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In 2016, Sanrio debuted a series of shorts featuring Retsuko, a cute lesser panda with a penchant for bursts of death-metal infused violent rage. The shorts, eventually transformed into a full show on Netflix, were a comedic look at Retsuko's anger at unfair treatment in the Japanese workplace, casting a critical eye on issues of sexism, harassment, and overwork. But while Retsuko has been explicitly positioned as counter cultural, what does it mean to be transgressive and Sanrio? This paper analyzes this question from a cross-disciplinary perspective, drawing on critical feminist studies, rage studies, media studies, and sociolinguistics. Approaching the framing, content, and speech of Retsuko throughout her media appearances, we argue that while Retsuko is certainly critical of contemporary Japan, her transgression is ultimately limited, with any potential paths to freedom or rebellion hampered by a corporate system that reabsorbs transgressive behavior and sells it back to customers, closing off the potential to imagine new ways of being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractIn our paper, we focus on the relationship between female civic engagement and subjective well-being. Based on qualitative interviews and participant observation in a rural area in southern Japan, we illustrate three ways in which these two phenomena can be conceptually linked. Against a background of ongoing demographic decline in many parts of rural Japan, we discuss how women have been building networks to engage in their neighbourhoods and how their joint activities are closely linked to their living environments and their roles within the community. Our analysis of their activities shows that (a) making others happy, (b) acting for oneself, and (c) the process of acting with others all have a beneficial impact on subjective well-being. In this regard, our findings support relational approaches to subjective well-being. More specifically, the reciprocity of well-being within social relationships helps to explain how civic engagement leads to higher well-being in rural Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Japan, the so-called neoliberal-inspired transition generally refers to an ideological agenda. However, one should distinguish between neoliberal reforms carried out in accordance with a political agenda and the genuine local evolution of ideas based on the influence of foreign thinkers. By leveraging key notions such as 'individual responsibility' (jiko sekinin), 'self-help' (jijo), 'mutual aid' (kyōjo) and 'public aid' (kōjo), this paper accounts for older roots of Japanese-style neoliberalism. It highlights how, throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, predating current liberal norms, certain notions preceded contemporary liberal ideas and served as a discursive framework, while others became intertwined with 'foreign' ideas as they permeated the political discourse. It illuminates how shorter-term politics characterized by conflicts of interest and political strategies fit within longer-term political notions and their ideological evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The origin and purpose of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution seem shrouded in secrecy. This paper places Article 9 in the context of the UN Charter and peace constitutions which were emerging globally that aimed to limit state sovereignty in favor of international organization and the renunciation of war in the aftermath of WWII (Schlichtmann 2009b). It is a provision the Japanese people have upheld for more than seventy years. With the gradual return of block confrontation during the 1990s and the revival of the 'balance of power' concept, however, Japan came under pressure to change its Constitution and participate in military defense alliances. This has led to a noticeable shift in policy. Although Shidehara Kijūrō (1872–1951) had been well-known and respected for his peace diplomacy as foreign minister during the interwar period, it soon became expedient to deny him any direct involvement in the drafting of Article 9 when he was Prime Minister after the war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the changing informal views of Japan held in Britain in the decade after 1931. It investigates the relationship between understanding and policy, and how the needs of policy, most significantly the subordination of Asia to Europe, impinged on understanding. In looking in microcosm at where Japan Watchers, made up of newspapermen, missionaries and businessmen, interacted with formal diplomats and government officials, this paper focuses on the lectures and journals of learned societies in London, especially the Royal Central Asian Society, which served as one conduit through which knowledge of Japan passed to an audience with a regional interest. A wider audience was reached through newspapers. In trying to influence the reading public, the importance of ideas having to resonate with the concerns of the reader is stressed. It is emphasized that influence on perception is often dependent on a particular time. The views of Old China Hands came to supplant those of Japan Watchers in influencing the British image of Japan by the late 1930s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that commodities such as blinds, flooring materials, and food supplies are valuable historical sources for understanding the power of Heian and Kamakura royal women. Vases and bowls excavated from the Noto Peninsula, for example, show that Premier Royal Lady Kōkamon-in (1122–1181) played an important role during the twelfth century in starting Suzu stoneware production at her Wakayama Estate and stimulated interregional commerce. From this growing industry, she gained economic benefits and strengthened her political networks. Another contemporary female landlord, Senyōmon-in (1181–1252), implemented a due-collection plan for obtaining material objects that maintained the livelihood of her palace. Mundane items including household furnishing articles supported her economic well being while buttressing her political and cultural influence over the course of her life. By collecting various items from her estates, such as blinds, curtains, and mats, she supported her adopted children and widened her human networks. With the effective use of such material goods, she could seek political allies and align with leading courtiers who participated in decision-making meetings at court. As a whole, the above case studies show that series of innocuous data such as excavated ceramic pieces and recorded object types can be used to reveal a level of significant cultural, political, and religious influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political trust has long been presented as a key social determinant of pandemic resilience in public health by facilitating public cooperation with government instructions. During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, countries where citizens had relatively low levels of trust in government tended to see higher numbers of infections and deaths. Yet Japan's public health response to COVID-19 complicates a straightforward relationship between political trust and successful pandemic response, presenting something of a paradox. Trust in government, very low by international comparison, was compounded by a lack of state authority to enforce its public health recommendations. Nevertheless, it appears that initially, most people followed government advice, particularly politicians' calls for jishuku ('self-restraint'). This paper explores the Japanese government's response to COVID-19 and places the concept of jishuku in historical context, arguing that it represents a complex dynamic that includes expectations about the solidaristic behavior of imagined fellow citizens, stigmatization and social coercion, and government appeals to ethnonationalist identity that together may have helped overcome low trust in government. 