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Public transport providers often attempt to prevent passenger behaviour they consider dangerous, deviant, or otherwise undesirable through media technologies such as posters, signage, and overhead announcements. This paper explores the rationale of such mediated regulatory endeavours by taking up the example of 'manner improvement' poster campaigns by urban rail providers in Tokyo. Based on expert interviews with individuals involved in the production of poster campaigns and analysis of industry documents, it examines the motives and considerations guiding company interventions into passengers' everyday mobility practices. While previous scholarship has largely viewed such initiatives as a form of social control, this paper interprets manner improvement efforts as a customer service strategy. The paper examines posters' content, design, and limitations to argue that manner improvement efforts by urban transport providers are not primarily concerned with disciplining passengers but satisfying customer sensibilities. Enquiring into transit etiquette posters from the perspective of transport and design companies involved in creating them, this paper presents a novel contribution to the study of urban mobilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper asks if there is deficiency of investment in people in Japan. To answer this question we examine comparative and historical data, as well as the reasons behind the data. We then look at public policies of recent administrations, particularly the Kishida administration, since one of its core policy agendas is 'investment in people'. We find that there is a deficiency of investment in people, by governments, companies and people themselves, for a variety of reasons, and that the Kishida administration has to date only proposed temporary measures without long term solutions. The paper concludes with policy implications and some proposals for additional action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan famously muddled through the 2020 Summer Olympics – triumphant as a host in that the Games were held, after a year-long delay, despite the global COVID-19 pandemic that had threatened to shutter the event entirely. The successes were qualified, with spectator-less matches and races leading to eerily quiet medals ceremonies, at least compared with normal years of cheering fans, enthusiasts, and tourists. Nowhere was the strangeness of the event more apparent than in the Opening Ceremony, filled with a combination of subdued but technologically adept spectacle, artistic representations of grief and loss, and the an unnervingly empty Olympic Stadium. This paper examines the politics of the Ceremony, and in particular the apparent early plans for a more standard, lightly nationalistic display of local history and culture, and toward a set of acknowledgments of a global crisis that transcended borders. In doing so, it calls attention to the complex political goals on display, as well as the challenges of benefiting politically from an event whose meaning in the midst of loss had been called broadly into question. Drawing from political science and literary theory, the paper emphasizes that while spectacle can matter, it risks, a dense environment of media reflection, being seen as little more than a gimmick. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the challenges posed by a rapidly aging society and its associated socio-economic difficulties, the Japanese government has encouraged the adoption of AI and robotics technologies for care. Conspicuous investments in these technologies in Japan underscore the dominance of techno-politics of innovation and the advocacy for the robotization of care practices. Such narratives — disseminated by the Japanese state, industry, media, and academia — often overlook the perspectives of the expected users of these technologies. This paper, rooted in a 14-month-long ethnographic study conducted at robotics labs in Japan and the UK in 2022–2023, examines the performance and ethical implications of technoscientific imaginaries portraying Socially Assistive Robots (SARs) as already reliable, safe, and efficient. It sheds light on the intricate relationship between science, technology, the state, and society, emphasizing their use as instruments of power for state-led national development objectives. Moreover, it exposes how technology is presented, creating an illusion of efficiency while neglecting the necessity of involving society in co-designing and co-producing these technologies. The paper ultimately advocates for responsible innovation, emphasizing in particular the need for user involvement to ensure these technologies are not only more efficient and reliable, but also more accessible, inclusive, and fairer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how AI ethics has been developed at the national level in Japan, and what this process reveals about broader Japanese state imaginaries of how advanced technology should be developed and used, and what a future with these technologies should look like. Key developments in the Japanese government's approach to AI ethics and governance between 2014 and 2023 are laid out, based on an analysis of official reports and policy documents supplemented by data collected via semi-structured interviews with three expert members of the committees that formulated several key sets of ethical principles. The paper considers Japan's positioning in the global race to develop AI ethics principles over this period, as well as the imaginary of AI within the wider historical context of imaginaries about the knowledge society in Japan. I suggest three ways in which AI ethics has been understood and instrumentalized in the Japanese context, and argue that the main methodology used to date—ELSI—complements the government's utopian and techno-determinist imaginaries of the future while concealing a deeply conservative approach that serves to reproduce structural inequalities and discrimination despite the apparent internationalism and progressive values that are repeatedly expressed in state-promoted ethical principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contrast to expectations that the greater visibility of aid increases the donor's prestige, this paper examines why certain donor countries may seek to render their aid programs invisible. As the case of Japan's early Triangular Development Cooperation (TDC) in Southeast Asia demonstrates, donors at times seek to conceal their presence to better secure their national interests. By approaching this (in-)visibility puzzle through the focus on its politics, this study highlights the complexity of donors' motivations in selectively activating (in-)visibility in TDC. Via a historicised account of Japan's post-war aid/economic cooperation relationship with Southeast Asia, the paper finds how the triangular mechanism allowed Japan and Thailand as an intermediary to selectively render their presence in-/visible to shun hostile sentiments against them in order to pursue their respective diplomatic goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conceptual framework of this paper is based on the concept of bounded rationality. During the decision-making process, the consumer uses images as mental shortcuts. The occurrence of the spillover effect has been confirmed in the literature. To this date, the effect of tourism advertising on the respondents' attitudes towards products originating from a particular country and the issue of whether it affects both dimensions of a country's image (cognitive and affective) have not been studied. The present study responds to these two gaps by developing an extended model of the spillover effect. A sample of 138 Japanese students participated in a pre-post experiment to provide feedback before and after exposure to advertising. Research results indicate that the commercial have created a more positive attitude among respondents in all areas measured. The current study adds to the growing body of cross-disciplinary literature on country image. