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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]

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]

This article examines the organization and activities of the Dai Nippon Heiwa Kyōkai (Japan Peace Society, founded in 1906), a group that was loosely affiliated with peace societies in Britain, the US, and other countries, as well as with the International Peace Bureau in Berne. The paper examines Japanese initiatives in the context of the global campaign to identify and implement strategies for the peaceful resolution of international disputes, in the global 'peace moment' of the early 1900s. The paper describes the activities of the Dai Nippon Heiwa Kyōkai and reviews its successes, but also analyzes some of the complexities and contradictions inherent in the movement. Foremost among these was the propensity of Japanese peace activists to focus on dispute resolution with the European and American powers, while ignoring or condoning Japanese militarist imperialism on the Asian mainland. While some were motivated by pacifist ideals, the senior members of the society - many of whom were members of Japan's political elite - tended to see peace activism as an extension of Japan's cooperative diplomacy, seeking practical solutions (including military aggression) that ensured Japan's continued status as one of the world's great powers. Their vision of cooperative governance within a global imperial system was, however, severely undermined by Euro-American racist discourses. The strength of anti-Japanese sentiment - as reflected in American exclusion laws and global discourses of a 'yellow peril' - ultimately swung many peace activists into the camp of outright imperialist militarism. However, from the threads of Japanese peace activism in the 1910s emerged a vision of global governance that helped establish the framework for Japan's participation in the League of Nations, and in the multilateral peace-keeping institutions of the post-Second World War era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this paper is the digital transition in major Japanese newspapers that sell millions of copies per day. By digital transition we refer to the shift to publishing content on digital platforms—in this case the shift from print to online and mobile media. Japan is globally one of the most important newspaper markets with the world's largest daily newspapers measured by circulation. The research focusing on the digital transition in Japanese newspapers and the implications of this shift has been hitherto almost non-existent. In this paper, the digital transition is examined by means of qualitative in-depth interviews with representatives from leading Japanese newspapers. The conclusion deriving from the empirical analysis is that for Japanese newspapers the most essential approach in coping with the transition to digital is protecting the printed paper and treating the digital platforms as supplementary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 captured the imagination of reading publics around the world and in Britain spawned a breadth of products aimed at a domestic audience, including cigarette cards, illustrated magazines and newspaper cartoons. This essay investigates the commentary on and interpretation of the war offered by cartoons appearing in the British Sunday paper the News of the World and the Welsh daily paper the Western Mail. Editorial cartoonist J. M. Staniforth drew over 70 cartoons documenting the war for both papers, and the degree to which these visual images complemented or diverged from the editorial line expressed in leader columns is considered. The importance of distinguishing between cartoons and editorials and of taking into account the identity and career of the cartoonist is stressed. The visual codes for communicating conflict are also investigated, revealing in the process something of the intellectual horizons of both cartoonist and audience. [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]

More than 70 years after the end of the Second World War, warring nations have not completely achieved true reconciliation. For decades, official state-sanctioned apologies have been considered a useful tool to help rebuild broken international bonds, but their effectiveness in fostering national reconciliation remains debatable. On the contrary, more and more studies seem confirming civil society's role in facilitating people's reflection upon the most rending aspects of their own past. With civil society involvement in the discussion of Second World War responsibilities still limited in Japan, this paper recalls the experiences of Germany and Italy and the difficulties they encountered in shaping a constructive discussion on war responsibilities and reconciliation to argue that the Obama-Abe exchange of official visits in Hiroshima and Pearl Harbour in 2016 represents a crucial step forward in relaunching the debate on the Japanese Second World War narrative. In particular, this article claims that the wording and the images used by Shinzo Abe and Barack Obama could become, if well framed by national media and the official debate, "agitators of memory" pushing civil society to further and more deeply engage in this crucial discussion for the future of Japan. [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]

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]

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]

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]

