Straitjacket Society: An Insider's Irreverent View of Bureaucratic Japan
by Masao Miyamoto
32 Members (2.75)
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"A book that could have easily been called Games Japanese Play, Straitjacket Society delves beneath the surface of ready smiles and gentle manners to look at the underlying code of Japanese life, which is nowhere more apparent than in the halls of power." "Almost overnight Masao Miyamoto attracted worldwide attention by pointing out the arcane - and often archaic - code of life inside one of the world's most powerful institutions, the Japanese bureaucracy. "Don't take vacations, don't be show more late, and don't initiate anything new" are the three basic rules of survival, Miyamoto says, and to understand the implications of this attitude is to understand not only the Japanese bureaucratic monolith but Japanese society at large." "His tales of life inside this secretive institution have struck a deep chord at home and abroad, where the American-educated Miyamoto is seen as the most trenchant "insider" critic of the Japanese establishment to come along in decades." "Dr. Miyamoto joined Japan's Ministry of Health and Welfare in 1986, after eleven years of practicing and teaching psychiatry in the United States. Even so, he was not prepared for the realities he witnessed within the walls of the bureaucracy, where laws are drafted, politicians controlled, and Japanese policy irrevocably decided." "In Straitjacket Society Miyamoto crosses every line of acceptable behavior within the "closed society" of the bureaucracy: he relentlessly questions, often in hilarious detail, the Japanese proclivity for groupism, "voluntary" overtime, conformity, insularity, suppression of individualistic tendencies, and the frantic need to maintain the status quo." "Breaking the "code of silence," Dr. Miyamoto explores, in a way no outsider could achieve, the foibles and power-plays of this all-pervasive institution that controls everything from health policies to trade barriers. He creatively uses his penetrating knowledge of social psychology to analyze the group mentality prevalent in the Japanese bureaucracy and some of the problems it causes. Through anecdotes of his personal experiences, he demonstrates why Japan's bureaucracy must change if it is to deal with the complexities of today's global realities. The result is an unusually illuminating - and eye-opening - glimpse of how Japan's most powerful institution actually operates."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved show lessTags
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21+ Works 67 Members
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, Sociology, General Nonfiction, Politics and Government, Biography & Memoir
- DDC/MDS
- 306.0952 — Society, government, & culture Social sciences, sociology & anthropology Social Behavior - Dating, Marriage, Divorce Social history Asia Japan
- LCC
- JQ1629 .E8 .M5913 — Political Science Political institutions and public administration (Asia, Africa, Australia, Pacific Area, etc.) Political institutions and public administration (Asia, East Asia
Statistics
- Members
- 32
- Popularity
- 879,727
- Rating
- (2.75)
- Languages
- English, French, German, Japanese
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 5