'Compliance' itself is complicated in this picture, with compliance with individual measures dependent on the dynamic tension between a variety of different factors beyond political trust alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the writing on labor market flexibilization focuses on non-regular employment, this ethnography of precarious work explores one overlooked aspect, the experiences of increasingly precarious young regular workers. These jobs take the form of standard employment, but workers are often subjected to even more precarious and exploitative working conditions than non-regular workers. Drawing on the case of Japan, a seemingly unlikely place to observe such a development, this article has three aims. First, it clarifies the underlying mechanisms of labor exploitation in precarious regular employment. Second, it illustrates these mechanisms at work by examining the experiences of young workers. Third, it explores the potential of such young workers to disrupt these mechanisms through an individualistic form of collective action. The paper illuminates that, in the context of labor market flexibilization, inequality of security exists not only between standard and non-standard employment but also within standard employment arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to examine the ongoing discourse on children's rights and related attitudes towards individualisation and risk in contemporary Japan's education system. The paper is also interested in how this discourse is translated into concrete change. The concepts of ‘children's rights’ and ‘risk society’ both have their origins in Western conceptions of the relationship between the individual and society, and the place of children and young people in that society. This paper explores the way that these concepts have been transformed by their adoption into domestic Japanese discourse on education reform. After a discussion of how the classical liberal concepts of positive and negative human rights can be applied to the specific case of children's rights, the discussion moves on to show how this debate has developed in Japan since the 1980s. Then the paradigm of the ‘Risk Society’ is introduced and the concepts of ‘positive risks’ and ‘negative risks’ are explored, first with reference to schooling in Western countries and then in relation to Japan. Finally, the relationship between risk, rights and neoliberalism is discussed, and it is shown how Western notions of individualisation have met strong resistance from various actors on both sides of the political spectrum. In the case of the Japanese education system, the shift of responsibility from state bureaucracies to individuals and private-sector organisations that is predicted by Risk Society theory has only partially taken place. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this article is to provide a fuller picture of the organized abortions on Japanese female repatriates that took place within the repatriate medical relief under occupation of the GHQ. It also analyzes how the government carried out illegal abortions prior to the de facto legalization of abortion by the Eugenic Protection Law of 1948. This article suggests that the government justified abortions for societal reasons, such as rape, or for eugenic reasons, which were illegal at the time, by broadening the interpretation of caring for the mother's health and treating societal and eugenic reasons as medical reasons. In so doing, the paper examines the issues of historical continuity and discontinuity in Japan's modern history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extracurricular clubs are widely believed to be an important part of education in Japan, and Japanese students devote an enormous amount of time and energy to them. Until recently, however, there has been very little research examining either the content or the outcomes of participation in such clubs. In this paper, based on a nationally representative survey of Japanese high school seniors (n = 3753) we examine the relationship between participating in extracurricular clubs and Japanese students' self-concepts. Our findings demonstrate that students who join extracurricular clubs have more positive self-concepts than those who do not join clubs, and students in sports clubs have higher self-concepts than students in non-sports clubs. This paper, therefore, offers important data for scholars interested in non-academic aspects of Japanese education in general, and demonstrates the impact that extracurricular activities have on Japanese students' self-concepts in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan is one of the richest democracies of Asia, a pillar of the international liberal order in the region, and a strongly pacifist nation with the only anti-war constitution in the world. It is also one of three major countries which have elected to incorporate human security principles as intrinsic components of foreign policy. However, its implementation of human security principles in some areas, especially refugee policy, belies its rhetorical commitments; it boasts the lowest number of refugees among all industrialised nations. What explains this discrepancy? Through a comparative study of the Indochinese and the Rohingya refugee crises, this study aims to offer a corrective and a supplement to Sarah Tanke's work (2021) by arguing that despite Japanese officials' championing of a human security narrative in the international arena, the gap between declaration and implementation, especially regarding the human security of displaced persons in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond, points to their instrumental use of such a narrative to avoid international censure and free ride on the international asylum regime. It further investigates the domestic political, social and psychological factors modulating this behaviour, and argues for a broader role for international pressure in order to bring about policy change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the fundamental changes which are currently taking place in Japanese higher education. These changes are seeing the development of what has been dubbed the 'third generation' of