Japan's New Middle Class

This classic study on the sociology of Japan remains the only in-depth treatment of the Japanese middle class. Now in a 50th-anniversary edition that includes a new introduction by William W. Kelly, this seminal work paints a rich and complex picture of the life of the salary man and his family. In 1958, Suzanne and Ezra Vogel embedded themselves in a Tokyo suburb, living among and interviewing six middle-class families regularly for a year. Tracing the rapid postwar economic growth that led to hiring large numbers of workers who were guaranteed life-long employment, the authors show how this phenomenon led to a new social class, the salaried men and their families. It was a well-educated group that prepared their children rigorously for the same successful corporate or government jobs they held. Secure employment and a rising standard of living enabled this new middle class to set the dominant pattern of social life that influenced even those who could not share it, a pattern that remains fundamental to Japanese society today.

Ezra F. Vogel is the Henry Ford II Professor of Social Sciences Emeritus at Harvard University. Suzanne Hall Vogel (1931–2012) was a psychotherapist with University Health Services at Harvard University. William W. Kelly is professor of anthropology and Sumitomo Professor of Japanese Studies at Yale University.