This work aims to show that Japan even at it's height of success, while the successful version of capitalism was blighted at it's core, being unsustainable. This revised edition features n introduction which gives an analysis of Japan's contemporary crisis.

Against the powerful image of Japan as a rising economic superpower, or even, in Ezra Vogel's influential formulation a deade ago, "Japan as number 1", this book explores the fragility, hubris and human and environmental costs of Japan's desperate drive for hyperdevelopment. As this economic superpower finds itself drifting, rudderless, through the decade, four seminal events seem to emblemise the enveloping crisis: the Kobe Earthquake, which the author shows to be no mere act of nature, but an event whose consequences are intimately bound up with desperate hypergrowth; The Ayum Rikyo poison gas attack, which struck at Japan's sense of security in its deepest senses (psychological and moral, as well as physical); the collapse of the LDP single-party rule after nearly 40 years, plunging Japan's superstable political system into crises manifested by implausible coalition with little more than a thirst to rule in common; and Japan's inability to come to terms with war respnsibility ever after 50 years, best symbolised by the Comfort Women issue and the government's hapless attempt to come up with an appropriate formula for recognising, apologising and making amends for wartime aggression and crimes. Gavan McCormack addresses these issues - which are political, economic, social cultural and moral in the most profound sense - directly in this book.

Now in a thoroughly updated edition, Resistant Islands offers the first comprehensive overview of Okinawan history from earliest times to the present, focusing especially on the recent period of colonization by Japan, its disastrous fate during World War II, and its current status as a glorified US military base. The base is a hot-button issue in Japan and has become more widely known in the wake of Japan's 2011 natural disasters and the US military role in emergency relief. Okinawa rejects the base-dominated role allocated it by the US and Japanese governments under which priority attaches to its military functions, as a kind of stationary aircraft carrier. The result has been to throw US-Japan relations into crisis, bringing down one prime minister who tried to stop construction of yet another base on the island and threatening the incumbent if he is unable to deliver Okinawan approval of the new base. Okinawa thus has become a template for reassessing the troubled US-Japan relationship-indeed, the geopolitics of the US empire of bases in the Pacific.

"Sandakan Hachiban Shokan" received the Fourth Oya Shoichi Prize for Non-Fiction Literature and it has been translated into Korean and Chinese, and a movie based on it, "Sandakan Hachiban Shokan Boyoko", was produced by Kumai Kei in 1974.

This work aims to show that Japan even at it's height of success, while the successful version of capitalism was blighted at it's core, being unsustainable. This revised edition features n introduction which gives an analysis of Japan's contemporary crisis.

Japan's Contested Constitution is essential reading for anyone with an interest in Japanese domestic politics and the international role of Japan. Subjects covered include;
* the no war, `pacifist' clause
* tension between the constitution and the US-Japan security treaty
* the political import of the constitution for Japanese political parties
* the significance of the constitution for the Japanese people

This book makes available in English the four key proposals on constitutional reform already in the public domain in Japan. The book is unique in that it is the only book to bring together these documents (some of which are presented in English translation for the very first time) all in one volume. These proposals form the backdrop against which the constitutional debate will evolve. Hook and McCormack place these documents in their historical and contemporary context, providing an analysis of their meaning in the development of postwar thinking on the constitution. They introduce the constitution and explain the government's established interpretation of the key clauses subject to controversy, going on to provide a thorough analysis of the differing interpretations of these clauses. Subjects covered include;
* the no war, `pacifist' clause
* tension between the constitution and the US-Japan security treaty
* the political import of the constitution for Japanese political parties
* the significance of the constitution for the Japanese people

Japan's Contested Constitution is essential reading for anyone with an interest in Japanese domestic politics and the international role of Japan.

"Sandakan Hachiban Shokan" received the Fourth Oya Shoichi Prize for Non-Fiction Literature and it has been translated into Korean and Chinese, and a movie based on it, "Sandakan Hachiban Shokan Boyoko", was produced by Kumai Kei in 1974.

In this his latest work, Gavan McCormack argues that Abe Shinzo's efforts to re-engineer the Japanese state may fail, but his radicalism continues to shake the country and will have consequences not easy now to predict. The significance of this book will be widely recognized, particularly by those researching contemporary world politics, international relations and the history of modern Japan. McCormack here revisits and reassesses his previous formulations of Japan as construction state (doken kokka), client state (zokkoku), constitutional pacifist state, and colonial state (especially in its relationship to Okinawa). He adds a further chapter on what he calls the 'rampant state', that outlines the increasingly authoritarian or ikkyo (one strong) turn of the Abe government in the fifth year of its second term. And he critically addresses the Abe agenda for constitutional revision.

Now in a thoroughly updated edition, Resistant Islands offers the first comprehensive overview of Okinawan history from earliest times to the present, focusing especially on the recent period of colonization by Japan, its disastrous fate during World War II, and its current status as a glorified US military base. The base is a hot-button issue in Japan and has become more widely known in the wake of Japan's 2011 natural disasters and the US military role in emergency relief. Okinawa rejects the base-dominated role allocated it by the US and Japanese governments under which priority attaches to its military functions, as a kind of stationary aircraft carrier. The result has been to throw US-Japan relations into crisis, bringing down one prime minister who tried to stop construction of yet another base on the island and threatening the incumbent if he is unable to deliver Okinawan approval of the new base. Okinawa thus has become a template for reassessing the troubled US-Japan relationship-indeed, the geopolitics of the US empire of bases in the Pacific.

This wide-ranging and innovative collection of essays addresses the Japanese dimension of one of the major sociological issues of our time: the nature of socio-economic modernisation and the emergence or otherwise of 'post-modern' industrial society. The rise to economic supremacy of post-war Japan constitutes an enormous challenge to that western orthodoxy which posits an essentially unilinear process of modernisation from the seventeenth century to the present day in which national and regional diversity has been eroded by the gradual social convergence of the major industrial powers. How does a society of contrasting social and cultural traditions fit within this pattern? Can one sensibly speak of Japanese society as 'modern' when such usage is effectively defined by other, western, presuppositions? In this volume an international team of contributors assesses these questions and investigates the real impact of modernisation upon the Japanese themselves.

This book challenges the conventional view of Japanese society as being monocultural and homogenous. Unique for its historical breadth and interdisciplinary orientation, this study extends from the prehistoric phase to the present. It challenges the notion that Japan's monoculture is being challenged only because of internationalism, arguing that cultural diversity has always existed in Japan. It is a provocative discussion of identity politics around the question of "Japaneseness". The paperback edition has a new epilogue.