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Introduction: Citation analysis has been used to evaluate the impact of papers in medicine. There has been multitude of orthopaedic oncology-related papers in literature, to our knowledge no citation analysis of orthopaedic oncology papers has been performed. We identified the 50 most-cited orthopaedic oncology papers and evaluated these papers in terms of their time of publication, source journals, countries, institutions, authors, and main topics.Materials and Methods: Science citation index expanded was searched in April 2018 for citations of papers published in 77 selected journals since the beginning of the database. The 50 most-cited orthopaedic oncology papers were identified and evaluated.Results: The number of citations for the top 50 papers ranged from 168 to 1162 (mean 308). These papers were published between 1957 and 2010. 1990s was the most productive decade, with 19 papers of the list. All papers were written in English and they were published in a total of 6 journals. The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery-Am published the largest number of papers with 31, followed by Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research with 8. The top 50 papers were created mainly from US and Japan, respectively, with 33 and 5.Conclusions: It is difficult to define the exact impact of a single paper in the literature. In doing citation analysis, it provides us perspective in the history and progress of orthopaedic oncology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what degree are historical animosities regarding another country relevant for foreign policy in the face of changes in the security environment? This paper seeks to answer this question in the context of Korea–Japan relations. While pundits have pointed to the Korean public's negative views of Japan—rooted in the colonial experience—as the explanation for the lack of cooperation between Japan and Korea in the security field, this paper argues changes in the level of common external threat can shift the public's priorities from perceived historical injustices toward the needs of security. Surveys from the period when the security environment was shifting markedly—the final years of the Cold War (1986–1990)—reveal that public opinion regarding Japan relative to other powers in the region began to deteriorate only after the security environment improved, pointing to a limit to the extent that "history" trumps security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for the importance of transnational memories in framing Australian anti-nuclear activism after the Fukushima disaster. Japan looms large in the transnational nuclear imaginary. Commemorating Hiroshima as the site of the first wartime use of nuclear weapons has been a long-standing practice in the Australian anti-nuclear movement and the day has been linked to a variety of issues including weapons and uranium mining. As Australia began exporting uranium to Japan in the 1970s, Australia-Japan relations took on a new meaning for the Indigenous Traditional Owners from whose land uranium was extracted. After Fukushima, these complex transnational memories formed the basis for an orientation towards Japan by Indigenous land rights activists and for the anti-nuclear movement as a whole. This paper argues that despite tenuous organizational links between the two countries, transnational memories drove Australian anti-nuclear activists to seek connections with Japan after the Fukushima disaster. The mobilisation of these collective memories helps us to understand how transnational social movements evolve and how they construct globalisation from below in the Asia-Pacific region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how origami has been implemented, practised, and developed in the early childhood education of Japan over the past 140 years. Historically speaking, paper-folding has been part of Japanese symbolic art, craft culture, and religious ceremonial artefacts since paper and paper-folding techniques were first imported from China during the seventh century. By the eighteenth century, paper-folding provided a form of mass entertainment in Japanese society. During the 1870s, paper-folding was dramatically transformed into a pedagogical tool within Japanese kindergartens after Friedrich Froebel's (1782–1852) kindergarten system and its curriculum was transferred to Japan from the West. "Papier-Falten" (paper-folding) comprised an element of Froebel's Occupations – which was a series of handiwork activities – in his kindergarten curriculum, whereby various folding techniques and models were derived from European traditional paper-folding and introduced into a Japanese kindergarten curriculum that was associated with the concept of Froebel's kindergarten. Particularly seen in early childhood education in Japan, what we now call origami developed as a new form of paper-folding. This gradually emerged through the marriage of Western (German) and Eastern (Japanese) paper-folding cultures. The study highlights the benefits and uniqueness of cultural transmission and transformation when developing origami in early childhood education in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paul Natorp is better known as a key figure of Neo-Kantian epistemology than as a great educationist. This paper discusses the affinity for Natorp's theory of education in Japan in the first decades of the twentieth century. It presents an overview of Natorp's educational way of thinking and analyses the interest of Japanese educationists in the educational thought encapsulated in the conception of Natorp's educational theory, which he called Sozialpädagogik. Addressing the debate around Natorp's Sozialpädagogik within the Japanese national community of scholars, key points of the inception of the theory in Japan are examined, central scholars involved are identified, and the impact of Natorp's conception on the Japanese philosophy of