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This article explores challenges and opportunities for Japanese Studies during the COVID-19 pandemic in South Korea. From March 2014 to February 2022, after receiving a US PhD, I taught Japanese history in English at an international college for Korean and international students. The pandemic's initial effect was isolation: online courses reduced interactions with students and scholars in Japan cancelled our joint research project activity in Korea. Eventually, however, there emerged solidarity peculiar to where I taught, both with my students and with the Japanese, Korean, and American researchers. In my Japanese history courses, email exchanges with individual students in lieu of class discussion often generated academically valuable yet potentially sensitive inquiries, which could have upset some Korean students if raised in the classroom. For the research, some primary materials turned out to be available online on Korean national libraries' websites. Our further research indicated the richness of sources produced in colonial Korea, including police records documenting lives of Korean workers in wartime Japan. The students' critical inquiries and collaborative research suggest vast possibilities for Japanese Studies, yet illuminate the constraints of national boundaries, reemphasized by the pandemic, in a world that we had hitherto imagined to be moving toward the global and borderless. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs officially claims that Japan had discovered Takeshima (Dokdo) since the seventeenth century, but this article argues that quite to the contrary, Isotakeshima Oboegaki, a primary source that confirms Japan's recognition of Dokdo as Korean territory, clearly corrects this claim. Isotakeshima Oboegaki's importance can be explained in three ways. First, Japan's official position regarding Dokdo wrongly conflates different uses of "Takeshima" depending on historical context and ignores that it was because of a paucity of Japanese sources confirming Japanese ownership over Takeshima (Ulleungdo) and a comparative certainty from the Korean government, forcing a reluctant Bakufu to admit the deficit in historical evidence and order that Japanese fishermen cannot trespass into Ulleungdo. Second, Isotakeshima Oboegaki was not just a document of its time but a key primary source that the Meiji government invoked as undeniable evidence to officially declare in the Dajokan Directive that neither Dokdo nor Ulleungdo were under Japanese sovereignty due to a paucity of evidence. Finally, Isotakeshima Oboegaki terminates Japan's logic regarding Dokdo because it contradicts the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs' claim of "original discovery" regarding Dokdo and Ulleungdo and corrects the mistaken notion of terra nullius. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to introduce the recent reform in history education across high schools and universities in Japan. Japanese education, including university history majors and teacher credential programs, has for long focused on in-depth training in narrow empirical studies, while basic theories and concepts, ones positioned across the entire spectrum of academic knowledge of history and historical research, are seldom taught systematically. This tendency, combined with other social and economic conditions and cultural values, has resulted in a secondary education history syllabus that emphasizes memorizing factual knowledge without necessary reflection on what historians articulate and deliberate over. To help researchers and teachers in history replace such a conformist form of education with competence-oriented active learning of history as a subject, Osaka-based historians, collaborating nationwide with researchers and teachers, have proposed several glossaries, commentaries, and novel exercises for understanding history and historical research and conceptualizing factual knowledge so as to provide necessary clarifications, discussions, and judgments. Thus, new textbooks written from the perspective of global history are expected to be well understood and taught in classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To find a more effective teaching method, the acceptance of migrant brides from China, Vietnam, and Japan of Korean history was investigated using the survey method. Four types of teaching methods were investigated. Before participating in the survey, migrant brides from Vietnam preferred the cramming teaching method (CTM), and those from China and Japan favored an audiovisual teaching method (ATM). However, after experiencing four types of teaching methods for a week--the CTM, ATM, comparative-history teaching method (CHTM), and discussion teaching method (DTM)--participants from Vietnam indicated the highest preference for ATM, whereas those from Japan and China preferred CHTM. Ultimately, this study demonstrated that a comparative-history teaching method is most effective for teaching migrant brides from countries with a history of recurrent cultural conflicts with Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares the history curricula of Hong Kong and Singapore since the 1980s with respect to their treatment of Japan, particularly its involvement in World War II. It examines the role played by Japan as one significant "Other" against which its former victims define themselves. As well as being cast as a wartime aggressor and agent of local "victimhood," Japan has also been hailed as an economic and military model worthy of emulation. By comparing portrayals in school history textbooks and their shifts over time, the author shows how images of Japan have been used by state elites in these two former British colonies to construct significantly divergent official visions of "postcolonial" identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Memory wars in Asia still revolve around Japan. Much has been discussed on the so-called kyōkasho mondai (history textbook controversies), yet, not much has been explored on the domestic social function of history textbooks per se. Emphasizing creators of history narratives (and their production), the field tends to overlook the audience, or, receivers in the process. In this article, by referring to the original interviews with Japanese college students, I question the very assumption of the creator-receiver connection. How are history textbooks perceived as a source for promoting Japanese people's underlying historical consciousness? How have they been utilized in schools? Are they useful? If so, how? If not, why? I argue that in the case of Japan, how people reflect upon history issues is not necessarily the function of school history textbooks as often assumed, making a strong case for the importance of receivers in the analysis of public discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the author's experiences teaching Pacific History and English to Japanese students. The author, an American who grew up in the Marshall Islands, examines the historical and geographic relationships between Japan and Oceania. He explores postcolonial curriculum initiatives, particularly what he cites as an "archipelagic" view of cultural studies and history. The author describes a course at the University of Tokyo he devised following several discussions with Pacific islanders entitled "A sea of islands connects us: contemporary Pacific Islander perspectives on empire, war, and globalization." The author discusses the syllabus of the course including definitions of Oceania, studying indigenous scholars, and decoding regional maps.

