Search

This paper attempts to reinterpret asylum theory (1954) propounded by Ortwin Henssler (1923-2017) as a free-space theory of education, as a way of grasping the problematic nature of 'pedagogical protection.' The theoretical potential of Henssler's thought has been more appreciated, accepted, and developed in Japan than in his native Germany. First, I outline Henssler's theory of asylum and show how his theory has been received and developed in Japan, especially in the fields of historical researches. Secondly, I discuss the possibility of reading Henssler's thought of asylum as a theory of 'pedagogical protection.' Thirdly, I consider whether it is possible to interpret 'free space' in education based on the model of asylum. Finally, I delineate some prospects for and challenges involved in connecting the theory of asylum to the theory of education.

Education in Japan has drawn attention widely from overseas, including a quantity of research pointing out that the context of Japan's modernization and its present-day advanced science and technology can be found in the high literacy rates and prevalent education of Japanese society. However, there has been insufficient examination of the effect of high literacy rates in early modern society on everyday life. Pointing out that at the beginning of the early modern period, character formats, grammar, writing styles et cetera became used in common throughout the country, while the use of written text became compulsory as well, this paper asserts that the establishment of this lettered society was deeply involved with Japan's modernization.

Inspired by the call to question (critical) assumptions underpinning frameworks for "seeing" (Lather, 1993) and ground criticality in alternative forms of knowing (Pennycook, 2018), this paper examines critical frameworks for approaching identity, experience, and (in)equity in "English" language teaching (ELT), with a focus on critical attention to Japan. Transdisciplinary scholarship, social movements, and other voices have detailed how the narrative of "homogeneous Japan" has given shape to notions of Selfhood-Otherness, resulting in the erasing of Japan's history as a site of movement, change, diversity and hybridity, and marginalization of many therein. The author notes that the scope of dominant, critical approaches to identity, experience, and (in)equity in Japan and globalized ELT -problematizing essentialized and idealized "nativeness" in English--does not afford conceptual space for attention to how the negotiation of being, belonging and becoming in ELT is situated in broader negotiations of identity and community membership. The author contends that this issue is linked to tensions within criticality pertaining to the imposition of essentializing frameworks for seeing upon individuals and communities around the globe. The author then discusses potential broader implications for theorization, inquiry, and practice in ELT in and beyond Japan.

Seeing the museum as a public space for adult learning and education is not new, but always requires a contesting perspective when it comes to the continuing socio-political and historical oppression from colonial experiences. This paper explores the process of building a new history museum in South Korea that had suffered from Japanese colonial occupation from 1910 to 1945. The authors outline how the Center for Historical Truth and Justice (CHTJ), a vanguard civil organization dedicated to historical research on the Japanese colonial period and social action against colonialism, arrived at the 2018 opening of the Museum of Japanese Colonial History (MJCH) in Seoul. Generating and using a series of dialogues, suggested in institutional ethnography, the authors couple the topic of decolonization with the MJCH building process to interrogate the meaning of decolonization in contemporary South Korean society as well as learning for the identity formation of the new museum at the CHTJ. The paper discusses the museum educators' continuing performative role for public pedagogy to create the participatory museum.

In recent decades in Korea, many significant changes in political, social and cultural dimensions have been held by the citizen's initiative, where the revitalization of citizenship and strong civic unity have played a role. Yet, in regard to the characteristic of Korean citizenship, it seems that the aspect of individual subject has not been fully matured or issued; that is, there is a dissymmetry between the strong civic unity and a weak individual subject. This paper attempts to explore a possible historical account of why this has been the case by examining the historical development of the concept of enlightenment in modern Korea and Japan. 'Enlightenment', as a modern concept in Korea, was imported via Japan in the period from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century as in many other new concepts such as 'democracy' or 'nation'. However, by comparison to the Western idea of the Enlightenment, its modern concept, Korean or Japanese, developed a different meaning in each own context, while lacking its original meaning essential to the creation of the 'modern individual subject' as a 'citizen'. Hence, in modern Korea and Japan, the word 'enlightenment' is regarded as a historical concept with no contemporary relevance.

This paper examines how collaboration amongst university, indigenous community and private sector companies can promote Ainu participation in higher education, drawing on a case study of the Urespa Project in Sapporo University, Japan. In this project, the university offers scholarships to Ainu students, requiring them to take a special course in Ainu culture and history and develop collaborations with partner private sector companies. We suggest that "the two-way learning" that the Urespa Project advocates signifies a challenge to the conventional approach to Ainu education, which has long centred on the majority wajin providing uni-directional assistance to the Ainu in order to help them achieve the national educational benchmarks. The "mutual learning" approach (sodateai in Japanese, urespa in the Ainu language) stresses a nurturing environment in which both Ainu and non-Ainu students feel included. That such initiatives came from private universities, rather than the national government, is indicative of how Ainu education is perceived as a local, rather than national, issue in Japan.