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'China threat' has been identified as an important driver of Japan's security agenda and discourse. The threat posed by China has been discussed either as a given factor determining the trajectory of Tokyo's security approach, as a product of identity construction, or as an expression of securitizing processes that facilitate institutional and policy change. This paper contributes to this debate by offering an alternative explanation of the process through which the Abe government constructed China as a threat. Building on securitization theory, the paper examines the modes and strategies employed by the Abe Administration to successfully securitize China. The paper argues that, while Beijing was labeled a 'concern' rather than an 'existential threat,' it was still securitized through a process of securitization that involves an association with those domains in which China engages assertively, namely the maritime commons. The paper suggests calling this type of securitizing pattern 'transversal securitization' and explores how this indirect strategy allowed the Abe government to pragmatically pursue its objectives both domestically and at the international level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intermediaries are indispensable for processing the mobility of international migrants. In the absence of an official migration policy in Japan, this requirement of intermediaries is not an exception. This paper examines the different approaches of Japanese intermediaries towards Japanese client firms and Vietnamese early-career professionals employed in the information technology sector in the cross-border labour market between Japan and Vietnam. Two major results are derived based on data from semi-structured interviews. First, recruitment companies instruct labour users, and recruitment organizations seek to 'frame' a job post for migrant workers for a successful visa application. Second, temporary staffing firms 'package' multiple Vietnamese workers to provide the necessary labour to clients. This study argues that different types of intermediaries are present in the employment process of early-career foreign skilled labourers and that a temporary staffing firm intervenes the most actively in the employment process of skilled migrants among other intermediaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union-Japan political and international development dialogue is resurging through the Strategic Partnership Agreement recently agreed between the two actors. The current paper argues that in order for this agreement to deliver on its promises, the EU and Japan need to build on their similarities, but more importantly on their differences and lessons learnt through their distinct international experiences. While common values and norms have helped them to agree on such document, building on their differences will help both actors to make this bilateral dialogue more productive and strategic. Through the theoretical lenses of policy entrepreneurship used to consolidate knowledge for development on horizontal cooperation, the paper questions how sharing their experiences as international donors can be of strategic relevance for both the EU and Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we introduce a project on singles' intimate practices conducted during COVID times as a case study of quantitative social research with a particular focus on qualitative reflections. We thematize the topic of self-reflexivity, which is considered an essential category in qualitative research but largely neglected in quantitative research. We discuss three methodological issues through the lens of self-reflection: 'translation issues'; the problems of asking 'sensitive' and the 'right' questions; and the problematics of 'the present' in particularly fluid times. We show that this approach promotes contextualization of the measurement tool, the data and the findings and can be a way for doing quantitative research on intimacy outside the 'standard' nuclear family in pandemic times. Overall, this paper underscores the ways that scholars as individuals and teams are inextricable from our research site, as we navigate disruption even while seeking to understand its implications on our informants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contrasts agricultural protection of Japan and Korea with the West and identifies major differences between them. It characterizes agricultural protection of Japan and Korea (net heavy food importers) as "tariff-based and scarcity-sensitive" aimed at promoting survival and the West (net food exporters) as "subsidy-based and surplus-inducing" aimed at enhancing farm income. We then identify factors underlying the coevolution and divergence in the extent of agricultural trade liberalization between Japan and Korea since the launch of the Uruguay Round in 1986. Korea accepted deep cuts in agricultural tariffs in bilateral FTAs with the US and EU during the 2000s while Japan continued to protect farm interests by concluding low levels of FTAs with politically sensitive products excluded from tariff concessions. The two countries' stances reversed since 2013 with Japan becoming proactive in pursuing high levels of FTAs with major agricultural exporting countries and Korea decelerating its opening of agricultural markets. To explain such divergences, this paper develops a political economy framework in which the incumbent political leadership would consider both national interests and sectoral (farm as import competing industries and business/manufacturing as exporting industries) special interests. Our analysis shows that President Roh (2002–2007)'s embracing of neoliberal paradigm in formulating foreign trade policies that would promote national interests underlies the unprecedented level of agricultural trade liberalization in Korea during the 2000s, while Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's determination not to be outcompeted by the rising China and Korea's ambitious FTA strategies underlies Japan's proactive bilateral and mega-FTA drives since 2013. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan has historically been a major player within the Indo-Pacific region due to its rapid post-war economic expansion, technological advancement, massive overseas development aid as well as its cultural outreach. As the Indo-Pacific today is marred with various challenges in the form of maritime and energy security, border conflicts, booming population, developing economies, and rising carbon emissions, among others. The region requires a multipolar balance of power wherein nations can lead by example and concerted action towards creating a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable future for an extensively dynamic Indo-Pacific. This paper focuses on one of the critical variables of the region, i.e., the energy sector, and attempts to place Japan's role and contribution to the region's ongoing energy transitions. The extent and means through which Japan can propel itself and the region towards a just transition with the help of regional and international cooperation have been analysed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Michael Rush sheds light on the Japanese 'Nordic Turn' in the family policy, including a father-friendly parental leave scheme after the 2000s in his work published in 2015. Despite this and the Japanese Government's apparent desire to encourage fathers to take parental leave, the policy does not seem effective as in Nordic countries. This paper examines what makes Japan's statutory parental leave scheme difficult to work like the ones in Nordic countries by analyzing the process of the amendments of the leave scheme after the 2014 amendment. The study pays particular attention to the views expressed by the various actors involved in the law-making process on the issue of the inconsistency between bonus months, which is a father quota, and the special extension of parental leave in case of no childcare place, and how this was reflected in the final bill. The paper reveals that the process was not confined to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare but was heavily influenced by the work of the Cabinet Office, project teams of the ruling party, and private groups promoting work-life balance measures. Partly because of this, the Japanese parental leave system has diverged significantly from the Nordic and German systems to which it was originally referred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the admissions practices of an 'Elite Traditional International School' (ETIS) in a large city in Japan. The school is seeing falling enrolment from its traditional clients e.g.'transnational capitalist class' families working for Embassies and its alumnus, whilst attracting an emergent aspiring locally-based body of parents representative of a 'global middle class' likely seeking advantages, and a new, distinct identity. The resultant tension, between dealing with market-led change (reflecting the reality) and trying to maintain and protect legitimacy as an ideologically driven institution serving the privileged 'international community' (reflecting the vision), creates a platform (the nomos) for admission practices that are potentially biased and largely hidden. Utilising a methodology grounded in the work of Pierre Bourdieu we identify how the school adopts a number of 'unwritten rules', to 'guard the gate'. Moreover, the imagined 'international community' emerges as a major field of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We aimed to survey the findings of phenomenological studies built up in the field of diabetes care in Sweden. This is a meta-synthesis of phenomenological studies on experiences related to diabetes in Sweden focusing on learning to live with diabetes. We proceeded by reference to the seven phases of Noblit & Hare. We examined papers from seven phenomenological studies on learning to live with diabetes in Sweden. From the papers, which describe the experience of living with diabetes, three overarching themes were selected—perception and awareness of the body; integration and responsibility; and presence of others who provide support. From those describing the expert's experience, an overarching theme emerged—encouraging reflection in persons with diabetes. We interpreted each of these themes in phenomenological terms and compared them with theories in Japan. Persons with diabetes take responsibility for coping with a range of things brought on by the illness and learn to live with diabetes. Experts support these persons so they can see their world objectively and critically scrutinize it. By building a model of diabetes care in Japan that references Scandinavian human science, it will be possible to find new approaches that support learning at the existential level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Japan, the complexity of the teaching profession has been downplayed in the course of repeated systemic reforms, wherein the profession is increasingly viewed as a technical operation. In response to this trend, the concept of "reflective practitioner" (Schön, D. A.) has been proposed as a counterpoint. While it has influenced the discussion of teacher education reform thereafter, it has also been coopted into what Gert Biesta calls "learnification" of teacher education. This paper outlines the trends and debates of teacher education reform in Japan and discusses ways to avoid the "learnification" of teacher education. This paper speaks directly to Item No. 1 of the 8 challenges put forward by the APJTE editors, which concerns the redefinition of teaching "as a technical operation aimed at the effective production of measurable learning outcomes" and its implications for teacher agency, identity and professionalism. It uses Japan as a case to depict the situation in which the trivialisation of teaching into a technical operation and the de-professionalisation of the teaching profession are proceeding not only through the action of educational policy but also through the interaction with discourses that are intended to criticise it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guest worker programs entail an intrinsic tension between control over workers' mobility and workers' agency. By drawing on the qualitative data from Chinese construction workers in Japan's Technical Intern Training Program (TITP), I illuminate the dialectical nature of the tension between control and agency. My findings suggest that labor recruiters and employers implement labor control, but their practices have the opposite effect of pressing workers to abscond or to do irregular jobs. Staying in the program is not an outcome of effective control, but a response to circumstances wherein revisions to Japan's immigration policy bring rewards while China's surveillance policies incur potential punishments. The control-agency dialectic suggests that the regulative focus should be shifted from workers to employers and recruiters. Incorporating approaches of spatiotemporality and relationality, I analyze how workers sustain relations with various actors through three interconnected temporal stages, and how the relational