education and educational practice is considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2020, the autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) has already become a vital part of deep-sea research. There is a long history of R&D of AUVs that dive into the deep sea, where radio waves cannot reach, thus making remote control difficult so that no help can be provided, which implies that careful and adequate preparation is necessary. Their successful development has been based on the accumulation of experience and achievements contributing to the remarkable results that no other system can produce. The aggressive R&D of Japanese AUVs started approximately 40 years ago. This paper looks back at this history and introduces various Japanese AUVs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gives an overview of the last 100 years of fluidization in the Japanese context. Japan was a relatively early adopter of the Winkler coal gasification technology in industry and an early participator in the formation of chemical engineering initiated in the United Kingdom and the United States. However, it was left far behind in the rapid development of fluidized catalytic cracking (FCC) technology in the worsening international relations of the 1930s. Academic research on fluidization and its applications, which had started with the development of FCC, did not start substantially in Japan until 1952, when the San Francisco Peace Treaty came into effect. In this paper, first reviewed is the global progress of chemical engineering and fluidization research, and further discussed is the three-stage scheme in the development of the knowledge of fluidization. Taking these as the background, we review first the pre-war and early post-war research situations, then, the formation of the fluidization community in Japan. Finally, the fully-fledged post-war research and technological developments with a brief look at the Japanese contribution to the above-mentioned global progress are reviewed regarding the three fields: energy-environment applications, catalytic reactors and numerical simulation. [Display omitted] • A review of 100 years' footsteps of Japanese chemical engineers. • Three-stage epistemological development of knowledge on fluidization. • Post war development of fluidization engineering both in academia and industry. • Fluidized-bed energy/environment and catalyst processes in Japan. • DEM-CFD model developments for fluidized bed simulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the introduction part of this paper, one will find definitions of terms Orient and Orientalism. Two conflicting views exist in Orientalism’s description – Edward Wadie Said (1935–2003) and George Paul Landow’s (1940) perspectives. An American movie intorduced to the public in 2013 47 Ronin is supposed to be an excellent example of Orientalism. It presents one of the most famous stories in Japanese history. In this film, we will find several orientalising elements, which are marked and subsequently analysed. One type of features offers a glimpse into the lives of samurai. An integral part of the movie are the Japanese martial arts and the fate of the ronin. It also points to the religious background of Japan. Despite all American filmmakers’ efforts to bring Japanese culture and historical events closer to the Westerners, there are moments in the movie that do not correspond to reality. The content and design are adapted to the eyes of the Occidental audience. This article therefore discusses the inspiration of Japanese culture and customs that used to be commonplace in the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how Nagasaki was reinvented from an imperial city to an “International Cultural, Christian city” and elicits the continuity of Japanese imperialism in postwar Nagasaki as well as the discontinuity between the war and postwar periods in the city. The paper seeks to determine what history and whose memory have been excluded or erased in the process of remaking Nagasaki into an international Christian city; it examines the particular historical and political conditions that enabled Nagai Takashi, Urakami Catholics and Kitamura Seibou’s Memorial Peace Statue to symbolize Nagasaki’s atomic bomb memory and postwar city identity as an “International Christian city” that “prays.” While Nagai is widely known as a spiritual, religious leader in postwar Nagasaki/Japan, and Kitamura’s Peace Memorial statue dominates Nagasaki’s commemoration space, this paper analyses how US dominance over Japan enabled the country to rehabilitate its imperial past and to revive the imperial legacy by appropriating the GHQ’s (General Headquarters of the Allied Powers’) demilitarization and Christianization policies. It argues that Nagasaki’s postwar reconstruction signifies the failure of what Kuan-Hsing Chen (2010) calls the “deimperialization” of Japanese consciousness and subjectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The book, The History of the Ouinkai, was published in 1940 as a commemorative project for the 60th anniversary of the Tokyo Higher Normal School for Women (THNSW). The purpose of this article is to illustrate the type of data collected in the surveys and their findings, to explore some of the activities of the association, and to discuss how the Ouinkai alumni association, in collaboration with THNSW, worked with female teachers nationwide. The paper traces some of the multi-norms and multi-roles for female teachers that THNSW promoted and their relation to norms thought to characterise 'ideal' Japanese women. The publication of The History of the Ouinkai was a milestone in Japanese women's education because it demonstrated the Ouinkai's successes in respect of Japanese educational policy for women as well as the leadership that the Ouinkai provided to female graduate teachers, whom it organised with skill. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The low number of female politicians in Japan is testament to the difficulties that women face in entering the political sphere. This paper analyses the life of Japanese actress, journalist, politician and activist Yoshiko Yamaguchi (1920–2014), in terms of her political career, to contribute to a deeper understanding of the way personal choices and characteristics, socioeconomic factors, macrosocial contexts and chance events shape life paths and possibilities. As a Japanese woman in Japan-occupied Manchuria, Yoshiko developed a unique cross-cultural identity and understanding which facilitated her movement through transnational spaces and her adaptability as she renegotiated her identity within different contexts. Yoshiko is a distinctive example as she successfully drew on these experiences to achieve her political goals of raising awareness about human rights issues and the harms of conflict. This paper suggests that women can enact agency within the political sphere but that few are able to do so effectively because they lack access to resources and opportunities through which to realise their political goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1905, Karafuto (Southern Sakhalin) became Japan’s second formal colony and the most sparsely populated territory in the Japanese empire. Despite its peripheral location and small population the colony was of important economic value, boasting considerable natural resources such as marine products, coal, oil and timber. This combination of richness and remoteness meant that enterprises in the colony faced an acute labour shortage. This paper examines the ways that enterprises operating in Karafuto sought to circumvent this problem by analysing the recruitment, management and maintenance of labour in Karafuto’s forestry and construction industries. It is found that a degree of coercion emerged at worksites in the colony, as management struggled to hold onto its workforce for the entirety of a project; however, coercion was not the norm and was strongly associated with specific recruitment grounds. Utilizing contemporary social research, colonial newspaper reports, oral testimony and other sources this paper finds that recruits from further afield were more likely to be involved in incidents of abuse than those in close proximity to Karafuto. Local connections, strength in numbers and mutual dependence of workers from these areas and Karafuto-based recruiters for work/labour served to reduce levels of conflict between the two parties. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Synopsis This paper begins to chart the history of the understudied topic of Indonesian activism for the so called ‘comfort women’ of the Japanese military from World War Two. It asks how and why activists in the specific historical context of New Order Indonesia, the cultural context of Indonesia, the global rise in human rights claims and a new openness to war redress in Japan were variously constrained and enabled in their advocacy. Drawing on recent research into the history of emotions and social movements the paper analyses how and why Indonesian activists appealed to certain emotions to gain support within Indonesia and Japan for compensation. A focus on emotions and the political and cultural contexts surrounding early Indonesian activism allows us to better understand the local framing, reception and outcomes of this global protest movement in Indonesia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1950s and 1960s, the modern Japanese state employed overseas cultural promotion as a way to maximise its interests and image not only in international contexts but also at home. By juxtaposing the Takarazuka Revue’s performances in the United States and Japan during the postwar period, this paper argues that the overseas promotion of this Japanese theatre troupe both depended upon and reinforced the Japanese populace’s nationalistic pride in its culture. The paper also addresses the ways in which the Japanese government used Takarazuka’s theatrical presentations as a means of pursuing its domestic and diplomatic agendas: improving Japan’s international position by proposing shared aspects of popular culture with the US and increasing its sense of nationalism by propagating cultural pride. In doing so, the paper explicates the ways in which Japanese popular cultural considerations interfaced with political concerns in the shaping of postwar Japan’s national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

Japan's policy toward India since 2000 appears to be a sign of new directions in Japan's security policy since its decision to establish a strategic partnership with India is different from the previous policy of exclusive bilateralism centering on the US-Japan alliance. Nonetheless, Japan's recent security partnership with India is part of Japan's long-term effort to support the US-led liberal political and economic order in East Asia. This paper argues that Japan's policy toward India since 2000 has evolved toward becoming fully aligned with US policy toward the Indo-Pacific region. The critical shift in Tokyo's policy toward India came in spring 2005, when Japanese political leaders and policy elites came to recognize India as an important balancer against China as a result of the violent anti-Japanese demonstrations in China. They decided to support including India into the East Asian Summit and incorporated India into their new values diplomacy. This shift in Japan's policy toward India, along with efforts to increase interoperability between Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Forces and Indian Navy, coincides with US strategy to bring India into the US-led coalition to balance against China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the complex relationship of sweets to changing gender identities in Japan. Drawing on ethnography and popular culture sources, it examines ways men negotiate their beliefs and activities concerning sweets within a context where being a sweet lover problematizes masculine