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In the early 1870s, when the Meiji Japanese government introduced the universal army conscription system, the age at which the conscription exam was administered, set at twenty, became a critical moment in people's lives. Although the Japanese army itself has gained much scholarly attention, the arbitrariness of its age stipulation directs us to an underexplored yet critical intersection between society and the state. Age twenty reprogrammed the rhythms of rural farming life and redefined the meanings of masculinity and adulthood for people far beyond those actually drafted into the army. Politicians and youth themselves linked this calendar age to the future of Japan's liberal democracy and the autonomous space free of bureaucratic intervention. The history of age twenty, which was all about translating fuzzy life stages into acutely clear calendar ages, reveals a moment in which people attempted to turn a cultural and discursive power into a form of authoritative power that lay beyond negotiation, even vis-à-vis the government itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the mid-Meiji period, the leading scholar Katō Hiroyuki proposed relying on religion in moral education as he was dissatisfied with the Ministry of Education's inclination towards Western ethics in their reform. Triggered by Katō's proposal, there arose an intense debate over the 'standard' for moral education in the educational circles. The Ministry of Education failed to present a debate-ending 'standard', while the promulgation of the Imperial Rescript on Education enforced the 'royal standard' for moral education and therefore cast aside all other propositions advanced in the debate. However, the main participants of the debate presented a dynamic discursive space revolving around ethics education and religion. By examining this discursive space, we can enable our investigation of the history of moral education in the Meiji period to go beyond the simplistic narrative framework centred on The Imperial Rescript on Education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is a wise choice for a backward country to explore overseas education bases to find the training for urgently needed talents. In 1900, the Qing government began actively sending students to study advanced technology in Japan. From that time, Tokyo Higher Technical School (THTS) became an indispensable overseas base for Chinese students studying abroad. Although the educational resources of THTS were not superior to those of the imperial universities, returning THTS graduates played a greater role in the industrial modernisation of China than the graduates from imperial universities. This article shows that the role of importers of technology is not only determined by the technology they have acquired, but also highly influenced by a variety of factors, such as opportunity and social demand, presenting a complex and changeable pattern in different contexts. For developing countries, the 'appropriateness' plays a more important role than the 'progressiveness' of the imported technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how origami has been implemented, practised, and developed in the early childhood education of Japan over the past 140 years. Historically speaking, paper-folding has been part of Japanese symbolic art, craft culture, and religious ceremonial artefacts since paper and paper-folding techniques were first imported from China during the seventh century. By the eighteenth century, paper-folding provided a form of mass entertainment in Japanese society. During the 1870s, paper-folding was dramatically transformed into a pedagogical tool within Japanese kindergartens after Friedrich Froebel's (1782–1852) kindergarten system and its curriculum was transferred to Japan from the West. "Papier-Falten" (paper-folding) comprised an element of Froebel's Occupations – which was a series of handiwork activities – in his kindergarten curriculum, whereby various folding techniques and models were derived from European traditional paper-folding and introduced into a Japanese kindergarten curriculum that was associated with the concept of Froebel's kindergarten. Particularly seen in early childhood education in Japan, what we now call origami developed as a new form of paper-folding. This gradually emerged through the marriage of Western (German) and Eastern (Japanese) paper-folding cultures. The study highlights the benefits and uniqueness of cultural transmission and transformation when developing origami in early childhood education in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japanese imperialism was one of the most important driving forces in the history of modern East Asia. One influential group of actors at the grassroots level were the so-called 'continental adventurers' (tairiku rōnin)—Japanese nationals who travelled in Korea and China on the lookout for adventures and employment opportunities. Some of them worked part time for the army as spies, translators, and agents for special operations. These adventurers have been studied before as agents of Japanese imperialism, but existing accounts fail to present a convincing model of the mechanism that made their activities effective. The goal of this article is to fill this gap. This mechanism, which I shall hereafter call 'the military-adventurous complex', was a lobby of officers, continental adventurers, businessmen, politicians, criminal elements as well as Chinese, Manchurian, and Mongolian revolutionaries. The interests of these contingents were unique but nevertheless intertwining. Despite its decentralized character, the military-adventurous complex had a significant impact on Japanese foreign policy over an extended period. In this article, we shall explore the contours, structure, and modus operandi of that complex, its ambivalent relationship with the Japanese state, as well as several examples of its operations in the early twentieth century. Finally, we shall dwell on the ramifications of the complex on the development of Japanese imperialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we analyse a visit by two Japanese cruisers (the Izumo and Yakumo), commanded by Admiral Yamamoto, to Turkey in 1926. Although the visit's aim was overstated at the time, its contribution to Turkish–Japanese relations cannot be disregarded. Ambassador Obata and Admiral Yamamoto's emphasis on and discourse in relation to Turkish–Japanese friendship demonstrate that the Japanese imposed different meanings on the trip, the most important part of which was to Istanbul, where visits to official departments, programmes for naval students and familiarizing Istanbulites with Japan were important activities. The Istanbul press published news about the Japanese guests and their daily activities. After Istanbul, the delegation went to Ankara for official visits. However, these visits were little reported in Turkish news columns or the press of the period. In fact, the visit is reflected in just one or two sentences in the pages of history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan has featured prominently in The Pacific Review (TPR) since the journal's inception; and the very first issue in 1988 was essentially a Japan special issue with four out of six articles devoted to considering the implications of the country's then seemingly relentless rise as a regional and increasingly global power. Thereafter, TPR has carefully documented Japan's changing international pathway, forming indispensable reading for all Japan experts. TPR has always been distinguished by a rare ability to question the conventional wisdom on the study of Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This analysis shows how Japanese legations, first established in Europe during the 1870s, were not just symbolic gestures but played a key role in the Meiji government’s quest for international recognition. The concept of resident ambassador was unfamiliar beyond the European world, so the transition from sending visiting envoys to establishing permanent missions was a pivotal stage. Here a comparative framework gauges the importance of Japan’s new strategy within the context of similar experiments by states such as the Ottoman Empire, Persia, and subsequently China and Siam. The case of Sameshima Naonobu, Japan’s first resident minister in Europe, highlights the cultural barriers the Japanese faced. Assisted by Frederick Marshall, an Englishman at the Japanese Legation in Paris, Sameshima’s research on the mysteries encoded in this particular social universe offers some insight on the nature of the diplomatic corps in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Around 1900, an extraordinary number of stillbirths appeared in Japan's statistical yearbooks. This article investigates possible biological explanations but concludes that Japan's anomalous stillbirth rates were primarily the result of the deliberate misreporting of infanticides and abortions. On the basis of an international comparison spanning five centuries, it estimates that between 1886 and 1940, Japanese parents filed between 1.7 and 2.8 million false stillbirth reports. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The history of both the Red Cross and the Japanese Red Cross is based on a teleological and eurocentric narrative which is strongly shaped by national histories and focused on persons. To assume 1863 as the founding date of the Red Cross is highly debatable, considering that most national relief organisations were renamed ‘Red Cross Societies’ only in the 1880s. In this Japan is no exception, since first a Haku-Ai-Sha (Philanthropic Society) was founded in 1877 and then turned into the Japanese Red Cross Society in 1887. Japanese actors must be regarded as intrinsically motivated and active participants in the Red Cross movement who saw an ideal and a model in the Euro-American ‘way of civilisation’ and humanity. It has taken about 30 years to turn the Haku-Ai-Sha in Japan into a humanitarian society which is accepted both at home and abroad and, with its 728,507 members in 1900, which constituted the largest Red Cross Society in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The author notes that the title of the film has been used to identify a social-psychological concept that has been widely applied in the literature. The author gives a synopsis of the film. In order to debunk the standard interpretation of the film and provide a new one, the author places the making of the film in an historical context. This requires an explication of the absorption of the samurai into modernized Japan and the country’s history before, during, and immediately after World War II. The perception of the Emperor as a deity and his de-deification are central to understanding the culture and the problem of managing aggression in that society. The social structure of the society can be described as massification. The effects of these sociocultural issues on psychotherapy in Japan are discussed along with the implications for group psychotherapy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the lives and deaths of Yokogawa Shōzō and Oki Teisuke, two ' shishi' (men of high purpose), captured, court-martialled, and executed by the Russians shortly after the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904. While their deaths apparently served little or no purpose, the tale of Yokogawa and Oki was presented to the public in three distinct fashions. The first was to a Western audience in newspaper reports at the time of the war. The second was the manner in which the Russians portrayed them for the home front during the war. Finally, there was the manner in which the pair was presented in a reader for young Japanese boys in the late 1920s. Each portrayal served a distinct purpose that this article will address. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The article focuses on the development of the Meiji art in Japan. Information on art history in Japan since 1868, the importance of art in Japanese politics, and the history of the creation of national identity in Japan is presented. Also included is information on Japanese art curator Okakura Tenshin.

