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The Meiji Restoration (1868) ended the Tokugawa Shogunate regime (1603-1867) and proclaimed the emperor as the supreme power of Japan. The Meiji emperor's reign began abruptly, requiring restoration leaders to construct an emperor-centred ideology of whole cloth. This ideology posited an eternal imperial Japan: a unique, tight-knit community of loyal subjects. To disseminate this ideology, the Meiji government introduced "shushin" (moral teaching) into the elementary school curriculum, aiming to transform all Japanese children into imperial subjects. Drawing upon Louis Althusser's theory of interpellation via Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs), this study reads textbook stories as an interpellation practice and shows how the government portrayed characters in the stories as "Unique and Absolute Subjects" of the ideology to persuade children to willingly subjugate themselves to national ideals. This study conducts direct textual and contextual analyses of "kokutei shushin-sho" (government-produced moral training textbooks) produced between 1903 and 1942, with a special focus on the teaching unit of the kokka (state). Two themes -- loyalty and the imperial family -- dominate this unit. The analysis reveals that the stories created "targeted truth" by pruning away details of characters' real lives, putting a beautiful mask on them, and sometimes even re-inventing or mythologising them.

By examining the widespread enthusiasm for education during the Japanese occupation of Korea (1910-1945), this article sets out to contribute to historiography on so-called 'education fever' (kyoyungyol), which so far has largely concentrated on researching the period after 1945. In the 1920s and 1930s the term was used to describe a multifaceted phenomenon that was driven by a striving for upward social mobility and the idea of national self-strengthening. Based on a wide range of sources including newspapers and journals, official documents as well as missionary reports, the article argues that 'education fever' was, on the one hand, closely linked to Korean nationalism, whose proponents made frequent recourse to the ubiquitous phenomenon in order to strengthen Korean political power through education. On the other hand, despite efforts to restrict school access, colonial authorities to a certain degree were forced to respond to these demands for education, highlighting Korean agency in the process.

Syed Ross Masood (1889-1937), grandson of the Muslim modernist Syed Ahmad Khan and former principal of Osmania University, traveled in 1922 from India to Japan as Director of Public Instruction for Hyderabad to assess Japan's educational system. In Japan and Its Educational System, a report published in 1923, Masood concluded that education had been key to Japan's rapid modernization and recommended that Hyderabad follow the country's model of modernization and educational reform: transmit Western knowledge through widespread vernacular education, and focus on the imperial tradition, freedom from foreign control, and patriotic nationalism. Masood sought to use mass vernacular education to create in Hyderabad a nationalist subject, loyal to the ruling Muslim dynasty, who absorbed modern scientific knowledge with its Western epistemic foundations but who remained untainted by Western norms. This study contextualizes and historicizes Masood's attempt to create in Hyderabad a new nationalist subject, focusing on his 1923 report about Japan.

Efforts have been made among scholars from Japan, South Korea, and China since the 1980s--on both private and state initiatives--to narrow the gaps in their historiographies and to cultivate mutual understanding. This article offers an extensive discussion of the author's history project, "A Student Project of Writing a Common History Textbook," which which was incorporated in a multinational class environment in the Spring 2019 semester. First the author explains the development of the conceptual framework and the organization and management of the class. Then, some of the history teaching materials that the students created is introduced. Finally, the author examines what the students actually learned from this exercise and working with their group members, based on their journals and answers to the project survey. The author would argue that this was a success in promoting mutual understanding among students by having them learn history together from various points of view, as the goal was not a complete reconciliation of their historical viewpoints. Young people from different countries, even those from the countries embroiled in politico-historical controversies, are able to learn from one another to create more complex historical narratives that look beyond competing nationalisms. The results of the course confirm the value of teaching history from a global standpoint and hold promise that if adopted widely, it might have a long-term and larger, positive effect on society and even on international relations by producing globally competent future generations.

The article explores the possibilities for cosmopolitan learning within a site such as the 23rd World Scout Jamboree. The approach is interdisciplinary, combining a theoretical conceptualisation of 'cosmopolitan learning' taken from Intercultural Education with a Cultural Studies focus on the representation of national and global cultures. This inspires an ethnographic exploration of the way that scout organisations and individual participants use artefacts, exhibitions and performances to communicate a sense of national/regional situatedness, world consciousness and interconnectivity. To decode cultural practices a three-layered framework has been employed, drawing on the three elements of national, global, and hybrid/fused culture.

