Mark Jones is Professor of History at Central Connecticut State University.

This extremely well researched historical study of the intersection of ideology, politics, and family in modern Japan explores the emergence of a political discourse that supported the construction of a middle class in early-20th-century Japan and details the centrality of child rearing in that discourse...Throughout the book, readers get a clear sense that the Japanese family system is not simply a product of random social forces but was consciously invented to achieve specific political and ideological aims. An excellent work of interest to scholars of Japan, gender studies, and child development.

• Introduction: Childhood, the Middle Class, and Modern Japan Part I: The Emergence of a Late Meiji Middle Class 1. The Moral and the Material: The Family Reformer and the Promotion of a Middle Class 2. The Public Professional and the Middle Class: The Scientific Expert's Quest for Social Influence 3. The Wise Mother and the Little Citizen: Building a Middle Class Part II: Remaking the Middle Class in Taisho Japan: Education, Play, and New Visions of Childhood 4. The Self-Made Woman and the Superior Student: Transgressive Femininity, Educational Achievement, and Meritocratic Modernity 5. The Childlike Child: Play and the Importance of Leisure Epilogue Notes Works Cited Index