A Sociology of Happiness: Japanese Perspectives (review)

This slim volume, unlike most of the books reviewed in this journal, is not mainly concerned with Japan, although the picture on the front cover shows images of Daikoku and Ebisu (not only Ebisu, as explained on the back cover), two of Japan's seven gods of good luck, and thus it appears in a Japanese disguise. It is the first English-language report on the 21st Century Center of Excellence (COE) Program entitled "The Study of Social Research for the Enhancement of Human Well-being: Construction of a Society that Values Cultural Diversity," which started in 2003 at Kwansei Gakuin University. Kenji Kosaka, professor at the Graduate School of Sociology and Social Work, is not only the editor of this volume, but also program director of this COE.

The "center of excellence wave" reached Japan in the 1990s and has swept over the country's learned institutions since then. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, in 2002, based on a report from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology titled A Policy for the Structural Reform of Universities, the 21st Century COE Program was established in order to

cultivate a competitive academic environment among Japanese universities by giving targeted support to the creation of world-standard research and education bases (centers of excellence). By thus raising the standard of both education and research at them, the program seeks to elevate Japanese universities to the world's highest echelons, while fostering people of talent and creativity who will be qualified to assume roles as world leaders.

(http://www.jsps.go.jp/english/e-21coe/index.html)

The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) is responsible for the program, while the program committee was chaired by Esaki Rona (Leo Esaki), the 1973 Nobel laureate in physics.

This committee in 2003 included the social sciences in its program and nominated 26 COEs in 13 universities, 17 programs in 8 national universities and 9 in 5 private universities. While most of these COEs in the social sciences are in law, politics, and economics, two are in sociology and one is in social welfare. The COE on which this report is based is the only sociology COE from a private university (http://www.jsps.go.jp/english/e-21coe/04_I.html), demonstrating the high standard of sociology at Kwansei Gakuin University. Daidō Yasujirō and Tsuganezawa Toshihiro are just two of the better-known sociologists who worked at this university. These 26 COEs, which receive ¥100 to ¥500 million annually, were selected from among 105 applications.

A look at the website of the COE reveals that A Sociology of Happiness is a translation of the first volume of a new journal, Senpan shakai kenkyū (Advanced social research), which appeared in 2004 as a special number with the title Kōfuku to fukō no shakaigaku (A sociology of happiness and unhappiness). This journal's title is also the title of the new English book series, which seems to have been established only to report the findings of this COE. Three other volumes have appeared in Japanese: two are concerned with research methods, while the latest one is about spirituality and happiness (http://coe.kgu-jp.com/jp/thesis/).

The book starts with a short introduction by COE leader Kenji Kosaka, which is followed by eight contributions by team members, all of whom are members of either the Graduate School or the School of Sociology and Social Work of Kwansei Gakuin University. All authors have PhDs: three from Kwansei Gakuin, one each from the University of Tokyo and the University of Kyoto, and three from foreign universities: Pittsburgh, Wisconsin-Madison, and Paris VII. These backgrounds are clearly above average compared to other professors of sociology in Japan and certainly one indicator of academic excellence.

In his six-page introduction, Kosaka defines two views of happiness, which he calls the "active" and "passive" views. The first holds that happiness can be obtained by actively searching for...