This book is an exploration that shows us how sentiment and duty form the core of Japanese culture. It looks at how the combination of common sense, culture, and social norms influence people's ways of thinking and behavior. Although the focus is Japan in looking at these interrelationships, the author draws on his experience and knowledge of other countries from his days before graduate school, when he traveled the world as a backpacker. Now, from the world of academia, he uses his knowledge of economic analysis to consider the similarities and differences in human behavior among countries and cultures.
The wide-ranging scope of the book takes in marital life, education, sports, business, and culture in modern Japanese society. Why, for instance, does linguistic heterogeneity generally have negative effects on FIFA rankings of national soccer teams, and what does this have to do with the difficulty of technology transfer among businesses in multilingual countries? Why was the demand for the film Bohemian Rhapsody, about the British rock group Queen, so high in Japan? How do Kazuo Ishiguro's novels resemble scenarios related to Japan's long-term public finance prospects? How does the depiction of contemporary life compared with "the old days" in the films of Yasujiro Ozu provide a cautionary tale for aging societies today? How are older people with grandchildren more likely to accept tax increases to support future generations? And how is the Japanese government actively drawing on behavioral economics to appeal to public sentiment to contain the spread of COVID-19.
These and a multitude of other questions are tackled by the backpacker who entered academia to become an economist and who now goes on a journey to find the answers. Readers can take the trip with him under his expert guidance, as he artfully combines sentiment, duty, and economic analysis.
Eiji Yamamura is professor of economics at Seinan-Gakuin University, in Fukuoka, Japan. He earned his B.A. and M.A. from Waseda University and a Ph.D. from Tokyo Metropolitan University in 1995, 1999, and 2004, respectively. He has been the executive director of the Association of Behavioral Economics and Finance since 2021. His research topics are behavioral economics, sports economics, income distribution, and household behavior. He has published over 100 papers in peer-reviewed journals including Regional Studies, Papers in Regional Science, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Population Economics, Journal of Economic Geography, European Journal of Political Economy, Review of World Economics, Review of International Economics, Economics of Education Review, Public Choice, Economics of Governance, Southern Economic Journal, Review of Economics of the Household, Kyklos, Journal of Cultural Economics, Journal of Sports Economics, Social Science and Medicine, Sustainability, and the Journal of the Japanese and International Economies.
He is also artist, and his tableau Madoi Bi ('A Day of Reflection') is on the cover of this book.