In the past few years, museum visualization systems have become a hot topic that attracts many researchers' interests. Several systems provide Web services for browsing museum collections through the Web. In this paper, we proposed an intelligent museum system for history museum artifacts, and described a study in which we enable access to China and Japan cultural heritage information from two history museums, the National Palace Museum in Taiwan and the Tokugawa Art Museum in Japan. Results from these museums' databases were used to develop a prototype system to demonstrate advanced cultural learning and historical timeline functionalities for foreigners. This system is based on temporal data from the museums' databases and provides the user with powerful data manipulation and graphical visualization tools. It might become a basis of an interactive digital museum system for Chinese and Japanese heritages, especially for foreign users. (Contains 3 figures.) [This research was sponsored in part by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sport, Science and Technology, Japanese Government under Grand-in-Aid for Scientific Research and the Japan Educational Mutual Aid Association of Welfare Foundation.]

This paper looks at the development of two similar academic disciplines in Japan, i.e. firstly practiced comparative education and recently flourishing intercultural education. The major focus of this paper is to analyse how these educational studies have been brought to, and practised in, Japan. Both comparative education and intercultural education are relatively young academic disciplines in the country, and their conceptualisation is still ongoing, as is their methodology and future direction. Despite considerable overlap, it is argued that comparative education--which evolved in the form of investigating nationally framed education--and intercultural education--which focuses on diversity in society beyond national frameworks--have grown differently. It is further argued that the development of both comparative and intercultural education is closely related to Japan's positioning of "self" against the "others" in Japanese history. (Contains 1 table and 3 figures.)

A major role of education is to socialise individuals into being responsible and productive citizens. It is aimed at preparing people for the workforce and for participating in the public life of the nation. Educational systems are complex bureaucracies based on particular educational and social theories and philosophies. This paper is concerned with one particular system, the Japanese education system, which emerged from many conflicting ideologies. Polar extremes of liberal and ultra-nationalism orientations were disseminated in its historical course and it remains in the early twenty-first century a system that retains many tensions. This paper seeks to elucidate these tensions while demonstrating that peace outcomes can still be achieved. It begins with three collected narratives of peace work and peace education work within a formally militaristic institution, Ritsumeikan University. Together with Kogakukan University in Mei and Kokushikan University in Tokyo Ritsumeikan was threatened with closure by General Douglas MacArthur for activities during the Second World War. Ritsumeikan has striven to develop a peace role post-war. By employing these experiential narratives together with a brief study of Ritsumeikan itself the paper demonstrates positive peace outcomes within an oft-perceived "rigid" education system: outcomes for promoting peaceful action found both at the institutional level and at the personal level. (Contains 41 notes.)

This article cites the problems of citizenship education in three different countries: Bosnia, England and Japan, partly because of the way in which these nations are defined, as well as the way in which knowledge within the official school curriculum is selectively developed. In most countries, the curriculum is derived from a narrowly based understanding of the nation. The article suggests that during the period of globalisation it might be possible to devise an intercultural understanding of knowledge from across cultures and civilisations to obviate a clash of civilisations. The first universalist phase that the paper considers is from fifth century BC to seventh century AD when the great religions of Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam existed in tributary regions. The second phase in Andalusia in the eleventh century was the interaction between Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars, which was part of the development of the Renaissance. These developments contributed to scientific and secular knowledge during the Enlightenment and led to the affirmation of the universal. The French and the American revolutions were informed by these ideas. The fourth phase was the development of the ideas of socialism to establish societies based on the basis of equality, but the states which espoused these ideologies failed to deepen ideas of shared values and inclusive citizenship in democratic contexts. The fifth phase of universalist development was the end of the colonial regimes in the middle of the twentieth century. The development of the Non-Aligned Movement following the 1955 Bandung Conference was the highlight of this phase of human development, but like many other phases of human history also failed in many ways.

The "Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior" was founded in 1958 by a group of male psychologists, mainly from the northeastern USA and connected with either Harvard or Columbia. Fifty years later about 20% of both editors and authors reside outside this country and almost the same proportion is women. Other changes in the journal include having its own website for more than a decade and now publishing online as well as on paper. A recent connection with PubMed Central of the National Library of Medicine has made possible the completely free electronic presentation of the entire archive of about 3,800 articles. (Contains 5 tables and 3 figures.)