The article discusses history wars scenario in various countries which took part in framing its history curriculum. It says that the patriotic history and struggle of historian Saburo Ienaga to attain public recognition were reflected in the Japanese textbooks. Meanwhile, neoconservatism has been a factor for the transformation of Argentina to reformed history. Moreover, history curriculum of Australia is influenced by ideological frameworks such as history as heritage, concept, and postmodern.

Chinese leaders have repeatedly insisted upon the contemporary relevance of the ‘War of Resistance to Japan’ (1937–1945). However, the content of the official history of the war and the lessons drawn from it have changed dramatically from 1949 through 2010. This paper begins by reviewing theories of collective remembrance and then covers four historical periods: China's ‘benevolent amnesia’ on Japan's wartime atrocities before 1982; China's patriotic education campaign from the mid-1980s; the rise of history activism in China in the late 1990s; and the post-2005 reversal in official rhetoric on Japan and the wartime past. It concludes that, while the party-state retains an impressive capacity to shape the narratives of critical periods of modern Chinese history, Chinese leaders are likely to find themselves increasingly constrained by domestic forces and by external events beyond their control. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the results of the author's survey on the understanding of his Japanese and American students of World War II history. It was found that the Japanese students have a broader exposure to the history of war than their American counterparts. Both students have relied on the mass media on learning about the war. History lessons in the states were found to be more teacher-driven than those in Japan and Japanese students saw the war as part of a longer process.

Despite modernization of the Japanese school system after 1872, this period was marked by the war in East Asia and nationalism focusing on the emperor, whereby the imperial rescript of 1890 defined the core of national education. Following defeat in the Second World War, Japan reformed its education system in accordance with a policy geared towards peace and democracy in line with the United Nations. However, following the peace treaty of 1951 and renewed economic development during the Cold War, the conservative power bloc revised history textbooks in accordance with nationalist ideology. Many teachers, historians and trade unions resisted this tendency, and in 1982 neighboring countries in East Asia protested against the Japanese government for justifying past aggression in history textbooks. As a result, descriptions of wartime misdeeds committed by the Japanese army found their way into textbooks after 1997. Although the ethnocentric history textbook for Japanese secondary schools was published and passed government screening in 2001, there is now a trend towards bilateral or multilateral teaching materials between Japan, South Korea, and China. Two bilateral and one multilateral work have been published so far, which constitute the basis for future trials toward publishing a common textbook. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how middle school history textbooks published between 1951 and 1995 explain the origins of the Japanese as an ethnic group (minzoku). The analysis shows that despite the relatively long period from which the sample of textbooks was taken, these texts continue to emphasize two categories of Japanese identity: a biologically heterogeneous people through prehistoric immigration and a unified language. Building on the latter theme, the textbooks continued to treat the innovation of the kana as a quintessential development underlying the Japanese cultural achievement. The analysis reveals that the narrative tone shifted from being emotive in the early 1950s texts to somewhat muted in later decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on developments concerning Japan's bilateral relations with China. The Japan-China Joint Study of History project's final report was released at the end of January 2010. Both countries expressed satisfaction with the project. There are no signs of progress in the efforts to reach an implementing agreement on joint development in the East China Sea. China protested Japan's decision to appropriate funds to support the construction of sea walls on Okinotorishima and Minamitorishma.

