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The Lisbon Treaty signalled that the European Parliament had become a central actor in the EU-Japan economic and trade partnership. In 2007, the ‘Global Europe’ strategy formalized the EU's process of expanding trade relationships via free trade agreements (FTAs). The EU-Korea FTA was the first of these to enter into force in 2011. Should Japan and the EU move forward with their own bilateral economic agreement despite a number of pending economic and trade issues ranging from mutual recognition or harmonization in clinical trials to the expansion of foreign direct investment to regulatory transparency? There are two main stumbling blocks to an agreement: linkage of issues and non-tariff measures (NTMs), i.e. local rules and standards that hinder trade. Three case studies in aerospace, telecommunications and food safety show that linkage has not been successful and highlights specific NTMs. The findings indicate that progress toward an EU-Japan FTA (or economic integration agreement or economic partnership agreement) hinges on the sector's regulatory past, the degree of transparency including the presence of NTMs and external factors including global trends and momentum towards agreements in other parts of the world. It remains to be seen if a formal bilateral trade arrangement is likely to result from the adoption of new approaches to negotiations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The year 2011 marked the twentieth anniversary of the Hague Declaration of 1991 between Japan and the European Community. This declaration was originally intended to enhance the bilateral relationship between Japan and Europe, but the reality was little more than a reluctant promotion of several insignificant programs. Meanwhile, although the EU has significantly developed its partnership with China, it has become ambivalent about the future of EU-Asia relations. While endeavouring to expand its economic ties with China, the EU also attempts to be a ‘normative power’, but, because of the limited nature of the EU's influence in East Asia, it needs normative partners in this region. This article argues that the EU-Japan relationship is becoming more vital because of the increasing importance of norms due to the rise of China. In the last decade, the Japanese government has increasingly emphasized the importance of values and norms in its diplomacy. At the same time, both the EU and Japan have been leading advocates of international law and multilateralism, while striving to promote democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Thus, the Cold War ‘trilateralism’, which was the core of the Western Alliance, has been transformed into the post-Cold War ‘normative partnership’. It is argued that the importance of EU-Japan relations can be appropriately understood in this light. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This introduction outlines the EU-Japan relationship and where it stands at present. At the last summit meeting the two sides decided to start parallel negotiations for (1) a deep and comprehensive free-trade agreement or economic partnership agreement; and (2) a binding agreement covering political, security and other areas of global cooperation. Here the factors that have led both the EU and Japan to abandon the former policy of defining the overall relationship with ten-year plans, such as the 1991 Hague Declaration and the 2001 Action Plan, will be analyzed. The present negotiations will be put in historical perspective, and what is new and unique this time will be analyzed. These EU-Japan agreements will be placed in a comparative global perspective relative to other major agreements. Finally, this introduction will also introduce the other articles in this special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the EU has a potentially important and unique role to play as a security partner for Japan. The EU, as the broadest grouping of liberal democracies that embraces a broad political spectrum from conservatives to social democrats, can help Japan to redefine its international security role beyond the narrower confines of the US-Japan alliance. This article tests this hypothesis in two potentially promising areas of security cooperation: post-conflict reconstruction operations and counter-piracy deployments off the coast of Somalia. The EU has great potential to help Japan expand its overseas security role precisely because the EU is not controversial or polarizing in Japan, unlike some aspects of the US alliance, especially those related to overseas SDF deployments. Cooperation with the EU can help Japan re-legitmate overseas deployments, disassociate these from the use of force, the controversial ‘normal nation’ discourse in Japan, and expand them into more ambitious, but non-combat areas. Military cooperation with the EU overseas also largely eschews the fears of entrapment that feature prominently in Japanese overseas military cooperation with the US. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

By reviewing the existing body of literature on socio-economic changes since the 1990s in the context of the functioning of processes of social mobility, cohesion and welfare services in Japan, this article attempts to track reasons for an increase in feelings of anxiety and insecurity to be found among the population in recent years. It is suggested that an examination of risk perception might complement analyses of objective changes, in order to achieve a better understanding of the implications of these transformations for the social cohesion of Japanese society from both a micro- and a macro-perspective. In this context, results of a nationwide survey carried out by the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ) in September 2009 will be discussed, proposing a new direction for research in the current discourse on the Japanese ‘gap society’ (kakusa shakai). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article revisits the Heisei municipal mergers, first considering the background and justifications for the mergers and then introducing three thematic criteria for their assessment. These criteria, and the framework that emerges on the basis of these criteria, reflect post-merger research that has been undertaken and which focuses on three specific dimensions: the processes and patterns of the mergers; post-merger governing efficiency and governance; and the place-identity conflicts that follow municipal mergers and the implications regarding regional image branding that can arise as a result. These three areas provide the basis for assessing the Heisei mergers in terms of the processes under which they were undertaken and the demographic municipalities they yielded, as well as the implications they have in terms of resident satisfaction with both government function and local sense of place. While the outcomes of municipal mergers often take decades to emerge fully, these three research areas in combination provide for a comprehensive, systematic and comparative means for assessing the mergers from this point forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Often exploring the very margins of society and thus frequently dealing with issues of poverty, oppression, as well as structures of gender and ethnic discrimination, Kirino Natsuo's literature has been labeled ‘neo-proletarian’. This analogy to the leftwing literature of the 1920s and 1930s is, however, clearly misleading. Through a close analysis of exploitation in Metabola, this article shows that contemporary representations of the casualization of the workplace can instead be read as testifying to the emergence of ‘precarity’ as a literary mode. The irregularity and permanent insecurity that characterize precarity are reflected in the struggles of the main protagonist, a former factory temp worker who, after a total loss of memory, is forced to (re-)construct an identity from scratch and ends up with a multiply fissured, ambiguous self. The analysis reveals that Kirino, by skilfully combining entertainment and sharp social criticism, addresses precarity on two levels: while on the one hand depicting the harsh working conditions of factory temp workers, on the other she expands the concept to reveal the pervasiveness of exploitation in contemporary society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Within the traditional culture of Japan, ryūha (schools) play a significant role in highlighting the continuity of artistic lineages. However, by examining the issues surrounding ryūha of shamisen and koto music known as jiuta-sōkyoku, I argue that ryūha can be seen as belonging to a cultural concept that has been continuously reinterpreted, altered and handed down by musicians through hereditary lineages over the years. As a tradition, ryūha can be seen as a concept that carries within it conceptualisations of artistic lineages with which its musical styles and repertoires are associated. As an organisation, ryūha can be seen as a powerful institution that has the authority to encourage or restrict its members, both in their pursuit of artistic acceptance and in the transmission of the tradition of their chosen group. As ryūha function as the means of reinforcing the distinctiveness of art forms and traditions, musicians conceptualize and present their ryūha with the idealized image of musical lineages, which can be seen as symbols of their identities as transmitters of tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Often ideology is downplayed in the study of Japanese politics. The Seirankai is important because it was a clearly ideological right-wing group of politicians. The group and its former members certainly pushed forward the right-wing ideological agenda in the decades after its formation but assessing its impact is not straightforward. The Seirankai and the fate of its members demonstrate the tension between ideology and standard narratives of political success in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyses the politics of Japanese labour-market deregulation since the 1990s with reference to the cases of the 1999 and 2003 amendments to the Temporary Work Agency Law. It demonstrates that factors such as the loss of political power by labour unions vis-à-vis employers and the resulting significant changes in labour policy-making structures enabled the LDP government to implement ‘extensive’ labour-market deregulation policies related to ‘non-regular’ employment. The decline of the left by the 1980s and the economic stagnation after the collapse of the bubble economy against a background of globalisation led to the establishment of the Deregulation Committee, which represented business interests and exerted strong policy influence due to the Cabinet's adoption of its policy proposals. In addition, labour unions lost political power as a result of factors such as their inability to maintain common policy stances towards labour-market deregulation and the reduced influence of ‘tripartite’ policy-making among labour, employer and public representatives in the advisory councils of the Ministry of Labour. This article contributes to the literature on Japanese political economy by showing an ‘exceptional’ case of extensive economic reform in Japan and its political reasons. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Kanehara Hitomi won the 2004 Akutagawa Prize to a tremendous fanfare. The media spectacle served to commodify both the violence and the sex in Snakes and earrings (Hebi ni piasu, 2004), as well as the unconventional lifestyle of this 20-year-old middle-school dropout. Kanehara's work earned the distinction of high culture via this prestigious literary prize, but she is simultaneously seen as representative of a problematic youth subculture. UK/US cultural studies theory suggests a reading of text and author as an expression of subcultural resistance to the commodification process and to mainstream Japanese society. But questions remain as to how this resistance translates into political expression in an era of conservative politics and so-called apolitical youth. Ultimately, resistance is not found in the subcultural self-identification of the young protagonist Lui. Rather, working from within the media spectacle, Kanehara utilizes a literary legacy of the body in order to make her writing relevant in the virtual, hyper-commodified culture of twenty-first-century Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article contributes to the growing body of literature on Japanese youth problems by tracing and unpacking a recent moral panic surrounding young people identified as ‘NEETs’ for being ‘not in education, employment or training’. While sharing many key features with other mainstream youth problems in Japan, the case of ‘NEETs’ illuminates particularly well the strategic interplay of social labels and more technical policy categories. To this end, a clear distinction is made between the social category nīto and the policy target group ‘NEET’. Close attention is paid to how these were re-defined in the Japanese context, including how the latter came apply to a remarkably expansive age group (15–34-year-olds). Most importantly however, the account highlights the central actors and interrogates their respective interests, providing strong support for the argument that the ‘NEET problem’ amounted ultimately to a strategic campaign designed to clear the way for new youth policies. The findings explicated will contribute to our understanding of high-profile youth scares as well as other social problems in Japan that operate through the media but are intimately linked to policy-making. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article introduces readers to a new pedagogy of Japanese sports coaching, which is based on science rather than Bushidō, rational thought rather than samurai wisdom. In doing so, it illustrates one alternative way that the Japanese are currently approaching sports, something that has up until now generally been ignored or overlooked by many scholars. It draws on the latest research in Japanese and English as well as long-term observational fieldwork to explain the roots of sports science, its introduction to Japan as well as how it is being used in Japanese basketball today. It interprets various voices to show why scientific approaches are having trouble displacing so-called ‘traditionally Japanese’ coaching pedagogies. Although many well-known Japanese coaches, professors and national sports organizations support them, scientific pedagogies of sports coaching currently face various difficulties making inroads in Japan because they are ‘too new’, ‘too confusing’, ‘too difficult to understand’, ‘not authoritarian enough’ or ‘too Western’, and therefore not seen as suitable to the ‘traditional’ Japanese sporting landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The promulgation of Japan's first modern constitution in 1889 was followed by a festival, which saw the inaugural cheering of banzai by crowds to greet the Meiji Emperor as he passed by. Respect for the imperial family had been gradually building during the previous decades, but for many of the Japanese people the Emperor remained a mysterious, distant being, when not simply an inconvenience. It was only in 1889, with the cheering of banzai, the singing of the national anthem and the dissemination of the imperial portrait, that the Emperor became a fully modern monarch. This article explores the significance of this moment for the relationship between Emperor and people and for the latter's development of their self-awareness as a nation. The constitution was problematic, in that many people were excluded from the electorate, but cheering banzai provided a moment when the Japanese people could experience a sense of unity with each other and their sovereign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 2009 House of Representatives election in Japan, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) took complete control of the government from the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Formed in 1996, the DPJ had gradually grown and expanded, taking control of the Upper House, the House of Councillors, in July 2007. After two years of confrontational politics, the 2009 election win meant that, for the first time since 1955, the LDP have no control at all in Japan. This article examines the problems that faced the LDP and DPJ prior to the election, their manifestos and public opinion polls, before providing a detailed analysis of the election data and the way in which the DPJ managed to seize control of the Lower House with the largest majority ever seen in Japan. It assesses the first year of the DPJ government and how it has managed in taking over government problems, dealing with international issues and finding ways to enhance the budget for the future. Finally, it discusses the extent to which this could have a long-term impact on the party system in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the creation of a new visual environment in interwar Japan through the mass production and extensive distribution of movie advertisements. It explores both the theory and the practice surrounding the production of such advertisements, as well as the figural aesthetics by which they were informed. It argues that figural aesthetics amounted to the creation of a visual milieu, which can be characterized as ubiquitous, distractive and ephemeral. Moreover, the aesthetics was incorporated as an effective mode of appeal into both commercial ads and national/imperial propaganda from the 1920s through the early 1940s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the fall of 1858 a large comet crossed the skies of Japan. Casting its light over a society in turmoil, torn apart by political factionalism and threatened by a virulent cholera epidemic, economic collapse, and foreign encroachment, the 1858 comet quickly became the centerpiece of diverging interpretations on the state of society, the country, or the world in general. To some, the 'strange star' was an ominous symbol of impending catastrophe, while others saw it as the broom that would sweep away the misery of old and usher in a much-needed world renewal. Through an examination of personal diaries, official records, astronomers' reports, and popular literature, this article argues that the 1858 comet served as versatile metaphor for all that was frightening, puzzling, or inspiring about life at the twilight of the Tokugawa era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Japan's relations with the Soviet Union/Russian Federation during the sixteen-year period between Gorbachev's coming to power in 1985 and Putin's completion of his first year as president in the spring of 2001. It identifies five lost windows of opportunity for solving the Northern Territories dispute between these two nations, which might have significantly improved the bilateral relationship. At the time of the first missed opportunity under Gorbachev in 1986-1988, the Cold War rigidity in relations still deeply affected how Japan and the Soviet Union dealt with one another. The second missed opportunity under Gorbachev in 1989 saw structural rigidity on the part of Japanese policy-makers hampering the faster development of the relationship. The third missed opportunity under Yeltsin in 1992 was the consequence of a failure in policy choices on the Japanese side and of policy-makers not fulfilling their responsibility. At the fourth missed opportunity under Yeltsin in 1997-1998, the Japanese side learned lessons from past mistakes and did not hesitate to propose a courageous proposal to break the impasse. President Yeltsin was impressed by this proposal, but the Russian side as a whole did not accept it as a basis for negotiations. Before the fifth missed opportunity, awareness of past failures was very much at the forefront of Japanese and Russian negotiators' mind. The negotiations proceeded unexpectedly fast and effectively in 2000-2001, and then were suddenly crushed because of domestic issues in Japan. Individual responsibility was fulfilled in negotiating with the Russians, but the negotiators were unable to overcome domestic constraint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although home-grown NGO-type organisations have existed in Japan for a century or more, it has only been in the last two decades that significant numbers of Japanese NGOs have become active internationally, promoting international educational, cultural, scientific, economic and environmental