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The article discusses a book titled "Towards an Atlas of the History of Interpreting: Voices from around the world," which explores the global history of interpreting. It covers topics such as the role of interpreters in different historical contexts, the impact of power dynamics on interpreting, and the experiences of indigenous interpreters. The book aims to contribute to interpreting training and education and shed light on the profession's evolution. The article also mentions several sources and publications related to the history of interpreting, providing valuable information for researchers in this field. [Extracted from the article]

The Ainu are indigenous groups of people found in Hokkaido and northeast Honshu, Japan. During the nineteenth century, their land was integrated into the Japanese empire and the people redefined and assimilated. While intended to erase the Ainu as distinct groups, policies and discourses also showed that Ainu communities were not accepted as belonging to the category of 'Japanese', with the notions that they lacked Japanese ingenuity and civilization, were stuck in a prehistoric past, and lived in terra nullius. These discourses influenced the formation of museums' collections in Japan, such as the Tokyo National Museum (TNM) and the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka (Minpaku). By offering a reading of exhibitions on the Ainu and their accompanying catalogues between 1977 and 2017, this research sheds light on how colonial legacies continue to be shaped and challenged in representing Ainu communities in museums. The TNM seems unable to challenge tropes of this colonial discourse due to their intricate connection with the government, their notion of political neutrality, and their focus on art that tends to exclude the Ainu from the museum. Minpaku, on the other hand, has tried to introduce notions of cultural relativism and centre cooperation with Ainu communities to facilitate best practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While participating in the discourse of world religions, Japanese biographers published accounts of Muhammad's life in many genres of academic and popular books during the Meiji and Taisho eras (1868–1926). This article unravels how these biographical accounts played a crucial role in facilitating a geographical imaginary of Asia/the East which incorporated both Japan and West Asia. Situated in a radically different context from the Victorian biographers who inspired them, Japanese biographers constantly compared Muhammad to historical figures familiar to them, most notably Buddha and Nichiren, and reinterpreted the life of Muhammad, relying exclusively on European-language sources. In particular, in contrast to another strand of pan-Asianism that stressed peacefulness as an inherent quality of the East, the biographers identified Muhammad's perceived militancy and the miracles he performed as signs of the values shared by Japan and Islamic civilization. Using the person of Muhammad as a concrete piece of evidence, Japanese biographers reimagined an Eastern civilizational space that could stretch from Tokyo to Mecca. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the cultural background informing the overarching narrative of the Legend of Zelda series, focusing on the references to Japanese religious traditions associated with the characters Ganondorf, Demise, and Calamity Ganon. The destruction enacted by these antagonists is not entirely negative; rather, it is a part of the cycle of rebirth that is necessary for the renewal of Hyrule both within the series mythology and in the context of the player's delight in the postapocalyptic and preindustrial green spaces that characterize the games in the Zelda franchise. A close reading of the original Japanese-language script of Breath of the Wild (2017), Skyward Sword (2011), and The Wind Waker (2002) reveals that the various permutations of Ganon add cultural depth to the games, thus endowing the conflicts underlying their stories with a greater sense of literary complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article engages with recent debates within feminism itself to rethink women, gender, body, and agency as conceptual categories for reading medieval Japanese literary/Buddhist texts. It questions the unreflexive transposition of contemporary understandings of concepts to the past, on the grounds that this produces anachronistic readings of the worlds we seek to understand. It argues that, in medieval Japanese texts, gender did not function as a 'social' category posited against the 'natural' fact of sex, and that gender was a kind of script and that it was the specificity of the gendered performance, rather than the sexual attributes and reproductive functions of the body, that gave substance to the categories 'male' and 'female.' The article also offers a critique of contemporary uses of the term agency in analyses of women and Buddhism in medieval Japan, arguing that agency here is defined as something possessed by autonomous individuals with free will, whose natural inclination is to strive to resist the oppressive conditions of their lives. This modern liberal conception of agency, which is secular in nature, grants agency to humans alone. This anthropocentric view of the world necessitates the evisceration of the agency of gods, buddhas, dreams and material objects, all of whom are central actors in the cosmological/social world of medieval Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cahiers Victoriens & Edouardiens is the property of Presses Universitaires de la Mediterranee and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The present paper discusses two minorities in Japan, kaigai/kikoku shijo, and Brazilian nikkeijin through the prism of Pollock and Van Reken's concept of Third Culture Kids (TCK) and Cross Cultural Kids (CCK), and reflects on their problems related to cultural identity and coping mechanisms for survival in a highly segregating society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates the shifts in the tourist orientation of a village festival in Tokyo, Japan. The place in question, Tsukuda, has been a tourist destination in Tokyo for more than two hundred years because of its village atmosphere. The local festival celebrating the Sea God has become a tourist attraction. The festival is held once every three years and is experienced by thousands of tourists. The study is based on long-term fieldwork from 1984 to the present. The exposure of the festival to tourism has shifted over the years. In times of duress, such as during urbanisation drives in the 1960s and a threatened urban razing in the 1980s, tourism was fostered as a means to rally support for local preservation. This culminated in tentative commercial tourism in the 1990s, when festival clothing was sold as souvenirs and spectator stands were opened. Recently this trend has changed to one of deemphasising tourism and accentuating the traditional attributes of the festival. It might be argued that this would destroy tourist interest in the festival, but such is not the case. While there has been some decline in the number of tourists present, both Japanese and international tourists came to see the recent festival in 2005. Spectators expressed satisfaction in the authentic appearance of festival performances, a lack of tourist staging and their physical proximity to the performers. Religious tourism opens a number of options for the persons in charge. In some cases a chosen lack of tourist orientation can strengthen the experience of authenticity for tourists. What strategy to adopt in relation to tourism, will depend on the context of political and religious conditions in the setting where religious tourism is performed. This context includes changes in leadership for the festival and the local community, local drives to preserve residential areas and livelihood, and the macro political processes of urbanisation and tourism in Tokyo. The perceptions of tourists will also have an impact, since the presence of tourists is taken to credit by festival performers. Theoretical contributions such as discursivity and constructivism are employed to explore how tourist interests interact with local perceptions of the festival. This leads up to a short discussion of how decisions by leaders and performers at the festival affect tourist attendance. Changes in the tourist adaptation of the festival provides an example of how different interests interact in religious tourism today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors discuss the work of Taiwanese artist Jimmy Liao and its adaptation into public art. They mention the art installations based on his comic books, the sense of a child's viewpoint in his art, and the art's counterpoint to Japanese influences on art in Taiwan.