Recent discussions around education for global citizenship continues to retrace notions of cosmopolitanism first laid out in Europe. Ostensibly seeking global inclusivity, much of this work ultimately returns to a rather narrow set of ontological and epistemic themes, primarily Stoicism and Pauline Christianity. The Kyoto School offers a constructive reconstruction of these core premises of European cosmopolitanism. In resisting the ontologizing of autonomous individualism and abstract universalism, Kyoto School thinkers offered an alternative tripartite structure that drew greater attention to the specific (nation-state): individual and universal are inevitably mediated by the 'logic' of specific histories, languages, institutions, and communities. Rather than naïve nationalism, this view emerged within a radically relational worldview: 'continuity-in-discontinuity' emplaced within absolute nothingness. Kimura Motomori, a leading Kyoto School educational thinker, explicitly extended these Nishidian ideas to challenge Rousseau's contracting individualism, Kantian abstract universalism, and Hegelian teleological temporality, thus offering a fresh vision of cosmopolitanism: self-aware citizens engaging concretely in the task of (re)opening their specific societies. In conclusion, in part to demonstrate the very forms of critique we envisage, we trace historically the impacts of Kyoto School cosmopolitanism ideas on postwar policy in Japan and lament the recent regressive closing.

This article examines Japan's resource diplomacy in the Middle East by focusing on the activities and ideologies of business leaders before the First Oil Crisis in 1973. By analysing the roles played by four prominent leaders in the oil industry (Idemitsu Sazō, Yamashita Tarō, Tanaka Seigen, and Sugimoto Shigeru), the article illustrates how the beliefs of these leaders intersected with those of the political class in Japan's oil diplomacy towards Middle East. The approach they took to oil diplomacy reflected the notion of Kōdōshugi (Imperial Way principles and ethics). This form of nationalism had some continuity with the prewar Greater Asianism insofar as it was infused with the religious ethics and doctrines of the 'Japanese Imperial Way' and the avoidance of dependence on the West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Failure to deal with the issue of collective and social loss increases the risk of extreme nationalism. When taken too far, a repetition of manic defence can arise that manifests itself in the form of war. In this paper, the notion of the "inability to mourn" by the German Psychoanalysts A. and M. Mitshcerlich (1967) is discussed in relation to the problem of Japan's post World War II nationalism, and its silence on social matters. The process of confronting past atrocities committed by the state is then discussed from the perspective of structural theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on Chinese football fans' reactions to the Japanese national team and their fans' behaviour during the World Cup 2022. Despite the historical and contemporary problems that make friendly relations with Japan difficult to achieve, football fans in China largely welcomed the good performance of the Japanese national team. This attitude may be described as 'thin cosmopolitanism' because Chinese fans' major frame of reference was still nationalistic. For them, the impressive performance of the Japanese national team means that Asians and the 'yellow race people' can also play good football. However, the Japanese fans, whose cleaning up of stadia received wide coverage during the World Cup, were criticized by the Chinese fans who interpreted the Japanese fans' action as reinforcing the existing global racial order. The findings of this paper help reveal the limits regarding football's role in contributing to a more cosmopolitan worldview. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How should we understand the relationship between nationalism and discourses of national decline, and more specifically the discourses of a shrinking nation? Driven by this question, this article highlights how bleak imaginings of the future also work to construct the relationship of the individual to the putative national community, creating forms of sentimental national belonging. This article analyses an emerging genre of best-selling books in Japan, Mirai no nenpyō [The chronology of the future] series, that present a dismal vision of Japan's national demographic future. Their goal is to provoke a sense of national urgency by encouraging Japanese nationals to feel personally the shrinking nation through imagining its coming consequences for everyday life. Such narrations of an imagined shrinking community act to create a timeless sense of national belonging, with daily lived experience in the imagined future interpreted through the lens of the contracting nation. Importantly, the future that these discourses present is nationalized within boundaries separating it from global developments and intercourse. Ultimately, this form of nationalism is constituted not by dying for the nation, but instead by people seeing the continued stability of everyday life as intricately tied to the fate of the national community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing theories of international relations have failed to interpret the hostile relations between Korea and Japan due to their Cartesian assumptions about the nature of national sovereignty and identity. Such theories view the hostilities between the two states as the result of incorrect policies or unhealthy interactions between domestic norms and foreign policies, because they believe that there are few negative structural elements between Japan and Korea. This study suggests an alternative