Japanese universities which can no longer rely on student fees and government support to survive and need to find other ways to generate income. The paper shows how the different responses of Japanese universities to these new challenges is leading to an increasingly diversified higher education sector with major implications for the future of teaching, research and administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines lifelong learning in contemporary Japan, considering first various conceptual, policy and practical aspects before contextualizing the reality of the relevance, focus and sustainability of lifelong learning in a rural Japanese setting by detailing lifelong learning as directed by Aomori Prefecture, Hirosaki University and in a special program of Hirosaki City. On the basis of this contextualization, the paper concludes by proposing that the lifelong learning sector that is emerging in Japan can be organized on the basis of four overlapping orientations: one based on personal interest for the 'hobbyist' as life- long learner, a second based on the lifestyle and contemporary issues concerns of the 'resident' as lifelong learner, a third through meeting the knowledge and skills needs of the 'careerist' as lifelong learner and the fourth through a specialized themes curriculum for the 'activist' as lifelong learner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By relating the stamp issues made during the period 1937-89 to the changing Japanese political environment, this paper identifies themes in their designs which involve attempts by government to redefine Japanese national identity and Japan’s desired role in the world. The paper suggests why certain other themes, which might have been expected to be prominent, were virtually missing from these stamp issues. The roles of politicians, civil servants and artists/designers in the creation of designs are described. The problems of analysing images on stamps for their social significance, involving theories of symbolism and semiotics aswell as of the anthropology of art, are briefly explored and the choices made for this analysis of their apparent themes are explained. Before the extent and nature of their social agency can be properly assessed, this research needs to be extended to include assessments of how the users of these postage stamps, both in Japan and abroad, interpret and act on their designs. It is also noted that, as a result of stamps becoming a part of material culture, there is a different social agency in their collection which further research may show results in new forms of social bonding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As there are many anthropologists in Japan, including those who work elsewhere, the focus here is largely on foreign anthropologists who choose Japan as a field, and whose numbers have increased exponentially during the working lifetime of the author. The perspective is from Europe, but the vital cooperation of local anthropologists in Japan is acknowledged from the outset. The paper recounts ways in which these anthropologists have themselves cooperated, reviews a selection of the theory and ethnography they have espoused, and demonstrates the importance of anthropology as a discipline essential for a good understanding of Japan and its inhabitants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the historical transformation of urban outcaste areas into commoner neighbourhoods in early modern/modern Japan. Focusing on Tokyo's largest early modern outcaste community, an Asakusa area referred to as Shinchō (literally ‘Newtown’), the paper argues that a combination of factors, namely the historical processes of urbanization, status group consolidation, labour specialization, capital accumulation, and inter-status group network creation, created an elite stratum of neighbourhood residents who were reasonably well-integrated into the broader social and economic landscape of Edo by the late Tokugawa period. This movement towards desegregation in turn laid important foundations for the later administrative and conceptual incorporation of the Shinchō area into the broader metropolitan area. Wide-ranging entrepreneurial activities by members of this elite class in the early Meiji period further built on and propelled these changes although they also facilitated their eventual exodus from the community. Proto-capitalist development, however, while clearly capable of inducing an emancipatory effect for some key elites figures and while enabling the neighbourhood itself to become more closely identified with an emerging working class Asakusa, also worked to create a substratum of people subjected to a compounded form of discrimination that took place along both traditional status and newly emerging modern capitalistic lines. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Kyoto has become synonymous with heritage tourism on a mass scale. Most accounts emphasize the role of Kyoto as the ancient capital, the arts and crafts that developed in the service of the court, and the wealth of temples and shrines. Yet, this article analyses the ways that Japanese historical events from the Bakumatsu era are represented, packaged, and consumed in contemporary Kyoto. Through a case study of two sites dedicated to the life and death of Sakamoto Ryōma, it is argued that the nostalgia exemplified in these sites is not one of pre-modern heritage, but the emergence of modern Japan. The sites examined here commemorate and commodify an important national moment, one that combines the bravado of samurai culture with the import of modern ideals. Through a pastiche of artefacts and experiences these sites recreate Ryōma's story for a contemporary audience, lauding the turn to modernity through Ryōma as the quintessential young hero who embodied new global values. Thus, with Ryōma at the fore, this paper analyses the ways that heritage sites mobilize specific moments in history to construct tourist sites and visitor experiences, and how those places take on new meanings within the context of contemporary Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the emergence of post-disaster ‘voluntours’ following Japan's 2011 disasters. An overwhelming, yet haphazard volunteer response to previous disasters spurred extensive collaboration between the state, relief organizations, and would-be volunteers in the wake of 3.11. However, when mapped onto to the massive devastation of the 3.11 disasters, this collaboration almost immediately turned many post-disaster volunteers into ‘voluntourists’, a problematic category commonly associated with visitors from the Global North volunteering for social and environmental causes while on holiday in the Global South. Japan's post-disaster voluntours demonstrate how uncoordinated and potentially risky volunteers have been channelled into a carefully-controlled and long-term response that satisfies people's desire to help disaster victims, while ultimately encouraging tourism (sansvolunteering) as the most desirable form of disaster recovery assistance. This shift toward voluntourism potentially