Tokugawa background : the ideal and the real -- The mid-century crisis -- The early Meiji Revolution -- The 1880s and 1890s : defining a Japanese national identity -- Late Meiji : an end and a beginning -- An emerging mass society : demands for equity and the dilemmas of choice -- Contesting the modern in the 1930s -- The dark valley -- "Enduring the unendurable" and starting over in the "new" Japan -- Conflict and consensus in the 1950s -- The "economic miracle" -- and its underside -- The "rich country" -- The "lost decade" -- Whither Japan?

1. Japan -- Social conditions