Sheldon Garon

Who is Sheldon Garon?

Sheldon Garon is a Princeton University professor who has been described as "the world's leading historian on household saving." He is a member of both the Princeton history department and East Asian studies department. His field of interest centers on modern Japan, and particularly the relationship between state and society.

Born and brought up in Minnesota, he graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1973 and received a master’s degree in East Asian studies from Harvard in 1975, followed by a doctorate in history from Yale in 1981. His first book, The State and Labor in Modern Japan traced the history of the Japanese labor movement. In 1997 he published Molding Japanese Minds: The State in Everyday Life, an account of the Japanese state’s success at mobilizing its people to act in the perceived interest of the nation in, for instance, saving a high proportion of their income. The book shed new light on Japan's reluctance to embrace American-style deregulation and consumerism.