The author discusses the role of genre in South Korean comics. Topics include an analysis of food comics as a genre, the hybridization of comics through Japanese influence, and the work of philosopher Theodor W. Adorno in developing the analysis.

The article examines the ways in which religious actors configured the spatial geography of early modern Japan in 1600-1868 by drawing in the case of Japanese Tendai high cleric Jōin and his contributions to the site of Mount Togakushi. Particular focus is given on the role of political and mythical discourses that held the potential of shaping and misshaping of early modern Japan.

An essay is presented on Japanese culture, aesthetics and intimate life of Japanese things. It examines Japan as a place wherein aestheticism's critique of bourgeois gender norms is amplified and undermined the tendency to treat Japanese culture as the core of Oriental unintelligibility. Also discussed are the relationship between Western and Japanese constructions of Japanese art, queer ontology of Japanese artwork, and several related literature.

‘Gender (jenda)’ is a troublesome loanword in Japan. While this term has been prevalent in feminist and scholarly circles, it has evoked confusion in the government and stimulated a backlash from the ultra-conservatives against gender equality. Japanese reactionaries have attacked the concept of gender because of their anxiety about cultural destruction – I thus call them the ‘old guard’. Focusing on a dispute over the term ‘gender’ between feminists and the old guard, this paper examines the changes in the term's usage and meanings in the Japanese political context. I first shed light on Japan's reaction to the newly arrived term ‘gender’, outlining different attitudes towards gender between the feminist/scholarly circles and the government. Secondly, I discuss the old guard's condemnation of the concept of gender, in which they distort its significance in order to diminish its positive impact on society. I then scrutinize the old guard's reasons behind their attack on the concept of gender. My findings reveal that the old guard, whose political cause is to protect traditional Japanese culture, asserts that gender equality damages this culture. Moreover, I refute their emphasis on Japan's uniqueness, demonstrating that Japanese women's traditional virtues under the patriarchal family system are not peculiar to Japan. To gauge how the concept of gender has been interpreted politically, I highlight legislative debates about the term ‘gender’. In doing so, I elucidate the extent to which the concept of gender has infiltrated Japanese society through the dispute. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In which the author, a historian of the modern West, goes to Japan to teach on a Fulbright and finds that his year abroad leads him to a historical topic so different from his past efforts and so close to his own experience that it takes him more than a decade to figure out an innovative way of writing the past that can express his, and he hopes that of others as well, contemporary literary sensibility. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Kagawa Tyohiko (1888-1960), who was a well known Christian leader and social reformer, is re-evaluated from the perspective of a public philosophy, and as an example of the possibilities for collaboration and conflict between science and the religious humanities in East Asia. His last book, Cosmic Purpose, which appears to be a kind of natural theology, is analyzed from the perspective of the hidden topic of human evil. By considering Kagawa's deep religious sensibility and conscience, the book can be interpreted to reflect on the wrong directionality selected by modern Japan's leaders that resulted in the tragic war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the features of a Japanese tea garden called "roji," which is based on Chinese culture. Topics discussed include the relationship between Chinese culture and tea culture and gardens in medieval Japan; the rise of Zen Buddhism in China and its impact on Japanese tea culture; and the aesthetic principles of the Japanese tea ceremony that developed on the basis of "wabi" principles.

