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Since the 1970s, a continuous exchange of information about conservation between Europe and East Asia has greatly influenced approaches to the treatment of paper objects as well as the tools and materials used. This knowledge is often disseminated and absorbed in a purely practical manner, stripped out of its wider cultural context. However, what is considered 'appropriate' treatment is closely linked to how a particular culture has historically interacted with artworks and arguably the lack of broader cultural perspectives can lead to misguided assumptions in the evaluation of those practices. This article reflects on the differences between European and East Asian cultures of paper conservation. By taking into consideration the relevant cultural, philosophical and historical contexts, the article aims to explore how approaches to conservation, as well as to the profession itself, have developed in these two different parts of the world. It further encourages paper conservators to reflect on their own training and practices while offering an understanding of how these approaches can sometimes be mutually exclusive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, Japan is at a major point to reevaluate its policies on the public communication of science. However, the government's self-reflection on their measures and policies of science communication has been inadequate. This study reviewed and analyzed descriptions of science-related public communication in the successive Japanese white papers on science and technology (S&T) from 1958 to 2015 with quantitative-qualitative hybrid approaches. Traditional enlightenment activities have always been given higher priority, even after the S&T Basic Plan aimed at two-way science communication, and have used such justifications as "the shying-away of young people from S&T," "accountability for research investment," and "problem-solving on issues related to S&T and society," without considering the reality of science communication. [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]

AbstractIn 2016, Sanrio debuted a series of shorts featuring Retsuko, a cute lesser panda with a penchant for bursts of death-metal infused violent rage. The shorts, eventually transformed into a full show on Netflix, were a comedic look at Retsuko’s anger at unfair treatment in the Japanese workplace, casting a critical eye on issues of sexism, harassment, and overwork. But while Retsuko has been explicitly positioned as counter cultural, what does it mean to be transgressive and Sanrio? This paper analyzes this question from a cross-disciplinary perspective, drawing on critical feminist studies, rage studies, media studies, and sociolinguistics. Approaching the framing, content, and speech of Retsuko throughout her media appearances, we argue that while Retsuko is certainly critical of contemporary Japan, her transgression is ultimately limited, with any potential paths to freedom or rebellion hampered by a corporate system that reabsorbs transgressive behavior and sells it back to customers, closing off the potential to imagine new ways of being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

America's allies have reacted differently to the uncertainty surrounding US global leadership and the return to hard power politics in the 2010s. Some allies have remained steadfast in their commitment to Washington, while others distanced themselves from the United States. Why is it so? This article develops an integrated argument that brings together different strands of the literature on alignment, to better make sense of cross-national and within-case variations in allies' strategic behavior. By examining three case studies from distinct regional contexts – Japan, Poland and Turkey – the paper shows that although these allies all shared concerns about the Obama and Trump administrations' security commitment, it was their differing perceptions of the threats posed by China and Russia's power that influenced their pursuit of either stronger alignment with the US security patron – through internal balancing for 'attractiveness' and internal hedging –, or increased strategic autonomy from Washington by pursuing hard hedging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The flexibility of the Delphi Technique has enabled its application across a wide range of fields to facilitate problem solving, decision-making and consensus-building. However, flexibility brings with it a corresponding lack of detailed methodological guidelines, and the rigour of Delphi studies has been questioned. This paper presents a recent study investigating global competence in Japan to demonstrate how Q-methodology can be integrated into a Delphi study to improve rigour. Using Q-methodology helps to mitigate potential problems associated with (a) consensus parameters and focus, (b) panel retention rates, and (c) feedback design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though many studies have analyzed public opinion of trade liberalization, they do not fully explain regional disparities in people's preferences with regard to trade. To explain such a geographic division, this paper focuses on differences in social contexts that exist between regions, which is composed of social networks of different characteristics and distinct news coverage from local media. By utilizing multiple recent public opinion surveys conducted in Japan, we confirm that individuals in rural areas are less likely to support trade liberalization and Japan's membership in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) independent of individuals' economic self-interest or skills. With multiple surveys and data on Japanese national and local newspapers, we investigate the mechanisms, showing that (a) individuals whose communication network includes people working for a sector vulnerable to trade liberalization tend to oppose free trade regardless of the industry they work for and that (b) newspapers circulated in rural and urban places tend to cover TPP differently, which also impacts people's attitudes toward the agreement. By analyzing the mechanisms of sociotropic considerations, our social context approach could eventually lead to further uncovering the formation of public opinion on trade. [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]

