A View from a Historical Sketch of Japanese Sociology

Abstract

Sociology in Japan developed rapidly after World War II. In those days, the prevailing view was that the modernization and democratization of Japanese society was an urgent task, and the field of sociology was expected to be useful in investigating various pre-modern problems that were still extant, especially in villages and families, and in contributing to their solutions. Thus sociology, centering on rural and family studies, showed a tendency toward a practical policy science. At the same time, under the influence of American sociology, structural-functional theory and mass society studies were introduced and widely accepted.

During the 1970’s, however, structural-functionalism gradually lost its appeal, along with its adversary, Marxist sociology. Instead, various new perspectives such as symbolic interactionism and phenomenological sociology came to the forefront, and research subjects became more diversified. Studies on the post-industrial consumer society proliferated and led into the post-modernist trends of the 1980’s. Together with these trends, the steady progress of globalization after the 1990’s threatened the basic premises of sociology. On the other hand, the collapse of Japan’s economic bubble and the nuclear accident, etc. led Japanese sociology to the restoration of the practical and policy-oriented interests that had been kept at a distance since the late 1980’s.

With this historical sketch of Japanese sociology in mind, and in reference to Burawoy’s concept of “public sociology” and Janowitz’s “engineering vs. enlightenment” models, it is suggested that the disciplinary ambiguities of sociology can be seen as a source of the discipline’s revitalization.