Search

Paul Natorp is better known as a key figure of Neo-Kantian epistemology than as a great educationist. This paper discusses the affinity for Natorp's theory of education in Japan in the first decades of the twentieth century. It presents an overview of Natorp's educational way of thinking and analyses the interest of Japanese educationists in the educational thought encapsulated in the conception of Natorp's educational theory, which he called Sozialpädagogik. Addressing the debate around Natorp's Sozialpädagogik within the Japanese national community of scholars, key points of the inception of the theory in Japan are examined, central scholars involved are identified, and the impact of Natorp's conception on the Japanese philosophy of education and educational practice is considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan's policy toward India since 2000 appears to be a sign of new directions in Japan's security policy since its decision to establish a strategic partnership with India is different from the previous policy of exclusive bilateralism centering on the US-Japan alliance. Nonetheless, Japan's recent security partnership with India is part of Japan's long-term effort to support the US-led liberal political and economic order in East Asia. This paper argues that Japan's policy toward India since 2000 has evolved toward becoming fully aligned with US policy toward the Indo-Pacific region. The critical shift in Tokyo's policy toward India came in spring 2005, when Japanese political leaders and policy elites came to recognize India as an important balancer against China as a result of the violent anti-Japanese demonstrations in China. They decided to support including India into the East Asian Summit and incorporated India into their new values diplomacy. This shift in Japan's policy toward India, along with efforts to increase interoperability between Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Forces and Indian Navy, coincides with US strategy to bring India into the US-led coalition to balance against China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1905, Karafuto (Southern Sakhalin) became Japan’s second formal colony and the most sparsely populated territory in the Japanese empire. Despite its peripheral location and small population the colony was of important economic value, boasting considerable natural resources such as marine products, coal, oil and timber. This combination of richness and remoteness meant that enterprises in the colony faced an acute labour shortage. This paper examines the ways that enterprises operating in Karafuto sought to circumvent this problem by analysing the recruitment, management and maintenance of labour in Karafuto’s forestry and construction industries. It is found that a degree of coercion emerged at worksites in the colony, as management struggled to hold onto its workforce for the entirety of a project; however, coercion was not the norm and was strongly associated with specific recruitment grounds. Utilizing contemporary social research, colonial newspaper reports, oral testimony and other sources this paper finds that recruits from further afield were more likely to be involved in incidents of abuse than those in close proximity to Karafuto. Local connections, strength in numbers and mutual dependence of workers from these areas and Karafuto-based recruiters for work/labour served to reduce levels of conflict between the two parties. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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 explores the complex relationship of sweets to changing gender identities in Japan. Drawing on ethnography and popular culture sources, it examines ways men negotiate their beliefs and activities concerning sweets within a context where being a sweet lover problematizes masculine identities. Sweets in Japan were traditionally regarded as the domain of women and children, while men were expected to prefer spicy foods/alcohol. Changes in food preferences have coincided with erosions in hegemonic forms of Japanese masculinity that emphasized vigor and drive. In popular culture Japan's economic malaise has been attributed to the replacement of the post-war "carnivorous men" with a generation of "grass-eating boys", whose interest in sweets is emblematic of their passivity and femininity. In real life, this link is treated rather paradoxically. Informants typically characterize it as a stereotype that no one really believes, or even that the stereotype doesn't exist, yet their actions and expression of sentiments display having internalized it. In exploring how a discourse can simultaneously be both deeply felt and dismissed as a trifling inanity, I consider the greater attention that ambiguity and uncertainty might be afforded in accounts of food specifically and human life more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines the emergence of eco-cities in Japan from a much needed historical perspective. Since Japan's rapid industrialization in the late nineteenth century, there has been an emphasis on economic growth at all costs. Despite the introduction of the concept of the Garden City in Japan in the early twentieth century, industrialization continued unabated. After a disastrous World War II, the nation rebuilt and enjoyed rapid economic growth in the 1950s and 1960s. Japan is still coming to terms with the cost of that economic growth. The paper examines three cities: Minamata, Kitakyūshū, and Kawasaki. Minamata has transformed itself from being a polluted city to a green tourism destination. The city of Kitakyūshū embraced an eco-town strategy in 1997 to promote a structural shift away from heavy industries to green industries. That year, Kawasaki (close to the Tokyo Metropolitan area), too, was designated an eco-town and Minamata received the same title in 2001. This paper identifies key features of eco-cities/eco-towns in Japan, the importance of retrofitting, and examines the roles of citizens, the government, and the private sector. What is surprising is the international orientation of Japanese eco-cities. These cities represent not only Japan's future, but also its efforts to deal with its industrial past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article sets out to elucidate the role of Japanese Protestants in the education of Koreans during the early twentieth century. Scholarship has often assigned only marginal roles to Japanese Protestants within the history of Japanese imperialism, despite the remarkable success of western missionaries in Korea at the time. As imperial expansion progressed, Japanese Protestants intensified their efforts to take up a leading role in the education of Koreans in colonial Korea and in the metropole wishing to spearhead the assimilation of Koreans. By drawing on the colonial