is a wonderfully clear, detailed and insightful study of the diplomatic prehistory of the Meiji Restoration. Prior to 1853, an “overwhelming ma­jority” of the “informed opinion” in Japan favored a policy of seclusion, while leading countries of the West were determined to end it. The possibility of a disastrous war was real. But Japanese leaders, becoming aware of the danger, modified their policies and by a “hair’s-breadth” avoided disaster. The book first looks at Japan’s traditional foreign policy and perception of the outside world, the Opium War and the debate it engendered within Japan, and the in­tentions of the West that put it on a collision course with Japan. It then treats Japan’s foreign relations between 1853 and 1856, not simply as the story of Commodore Perry, with Townsend Harris in the wings, but as the steady devel­opment of Japanese thinking about foreign relations through Perry’s first visit, the negotiations with the Russians in 1853 and 1854, Perry’s return, the Treaty of Peace and Amity of 1854, and the treaties established with Britain and Rus­sia the following year. Digging deep, it explores the thought underlying policy decisions. The analysis of the difference between the Japanese and American versions of the 1854 treaty is outstanding—this is a must-read book.
—Albert M. Craig, Harvard-Yenching Professor of History Harvard University

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Japan’s Lost Decade
By Yoshikawa Hiroshi (Professor, University of Tokyo)

Translated by Charles H. Stewart
Revised and expanded edition. 2008, 268 pages, cloth, ¥3,000 (¥2,858+tax) 
ISBN 978-4-903452-12-8
Originally published in Japanese in 1999 by Iwanami Shoten as Tenkanki no Nihon keizai
Winner of the 2000 Yomiuri-Yoshino Sakuzo Prize

“Professor Yoshikawa’s book, an analysis of Japan’s lost decade and policies for overcoming it, is fast becoming a classic. The main concept in his analysis is what he has labeled ‘the uncertainty trap.’ Overcoming the stagnation, on the other hand requires yet another new concept: ‘demand-creating innovation.’
　　“According to an article in the February 9, 2008 issue of the New York Times entitled ‘From Japan’s Slump in 1990s, Lessons for U.S.,’ the present disarray in the American economy triggered by the subprime loan debacle closely resembles the ‘Japanese disease’ that troubled Japan in the 1990s, or a mild case of it. What the U.S. economy needs now is the power of demand-creating innovation to rescue it from the uncertainty trap in which it finds itself. In that sense, economic experts everywhere are likely to find this book a good prescription for how to beat the ‘Japanese disease.’”
—Ryuzo Sato, C.V. Starr Professor of Economics, Emeritus, New York University

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MARUYAMA MASAO
And the Fate of Liberalism in Twentieth-Century Japan
By Karube Tadashi (Professor, University of Tokyo)

Translated by David Noble
222 pages, cloth, 2,500 yen
ISBN 978-4-903452-09-7
Originally published in Japanese in 2006 by Iwanami Shoten as Maruyama Masao—Riberarisuto no shozo

MARUYAMA MASAO (1914–96) has been widely regarded as an archetype of the twentieth-century Japanese intellectual. Immensely influential for his scholarly work in intellectual history and political science, Maruyama also reached a wider public through extensive writing and commentary in the leading opinion journals of the postwar period, where he emerged as an outspoken advocate of liberalism and democracy.
　　In this intellectual biography, Karube Tadashi traces Maruyama’s childhood and youth in prewar and wartime Japan, vividly depicting a number of the key experiences that deepened his commitment to democratic ideals and motivated his quest to ground them in the autonomy and integrity of the individual. This was the perspective that informed Maruyama’s postwar investigation of the problems of mass society and his efforts to reinterpet the Japanese tradition by dissecting its pathologies and tracing the alternative paths to modernity latent within it.   
　　While demonstrating the significance of Maruyama’s life and thought to the modern Japanese experience, this book is not an idealized portrait of a great man. Maruyama’s ambivalence about his own political activity is clearly evident, as is the pathos of his later years, when, under attack by both the neo-nationalist right and the radical student left, he found himself isolated and in failing health and largely withdrew from public life, including his professorship at the University of Tokyo.
　　In this way, Karube offers a nuanced portrait of an era and a society through the lens of Maruyama and his thought, bringing into focus the concerns, trials, victories, and defeats of this representative twentieth-century thinker and the fate of the liberal intellectual tradition to which he committed his life.