Japanese department stores became major art entrepreneurs in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Since the Mitsukoshi department store launched its art section in 1907 to display and sell the art of prominent contemporary artists, other Japanese department stores followed suit. The primary customer of the department store art sections was the rising urban middle class, who needed works of art with which to decorate tokonoma (decorative alcoves) of their new houses. By occupying a house with tokonoma, which had previously been built only in elite domestic architecture, and participating in the cultural practices associated with that space, the new middle class attempted to legitimize their cultural taste, which acted not only as a conspicuous marker of social status but also as an active determinant of it in the fluid conditions of modern Japan. This article explores how department stores allowed the new middle-class customers, who lacked both the proper financial means and the cultural competence to indulge their craving for ‘high culture’, to become members of the cultural elite in exchange for shopping at their art sections. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A case study is presented of the use of the term "gender free" and gender mainstreaming in Japan during the 1990s and early 21st century, including in regard to the relationship between feminists and antifeminist conservatives in the country and . An overview of feminists' use of the concept of gender equality in Japan, including in regard to their efforts to pressure the Japanese government to pass legislation to eliminate gender discrimination, is provided.

Drawing on a corpus of 300 words, this paper analyses the linguistic characteristics of the special lexicon of the secret language (ingo) used by thieves in Japan between the Edo and Showa periods. A total of 189 words are illustrated to demonstrate how the secret language of thieves can be described in terms of the three strategies used to create this special lexicon: 1) semantic changes introduced into the pre-existing Japanese lexicon; 2) lexical innovations; and 3) morpho-phonological modifications of the pre-existing Japanese lexicon. Strategies used in the creation of the special lexicon are examined in order to determine how the strategies employed in thieves' ingo conform to or deviate from the strategies used in modernising the lexicon of Standard Japanese. This paper also examines how morphological processes utilised in the special lexicon o f thieves' secret language interact with Japanese phonology, and concludes that the mora is an indispensable unit for the processes o f truncation, hypocoristic formation and reduplication, while the syllable is an indispensable unit for the process of metathesis. Finally, data analysis reveals that truncation and metathesis work at a level which ignores morpheme boundaries, and operate instead at the level o f the mora and syllable respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Socio-Economic History / Shakai-Keizai Shigaku is the property of Socio-Economic History Society 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.)

During the Japanese colonial rule of Korea, the term nambang ... (south), which traditionally simply referred to the cardinal direction, came in Korean minds to refer to Southeast Asia in particular. This change in meaning was associated with the political situation of that period. Nambang came to carry connotations of "undeveloped countries inhabited by indigenous peoples" and evoked a sense of superiority by those who used it. This was a manifestation of another form of Orientalism on the part of Koreans, who were themselves colonized people. Following the way Japan viewed Southeast Asia, the Korean people during the Japanese colonial period regarded the Southeast Asian region as the origin of life with a focus on its abundant natural resources. Unlike the brand of Orientalism of the Western romanticist, which focused on the harsh and violent barbarity of Asia, the image of the Southeast Asian regions as created by Japanese artists tended toward the idyllic and lyrical. Ironically, the people of Korea held imperialistic illusions about Southeast Asia without a tinge of sympathy, although they displayed an infinite sense of affinity toward India. This reveals Koreans dual standard of Orientalism mixed with a sense of relative superiority and unease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte is the property of De Gruyter 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.)