This paper starts with the founding of UNESCO and the fundamental belief that humanitarian, social and political deficits in given societies can be corrected by means of education. The history of the UNESCO International Conferences on Adult Education (Elsinore, Montreal, Tokyo, Paris and Hamburg, 1949-1997) demonstrates the changes in perceptions of adult education, from literacy to lifelong learning, in which adult education is seen as both part of the continuum of education and an entity in itself. In course of time, the position of participants (governments, NGOs and experts) has changed likewise. Since the author was a member of the German delegation at several of these conferences he feels competent to analyse the proceedings and to describe the atmosphere as well. (Contains 13 notes.) [Abstract presented in English, Spanish, and French.]

The Han sphere, including Vietnam, Korea, Japan, Taiwan and China, adopted Han characters and classical Han writing as the official written language before the 20th century. However, great changes came with the advent of the 20th century. After World War II, Han characters in Vietnam and Korea were officially replaced by the romanised "Chu Quoc Ngu" and phonemic Hangul, respectively. In Japan, the number of Han characters in use decreased, and the syllabic "Kana" system was promoted to a national status. In Taiwan, although Taiwanese romanisation was developed centuries ago, Han characters remain the dominant orthography in current Taiwanese society. This paper examines Taiwan's orthographic transition from the perspective of the Han sphere. Both internal and external factors have contributed to the different outcomes of orthographic reform in these countries. Internal factors include the general public's demand for literacy and anti-feudal hierarchy. External factors include the political relationships between these countries and the origin of Han characters (i.e. China). (Contains 5 notes.)

A teacher reminisces on her experiences in Japan after World War II. (JD)

Compares current U.S. productivity to productivity in two previous decades and to productivity in Japan and Germany. Suggests that productivity comes from three groups of factors: (1) human resources, (2) technology and capital investment, and (3) the external environment. Recommends that vocational educators should more aggressively sell their services to employers and individuals. (LRA)

Japanese firms have historically followed a country-specific model of corporate governance. Yet, Japan has had to adapt its corporate model over the last 30 years, along with the transformation of distinctive characteristics of Japanese capitalism in the same period. We review the historical evolution of Japanese corporate governance over the last three decades with a specific emphasis on the changes in the capital structure of major companies and the efforts to correct ineffective board of directors monitoring. By doing this, we investigate to what extent specific Japanese corporate governance features may explain the nation's economic situation over this period. Thereby, we try to clarify the influences that have presided over recent corporate governance reforms in Japan despite the existence of managerial failures and corporate scandals. This paper places itself into the debate over the diversity of capitalism as it portrays the specificities, differences, and converging trends of Japanese corporate governance practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what degree are historical animosities regarding another country relevant for foreign policy in the face of changes in the security environment? This paper seeks to answer this question in the context of Korea–Japan relations. While pundits have pointed to the Korean public's negative views of Japan—rooted in the colonial experience—as the explanation for the lack of cooperation between Japan and Korea in the security field, this paper argues changes in the level of common external threat can shift the public's priorities from perceived historical injustices toward the needs of security. Surveys from the period when the security environment was shifting markedly—the final years of the Cold War (1986–1990)—reveal that public opinion regarding Japan relative to other powers in the region began to deteriorate only after the security environment improved, pointing to a limit to the extent that "history" trumps security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports that social studies has declined in the school curriculum of Japan because of its failure to keep pace with the changing orientation of Japanese society toward the future and the emergence of an internationalized society. Summarizes recent policy initiatives and curriculum developments designed to accommodate these social changes. (JDH)

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]

In order to foster interactive discussions with other countries, this paper offers an overview of residential care for children in Japan and its ongoing development. Japan still relies especially heavily on the residential care system; this is due to the past process of development more than to traditional Japanese culture. The period from the post World War II era to the present is briefly described, including the rapid growth in the number of institutions before 1960, the rather stable period before 1990, the revision of the Child Welfare Act in 1997 permitting the privatization of institutions, and the movement towards problematizing child abuse in the mid 1990s, after which residential institutions were designated as the last resort for maltreated young people. In the present situation, smaller institutions and a foster care system are strongly promoted in accordance with international guidelines for alternative care and the recent governmental guideline based on the Child Rearing Vision of 2010 and the Child Welfare Act of 2016. The task of present Japanese residential care institutions is to realize a family-like environment and a better placement strategy, collaborate more with specialists to improve the standard of care, function in the community as centers for the care of children in need, and expand their care work for young adults and care leavers. The paper concludes by stressing the need for more international exchange among individuals and groups working in Japanese residential care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