explanation by utilising the worldview of East Asian medicine. By interpreting the formation of the Japanese and Korean national identities from the late nineteenth century and by viewing the hostility between the two states not as evidence of 'malfunctioning' inter-state relations but as a core element of their national identities, this study proposes an alternative understanding of 'problem-solving' with respect to Korea–Japan relations that is directed towards healing their relations with a long-term perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article meticulously examines the interplay of myth and memory in Kenzaburō Ōe's novel Death by Water, with a central focus on the protagonist's relentless investigation into his father's death by drowning. Ōe skillfully intertwines personal tragedy with the collective consciousness of Japan, invoking the 'Meiji Spirit' and the 'Spirit of Postwar Democracy' to frame the narrative. The study identifies the 'drowning death' as a mythological archetype, analyzing its symbolic representation of life, death, and rebirth cycles within the novel's context. Through a close reading of the characters' experiences, particularly the deaths of the father and Daio, the paper explores the multifaceted nature of mythical thinking shaped by historical zeitgeists. The findings suggest that national spirit, or Zeitgeist, exerts a profound influence on societal values and actions, leading to a discourse on the nation's relationship with the concepts of sacrifice and offering. Employing political mythology, the study delves into the nuanced connection between national identity and the sacrificial ethos, proposing that such narratives reflect deeper cultural and political undercurrents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article delineates how actors invoke nationalizing accounts—accounts that turn local conditions, actions, and actors into national ones—in everyday talk. Taking the case of Japanese university scientists depicting their commercialization trajectories after the adoption of a set of policies that originated from the U.S., the article delineates how scientists stipulate what they do is Japanese. I outline the discursive practices through which they posit that the cause of others' actions, or of they themselves, derives from some kind of ethno-national distinctiveness. Interviews show how such nationalizing accounts were made through the inevitable gaps between local practices and formal global structures. Scientific and commercialization practices in Japan that deviated from the original form were explained not only through the institutional differences between the U.S. and Japan, but also through lay categories of "culture," ethno-psychology, and readily available tropes about Japanese history. In such nationalizing accounts, what the Japanese scientists did under these new, and explicitly global policies, was argued to be fundamentally Japanese because they were rooted in and caused by the ethno-national character. As new institutional theory suggests, a decoupling between formal rules and local contingencies is a hallmark of any institution. The article further shows that such decoupling could then be used as a resource for everyday nationalism. At least in some cases, the global adoption and the localization of a global form may create an opportunity to enact the nation, contributing to a discourse that posits that an imagined community is distinct and special, precisely as the world becomes more globalized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the complicated nature of the citizenship of ethnic return migrants from Japan and Korea, Nikkeijin and Joseonjok. It aims to contribute to the scholarship by demonstrating that racism and nationalism are layered concepts by examining the reasons why Nikkeijin and Joseonjok enjoy preferential treatment to some extent but at the same time become targets of discrimination in Korea and Japan. I draw on Christian Joppke's position that citizenship is composed not only of legal status but also of social and identity elements and utilize two relatively novel concepts that shed new light on the complex nature of Nikkeijin and Joseonjok citizenship. One is Takeyuki Tsuda's concept of ethnoracism, which helps capture the type of racism aimed at groups that are not racially distinct but whose ostensible background differences are essentialized as inferior. The other is Gil-Soo Han's nouveau-riche nationalism, which argues that migrants are evaluated according to the global and developmental status of their country of origin. This comparative analysis helps demonstrate how the lives of Joseonjok and Nikkeijin are shaped by multiple layers of nationalism, racism, and status perceptions in their respective countries of residence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan faces its most serious and complex defence environment since the end of World War II. The country holds two significant security concerns: first, and critically, China’s burgeoning military, increasingly aggressive diplomacy, and destabilising actions around the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea; second, North Korea’s continued unpredictable rhetoric and actions in its nuclear arming program and ballistic missile testing. Japan’s 2022 National Security Strategy proposes two unprecedented policy ideas to counter these threats: first, to significantly increase Japan’s defence budget; second, to acquire counterstrike long-range missile capabilities in response to an attack. Nonetheless, despite these security issues and policy developments, this article argues that formal amendment of the peace clause in art 9 of the Japanese Constitution remains unlikely. To understand the improbability of constitutional amendment, this article