The article discusses the popularity of the mascot characters known as yuru-kyara in Japan. Topics include the black bear mascot Kunamon that was created for the Kumamoto Prefecture, the Japanese aesthetic notion of Kawaii (innocence or kawaisa, meaning cuteness), and performances by Kunamon. Internet aspects of the Kunamon phenomenon are addressed.

ABSTRACT This study deals with the description and analysis of directives in Japanese. Data is drawn from public signs and announcements. The study is organized around two issues: the linguistic forms associated with directives and the use of graphics. Regarding linguistic forms, there was found to be a strong tendency for directives to be framed as requests. Imperative forms were avoided and other strong forms used infrequently. Although the directives were impersonal, being directed at a general audience, there was a clear concern with mitigating the face-threat of directives. This was evident in the preference for framing directives as requests, in the avoidance of imperative forms, and in the prefacing of directives by explanations or statements of purpose. One distinctive characteristic was the use of the -mashoo ('let's') form for directives. This use can be attributed to politeness concerns and a sense of empathy. Graphics, usually in the forms of caricatures and cartoon-like characters, were often used on signs with directives. The association of graphics with directives is related to the popularity of anime and manga in Japanese culture, where they are used not only for entertainment, but instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article revisits the newly ‘discovered’ island that world culture theorists have repeatedly utilised to explain their theoretical stance, conceptual preferences and methodological approach. Yet, it seeks to (re)connect world culture with the real world by replacing their imagined atoll with a real one – the island-nation of Japan. In descending to understand social and educational change on the ‘island’ that may appear – from afar – to be consensually convergent on purported world models, this article challenges the ways that world culture theory suggests we read both individual nations and the wider World. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This essay investigates the conditions of portrait photography in Taiwan during Japanese colonization. After a brief introduction to the theoretical issues concerning the indexical nature of the photograph, I consider the Japanese colonial photographic industry and its products (portraits) in three contexts: the state of photographic technology in the world at that time, the ideological machinery of colonization in Taiwan, and the wider phenomenon of colonial mimicry. In this consideration, I offer a diachronic analysis of photo albums and commercial directories that contain formal portraits of politically and economically influential (almost exclusively) men. Bringing these considerations together suggests an aspect of the colonial ideological machinery that has been underrepresented in other studies: the colonial portrait as a mask in several forms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article is devoted to specific features of the Japanese national character. The authors examine natural, geographic, histopsychological, socioeconomic, and politicocultural factors that exert influence on the formation of this character. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within Japan, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima is understood as a national experience that sets the country apart from nations that have been spared such devastation. A special phrase the Japanese use to describe their country is yuitsu hibaku kokka, 'the only country that has experienced atomic bombing'. This phrase has become a powerful cliché for depicting Japan to a national and international audience. Even though Hiroshima was the experience o f a comparatively small group before it spread to a larger collectivity, its transformation into a collective experience is regarded as a natural outcome, explained by the devastating nature of the event. This perspective, however, does not fully explain why people who have different war experiences unconditionally accept as their own experiences ones which they have not personally suffered. This article aims to clarify the process by which the Hiroshima experience was nationalised, and the period of its nationalisation. It also examines whether this transformation means that Hiroshima has become a 'trauma for everybody'. This is achieved through the application of Jeffrey C. Alexander's work on the transformation of Holocaust memories into a collective trauma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores an example of the transmission of Dutch psychiatric knowledge to Japan in the Edo period (1600–1868), through the translation of a case study first published by Schroeder van der Kolk in 1826. The translation appeared in an innovative new journal of Western medicine edited by the Japanese rangaku (Dutch-learning) scholar, Mitsukuri Genpo. The case study describes the symptoms and treatment of a woman who experienced delusions following an ear infection, in terms largely familiar to the Japanese doctors of the time. This translation provides opportunities to consider the globalization and localization of psychiatric knowledge, the medicalization of mental health care in Japan, and the growing interest in Western psychiatry before its official introduction to Japan after 1868. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

