Dear Colleagues,

Please allow me to announce the recent publication of my book, Lifelong
Learning in Neoliberal Japan: Risk, Community, and Knowledge.

Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN13: 978-1-4384-5787-1

A book description follows:
Akihiro Ogawa explores Japan’s recent embrace of lifelong learning as a
means by which a neoliberal state deals with risk. Lifelong learning has
been heavily promoted by Japan’s policymakers, and statistics find
one-third of Japanese people engaged in some form of these activities.
Activities that increase abilities and improve health help manage the
insecurity that comes with Japan’s new economic order and increased
income disparity. Ogawa notes that the state attempts to integrate the
divided and polarized Japanese population through a newly imagined
collectivity or the New Public Commons, a concept that attempts to
redefine the boundaries of moral responsibility between the state and
the individual, with greater emphasis on the virtues of self-regulation.
He discusses the history of lifelong learning in Japan, grassroots
efforts to create an entrepreneurial self, community schools that also
function as centers for problem solving, vocational education, and
career education.

http://www.sunypress.edu/p-6115-lifelong-learning-in-neoliberal.aspx

Regards,
Akihiro Ogawa, Ph.D.
Professor of Japanese Studies
Asia Institute
University of Melbourne, Australia