co-operation. This is particularly noticeable in the case of Japanese NGOs' activities in China. With the growth in China's economy, international trade and other activities, Japanese people have become increasingly sensitive to environmental, political and social problems within China. In addition to this are the perennial problems caused by the troubled history of relations between the two countries. To help address these issues, a large number of Japanese NGOs have been set up in recent years to focus on exchanges of people and ideas between China and Japan. In order to investigate the background and reasons for this situation, this article first charts the development of international NGOs in Japan, considering changes in Japan's civil society and international awareness. It then considers why Japanese NGOs have become active in China and what kinds of activities they are focusing upon in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The corpus of haikai (haiku) poetic material produced from the early until the latter part of the nineteenth century in Japan has been largely dismissed as unliterary since Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902). In particular scholars have avoided the study of the poetic practice known as tsukinami haikai, a form of poetic competition. By examining a specific tsukinami haikai text as well as looking at the process of tsukinami haikai competitions, I argue that they had an important pedagogical and cultural value. The poets who composed poems for tsukinami haikai competitions gained the education necessary to read Masaoka Shiki's arguments in favor of a 'literary poetry'. In addition the vocabulary that they learned from tsukinami haikai was 'universal' and thus transcended local identities. Tsukinami haikai is important for understanding the cultural history of nineteenth century Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the seldom expressed class anxiety present behind representations of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. As with most disasters, those living in the poorer districts suffered more acutely. The government was aware of this fact and it lies unspoken behind the post-quake ideological campaign emphasizing unity. Most popular representations of the quake did little to trouble the state discourse. In Nagata Mikihiko's work, however, the interaction between the narrator and a sufferer reveals both the differing conditions of vulnerability that caused the unequal distribution of damage as well as the middle class anxiety when faced with that difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how changes in both the international environment and domestic politics have influenced defence policy and debates on constitutional revision in Japan since the Second World War. Idealism in security policy was institutionalised in Article Nine of the Constitution of 1947 and an idealism-versus-realism schism was entrenched in the political arena during the 1950s. Japan developed its own defence capability from the 1960s, however, and the disjunction between constitutional limits on security policy and changes in the international environment became apparent in the 1990s, which in combination with domestic political changes led to the 'sudden death' of idealism. Despite the new political landscape, however, and the changed international situation, the gap between the unrevised Constitution and the reality of Japan's security remain critical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the ongoing struggle of leading Japanese universities to elevate their positions in world rankings, and the perceived necessity of Japanese higher education to internationalize in order to achieve more favourable international recognition. The author discusses structural difficulties inherent in Japanese universities in establishing effective approaches for internationalization. Recognition of the necessity to pursue internationalization as seriously as the rest of the world is still very limited among Japanese universities. At the same time, quite different agendas are often implemented under the umbrella term 'internationalization', rendering the policy orientation vague. Immediate and practical approaches to changing the status quo in terms of global prestige and recognition among universities, academics and students include the suggestion that universities themselves should take a more active role in increasing opportunities for international exchange. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the internal risks posed by US military installations to the inhabitants of Okinawa as a result of the security policy adopted by the Japanese government to deal with the external risks and specific threats faced by Japan. Although these outposts of US power are viewed by supporters of the alliance as beneficial to the security of Japan, their existence and operation pose risks to the population, with the overwhelming burden imposed on the inhabitants of Okinawa, whether in terms of crimes, noise and environmental pollution or the erosion of solidarity among the population due to the divisive role foreign bases play. The article thus does not focus on the external risks posed to Japan by the hypothetical enemy of the day, as with the Soviet Union during the Cold War or North Korea today, but rather on the internal risks to the everyday lives and peace of Okinawans posed by the American presence. A key concern is how the risks of the bases are articulated by the inhabitants and mediated by the state as part of the national governing system of Japan. This system of governance allocates, distributes and locates the bases unequally, exposing Okinawa to disproportionate dangers and hazards, but offers compensation as a way to deal with the problems their existence and operation pose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the promotion of Mongolia as a source of mounts by the Japanese army through a campaign that gathered momentum in the late 1920s. This campaign was one part of a larger campaign to promote the importance of 'Man-Mō' (Manchuria-Mongolia) within Japan, a campaign that made use of evocative language to trumpet Japan's claim to the region. The promotion of Mongolia as a source of mounts continued into the 1930s and 1940s and made use of a range of media, including print, film and sound recordings. The promotion of Mongolia as a source of horses was often couched in romantic terms, with Mongolia as a place of sweeping plains, lone horsemen and mysterious strangers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a sea change in the way policy-makers around the world see the economic role of universities. With the rise of the knowledge economy, universities are regarded as potential engines of growth, capable of contributing not only to the creation of individual companies, but also of new industries. This