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This paper considers changes in developmental policy, reform agenda and political leadership within the Liberal Democratic Party since the 1990s. Particular attention is given to the contrasting reform agenda of Koizumi and Abe. The author argues that both leaders represent variants of enhanced authoritarianism; Koizumi pursued a 'Thatcherite' style agenda in efforts to 'modernise' the Japanese economy, while Abe is a more traditional interventionist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early 1990s Japan's defense policy has been under incremental significant change, revealed mainly in the legislative field. This paper explores the extent to which Japan's defense policy is changing in military terms. Analysis of Japan's latest security posture in Iraq (2003-2006) brings to light changes in Japan's overall defense policy in terms of defense priorities and implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Irisawa Yasuo (b. 1931) is one of the most theoretical and experimental poets that postwar Japan has produced. His poetry is highly individual; its themes and techniques place it firmly in the mainstream of contemporary international poetry. Like T. S. Eliot, Irisawa insists on the impersonality of the poet in creative expression. The point of his work is arrived at through implication, through the allusiveness contained in language; in language games reminiscent of James Joyce, and echoes from past time reminiscent of Eliot's work. Irisawa creates ambivalent images tied to the theme of mortality. This paper explores the variety of his narrative techniques, his creation of myths, his use of satire and even nonsense poetry. It considers the theory of the restructuring of language he expounds in Memorandum on the Structure of Poetry: if words are divorced from their daily usage, they may be joined together in new ways to create 'a meaning beyond meaning'. Irisawa does this in abstract conceptions filled with references and allusions to existing literature, as we see in My Izumo, a poem about spiritual identification with the past, which alludes to ancient Japanese works such as Izumo Fudoki and the Kojiki. This article shows how Irisawa's work exemplifies a dominant trend in modern Japanese poetry: the denial of meaning as it is ordinarily interpreted and in its place the use of language to create abstract visions which contain a 'meaning beyond meaning' - Irisawa's central thesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the way Japanese historians arrived at an increasingly uniform understanding of Buraku history over the course of the twentieth century. It analyses in detail the continuities and changes in pre-war perspectives on Burakumin and the roles renowned historians like Inoue Kiyoshi played in the development of a particular understanding of Buraku history in the early post-war period. This paper argues that Inoue's intervention in a key debate in the late Occupation years was of critical importance in the emergence of the mainstream narrative of Buraku history still widely subscribed to today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will examine the Japanese empire as experience, not as policy, through a study of the Japanese community in Tianjin, north China, before 1937. Recent scholarship on Japanese settlers in East Asia suggests considerable variation within and between communities and Tianjin's location at a key point of Sino-Japanese conflict arguably encouraged a view of China and the Chinese that mirrored the rhetoric of empire. However, settlers valued personal and economic security and status over more abstract questions of national interest, and settler engagement with empire and with the Japanese influence in China varied according to the perceived impact of political developments on personal interests. This engagement can therefore be understood as an extension of the quest for economic opportunity and social capital that was manifested also in factional struggles in concession organisations and in the highly transactional approach to relations with the Japanese state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the case of the zanryū koji and zanryū fujin —Japanese women and children abandoned in China through war—and their lives in both China and Japan as conditions of exile. It examines how their separation from the Japanese mainland meant that they were unable to develop the markers of Japaneseness, and the consequences of this for their return to Japan, where they continue to live in a second form of exile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes issues of language and communication in Japan in national language policies. It offers a brief overview of historical aspects of language and communication in Japan, including the part played by interpreters and translators who helped modernize the country, then reviews national language policy in today's Japan, considering new trends in English language education as well as the national language (kokugo). The issue of loan words is presented to extrapolate influence of English on the Japanese language. Third, the social reality of language in present day Japan is discussed. Finally, some challenges facing twenty-first century Japan will be addressed, in terms of language, communication and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the representation of foreign residents in Japan in the popular television variety show Kokoga hen dayo nihonjin (This Is So Bizarre, You Japanese) . It discusses ways in which the increasing presence and visibility of foreign residents in the Japanese public space enhances the commercial value of ‘ordinariness’. In this process the boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them-within-us’ are sharply re-demarcated in an international framework and the intensifying multicultural situation is subtly turned into a multinational media spectacle, in a way