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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Fukushima nuclear disaster posed food safety risks on an unprecedented scale in Japan. In its immediate aftermath, information on the scale and the extent of the contamination of the food chain was scarce. Facing an anxious public, the government was tasked with defining and ensuring food safety amidst uncertainty. Via three case studies spanning from 2011 to 2020, this article draws on risk communication theory to analyze the Japanese government's response to food safety risks after Fukushima and its development over time. It finds that initial responses did not take the food-related risks facing consumers seriously. Instead, the response was aimed at mitigating the economic risks faced by producers. This increased both public confusion and uncertainty, and consumer avoidance. Over time, the government's response has improved, and elements of the policy have shifted towards more inclusive and interactive practices. Still, the article finds that ten years after Fukushima, the governmental risk communication is primarily aimed at correcting and dismissing consumer concerns while expressing certain fatigue with ongoing consumer avoidance. The article shows how the goal of risk communication changes from reassuring to correcting, and finally to closure. While the risk communication's main message remains consistent and simple – local produce is safe, eat local produce -, its target audience also differs. The article demonstrates that on top of ongoing shortcomings in terms of participation, the actual content of the government's risk communication also fails to assist in informed decision-making. Instead, the government makes the decision for the citizen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legally, administratively and socially, citizenship adapts to the challenges of not only shifting geopolitics but to new infectious diseases that do not readily submit to the rule of nation-states. This essay looks at citizenship in Japan among other countries against the backdrop of the ongoing HIV/AIDS pandemic and the newer COVID-19, from the abject figure of the stigmatized homosexual in the former to quarantined foreigners aboard the cruise ship Diamond Princess in the latter. I conclude with the role of passports in Japanese writers, such as Tawada Yōko (1960-), who do not so much remap citizenship as question its utility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan's gender gap in housework—the second largest in the OECD countries—has come sharp focus with its female employment on the rise. Why are women and men in Japan still struggling to share housework? This article examines this question, analysing relatively newly emerged representations of 'kaji-hara'. The Japanese neologism 'kaji-hara'—a shortened form of the phrase 'housework harassment'—has garnered much public attention, since Japan's leading home builder Asahi Kasei Homes Corporation (AKHC) launched its 'Wives' Housework Harassment' campaign in 2014. The campaign conveyed a contentious message—that is, it is not husbands, but actually wives, who act as a bottleneck to gender equality in housework. This received a negative backlash, ultimately leading to the phenomenon of what I label here as the 'kaji-hara debates'. Based upon analysis of AKHC's campaign ads, its online survey results, literature and media coverage that inform the kaji-hara debates, this article shows the operation of the 'gendering of housework', by which housework is gendered and produces gender itself, thereby perpetuating the housework gender gap in the society. It argues that AKHC's campaign constitutes the gendering of housework, as it represents, assumes and commercialises housework as 'women's primary responsibility' while simultaneously promoting men's domesticity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are estimated to be more than 10,000 children in Japan that are without the legal identity usually afforded through household registration. These children are placed in an extremely vulnerable position with diminished security and inadequate access to fundamental services provided by the state. In many cases, this situation continues into adulthood where a lifetime of difficulties awaits. In this article, I survey the recent context to provide insight into the complex legislative environment and a glimpse into the lives of the unregistered. Further, I argue that Japan's problem of unregistered children (mukosekiji) has been a matter of legislation that favours patriarchy and normative notions of family, which, combined with systemic inadequacies, has failed to sufficiently address the situation. I further argue that, the specific conditions of Article 772 of Japan's Civil Code that creates this type of statelessness reveals the indiscriminate and random effects within the exercise of state power that run counter to the intended outcomes of population governance, social control and legal status in Japan. This research is particularly relevant given Japan's demographic decline and resistance to progressive immigration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food replicas (shokuhin sanpuru) line the show windows of cafes and restaurants in cities, towns, and villages throughout Japan. They are usually found artfully arranged in restaurant show windows or cases, facing and visible from the street, corridor, hall, etc., on which the restaurant is located. Building on consumers' familiarity with foods, ingredients, and cooking techniques, these replicas visually evoke other senses – taste, scent, texture, and mouthfeel – instantly providing massive amounts of information. As a ubiquitous visual marketing tool, sanpuru have contributed to the creation and maintenance of Japan's hybrid national culinary culture, especially the pervasive 'middlebrow' echelon of mainstream, everyday consumer culture. In particular, it is argued in this article that, as an inevitable, almost transparently naturalized part of the visual landscape of food and consumer culture, samples have played a crucial but underappreciated role in the establishment and dissemination of the