is the reason why Japan has been far from alone in emphasizing university-industry relationships and their role in industrial innovations since the late 1990s. The objective of this article is to examine the economic roles played by Japanese universities and the factors that helped or inhibited them from becoming engaged with the economy. More specifically, the article discusses how their roles changed through three distinct periods: the late nineteenth century to the 1950s when Japanese universities were very active economically, the 1950s-80s when they became somewhat removed from the industrial development process and the 1980s onwards when they began to re-engage with the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The circumstances in which Japan's Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Matsuoka Toshikatsu, took his own life in May 2007 highlight two under-researched aspects of political corruption in Japan: the connection between bureaucrat-led bid-rigging (kansei dangō) and political donations to Diet members from public works contractors; and the arena of politicians' political expenses, which provide opportunities for politicians to hide expenditure on illegal activities such as vote-buying. While suicide is a rare outcome of political scandal for major political figures such as Matsuoka, political corruption remains an endemic feature of Japanese politics. The conventional explanations of this phenomenon remain relevant in spite of electoral reform. However, Matsuoka's case highlights the pivotal position of the politician-bureaucrat nexus in facilitating the practice of 'money politics' and therefore the bureaucracy's role as a major institutional pillar of corruption. Matsuoka privatized public administration for his own political purposes, specializing in one of Japan's last sanctuaries - forestry public works - as a source of funding. While the legal system has been strengthened in the area of bureaucratic corruption and dangō, changes to provisions on politicians' political expenditures reflect the ad hoc nature of government attempts to tackle the political corruption issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Japanese government introduced new social welfare policies and institutions during the late 1910s and 1920s that acknowledged the growing significance of the 'social question' in Japan and seemingly recognized that social and economic structures were responsible for an increasing number of urban poor. However, a moralistic approach to the solution of poverty remained prominent, which aimed at 'guiding' and 'correcting' poor families' behaviour, values and 'thought'. This revealed the persistence of an assumption that the poor were poor due to their individual moral failings. The Relief and Protection Law of 1929 and social welfare institutions and practices defined the poor as morally undeserving and thereby marginalized and marked them as inferior to respectable members of Japanese society. Not only was relief inadequate to raise the poor out of poverty; discriminatory treatment and stigmatization excluded the poor from being full members of Japanese society, a situation that still affects Japanese social welfare policies and social attitudes today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an analysis of newspaper coverage of the so-called 'bear problem' in Japan during 2004 and examines the symbolism evident in the media discourse. During 2004, human-bear conflict involving the Asiatic black bear reached a crisis point in Japan, attracting an intense level of coverage in the media. Over the summer and autumn months, the normally elusive forest-dweller entered villages and towns, causing numerous human injuries and damage to crops, homes and other property. At the peak of the incidents, newspaper headlines announced bear attacks and sightings and carried warnings to beware of bears on a daily basis, reflecting the high level of concern and interest these incidents generated. The examination of this coverage provides insight into how the Japanese conceptualize the bear and the 'bear problem', and into the Japanese relationship with a 'wild nature', rarely explored in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores Sino-Japanese relations by looking at how negative sentiments towards Japan among the Chinese population are deployed as a form of political capital in struggles among the Chinese Communist Party elite. It gains insights into this process by looking at how such sentiments have been deployed to challenge the legitimacy of three CCP leaders since the establishment of the People's Republic of China, resulting in the downfall of two. The conclusions from these case studies are then used to understand how the current Chinese leadership has engineered the 'new starting point' in the relationship with Japan in the context of the movement from a 'winner takes all' type of factional politics into one characterized by 'power balancing' among the elite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the censorship trials of Nagai Kafu's Taisho-period (1912-26) erotic short story 'Yojohan fusuma no shitabari' (What I found in the sliding doors of the four-and-a-half-mat room) in postwar Japan. I consider why this story provoked censorship charges in two instances that span almost a quarter of a century and why it was successfully prosecuted in both instances despite the increasing shift toward a climate of sexual liberation in the interim. By analyzing the lawyers' and judges' arguments, I consider how the guilty verdicts were paradoxically also attempts to sanitize the reputation of literary giant Kafu. These censorship trials attempted not only to regulate sexual morality, but also to define the role and responsibilities of art, author and audience in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the introduction of the play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) by Karel Capek (1890-1938) in 1923, Japan witnessed a boom of literature about robots (jinzo ningen). Early Showa Japan was undergoing a rapid mechanization process where machines were incorporated into the modern landscape, and these robots became the epitome of the machine's power and authority. At the same time, however, they also produced considerable anxiety about the mechanization of the human body and its reproductive process. This article focuses on cultural historian Hirabayashi Hatsunosuke's short story 'Robot' published in Shin Seinen (New youth) in 1928. It situates this text within the scientific discourses surrounding women and their bodies in the Showa era, and shows how the text borrows the metaphor of the machine to raise key questions about bodily differences and female anatomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores national government, local government and non-governmental responses to the