identities. Sweets in Japan were traditionally regarded as the domain of women and children, while men were expected to prefer spicy foods/alcohol. Changes in food preferences have coincided with erosions in hegemonic forms of Japanese masculinity that emphasized vigor and drive. In popular culture Japan's economic malaise has been attributed to the replacement of the post-war "carnivorous men" with a generation of "grass-eating boys", whose interest in sweets is emblematic of their passivity and femininity. In real life, this link is treated rather paradoxically. Informants typically characterize it as a stereotype that no one really believes, or even that the stereotype doesn't exist, yet their actions and expression of sentiments display having internalized it. In exploring how a discourse can simultaneously be both deeply felt and dismissed as a trifling inanity, I consider the greater attention that ambiguity and uncertainty might be afforded in accounts of food specifically and human life more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Focusing on the late 1920s to the mid‐1930s, this paper determines and analyses the societal conditions and structures leading to the immiseration of Korean farmers during the colonial period. Specifically, these were the deterioration of aspects of traditional society, indebtedness, and interest rates. These led to wide‐scale smallholder bankruptcies, resulting in their transformation into landless tenants, and ultimately resulting in a bifurcation into the “haves” and the “have‐nots” in the Korean countryside. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of the activities of the Japanese chapter of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU, also known as Reform Society, est. 1886) in the late Meiji period (1868-1912) have primarily focused on its reformist agenda associated with the ongoing imperial nation-state building such as abolition of licensed prostitution, promotion of monogamy, and women's education. With its strong connections to Japanese elites, Western missionaries, and female sympathizers, however, the WCTU in the early twentieth century provided its ambitious members with useful opportunities to learn necessary skills and broaden their networks. By scrutinizing three individual members with different interests as case studies, including charity for victims of industrial pollution, publication of a household magazine, and anti-war socialism, this paper demonstrates the malleability of the WCTU that extended beyond its renowned agenda and various ways in which individual members benefited from the organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information about the interwoven history of mercury poisoning among indigenous people in Ontario, Canada and the 20th century industrial incident in Minamata, Japan. It discusses issues concerning Dryden Chemical Co.'s pulp and paper mill, which generated mercury waste from bleaching paper, and methylmercury, a lipid-soluble compound.

During the 1890s and 1900s, Japanese primary education expanded at an unprecedented scale with the number of teachers growing from a mere 60,000 (1892) to 160,000 (1912). This mass of teachers formed a new readership and numerous educational periodicals were published specifically for them, not only providing educational philosophy and pedagogical instruction, but also literature. The short stories printed in many of these periodicals often depicted school children as little angels, pure and innocent, loving the teacher and in need of his guidance. These one-sided portrayals of children have been characterized as typical of the simple, moralistic nature of the short stories, which aimed at beautifying and idealizing the teaching profession. However, careful observation reveals significant variation between different stories and periodicals regarding the little angels' function and meaning in the texts. This paper focuses on the portrayal of children in literary texts published in the periodical Kyōikukai in the first half of 1900s. By examining the pedagogical meaning underlying the depictions of children, it lays bare the more complex character of some of the stories, attesting to the multifaceted nature of both the teachers and their reading patterns. [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]

This article sets out to elucidate the role of Japanese Protestants in the education of Koreans during the early twentieth century. Scholarship has often assigned only marginal roles to Japanese Protestants within the history of Japanese imperialism, despite the remarkable success of western missionaries in Korea at the time. As imperial expansion progressed, Japanese Protestants intensified their efforts to take up a leading role in the education of Koreans in colonial Korea and in the metropole wishing to spearhead the assimilation of Koreans. By drawing on the colonial discourses of East Asian unity under Japanese leadership, Protestant churches strove to mediate and facilitate colonial policies in Korea. Yet there were also voices of dissent from prominent Japanese Protestants critical of the assimilation policies implemented by colonial authorities in Korea. This ambivalent stance of Protestantism towards Korea is further complicated by the fact that the Korean Young Men’s Christian Association in Tokyo served as an important venue of the Korean Independence Movement. Examining Christian magazines and journals of the time, this paper delves into the contentious debates among Japanese Protestants concerning the Korea Mission and the Japanese government’s strategy of assimilation through education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper compares the governance of education for older people in Japan and Korea. The findings revealed that the overall mechanisms of governance for the education of older people shared a number of similar features such as the structure of relevant laws, ministries, and policies. However, differences were also found