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GARON, Sheldon Molding Japanese Minds: The State in Everyday Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.
Sheldon Garon, Professor of History at Princeton University, describes in his 1997 book, Molding Japanese Minds: The State in Everyday Life, how the Japanese government strives to both shape the behavior of its citizens and promote policies for the strengthening and enrichment of the nation through widely based moral suasion campaigns. Japan's strong commitment to social management, Garon contends, is the key factor in explaining how resource-poor Japan became Asia's first modern military and economic power. Garon chronicles the development of social management in Japan over the course of the twentieth century through four case studies of moral suasion campaigns by the Japanese government on matters of gender, sexuality, welfare and religion.
Garon suggests that the Japanese government's successful management of society in the modern era rests in part "on its ability to combine the mission to modernize and Westernize everyday life with the statist objectives of extracting savings, improving the quality of the work force, and maintaining social harmony." (p. 21) These goals have been accomplished through a series of "moral suasion" campaigns where the people were exhorted to save more money, buy fewer imports and work harder to avoid relying on public assistance. Perhaps the key to social management is the ability of the Japanese government to obtain the enthusiastic participation of a myriad of private groups incorporating large segments of the population in its ambitious programs to manage society.
Garon's studies of women and brothels are fascinating. He demonstrates how the Japanese government, realizing the critical role women play in every aspect of society, has mobilized the millions of women who belong to local women's associations in every Japanese neighborhood as "ground troops" in campaigns to promote household saving, discourage the use of credit cards, and the assistance of police in crime prevention. The employment of women in brothels, while discouraged today, once was seen as an important instrument for strengthening the nation. Licensed prostitutes served to satisfy the urges of husbands and thus preserved family units. They also enabled single men to forgo marriage, thus reducing their need to support families and so reducing aggregate national consumption.
Garon also deals at length with the Japanese government's...