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted Japanese society, including its relationship with cultural heritage. This paper shares findings of a large-scale web-based survey conducted from January to February 2022, reaching over 10,000 respondents using a smartphone questionnaire system, aimed at answering the following questions: ‘What impact has the pandemic had on societies and local communities in Japan?’ and ‘What policies should be implemented to protect cultural heritage in response to this new situation in Japan?’. A cross-cutting analysis of the collected responses and respondent attributes was performed. The paper offers four recommendations for long- and short-term cultural heritage policies to enhance future protection. Firstly, it emphasizes increasing cultural heritage awareness, targeting youth and the economically disadvantaged. Secondly, it recommends a reassessment of the prevailing policy structures related to temples and shrines. This recognises the traditional role these institutions have played as community gathering places. Thirdly, it emphasizes supporting smaller, rural festivals with financial aid for repairs, promotions, and bridging migrant gaps. Finally, it suggests integrating the younger generation into the cultural heritage discourse through educational initiatives and digital resources, ensuring continued relevance and intergenerational connection to cultural heritage in Japan. These policy suggestions stand as the linchpin for perpetuating cultural heritage and fostering intergenerational engagement therein. [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]

Comparative adult guardianship law and other alternatives, especially in an Asian context, is an under-investigated area. This paper attempts to fill the gap in the literature by comparing the adult guardianship law and other alternatives from the perspectives of Singapore and Japan. The central argument of this paper is that in order for the law of adult guardianship to be widely adopted in Asian societies like Singapore and Japan - where much of adult guardianship related issues are governed by informal familial arrangements; this would require governments to do more than the mere enacting of adult guardianship legislation. To encourage widespread adoption, governments must embark on a robust public awareness campaign to promote the adult guardianship scheme, provide institutional support, and simplify the process for people wishing to sign up to the scheme and enact the appropriate safeguards against abuse. Such conditions are present in Singapore, whereas in Japan, these are lacking which explains the lower take-up rate with Japanese people preferring informal arrangements. Another key difference between Singapore and Japan is that the former relies primarily on family and relatives to act as adult guardians, while the court in the latter jurisdiction insists on the appointment of professionals like lawyers to act as adult guardians. It is surmised that this factor explains the lower take-up rate of formal adult guardianship in Japan as compared to Singapore due to the costs involved in engaging professional guardians. This paper also explores the alternatives to adult guardianship in both systems. Alternatives to formal adult guardianship is important because there will be a substantial portion of the population of older adults who would prefer these alternatives for various reasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the civic capacity of an organisation formed by migrants to act as an intermediary between co-ethnics and the host country. By presenting a case study of a co-ethnic association for Filipino migrants in a regional part of Japan with a qualitative data set, I explore how and why older migrants support co-ethnics while working collaboratively with the local community. This paper shows that the association as an intermediary does not just fill gaps, but engages co-ethnics and Japanese locals in the organisational growth of its volunteer work. The bottom-up work of the association not only exposes but also complements inadequacies in existing structures in the host country to build a constructive interdependence between co-ethnics and the local community. This highlights the pathway-building capacity of a co-ethnic association to effect change to migrants’ participation in the host country. [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]

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]

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 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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