dynamics shape workers' varied mobility choices. Two features of the construction industry shape workers' circumstances and occasionally facilitate their mobility: the stratification of the labor force according to legal status and the subcontract system. The paper thus highlights the need to contextualise labor agency in changing state policies, relations with co-ethnics, and industry-specific features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local knowledge is recognised as a critical element of global energy transition and energy justice. This paper explores the roles local knowledge in the formation of a community organisation responsible for monitoring the nuclear facility operations, governance, and public risk communication. Our case study examines a local nuclear oversight organisation in the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa region in Japan, where suggestions have been made to consider nation-wide institutionalisation of organisations similar to French Commissions Locales d’Information (Local Information Commissions). Our findings reveal the critical roles of three forms of local knowledge, with a particular emphasis on the nuanced yet crucial impact of everyday-life knowledge (seikatsu-chi), a facet not extensively explored in existing studies, in facilitating the establishment of the local organisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the 'new trinity' reform of labour markets proposed in 2023, which is an integral part of Japan's New Form of Capitalism. After providing an overview of the reform's three components – reskilling/upskilling, inter-company mobility, and job-based employment – it discusses how the reform may contribute to reduction of labour shortages, skill shortages, and inequality among workers. It then assesses challenges to this reform, ways to overcome these challenges, and how Japan may hold answers for other countries facing similar labour market problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting with a broad overview of the need for urgent action concerning climate change globally, this paper then reviews the evolution of environmental policy in Japan up to and including green transformation (GX) measures taken under the Kishida administration, and an assessment of the changes still needed to achieve sustainability in Japan. An integrated approach has been adopted in Japan, encompassing the environment, the economy, and society, to achieve three transitions: first, to a de-carbonized society; second, to a circular economy; and third, to a 'nature-positive', decentralized society which co-exists with nature. This approach was signalled in the Regional Circular and Ecological concept in the Fifth Environmental Basic Plan of 2018, building on extensive discussions within the Ministry of Environment and with other ministries from 2014, in the wake of the 2011 triple earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the process of the internationalisation of Japan Tobacco (JT), as a former state-owned enterprise (SOE) in the context of varied state motives and interventions influenced by changing social and political environments. The account of the successful internationalisation of this large Japanese multinational corporation (MNC), frequently listed in the Fortune Global 500, helps to meet a growing need to elaborate the relationship between the privatisation and internationalisation of SOEs. The historical analysis of JT's internationalisation is presented with two distinct focuses, each of which illuminates significant implications for scholars of business history. First, breaking down the narrative into distinct phases helps to reveal the dynamic interaction between processes of privatisation and internationalisation over time. Second, the focus on distinct stakeholders draws on resource dependency theory to elaborate the nuanced relationship between the State's motives and JT's determination to internationalise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gives an overview of Zainichi Korean magazines (magazines published by ethnic Koreans living in Japan) from 1980 to the present and examines the directions of major magazines. Zainichi Korean magazines started mostly as outlets for the ethnic Korean community in Japan in the political environment of the 1940s and 50s. Faced with factors such as the division of their Korean homeland and the suppression of Koreans in Japanese society until the 1960s and 1970s, they developed towards conveying a unified voice for the ethnic Korean community in Japan. In the 1980s, the third generation came to account for the majority in the population of the ethnic Korean community in Japan, and their perceptions of the Korean community in Japan, their homeland (Korea), and Japan were different from those of the older generation. The role and stature of Zainichi Korean magazines began to be undermined as an increasing share of the younger generation no longer expected an answer to the question of which source ethnic Koreans in Japan could rely on, now that the age of a collective consciousness had passed. The dwindling role of the Zainichi Korean magazine as an outlet for a collective consciousness was an inevitable trend. As if proving this, in the 1990s Zainichi Korean magazines rapidly lost their cultural dominance in all areas, including literature, politics, history, and popular culture. Since the 2000s, the market for Zainichi Korean magazines has generally been on the decline. Not only is the launch of new magazines dropping rapidly, but they can hardly be said to function as a public forum that can unite the entire Zainichi Korean community. As the specialized nature of the "Zainichi" Korean media is no longer appealing not only to the younger generations but also the older generations, the drift towards breaking away from the Zainichi Korean media is already a fait accompli. Notwithstanding this, many of the Zainichi Korean magazines are still looking for new roles to play in the midst of a changing environment for the Zainichi Korean community, and the future of Zainichi Korean magazines will depend on their decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For a long time after the end of large-scale student unrest in the 1970s Japan stood out by a comparatively low level of protest. Yet spectacular waves of mass-protest returned with the anti-nuke mobilizations following the 2011 Fukushima meltdown and other 'post-2011' movements. In this paper I develop an analytical framework inspired by the multi-level perspective in transition studies to illuminate two questions: how can the relatively low level of protest in Japan before 2011 – in particular the so called 'ice age' of protest from the 1970s to the early 2000s – be explained, and what enabled the recovery of protest afterwards, starting in the early 2000s and leading up to the post-2011 protest cycle? I point to the crucial role played on the one hand by niches in the form of social movement spaces in fostering oppositional discourses and on the other hand by landscape changes that destabilized the established politico-cultural regime. A crucial role was played by the creative work of freeter activists in social movement spaces during the 1990s who reinvented activism in response to stigmatization of open protest after the collective trauma of the perceived defeat of the New Left in the 1970s. This creative work was a precondition for the rise of protest movements in the early 2000s which in turn prepared the way for the post-2011 protest wave. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the case of a migrant-owned apartment in Japan that has been rented to migrants for over a decade. The apartment, located in the "house with the red roof," and people's relations that develop within and around it are approached through the anthropological concept of "societies with houses." The apartment is regarded not only as a dwelling but as an institution that governs relations in a loosely tied migrant society with houses. The study contributes both to migrant housing studies, offering an experimental perspective that goes beyond inquiries into migrant spatial distributions and notions of home, and to the "societies with houses" concept through expanding its toolkit and application. The apartment in question not only provides a place to live for migrants but also enacts the functions of protection, capital accumulation, social memory reproduction, disguise and exposure, and metaphorical kinning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a result of the port reforms in Japan, the Japanese government has intensively invested in physical infrastructure to maintain the trunk routes at selected and legally repositioned first rank strategic international ports under the Strategic International Container Port Policy. However, although central international ports, which are legally ranked second, have important roles to play in trade with Asia, it is difficult to expand the functions of these ports further without the development of strategic measures, given the government policies and accompanying budget constraints. This paper describes an examination of the feasibility of logistics strategies for a second-rank port to become a hub for Asia in Japan consistent with the current policy by using the global logistics intermodal network simulation, considering Hakata Port as a case study. The results show that Hakata Port has the potential to collect cargo from ports on the Japan Sea side and to launch shuttle services to Southeast Asia. The simulation results also suggest that cooperation with Kitakyushu Port, which is geographically close, is desirable. Approaches based on the characteristics of port governance in Japan are also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering the significant importance of environmental sustainability, it is vital to understand the determinants of environmental sustainability and to draw the policy implications for a sustainable environment. This paper examines the impacts of financial development and industrial structure on environmental sustainability in China from 1995 to 2020 using the A.R.D.L. approach. The result indicates that financial development negatively impacts CO2 emissions and greenhouse gas emissions in the long-run. The impact of industrial structure is also enormous. The results also suggest that industrial structure negatively impacts environmental sustainability by decreasing CO2 emissions and greenhouse gas emissions in the long-run. While Internet development accelerates environmental sustainability in Japan in the long run, economic development and energy negatively impact environmental sustainability in the long run. The findings of this study add to the current literature and provide some significant policy implications for improving environmental sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing risk of a military attack on Taiwan by mainland China (otherwise known as the People's Republic of China, or PRC) to achieve what the latter terms "reunification." Taiwan, the US, and Japan must urgently and interactively prepare for this contingency—which is also the best way of deterring it. Taiwan must increase military spending (as it has begun to do), with an emphasis on a "porcupine strategy" of lots of distributed, mobile, survivable, affordable, and lethal weapons. The US must increase its military deployments and joint exercises in the region, again emphasizing the types of weapons that can survive a preemptive PRC attack and counter a Chinese blockade or amphibious invading force. Japan will double defense spending over the next five years in a welcome and transformative move, but effective deterrence requires that it also signal that the collective defense of Taiwan against a military attack is existential for its own security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As more countries witness depopulation, the expansion of High-Speed Rail (HSR) to reach shrinking cities in peripheral regions is renewing the debate on the effects of this infrastructure. This is the case in Japan, a country that continues to extend its highly developed HSR network hoping to curb regional decline. This paper investigates whether HSR had a positive effect on the shrinking trajectories of connected medium and small-sized cities in peripheral regions by examining the impact of extending the Shinkansen network on five municipalities in the prefectures of Iwate and Aomori, northern Japan. Although depopulation decelerated in some of the case studies, the findings highlight that HSR did not reverse shrinkage and benefits are mainly found in increased accessibility, albeit unevenly distributed. This suggests that, rather than uniformly uplifting socio-economic outlooks, the Shinkansen contributed to reshaping the trajectories of the connected cities and reproduced core–periphery dynamics at the regional level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does the notion of state security inform national approaches to managing cross-border in-migration in the increasingly interconnected but volatile Northeast Asian region? This paper explores this question by focusing on the intermestic politics of labor importation. Specifically, it theorizes the multidimensionality and multifunctionality of security fears that inform Japan's and Taiwan's approaches to the admission of low-skilled foreign workers. The paper proposes a comprehensive conceptual framework that explicates these relationships and argues that Northeast Asian labor importation regimes were formed at the intersection of a threefold logic of state security. Whereas economic security acted as an enabling (inclusionary) factor in both Japan and Taiwan and motivated the acceptance of foreign workers, internal security in Japan and external security in Taiwan acted as constraining (exclusionary) factors, which directly and distinctively conditioned the resulting policies. Moreover, ever since their inception in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, the divergent policy regimes have been interlocked in these economic-internal and economic-external dynamics of state security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Faced with ageing