undermines post-disaster volunteering and threatens to trap parts of Tōhoku, like other disaster sites, in a position of permanently ‘post-disaster’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 2001 Tokyo and Brussels had very ambitious plans on paper for international economic, political and security co-operation when they adopted the so-called EU-Japan Action Plan for Co-operation (also EU-Japan Action Plan). However, to date, few of the envisioned joint international policies in the areas of global and regional politics and security have actually been implemented since 2001. The EU Commission has repeatedly referred in its recent so-called ‘information notes’ and official documents to the outcome of envisioned joint EU-Japan policies as being ‘disappointing’, acknowledging that the Action Plan suffered from a lack of focus and sought to tackle too many issues and areas without sufficient resources and adequate instruments. Without dismissing out of hand the achievements of EU-Japan on-the-ground cooperation in the areas of international politics and security, much more could have been done together in international conflict prevention, peace-building and other areas of non-military security cooperation given the resources, instruments and capabilities available in both Europe and Japan. This article analyzes why this did not take place, and is unlikely to take place in the near future. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In recent decades, hundreds of studies have addressed connections between religious beliefs and behaviours and individual well-being in Europe and the US. There are only a handful of publications that examine these important links in Japan, however. In this paper, I rely on participant observation and in-depth interviews with some of the leaders of Kyoto's Gion Festival to illustrate associations between public ritual involvement and sense of self. Specifically, this paper is a sociological exploration of relationships between annual participation in the Gion Festival and self-esteem. In Japan, as in other cultures, self-esteem is an important component of well-being, and this study reveals that the men who are heavily involved in the rites, parades and other events of the Gion Festival have a positive sense of individual and collective self-worth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japanese naturalism continues to be typically thought of as a failed attempt to produce a Japanese version of Zola's pseudo-scientific deterministic naturalism. Alleged causes for this failure have been retrospectively produced, such as a lack of scientific tradition in Japan and the shortcomings of Japanese naturalists who confused naturalism and romanticism. In fact, not only was Zola's type of naturalism merely one of a range of very differing and influential French naturalisms, including for example Huysmans' 'spiritual naturalism', it was fundamentally and conceptually different from most of the many and varied types of naturalism which prevailed in Germany. German naturalism also contained elements of 'romanticism', such as assertion of the individual, subjectivity, defiance of convention, and a 'back to Nature' spirit. It even included Nietzsche. This complex, multi-faceted German naturalism was more influential than Zola was upon the (later) Japanese naturalists. This paper, focussing in particular on the leading naturalist writer Tayama Katai, provides clear evidence of the inappropriateness of overestimating the influence of Zola and underestimating that of German naturalism. It is puzzling that the negative view of Japanese naturalism as failed Zolaism still prevails, and the paper concludes by calling for a more positive reassessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper moves between text and context in order to trace the personal, familial and narrative connections between two women, Nakayama Suzuko (b. c. 1675), wife of a Mito domain official stationed in Edo, and her sister-in-law Kuroda Tosako (1682-1758), wife of an official of Tatebayashi domain. Drawing on four extant texts - two travel accounts and two diary/memoirs - the paper argues that, although marriage and family fundamentally shaped these bushi-class women's lives, these factors did not confine them to the home, but pushed them out into the world to act on behalf of their families as well as for their own enrichment and pleasure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan's first Western-style criminal law of 1880 is an odd mixture of 'old' and 'new'. The principle of legality ('no punishment without law') is laid out in this code for the first time in the country's legal history, while another mooted principle, legal equality ('everyone has to obey the same law'), is finally omitted. Instead, the law introduces new forms of legal inequality. This paper compares the law with one of its main drafts which still supports the two principles. The paper assesses the impact of the unequal treaties that Japan had signed with the Western powers in the 1850s in this development, and considers the difficulties the Japanese had in comprehending legal principle in relation to the role of the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the role of English in Japan, outlining its current status and use. The paper begins with a critical review of the World Englishes model as it relates to the categorization of Japan within the expanding circle of English use and continues with a brief history of English language contact with the country. It then examines the changing role of English in the Japanese education system and media. This is followed by a discussion of the influence of English on the Japanese language as well as the role which the English language plays within the discourses of nihonjinron and kokusaika. The paper concludes with a call for empirical research to be conducted investigating the spread, acquisition and attitudes towards English in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neo-liberalism refers to a public policy mix that is market oriented, pro-trade liberalization and advocates minimal state intervention in the economy. Japanese governance has arguably not been based on neo-liberal principles, and some see this as contributing to Japan's long-running recession. In 2001 Prime Minister Koizumi came to power promising neo-liberal reform. This paper presents a history of government involvement in the distant-water tuna longline industry and looks for evidence of neo-liberal reforms in fisheries, in terms both of observable changes to governance and of key stakeholders' receptiveness to neo-liberalism as visible in their representations of issues facing tuna fisheries. We find no evidence of neo-liberal reforms in this sector, and that key stakeholders show little sympathy with neo-liberal policy prescriptions, meaning they are unlikely to champion such reforms. This conclusion may be specific to fisheries since in Japan the political importance of food production and the iconic status of fish cuisine make the sector particularly susceptible to economic and cultural nationalism. In