In the early twentieth century, the Japanese colonial government initiated an island-wide malaria eradication campaign in Taiwan, resulting in not only a rapid decline in malaria across time but also elimination of disparity across regions. Exploiting variations in malaria deaths caused by the campaign, we estimate causal effects of malaria exposure around birth on the health of elderly born in the colonial period. To mitigate potential biases caused by measurement errors and omitted confounders, we employ climatic factors to instrument for malaria deaths. Our findings suggest that people who were exposed to a high malaria risk around birth tend to have a higher likelihood of cardiovascular diseases and worse cognitive functions at old age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the coverage of the First World War in the mass media in Japan, as well as efforts by the Japanese military and education ministry to study the war. The author suggests that this perspective is a useful contribution to the historiography of World War I even though Japan's direct military engagement in the war remained comparatively marginal. Topics discussed included reporting on the war in Europe by Japanese foreign correspondents and intellectuals, government studies on economic planning and social engineering, and the discussion of the war in school textbooks.

The 'group relocation' policy imposed during the Japanese colonial period in Taiwan is arguably one of the most notorious policies to be imposed upon indigenes. As a result of this project, almost half of Taiwanese indigenes were resettled from the high mountain areas to the lowlands. Relocated populations needed to adjust themselves to new circumstances, and relocation became a traumatic memory for many. What is interesting is that relocating villages is not, historically, an uncommon occurrence for most Taiwanese indigenous groups. This suggests that 'relocating villages', in and of itself, might not be overly problematic for indigenous populations. Why then did the Japanese relocation policy come to be regarded as such a traumatic event? In this paper, I will present a sketch of how the Japanese relocation policy became regarded as such a traumatic event for many indigenous groups, and explore the reason the Thao people, living by Sun Moon Lake of central Taiwan, had a very different experience of relocation. Moreover, I also describe the relationship between the mapping project of Traditional Territories of Indigenous Peoples that began in 2002 and the collection of oral histories of indigenous relocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the history of Japanese higher education during the early Meiji Era and the influence of American knowledge. The author reflects on the U.S. training of Japanese educator Nose Sakae at Pacific University in Oregon. Other topics include the recruitment of Japanese students by university president Sidney Marsh, financial support, and Nose's appointment as vice principal at Okayama Normal School in Japan.

Since the inception of the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1863, the international Red Cross movement had developed under the leadership of European humanitarians. Imbued with Western values and practices, Red Cross humanitarianism reflected an ideology of civilization in the age of imperialism. The contemporary European notion of civilization characterized most Asian countries as ‘uncivilized’ others who needed benevolent instruction of Western humanitarians. This article examines the ideological politics of Red Cross humanitarianism between the West and East through an analysis of the activities of the Japanese Red Cross in the First World War era. While the dreadful calamity of total war drove relief associations to European battlefields on an unprecedented scale, the global war also stimulated the activities of the Japanese Red Cross on the other side of the world. During the war, the Japanese Red Cross endeavoured to live up to the Red Cross ideals of humanitarianism. Appropriating an ideological linkage of humanitarianism and civilization, the Japanese Red Cross attempted to enhance the international status of Japan as a ‘civilized’ nation, an exception in ‘backward’ Asia, by almost excessively complying with Red Cross principles of humanitarianism during the war. The relief activities of the Japanese Red Cross in the world war illustrate the functioning of the ideological politics of humanitarianism between the West and East in the early twentieth century. The First World War marked a watershed in the history of the international Red Cross movement. In the aftermath of the protracted war, Red Cross humanitarians envisioned the extension of their activities from wartime relief to peacetime public health programmes. Their aspiration culminated in the establishment of the League of Red Cross Societies in 1919. The new international organization embarked on a global project of creating an international public health order in a world disordered by the total war. Yet, when applied to areas outside of Europe, its public health programmes came to be tied to colonial control of the indigenous peoples. This article argues that the global project of establishing an international public health order provided a new means to maintain, and in fact strengthen, asymmetric relationships between the West and East in the post-war world by opening channel for connecting humanitarian aids with colonial rule. A close analysis of the Red Cross initiatives on public health in Asia illuminates the reality and limitations of cooperative internationalism emerging from the ashes of the First World War. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The influence of European and especially German historiography on the formation of the modern academic discipline in Japan is undisputed, as is the importance of the German historian Ludwig Rieß. Undeniably, Rieß contributed to the organization of the academic discipline by teaching future historians and taking an active part in the establishment of the Historical Society, as well as by the example of his own research in the history of Japan. But how significant was his influence on the establishment and maintenance of archives in Japan? Japanese scholars had been collecting and working with primary documents long before Rieß arrived; indeed, the earliest efforts predate even the measures introduced under the Meiji government in the 1870s. This article outlines the beginnings of komonjogaku (the study of primary documents), giving particular attention to the work of its pioneer, Kume Kunitake. The author argues that while European methods based on archival research inspired and served to justify Japanese activities, indigenous traditions were at least equally important. Moreover, parallels with western countries are not merely a result of western imports but reflect the common responses to global processes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article surveys English-language writings on gender and modernity in Japanese history in the "long twentieth century." The discussion is organized around the themes of gendering the public sphere, feminism and the gendered state, gender and labor, and gender, sexuality, and cultural politics, with some closing reflections on emerging research themes which place the study of Japan's modernity in a transnational frame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early works on the history of the tea ceremony during the modern period emphasise the roles of the modern industrialist elite and their connoisseurial appreciation of tea objects. They argue that their aesthetic value derived from the history of the tea ceremony and that the space provided by tea gatherings played a critical role in the collection and display of art objects in the modern period. This article focuses on the social life of the elite in Tokyo during the mid-to-late Meiji period and examines how the tea ceremony generated new socio-economic networks and cultural institutions. It suggests that the modern development of the tea ceremony was influenced not only by the modern industrialist elite, but by a broader set of actors from various social groups, with differing motivations, that transcended nationality and gender. Towards the end of the Meiji era, the tea ceremony prompted the emergence of new institutions and became a medium for public diplomacy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines changes between 1992 and 2010 in Japanese junior high school history textbooks’ representations of imperial Japan's colonialism and aggression in Asia, using documentary study and interviews with actors in the textbook production process. Following a trend to increase textbook material on Japan's wartime aggression in the mid-1990s, after 2000 publishers approached this topic in contrasting ways, some expanding and some reducing their coverage, with dramatically varying results in terms of market share. Publishers’ decisions on content were related to their market position and to changes in local textbook adoption procedures that have increased the decision-making power of appointed boards of education at the expense of teachers. Increased market share since 2000 is associated primarily with a progressive pedagogy in tune with recent curriculum reforms. The recent spotlight on textbook adoption has exposed weaknesses in the system, such as inadequate representation of the local community and insufficient guarantee of teachers’ expert input in the adoption process. With the introduction of new textbook approval criteria requiring their conformity with the patriotic emphases of the revised Fundamental Law on Education of 2006, the content of future textbooks will clearly be strongly influenced by both approval and adoption processes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Korean word haengbok ... (... in Chinese characters), meaning "happiness," was newly coined during the state's modem times. Haengbok and its rival terms hyangbok ... (... in Chinese characters), meaning "bliss," began to appear in usage from the Gabo Reform and was used sporadically, yet never established a clear usage nor acquired popularity among people until a turning point in 1910. Until then, haengbok had been mainly a statist term and rarely used in an individualized or private way, but in the 1910s, became popularly used, being associated with private intimacy differentiated from the public sphere on the one hand and with pleasure separated from labor and daily routine on the other hand. The colonial power of the 1910s and its media, the Maeil sinbo (Daily News), played a special role in the course of isolation and privatization of happiness in Korea. Colonial happiness began to be reappropriated in the midst of overwhelming new values such as freedom, justice, and humanity upheld in the March First Independence Movement of 1919, and during the early 1920s, it was widely used as a public and dynamic concept. The concept of happiness then took the path of introspection and privatization, and in this latter course there was no attempt to engage in active discourse on its individualization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides the first comparative overview in English of Japanese