growing presence of ‘newcomer’ children in the student population. Although most work in this area has tended to focus on urban areas with large concentrations of non-Japanese, these schools are, statistically, the exception rather than the rule. In an attempt to address this imbalance, this article focuses on ‘newcomers’ in a non-metropolitan, so-called ‘rural’ area of Japan, Yamagata in north-east Japan. In Yamagata, as in most of Japan, schools generally fail to qualify for government assistance such as the dispatch of special teachers. As a result, support tends to come not from inside but from outside the school. Often, volunteer organizations are the only source of support for ‘newcomer’ children in these areas. In this sense, Yamagata offers a snapshot of the ways local players have typically responded to the growing diversity of the student population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how Japanese college students' motivation to volunteer reflects tension between public, relational and private identities in contemporary Japan. The article first explores the students' diverse motivations to become volunteers in a country where volunteering has not been a widespread social phenomenon, particularly among college students. It argues that Japanese college student volunteers are not primarily motivated to volunteer in order to strengthen Japanese communities or to help solve or alleviate contemporary social problems, despite discourse by both the state and civil society proponents that encourage, for different reasons, these kinds of motivations. Instead, many volunteers offer more individualistic and personal motivations to volunteer, such as the opportunity for self-discovery or the opportunity to make diverse friendships. This is often mediated, however, by the strong attachments volunteers often form with those they help and social conventions that stress the importance of relational bonds. However, their role as college students, in a liminal period lacking in strong institutional attachment in an increasingly individualistic contemporary Japan, leads them to place precedence on their own personal growth and individual interests. The opposition and integration of these two competing motivations help explain the uncertainty and ambiguity of their motivations to volunteer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In early postwar Japan Marxian historians like Ishimoda Shō and Inoue Kiyoshi utilized history in order to help create the cultural conditions for a socialist revolution. Ordinary Japanese women were important to this project and to Marxian campaigns for social change among the working class during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Local women's history-writing groups such as the Ehime Women's History Circle were, conversely, inspired by these historians and shared with them the belief that history writing could become a ‘revolutionary praxis’ to change Japanese society. This article will discuss how, while influenced by Marxian positions on history, the Ehime group nevertheless sought to devise ‘tactics’ by which to distance itself from the larger ‘strategies’ represented by professional historians and institutions. In this respect, the relationship between Marxian approaches and the Ehime Circle reminds us of what Michel de Certeau has, more generally, called ‘tactics’ that both utilize and distinguish themselves from larger institutions and discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although only some 6 per cent of the noh plays in the modern repertoire are shura plays, pieces that feature the ghosts of suffering warriors, these works are synonymous with ‘warrior noh’, and as a group they form one of the five main categories of plays. Prior studies have looked to the theoretical writings of noh's founder, Zeami (d. 1443), to explain why shura plays, though few in number, have come to represent the genre of warrior plays. However, this article contends that the theories of the actor and playwright Konparu Zenpō (1454–1532?) offer more persuasive reasons why shura plays became equated with warrior noh. The article contrasts Zenpō's and Zeami's different definitions of the warrior archetype called the ‘marital mode’ ( guntai ). It then considers performance practices in the sixteenth century, specifically the ritual use of shura plays, to discern factors that impinged on their performance and composition. Finally, it places Zenpō's ideas on shura noh and the performance of these plays within a brief survey of late medieval theoretical writings on noh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite success in many areas of education policy, the Japanese education system has been criticized at home and abroad for poor levels of communicative foreign language teaching. There has been a consensus on the need to improve performance in English teaching in particular among actors in the policy-making process. There has also been a considerable demand for private English language classes throughout Japan for some time. Focusing on government efforts to improve English language teaching since the mid-1980s, this article proposes that obstacles to the improvement of foreign language teaching can best be understood through an analysis of the social norms, values and expectations relating to teaching and learning that permeate school and university classrooms in Japan. The paradigm of ‘small cultures’ (Holliday 1999) is used in order to show how common characteristics of the learning environment in Japan influence the interactions of groups of learners and teachers in ways that inhibit effective communicative foreign language teaching practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a preliminary examination of the municipal mergers of the Heisei era as the process unfolded in one rural prefecture in advance of the deadline of March 2006. The article opens by contextualizing the arguments for municipal mergers and the reality of mergers in other settings. A brief history of past periods of municipal mergers in Japan is provided and then the case for Aomori Prefecture, a rural and highly peripheral prefecture of northern Honshu, is examined. Using municipal PR materials, a sector analysis approach focusing on government, municipality and resident and coverage in the local media as the means to examine the process and issues of the mergers, the article concludes by questioning if mergers are necessary and, now that mergers are a reality, if the objectives which mergers are to achieve are locally meaningful to much of rural Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There may be a useful parallel between the intense male cultural interest in and production of girl ( shojo/gyaru ) characters in modern Japan, particularly in the last two decades of the twentieth century, and the phenomenon of blackface minstrelsy