regarding independence of education administration, contracting out of public institutions, and participation of voluntary institutions. Our findings suggest the need for promotion of interministerial cooperation and the development of more “educational” programs for older people in both countries. In particular, the findings indicate that Japan should evaluate the effectiveness of the national policy of contracting out and the local policy of subordination of the educational administration to the general administration. With regard to Korea, the findings suggest that both the national and local administrations of education should change their school education-oriented policy and promote education for older people. In addition, Korea needs to facilitate education for older people at voluntary institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Japan is periodically wracked by "Great Earthquakes" (daijishin) - seismic events so destructive that they leave massive amounts of textual and graphic evidence, much of it produced by people who did not experience the events directly. Using this cache of information, it is possible to see how the idea of the "disaster victim" has changed over time and circumstance. My paper traces this role across five Great Earthquakes that spanned roughly 150 years (1855-2011), a period convergent with modern Japan. I will argue that the sense of who and what has been victimized by the shaking of the earth - who has suffered, what weight to attach to their loss, what actions to take and emotions to feel regarding their situation - has changed regularly, and surprisingly, over this rather short period. There is, in other words, no common Japanese experience of victimhood, even in the context of one disaster type over a relatively short historical period. The article is one contribution to an as-yet unexamined history and comparative study of the modern role of disaster victim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses how diverse stances toward nuclear energy were produced and reproduced among Japanese labour unions from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, and how these stances of the formative period influenced the subsequent development of inter-union politics before and after the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster in 2011, based on content analysis of union bulletins and other materials of pro- and anti-nuclear energy unions. This article asks three research questions: (i) what factors contributed to proor anti-nuclear energy stances of labour unions?; (ii) what elements constituted or framed unions' arguments on the issue of nuclear energy?; and (iii) what impact did these stances and arguments formed in the early period have on the subsequent development of inter-union politics over nuclear energy, especially in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster? The paper shows union ideologies and institutional integration were the factors influencing unions' stances on nuclear energy. It also analyses the worldviews of pro- and anti-nuclear energy unions based on the three policy styles of technological enthusiasts, moralists and cost-benefiters. The Fukushima disaster reinforced the previously formed division of union ideologies, but considerably weakened the discourse of technological enthusiasm stressed by pro-nuclear energy unions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the critiques of the Taiji Tushuo《太極圖說》， one of the most important classics of Shushigaku 朱子學 in the history of Japanese ConfUcianism， that were advanced by Ito Jinsai 伊藤仁齋 and Ito Togai 伊藤東涯. Jinsai and Togai were famous for their anti-Shushigaku thought. Although there are some misunderstandings present in their critiques of the Taiji Tushuo and Zhu Xi 朱熹， it is argued here that their interpretations still have value because they shed light on a different perspective regarding the Yijing and the Taiji Tushuo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the postwar evolution of land consolidation policy in Japan in light of change in its agenda, scope, approach, policy tools and contexts with the aim to identify its possibilities and limitations for rural development. With a focus on Land Improvement Act (LIA) and other relevant policy tools and schemes, it analyzes the distinctive traits of policy change for the five sequential periods of the postwar era that reflects on socio-economic and political trends. Highlighting the change from government-led and infrastructure-based approach to community-based and managerial-oriented one to land consolidation as an integrated part of broader agricultural and rural development policy, the study suggests future evolution of land consolidation policy that is likely to involve further diverse interests in sustainable development held by a broad range of stakeholders including rural, urban and international communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines civil activities to protect and conserve the underground war-related sites in contemporary Japan. Conservation movements rooted in local communities and centred on the Japanese Network to Protect War-Related Sites are making efforts to transform the dark heritage of war-related sites into cultural property in an attempt to integrate diverse wartime experiences. In delving into the heritage-making practices, I introduce local movements in Okinawa and Okayama. Okinawa hosts the first underground war-related site to become a cultural property, the Haebaru Army Hospital Bunkers, while Okayama struggles to create another one by making the Kamejima Mountain Underground Plant a dark heritage site. I argue that these conservation movements are challenging the homogenising national war memory by attaching ethnically diversified vernacular memories to the underground sites. In doing so, these underground war-related sites have become public spaces where new forms of social engagement are negotiated and contested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This