first explores Japan’s constitutional pacifism under the post-World War II Yoshida Doctrine and the United States–Japan cornerstone security alliance, as well as the context of North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile threat and the emotive issue of abductions of Japanese citizens. The article then turns to Japan’s historic imperial relationship with China as an avenue to understand contemporary relations, including the key issues of trade and its link to security, and the Senkaku Islands sovereignty dispute. It concludes that formal constitutional amendment of the peace clause remains unlikely in the short to medium term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sports mega-events, like the Rugby World Cup, are often considered as a major platform for the celebration and reinforcement of nationalism. However, there is an emerging strand of research which contends that the host nations are increasingly presenting themselves with diverse, inclusive and cosmopolitan characteristics and, in turn, forms of nationalism have undergone some noticeable changes in more recent times. In this paper, we pursue an argument that Japan as the host of the 2019 Rugby World Cup projected the nation with a cosmopolitan outlook ultimately to sustain or even strengthen national interest and identity through the process of 'cosmopolitan nationalism'. Methodologically, the research deployed critical discourse analysis to examine media representations of Japan as the host nation in general, and its national team in particular, within one of the leading Japanese newspapers as well as a range of other publicly available resources and materials in relation to the Rugby World Cup. In result, the study reveals the ways in which the discourse of 'One Team', embracement of foreignness and incidents of international exchanges during the event were mobilised to generate 'thin' cosmopolitan moments and, at the same time, were incorporated into the narratives of Japan's success on the world stage through conditional acceptance of foreignness and diversity. Consequently, this paper offers both a theoretical underpinning for and empirical evidence of the emerging linkage between sports mega-events and cosmopolitan nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shinzo Abe, Japan's former and longest-serving prime minister was assassinated on 8 July 2022. As the world expressed sorrow of the human tragedy, nationalists in China were celebrating the disappearance of a hardline Chinese hawk with great enthusiasm. When a Chinese journalist sobbed for Abe's death during a live report of the assassination, the surging anti-Japan sentiment exploded and soon developed into a hashtag-based nationalist protest attacking Abe and the journalist. Drawing from cyber nationalism and hashtag activism literature, the author coined a concept 'hashtag nationalism' to analyze this protest, the interactions between state-led nationalism and popular nationalism, and the role of digital media in the public-state relation. This article also generalized three affordances of hashtag – interconnectivity, intertextuality, and interdiscursivity – to approach the role of social media in digital activism from a relational perspective. Finally, the analysis revealed the discursive and networked nature of hashtag nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"'Us' and 'Others': The Chinese Diaspora in Japan and the Negotiation of Their Membership in the Sphere of Chineseness" examines the way first-generation Chinese diaspora in Japan make sense of their relationships with the Chinese nation. With empirical evidence collected from both the in-depth interview with 69 informants and the media ethnographic observation with 26 research participants, this thesis contributes to conceptualize the diasporic experiences as well as the identity politics of the Chinese diaspora who live in a crucial era – while we have witnessed China's rise and its transition from a diminishing to a returning power, as a response to this Japan has continuously articulated a "China threat" discourse, which not only further promotes its ethno-nationalistic ideology, but also directing the ethnicity-based marginality toward the Chinese diaspora in Japan. In this context, this thesis contributes to present that while these events create complex Sino-Japanese power dynamics, the presence of digital media means that the Chinese diaspora in Japan are influenced by them in a new way – "new" in the sense that the digital mediation fills those power and forces into every dimension of their lives, making their daily reality a constant identity negotiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Youth literature of the Meiji period (1868–1912) has been portrayed as moralistic and unable to overcome premodern literary styles and tropes. However, in this article I show how this literature was transformative and functioned as an arena within which literary writers and the government contended for the minds of young Japanese citizens. I reexamine the early development of the genre of youth literature in Japan through the lens of Juri Lotman's theory of cultural memory. In Lotman's spatial model of culture, or semiosphere, foreign concepts travel from the periphery to the centre of a given cultural (sub)sphere through an amalgamation with established texts, in a process of 'creative memory'. This process, I argue, is reflected in the serialized adaptations of premodern warrior legends by the pioneering author Iwaya Sazanami (1870–1933), in which he explores the conventions of nineteenth-century youth literature from the West. Recognizing the new genre's deep connection to citizenship, he shaped his protagonists into exemplary boys who display wanpaku (spirited) dispositions, in opposition to the