On visiting Japanese cities, the overwhelming impression is of the stark contrasts between the modern and historic cultures of Japan, both of which are written into the landscape of its cities. This both distinguishes Japan's cities and creates tensions. Japan's contemporary development processes give rise to a form of development that strongly emphasises the individual, and this is overwhelmingly reflected in the aesthetics and townscapes of Japanese cities. While this has given rise to some of the most distinctive and vibrant cityscapes in the world, these processes and the robust but inevitably blunt regulatory tools that they give rise to are threatening the traditional forms and typologies that represent the other side of the Japanese city character. Recent innovations in Japanese design governance, although (so far) tentative, point to both a growing concern about this and to some limited attempts to tackle the situation. The research reported here suggests that these efforts need to be re-doubled if the dual character of Japanese cities - hyper-modern and yet also traditional - is to be retained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two of the more remarkable sites of early Japan that have astronomical iconography are Takamatsu Zuka Kofun and Kitora Kofun. Located south of the ancient capital of Fujiwara Kyoou in Asuka, these tumuli contain star charts and paintings adapted from China and Korea in what was the first major wave of cultural diffusion of knowledge from the continent in the early centuries of the common era. While the overall layout of the two tombs is similar, the ceiling star charts are quite different. That of Takamatsu Zuka is square and includes the 28 sei shuku or moon lodgees, arranged in correspondence to the four animals of cardinal directions. That of Kitora is circular and contains stars visiblee to an observer of the chart's base latitude. Following discussion of the geographical and historical context of the two tombs, this article provides an explanation of the iconography of each tomb, including the astronomical and cosmmological basis of the ceiling star charts and wall paintings, consideration of anomalies and problems related to each tomb's iconography, and a discussion of the implications of the iconography. While the tumuli reflect some of the best-preserved examples of ancient Chinese cosmological principles, they also indicate that tomb builders may not have fully understood these principles in adapting them to the locale of their construction. The iiconography provided a symbolic base for reinforcing the hegemonic power of those who ruled and may have had greater importance in that role than in providing an accurate representation of the cosmos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista CS is the property of Rafael Silva Vega and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

An introduction is presented that discusses the issue theme of global children's culture in Japan, noting articles on the television program "Sesame Street," the book "Anne of Green Gables," by L. M. Montgomery, and the book "Alice in Wonderland," by Lewis Carroll.

Copyright of Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Germany was the most influential model for modern Japanese politics since the forced opening of the country. The article illustrates this by way of the example of Sakuzo Yoshino (1878-1933) and Shinkichi Uesugi (1878-1929), two professors at the Imperial University of Tokyo who were simultaneously important commentators on public affairs. Both had studied in Heidelberg, but perceived German politics in very different ways: while Yoshino decidedly rejected the German Son- d^erweg and was positively disposed towards Anglo-Saxon democracy, Uesugi defended the political role of the Japanese Emperor precisely because of his German experiences. The article tries to find explanations as to why and how Yoshino and Uesugi reached such diametrically opposed views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on a conference on the history of Germans in foreign countries, held in Berlin, Germany, from July 10-12, 2013. Topics of discussion included the national and ethnic identities of Germans in the post-Soviet republics, German influences on Japanese civilization, politics, and society, and German international schools.

This essay casts light on the alternative but unrealized futures imagined through the Indian Muslim encounter with Japan in the inter-war period. Echoing other attempts to destabilize the empire-to-nation teleology of Indo-Pakistani independence, the essay uncovers a set of aspirations, actors, and spaces of comparison by which Indian Muslims sought an independent future for Muslim-ruled princely states such as Hyderabad. Through comparison with similar patterns in other Asian princely states, a case study of Urdu writings on Japan shows how East Asia became a place to imagine for Hyderabad a future that never came to fruition. By locating India in a trans-Islamic pattern of engaging Japan, the essay shows how, between the Russo-Japanese War and the Second World War, Japan provided newly globalized intellectuals with a template for empowering Muslim-ruled polities that either never came into existence or were subsumed by Asia's postcolonial nations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article investigates cultural interactions and influences between Japan and Taiwan in the realm of popular culture during the later half of the colonial period and the immediate postcolonial era (1920s to 1960s). In particular, it focuses on the genre of crime fiction, a genre that enjoyed widespread readership that cut across all spectrum of the colonial society. It examines the history and scope of crime fiction as a transnational genre fiction that first emerged in Anglo-American literary production in the mid-nineteenth century. Its rapid dissemination, first to Japan and then to its colonies, serves as an indicator for one to track the trajectory of a cultural current that emphasizes scientific methods and logical, deductive reasoning. Using close reading of several (post)colonial texts that involved ethnic body, local and cosmopolitan identities, social chaos caused by crime and the restoration of social order and colonial authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]