populations, escalating care needs, and growing shortages of care workers, Japanese and EU governments have pursued large, publicly-funded research projects to develop and commercialize care robots. Yet despite their global leadership in this field, Japan and the EU have rarely been compared directly in studies of care robotics. This paper explores similarities in their approaches to the public funding and planning of care robot development, commercialization, and implementation since the late 1990s, and what the differences reveal about their contrasting priorities in science, technology, and innovation policy, as well as differential treatment of care robotics as an industry and as a research domain. I conclude by arguing for the importance of studying such funding mechanisms and institutional actors to better understand their key role in shaping the emergent landscape of care robotics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Escalation of great power rivalry resulting from China's rise and Russia's invasion of Ukraine has prompted Japan to align its foreign and security policies more closely. This paper analyzes how ODA policy, which the Japanese government regards as a crucial diplomatic instrument, has been modified in the face of these changes. The most significant transformation is the securitization of ODA, or the deployment of ODA to advance Japan's national security interests. This trend is evident in the emergence of a new type of ODA that aims to contribute to Japan's security interests by strengthening the deterrence capabilities of developing countries involved in territorial disputes with China. Notably, Japan is justifying this new ODA trend in the name of upholding the universal value of the international rule of law. In other words, Japan is shifting the focus of assistance away from domestic issues of democracy and human rights in each recipient country toward the rule of law in international relations. This is a manifestation of Japan's effort to strike a careful balance between upholding universal values and avoiding the risk of offending incumbent governments in recipient countries with questionable domestic governance records. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on the online fandom of a Thai Boys Love (BL) drama in Japan, called tai-numa, this exploratory study examines its background, fan practices and experiences, and negotiations between fandoms and the mass media and within the fandom. Through interviews with 19 fans active in the fandom, which was shaped by external and internal factors, such as mediascape, characteristics of consuming BL, and the global pandemic, this research argues that the fandom is a transnational, transcultural, and trans-subcultural contact zone, enabling fans to create, learn, reflect, negotiate, and update each other's values. Fandom activity was facilitated because it was equal and non-hierarchical, allowing for the engagement of a heterogeneous mix of fans from different subcultural backgrounds, and it offered a sense of simultaneity. Through fan voice and discussion, this paper suggests the potential impact of fandom activities on real life and what is needed for such fandoms to be established and sustained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan formulated its first infrastructure export strategy in 2010. However, the outputs and effects of that strategy and its successive revisions over the preceding decade have not yet been extensively reviewed. Although infrastructure came to the fore of the international agenda over the past decade, existing research has mostly discussed individual infrastructure projects and accompanying signalling, sloganeering, and strategic communications in the geopolitical and geo-economic context. This paper therefore aims to make an empirical and interpretive contribution to existing scholarship by comprehensively reviewing Japan's infrastructure exports in 2010–19 and elucidating further its oft-disregarded commercial and developmental aspects. To do so, this article focuses on Official Development Assistance (ODA) loan projects, which count among the largest items of Japan's infrastructure exports. We introduce and analyse a previously unexamined dataset on infrastructure-related ODA loan projects and contract awards, while also showcasing the avoidance of zero-sum-game approaches in Japan's related strategy. We then discuss whether and how the changes of Japanese infrastructure export strategy affected the performance of Japan's infrastructure export through the ODA loan projects as well as Japan's relationship with the recipient countries, especially in the various parts of the Indo-Pacific region, such as Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Population decline is expected to continue to be a prominent feature of Japanese demography in future decades. Internal migration plays a significant role in dictating the intensity of population decline at the regional level. In this paper we visualize inter-prefecture internal migration flows between the eight regions of Japan in 2020 using a chord diagram to show the relative scales of the origin-destination migration flows between each region. In addition, we use an animated series of chord diagrams to show the development of internal migration between 1954 and 2020. We fix the axis of the sectors of the chord diagram in the animation to illustrate the rapid growth and then slow decline (post-1972) in the regional migration system, as well as the interruption in the movement patterns during 2011, due to the Great East Japan Earthquake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study reviewed the literature on psycho-social treatments for reducing school absenteeism in Japan, particularly focussing on those featuring a cognitive-behavioural approach. To extract studies, we screened journals published by 52 academic societies that are members of the Union of the Japanese Psychological Association and reviewed relevant peer-reviewed papers. We consequently analysed 31 cases: 21 elementary school students and 10 junior high school students. We found that to effectively address school absenteeism in Japan, cognitive-behavioural approaches should feature a combination of two or more behavioural techniques. These findings may help Japanese practitioners, such as school counsellors, explain to clients the benefits of choosing cognitive-behavioural approaches, as well as the prospects for support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Personal Outcomes Scale is a measurement tool to examine quality of life among persons with intellectual disability. This paper addressed the validity and reliability of the Japanese version of the scale using both self-reports and reports of others. Data were collected from 128 people with intellectual disability (90 men and 38 women; Mage = 37.19 ± 11.90 (range = 19–69) years) and 27 support workers. Reliability was examined by Cronbach's alpha coefficients, inter-respondent reliability coefficients, and test-retest reliability. Validity was examined by construct validity and criteria-related validity. Self- and