This paper describes the electroacoustic music history of Japan since the late 1980s. This new music was originally created by traditional contemporary music composers. However, after the 1970s, the digital computer took over the primary role of the tape recorder for use in electroacoustic music, and composers could not keep up with the technological progress. Instead, composers of a younger generation who studied computer music in Europe began to emerge in the 1990s. They were quite active, and collaboration with music researchers in the computer science field established a longlasting community. The iconic event for Japan was the International Computer Music Conference, held in 1993 at Waseda University, Tokyo. This was successfully done in cooperation with the Kunitachi College of Music. After experiencing several such events, many researchers shifted their focus to music information processing research, while other musicians lost their interest in artistic computer music research. In the twenty-first century, individual composers are experiencing better and more convenient electroacoustic environments, including hardware and music software facilities. They are very active, and their interests range widely from pure electroacoustic music to multimedia sound art. However, an unified organisation has not yet been established for electroacoustic music, and this prevents Japan from achieving mutual understanding among composers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mexican intellectual Francisco Bulnes is one of the most outstanding members of the so-called group of scientists during the Porfiriato. He forms part of the Mexican Astronomical Commission to Japan in 1874 as an official writer. In addition, Bulnes published in 1875 a personal and well-documented account of the scientific expedition in Japan and the vicissitudes of the journey through the East: On the Northern Hemisphere, Eleven Thousand Leagues. Travel impressions to Cuba, United States, japan, China, Cochinchina, Egypt and Europe. This paper studies the details of this exceptional chronicle of a renowned Hispanic American intellectual, chronicle that with a rich cultural baggage expresses his own vision of the world, his country and East Asia. The positivist liberalism of Bulnes's contrasts with his skeptical worldview. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines the emergence of eco-cities in Japan from a much needed historical perspective. Since Japan's rapid industrialization in the late nineteenth century, there has been an emphasis on economic growth at all costs. Despite the introduction of the concept of the Garden City in Japan in the early twentieth century, industrialization continued unabated. After a disastrous World War II, the nation rebuilt and enjoyed rapid economic growth in the 1950s and 1960s. Japan is still coming to terms with the cost of that economic growth. The paper examines three cities: Minamata, Kitakyūshū, and Kawasaki. Minamata has transformed itself from being a polluted city to a green tourism destination. The city of Kitakyūshū embraced an eco-town strategy in 1997 to promote a structural shift away from heavy industries to green industries. That year, Kawasaki (close to the Tokyo Metropolitan area), too, was designated an eco-town and Minamata received the same title in 2001. This paper identifies key features of eco-cities/eco-towns in Japan, the importance of retrofitting, and examines the roles of citizens, the government, and the private sector. What is surprising is the international orientation of Japanese eco-cities. These cities represent not only Japan's future, but also its efforts to deal with its industrial past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examining the coverage in seven major Japanese and Taiwanese daily newspapers of a selection of events involving both societies in the first decade of the twenty-first century, this paper investigates the phenomenon of rhetorical instrumentalization of the past for present ideological purposes. The concerns of this study are the processes of dehistorization in Japanese and Taiwanese news and public debate, and through a critical thematic reading of the sources I argue that a motif of Taiwanese repetition and imitation of Japan runs through all the studied cases as a basic narrative formula. Analyzed cases include news presentations of Taiwanese politicians visiting Japan, controversial statements on Taiwan by a Japanese cabinet minister, infrastructure developments in present-day Taiwan and the controversy surrounding a Japanese guidebook to Taiwanese prostitution. Throughout the material, Taiwan is pictured as ideally progressing along a trajectory marked out by Japan and the two are cast in fixed roles that recall their relative positions in the half-century of Japanese colonization of Taiwan: Japan teaches Taiwan order, unity and modern development and Taiwan studies Japan's past to overcome the challenges of its own present. Or Taiwan spontaneously imitates Japanese precedence as a consequence of its own development. This paper fundamentally challenges the rationale underlying strategic instrumentalization of the past and draws critical attention to the paradoxical fact that the use of the repetition formula positions the covered news events in a thematic field of time-lag and retrospection. [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]

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]