paper analyzes the origins and internationalization objectives of methodologies used for English pedagogy in Meiji Japan. Curriculum during this period was designed to reinforce analytical, rote methodologies that resulted in the separation of language from culture. Texts tested intellectual acumen and promoted nationalistic sentiments, rather than communication skills, thereby limiting direct communication with the West and access to foreign ideas. A close examination of historical ties between English textbook methodology and the modernization agenda during Meiji helps us to better understand some of the practical challenges facing current foreign language policy and oral-linguistic proficiency in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An early nineteenth-century British voyager, Captain Hall, published in 1818 an account of his landing at Okinawa Island and encounter with the court nobility of what was still at that time the Kingdom of the Ryukyus: Account of a Voyage of Discovery to the West Coast of Corea and the Great Loo-Choo [Ryûkyû] Island in the Japan Sea. The paper asks: Why did the Ryukyuans respond to the unannounced entry into their waters by two British naval ships by a seemingly boundless hospitality? With a sideline view on the Sahlins-Obeyesekere controversy, the author proposes that even as the Ryukyuans were eulogizing the entry of the British by showering them with one-sided attention and acknowledging their royal credentials, they tried at the same time to make a bid for their departure. They might have been deploying ritual techniques apparent still today: of welcoming and (subsequent) sending-off in one single act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the popularity of hula in contemporary Japanese society in order to understand how Native Hawaiian images and traditions play a role in constructing the image of a ‘paradise’ in Hawai`i. By drawing on the personal experience of the author as a participant observer in hula lessons and performance in Tokyo, it argues that aiming for the sense of cultural authenticity is integral to the Japanese practitioners’ attraction to hula. It also shows how Native Hawaiian hula teachers and performers skillfully appropriate the Japanese desire to discover an ‘authentic’ Hawai`i for their cultural as well as personal gain. Today’s Japanese discourse of ‘Hawai`i as paradise’ derives from the contemporary socio-cultural context of a Japanese society that longs for the authentic culture of the indigenous ‘other’ as well as from the shrewd use of that longing by the ‘other.’ [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the 1990s, Japanese views of China were relatively positive. In the 2000s, however, views of China have deteriorated markedly and China has increasingly come to be seen as ‘anti-Japanese’. How can these developments, which took place despite increased economic interdependence, be understood? One seemingly obvious explanation is the occurrence of ‘anti-Japanese’ incidents in China since the mid-2000s. I suggest that these incidents per se do not fully explain the puzzle. Protests against other countries occasionally occur and may influence public opinion. Nonetheless, the interpretation of such events arguably determines their significance. Demonstrations may be seen as legitimate or spontaneous. If understood as denying recognition of an actor's self-identity, the causes of such incidents are likely to have considerably deeper and more severe consequences than what would otherwise be the case. Through an analysis of Japanese parliamentary debates and newspaper editorials, the paper demonstrates that the Chinese government has come to be seen as denying Japan's self-identity as a peaceful state that has provided China with substantial amounts of official development aid (ODA) during the post-war era. This is mainly because China teaches patriotic education, which is viewed as the root cause of ‘anti-Japanese’ incidents. China, then, is not regarded as ‘anti-Japanese’ merely because of protests against Japan and attacks on Japanese material interests but for denying a key component of Japan's self-image. Moreover, the analysis shows that explicit Chinese statements recognising Japan's self-identity have been highly praised in Japan. The article concludes that if China recognises Japan's self-understanding of its identity as peaceful, Japan is more likely to stick to this identity and act accordingly whereas Chinese denials of it might empower Japanese actors who seek to move away from this identity and ‘normalise’ Japan, for example, by revising the pacifist Article Nine of the Japanese constitution. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Neutron Diffraction represents the ideal technique for the characterisation of the micro-structural properties of ancient metals, allowing retrieval of information on the smelting process, and the mechanical and thermal treatments applied during the manufacture of the sample. The object under investigation is a 17th century Japanese helmet (kabuto) from the Haruta School that has already been analysed, along with other six similar examples, using a general purpose neutron diffractometer. Through this study, the quality of the steel (phase composition) was determined and information on the thermo-mechanical treatments applied was inferred, averaging over a scattering volume that affected the entire thickness of the sample. The Haruta kabuto stood out for its very high carbon content, the absence of texture and residual strain, and very big grain size. These factors and the presence of incomplete reduction of the ore sand suggest the presence of plates with a composite structure of layers of steel and iron superimposed. This paper shows the possibility of using neutron diffraction on a highly collimated instrument, such as ENGIN-X (ISIS, UK), to be able to select a very small gauge volume and, this way, to detect variations in the phase composition along the thickness