other-reported versions showed adequate internal consistency (α = 0.79); however, some domains had relatively low internal consistency. Validity tests showed weak to moderate correlations between the total score and the domain scores in both versions. The scale is reliable overall; however, cultural aspects should be considered to bolster its reliability for practical application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan's military participation in the First World War was relatively brief but the war and the ideas it unlocked exerted an impact up to and after the Second World War. Japan experienced an economic boom during the war resulting in an exponential increase in the cost of rice. This sparked a serious challenge to the Japanese state. The ensuing rice riots of 1918 saw the government forced to deploy more troops to suppress them than it had sent to intervene on behalf of White Russian forces in Siberia in the same year. Further, the 'Wilsonian Moment' emboldened the Korean independence movement in 1919. When the war ended on the Western Front in 1918, Japan was involved in military intervention in Eastern Russia, was quelling domestic unrest, and facing a major threat to the stability of its empire. Although enacted in 1925, the Peace Preservation Law grew directly from the events beginning in the final year of the First World War. The law was the instrumental platform for the construction of Japan's infamous thought control apparatus of the 1930s and the policing of Japan's formal and informal empires. This paper traces the wartime origins of the Peace Preservation Law in the context of the state of exception and how the First World War and the Russian Revolution forced Japan to rethink its conception of sovereignty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a critical engagement with endings in relation to formulations of crisis and futures through two sites that stage an encounter with the end. The first is the permanent exhibit at Japan's National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation in Tokyo. This site, I show, asks us to reflect on how we think about the end of civilisation as an immanent crisis to be overcome through an innovation that allows us to escape accountability for conditions in the present. As such, I argue, it ultimately encourages us to cultivate attention and accountability toward material and conceptual problems in the present. The discussion then takes the idea of cultivating attention to the present to northeast Japan. I show there how an ending inflicted on the coastal residents by the tsunami of March 2011 has made space for precisely this kind of attention and accountability to the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how female and foreign corporate directors influence their corporation's climate change behaviour. This study found that female directors contribute to the formulation of their company's climate change vision, and foreign directors contribute to the formulation of a climate change mission. Japan has set a long-term goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, an extremely difficult goal to achieve. Our results suggest that it is important to appoint female and foreign directors to achieve net zero emissions. Our results also suggest that diversity among company directors needs to be further expanded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on migrants' experiences of moving house in the country of settlement, the study explores the housing pathways of Russian-speaking migrants in Japan over their life courses. This paper emphasizes the need for the anthropology of migration to consider not only the housing events but also the housing pathways experienced by cross-border migrants in receiving countries. It is argued that the act of moving from one accommodation to another plays a crucial role in how migrants develop their biographies and perceptions of self. In addition to investigating house relocation, the study borrows from the Russian formalist school of narratology to examine how migrants narrativize their experiences in stories that intertwine housing pathways and movers' identities. The study reveals how the instances of moving—and not necessarily the physical qualities of housing—emerge as dynamic forces that initiate migrants into their desired statuses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the Japanese crown prince and emperor Hirohito during the 1920s to think more critically about how fashion historians can analyze "western" dress in non-western contexts. In particular, this essay looks at Hirohito's embrace of new forms of middle-class menswear—particularly sportswear and the lounge suit—to signal fundamental shifts in the relationship between monarch and subject. These innovations rested upon far more than simply imitating western centers of men's fashion. Instead, this paper argues that to understand the meaning of "western" clothing styles in non-western contexts, fashion studies needs a more sophisticated paradigm than the term "western clothes." While some garments carried strong resonances of their European antecedents, Japanese men like Hirohito adopted them primarily for what they could do in Japan, while also understanding their potential for integrating Japan into the broader world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article takes a critical look at the sovereignty claims surrounding the Senkaku / Diaoyu Islands. The dispute has long plagued Sino-Japanese relations and is considered one of the key regional security hotspots, with the People's Republic of China mounting an active challenge to Japanese administrative control. This article reviews the case for sovereignty under both the discovery and the prescription principles. However, the article concludes that one cannot find a compelling case for sovereignty under either principle in favour of either claimants. The paper argues that this is due to the traditional insignificance of the islands prior to UNCLOS establishing exclusive economic zones. Rather, the article suggests that to facilitate a resolution to the disputes, the islands should not be classified as islands under UNCLOS as they do not meet the legal threshold for such a classification, either today or historically. If anything, the weakness of claims that contributes to the intractability of the dispute today shows that traditionally neither China nor Japan has considered these territories as islands in a manner that would be in the spirit of UNCLOS. While such a reclassification would not immediately resolve the dispute, it would be a significant step to remove incentives for the further pursuit of conflicting sovereignty over the islands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, Teaching Expertise in Three Countries project is used as an example to show the significance and contribution of international comparative research and to think about the possible implications for policy in early childhood education. The project studied the development of expertise in preschool teaching in Japan, China, and the United States by employing 