examining relations between industry and government the paper also highlights problems in Japan's co-management of fisheries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I use the Japan Chronicleas a reference point for the internal idea of Japan and the struggle to define it waged between the press and the government. In describing the underlying principles adopted by the Chronicle, I look back at some early moral and intellectual influences on Robert Young, its founder and first editor. I then compare the stance and behaviour of the Ōsaka Asahi Shinbunand the Chronicleon issues of press freedom, with specific reference to the White Rainbow Incident (hakkōjiken, also known as the Ōsaka AsahiIncident). I then analyze the differences between the two papers in their treatment of political affairs following the Manchurian Incident and show the Chronicle, the Japanese government and a supine Japanese press at the height of their three-cornered struggle for the internal idea of Japan. I conclude with historical observations on the foregoing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the transformation of male-to-female transgender identities in Japan since the Second World War. The development of print media aimed at a transgender readership is outlined, as is the development of bars, clubs and sex venues where transgendered men sought both partners and commercial opportunities. The origin of various transgender 'folk categories' such as okama , gei bōi , burūbōi and nyūhāfu is discussed and their dependence upon and relationship to the entertainment world is outlined. Finally, the paper looks at how the resumption of sex-change operations in Japan in 1998 has led to a new public discourse about transgender phenomena that utilizes a range of medical terminology. While the recent establishment in Japan of clinics for individuals who consider themselves to be transsexual is an important development, it is argued that other transgenders who identify with indigenous categories are sceptical about the new medical model which they regard as both reductionist and pathologizing, and that their experience should not be overlooked when giving an account of constructions of transgender experience in contemporary Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Revision of the Fundamental Law of Education (FLE) has recently become a key aspect of educational reform in Japan. The perceived need to enhance national solidarity through textbooks and the school curriculum is also evident in discussions surrounding educational issues in Japan and has been expressed in calls for greater patriotism and morality in society. This move towards developing a 'self-awareness of being Japanese' and a respect for traditional culture increased after the establishment of the Ad-Hoc Council in the 1980s and was later sanctioned with the passing of the National Flag and Anthem Law in August 1999. It is important to note that the Education Reform National Council's (ERNC) proposal to revise the FLE must be seen as essentially continuous with the Ad-Hoc Council's call for national integration, since the ERNC views the ideals of education expressed in the FLE as deficient in patriotism and social morality. In an attempt to understand the move towards the revision of the FLE, this paper examines the conflicts that animate the contemporary educational reform debate by scrutinizing the proposals for reconsideration of educational principles of post-war Japan. The paper argues that the revision of the FLE may threaten the democratic ideals of post-war Japanese schooling and result in greater educational inequalities along the lines of social stratification. The paper cautions against an unqualified commitment to the revision of the FLE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1930s and 1940s shaman hunts (yutagari) were conducted by the Japanese Special Higher Police in Okinawa, Japan's most southern and remote prefecture. This was not the first time that attempts had been made to remove these women from Okinawan society. The fact that theyutawere hunted down and incarcerated, driven underground, and in some cases executed says much about how influential and threatening Japanese authorities perceived them to be. At the end of the Battle of Okinawa, more than one quarter of all Okinawan civilians were dead, and in many cases their remains were unrecoverable due to the extent of the destruction. The absence of appropriate mortuary rituals and religious specialists to perform these rituals, many of whom had been removed by authorities, led to severe spiritual dislocation for many Okinawans. In the chaotic postwar environment a path was opened for the revival of the previously hunted shamans to treat those who had suffered physical, family and spiritual loss, through providing help for these clients in dealing with settling the unsatisfied dead. It also led to the emergence of the ‘new’yuta, those shamans who followed different routes to becoming religious advisors. This paper first outlines some of the circumstances that led to the shaman hunts, and then assesses the role of the Battle of Okinawa and its aftermath in rehabilitating shamanism in postwar society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The contamination of food with radionuclides has posed serious problems to consumers, producers and policy makers in Japan since the Fukushima nuclear disaster of March 2011. Many Japanese consumers were and still are worried about the safety of domestic food products. How did the nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima affect consumer trust in food safety regulation, and how did the Japanese government try to (re)establish consumer trust in its food governance system? Drawing on empirical data from a consumer survey, expert interviews and documents issued by the Japanese government and public authorities, this paper argues that existing institutions had difficulty handling the situation and rebuilding consumer trust. I will argue that consumers in Japan lack trust in government institutions and the food industry and that the government's risk communication was not suitable for rebuilding trust. This specific situation saw the emergence of new actors from civil society, such as citizens’ radioactivity monitoring stations (CRMS). These actors took over some of the functions of public authorities by providing information and monitoring food. I argue that they have the potential to build trust by fostering the participation of lay people and encouraging a more democratic discourse on food safety. Nevertheless there are some limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The content of Japanese history textbooks became the focus of much media and academic attention after the internationalization of the issue in 1982 when Japan was accused by the Chinese government of attempting to re-write its wartime invasion of China in school textbooks. The issue threatened to disrupt the celebrations for the tenth anniversary of Sino-lapanese normalization and, according to some observers, set back Sino-Japanese relations by ten years. In