Böcker av Merry White

Are Japanese families in crisis? In this dynamic and substantive study, Merry Isaacs White looks back at two key moments of family making in the past hundred yearsthe Meiji era and postwar periodto see how models for the Japanese family have been constructed. The models had little to do with families of their eras and even less to do with families today, she finds. She vividly portrays the everyday reality of a range of families: young married couples who experience fleeting togetherness until the first child is born; a family separated by job shifts; a family with a grandmother as babysitter; a marriage without children.

Describes the youth culture of Japan, drawing comparisons with the interests and activities pursued by teenagers in the United States and the contrasting attitudes of adults in Japan and the U.S. towards adolescence.

Part ethnography, part memoir, this book traces Japan's vibrant cafe society over one hundred and thirty years. It also traces Japan's coffee craze from the turn of the twentieth century, when Japan helped to launch the Brazilian coffee industry, to the present day, as uniquely Japanese ways with coffee surface in Europe and America.