At the dawn of the twentieth century, ignorance towards the growing military power of Japan led Imperial Russia to her unexpected and decisive loss of the war of 1904–1905. Just ten years earlier in 1895, Japan was almost half-robbed of the spoils of her victory over China by the Western Powers (including Russia), which insisted on revising the Treaty of Shimonoseki. The Boxer Rebellion of 1899–1901 stopped this confrontation and turned Japan and Russia into allies for a short time: Russian and Japanese soldiers fought together against the Chinese, constituting the two largest units among the five allied troops with Russians playing the leading role on the battlefield and the Japanese being their loyal deputy (as it was viewed by Russian media of the time). All these circumstances led Russia to underestimate the Japanese army in the following years. However, the Russo-Japanese War itself changed that attitude, turning it into a sort of ‘a-next-war-to-be-hysteria’ among the Russian officials who served in Japan after the war. The reports by Russian military agents and diplomats from special collections in the Hoover Institution of War, Columbia University, and other archives used in this paper show us that despite being their government's only ‘eyes’ watching the Orient, sometimes those eyes were ‘blinded’ by the loss in the recent war and by their own experiences. One major reason for this was that many Russian diplomats, military agents and spies had long been serving in the Far East, and for some of them the transformation of Japan from ‘weak ally’ to ‘strong enemy’ status happened so swiftly, they came to overestimate this new ‘peril.’ Another problem was Japanese language skill. In the same way that Russia could not properly predict the growing power of Japan before 1904, she wanted after the war to obtain all possible information about her neighbor and, thus, paid special attention to educating a new generation of oriental specialists. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Aims and objectives. This paper provides an overview of nurses’ working conditions in Japan, exploring tensions between nurses’ rights to take leave from work to fulfil family and personal needs and their actual ability to take such leave. It also considers possible effects of being restricted from taking such leave. Background. Little has been written on the specific needs of nurses who are mothers in the Japanese work environment. Research has focussed on the effects of heavy, stressful workloads and long working hours leading to burnout, death from overwork and suicides in Japanese culture. However, research that considers unique cultural and female issues in Japan affecting nursing work has not been published. Method. Discursive. Conclusion. The paper shows that there are many overlapping, complex issues affecting nurses working in Japan and their needs need to be considered and addressed in order to promote a healthier work environment, as well as a more humanistic environment. Relevance to clinical practice. Workplace issues are relevant to recruitment and retention and better conditions are likely to improve hospital functioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper represents a contribution to the knowledge about the experience of the Japanese community in rural areas of Argentina, particularly Buenos Aires (state) across the first half of the 20th century. With the objective of updating knowledge about this subject, a comparison was made between communities in peri-urban agricultural colonies: La Capilla, located in Florencio Varela, and Justo José de Urquiza, La Plata. We also focus on the origins, incursions, productive profiles, and the level of participation of Argentine and/or Japanese entities that influenced how each community developed, as well as successful companies and migrant settlement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new nuclear history can make a critical contribution by forcing us to reconsider or reframe the theoretical premises of the concepts we apply to our understanding of the present – and with which we try to navigate the future. It bears on fundamental questions, such as: How should the US manage its alliances? Should it establish a multilateral nuclear policy dialogue in Asia? In what depth should it discuss issues of doctrine and targeting with its Asian allies? What capabilities might reassure European allies in light of current Russian revisionism? Could nuclear war be limited and controlled in an East Asian maritime arena? Do nuclear weapons strengthen an alliance, or do they introduce a divisive bone of contention? Is extended nuclear deterrence (END) stabilizing or is it on the contrary pushing the allies to ask for more? What is the relationship between nuclear and conventional forces in END credibility? How do nuclear alliances contribute to international security and international order? The lessons and insights from these papers, which look at five historical cases of US extended deterrence during the Cold War, should help us think about crucial current issues, and be of use both to historians who want to have a better understanding of the Cold War past and to policymakers who are currently grappling with these issues. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

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]

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]

