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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the normative function of historic narratives using the example of South Korean perceptions of twentieth-century history. The exploration of how relations between South Korea and Japan are perceived is based on 32 semi-structured interviews with academics, representatives of non-government organizations, and government officials in South Korea. The paper posits that the normative function of historical narratives is based on four mechanisms: (1) recognition: identifying problems in society that are associated with the aggressive and vicious actions of an outgroup in the past; (2) assessment: framing these problems as injustices; (3) connotation: establishing a specific meaning of national identity that promotes motivations for actions and agency (with specific duties and obligations); and (4) prescription: defining explicit strategies and tactics for action. An analysis of these mechanisms, which comprise the structure of historical narratives, reveals that in the case of South Korea, perceptions of the relations between South Korea and Japan have been shaped by Japan's brutal colonization of South Korea, the absence of Japanese accountability for this period, and a need for a South Korean identity premised on uniqueness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1950s and 1960s, the modern Japanese state employed overseas cultural promotion as a way to maximise its interests and image not only in international contexts but also at home. By juxtaposing the Takarazuka Revue’s performances in the United States and Japan during the postwar period, this paper argues that the overseas promotion of this Japanese theatre troupe both depended upon and reinforced the Japanese populace’s nationalistic pride in its culture. The paper also addresses the ways in which the Japanese government used Takarazuka’s theatrical presentations as a means of pursuing its domestic and diplomatic agendas: improving Japan’s international position by proposing shared aspects of popular culture with the US and increasing its sense of nationalism by propagating cultural pride. In doing so, the paper explicates the ways in which Japanese popular cultural considerations interfaced with political concerns in the shaping of postwar Japan’s national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

'Cool Japan' is an instance of Japanese government's nation branding exercise as part of its soft power projection in which the unique selling point is identified as Japanese national identity. In this paper, I examine the relationship between Cool Japan and Japanese national identity and highlight a tension in the construction. Cool Japan is about emphasizing Japan's attractiveness for public diplomacy, while the top-down nature of the branding undermines the imagery that the branding is designed to convey. I show that policy elites resolve this tension by invoking the traditional Japanese identity narratives that construct Japan into both a non-Western and an un-Asian entity, reproducing the myth of Japanese uniqueness. I argue that the elite narratives surrounding Cool Japan readily replicate the language reminiscent of prewar identity construction. Despite the contemporary popularity of manga and anime, the purported 'coolness' of these products are framed within older constructions of Japanese Self that can trace their pedigree back to the nineteenth century. Using the minutes of committee meetings, policy documents, as well as media interviews given by policy- and business elites, I show that Cool Japan is effectively a twenty first century rendition of the familiar Japanese identity construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a discourse analysis of the fan-audience discussions found in the National Taiwan University and Soochow University Bulletin Board Systems, this case study discovers that the Taiwanese youth in fact draw on Japanese TV dramas as a springboard for reflexive discussions of their own social and political conditions in post-authoritarian Taiwan. The Japanomania fan discourse played a crucial role in Taiwan's democratization and nationhood-building in the 1990s. This paper argues that fan discussion networks are ‘pre-political’ because they create social conditions and alternative discourses that could prepare media users for potential social changes. I contend that foreign media are not necessarily the most immediate oppressors and could become the source of subversive symbols and new meanings for local resistance. Further research is called for to illuminate the shaping of identity by the global media in non-Western contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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