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]

In 2020, the autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) has already become a vital part of deep-sea research. There is a long history of R&D of AUVs that dive into the deep sea, where radio waves cannot reach, thus making remote control difficult so that no help can be provided, which implies that careful and adequate preparation is necessary. Their successful development has been based on the accumulation of experience and achievements contributing to the remarkable results that no other system can produce. The aggressive R&D of Japanese AUVs started approximately 40 years ago. This paper looks back at this history and introduces various Japanese AUVs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The teaching of history is an important way in which the older generation, who control education systems, curricula, content choice and so on, pass on to the younger generation ideas, especially the idea of nationhood, which they hope will form the basis for future national cohesion. The younger generation, however, receive these messages and interpret then through the lens of their own experiences, experiences that they do not share with the older generation. Consequently, the idea of history is re-formed and reformulated by each generation. This paper looks at the role of textbooks, principally history textbooks, in that process. The style of textbooks is to present history as uncontentious, a descriptive account of facts and events. In practice, however, textbooks can only present an arbitrary selection from history, and a crucial decision made by educators is when to start their account – the beginning of history – as this can radically affect the interpretation of events. This facsimile of neutrality stands in sharp contrast to the professional historians’ hope that the teaching of history can develop a critical sense of important and contested events in history. The discussion is illustrated with examples of how history is presented in China and Japan, and how the conflicting accounts serve the interests of the policies adopted by the older generation, but may have unanticipated consequences for the younger generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The diplomacy of Japan towards its Asian neighbours has always been a complex issue. Throughout the years, the foreign policy of Japan has witnessed severe alterations specifically after the Second World War. Since then, new challenges and opportunities have risen which have formed a new, adapted Japanese diplomacy, albeit not disconnected from its traditional aspects and its past. The current purpose of the paper is to highlight these evolutions and challenges of the post WWII Japanese diplomacy. The focus will be on the two main neighbours and traditional partners of Japan, the People's Republic of China and the Republic of Korea. There will be an effort to highlight the challenges that Japan experiences with the aforementioned countries, its diplomatic approaches and how these could be evolved in the near future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After its release in 2003, The Last Samurai became a major success at the Japanese (and international) box-office, simultaneously marking a turning point in the illustration of Japan by Western media, and more specifically, by US-American institutions of mass entertainment, such as Hollywood. The Last Samurai has been mostly discussed on the background of the historical realities it depicts (the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the unconditional import of Western artefacts and values, the clash between old and new in Japan by mid-19th century) or from the perspective of the impact it had on the representation of Asian or other non- European cultures by American mainstream mass-media. Based on a 15-year empiric-phenomenological fieldwork in the slippery domain of Japanese mass-media, as well as in-depth literature research on new media, masculinity studies and entertainment industry with specific focus on Japan, this paper argues that the character embodied by Tom Cruise - the typical white male from Japanese perspective - displayed an unexpectedly refreshing insight into the prevalent masculinity ideal in Japan, as subliminally suggested by the Japanese characters. On the one hand, it challenges the image of the samurai, both in its historical idealization (stoic warriors and social elite) and in their contemporary adaptation (carriers of Japan's post-war recovery). On the other hand, it questions the values incorporated by classical Japanese masculinity and suggests a credible alternative, with emotional flexibility, human warmth and mental vulnerability as potential core attributes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Far East / Dálný Východ is the property of Palacky University in Olomouc and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Disability Studies is the property of Canadian Disability Studies Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper explores how what I call 'administrative categories' have been adopted by the Japanese government and experts in autism support and what roles these categories have played in local settings. Since support practices for children and adults with autism began in the 1950s in Japan, the Japanese government and people engaging in autism support have used Japanese-specific administrative categories, instead of relying on a medical concept of autism, such as 'severe moving disabilities' (SMD), 'emotional disturbance', and 'extremely disruptive behavioural disorders' (EDBD). To understand the emergence of these three autism-related administrative categories in Japan, historical materials published from the 1950s to the 1990s by Japanese authors (doctors, psychologists, teachers, educationalists, welfare workers, government officials, and parents) and interview data with 19 leading experts of autism in Japan were collected and analysed thematically. The analysis revealed that the governmental ministries aimed to focus on establishing administrative support by avoiding engaging in aetiological debates among doctors, and to describe the political agenda more vividly. Administrative categories filled the gap between local interests and international medical concepts, enabling the concept of autism to be rooted in Japan's administrative systems. Three roles of administrative categories were