of the plates. Here we present novel results from diffraction measurements by using the instrument ENGIN-X. This study completes the previous cycle of neutron measurements on this sample and sheds light on the structure of the plates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Austronesia, one of the largest language families in the world, covers a vast area from Madagascar in the extreme west to Easter Island in the far east, Taiwan in the north to New Zealand in the south. The languages are spoken by the people of insular southeast Asia, Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia in the Pacific, as well as certain parts of the Asia mainland. The vernacular architecture of the people that belong to this language family shows certain shared characteristics that seem to indicate a common origin in the distant past. The Grand Shrines at Ise, Japan pose an intriguing phenomenon because they possess striking architectural features that are reminiscent of Austronesian vernacular architecture. This paper is an attempt to investigate the phenomenon using the findings of studies by experts from other disciplines such as historians, anthropologists, linguists and others, based on the link between culture, language and architecture.1 [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Here, we present an iteration of our theoretical/creative writing project Hashima, begun in 2012. The paper is a collaboration and draws on the different discourses, practices and sensibilities of a performance theorist, a geographer, and a visual artist. For us, Hashima, located off the coast of Nagasaki, Japan, and a former site of forced labor and intensive offshore coal-mining, is a provocation for experimentation. Hashima, exploited and abject, has offered itself, unsurprisingly, to the fetishistic gaze of artists, photographers urban explorers, and ruin enthusiasts. The logic here is to control representation, and to determine and fix the meaning of the island as always in reference to something else and elsewhere. Paradoxically, there is no sense of temporality or transformation in these representations of ruins; time has been stopped in an image. By contrast, we want to draw out the allegorical value of Hashima not as a site of loss, but as a baroque, blasted landscape of monstrous becomings that resists, and forefronts, this tendency to collapse history into nature. In the following, we introduce the island before turning to an exegesis of Walter Benjamin's writing on German baroque tragedy in order to demonstrate how representation itself becomes tainted through a material encounter with the baroque's two primary topoi, the ruin and the labyrinth. To do this, we finish with a creative narrative and two images illustrating our methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper compiles a catch history of Japanese eels Anguilla japonica in East Asia and some Japanese relative abundance series. Maximum likelihood estimates of stock abundance of eels have been obtained using the abundance series and various biological parameters, such as growth, maturity and natural mortality. Age- and sex-structured models have been used to express the dynamics of stock abundance, and the Beverton and Holt model has been used to express the relationship between stock and recruitment. Data for estimations are standardized catch per unit effort of commercial fishery for exploitable stock (1954-2006 and 1968-2008) and for glass eel (1954-2010, 1972-2004, and 1973-1997). From the results of the base case scenario of estimations, the estimated stock size of individuals aged ≥1 year was 18.7 thousand tons in 2010, which was 24 % of the carrying capacity. The estimated stock size has recovered since 1990. Maximum sustainable yield was 4,180 tons if only the exploitable stock were utilized, and 266 tons if only the glass eel were utilized. These results and issues relating to estimation and management for reducing the fishery impact on stock are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I will discuss how to enhance Japanese teacher education. After sketching teacher education from the mid-1940s to the 1960s, I sum up the main topics people discussed through each decade of the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s. Illustrating some of the current topics of teacher education in the first decade of the new century, I discuss what they would create by way of introducing a new type of Graduate School into the teacher education institutions, which raises the question whether Graduate Schools heighten teachers’ professionalism or not. In conclusion, I propose an ideal network for promoting teaching expertise. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Contemporary concerns about the difficulties faced by the Japanese economy following the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923 soon appeared to be unfounded as the economy recovered relatively quickly. This paper suggests that despite its limited impact on Japan's longer-term economic trajectory this disaster can tell us a great deal about the ways in which individuals, organizations, and officialdom respond to a devastating event, and help us better understand the process of transition from immediate relief to longer-term recovery, not just in Japan, but more broadly. It analyzes the impact of the disaster on market transactions, showing that the scale and nature of market disruption went far beyond direct physical destruction; that the collective and individual responses of government, producers, traders, and consumers had the potential to make matters worse, rather than better; and that the existence of integrated markets spread the effects of the disaster across the Japanese archipelago. It also suggests that reestablishing market stability following the crisis was one of the keys to longer-term recovery, and that further research will help us understand the causal factors in that process. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]