Japan Office

Professor Kariya Book Launch: Who Killed Japan’s Modernity? What Comes after ‘Catch-up’?
Professor Takehiko Kariya, Professor in the Sociology of Japanese Society, Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies
Friday 6 December 2019

Professor Takehiko Kariya’s long awaited new book “追いついた近代、消えた近代” has recently been published by Iwanami Shoten. In the book Professor Kariya discusses how Japan has experienced the quest for modernity and how this quest has had an impact on social policy and national self-image.

In the post-war years the idea of catching up with the West was a national obsession in Japan, until finally in the 1980’s it was announced that the country had ‘caught up’. Exploring how intellectuals and policymakers have evaluated Japan’s march to modernity over the years, Professor Kariya describes how this mindset can be said to be at the root of a multitude of today’s social issues.

Takehiko Kariya is Professor in the Sociology of Japanese Society in the Social Science Division and the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies at the University of Oxford.  He is a Fellow of St Antony’s College.  He taught the sociology of education at the Graduate School of Education in the University of Tokyo before taking up his current post in Oxford in 2008.

Friday 6 December 2019
19:00 – 20:00
Lecture
UF Hall, Sanbancho UF Building 1F, 6-3 Sanbancho, Chiyoda ku, Tokyo
Map to lecture venue
The lecture will be held in Japanese with no English interpretation.
The book will be available for purchase at the event.

20:10 – 21:30
Reception
Tony Roma’s, La Mer Sanbancho, 6-4 Sanbancho Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo
JPY 3,500 (payable on the door)
Map to reception venue

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