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Doing It Our Way: A Sony Memoir
By Ohga Norio (Former CEO, Sony Corporation)

Translated by Brian Miller
144 pages, hardcover. 2,000 yen
ISBN 978-4-903452-11-1
Originally published in Japanese in 2003 in a somewhat different form by the Nihon Keizai Shimbun as Sony no Senritsu

“‘Maximize the brand value of the four letters of the Sony name.’ As the company’s newly named president in 1982, that was how I answered journalists who asked about my management priorities. I had inherited the devotion to conscientious branding evoked memorably by Sony cofounder Akio Morita.
   “Sony has retained the venture-business vitality that animated the company in its earliest days as a start-up. That lasting vitality is a tribute to Morita’s consistent emphasis on emphasizing capability and performance over academic credentials and on localizing our approach to business in markets around the world.
   “The passion evinced by cofounders Masaru Ibuka and Morita persuaded me to abandon a career as an operatic baritone. Morita suggested that a job at Sony needn’t oblige me to abandon music as a serious avocation. In fact, it meant new challenges daily and a lifelong race across the planet. Not until late in my career did I regain the time to devote myself anew to music. Decade after decade passed as if in the batting of an eye. But that is simply evidence of the continuing excitement that is Sony. I hope that this book will convey some of that excitement.”

From the author’s Prelude

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Contradictions of Globalization―Democracy, Culture, and Public Sphere―
Edited by Tessa Morris-Suzuki

164 pages, paperback. 1,500 yen
ISBN 978-4-903452-09-8

 

 

This is a collection of papers and writings contributed to the House conference in summer 2006 to celebrate the renewal reopening of the International House of Japan. Attempting to grasp the complex and multiple meanings of “Globalization” beyond the conventional definition and understanding in terms of the growing interdependence of the world, the formation of global institutions, and mutually exclusive conditions of the global and the national (local), this volume aims at shedding light on its contradictory aspects from both a political and cultural perspective. While national borders seem to have subsided or been lowered for some in our rapidly interconnected world, new borders, real and imagined, are being constructed or reconstructed, as, for instance, seen in the widening gaps/disparities and the eruption of identity politics. How should the paradoxical development of two contrasting phenomena, —for example, economic globalization and the rediscovery of culture as the basis of identity—be perceived? Prominent intellectuals from academia, the mass media, and NGOs/NPOs from around the Asia-Pacific address such issues as the role of intellectuals, journalism, cultural /academic organizations, and the significance of cross-border networking, with a focus on the idea of the “public” in order to tackle a trans-disciplinary agenda in an increasingly borderless world.

Paper contributors:
Clifford Chanin, Founder and President of the Legacy Project
James Fallows, National Correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly
G. John Ikenberry, Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Princeton University, and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
Ignas Kleden,Chairman of the Indonesian Community for Democracy (KID); Executive Director of the Center for East Indonesian Affairs (CEIA)
Mary Byrne McDonnell, Executive Director,Social Science Research Council (SSRC)
Mohamad, Maznah, Visiting Senior Fellow, National University of Singapore
Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Professor of Japanese History at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies,Australia National University.
P. Sainath, Rural Affairs Editor, The Hindu.
Saskia Sassen, Helen and Robert Lynd Professor of Sociology, Committee on Global Thought and Department of Sociology, Columbia University and Centennial Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics (LSE)

This book is the product of a ground-breaking cross-border and trans-disciplinary dialogue aimed at revealing the manner in which the Janus-faced process of globalization is being manifested in the different regions of Asia and other parts of the world. No discussion of the contemporary situation in Asia and other areas can afford to ignore it.
—KANG Sang-jung, Professor, University of Tokyo

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Japan and Its worlds: Marius B. Jansen and the Internationalization of Japanese Studies
Edited by Martin Collcutt, Kato Mikio, and Ronald Toby

312 pages, hardcover. 3,000 yen
ISBN 978-4-903452-08-1

A collection of papers presented at the Jansen Memorial Conference in 2001 and other essays on the man and work of Marius B. Jansen

