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Few things make Japanese adults feel quite as anxious today as the
phenomenon called the “child crisis.” Various media
teem with intense debates about bullying in schools, child poverty,
child suicides, violent crimes committed by children, the rise of
socially withdrawn youngsters, and forceful moves by the government
to introduce a more conservative educational curriculum. These
issues have propelled Japan into the center of a set of global
conversations about the nature of children and how to raise them.
Engaging both the history of children and childhood and the history
of emotions, contributors to this volume track Japanese childhood
through a number of historical scenarios. Such
explorations—some from Japan’s early-modern
past—are revealed through letters, diaries, memoirs, family
and household records, and religious polemics about promising,
rambunctious, sickly, happy, and dutiful youngsters.