Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture, and Community in Interwar Japan

by Harry D. Harootunian and Harry Harootunian

Book Overview

In the decades between the two World Wars, Japan made a dramatic entry into the modern age, expanding its capital industries and urbanizing so quickly as to rival many long-standing Western industrial societies. How the Japanese made sense of the sudden transformation and the subsequent rise of mass culture is the focus of Harry Harootunian's fascinating inquiry into the problems of modernity. Here he examines the work of a generation of Japanese...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0691006504
• ISBN13: 9780691006505
• Release Date: October 2000
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Length: 480 Pages
• Weight: 1.94 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

an extremely difficult masterpiece

This book is essential reading for anyone trying to understand modernity and capitalism as a global phenomenon. However, if you are looking for information specific to Japan, this isn't the right book. Harootunian is consciously writing against area-studies specialization. Anyone trying to learn about the "Japanese case" will be disappointed. If you confront the book with an open mind (and a lot of patience to work through the myriad theoretical references), it could radically change the way you think.