recent years Japanese textbooks have been seen in a more positive light, with progress being made on the inclusion of references to the comfort women and, more recently, Ienaga Saburō's partial victory in his long-standing legal battle with the government. Some have argued that it was the events of 1982 which sparked off the movement to 'liberalize' Japanese textbooks, and that after that date descriptions of Japanese wartime activities in Asia became more 'truthful'. This paper examines the events of the 1982 textbook issue, focusing on the response of the Japanese government to Chinese (and Korean) protests and assessing Japan's foreign policy making vis-à-vis China. Japanese governments are often considered to adopt a 'grovelling' foreign policy with respect to China, giving in to Chinese demands whenever the issue of 'history' is raised. This paper assesses the validity of this claim, using the textbook issue as a case study, and questions whether the textbooks really were radically altered as a result of this diplomatic controversy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of a collective project to map the Changes in the sense of vision and visuality in modem Japan, this paper focuses on theater and the environment around it, and asks what gender, sexuality and performance had to do with vision and visuality, as physical operation and as social fact. Examining the circulating images of women as performers and performers as women, this paper argues that a significant change occurred in Meiji Japan which aligned in new ways the categories of gender, sexuality, performance, visuality and the body. That alignment opened up possibilities for new forms of disciplinary control as well as for new forms of resistance and pleasure. These possibilities can be illustrated by the various versions of Oscar Wilde's Salome that came into view in Japan at the turn of the century, especially the competing performances of Kawakami Sadayakko and Matsui Sumako in 1914. Matsui Sumako's triumphant performance was paradigmatic and of the modern formations of visuality and gender, Salome's Dance of the Seven Veils' can be understood as a synecdoche for that formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The films of Japanese director Kurosawa Kiyoshi in the late 1990s and early 2000s capture the malaise of the ‘lost decade’ (ushinawareta jû-nen) of the 1990s, a period characterized by the end of an economic boom that propelled Japan through two decades of unprecedented prosperity. Facing the decline of high-growth, the country for the first time in two decades could no longer ignore the things that it had suppressed to realize progress: the failure of Japan's radical movements of the 1960s and early 1970s and their de-evolution into extremism. As the haze of prosperity dissipated in the early 1990s, Japan was again stunned by a violent uprising more than two decades after the collapse of the student movements – the Tokyo subway gassings in 1995, an event that many associated with the radicalism of the 1960s and 1970s. The attacks served as a reminder of the deep-seated social dissatisfactions that existed among the activist generation and the violence that results from extremism. Utilizing trauma theory, this paper will examine the way Japan's radical past is re-experienced in Kurosawa's films in the years following the gassings. Through an analysis of the cinematic style ofCharisma(Karisuma1999),Pulse(Kairô2001), and other cinematic works in light of their narrative references to radicalism, this article will flesh out the layered process through which Kurosawa's films engage the past while coping with the trauma of post-Aum Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines Japan's policy towards methamphetamine (Japanese:hiropon). Opium has been used in Japan for medicinal purposes since 1722. However, it was strictly controlled. The result was that drug abuse was minuscule. This changed with the introduction of methamphetamine. During the Second World Warhiroponwas given by the military to fighter pilots and the signal corps in order to help them stay awake and alert. After 1945, the large military stockpiles of methamphetamine found their way onto the black market. With society in chaos, drug abuse spread rapidly and ahiroponepidemic emerged. The introduction of a comprehensive anti-drug package in the mid-1950s, including stricter laws, resulted in that abuse having been almost totally eradicated by 1957. Around 1970 a new wave of abuse (‘the second epidemic’) began. It peaked around 1985, after which abuse tampered off, albeit slowly. A temporary increase in the mid-1990s made Japanese authorities declare the emergence of ‘the third epidemic’ that is still said to be ongoing. Official statistics show, however, that Japan has not seen any such epidemic. In comparison with most other Western countries, methamphetamine abuse in Japan is modest. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper offers a critical examination of ‘Shin-manshūkoku to ha donna tokoro ka’ (What kind of place is the new Manchuria?) a roundtable talk (zadankai) published inNyonin geijutsu(Women's arts) in 1932. The discussants included an eclectic mix of literary feminists and their male supporters from literary and political backgrounds. The combination of the literary with the personal accounts of the participants provides a candid background of the social milieu as well as the misconceptions and prejudices of the Japanese people during a tumultuous time in Japanese history. The relaxed exchange of ideas on Manchuria also provides an insight into the personal travel experience of Japan's literati in relation to the Japanese expansion into China and provides a fascinating insight into the zeitgeist of Japanese colonialism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article explains the evolution of Japanese technology from handwritten documents to printed ones as of June 2019. Topics discussed include the preference of Japanese workers for handwritten office documents, their use of mimeograph to reproduce copies, and the role that manuscripts play in the Japanese book culture.

Research on the Japanese living in Manchukuo in August 1945 has generally fostered the assumption that all Japanese there wanted to return to Japan as soon as possible. Yet, some made the conscious and voluntary decision to stay, at least for the short to medium term. Among those who chose to delay repatriation were a number of technicians employed by Mantetsu's (South Manchurian Railroad Company) Chūo Shikenjo. This paper looks at the political and personal realities faced by these technicians when making their decisions as whether to stay or leave in terms of the concepts of voluntary and involuntary repatriation. It shows that the circumstances faced, and consequently the decisions made by the technicians, differed over time. It argues that there were three main reasons behind any decision to stay: pragmatism, a sense of responsibility for Japan's activities during the war and a sense of loyalty. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