This article introduces, first, a well-researched historiography and the writings on "world history" in Japanese academic circles from the late 1940s to the 1980s. It discusses the influence of Marxism and modernization theory in postwar Japanese historiography, the efforts by Japanese historians to explore the field of world history, and some of their meaningful results. It then provides an overview of the recent development of a "new global history" in Japan from the mid-1980s to the present, centering on the team at Osaka University and its collaborations with scholars outside Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to special historical circumstances, people in Taiwan had little knowledge of Japan over the past several decades, as did the Japanese of Taiwan. After the removal of martial law in 1987, Taiwan moved in the direction of democratization, which opened up many opportunities for the Taiwanese to reexamine their past under Japanese rule. This period of history highlights the uniqueness of Taiwan's historical experience in modern times. It also provides the foundation for building a Taiwanese perspective on history studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

History praxis can transform perceptions of the 'other' by reshaping ideas about events transpiring between groups. Nevertheless, peace education research has rarely examined history teaching. This article addresses the potential for teaching peace through history teaching. After laying out a conceptual framework for understanding the importance of teaching peaceful values in history, as well as providing a background of history teaching in the US and Japan, an analysis is given of qualitative interviews with junior high school teachers regarding history teaching in Japan and the US. Findings revealed teachers in both countries feel expected to teach mostly historical facts, find it difficult to give satisfactory coverage to events in which their country engaged in immoral acts, and are expected to teach a curriculum generally favourable to the national state. The countries differed in that American students are presented with extensive coverage of their country's activity around the world whereas Japanese students are not, and Japanese students are taught that war is an immoral act of which their country is historically guilty whereas American students are not necessarily taught this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Controversy over the inadequate presentation of Japan's colonial and wartime past in the country's history textbooks is one of the most protracted, notorious, and politically relevant "history problems" currently troubling East Asia. This article provides an overview of the controversy's evolution since 1982, situating it in changing domestic and regional contexts, analyzing its particularities and interrelations with other controversial issues, and evaluating its impacts on textbooks and societies at large. It shows how increased domestic and foreign scrutiny and contestation have triggered cycles of greater openness, conservative counterreactions, subsequent backlashes, and renewed debate in the field of textbooks and have overall contributed both to reinforcements and to reconsiderations of foreign relations in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at the international protest over Japan's school history textbooks. The protests in 2001 and 2005 were due to the Ministry of Education's approval of a junior high history textbook that gave scant coverage to Japanese wartime atrocities. The article suggests that any textbook screening process should be as transparent and open as possible.

Richard Samuels's book Machiavelli's Children: Leaders and Their Legacies in Italy and Japan raises a number of important issues concerning political leadership and the role individual leaders can play in a nation's history. The book won the 2003 Marraro Prize from the Society for Italian Historical Studies and the 2004 Jervis-Schroeder Prize for the best book in International History and Politics, awarded by the International History and Politics section of the American Political Science Association. This is a roundtable involving four critical essays and the author's response. Discussion centers on the book, its methods, its broader applicability, and the ways in which it dovetails with other intellectual concerns, particularly as these apply to contemporary East Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent writing in English shows a range of new approaches to and interpretations of Japanese colonialism between 1931 and 1945. Earlier bodies of work tended to focus on the aims, strategies and structures of Japanese rule throughout the empire, especially the formal empire. Newer studies have not abandoned these concerns, especially in relation to geographical areas, notably Manchuria, that have only just begun to emerge or re-emerge in English-language writing on Japanese colonial practice. At the same time, however, there is now much greater recognition among historians of Japan that the colonial relationship is shaped by the colonised as well as the colonisers; that life in the metropolis itself is affected deeply by its colonies; and that mainstream studies of modern Japanese history should include Japan's formal and informal colonies as a matter of course. In this essay I identify three major trends in works that have appeared in the last five years or so: a spurt of interest in Manchuria and other areas of northern China, a reconsideration of the major stages of empire, and an expanded understanding of what constituted colonialism and who participated in it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assesses the characteristics of the field of intellectual history of Japan's Early Modern or Tokugawa period in the U.S. Objective description of four different groups of scholars; Evaluation of the extreme theory-driven approach; Conservative nature of the American established academic scholarship of Japan studies.

Discusses Japanese historiography. Three divisions of historical scholarship that became fixed in history teaching according to the guidelines issued by the Ministry of Education of Japan in 1894; Infusion of world history as a subject of social studies at Japanese schools after the collapse of the Japanese Empire in August 1945; Book on modernization by W. W. Rostow that challenged the traditional Marxist stages of development and which Japanese Marxists disagreed with; Organization of a workshop called Comparative History and History Education which was designed to reevaluate the writing of history.

Presents an interview with Hugh Patrick, an expert in Japan studies. Career history; Achievements; Contributions to Japan studies.

