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The accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station resulted in 170,000 evacuees, and 10 years on their number still exceeds 40,000. The Japanese government set the standards of compensation that it ordered TEPCO to pay evacuees. However, many evacuees are dissatisfied with the compensation amount and by the absence of a government apology, with some 15,000 people filing 28 lawsuits against TEPCO and the government. Based on the statements submitted to the court and on our questionnaires, this paper seeks to establish a "life document" of 171 evacuees from 54 households who filed a complaint with the Kyoto District Court. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1957, Japan launched its first experimental nuclear reactor, the JRR-1, in Tōkaimura (Ibaraki). The bedrock of the Japanese nuclear industry, it introduced the famed BWR technology--also used in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant--and the training of the future workers of a flourishing industry. Based on the premise that the Fukushima accident was in part caused by the nuclear village--a system created with the commissioning of JRR-1 reactor in Tōkaimura--this paper analyses how the national newspapers covered the launch of the first Japanese reactor, and how the remaining media records suggest that the Fukushima nuclear accident falls within the continuity of earlier policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Tōhoku Pacific Coast earthquake on 11 March 2011 severely disrupted transport networks, suddenly jeopardising a large part of Japan, and prompting authorities to take fast action. Refugees and inhabitants of the affected areas were forced to adapt their transport needs. This unprecedented situation laid bare the need for a more resilient Japanese transportation infrastructure in order to significantly improve physical and social reconstruction capacity during an emergency situation. This paper analyses the damage and impact of the disaster on transport and its energy infrastructure, reviews the measures adopted, and assesses past and acquired resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Itō Toyō (born in 1941) is in the vanguard of a professional lineage that includes numerous eminent architects from the Heisei era. This paper focuses on that era to draw attention to the continuities observed in the way several generations of architects represent their work, and therefore how they design them. By contemplating their drawings and models, we can identify how they apprehend the definition of the borders of space in ways that are unique to their time. Transmission through the graphic medium provides a singular reading of the legacies at play and at times reveals unexpected elements of permanency in the formal topologies of works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the relationship between convenience stores (konbini) and individualisation in contemporary Japanese society. As a retail form, konbini provide convenience in the form of a time and space which not only their goods, but also their organization type and information technologies make possible. They thus give birth to a new style of consumption, networked consumption. Social life that has "individuals" as its main unit will expand by relying on the "consumption networks" formed by konbini. We point out that the circulation of individuals and networks produced by these modern Japanese convenience stores defines the outer edges and interior of the society called Japanese, by referring to the two "outsides" of America and Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many European companies adapted and distributed Japanese cultural products for young French audiences long before Japanese government institutions promoted "Cool Japan" as a policy targeting the growth of cultural industries. They used different strategies depending on market developments and public reactions. This paper adopts a historical perspective to detail these different approaches to making manga and anime suitable for the French market, with a focus on translation and marketing policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Meiji 20s (1887-1896), the political development of an "Edo style" came about as a form of resistance to Europeanisation policies and reflected a desire to preserve national characteristics. Although the phenomenon has been analysed in studies of Japanese nationstate building, in which Edo culture created unique "Japanese traditions" and thus united the country as a nationstate, its commercialisation has not been fully explored. This paper thus examines the mechanisms and impact of the Mitsukoshi- led commercialisation of this "Edo style" from the late Meiji period to the Taishō period (early 20th century). More specifically, it focuses on the boom in Genroku patterns after the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) and popularity of the Edo style in Taishō daily life and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article adopts a competence- based approach to legal education in order to examine how innovative legal training can be developed in Japan using moot courts, legal clinics and project- based learning frameworks. While in practice few law professors consider the need to target specific professional abilities in their teaching, this paper examines the possibility of creating an overarching competency framework to support contemporary legal education. In contrast to the"laundry lists" sometimes mentioned in the existing literature, such a framework could build on the distinction between two categories of skills seen in the global context, namely "globalised domestic legal skills" (i.e. skills that appear similar to domestic legal skills but work differently in the global context) and "global legal skills" (i.e. skills that are distinctively global). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an extract from Geopolitics of the Visual City (2015), published in Japanese by the sociologist Yoshimi Shunya, in which the author draws on the work of Michel Foucault and Jonathan Crary to explore not how people's gaze has been reconstructed in modern times, but how the reorganisation, redistribution and disciplining of the gaze fundamentally informs the way modernity is experienced in cities. The aim is to document a veritable epistemological change: namely, that the city has ceased being driven by architectural principles and now conforms to the demands of visual media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explore what impact the changes in Japan's energy policies have at the local level, focusing in particular on how environmental planning and experimentation affect the structuring of the urban tissue. Using the example of Yokohama, a city with a proactive approach to energy, and its "smart community" project, I will show that local action on energy issues relies not only on incentive measures via energy planning that blends local and national initiatives, but above all on a growing use of experimentation. I will also examine the impact of local energy management systems and question how sustainable they are in an experimental context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2013, with the city's 2002 urban renaissance policy seemingly having reached its limit, Tokyo won its bid to stage the 2020 Olympics. The city plan was modified, with Olympic clusters replacing the special zones of urban redevelopment. However, the highly selective, centrally concentrated nature of urban renaissance and Olympic infrastructure has created a two-tier city, provoking debate over what David Harvey calls the spatial fix, i.e. the temporary spatial solutions adopted by capitalists to save their assets from a downward spiral in values. This paper will examine the assumed continuity between the 2000s (urban renaissance) and the 2010s (Olympic development) and discuss the pertinence of the term spatial fix in Tokyo. It will formulate the idea of a trend fix to debate the uneven development associated with the Olympics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The thought of philosopher Nakai Masakazu (1900-1952) has exerted a quiet but enduring influence on Japanese culture for more than half a century. Nakai began his career studying Kant, discovering in the process Cassirer. But there is also a Marxist dimension to Nakai's writings. This paper focuses on his links to thinkers from the Frankfurt School, who were presented in Sekai bunka (World Culture) as early as 1935. It attempts to understand how and in what sense Nakai's thought can be said - as has been the case since the late 1950s - to provide a model of contemporaneity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maruyama Masao wrote his most politically engaged texts between 1946 and 1951. "en a 30-year-old scholar and recently returned soldier, he was popular with readers who had also fought in the war. Yet he never enjoyed the same level of influence as his more experienced peers in the intellectual community. He retired from the public debate in 1952 due to ill health and, except for a short period around 1960 when a new Japan-United States security treaty was signed, devoted himself to academic pursuits. Maruyama's fragmentary statements were widely reported and collections of his writings became bestsellers. He came to be seen, somewhat erroneously, as the representative thinker of Japan's postwar democracy. Ever since, the Maruyama legend has been the focus of both criticism and praise, going beyond his original intentions. Using an approach borrowed from the sociology of knowledge, this paper seeks to examine the issues of social cognition and political engagement in his work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of how films— mainly Japanese but also Chinese, American and European—were received by the people of Taiwan between 1895 and 1945 is of particular interest due to the island being under colonial rule during this period. This paper seeks to illustrate how, during the colonial period, the Taiwanese did not reject otherness but rather assimilated it by way of a unique process I term "assimilation by confrontation". This process saw the appearance of cinematographic events in which the colonised population appropriated such foreign productions. To rephrase, film reception in Taiwan during the colonial period was not that of a nation-state but that of a colonised territory. I aim to explore how such a difference in film reception in a colonial context was possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How was World War I represented in the Japanese press? How was it turned into a media event by journalists? As the journalism industry expanded rapidly and newspapers debated the "World War", the Asahi Shimbun dispatched two correspondents, Sugimura Sojinkan (1872-1945) and Ōba Kakō (1872- 1924), to cover the events unfolding in Europe. World War I was thus an opportunity for East Asia to picture the "world" in a global sense. This paper, which is based on war reports and debates on journalism, examines how the press provides readers with a fictional reality constructed from testimonies from the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exploration of the Southern Islands was the result of a comprehensive survey conducted in Okinawa on the eve of the Sino-Japanese War. Commissioned by the Home Ministry to promote the sugar industry in the southern islands, Sasamori Gisuke recorded his daily observations on the social and economic life of Japan's newest prefecture. His work must be understood as a part of the government's efforts to control these territories and populations, but if it is still known today, this is due to the fact that modern ethnologists like Yanagita Kunio saw in Sasamori a pioneer of their discipline. This paper aims to reconsider Sasamori's diary in order to shed light on his motivations and the context in which he wrote. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies were written on World War I in Western countries in 2014; however, most focused on the main warring nations and overlooked the countries of East Asia. Beginning in 2007, the Institute for Research in Humanities at Kyoto University conducted a seven-year research programme on the political and cultural transformations brought about in Europe and East Asia by WWI, which ushered in the contemporary era. This paper discusses the impact of WWI on China, colonial Korea and Japan, and provides a digest of the themes explored in the Institute's research with regards East Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jean Ray (1884-1943), the sociologist, law professor and Doctor of Law, was an important bridge between France and Japan during the interwar period. A supporter of imperial Japan and its military expansion, Ray remains important today due to his works on contemporary Japan, from the early Meiji era through to Pearl Harbor, an attack he fully condoned. Although Ray is known for his studies on French law, this article will analyse his historical papers as well as his political and legal assertions. I will attempt to shed light on French historical studies on Japan during the interwar period as well as on relations and understandings between the two countries during the age of colonial empires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]