This paper is the first academic attempt to critically bridge the politics of sustainability fix with social conflict theory (SCT) focusing on Indonesia's foreign-sponsored development of Ultra Supercritical (USC) coal power plants. I examine the contradictory development of 'green' projects in Indonesia and specifically unpack: how transnational politico-economic forces have secured a stable sustainability fix for the USC and how they have tamed opposition forces and reshaped governance strategies for intensified accumulation. I attempt to empirically demonstrate how such process unfold through two case studies – Cirebon II developed by Japanese and Korean companies and the Java 7 project funded by China. Albeit each have different alliance formations and strategies, both cases demonstrate that the safeguarding of stable conditions for sustainability fixes of USC power plant development is primarily determined by contestation, conflicts, and compromises between socio-political forces – international fractions of capital, state apparatuses, Indonesia's PLN and coal oligarchy as well as broader civil society actors. They reshape governing strategies that are ultimately organised through the Indonesian state and react to the selectivity of state strategies which privilege dominant forces. The paper contributes to the existing literature on the political economy of infrastructure and serves to take state transformation into account and to dispel the 'methodological nationalism' view that presupposes policy outcome and institutional features are inherent to the mode of capitalism of the investor's country of origin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is a popular teaching approach that is being enthusiastically adopted across Japan (Ikeda, M. 2019. "CLIL in Comparison with PPP: A Revolution in ELT by Competency-Based Language Education." In Innovation in Language Teaching and Learning: The Case of Japan, edited by H. Reinders, R. Hayo, and S. Nakamura, 23–45. Palgrave Learning). CLIL is built on a 4Cs framework: Content, communication, cognition and culture (Coyle, D. 2007. "Content and Language Integrated Learning: Towards a Connected Research Agenda for CLIL Pedagogies." International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 10 (5): 543–562), addressing and nurturing all four domains. While CLIL has since extended its tenets beyond the 4Cs and now adopts a more holistic, integrated, multimodal pluriliteracies perspective (Meyer, O., D. Coyle, A. Halbach, K. Schuck, and T. Ting. 2015. "A Pluriliteracies Approach to Content and Language Integrated Learning – Mapping Learner Progression in Knowledge Construction and Meaning-Making." Language, Culture and Curriculum 28 (1): 41–57; Meyer, O., and D. Coyle. 2017. "Pluriliteracies Teaching for Learning: Conceptualizing Progression for Deeper Learning in Literacies Development." European Journal of Applied Linguistics 5 (2): 199–222), the 4Cs ideals are still integral in understanding CLIL, and in this paper the author extends its importance and suggests the addition of the fifth C, that of criticality. Without the fifth C, CLIL remains a contentious teaching approach in Japan, given that it is framed within neoliberal goals and discourse. In the current framework, language is deemed largely as a tool that allows one to cultivate the four domains, assuring language/content learning and possibly socio-economic advancement. However, as is, incongruencies in ideologies and conceptualizations conveyed via different languages are not taken up sufficiently, and what's more, problematized and challenged. This paper addresses this lack and calls for the fifth C to make CLIL in Japan an even more robust, holistic and meaningful language teaching approach. [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]

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]

Does railway technology represent Japanese national identity? This paper focuses on the narratives indicating railway technology as a form of Japanese national identity representation. Using Japanese government pronouncements and interviews given by people involved in the Japanese railway supply industry appearing in Japanese vernaculars, I show that railway technology constitutes an integral component of the contemporary Japanese identity narrative, which has been built up through a particular technopolitical regime. These narratives consistently refer to the purported safety, reliability, and punctuality of Japanese railways as one manifestation of the high-quality technological skills underpinning Japanese identity construction. However, the narratives also reveal an inherent irony, whereby the confident Japanese Self at once reveals a countervailing, inexperienced Japanese Self, in which the Japanese railway technopolitical regime realizes that its own domestic strength has resulted in a lack of international experience compared to its European, and increasingly Chinese, rivals. I conclude by suggesting that the Japanese railway identity follows a complex construct involving a confident Self in contradistinction to an inexperienced Self both reproduced in opposition to the European and Chinese Other. [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]

This paper focuses on the dynamics of education in the interplay of power and seduction as creatively displayed in Takarazuka Revue's performances re-enacting the major players of the Cold War: USA and Russia (rather than former Soviet Union). Oceans 11 (cosmos troupe, 2019) and Once Upon a Time in America (snow troupe, 2020), on the one hand, and Land of Gods (cosmos troupe, 2017) and Anastasia (cosmos troupe, 2020), on the other hand, lavishly display subtle interactions of longing and belonging, ecstasy and rage, love and betrayal, envy, hatred and passion, while painstakingly building up irresistible tensions between the instances involved in the performative process: actresses, administrators, audiences. The theoretical support is delivered by Robert Greene's pragmatic elaborations in his seminal works The 48 Laws of Power (1998) and The Art of Seduction (2001): education is never a linear process between a 'master' and a 'disciple', but an interactive game, governed by the pursuit of joy in overcoming challenges and finding ingenious solutions. [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]

