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In this paper, I demonstrate how long-term multigenerational minorities and Japanese residents engage in the current socio-political discourse of "multicultural coexistence" society (tabunkakyōsei shakai), which had not previously been integral to the vocabulary of national rhetoric in Japan until the 2000s. I argue that the lack of clear definition and goals of multicultural coexistence by the current Japanese government generates obstacles in the attempt to build a multicultural society. While local municipalities' programs, such as multilingual services and lifestyle support, are certainly needed, long-term foreign residents with linguistic and cultural competence are suspicious of the concept of multicultural coexistence due to their own embodied marginalized positions. Taking a local municipality's intercultural event as a point of reference, this paper explores how long-term minority residents perceive their positions at the crossroads of seemingly paradoxical forces of multicultural trends and an ongoing national identity founded upon ethnic homogeneity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

'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]

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]

This paper joins the debate on Japan's territorial dispute with South Korea over the Dokdo/Takeshima islets. Informed by the ontological security framework of analysis, this paper seeks to explain the decision to adopt the ‘Takeshima Day’ ordinance by the Shimane Prefectural Assembly and the subsequent ascendance of ‘Takeshima’ to the fore of Japan's identity construction vis-à-vis the Korean ‘other’. In this paper, I distinguish between two processes: one that led to the adoption of the ordinance and another that resulted in the entrenchment of ‘Takeshima’ in Japan's identity construction vis-à-vis the Korean ‘other’. The paper argues that the former process should be understood within the context of Shimane Prefecture's distinct identity construction vis-à-vis Tokyo, while the latter can be attributed to recent changes in Japan–Korea relations unrelated to the territorial dispute per se. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Scholars tend to overlook the overseas Chinese press as a communicative tool for Chinese nationalism. This paper takes media history as its focal point to demonstrate the contextual influences that shaped the operations of Chinese print media and gave rise to the manifestation of the overseas Chinese (huaqiao) identity in Japan. In particular, it emphasises that the mobilisation of the modern Chinese nationalism movement of the time was not the sole determinant of Chinese identity. It was also influenced by the way in which Chinese ethnic boundaries came to be shaped and reshaped in different historical periods through the dynamics between overseas Chinese communities and Japanese society. I use two overseas Chinese publications from different periods to illustrate the impacts of modern Chinese nationalism and the changing social and political context of Japan on the Chinese press. Finally, I present a synthetic narrative to account for the history of the overseas Chinese press in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a historical and sociolinguistic interrogation of Taiwanese to demonstrate the significance of language continuum in relation to identity formation. To this end, Taiwanese is discussed as a particular variety of language. Literacy practices in the Japanese colonial period (1895-1945) are contrasted with the precolonial and post-Japanese colonial period. The paper maintains that policies of Japanese linguistic colonialism strengthened the sociosemiotic cohesion amongst speakers of Taiwanese, and discusses how this experience resonated with the new reality after Japanese colonial rule in 1945 when Taiwan was reunited with its Chinese historical and cultural heritage. It suggests that in the post-Japanese colonial period, spoken Taiwanese continued to be a convincing vehicle of struggle for an alternative national identity. A proper appreciation of this situation depends on how we define literacy practices and comprehend these in the context of Taiwan's sociolinguistic landscape, past and present. Special reference will be made to diglossia, the connotation between script and language, criteria of literacy (functional and cultural), Chinese language standardisation and Japanese linguistic colonialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the field of Migration Studies, understandings of national attachment and nationalism are often located at the individual and collective boundaries of difference between migrant groups and a host, national Other. Such studies deny the extent to which the existence of differences within migrant groups may reflect the cultural complexity and specificity of particular nationalisms. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with Brazilian nationals living in Japan, this paper explores these differences through the lenses of personhood, national ideology and social relationships. Through their engagement with the Brazilian ideals of 'person' and 'individual', I demonstrate the extent to which such people embody a nationally constituted 'double code' of being open and yet closed to the values, relations and substances of Other Brazilians. By considering the significance of calor humano (human warmth) and saudades (yearning, homesickness) in people's lives in Japan, this article sheds fresh light on the links that exist between ideals of personhood, national ideology and contemporary processes of movement and migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a reinterpretation of Japan's responses toward China's pressure over the Yasukuni issue. It is generally taken for granted that Japan's official responses to China's pressure over the issue are determined by the personality of individual leaders, the emergence of Japanese conservative nationalism and the calculations of Japan's national interests with regard to China's strategic role. With the examination of two cases during the Koizumi and Abe administrations between 2001 and 2007, this paper offers an alternative interpretation by highlighting the rationality of individual political actors and the primacy of domestic political survival. The article suggests domestic political legitimacy of individual leaders is a vital factor that affects Japan's official responses to China's pressure over the Yasukuni issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language learning is frequently justified as a vehicle for promoting intercultural communication and understanding and language-in-education policies have increasingly come to reflect this preoccupation in their rhetoric. This paper examines the ways in which concepts relating to interculturality are constructed in Japanese language policy documents. It will explore in particular the ways in which ideologies of nationalism and Japanese identity have an impact on understandings of the nature and purpose of interculturality and how these are developed discursively in Japanese language-in-education policy. Japanese language policies construct a discourse of interculturality that focuses on the development of a nationalistic adherence to a particular conceptualisation of Japanese identity, which is unique, homogenous and monolithic. A multiculturalist perspective is taken in re-examining these themes in the contexts of Japanese policy documents relating to foreign language teaching, minority languages and Japanese language spread. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]