discourses of East Asian unity under Japanese leadership, Protestant churches strove to mediate and facilitate colonial policies in Korea. Yet there were also voices of dissent from prominent Japanese Protestants critical of the assimilation policies implemented by colonial authorities in Korea. This ambivalent stance of Protestantism towards Korea is further complicated by the fact that the Korean Young Men’s Christian Association in Tokyo served as an important venue of the Korean Independence Movement. Examining Christian magazines and journals of the time, this paper delves into the contentious debates among Japanese Protestants concerning the Korea Mission and the Japanese government’s strategy of assimilation through education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Japan is periodically wracked by "Great Earthquakes" (daijishin) - seismic events so destructive that they leave massive amounts of textual and graphic evidence, much of it produced by people who did not experience the events directly. Using this cache of information, it is possible to see how the idea of the "disaster victim" has changed over time and circumstance. My paper traces this role across five Great Earthquakes that spanned roughly 150 years (1855-2011), a period convergent with modern Japan. I will argue that the sense of who and what has been victimized by the shaking of the earth - who has suffered, what weight to attach to their loss, what actions to take and emotions to feel regarding their situation - has changed regularly, and surprisingly, over this rather short period. There is, in other words, no common Japanese experience of victimhood, even in the context of one disaster type over a relatively short historical period. The article is one contribution to an as-yet unexamined history and comparative study of the modern role of disaster victim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines civil activities to protect and conserve the underground war-related sites in contemporary Japan. Conservation movements rooted in local communities and centred on the Japanese Network to Protect War-Related Sites are making efforts to transform the dark heritage of war-related sites into cultural property in an attempt to integrate diverse wartime experiences. In delving into the heritage-making practices, I introduce local movements in Okinawa and Okayama. Okinawa hosts the first underground war-related site to become a cultural property, the Haebaru Army Hospital Bunkers, while Okayama struggles to create another one by making the Kamejima Mountain Underground Plant a dark heritage site. I argue that these conservation movements are challenging the homogenising national war memory by attaching ethnically diversified vernacular memories to the underground sites. In doing so, these underground war-related sites have become public spaces where new forms of social engagement are negotiated and contested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An early nineteenth-century British voyager, Captain Hall, published in 1818 an account of his landing at Okinawa Island and encounter with the court nobility of what was still at that time the Kingdom of the Ryukyus: Account of a Voyage of Discovery to the West Coast of Corea and the Great Loo-Choo [Ryûkyû] Island in the Japan Sea. The paper asks: Why did the Ryukyuans respond to the unannounced entry into their waters by two British naval ships by a seemingly boundless hospitality? With a sideline view on the Sahlins-Obeyesekere controversy, the author proposes that even as the Ryukyuans were eulogizing the entry of the British by showering them with one-sided attention and acknowledging their royal credentials, they tried at the same time to make a bid for their departure. They might have been deploying ritual techniques apparent still today: of welcoming and (subsequent) sending-off in one single act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan has become renowned as a site for the production of artisanal-quality denim and jeans, which appeals to increasingly discerning cognoscenti. The usual mass-produced, non-designer "safe" denim has a ubiquitous presence in Japan as it does elsewhere but there are many Japanese for whom a pair of jeans has many more qualities that should be carefully considered before its consumption than the perhaps usual factors of price, brand, cut, wash and color. These include the types of machines the denim was woven on, the presence of certain (sometimes invisible) rivets, the technique of stitching and so on. "Made in Japan" has become the catch phrase for new denim authenticity sought by "denim maniacs" (denims mania no hito). This paper gives a brief history of jeans in Japan, introduces the area where they are made and examines two jeans companies as well as consumers of these premium jeans. It looks at how expensive Japanese jeans echo the mingei craft movement in their emphasis on method of production over the aesthetics of the final product. It shows that authenticity in Japan can be relocated both geographically and from the "original" to the "copy." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Contemporary Japan maintains longstanding and well-documented traditions of same-sex eroticism and yet the terminology for describing these traditions as well as the contexts and identities through which they have been expressed have changed greatly since Japan's opening to the West at the end of the nineteenth century. These changes have been most striking in the post-war period, when new rights-centred discourses concerning issues of sexual identity and sexual citizenship began to develop alongside enduring Japanese notions situating sexual expression in the private realm of personal interest or play. Taking a broad historical view, this paper shows that it is only since the mid-1980s that a voluble discourse linking same-sex sexual activity and human rights has gained mainstream attention. The factors that led to this paradigm shift are outlined as are the current and future challenges facing a range of sexual minorities in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of gerontological education is lagging behind in Japan in spite of Japan's large population of elders. Nevertheless, there are signs that this may be changing. In this paper we discuss how gerontology education has evolved in Japan over the past 40 years. Specifically, we provide an overview of the development of academic societies related to gerontology, the number of gerontological books published, government statements about gerontology education, and Japan's only graduate program in gerontology.We also identify some reasons for the delay in creating gerontology programs and propose specific steps that might be taken to reverse this trend. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]