David Chiavacci, Review of Ishida and Slater (2010), to be published in Japan Forum: Journal of the British Association for Japanese Studies, 24 (4), 2012. Hiroshi Ishida and David H. Slater (eds.), Social Class in Contemporary Japan: Structures, Sorting and Strategies, Routledge, Oxon and New York, 2010, xviii+243 pp. Basically, there are two reasons to read a social science book: its topic is very timely, or it is a work of high quality. Fortunately for its readers, the edited volume by Hiroshi Ishida and David H. Slater on social class in contemporary Japan is both. For many decades, the view of Japan as an exemplary equal middle-class society (sôchûryû shakai) was hegemonic in academic research as well as in popular perception. However, since the late 1990s, a new discourse describing Japan as gap society (kakusa shakai) marked by increasing social inequality and new forms of social exclusion has become dominant and let to academic, public and political debates. Hence, this collection of papers about the relevance of social class in contemporary Japan taps right into the zeitgeist of new social differentiations. But in contrast to the often simplifying, lurid and even incoherent contributions in the debates on Japan as gap society, this volume consists of a number of well-thought and concise social-science analysis that do not take social class as the factor for explaining social mechanisms and developments, but consider carefully the interrelation and interdependence between social class and other factors. Moreover, the quality of this volume is also due to its internal structure and coherence. It is not simply a collection of loosely connected essays about a general topic as (too) many edited volumes are, but the essays follow an overall order and are linked through it. Hence, one could use this volume independent of its topic as a positive prime example for a well-structured edited volume of high quality in seminars. In the introduction, Hiroshi Ishida and David H. Slater discuss the history and new salience of class analysis in social science research about Japan. By adapting the work of Ira Katznelson, they develop a framework of four levels of analysing: class structure, class-differentiating selection, class-based socialization, and class strategies that shows the ambitious research program of this volume, which tries to overcome dualities like structure versus agency or quantitative versus qualitative approaches. The following eight essays are structured into this framework of four class dynamics. The first two analyse class structure and social mobility on the societal macro level. Hiroshi Ishida asks in his essay if social class really matters in Japan? As readers are used from his former publications, Ishida uses sophisticated quantitative analysis of representative surveys to answer this question. He shows that the Erikson-Goldthorpe-Portocarero classification model with its five classes is indeed a meaningful instrument to describe the overall structure and internal distribution of education, occupational prestige and income in Japan. Then in comparing intergenerational social mobility in Japan, Germany and the USA, he identifies some distinctive patterns in Japan in international comparison due to its fast post-war economic development and structural change, but shows also that social reproduction is today in Japan as in Germany and the USA still clearly identifiable. And subjective perception of one’s own social position is in all three countries