This paper analyses impressions of Fiji in 1961, recorded by two well-known Japanese travel writers: travel journalist Kanetaka Kaoru and writer Kita Morio. Their comments on ethnic Fijians' attitudes to work and on encounters with a variety of Indigenous Fijians, includingratu(hereditary chiefs), made the observed people ‘others' informing the travellers' views on post-war colonial Fiji in an era when little was known about Fiji in Japan. Differing views on colonialism underpinned the two authors' views. At the time, Kita and Kanetaka revised but replicated the assumptions of pre-war Japanese writing about Nanyō (the South Seas) and of Western travelogues on the Pacific Islands. While Kita passed blunt and prejudiced judgements, he demonstrated an awareness of colonialism's adverse effects and of concerns also felt by the colonial administration about the place of Indigenous Fijians in the modern world. Kanetaka, seemingly without awareness of her latent prejudice, praised Fiji as a near-perfect colony that benefitted from colonialism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper posits four ranked, generic goals of state foreign policy, maps them against the American ‘pivot,’ and concludes with possible handicaps of that shift. Drawn broadly from realism and liberalism, those abstract goals are as follows: national security, economic growth, prestige among the community of states, and the promotion of cherished national values. Applying this framework specifically to Northeast Asia, the USA, regarding security, is likely to increasingly ‘hedge’ China, and its North Korean client, with regional allies, off-shore balancing, and a shift toward AirSea Battle. On trade, the USA will continue its decades-long effort to reduce Asian mercantilism by tying Asian traders into multilateral, neoliberal rule sets. Regarding prestige, the ‘Beijing Consensus’ is a growing challenge to US soft power which the pivot seeks to refute. In addition, on values, the USA will continue to nag especially China to conform to US standards of law and human rights. The USA will continue to push the broad liberalization of Asian polities and economies. The democratic peace and liberal trade are the ideological frame and motivation of the pivot. Nevertheless, significant US handicaps may slow the pivot: American cultural distance from Asia means little public support and understanding of its necessity; strong regional allies will tempt the USA toward offshore balancing on the cheap; and the dire US budget shortfall will reduce the resources necessary to fund it. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper deals with the new (2013) Japan's National Security Strategy and its relationship with the actual changes in the regional and global strategic landscape. The connections between the new Japanese perspectives on the subject and the recent U.S decision to focus its military Power in the Asia Pacific region will be specially stressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soaring prices for minerals and energy are posing a major threat to the resource security of economies in Asia. As a result, many regional governments have launched new resource security strategies in the last few years. Most recent attention to resource security in Asia has focused on debating whether the Chinese government’s resource policies are mercantilist or liberal. This China-focused debate is too narrow to fully capture the nature of resource politics in Northeast Asia, since the governments of Japan and Korea have also recently launched their own resource security strategies. This paper considers regional-level trends in Asian resource politics by examining the causes, content and implications of the resource security strategies deployed by the consumer governments in Northeast Asia. It argues that growing resource security concerns, combined with a process of competitive policy emulation, have seen the Chinese, Japanese and Korean governments each adopt mercantilist resource security strategies over the last decade. Furthermore, the competitive nature of these mercantilist strategies is acting to intensify political and economic competition for resources between the Asian region’s three main economic powers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Japan has become renowned as a site for the production of artisanal-quality denim and jeans, which appeals to increasingly discerning cognoscenti. The usual mass-produced, non-designer "safe" denim has a ubiquitous presence in Japan as it does elsewhere but there are many Japanese for whom a pair of jeans has many more qualities that should be carefully considered before its consumption than the perhaps usual factors of price, brand, cut, wash and color. These include the types of machines the denim was woven on, the presence of certain (sometimes invisible) rivets, the technique of stitching and so on. "Made in Japan" has become the catch phrase for new denim authenticity sought by "denim maniacs" (denims mania no hito). This paper gives a brief history of jeans in Japan, introduces the area where they are made and examines two jeans companies as well as consumers of these premium jeans. It looks at how expensive Japanese jeans echo the mingei craft movement in their emphasis on method of production over the aesthetics of the final product. It shows that authenticity in Japan can be relocated both geographically and from the "original" to the "copy." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese cooking is popular in contemporary Japan. It is also a favourite subject of gastronomic writings that discuss not only the cooking techniques and ingredients but also the cultural meaning of the cuisine. This paper analyses the central concerns of this literature and points out its broader cultural-political implications. It contends that Japanese writings on Chinese food share a set of common concerns with the fat and spices in the food as well as its authenticity and cultural meaning. It demonstrates that this gastro-cultural discourse continually seeks to affirm, deny and transcend the putative characteristics of Chinese food. It further argues that such writings that seek to distinguish Chinese from Japanese foodways constitute a gastronomic version of nihonjinron or Japanese discourse on themselves. Finally, it points out that gastronomic nihonjinron lends support to Japan's current effort to reassert its identity/independence vis-a-vis a “rising China”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary Japan maintains longstanding and well-documented traditions of same-sex eroticism and yet the terminology for describing these traditions as well as the contexts and