Since the 1960s, NHK's morning drama series (asadora) have become known as a popular and quasi-institutionalised serial format of Japanese TV broadcasting. They attract millions of viewers by telling stories of female protagonists struggling to achieve personal fulfilment. At the same time, they also function as tools to spread certain forms of national identity, which are often linked to conservative concepts of an ideal Japanese lifestyle and anchored in a nostalgic rural landscape. Using the example of 2015's asadora Mare, we investigate how these two crucial aspects are implemented in the series' narrative and production. Furthermore, we link our observations to the domain of 'contents tourism'; this type of Japanese media-induced tourism recently gained significant attention from regional decision-makers working towards local revitalisation. By investigating contents tourism activities in Mare's context, the rural city of Wajima in the Noto Peninsula, we aim to understand how the media-touristic negotiation between real and imaged landscapes works and how that process influences consumers as well as locals. Our study provides a previously missing link between the qualitative analysis of media content and the examination of contents tourism in order to achieve a broader sociocultural perspective on this phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores and compares the positions of two major powers in East Asia—China and Japan—towards the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P) norm. R2P calls for collective international responsibility in the event that states are unwilling or unable to protect their people. Evaluating the mainstream argument in the literature that China and Japan have recently been welcoming the R2P norm, we ask the following questions: To what extent have China and Japan aligned themselves with R2P? How do international and national factors play out to influence their R2P stance? To summarize our findings up front: unlike what much of the current literature says, China and Japan's acceptance and practice of the R2P norm are largely pro forma. We argue that they both appear active in participating in the debates but only in order to remain inactive. In other words, they are active participants in the debates and discussions on R2P, but their aim is not to further its usage but to contain its effects. Their current stance on R2P is characterized by what we will call ‘Active in Not Being Active’ (AINBA). The article discusses the key sources and rationale for their AINBA policy with regard to R2P. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how a variety of national identity rhetorics are formed with the nuanced aestheticization. We focus on visual rhetorics. We use advertisements for traditional, seasonal gifts in post-postwar Japan as the context of inquiry. Two research questions addressed are: (1) how different rhetorics of national identity are formed between the gifts advertised and the audience, focusing more on visual than merely verbal elements, and (2) how visual genealogy – specific cultural and historical references in contemporary images – is used in rhetorical figures. Underpinned by a critical visual analysis, we apply Western and Japanese art canons to a visual social semiotic approach in order to interpret variations in the semantics of national identity. We discuss three types of rhetorics of national identity: rhe-transfiguration, rhe-truculence, and rhe-trepidation. The study suggests that national identity rhetorics activate a “deep subjectivity” resulting from the aestheticized experience reinforced by the nation’s consumption ritual. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

However intense, varied, and enriching the reception of Japanese culture in France has been since 1945, it still seems to be confronted with dead ends or counteractions, the least of which we can say have gone back a long way and also involve other countries besides France and Japan. To reflect on them can also help to consider Europe's relationship to the ‘other’ and even, I think, with certain adjustments include the United States. How can we avoid the binarism and dichotomy which today still result in the constant reference to Japanese culture as both radically different and yet always the same due to the unchanged arsenal of clichés? Such a project involves forging a critical discourse located not from one country or culturetoanother but a discoursebetweencountries. It is in this context that a number of writers—I call them the Coral Writers—delineate new forms of creativity, belonging, and identity as well as the image of another Japan that is plural, anarchic; new forms of creativity that can be thought of more in terms of reciprocity and hybridization, in other words, of cultural and identity interactions that reveal the extraordinary archaism of references to an original purity. [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]

By the twentieth century, Black intellectuals envisioned Japan as a beacon of their own possibilities. Japanese perceptions of this bond are typically implicitly assumed in most research on the subject. In this essay we argue that Japan saw Black America as a symbol of strategic not substantive solidarity. With its entrance onto the international scene in the nineteenth century, Japan encountered an international racial hierarchy, and struggled in formulating an emergent self-identity that would allow it to rationalize its rightful place alongside White Western powers. On the eve of the Second World War, Japan's national/racial identity is a complex set of influences: a merging of its own indigenous perceptions of race, an importation of outside racial ideology, and contextual needs linked to still trying to insert itself as an equal to Western powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines whether support for multiculturalism is compatible with an ethno-national identity in Japan. Multiculturalism discourses have centred on the issue of how to treat cultural diversity within a society. In Japan, the concept of multiculturalism has become popular over the past decade. However, some researchers think that the Japanese maintain their privileged position by essentialising cultural differences in the name of multiculturalism. My study therefore investigates the relationship between ethno-national identity, the endorsement of multiculturalism and supportive attitudes toward the equal rights of ethnic minorities by employing Japanese data from an international public-opinion survey. It was found that ethno-national identity has positive effects on the endorsement of multiculturalism, while having negative effects on the endorsement of equal rights between ethnic majorities and ethnic minorities. This means that the Japanese do not regard multiculturalism as antithetical to the maintenance of ethnic homogeneity within a 'nation'; rather, the endorsement of multiculturalism stems from belief in the uniqueness of 'Japaneseness'. The theoretical and political implications of this study's results are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores responses to modernity and the challenge it poses to identity in Japan through the works of the poet Hagiwara Sakutaro. It concludes by arguing that, inspired by Sakutaro's call to 'return to Japan', the Japanese Romantics transformed Japan into a spiritual project of overcoming the modern and the West - thus being superior - through the nostalgic construction of a cultural essence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]