This book provides a comprehensive review of a broad range of issues around housing, care and inheritance in the United Kingdom and Japan. Based on a thorough review of existing evidence and new empirical findings, the book draws on a mix of quantitative and qualitative research to explore and compare changing attitudes and practices in this field. Such a study is very welcome given the relative lack of empirical data on inheritance and family relations, combined with a relative lack of studies comparing East Asia and the West. Alongside this international comparison, the book also examines change over time and so deals with these important and complex issues from several perspectives.

Chapter 1, on intergenerational reciprocity, also draws on various academic disciplines, including anthropology, sociology and economics, to discuss the degree of solidarity, ambivalence and conflict within families over care and inheritance issues. Izuhara makes the point that there has been considerable change in Japan, from a traditional familist culture to a more individualistic one. This change is evident from attitude surveys and in the decline in the co-residence of successive generations. There has also been some breakdown in the traditional expectation that the eldest son should be the heir to the parents' wealth. These changes seem to have been the result of the new civil code, introduced immediately after the Second World War, ‘to democratise’ the family, which also removed the oldest son's legal priority in relation to inheritance. Izuhara points to the persistence of some traditional attitudes and behaviours, however, and suggests that while legal/policy change can have some effect on practices, such effects are not immediate or universal. ‘Convergence’ is discussed in this chapter and throughout the book. Izuhara's conclusion is that there has been some international convergence in policy and practice, for example around home ownership and state support for long-term care, and some convergence in terms of leaving inheritance to children equally: but that differences between countries also remain. One example is the increase in numbers of complex families in Britain, which make decisions about inheritance less simple: Japan does not (yet?) have so many complex families to muddy the inheritance waters.

Chapters 3 and 4 consider, in turn, the global context and the shifting responsibilities of state and family around long-term care. There is some overlap between these chapters, which discuss the growth of home ownership and house prices in recent years and the impact of demographic change – ageing, low fertility, multiplying complex families. The legal context around care and inheritance are also mentioned here. Although Japan reformed its laws in this field following the Second World War, it still prescribes responsibilities for care and inheritance to a greater extent than England and Wales (which allow citizens to exercise almost total freedom over who will receive any inheritance).

Chapters 5–7 turn to Izuhara's own empirical research on housing wealth accumulation, family relations and inheritance. This research suggests some differences in the ‘meaning of home’ between the United Kingdom and Japan, with the home seen more as a family asset in Japan, particularly among older generations – but younger generations appear to be more in tune with the growing Western view of housing as an asset that belongs to the individual or couple but not the family more broadly. Attitudes to home ownership also seem to be changing in Japan as young people seem less enthusiastic for home ownership, given housing market volatility. Here, it seems, Japan is ‘ahead’ of the West, as attitudes also seem to be shifting in Britain since the credit crunch. The book presents a number of surprising findings, not least that those children who were not looking after their parents tended to agree that any siblings who did provide care should get more inheritance. Whether this was due to gratitude, generosity or guilt is difficult to say.

This is an excellent book for anyone with an interest in issues around housing, care and inheritance. It provides a comprehensive and up-to-date review of existing research alongside new empirical insights. The international and historical comparisons provide much food for thought, particularly in relation to that complex issue of convergence. Like any good book, it left me wondering about further questions. Why is convergence taking place? Is further convergence inevitable? What are the underlying drivers of changing policies, attitudes and practices? Perhaps Izuhara's future work can explicate these fundamental questions still further.