much-remarked-on visual aesthetic of Japanese culinary culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines opinions concerning fūfubessei (a married couple retaining their birth surnames) posted on an online forum. Recently, the topic of fūfubessei has once again come under a spotlight, since the Japanese Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Civil Code Article 750, which stipulates that a married couple must choose either the husband's or wife's surname upon marriage registration. Owing to the large number of women forfeiting their surnames, the fūfubessei issue has often been researched from feminist perspectives, which may have hindered the voices of others. This article analyzes, using text mining (quantitative analysis) and discourse analysis (qualitative analysis), a large number of opinions from people of various cultural backgrounds. The results of this study reveal a diversity of beliefs and attitudes towards Article 750, reflecting the complexity of the issue. In general, proponents of reform claim the law violates equality, rights and liberty. From opponents there was a strong push to conform rather than to recognize a need for individual choice. Moreover, the many personal narratives provided insight into issues on the ground and revealed how many in Japanese society have dealt with the law, social pressure and social expectations and why they have followed the path they have chosen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the degree of cross shareholding among corporations, or between banks and companies (referred to as ‘insiders’ in this article) has been declining since the 1990s, the percentage of shareholding by institutional investors (‘outsiders’), or financial intermediaries, has been increasing in Japan. Studies show that both companies and investors are becoming more short-term oriented and are showing herd behaviour. With such a collective mentality, company–investor relations in Japan have experienced a vicious cycle and have thus lowered the market's rate of return. Meanwhile, conventional ‘insiders’ tend to hold shares in the longer-term, but lack engagement in investee companies’ corporate governance. Japan's Stewardship Code requests fund managers ‘engage’ more than ever in the governance of investees so that investor-company relations become longer-term and the risk of investors’ ‘exit’ decreases. However, the Code only covers the behaviours of ‘outsiders’ but not those of ‘insiders’, who still play certain roles among all shareholders. Due to its imperfect coverage, the expected effect of Japan's Stewardship Code in achieving stronger ‘engagement’ by investors should be limited. To cope with this issue, this article outlines a suggestion that a comprehensive rule covering all types of shareholders should be implemented in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This introductory article to the special issue on “Japanese Political Economy Revisited: Diverse Corporate Change, Institutional Transformation, and Abenomics” starts with a short summaryof the changing perceptions of Japan's political economy from its meteoric rise as worldwide leading model in the 1970s and 1980s to its demotiontoa problem and reform case since the later 1990s. Based on this overview, it identifies some striking issue and open questions in this conventional view of Japan's political economy as problem and the high expectations on Abenomics as Japan's current economic reform programme. Then we discuss the articles of the special issue and their new contributionsto a better understanding of the developments at the corporate level as well as institutional change and economic reforms at the macro level in the last two decades. Finally, this introductory article ends with a short outlineof a new research programme and four central research questions about the Japanese political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

‘Abenomics’ has continued to attract the attention of both the national and international media and a broad range of scholars. There are different and contested views of Abenomics and its impact upon the Japanese economy. This article argues that those more Keynesian-style remedies that form part of Abenomics have not been able to address Japan's longer-term problem of weak demand, especially in terms of private consumption. This is in large part due to the liberalising measures that also form part of Abenomics, and which are incompatible with the Keynesian remedies pursued. Whilst Abenomics has the potential (at least in the short-to-medium term) to improve the profitability of Japanese businesses, in the absence of a corresponding move to redistribute corporate wealth to labour, Abenomics also represents a hazard to future economic growth in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, I explore a little known aspect of British and Japanese history that began not long after Japan open its ports to the west in the middle of the nineteenth century. It is about negotiations between Japan and foreign powers over sovereign control of an island archipelago 1,000 kilometers southeast of Edo (Tokyo). The Ogasawara (Bonin) Islands were first visited by Japanese in the seventeenth century, declared British territory in 1827 and then reclaimed by Japan in 1876. The diplomatic discussions involved the British and US Consuls acting under instructions from their respective governments and negotiating with the highest levels of Japanese authority during both the Tokugawa and Meiji Periods. I argue that the islands were of little importance to either the governments of Britain or America and that the British authorities were more than willing to hand over sovereign control of the Bonin Islands to the Japanese as early as 1862. Indeed, by the mid-1870s, the British authorities in England were more concerned that the Japanese would not claim the islands and that Britain would be burdened with their responsibility. In arguing this, I provide a novel perspective of Japan's struggles with becoming a modern nation in an increasingly international setting. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Market actors are commonly faced with solving three distinct coordination problems as sources of uncertainty. How should they value the objects of their trade? How can they shield themselves from the competition? And with whom and how do they cooperate? This article investigates how Japanese antique art dealers confront these issues. While offering a rich description and analysis of a hitherto understudied Japanese market, the article shows how economic and social issues are closely intertwined. It contributes to our understanding of behaviour in a Japanese market in three ways. First, it underscores how inclusion/exclusion, status, reputation, networks and hierarchies constitute a field that allows market exchanges to exist in the first place, while also channelling, and being impacted upon by these market exchanges. Secondly, contrary to neoclassical economic theory, where the idea of value has largely been abandoned, the findings highlight the importance of distinguishing between notions of value and price in the understanding of markets. Thirdly, the article shows how market actors actively shape market arrangements to address the specific challenges of their domain. In the case of the Japanese antique art market these challenges include high risks of fakes, a limited quantity of high quality material, market outsiders, and dealers with deep pockets. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article compares and discusses the third series of kokugo tokuhon (national language readers) used in Japan between 1918 and 1932, and the first series of kokumin tokuhon (national readers), used in Taiwan between 1913 and 1923. The study points out that the materials introducing the world (including geography and history lessons, adaptations of foreign literary texts, episodes from the life of great men of science, etc) are considerably more numerous in the Japanese readers than in their Taiwanese counterparts. Following the two different processes of (intended) national identity formation via a detailed analysis of the materials and illustrations in the two sets of textbooks, the article also sheds light on the way the Taiwanese tokuhon attempt to replicate successful methods of earlier Japanese textbooks, while at the same time anticipating some of the trends visible in subsequent readers from Japan proper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adventure stories were a feature of children's magazines between 1925 and 1945, both in Japan and in colonial Korea. These stories expressed very different visions, depending on the audience, the period, and the purposes of individual authors. Japanese adventure stories in the bestselling magazine Shōnen kurabu portrayed heroes who ranged widely across the seas, articulating a vision of Japanese as outward-looking explorers of far-flung regions, which resonated with Japanese imperialism. In contrast, adventure stories in Korean magazines focused on adventures in and around Korea, reflecting the relative constraints of the colonial subject, as well as an exploration of Korean identity that was strongly linked to the land of Korea itself. The stories of Bang Jung-hwan in the magazine Orini depicted young Koreans rescuing kidnapped friends and relatives, symbolically representing the restoration of the lost nation by the hands of Koreans themselves. On the other hand, the later adventure story of Kim Nae-Seong portrays Korean heroes who are also subjects of the Japanese empire. Although the children's adventure story as a genre has often been associated with imperial expansion, its use in both Japan and Korea shows that adventure stories could also be used to express alternative visions of identity for the colonized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a series of ethnographic cases of some fishing communities, the article explores the role of meteorological winds in Japanese coastal fisheries. In particular, it is argued that Japanese fishermen's ecological knowledge is strictly connected to memory that coexists with other institutional knowledge, such as meteorology, in a complex scenario of contestation and negotiation. The article stresses also the idea that fishermen's memory is implicitly subversive to the dominant native discourses on knowledge proposed by Japanese folklore studies, focused on its epistemological hierarchization (folk and scientific knowledge), or on the individualization of the intergenerational discrepancies between traditional and contemporary knowledge. It will attempt to show how the method of interpretation traditionally adopted by this academic discipline offers a vision of fishermen's ecological knowledge that is more susceptible to local and static evocations, and which is far from reflecting the complex relationship between coastal fisheries, memory and knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since around 2008, a new type of eager consumption of Japanese traditional, cultural and ideological images and notions has been exhibited by young women in Japan. Calledrekijo(history fan girls), they have attracted great public attention. They enjoy visiting historical sites that appear in anime, novels and videogames based on historical fact, and actively participate in events led by local communities. The popularity of such ‘contents tourism’ or ‘pilgrimage’ has had a significant economic effect. Simultaneously, a ‘power spot’ boom has taken place, in which young women visit Shinto shrines, Buddhist temples and historical sites to gain spiritual power. Their ‘“pop” nationalistic’ faith towards the spirits of historical figures, Shintokamiand Buddha may be called ‘pop-spiritualism’ and contributes to building new notions of ‘Japanese-ness’. This article explores the significance of the heritage tourism of young women in socio-cultural and feminist contexts, and discusses how the recentrekijophenomenon and women's ‘pop-spiritualism’ serves to reconceptualize their national identities and challenge Japanese gender norms. These processes are exemplified through discussion of women's heritage tourism induced byAn-anandNon-noin the 1970s, historical dramas in the 1980s, theMirage of Blazeseries in the 1990s andSengoku BASARAandHakuōkiin the 2000s. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]