While Japan has led the world in certain high-technology industries, such as automobiles and electronics, it has remained a minor player in the global pharmaceutical industry. Japan's leading pharmaceutical firms invest less in R&D and record lower sales than leading global firms. Japan remains a net importer of pharmaceuticals and few Japanese drugs are found outside the country. The global pharmaceutical industry is led by firms from the United States, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, rather than those from Japan. This article explains why the pharmaceutical industry has remained largely in the second tier of Japan's dual economy. For the purposes of this paper, the dual economy refers to the pronounced divide observed between the globally competitive and non-competitive sectors of the Japanese economy. Japan's pharmaceutical industry long subsidised other sectors, including those in the competitive tier, by providing medicines at low prices for a universal health care system. This played a critical role in shaping the industry's domestic orientation. While no single reason explains why pharmaceuticals did not become one of Japan's first tier industries, the major reasons lay in the smaller size of Japanese firms, the lack of R&D incentives, and the government's protectionist policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current 'spiritual boom' represented by the phenomenal popularity of spiritual counsellor and television personality Ehara Hiroyuki provides evidence that the 1980s media-based religious boom in Japan did not come to an end in the aftermath of the terrorist act perpetrated by the new religious group Aum Shinrikyō. Today, however, the media focus seems increasingly to be falling on various therapies that have become objects of business transactions, which one Japanese researcher has vaguely referred to as the 'spiritual business'. The author of this paper, by examining the activities described as 'spiritual business' through an empirical study of practitioners active at the forefront of this phenomenon, narrows down the use of the term 'spiritual business' to the Ehara-inspired, independent professional spiritual therapists, and links their increasing number to two sociological factors: the sluggish Japanese economy and the commercialization of therapy as sacred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the world's largest creditor nation, with some of the world's largest banks and leading industries, Japan is often portrayed as an economic and financial superpower. With long-established 'Western-style' financial institutions to represent it in all the world's major financial capitals and markets, a technologically savvy Japan is often said to be positioning itself to lead Asia, the Asia/Pacific region, or even the entire world, into the marvels of the twenty-first century. Against this continuing rhetorical backdrop, however, fundamental questions arise as to Japan's ability to internationalize in today's increasingly globalized world economy. Domestically, only a very limited presence is permitted to the foreigner in the Japanese economy, especially in the commanding heights of finance. Japan's leading city and regional banks have only recently begun to offer services that have long been thought of as standard in other industrialized economies, such as foreign exchange, 24/7 ATM access, phone and internet banking, while they continue to pay customers for their 'service' with tissues and toilet paper. How, in what ways, and to what end, is Japan's business and financial world becoming international, or globalized, as it confronts the global financial crisis? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I discuss the conflicting views of Japan's mission in the world and national moral education held by Yamaji Aizan and Inoue Tetsujirō, two eminent intellectuals of the Meiji and Taisho periods. In doing so, I suggest that one can not understand the dilemma that Japanese intellectuals faced when they realized the limits of Meiji modernization if one simply labels them as 'nationalists'. Inoue Tetsujirō made a sharp distinction between Japanese culture and other cultures and regarded foreign countries as a threat to Japan. Inoue attempted to establish the Japanese spirit embodied in bushido as the basis of 'state-centred education' (kokkashugi kyōiku), while believing that Japan's mission was to spread this unique spirit to the world. In opposition to such arguments, Yamaji Aizan criticised Inoue's idea of Japanese cultural uniqueness, which he thought could hinder cross-cultural understanding. Yamaji was also opposed to Inoue's method of investigating Japanese spirit in history and utilising it as the basis of national moral education. Instead Yamaji asserted that there was a common humanity behind the different manners, customs and ways of thinking in each nation. Although often considered an imperialist, Yamaji believed that Japan's mission was to promote better cross-cultural understanding by removing prejudice and discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The east bank of Tokyo's main river, the Sumida, was lined on its northern stretch at Mukōjima by an embankment and by a series of temples, shrines and gardens that had been in the Edo period and continued into the Meiji era to be a favoured place for escape from the city and its physical and social constraints. In 1889, a large textile mill was founded at the embankment's northern end, and in the years that followed the area was largely industrialised. This paper traces this process of industrialisation and its culmination in the death of the cherry trees that lined the embankment as a result of flood and fire. It uses a variety of accounts to examine this process of marginalisation of a cultural landscape. In so doing, it reflects on some of the contradictory impacts of the process of urban modernisation and highlights the construction of a new riverside park and promenade in Mukōjima that incorporated the contradictory but classically modernist impulse to preserve the old while showcasing the new. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Faced with the demands of the rapidly ageing population, the Japanese government introduced Long-Term Care Insurance (LTCI) in 2000, which has led to a substantial debate over the effects of marketization on the quality of care and the universal availability of care. Eight years later, even as they note that there are problems with LTCI, many agree that LTCI has produced some positive results worthy of attention; most importantly it has helped establish a 'national consensus' that the care of the elderly is no longer just a family obligation. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that various types of private senior housing have become much more affordable and popular and can, in the author's opinion, play an important role in the socialization of care in the Japanese cultural context. Using a concrete example of a relatively well-functioning private senior home in the outskirts of Tokyo, the present paper will examine how care can be organized in a private regime with emphasis on the possible effect of marketization. To give my analysis a comparative and feminist perspective, I will draw on the international and Norwegian feminist discourse on the ethics of care in dependency work - an ethics that attempts to relativize hitherto undisputed concepts in public management such as equality and rationality by taking into account the necessarily specific nature of care, which resists generalization and standardization. The essay will try at the same time to assess the potential of and the challenges for LTCI in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I examine two major aspects of Satō Haruo's dystopian imagination as articulated in his absurdist, futurological story of 1929 titled A Record of Nonchalant, referring to the eponymous city in which the story was set. First, I trace how Satō experiments with the construction of a science-fiction-type dystopian world before the concept and the terms to express it gained acceptance in modern Japanese literature. Second, I place his story in the narrative upheavals of his time, when proletarian literature, mass fiction and modernist expressions were jostling for a place in the 1920s and 1930s literary scene. Much of so-called modernist literature was influenced by a fascination for the erotic, grotesque and nonsensical, or ero guro nansensu, aspects of interwar culture. Capturing a time when narrative modes were undergoing dramatic transformation because of the changed relationship between the production, distribution and consumption of literature, Satō uses the modernist idiom to construct a dystopia in which art becomes a mere commodity. In assessing the value and internal conflict of this minor work of a major writer, I hope to identify its relevance and legacy in Japanese modernist literature and, at the same time, to position it in the larger intellectual discourse of utopian/dystopian literature, which until now has been largely dominated by the West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To better convey the effects of rapid modernization, interwar Japanese authors adopted techniques that went beyond conventional literary realism. Nonsense was integral to this exploration. Uchida Hyakken of the elite bundan circle reacted to the inexplicable aspects of everyday life in his absurdist works, while Yokomitsu Riichi created new narrative structures. Popular authors also investigated the quotidian unknown through formal experimentation. In particular, some writers subverted aspects of the flourishing detective and science fiction genres. This paper discusses how Tokugawa Musei, arguably the most famous benshi or silent film narrator/commentator, undermined conventions of detective fiction by adding aspects of benshi narration to the typical formulae of detective novels. By doing so, Musei supplemented the main narrative with a perspective external to the diegetic narrative. This supplementation resulted in a nonsensical story that overwhelmed the reader with too much contradictory information and overturned the premises of logic integral to detective fiction. To illustrate Musei's techniques, I analyze his 1927 'The case of obetai buruburu', published in the magazine Shinseinen (New youth). Musei's absurdity and humor reveal the potentially deadening effects of literary formulae and show how rationalist epistemological assumptions of realist narrative fiction were too limited to depict the contradictions of urban life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article takes a new approach to the study of Natsume Soseki's Bungakuron (Theory of literature, 1907) by examining it in the context of the formation of 'literature' in late-Meiji Japan, with a specific focus on the development of national literary history (kokubungakushi) and rhetoric (bijigaku). The dialogue between Bungakuron and the context in which Soseki published the text is particularly important because it was a time in which the institution of 'literature' was beginning to take form in Japan. My paper examines Bungakuron's contribution to the realm of 'literature' and identifies how Bungakuron functioned as a criticism of how 'literature' was being conceived in Japan. The ultimate goal of my project is thus double: situating Bungakuron within the movement of literary formation and identifying how the text becomes a theory that critiques the trend itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reading One Wonderful Sunday (Subarashiki Nichiyobi, 1947) as counter-discursive film, this paper challenges humanist readings of the film to argue for a more critical commentary on the problematic postwar. The essay investigates the labels of 'pro-democratic' and 'compliant' director ascribed to Kurosawa Akira (1910-98), stemming from the reception of No Regrets for Our Youth (Waga seishun ni kuinashi, 1946). In light of Kurosawa's experience with negotiating censorship boundaries, the essay argues that Kurosawa's strategy should be read in terms of creativity and critique rather than mere compliance with external demands, with a close reading of One Wonderful Sunday providing evidence of critical construction. The film is placed in the context of SCAP policy to demonstrate that such 'problematization films' were not only useful to Occupation aims but welcome, seen as supporting the wider goal of rebuilding Japan in a realistic way. The essay concludes that simple binary expectations, attached to terms like censorship and non-censorship, discourse and counter-discourse limit our understanding of the complex censorship process. Once the contextual location of the viewer is taken into account, however, the seeming disjunction between non-censorship and counter-discursive film are seen to disappear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout its early history, kabuki was profoundly influenced by the Tokugawa bakufu regulations to curb its perceived immoral and decadent influence on society. This policy changed at the start of the Meiji era when the new regime, inspired by Western concepts of theatre as an integral part of civilized society, made efforts to embrace kabuki's potential as a morally didactic and educational entertainment. This paper investigates the political, historical and ideological background to the censorship codes of the 1870s and 1880s that sought to replace vulgar and historically anachronistic elements of the traditional stage with wholesome tales of honour and valour. It also examines official efforts to extend this censorial approach beyond textual matters so as to apply the bunmei kaika ideology to aspects as diverse as kabuki's architectural specifications and actors' private lives. The received wisdom is that official efforts to control kabuki were toned down after the first five years of the Meiji era. I will argue that politicians rather turned their attention from public announcements of regulations applicable to all kabuki theatres, and instead engaged in private encouragement of individual reformers based primarily at Meiji Tokyo's leading theatre, the Shintomi-za. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]