'video-cued multivocal ethnography' to explore how teaching expertise is defined in each of these countries and what processes help teachers acquire advanced teaching skills. This project has shown similarities and culturally specific notions, in what the participants have to say about characteristics of less and more experienced teachers. These research findings raise issues and challenges in early childhood education that resonate with the situation not only in the three countries but also possibly in other countries, such as problematizing the role of remembering and reflection in professional practice and the value of experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Staying unmarried and not starting a nuclear family is increasingly common around the globe. At the same time, living arrangements are diversifying. Both living alone and sharing housing are growing trends, especially in urban areas. This is also true in Japan, where experts anticipate the emergence of a so-called 'Hyper-Solo-Society', despite the norm to get married remaining strong. In this regard, Japan can serve as an excellent case study for investigating the relationship worlds of unmarried adults through and in relation to their living arrangements. My data draw on a qualitative study of unmarried individuals—primarily women—between the ages of 24 and 45 in different living arrangements in Tokyo and Kyoto and point to a diversification of relationship worlds, offering insights into how this development is interwoven with the diversification of living arrangements and revealing the shifting, partly blurring boundaries of dwelling, relating, and belonging. Furthermore, the data indicate that 'new' spaces of relating and belonging—spaces of one's own, spaces of (unfocused) embeddedness, and spaces of togetherness with friends, partners, or one's family of choice—are emerging and/or actively being created. These spaces, which partly break with conventional gendered configurations, are fluid and comprise ambivalences and ambiguities, but they can play a salient role for shifting notions of what 'home' and 'belonging' mean. By identifying changing perceptions of home and belonging, this paper contributes a new perspective to current global debates on 'singles' and their practices of relating and belonging at the intersection of gender, mobility, and space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether the tourism programs offered by the higher education institutions in Japan address the aspect of sustainability and corresponding concerns and challenges faced in the tourism industry. This study identifies the main issues based on thematic analysis from 62 sustainable tourism event publications identified based on key search terms and relevance. The findings highlight a major shortage in addressing the concerns found in the analysis which, shows that there is a need for the higher education institutions in Japan to revamp their existing curricula. There are strong critical voices that call for necessary reforms in management practices to include collaboration with residents. Given the importance the Japanese government has placed on the role of tourism for invigorating the economy and revitalizing rural communities, a lot must be done in higher education for tourism to be successfully, and sustainably managed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the striking similarities in strategic environment of Japan and South Korea, US deterrence through nonproliferation policy toward the two allies varied in terms of its measures applied: reward-based deterrence and threat-based deterrence. Using the critical junctures framework, this paper argues that 1) domestic structural circumstances of divided with idealist bias or unified with realist bias in two allies led to different local responses to US policy that signalled the level of credibility of US security guarantee; 2) intermediaries that played a critical role in promoting mutual trust and confidence have influenced the credibility and confidence on intra-alliance level; 3) this credibility and confidence had shaped the direction of the US deterrence strategy of reward-based deterrence for Japan and threat-based deterrence for South Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1930 and 1943 over 400 public radio receiver installations were erected by Japan's national broadcaster in public parks around Japan. They were intended to bring radio broadcasting, during this period the voice of the state, to a wider audience and to play a part in Japan's home-front mobilisation efforts. The majority of installations seem to have been destroyed during or shortly after World War Two but roughly 40 are known to be extant, these have yet to receive systematic attention from either Japanese or foreign academics, they thus offer a fresh focus for research into the relationships between the interwar Japanese state and the listening publics. This paper aims primarily to draw attention to the existence of these little—known objects, it also offers a sketch of the media landscape into which they emerged, and covers two significant contemporary social developments—the growth of coordinated mass sport and exercise, and the 'year 2600' celebrations of 1940—which contributed to the spread of radio towers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The politics of international finance for coal power plants have intensified since the 2015 Paris climate agreement was negotiated. Over the past few years, Japan and South Korea have signaled their intent not to fund new coal projects overseas, leaving China and its Belt and Road Initiative as the 'financier of last resort.' In September 2021, China too announced its intent to stop providing finance for overseas coal projects. What accounts for their decision to cease financing overseas coal projects despite prominent differences in political systems, degree of internationalization of their financial systems, and economic size? Drawing on datasets of coal projects and financing supplemented by case material and interviews, this paper explores the dynamics of coal export finance and how the combination of international reputational pressures and declining demand for coal finance diminished the domestic support for incumbent coal exporters in all three countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an alternative channel for elderly consumption response to housing value changes by focusing on the informal financial markets. This channel may be important, particularly in a society where the elderly are less mobile and have limited access to the formal financial markets. In such a society, elderly homeowners may leave their housing assets to their children, and in exchange receive cash to fund consumption. Japanese household-level data on the elderly are used to examine this possibility. The results indeed suggest that the consumption of the elderly responds to changes in their house values through the intrafamily finance channel alone. The marginal propensity to consume out of housing wealth is only 0.01. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]