moralism and 'narrow-minded nationalism' imparted at home and in schools. As a mediator between premodern and modern concepts and modes of text production, Meiji youth literature thus offered adults a way to develop modern identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Inner Mongolian nationalism, which was promoted by Japan in Inner Mongolia during the Sino-Japanese War through the intermediary of Mongolian Buddhist Lamaism. It reveals the competition for the religious support of Lamaism among the nationalist political parties in Inner Mongolia, the reformation of Lamaism carried out by the Japanese under the slogan of Mongolian national awakening, and how the Japanese integrated this work into their larger Asian goals, specifically the Japanese army's promotion of its own Pan-Asianism among other Asian peoples as the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines cross-national, geographical analogizing through the under-theorized example of an artist colony in Japan nicknamed the "Ikebukuro Montparnasse" (a title coined by the poet Hideo Oguma, 1901–40). Located in the Toshima Ward of Ikebukuro district, Tokyo, this community flourished in the 1930s and housed mostly young, impoverished painters and sculptors, evoking the Montparnasse area of Paris. The analogy with Montparnasse is significant for several reasons. First, the concept of an "artist's village" was just being introduced to Japan during this time, and the Ikebukuro quarter exemplified this trend. Second, at the height of Japanese nationalism, the Ikebukuro Montparnasse had an anti-establishment reputation, partly linked to the ideal of Parisian bohemianism. Artworld analogies can be sharply political. Many of the artists and poets in this community were criticized as hikokumin, "those who failed to support the country," during wartime. This study also elucidates what I see as a partial turn from Sinophilism to Francophilism in the modern Japanese art world. Overall, I demonstrate how becoming involved in a community seen as Tokyo's answer to Montparnasse was a way for Japanese modernists to forge a new collective identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last two decades, against the backdrop of multiple anti-Japanese protests in China, the rise of Chinese nationalism has been much debated. By taking the 2010 and 2012 Sino–Japanese crises over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands as a case study, the article applies discourse analysis to media articles and interviews to ascertain the Chinese government's propaganda toolbox in shaping the nationalist discourse, as well as to substantiate the defining features of anti-Japanese nationalism. The findings reveal a combination of strategies and techniques that the propaganda apparatus uses, such as the creation of an 'us-versus-them' dichotomy, galvanised inclusiveness, censorship, and 'card-stacking' to mould nationalism. The article substantiates empirically both top-down and bottom-up strains of nationalism, and their interaction through the four key themes of sovereignty, history, mistrust and reactivity. It finds that Japan bridges these strands of Chinese nationalism, but in its absence alternative views of nationalism are articulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Books containing hate speech against Koreans and the Chinese have become a common sight in Japan's bookshops. The publication of 'hate books' has increased in tandem with the struggles of the publishing industry and the deterioration of Japan's relations with South Korea and China. This article seeks to explain the causes of Japan's hate book phenomenon, with a particular focus on books targeting Koreans. While South Korean researchers have mainly identified rising nationalism in Japan as the key factor, Japanese analysts label peculiarities in the Japanese publishing industry as the main cause of hate books. We argue that both these explanations are necessary but ultimately insufficient because they ignore each other's key findings. We propose a synthesized explanation that takes account of both the role of nationalism in creating demand and the unique structure of the Japanese publishing industry, which tends to incentivize the supply of hate books. The article also shows that nationalism only translates into hate book demand in times of diplomatic crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The “modernity” of Japan is to overcome and transcend other principal civilizations. From the perspective of historical context, Japan first overcame the influence of traditional Chinese order and civilization by “leaving Asia”. Then Japan resisted the West to eliminate the psychological depression of the failure to “join Europe” and constantly surpassed and overcome its previous modern identity, in an attempt to achieve the pattern of leading Asia and rivaling Europe and the United States.From the perspective of religious context, through institutionalization and homogenization of God and human, Shinto rose to the national religion at the ideological level, and then became the religion that dominated the national consciousness in the process of “integration of politics and religion”. As a result, it fulfilled the two transcendences in the face of “modernity”,and realized the integration of internal thoughts, and making a contribution to foreign aggression. Therefore, it has become an important factors for Japan to launch many aggressive wars from the 19th century to the 20th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, it is aimed to examine the Japanese national language textbooks in the context of collective memory. Secondary school 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade Japanese national language textbooks published by Sanseidō Publishing House were used as