colonial banks before World War II with an emphasis on their roles as banks of issue in Taiwan, Korea and Northeast China. It discusses at length similarities and differences in these banks’ note circulation patterns, in their note-reserve requirements and their actual application, and in their geographical spread and respective colonial mandates. There was some variation in Japanese bank note issuance in the colonial setting of Korea and Taiwan, in ‘Manchukuo’ and in those parts of China that remained nominally sovereign. But all Japanese colonial banks seem, in one way or another, to have astutely adjusted the spread of their note issue in order to control for flagging demand due to nationalist boycotts, or to conversely cash in on demand spurts for notes resulting from crises in the indigenous financial sector. The banks of issue under review here were theoretically subject to a 100 per cent reserve requirement, but the make-up of their metallic bullion reserve and the degree of their notes’ convertibility were very dissimilar, reflecting varying local conditions. Both in terms of reserve ratios, and note denominations—the banks prudently followed charter obligations that were devised by the Japanese Treasury but, at the same time, were reminiscent of the obligations that British overseas banks also had to abide by. Thus, the findings discussed here shed light on the inception and adaptability of Japanese colonial policy in the lead-up to the Pacific War. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Nation-building initiatives during Japan's Meiji period (1868–1912) erected a rigid normalcy that galvanized a culture of exclusionism. They afforded broader spheres of social activity but a narrower range of acceptable behaviors, greater opportunities for individual empowerment but less tolerance for individuality itself. Backward-looking artists and writers were particularly susceptible to these developments, many earning repute as “useless losers,” heretics, or traitors. This article speaks to the dynamics between modernity and marginalization through an analysis of the exclusionism that accompanied Japan's modernization initiatives in the late nineteenth century. It demonstrates how Meiji's modernization program fostered the development of new paradigms of knowledge while condemning non-conformists as social misfits. The article begins with a review of early Meiji's construction of normalcy and then proceeds with a discussion of talented writers and artists rendered irrelevant by this process, ultimately exploring how conceptions of marginality played out in the social, political, and cultural contexts of that period. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article deals with the commercial aspect of midwifery in Japan since the Meiji period. In focusing on the important yet often neglected aspect of the history of medically trained midwives, it aims to complement existing scholarship that tends to emphasize the role of midwives in the construction of the modern Japanese state. The article analyzes and contextualizes health-related advertisements published in San'iku shimbun, a newspaper aimed at medically trained midwives. These advertisements encouraged midwives to participate in commercial activities involving the sale and promotion of health commodities. Representations of midwives in the advertisements point towards an important aspect in the professional reality of midwifery: making a living. But the advertisers also implicitly exploited the role ascribed to midwives, as agents of health and hygiene in the context of the modernizing state. Thus the social function of medically trained midwives was informed both by their officially endorsed role in the state's vision of creating healthy citizens and the reality of their position in the medical marketplace. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 2008 Japan hosted the Fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) and the Group of Eight (G8) Summit. This coincidence provided a high-profile diplomatic opportunity within both Japan's relations with Africa and its summit diplomacy to shape regional and global agendas respectively and, to these ends, the Japanese government sought to connect the two international meetings. While Japan maintained its commitment to international society by fostering South–South dialogue and high-level contact between the G8 and Africa through these forums, the linkage of the two 2008 events was dominated by Japanese efforts to gain African endorsement for its ‘Cool Earth 50’ policy on global climate change. In the event, African leaders resisted Japan's efforts to place priority on discussion of climate change. The government also hoped that the conjunction of the two meetings would improve perceptions of, and interest in, Africa among the Japanese public, but evidence suggests little was achieved in this regard. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The history of psychology in Japan from the late 19th century until the first half of the 20th century did not follow a smooth course. After the first psychological laboratory was established at Tokyo Imperial University in 1903, psychology in Japan developed as individual specialties until the Japanese Psychological Association was established in 1927. During that time, Tomokichi Fukurai, an associate professor at Tokyo Imperial University, became involved with psychical research until he was forced out in 1913. The Fukurai affair, as it is sometimes called, was not documented in textbooks on the history of Japanese psychology prior to the late 1990s. Among earlier generations of Japanese psychologists, it has even been taboo for discussion. Today, the affair and its after-effects are considered to have been a major deterrent in the advancement of clinical psychology in Japan during the first half of the 20th century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Strongly influenced by the previous Meiji Civil Code that shaped people’s perceptions about the traditional Japanese family, postwar Japanese society has not fully guaranteed gender equality, and whether to legally allow the dual-surname system is one of the major legal and political debates in Japanese society. To understand the tension between the traditional Japanese family emphasized in the previous Meiji Civil Code and gender equality emphasized in the current Japanese law, this study explored the surname system in Japan by reviewing historical trends, recent surveys, political debates, and comparing with other nations. This study illustrated that the surname was not attached to the family lineage and membership as today in the past, and symbolic significance of the surname has changed through the course of Japanese history. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

After a period of some 250 years in which Europe has been in the ascendency, the economic pendulum has begun to swing back towards Asia, “back” because until about 1750 it was Asia that dominated the Eurasian land mass with its large cities, sophisticated lifestyles and flourishing trade. Then Europe embraced the modernizations of the Industrial revolution and reaped the benefits. Now a dynamic Asia is modernizing very fast. Is it sustainable? Much depends on whether Asia can resolve peacefully those problems of old-style nationalism which exhausted Europe. Even so, the statistics of recent growth in India and China cannot necessarily be extrapolated into the future; export-led growth is one thing, running global businesses is quite another. There is much talk of corruption in Asia, but this is perhaps a problem to be managed, rather than solved. Asia is not just South Asia (India), East Asia (China) and South East Asia (the “Tiger” economies). Recent events in the Middle East (West Asia) suggest a move towards democracy, which could transform the nature of Asia. And then there is Central Asia, with its huge mineral resources. The Resurgence is proceeding at a different pace in different parts of Asia and the fantastic prospect is of the whole Eurasian land mass prospering at the same time. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Playing the violin in Japan was pioneered by women. The first Japanese to study the violin abroad were Kôda Nobu (1870–1946) and Andô Kô (née Kôda, 1878–1963). Both taught at the Tokyo Academy of Music (now Tokyo University of the Arts) after their return. Kôda later opened a piano studio. The article describes their lives and careers and shows how their Western expertise gave them unprecedented opportunities while their gender imposed limitations. It discusses the sisters' role in the transmission of Western music to Japan in the context of Western as well as Japanese preconceptions about appropriate musical roles for women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses economic ideas and policies in Japan in the late nineteenth century, focusing on a boom in rabbit trading in the 1870s and laissez-faire economics. It examines the rise in rabbits' popularity and prices. The author comments on government intervention following the growth in crime and social disorder related to rabbit trading, which included banning organizations known as rabbit associations, or usagi kai, as well as taxing the trade. He also comments on the idea that rabbits were involved in a cholera epidemic that hit Japan in 1877.

Although known primarily for his lone horseback ride from Berlin to Vladivostok in 1892-93, Fukushima Yasumasa's career encompassed more than just this one remarkable ride. Born in 1852, Fukushima was caught up in the 1867 civil war, before beginning a military career that took him to almost all corners of the globe. In addition to his service during the 1894-95 Sino-Japanese and 1904-05 Russo-Japanese Wars, Fukushima played an important part in the development of Anglo-Japanese and Japanese-Mongolian relations in the early twentieth century, an aspect of his career that has been largely overlooked. This article re-examines Fukushima's career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses social attitudes toward the reuse and preservation of defence sites in Japan, exploring defence heritage since 1920. It comments on the listing of various military sites and forts as National Historic Sites in the 1920s and 1930s, providing a social background for this era. The author comments on the neglect of such sites in the post-World War II period and the transformation of some into parks. The reuse of both coastal and inland defence heritage is considered and the educational, recreational, and artistic purposes of reuse are explored.

The article introduces a series of articles that will appear in upcoming issues of the journal that explore design history in East Asia. Also presented is the first article in the series, which focuses on Japan. It explores design history in Japan dating to the 1950s and discusses the associations and publications that have led developments in the field of design. It discusses the country's lack of a national design museum, but notes that the country boasts several notable exhibitions dedicated to the history of Japanese design. The article also examines significant Japanese publications and texts on design and discusses current trends in Japanese design.

