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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 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]