A prominent historian of modern Japan, the late professor Marius Jansen is known as the author of the highly acclaimed work Sakamoto Ryoma and the Meiji Restoration. He played a pioneering role in the internationalization of Japanese studies through his innovative scholarship and teaching, and was admired in Japan and Europe as well as the United States, not only for his contributions to the study of Japanese history, but for the way he tied Japan’s historical experience to the larger frames of inter-Asian, trans-Pacific, and indeed global history. The essays complied together in this volume—all written by old friends and former students—are centered on major themes running throughout his work. Four essays look at historiography and changing frameworks for interpreting Japan’s modernization, the rapid transition from feudal Tokugawa society to modern industrial power in just a few decades. Two others emulate Jansen’s commitment to history rooted in the particulars of local life, while the remaining pieces exemplify Jansen’s focus on the relationship between Japan and its various worlds—the many complex, overlapping, and often synergistic relationships between Japan and its Asian neighbors, and the wider world.
   In such a range of essays Japan and Its Worlds provides a fitting tribute to Marius Jansen’s humanity, sharp wit and dry humor, and remarkable ability to synthesize and elegantly present complex historical issues. Reflecting Professor Jansen’s close association with the International House of Japan for more than forty years, the book also most appropriately includes an essay on the genesis and formative years of the International House and the role Jansen played therein.

 

Published 2007

The Meiji Constitution: The Japanese Experience of the West and the Shaping of the Modern State
by Takii Kazuhiro (Professor, University of Hyogo)

Translated by David Noble
2007. 180 pages, paperback. 2,000 yen
ISBN 978-4-903452-04-3
Originally published in Japanese in 2003 by Kodansha as Bummeishi no Naka no Meiji Kempo

Kazuhiro Takii details the formulation of Japan's Meiji Constitution. He looks beyond the legal codification of the document and shows how the constitution catalyzed the emergence of a modern nation-state. Takii brings a cross-cultural perspective to his analysis. He relates how key leaders of Meiji Japan had experienced the West through fact-finding missions and extended overseas travel and research, and he demonstrates how their international experience shaped the policies and character of the nation-state that they helped build.
　　Japan's leaders had witnessed the piecemeal devouring of Qing-dynasty China by Western powers, and they were determined for Japan to avoid a similar fate. Takii describes how they proceeded by assimilating the elements of Western civilization that underpinned constitutional government.

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Competing to Be Really, Really Good: The Behind-the-Scenes Drama of Capability-Building Competition in the Automobile Industry
By Fujimoto Takahiro (Professor, University of Tokyo)

Translated by Brian Miller
2007. 167 pages, paperback. 2,000 yen
ISBN 978-4-903452-05-0
Originally published in Japanese in 2003 in a somewhat different form by Chuokoron-Shinsha as Noryoku Kochiku Kyoso: Nihon no Jidosha Sangyo wa Naze Tsuyoi no ka

Published 2006

A Nagging Sense of Job Insecurity: The New Reality Facing Japanese Youth
by Genda Yuji (Associate Professor, University of Tokyo)

Translated by Jean Connell Hoff.
Tokyo: I-House Press, 2006. Second edition. 218 pages, paper.
1,400 yen
ISBN 4-903452-00-X C1036 Y1334E

A book informed by a single, clear vision, that clarifies with copious data the essence of various problems that beset Japanese society."
Ryu Murakami, Japan Mail Media (JMM), Weekly Report

"In all matters, [the author] brings a structural, empirical, multifaceted-in other words, fair-perspective to the work environment for today's young people, in which hitherto the only thing to be called into question has been their attitudes rather than the [socioeconomic] structure."
Koichi Yamazaki, Asahi Shimbun [newspaper]

"Makes clear with ample data that the main cause of youth unemployment is not change on the supply side, i.e., change in the behavior of young people, but rather change on the demand side; in particular, a situation in which the jobs of middle-aged and older workers are protected as a vested right has led to a drop in youth employment."
Fumio Ohtake, Nihon Keizai Shimbun [newspaper]

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Kabuki: Baroque Fusion of the Arts
by Kawatake Toshio (Professor Emeritus, Waseda University)

Translated by Frank & Jean Connell Hoff
2006. An enlarged, revised edition, 388 pages, color photos, paperback.
2,000 yen
ISBN 4-903452-01-8
Originally published in Japanese in 2001 by the University of Tokyo Press as Kabuki

"Kabuki became a world theatre in the second half of the 20th century, 350 years after its founding. In the 21st century, kabuki's value as a universal product of the human imagination and as a representative of a distinctively Japanese aesthetic sensibility will grow.
　　"Japanese theatre is a many-layered tradition that is not to be found in other countries; it flows on like a great river with many tributaries, and, thanks to its process of physical transmission, each genre of the traditional theatre parallels and coexists with the others without infringing upon them. The essence and form of this tradition is unlikely to change so long as Japan itself exists. And as kabuki, grounded in tradition, proceeds boldly forward into the new century along its dual pathway, its distinctly Japanese beauty will be disseminated to the rest of the world, and kabuki will continue to move and entertain audiences in Japan and worldwide."
From the afterword