Japan's early postwar leadership and American occupiers alike asserted that democratization was a new lesson that the Japanese public would have to learn. In fact, the ideas of democratic reformers had been broadcast to a large audience as feasible programmes decades before 1945. Miyatake Gaikotsu, the editor of Democracy in 1919, outlined the benefits that democratic reforms might provide in a post-World War I world. Decades later, Japanese people faced a new postwar struggle, not as victors but as the vanquished. Gaikotsu, writing in 1945, reflected on democracy in these new circumstances in his study, Amerika-sama. Although the situation was vastly different, victory and defeat in world wars had opened paths to new possibilities. This paper examines Gaikotsu's prewar writings as prescient prescriptions that he revisits in his essay Amerika-sama, or ‘Honourable America,’ at the point they begin to be played out, in some instances only partially and at times for ill as well as good, in occupied Japan. These reflections strikingly demonstrate the continuity of ideas during the prewar past and postwar present. Amerika-sama is a representative expression of many programmes Gaikotsu and likeminded humanistic activists attempted to put into practice from the late nineteenth century until they were suppressed during the wartime years. Mainstream political parties, prewar and postwar, often found it difficult to embrace Gaikotsu's ideas and political programmes. Nevertheless, the general public embraced them and they now find legal support in the Constitution of Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the doctoral thesis of Japanese colonial administrator and health reformer Gotō Shinpei, written while he was studying in Munich, Germany. It comments on Shinpei's views on biopolitics and his model for public health administration in the Japanese colonial areas of Taiwan and Manchuria, China, which combined both a centralized medical police force and local self-administration. The author also reflects on the influence of the Prussian public health administration model on Shinpei.

This article examines the emergence of private universities in Meiji Japan (1868-1912). It begins by discussing the interrelationships of modernity projects with the emergence of state universities, and with the new state civil servants. Second, it reviews the processes through which forerunners of private universities emerged, considering academic freedom and political independence as linked in the thought of their founders. The third section offers case studies of Keio and Waseda Universities. Finally it explores the process of cultural transformation in four areas of social formation: how religion, gender, social stratification and political philosophy were affected by the state modernity projects and private universities' resistance. The conclusion summarises the combined effects of state and private universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the history of Vietnamese studies in Japan, commenting on Japanese geographical conceptions of the Orient and the South Pacific. It examines Japanese orientalism and Japanese colonial expansionism. The author comments on the role of institutions and universities in Japanese Vietnamese studies and explores several Japanese scholars, including Yamamoto Tatsurō and Matsumoto Nobuhiro. The influence of Marxism and of World War II on Vietnamese studies is also considered.

The article presents an business history for the Japanese enterprise Shimadzu Company from 1900 to 1960, focusing on its efforts to develop, manufacture, market, and distribute x-ray machines during the early twentieth century. Some of the subjects considered include the diffusion of technologies, technological innovations, organizational strategies, competition, and the development of transnational corporations. It also considers the privatized state of medicine and health care in Japan during the period.

This article is part of a forum discussing the article "Asia Redux: Conceptualizing a Region for Our Times," by Prasenjit Duara, which also appears in this issue. The present author believes the notion of a unified Asia has been conceptualized through four different pan-Asian philosophies since World War II, namely imperialism, nationalism, universalism, and the aforementioned regionalism. Japanese imperialism sought to unify Asia through military force, while Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore promoted a universalist Asia based on Asian spiritualism. Asian nationalism was developed in response to Western imperialism on the continent by leaders such as Chinese Republic President Sun Yat-sen. Regionalism is based on historic Asian trade connections.

This paper addresses a question raised by Jan de Vries' on the relationship between industriousness and the rise of the market in East Asia. Was the growing industriousness in Tokugawa Japan, as de Vries suggests, a substitute 'for the absence of markets'? The examination refers to two versions of Chayanov's peasant farm model and their empirical relevance to the Tokugawa agrarian history, with special reference to the formation of labour-intensive peasant farming (Akira Hayami's version of an industrious revolution), product specialisation, and the markets for production factors, land, and labour. Its implications for the Great Divergence debate are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]