in which the national imagined community is not fundamentally displaced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Nakajima Atsushi's celebrated short novel about transformation, ‘Sangetsuki’ (‘Tiger-Poet’). I describe Nakajima's view of literacy and how this view is reflected in ‘Sangetsuki’. For Nakajima, literacy is the fruit of knowledge: once eaten, one can never return to one's original state of happiness. In Nakajima's world, to be literate means to experience agony, which is made even more acute when the inner literate mentality is contained within an outer oral appearance. The tragedy of ‘Sangetsuki’ lies not in the transformation of the hero from literate to oral, but in the incompleteness of the transformation; the hero retains his human mentality even after his physical appearance has been transformed. I also discuss ‘Sangetsuki’ in relation to the Gothic novel. It has been said that ‘Sangetsuki’ is Nakajima's version of ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’. However, if we focus on the issue of literacy, it has much more in common with Frankenstein . For the monster in Frankenstein and the hero in ‘Sangetsuki’ share the same suffering: the agony of literacy and the tragedy of discordance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes Japanese newspaper editorials on the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York to test the validity of the three major assumptions of current critical scholarship. Are Japanese newspaper editorials homogeneous; polarized into a majority Left and a minority Right; or diversified within the framework of this political opposition? The results suggest that all three are partially correct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oda Makoto is known in contemporary Japanese society as a prolific novelist, fierce social critic and controversial political activist. After travelling extensively throughout America and East Asia Oda's seminal travel narratives broke Japanese postwar isolationism and reinvented the postwar conceptualisation of the journey. As one of the intellectual founding fathers of the Beheiren movement Oda was an outspoken social critic in the 1960s and 1970s whose legacy of civil disobedience is currently more valid than ever before. This paper demonstrates that Oda is one of the few counter-hegemonic voices that speak out against revisionist national tendencies found in postwar Japanese discourse. Oda employs techniques of estrangement to reconceptualise established cultural tropes such as the mythology of Hiroshima, the higaisha discourse and indigenous Korean alterity. Oda's unravelling of discursive formations is explored through an analysis of three works: Nan demo mite yarō (1961), Hiroshima (1981) and Gyokusai (1999). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Japan, the need to proceed towards a more sustainable agriculture appears to be a common goal for the Ministry of Agriculture and farmers' organizations. However, agricultural policy aiming at a more sustainable agriculture will only be successful if it corresponds to farmers' values and convictions. Accordingly, the correspondence of young farmers' values and convictions with a new model of sustainable agriculture can help Japanese agriculture move towards sustainability. Nevertheless, mature and elderly farmers (the bulk of the farming sector), concerned principally with agricultural productivity, are more reluctant to redirect farming practices by taking ecological considerations into account. This paper, based on a qualitative methodology, examines the integration of the environment into Japanese agricultural policy, and goes on to analyse Asahikawa farmers' attitudes towards sustainable agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to reassess the dominant images of popular militarism or stoic suffering in wartime Japan, this paper takes a street-level view of provincial society during the major conflict with Russia, 1904–1905. It focuses on three main sites of wartime contact between the community and the military: the rail station, the cinema, and the cemetery. By mining local press reports and especially letters to the press from local people, it exposes the diversity of public attitudes towards the war, the military and those in authority; these attitudes include a healthy cynicism and satire towards elites or propaganda, as well as a readiness to express discontent rather than suffer in silence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between about 1890 and 1919, the dominant discourse in Japanese nationalism emphasised Japan's status as a great modern nation, in contrast to earlier concerns about weakness and vulnerability in the face of Western imperialism, and despite continuing insecurities of various kinds. This paper revisits the ‘discourse of national greatness’, focusing on its construction, limitations and consequences. Emphasis on Japanese greatness was evident in the press, in self-presentation at industrial expositions, and in substantial written works by Japanese intellectuals. Several factors explain the rapid spread of such a discourse, including the decline of class and regional identification, the considerable expansion of the press, and the stimulus of war. The consequences of the rise of the notion of Japanese greatness for the later development of Japanese nationalism were profound. They included the further subordination of regionalism, entrenchment of the gendered nature of Japanese nationalism, the further denigration of other Asian peoples and of Japan's own past, reinforcement of the yet fragile cult of the emperor, encouragement to conflate ‘nation’ and ‘state’, and a strong tendency to associate nationalism with military conquest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Promoters of Meiji Japan's imperialist expansion vied with European and American competitors for control of Korea perhaps more than in any other place in Japan's early empire. Thus, although Korea was not officially colonized until 1910, Meiji officials recognized the need for Japan's new policies toward Korea to make international sense more acutely than in the country's other colonial schemes. Within Japan's expanding empire, therefore, the annexation of Korea most significantly established the perceived legitimacy of Japan as a modern imperial nation. This paper examines this issue by analyzing how the idea of the legitimacy of colonization itself came into being in Meiji Japan. It focuses particularly on the period leading up to annexation during which the development of colonial ‘science’ as an area of specialized knowledge took hold, particularly in relation to Japan's development of Hokkaido. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the evolving Australia--Japan bilateral relationship. Key issues discussed include the `drift' and `neglect' in bilateral relations in the 1990s, the current state of the economic relationship, the proliferation of Free Trade Agreements and future directions. A central theme is the importance of bilateral ties for both countries and that shared visions such as building regional cooperation through APEC might be compromised by the proposed Free Trade Agreement between Australia and the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intense controversy over Japanese investment in Australia in the late 1980s continues to attract academic attention as a significant episode in Australia-Japan relations. This paper addresses two limitations of the existing literature. Firstly, it situates the controversy in the political economy of foreign investment policy liberalisation. This is important to an understanding of to what degree it was fundamentally a Japan-related or a foreign investment-related issue. How it became both provides insights into the dynamics of Australia--Japan relations in that era. Secondly, why the Australian government reaffirmed its commitment to liberal non-discriminatory policy in the face of popular disquiet is examined directly. This complements the existing rich literature on the negative reactions to Japanese investment and may help to provide a fuller picture of the domestic sources of stability in Australia--Japan relations in that period. It also highlights the historical magnitude of the Howard government's recent apparent abrogation of the non-discriminatory principle in foreign investment policy with the Australia--US Free Trade Agreement of February 2004 and the questions so raised about the Australia--Japan bilateral relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the textual transformation of noblewomen/poets such as Izumi Shikibu into yūjo or courtesans and bodhisattvas. In trying to make sense of this remarkable reconfiguration, it looks at the many contending Buddhist discourses that shaped medieval texts. It argues that while the practice of poetry, in the hands of male poets, becomes a revered michi which is seen as being concomitant with the Buddhist Way, the noblewoman's poetry is not granted the same status. Women are seen as inherently sinful and lustful and hence their poetry cannot be easily assimilated to the goal of enlightenment. It is by recasting the noblewoman as yūjo , thereby foregrounding and indeed exaggerating her sexuality, that medieval texts, drawing on tantric and other practices, are able to salvage both the noblewoman and her poetry . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The period after 9/11 has been labeled the new post Cold War or 'post post Cold War': 1 an era of increased asymmetrical threats and terrorism, deeper global cooperation concerning counter-terrorism and non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), growing US unilateralism as well as isolation and the birth of the Bush Doctrine. Beyond 9/11, what is the meaning of the new post Cold War for the US-Japan alliance? This paper will address this question from the perspectives of both the United States and Japan in this new era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines four pre-war examples of gastronomic fiction: Murai Gensai's Kuidōraku , Kōda Rohan's 'Chinsenkai', Tanizaki Jun'ichirō's 'Bishoku kurabu', and Okamoto Kanoko's 'Shokuma'. Notably, these stories of gastronomic quest are not necessarily about what Brillat-Savarin called gourmandise, in contrast to gluttony and voracity. In many cases the quest goes totally against Brillat-Savarin's 'physiology' and heads towards destruction--of the body, the economy, and romantic and other relationships. The majority of pre-war Japanese gastronomic fiction seems to ignore or reject heterosexual love. The passion for food may be associated with eroticism; but the stronger that passion is, and the more ardent the gastronomic quest, the less the space that remains for romantic love affairs. In other words, 'romancing food' tends to go against, rather than favour, romantic love. I shall argue that the homosocial nature of pre-war Japanese gourmandise and literature has brought this about. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the changing image of the city in the poetry, prose and critical essays of the free verse poet Hagiwara Sakutarō (1886-1942). Sakutarō's growing disillusionment with Japan's modernisation and slavish imitation of Western models is reflected in changes in his poetic representations of the city, from a modern, sophisticated utopia, through the liberating home of the crowd, and the symbol of the existential despair of modern man, to the hallucination of a fevered imagination. The progressive disenchantment with the city in Sakutarō's poetry is accompanied by a corresponding rise in his estimation of the countryside. We can also see the city as a metaphor for modernity and the West on the one hand, and the countryside a trope for Japan and tradition on the other. In calling for a fusion of elements derived from both Western and Japanese culture Hagiwara Sakutarō sought to negotiate a distinctive Japanese modernity in the interwar period, but was, in the end, profoundly disappointed with the colourless intellectual desert he saw emerging from the blend. