About Face: How I Stumbled Onto Japan's Social Revolution

In this myth-breaking assessment of life in Japan today, Naff presents a disturbing but ultimately positive depiction. He maintains that the country is still hugely misunderstood and he is well situated to describe its realities, as an American working for a Japanese employer-the Tokyo-based Japan Times-and as the husband of a Japanese (his wife is an architect). Naff intersperses an insightful history of the country with an account of his own life as husband, father and son-in-law of a Japanese family. We learn that Japanese women are so dissatisfied with the constrictions of marriage that they are divorcing at a high rate, or refusing to marry at all; that the once admired educational and managerial systems are crumbling; that the country is unprepared for the problems of its large aging population. But Naff also suggests that the still fundamental feudal structure of Japanese society is giving way and will eventually move closer to real democracy. (Oct.)