identified: i) separation from medicine, ii) describing local problems, and iii) claimsmaking to wider actors and the public. I concluded that looking purely at medical and specifically diagnostic concepts limits our understanding of the formation of practices regarding disabilities, and thus more focus should be placed on categorisation practices outside of medicine. In addition, to the literature on the globalisation of Euro-American psychiatric concepts, this study contributes to our knowledge of a form of locality that has not been central in the exploration of the influence of globalisation on local settings and the relationships between the local and the global. • Focuses on 'administrative categories' of autism used by Japanese government and experts. • Describes the history of three autism-related administrative categories in Japan. • Shows how an international medical concept interacts with local systems. • Identifies roles of administrative categories that international medical concept cannot play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Austronesia, one of the largest language families in the world, covers a vast area from Madagascar in the extreme west to Easter Island in the far east, Taiwan in the north to New Zealand in the south. The languages are spoken by the people of insular southeast Asia, Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia in the Pacific, as well as certain parts of the Asia mainland. The vernacular architecture of the people that belong to this language family shows certain shared characteristics that seem to indicate a common origin in the distant past. The Grand Shrines at Ise, Japan pose an intriguing phenomenon because they possess striking architectural features that are reminiscent of Austronesian vernacular architecture. This paper is an attempt to investigate the phenomenon using the findings of studies by experts from other disciplines such as historians, anthropologists, linguists and others, based on the link between culture, language and architecture.1 [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Much has been written about the many Western experts, particularly engineers, who travelled to Japan and contributed to the country's modernization in the years following the Meiji Restoration (1868). In this paper it is argued that more emphasis could be placed on the contribution made, not only by experts in situ, but also by agents who remained in the West and sent out instructions and materials, enabling extraordinary changes under the new centralized Japanese government. The author traces the achievements of the Waters and Robinson families who, as agents, engineers, entrepreneurs and opportunists, combined to contribute to a decade of advancement now known to Japanese historians as the Waters era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most Japanese consider themselves to be non-religious or secular. "Ritual, but not religious" might be a useful term to describe Japanese religious characteristics. Indeed, we celebrate many religious rites throughout the year and throughout our lives, some of which are closely related to Buddhism, others are related to Shinto, and others are related to Christianity. For most Japanese, religion is not a specific belief system but a pragmatic instrument for daily life. Although Christian faith does not root itself in the Japanese community, when we look back at the history, we find that some Christian missionaries took tremendous efforts to bridge the gap between Buddhism and Christianity. In this paper, I would like to trace these efforts. First I will present some demographic facts about religion in Japan. According to the annual reports of Japan's Ministry of Education, Cultural, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan has had more religious adherents than its total population. Next I will trace how the dialogues between Christians and Buddhists developed. In the Meiji Era, although the Meiji Constitution guaranteed the long-cherished freedom of religious belief, the Christian churches entered a period of hardship, persecution, and retarded growth. 1896 is a remarkable turning point for the relationship between Christianity and Buddhism, because the first Buddhist- Christian conference was held in Tokyo. That was a social gathering of Buddhists and Christians for the purpose of exchanging opinions. The next turning point is the lectures on Zen-Buddhism by D.T. Suzuki, who found something common between Christianity and Zen-Buddhism. In the end, I will reach the most important figure--Father Hugo Lassalle. He was a Jesuit priest who tried to bridge the Zen-Buddhism and Catholicism through the practice of meditation. His effort bore fruit and gave impacts on people not only in Japan but also overseas. What do Catholicism and Zen have in common, then? I might say it is the practice of meditation and mysticism. I would like to close my paper by citing a passage from W. Johnston - "What united us was not philosophy but religious experience." [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]

Abstract: Focusing on the late 1920s to the mid‐1930s, this paper determines and analyses the societal conditions and structures leading to the immiseration of Korean farmers during the colonial period. Specifically, these were the deterioration of aspects of traditional society, indebtedness, and interest rates. These led to wide‐scale smallholder bankruptcies, resulting in their transformation into landless tenants, and ultimately resulting in a bifurcation into the “haves” and the “have‐nots” in the Korean countryside. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large areas of Northeast Asia experienced drought in 1939. Agricultural production in Korea decreased significantly, but the drought did not cause famine in Japan despite its dependence on rice imports from Korea. The paper analyses the impact of the 1939 drought on the markets for rice and electricity in Japan. The authorities were ill-prepared for such a disaster but willing to use it for the purpose of covering for other problems. The drought thus accelerated the move of Japan's economic system towards a managed economy. A lower total rainfall in Japan in 1940 did not generate similar problems, suggesting that the broader political, economic, and social context is crucial to the identification of short-term climatic fluctuations as crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]