Bringing together a number of perspectives on the Japanese housing system, Housing and Social Transition in Japan provides a comprehensive, challenging and theoretically developed account of the dynamic role of the housing system during a period of unprecedented social and economic change in one of the most enigmatic social, political, and economic systems of the modern world.

While Japan demonstrates many of the characteristics of some western housing and social systems, including mass homeownership and consumption-based lifestyles, extensive economic growth and rapid...