Japan's New Middle Class

Japan’s New Middle Class: The Salary Man and His Family in a Tokyo Suburb by Ezra F. Vogel is a landmark sociological study that captures the rise of white-collar life in postwar Japan. Drawing on immersive fieldwork in the suburban community of “Mamachi” between 1958 and 1960, Vogel examines the everyday rhythms, aspirations, and anxieties of the sarari man and his family. He situates their lives within the broader transformation of Japanese society—from the devastation of war and scarcity to rapid industrial growth, bureaucratic expansion, and the emergence of consumer modernity. By detailing school pressures, workplace hierarchies, consumer culture, and family relations, Vogel traces how middle-class patterns of security, conformity, and aspiration redefined Japan’s social order. At once intimate and analytical, Japan’s New Middle Class portrays the salary man not only as an individual economic actor but as a cultural symbol of stability and ambition in a rapidly changing society. Vogel explores themes such as the “examination hell” that governs educational mobility, the new domestic arrangements that reconfigure gender and generational authority, and the sense of security and constraint that life within large organizations provides. In doing so, he illuminates how Japan’s postwar prosperity depended on the accommodation of tradition to modern institutions, and how the family became the linchpin connecting personal aspiration with national growth. This richly detailed ethnography remains a foundational text for understanding Japan’s postwar transformation and the lived realities of its middle-class citizens. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1963.