In 2014, the Japan Foundation and the Tokyo International Film Festival commissioned three films from Japanese, Cambodian and Filipino directors to represent the theme 'Reflections: Living Together in Asia'. This was the first edition of a government-sponsored film co-production entitled the Asian Three-Fold Mirror. Running from 2014 to 2020, this initiative aims at improving mutual understanding between national audiences. This project shows a shift towards reciprocity and active collaboration and away from a unidirectional Japanese cultural diplomacy. However, it casts Japan as a primary actor for a successful regionalization of Southeast Asia, thus undermining the advertised reciprocity of the initiative. Through a juxtaposed analysis of the policy papers that led to the funding of this project, and of the creative content and reception of the films, this paper analyses the aims of these policies, and evaluates how the project of the Asian Three-Fold Mirror relates to these goals. [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]

This paper compares direct measures of content knowledge for students studying Chemistry through English Medium Instruction (EMI) and Japanese Medium Instruction (JMI). It also examines a range of contextual differences between the two mediums of instruction. A total of 53 undergraduate students undertook pre–post course content tests at a university in Japan. These measurable test outcomes were triangulated with data from semi-structured interviews with eight EMI and five JMI students and two content teachers as well as field notes from ten EMI and ten JMI lecture observations. While the quantitative results revealed no statistically significant differences in the post-test scores between the two courses, the qualitative data illuminated a huge range of context-dependent differences which shed light on possible explanations of this non-significant result. Findings revealed that while there were unique challenges only experienced by EMI students, many of the students navigated their EMI studies successfully through a combination of effective institutional and academic language support, teacher support and – not least – collaborative peer networks. This comparative study of an EMI and non-EMI course contributes to the currently limited research evidence on medium of instruction differences on content learning outcomes. [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]

Taking the UK and Japan as contrasting national case studies, this article supplements existing research into student migration by consolidating a regulatory perspective with individual narrative accounts. Reported here are the results of a mixed-methods two-phase study. Phase 1 is a concerted trajectory analysis of student migration policy in the UK and Japan from 2004 to 2018, while phase 2 draws on biographical-narrative interviews with 26 student-migrants. The paper reveals tangible effects of the receptivity, stability, and transparency of regulatory frameworks in student-migrants' trajectories, while also demonstrating that seemingly receptive regulatory environments do not necessarily equate to smooth and risk-free post-study transitions. [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]

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]