in the north-eastern states of America in the mid-nineteenth century. Between the 1840s and the 1880s white vaudeville entertainers, including a high proportion of Irish men, blacked up with greasepaint, or burnt cork, and adopted comically outsized ‘Negro’ costumes, in which they performed songs, dances, comic dialogues, japery and narrative skits to white audiences. Staged minstrelsy was accompanied by the circulation of plantation songbooks, minstrel theatrical reviews and classical, abolitionist novels. Critics have suggested that this racial cultural language was integral to the emergence of American popular culture. In Japan, reportage, novels, films, animation, pornography and comics about girls have dominated professional and amateur cultural production and news reportage to such a degree that it is not possible to separate the epochal expansion of the media industries in the 1980s and 1990s from the driving attraction to these cultural caricatures. Most contemporary female impersonation by writers, directors and artists in Japan has been indirect: mediated and reproduced through the press and lens rather than through theatre. This article will use the example of blackface minstrelsy as one means to help us think more about the deeper nature of male cultural production and consumption of girl characters in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses how women's movements in Japan function as political agents that change the political status quo. Japanese women's movements can be seen to comprise three groups: elite-initiated, feminist and non-feminist participatory. Despite differences in their outlook and attitudes, they share two common characteristics. First, their identities tend to be centred on motherhood. The language of motherhood has been a key idea behind Japanese women's mobilization. Second, their campaigns link women's demands with politics. Women's movements provide Japanese women, who are largely excluded from formal political processes, with an alternative channel for political participation. When they exercise practical influence on politics, they make effective use of channels both outside and inside formal political institutions, i.e. non-institutional and institutional channels. In the former case, the traditional style of Japan's policy-making makes political influence possible for the women. Use of institutional channels means electing female candidates to political office. Women's movement organizations provide those candidates with support for their election campaigns. It is clear that women's political involvement at the grassroots level has contributed not only to improving women's social conditions but also to developing a more democratic political system in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyse the amakudari practice in Japan focussing on the banking industry where officials from the regulatory authority obtain post-retirement jobs in private banks. A theoretical model is developed to investigate a new role that amakudari might play following the introduction of limited deposit insurance in 2005. It is generally expected that changing deposit insurance from full to limited will discipline Japanese banks' risk-taking behaviour because depositors will start monitoring their banks. However, our game-theoretic analysis suggests the possibility that this disciplinary effect could be reversed by the new role that amakudari may play. We assume that depositors are unsure about banks' riskiness and infer their riskiness from observing whether or not they hire amakudari officials, i.e. these amakudari officials play a crucial role as a signal to depositors. This signal, however, might malfunction. We show that, in order to create more post-retirement employment opportunities for their officials, the regulatory authority may weaken prudential regulation. Ironically and unexpectedly, the introduction of limited deposit insurance may make the whole banking industry riskier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the role of violence in Fukasaku Jinji's Jingi naki tatakai (War without a code of honor) series (1973–4). It reviews the formalistic way in which violence was presented in pre-1973 yakuza films and contrasts this with Fukasaku's cinematic style, which broke all the rules of the genre. Fukasaku opted for a highly realistic, documentary approach. This documentary style is examined by considering the prison memoirs of a yakuza gang member and other sources upon which the films were based and then by providing examples of the manner in which Fukasaku translated these written materials into cinematic images. It is argued that, for Fukasaku, the world of the yakuza is only a microcosm of the broader society and international order of the post-war period, in which violence lacks moral significance and exists without heroes. The continued relevance of these films in the light of current events is noted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the summer of 2001 there were two major controversies concerning Japanese memory and commemoration of the Second World War in Asia and the Pacific: a textbook controversy triggered by the nationalist group, the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform (Tsukurukai) and a row triggered by Prime Minister Koizumi's worship at Yasukuni Shrine. This article presents a critique of how the two controversies were reported in the British quality media. It argues that the British media's reportage was a representative example of the ‘orthodox’ interpretation of Japanese war memory. By focusing on ‘newsworthy’ controversies, the stance of the Japanese government and diplomatic confrontation between Japan and China/South Korea, the British media's reportage presented a largely stereotypical and biased version of Japanese war memory that under-represented its complexity and contested nature. The media's reportage is critiqued using the theoretical frameworks of media theory, war memory theory and orientalism, as well as Japanese accounts of the crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mid-1950s literary debut of Ishihara Shintaro with his novel Season of the Sun ( Taiyo no Kisetsu ) marked a new interaction between Japanese mass culture and the historically dominant literary establishment. By skilfully mobilizing the emerging post-Occupation discourses of post-war film, literature, criticism and Cold War capitalist consumerism, Ishihara succeeded in creating a new emphasis on a youth culture divorced from the war responsibility debate. Ishihara's subsequent political career and his prominence as neo-conservative governor of Tokyo at the turn of the century also have their roots in his early literary activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attitudes concerning social equality in Japan have two completely different sides. An equal income