This essay compares three Japanese middle-school history textbooks and one officially approved textbook of the People's Republic of China. It illuminates similarities and differences among their descriptions of Japan's colonialism in Asia. The author treats these history textbooks for children as cultural documents as well as policy documents, and analyzes how each culture's story-telling convention is deployed to organize diverse subunits of the tale about the conflicts between the two countries. This study indicates that the Japanese texts tend to employ formulae for describing the nobility of failure, while the Chinese text follows more closely the conventional hero folktale with such functional units as endurance, struggle, and ultimate victory. A detailed relational analysis among subunits identifies the Chinese and Japanese cultural and ideological paradigms that underlie the production and interpretation of these historical texts for children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author provides an interpretation of the post-World War II economic “miracle” of Japan as a process of economic convergence within the framework of the neoclassical Solow—Swan model of economic growth. He shows how the predictions of the Solow—Swan model are qualitatively consistent with the actual economic record of Japan in the decades following World War II. The article is intended to help in the teaching of economic growth and the Japanese economic miracle, either as part of a macroeconomics course or in an advanced elective course in economic growth and development or in Japan's modern economic history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan has often been criticized for allegedly teaching its schoolchildren about the history of Imperial Japan 1895–1945 in selective and misleading ways. Is this criticism justified, and how does it compare with the record of another former colonial power in East Asia: England? International criticism of history teaching in England has been insignificant when compared with criticism of Japan. Yet how much are English schoolchildren taught about the British Empire?This paper is based upon documentary study of national curricula and examinations, together with observations of history lessons at several secondary schools in Japan and in England, as well as interviews with history teachers in both countries, with university students in Japan, and with high-school students in England. It argues that both Japan and England devote relatively little curricular time to the study of their respective imperial pasts. However, this is not necessarily because of a deliberate cover-up of the facts. In each country, teaching about imperialism is partly determined by the way history as a subject is taught. In order to change the way children learn about imperialism, it may be necessary to change the philosophy and practice of history teaching as a whole. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In recent years, there has been a good deal of media and academic interest in the ways in which Japanese history textbooks represent Japan''s wartime past. However, the discussion has tended to revolve primarily around a number of symbolic textbook issues, such as government censorship of the term ‘aggression,’ without much consideration of divisions and conflict within the state and the ruling bloc itself. Consequently, no real analysis has emerged concerning the ways in which right-wing nationalist elements have exploited the textbook issue with the aim of reinforcing their political and cultural dominance over contemporary Japan.This article presents the Japanese history textbook controversy as an ongoing cultural and political struggle. It attempts to understand the process of the textbook struggle historically, and the relations between political parties and actors, the state bureaucracy, and right-wing nationalists. In particular, the study examines the ways in which the power of right-wing nationalism has been appropriated and negotiated by the leaders and members of the Liberal Democratic Party and bureaucrats in the Ministry of Education. It also looks at the ways in which such power has been resisted by textbook authors, educators, and certain segments of public opinion. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various articles within the issue on topics including citizenship education, civic education in Japan, and history in the school curriculum.

Studies Mori Rintaro's writing subtly examining the early development of imperial themes in Japan and considers Mori's experiments with history, science and language. Brief biography on Rintaro; Reasons scholar Bruno Latour is important in the account of Mori Rintaro; Background on the essay titled 'Acupuncture Science.'

1990s Japan appears to be in the grip of a revisionist trend which many people associate with the emergence of neo-nationalism. This paper argues that, while the leading proponents of revisionist history in the 1990s are superficial and intellectually unpersuasive, they nonetheless ought to be taken seriously by Japan scholars. Through a study of the 'Liberal School of History' and the ideas and person of its figurehead, Fujioka Nobukatsu, the logic expounded by revisionists and the alleged historical antecedents for these ideas are identified. The tumultuous context of the 1990s, including the Gulf War, death of Hirohito and the fiftieth anniversary of defeat in 1945, have provided a fertile environment for arguments in favour of a more patriotic history education for Japanese junior and senior high-school students. Conservative and rightist politicians across party lines have developed activist groups in support of Fujioka's programme, and he has received considerable financial backing from the private sector. Analysis of 1990s revisionism reveals a closer affinity with pre-war and wartime nationalism than with any kind of 'new' post-war nationalism. It has revived a Statecentred nationalism that explicitly regards post-war democracy as its ideological enemy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses contemporary Japanese civilization theory, and examines ideas of bunmeiron to be used as a basis for thoughts on future directions for the study of history. According to the author, two fundamental concerns are seen in writings on civilization theory namely, the desire to escape from Eurocentrism, and the development of an alternative to the Marxian stage theory of history, an influence in the historical imagination in modern Japan.

The article offers information on the digital archives of several journals from ME Sharpe Inc. which include "The Japanese Economy," "Chinese Studies in History" and "European Education."