We evaluate the treatment of climate-related financial risk by bilateral finance organizations and related policymaking bodies involved in the design and implementation of thermal coal power generation technology financing. Our empirical focus is Japanese bilateral financing of thermal coal power generation in the Asia-Pacific. We differentiate between three approaches that organizations can adopt to assess climate change risk. In the first, the organization assesses climate risk and includes consideration of stranded asset risk. In the second, the organization assesses climate risk but does not take into account stranded asset risk. In the third, an organization does not explicitly consider climate risk although it may use alternative criteria for deciding whether to support an investment, such as the broader environmental implications of a proposed project. We review publicly available documents from nine organizations, supplemented by interviews, and find that while some Japanese lending and policy-setting bodies take climate risk into account, none are required to consider the risk that infrastructure investments may become stranded. Our paper contributes to the study of stranded asset risk in two ways. First, while export finance plays a crucial role in thermal coal power plant investments in the Asia-Pacific region, lending by bilateral finance institutions has not been a focus of such research to date. Second, we extend research into stranded asset risk to bilateral finance organizations and related policy bodies. Our approach can be adopted to understand how finance decision-making bodies in other geographic contexts and technology-types assess the risk that assets may become stranded. Key policy insights Bilateral finance organizations are important in infrastructure exports for thermal coal power plant technologies. Japanese bilateral finance organizations and policy bodies take climate risk into account when making lending decisions for thermal coal power plant technologies, but until recently have not explicitly addressed stranded asset risk. Impairments to the asset value may be incurred by the asset holders or the government. This risk should be taken into consideration in investment decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Damaged ukiyo-e are often backed with kozo paper and placed after conservation in matt window mounts. However, backing an ukiyo-e affects its physical nature by adding new materials to it. Matt window mounts are also not historically relevant because they come from the Western tradition of mounting prints. With these issues in mind, a new approach for treating and mounting ukiyo-e was developed at the Tokyo National Museum's department of conservation. The authors describe the technical steps that led to this new approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'Indo-Pacific' framework constructed upon the emerging shift in geopolitics from the Atlantic-Pacific to the Pacific-Indian Ocean region has underlined the increasing significance of maritime space as a theatre for geopolitical competition. Japan and India, which were historically on opposite spectrums, have now evolved into regional partners to increase their strategic influence and pursue in earnest the Indo-Pacific approach towards shaping the regional and maritime dynamics. This paper delves into the fundamental transformations in Japan-India relations; beginning specifically with imperial Japan's fostering of bonds with the revolutionary nationalist campaigns in colonial India during the Second World War. The paper goes on to analyze the pre, post-War and post-Cold War evolution of ties between Japan and India, along with the transformation in priorities of both countries, converging on the diverse contours of maritime security cooperation in alignment with the shifting undercurrents of the 21st century geopolitics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By sharing the stories of the Japanese Bollywood dancers at the Namaste India Festival in Tokyo, this paper explores their self-developed hierarchy of authenticity to argue that there are multiple ways to claim and access authenticity as it relates to the performance of Bollywood dance. The dance form's base as global, hybrid, and commercial rejects authenticity as a concept, but its performance by these groups results in meaningful cultural exchange. The appeal of this Indian dance form in Japan provides an Inter-Asia reference point from which to explore the different ways this transnational yet national dance form functions as a sign of global modernity in these two different Asian contexts. The Japanese Bollywood dancers have developed a discourse that references and weights criteria such as heritage, source material, training and discipline, in-country experience, affect, imitation, cultural proficiency, emotion, and engagement as they rank themselves in relation to other dancers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the U.S.-China strategic rivalry has intensified, Washington has looked to its close allies and partners to counter Chinese clout in global technology leadership. With the Huawei ban as a proxy for the U.S.-China competition, the paper focuses on the concept of the alliance halo and analyzes how the three key U.S. allies in Asia—Australia, Japan, and South Korea—responded to Washington's expectations of mutual support on the decoupling of Chinese technology companies from global supply chains. We argue that given that the Huawei ban is about future risks associated with China's economy, as opposed to demonstrated military threats, it was more challenging to establish allied reliability within the U.S. alliance network as a whole. Our comparative analysis shows that Australia's reactions have been the most direct, banning Huawei before the United States, showing a contrast with South Korea's relatively muted responses. Japan's decision to ban Huawei was as decisive as Australia's but Tokyo sought to keep a low profile. Rather than the diplomatic pressure from the Trump administration, these allies' varied responses resulted from their own assessments of security risks associated with Huawei. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Singapore used to be receptive to labour migration and Japan more restrictive. Recently, trends in both countries have reversed and a selection based on racial background has been noted by migrants. Using qualitative data of young white Europeans, this paper argues that amidst changing immigration policies, the way these migrants are received and perceived as "skilled" is not necessarily due to their acquired skills but rather to the passively accrued value of whiteness. This in turn fuels migrants' self-identification as white and their perceptions of a market demand for white foreigners. However, their migratory trajectories underline that in a changing landscape of skill appreciation, meanings of whiteness are changing, too. The paper links migration with critical whiteness studies and argues that white privilege is sustained differently in Singapore and Japan, yet that in both cases, whiteness increasingly acts passively rather than being actionable capital and that its benefits are questionable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the changing experience of middle-class labour in an economic downturn and its relation to migration motivations. At the heart of this paper is an intriguing question of why educated middle-class workers would leave metropolises with high standards of living to work in a provincial city abroad where they perform routine tasks and earn less than they would in comparable positions back home. An analysis of in-depth interviews with Japanese service workers in China's digital outsourcing industry focuses on their educational background and employment experience prior to migration. Based on my findings, I argue that relatively educated migrants use their diminishing middle-class resources to access an occupational niche abroad, in order to (temporarily) evade the increased risk of class slippage in the society of origin. Japan's experience of a long-term economic slump since the early 1990s provides a fruitful point of comparison for studies that investigate changing youth transitions from education to employment and their relationship to migration patterns and class mobility in economically stagnant nations elsewhere. I critically engage with the literature on middling migration to highlight the usefulness of a historically sensitive and relational perspective from which to study middle-class migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]