distribution is far more strongly supported in Japan than in any other advanced industrialized nation, but support for gender equality regarding family roles and the labor market is clearly weaker than in Western societies. However, in recent years, the appropriate level of income inequality has become a public issue in Japan and support for traditional gender divisions of labor in the family, with women confined to the role of housewife and mother, is weakening. This article tries to gain Some further insight into the evaluation of equality in contemporary Japan on the basis of structured, problem-centred interviews with young elite university graduates who joined foreign-affiliated companies (FACs), which have experienced a sudden surge in popularity as employers among top university graduates in the second half of the 1990s. The case of FACs and their boom is of special interest regarding income and gender equality attitudes, as FACs are said to have far more performance-related pay and a different promotion system, as well as to offer much better career possibilities for women in comparison to Japanese firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely agreed that the Japanese economy has experienced the following three phases since the early 1970s: (1) ‘success’ from the oil crisis to the mid-1980s; (2) a ‘bubble economy’ from the mid-1980s through the early 1990s; and (3) ‘failure’ since the early 1990s. This article, however, suggests that the production system has remained ‘successful’ throughout the three phases, while the financial system has been a consistent ‘failure’. If we accept the conclusion that the true nature of the crisis facing Japan in the 1990s was a crisis of the financial system, and that the production system remained sound during that period, the prescription for curing the crisis is simple: reform of the financial system and maintenance of the production system. At the very least, the following four actions are crucial for the rebirth of the Japanese economy and its corporate system: 1. skin-building in equity finance by both businesses and banks, 2. overcoming the ‘investment suppression mechanism’ which came into effect after the oil crisis, 3. shifting to an enterprise strategy combining product power with services in order to increase revenues, and 4. building an economically rational international division of labor with East Asian economies and enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article locates the Chūshingura narrative within the studio system as the story chosen for all-star studio celebration productions to mark special events (kinen eiga), and examines the narrative's relation to the studio star system. The main question addressed is: how have established narrative conventions of the drama been manipulated to remain fresh to each viewing generation? Here I take a structuralist approach which argues against the view that scarcity of historical information about the incident has ensured its malleability and therefore popularity. Instead, I argue that Chūshingura has become, in filmic discourse, a ‘memorial meta-text’. Repetition has ensured that, contained within the audience memory, there is a set of expectations and essential elements of predictability. Thus for any given film version of Chūshingura to be an economic success (i.e. be popular) there has to be a balance between novelty and repetition. I argue that this is achieved through the tension between a rigidly pre-prescribed plot structure and the similarly rigid dictates of star persona, and that it is this dynamic that produces the vitality of film productions and ensures the continued popularity of the drama. This leads to such further questions as how does Chūshingura function politically within the Japanese studio star system and, relatedly, to what extent are character types within the drama dictated to by actors' star personas? And, finally, what is the relationship between star image and history? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Tokugawa Bakufu ordered a second military expedition against Chōshū in 1865, and war broke out in 1866. Rioting occurred during wartime in the villages within Iwami Province as well as Buzen Province's Kokura han, which became a frontline for the attack on Chōshū from Kyushu. Due to the restricted sale and hoarding of rice because of war, rice prices, as well as those of other goods, rose suddenly in all areas of the country and frequent rioting erupted. Such popular violent movements are known as yonaoshi ikki (social reform uprisings) oryonaoshi sōdō (social reform riots). Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century popular movements have been interpreted in various ways. Sasaki Junnosuke's yonaoshi jōkyō ron (a theory of the conditions of social reform), first advocated in the late 1960s,1 has met with various criticisms, yet there is still no counter-theory which can be said to replace it. The following study reconsiders Sasaki's yonaoshi jōkyō ron and proposes a new line of research, a necessity in the study of popular movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an assessment of the Shin Fujin Kyōkai (the Association of New Women), a women's political organization founded by the leading Japanese feminists Hiratsuka Raichō, Ichikawa Fusae and Oku Mumeo in 1919. It surveys the main objectives, activities and membership of the Association. The contents and characteristics of its magazine, Josei Dōmei (Women's League), will be also investigated. The article explores how the political and social climate of its period contributed to the foundation of the Association and how it was greeted by the public and press. The tactics, strategy and development of the Association's parliamentary campaigning and lobbying will be discussed together with the Association's limitations and its achievements in bettering the social, political and legal position of women. This article compares the Association with the Seitō Society, and also makes further comparisons between the Association and other contemporary Japanese and Western women's associations. It evaluates the impact the Association's activities had both on society and on the women's movement, and finally assesses the Association's key role in the history of the Japanese women's movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This case study of the making of the Revised Temporary Worker Law (1999) seeks to update our understanding of the labour policy-making process. The analysis indicates that government officials continue to play an effective role in guiding new labour legislation to enactment, but that the policy-making process is better suited to deregulation (liberalization) of employment practices than to reform of fundamental problems, such as the low status of non-regular and women workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]