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents six anti-military base citizens' groups on Okinawa, Japan to demonstrate the existence of an anti-military base social movement on Okinawa. The author contends that three 'incidents' involving the US military on Okinawa--the 1995 Kin Town rape, the 1997 Nago City Heliport transfer proposal, and the 2001 Chatan Town rape--have solidified the groups into a social movement. This has occurred with the incorporation of broader perspectives into the anti-military base campaign including environmentalism, feminism, and anti-militarism. The author concludes that comparison of the Okinawan anti-base social movement with other social movements and the application of social movement theory to the Okinawan example will facilitate theorising about the future direction of the Okinawan anti-military base social movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

English-derived vocabulary in Japan serves both referential and pragmatic functions. It is used to label the world and to shape it in particular ways. This paper examines the ways speakers in one rural community in Japan use English-derived lexical items to manage personal impressions and social distance, to negotiate socially sensitive topics, and to express subtle approval or disapproval of the West and Western cultural influences in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Received theories of globalization are mostly spun out of armchair speculation without hard empirical data. They also tend to be Western centered. Based on a considerable amount of empirical, ethnographic data made available by fellow Japan specialists, several concepts have been identified to help account for Japan's globalization. For example, some cultural products tend to maintain their authenticity while others are easily creolized. At times, claimants of 'authenticity' fight a tug of war with creolizers. Cultural similarity is an important but incomplete explanation for the heavier density of Japanization in Northeast Asia, but Japanization, as synonym for Japan's globalization, is going on throughout the world. As Japan 'Japanizes; that is, 'creolizes' the West, this Japanized West is diffused to the rest of Asia in the Asianization process. Most of these and other concepts discussed in this paper are applicable without, or with slight, obvious modifications to an analysis of globalization from other centers such as the United States, Great Britain, or China. The study of Japan's globalization can offer useful ways of understanding globalization elsewhere and thus contribute to the general theory of globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses papers published within the issue, include on the historical trajectory of the notions of jinshu and minzoku, another on Korea-phobia in Japan, and finally on how Japanese citizenship and nationality are a structural source of exclusion and marginalization for various groups.

It is my great pleasure to present this special literature issue of Japanese Studies . The last time a similar issue was published was in December 1994 (Vol. 14, No. 3). Of course, individual literature papers have been published regularly in subsequent issues, but many of us have been feeling that it is high time for another issue entirely devoted to literary studies. This feeling was reinforced at the Asian Studies Association of Australia Fourteenth Biennial Conference, Hobart, 30 June-3 July 2002. Despite the unfortunate cancellation of Ōe Kenzaburō's keynote speech, Japanese literary studies were strongly represented at the conference. It took several months after the excitement of the ASAA conference, however, for a more concrete plan for this issue to emerge. Once it was decided to allocate the December 2003 issue for this purpose, there was no time to waste. Being a complete novice in editing, I am deeply indebted to a number of people who worked very hard to make this issue possible. I am particularly grateful to the chief editor, Judith Snodgrass, for giving me this opportunity and for guiding me through this very rewarding operation. My big thanks go to all the contributors and anonymous referees, who are based in, or travelling in, various parts of the world, not only for their intellectual contributions but also for their cooperation in enabling us to meet the extremely tight schedule. I would also like to thank the School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies, University of Queensland, for funding editorial assistance. Last, but by no means least, Anne Platt must be commended highly for her thorough and efficient editorial work. The six papers are arranged roughly in chronological order. The first three deal with pre-war texts, beginning with Hiroko Cockerill's study of Futabatei Shimei's translations of Russian literature, with a particular focus on the development of narrative style. This is followed by Maria Flutsch's reading of Natsume Sōseki's less frequently discussed piece Omoidasu koto nado , which contains accounts of some crucial moments in his life and in the history of the nation. Tomoko Aoyama's paper examines the lack of romance in pre-war examples of 'gastronomic literature' written by Murai Gensai, Kōda Rohan, Tanizaki Jun'ichirō, and Okamoto Kanoko. Of the group of three papers on post-war literature, Erik Lofgren's presents an interesting analysis of Ichikawa Kon's film adaptation of Ōoka Shōhei's canonical and controversial novel Nobi , while Rio Otomo offers a provocative reading of Mishima Yukio's Kinkakuji . Barbara Hartley focuses on the corporeal experience of motherhood as represented in selected texts of Tsushima Yūko, Ariyoshi Sawako, and Enchi Fumiko. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]