identities through which they have been expressed have changed greatly since Japan's opening to the West at the end of the nineteenth century. These changes have been most striking in the post-war period, when new rights-centred discourses concerning issues of sexual identity and sexual citizenship began to develop alongside enduring Japanese notions situating sexual expression in the private realm of personal interest or play. Taking a broad historical view, this paper shows that it is only since the mid-1980s that a voluble discourse linking same-sex sexual activity and human rights has gained mainstream attention. The factors that led to this paradigm shift are outlined as are the current and future challenges facing a range of sexual minorities in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The destruction of Japan's cyclotrons by Occupation Forces after the Pacific War resulted in a major setback for experimental physics in that country. Key figures such as Yoshio Nishina, Sin-itirô Tomonaga, and Ryôkichi Sagane strived to help Japan rebuild its scientific infrastructure and regain some of its former eminence in the field, but in the wake of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the atom had new meaning. Local residents objected to the establishment of the Institute for Nuclear Study in Tanashi, Tokyo. Despite their protests, construction went ahead and the Institute of Nuclear Study (INS) opened in 1955. Within a few years, physicists sought to establish a second major accelerator facility. Sectionalism among physicists and shortage of funds plagued attempts to establish the National Laboratory for High Energy Physics (KEK) which eventually came into being in 1970. This paper reveals some of the problems that physicists faced and how they sought to overcome them within the context of a defeated Japan, wary of military research, and desperately seeking to rebuild its economy. Physicists sought to influence the direction of science policy and to deal with the concerns of citizens in a newly democratic Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vacuum circuit breakers (VCBs) have been developed and widely applied in Japan to meet the requirements of increasing energy consumption and also in national security of various areas. As a result, for example, a 168 kV two break porcelain type and a 100 kA one break VCB have already appeared in the Japanese market and they are currently being exported to world-wide markets. VCBs interrupt currents in vacuum, and this means they do not exhaust dissolved gases which are sometimes harmful to the human body or cause effects on the environment. Therefore, by its nature, the recycling of materials and safety to the human body have been realized, and also no global warming effects would be expected. Energy is extremely essential and important in human daily life, and many types of circuit breakers play important roles in electrical power transmission and distribution systems to maintain the systems reliability and safety by switching the systems under several conditions. Since vacuum circuit breakers possess a lot of advantages such as high current interrupting capabilities, small size, and Low cost, they will be used much more in the future, and at this moment, we believe it is very worthy to discuss and consider thoroughly future trends of VCBs. In this paper, the results of the developments in Japan will be reviewed, the reflection of the results will be stated, and the subjects of engineering in the 21st century will be discussed. These will include recycling, safeguards to the human body and the fireless nature of VCBs; and it will be demonstrated that the developmental works of VCBs are being wonderfully explored in Japan now and in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of gerontological education is lagging behind in Japan in spite of Japan's large population of elders. Nevertheless, there are signs that this may be changing. In this paper we discuss how gerontology education has evolved in Japan over the past 40 years. Specifically, we provide an overview of the development of academic societies related to gerontology, the number of gerontological books published, government statements about gerontology education, and Japan's only graduate program in gerontology.We also identify some reasons for the delay in creating gerontology programs and propose specific steps that might be taken to reverse this trend. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The issue this paper wishes to address is how history, as encoded in historiography of history-writing, is actually based upon its capacity to conceal, disguise and indeed suppress the everyday. This is especially true when you consider that most history is really driven by the nation state and that far from envisaging a history free or rescued from the nation, most history-writing ends up reinforcing it. In other words, history's primary vocation has been to displace the constant danger posed by the surplus of everyday life, to overcome its apparent 'trivia', 'banalities' and untidiness in order to find an encompassing register that will fix meaning. With Hegel, narrative was given the role of supplying the maximal unity by which to grasp the meaning of history. What immediately got privileged was, of course, the nation state in the making of world historical events or and ultimately class, subjects who can claim world historical agency. By the same measure, the surplus or messy residues of modern life, especially its immensely staggering complexities, its endless incompletions and repetitions - all irreducible - are repressed or in some instances the microcosmic is sometimes mobilized to reinforce macrocosmic meaning. (This has frequently been called history from below and what Germans have called Alltagsgeschichte.) What I would like to do is explore the category of everydayness, ushered in with the masses and the appearance of the subaltern, as a minimal unity that provides its own principle of historical temporality that easily challenges the practice of history-writing as we know it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past century, Japanese society has undergone a radical change in its temporal experience, moving from one following the rhythms of nature to one of mathematical precision, namely, the western time system. Why did Japan westernize its time? This paper argues that it was for the sake of industrialization, where time was equated with profit. The accelerating sense of time reflected Japan's desperate efforts to catch up with the western level of industry in the shortest possible time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]