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The Japanese House: In Space, Memory, and Language
by Nakagawa Takeshi (Professor, Waseda University)

Translated by Geraldine Harcourt
2006. An enlarged, revised version, 282 pages, paperback, color photos.
2,000 yen
ISBN 4-903452-02-6
Originally published in Japanese in 2002 by TOTO Shuppan as Nihon no Ie: Kukan, Kioku, Kotoba

Architectural historian Takeshi Nakagawa revisits Japan's traditional domestic architecture in twenty-five essays illustrated gorgeously with color photographs. The essays take on a personal warmth as the author recalls, for example, taking a nap on tatami shaded by reed blinds while "the din of cicadas would seem to pause for a moment as an occasional cool breeze blew."
　　Nakagawa demonstrates alarmingly how the quality of life has suffered in Japan's transition from traditional residential architecture to modern, and he offers concrete and realistic proposals for restoring some traditional amenity in a modern context. His book is a feast for the eyes and a treat for the inquisitive mind of anyone interested in Japanese architecture, culture, or history or in comparative architecture in general.

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Shrinking-Population Economics: Lessons from Japan
by Matsutani Akihiko (Professor, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies)

2006. Second edition, 214 pages, paperback. 1,500 yen
ISBN 4-903452-03-4
Originally published in Japanese in 2004 by Nihon Keizai Shimbun as Jinko Gensho Keizai no Atarashii Koshiki

Japan's population has been aging for years. And now it is shrinking. A smaller and older workforce will mean a decline in productive potential. Declining tax revenues will starve already-strapped municipalities. Regions and industries accustomed to subsisting on public works spending will lose their traditional grubstakes. Japan's pension and health insurance programs will become unviable.
　　Akihiko Matsutani offers a refreshingly informed and far-reaching account of the economic and social implications of the demographic change under way in Japan. He exposes the futility of widely proposed measures for forestalling population and economic shrinkage, such as encouraging larger families and encouraging an influx of foreign workers. Matsutani urges Japanese, instead, to learn to live with a smaller, older population. Most strikingly, he argues persuasively that population shrinkage and aging promise to redress the great tragedy of Japan's postwar economic surge: the failure of economic growth to deliver commensurate improvement in the quality of life.

Forthcoming books

Newly available from the LTCB International Library

The following eight titles, originally issued exclusively on a noncommercial basis, are now available for sale.

Lectures on Modern Japanese Economic History 1926-1994
By Nakamura Takafusa (Professor Emeritus, University of Tokyo).
1994. 336 pages, hardcover. Y3,465 ISBN 4-924971-00-6

Beyond the Full-Set Industrial Structure: Japanese Industry in the New Age of East Asia
By Seki Mitsuhiro (Professor, Hitotsubashi University).
1994. 172 pages, hardcover. Y2,100 ISBN 4-924971-01-4

The Economics of Work in Japan
By Koike Kazuo (Professor, Hosei University)
1995. 304 pages, hardcover. Y3,150 ISBN 4-924971-02-2

The Japanese Market Economy System: Its Strengths and Weaknesses
By Tsuru Kotaro (Senior Fellow, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry).
1995. 166 pages, hardcover. Y2,100 ISBN 4-924971-03-0

Shaping the Future of Japanese Management
By Tsuchiya Moriaki (Professor Emeritus, University of Tokyo) and Konomi Yoshinobu (Professor, Keio University).
1997. 264 pages, hardcover. Y3,150 ISBN 4-924971-04-9

The Japanese Family System in Transition
By Ochiai Emiko (Professor, Kyoto University).
1997. 210 pages, hardcover. Y3,150 ISBN 4-924971-06-5

The Economics of Development Assistance: Japan's ODA in a Symbiotic World
By Nishigaki Akira (Former President and Chairman of the Overseas Ecomomic Cooperation Fund) and Shimomura Yasutami (Professor, Saitama University).
1999. 332 pages, hardcover. Y3,150 ISBN 4-924971-05-7

The Postwar Conservative View of Asia: How the Political Right Has Delayed Japan's Coming to Terms with its History of Aggression in Asia
By Wakamiya Yoshibumi (Managing Editor, Asahi Shimbun [newspaper]).
1999. 382 pages, hardcover. Y3,150 ISBN 4-924971-07-3

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