the main material of the study, and the textbooks were analyzed by document analysis method. Firstly, it was mentioned how the education system was shaped after World War 2 in Japan and the formation process of the textbooks was examined. Then, the curriculum was analyzed in the focus of its aims and objectives. In conclusion, the content of the Japanese national language textbooks was analyzed and the common elements of the Japanese society were evaluated in the context of collective memory. In the light of the findings, the collective memory created through textbooks in Japan; It has emerged that it tends to increase the awareness of "being Japanese" by developing the Japanese national consciousness focused on historical and cultural elements. In addition, it has been demonstrated by this study that Japanese national language textbooks are a functional tool in the field of education in terms of recalling the past, transferring the culture to the future by keeping it alive and contributing to the formation of the collective memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an emerging debate about the role and importance of women in right-wing nationalist movements. Drawing on research that highlights the need to study such women as active and complex political agents, this article examines a phenomenon that has previously received little attention—the activism of female Japanese nationalists. We approach the question of how such activism is practiced by analyzing a group interview with female nationalists, a nationalist manga centering on women's experiences, and autobiographic books on such activism by and for Japanese women. The article contributes by arguing that female nationalist agency in Japan is a complex phenomenon, which is enacted through everyday micro-practices. It outlines how female nationalist activism draws upon and enhances, as well as challenges and transcends, a traditional Japanese "housewife identity." As such, the female Japanese nationalist is imagined as having access to certain truths. She takes on the role of "truth-teller," who is playing a strategic role in "waking people up" to the nationalist cause by voicing anger but also making space for a more "joyful," "cute," and inconspicuous everyday activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For Kazuo Ishiguro's characters, institutions endure as ghosts long after their original functions have ceased. Though such institutions appear in Ishiguro's work from Japan to Shanghai to central Europe, this essay argues that Ishiguro's English institutions register his subtle yet deeply-rooted critique of the British state's particular modern crises, exposing its attempts to replace political plurality and historical contingency with an essentialist ideal. Ishiguro's institutions are themselves repeatedly complicit in such attempts, whether oriented towards racial nationalism in The Remains of the Day or the 'Originality' that governs Never Let Me Go - ideologies that ultimately destroy these institutions. The circumstances of that destruction nevertheless expose, ironically and elegiacally, the institution's lost potential. This essay argues that despite their compromised status, these institutions have a real ethical value and even subtle radicalism in haunting Ishiguro's Britain from the pre-state landscape of The Buried Giant to the late modernity of Never Let Me Go. Beginning by identifying this ethical and political potential, proceeding to describe how it registers through the institutional access enjoyed by Ishiguro's protagonists, and finally exploring Ishiguro's provocative response to Britain's recent history, this essay offers a revised interpretation of Ishiguro's English institutions and of their collective significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the ongoing debate over "comfort women" memorials, especially one statue known as the Statue of Peace. Whereas Japanese ultranationalists and their foreign collaborators attack "comfort women" memorials for tarnishing Japan's reputation and spreading historical falsities, progressive scholars sympathetic to "comfort women" victims criticize these memorials for reinforcing female chastity and anti-Japanese nationalism. Examining these varying responses to "comfort women" memorials across the Pacific, this article analyzes how Japanese ultranationalism, anti-Japanese Korean nationalism, US imperialism, and transnational feminism collide in the representation of "comfort women." By pointing out the significance and limitations of "comfort women" memorials, this article concludes with a discussion of how socially engaged memorials can serve as critical sites for building transnational feminist coalitions in shared struggle against both wartime violence and postwar amnesia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to clarify the form and development of the imagination of Japan as a Buddhist country in Japan's medieval period. Recent studies on the rise of nativism in the early modern period have tended to consider the privileging of Japan over other countries to be a uniquely early modern phenomenon. This article, by contrast, argues that a Japan-centric view of the world can be traced as far back as the early Heian period. Special attention is given to the formation of a soteriologically oriented Buddhist discourse on Japan's place in the Buddhist world, particularly in relation to the countries from which Buddhism was understood to have been transmitted—India and China. The articulation of this discourse in the fields of classical Japanese poetry (waka) and poetics from the late Heian through Muromachi periods is also considered. Whereas the nativist imagination of Japan in the early modern period valorizes that which is perceived to be native to the Japanese archipelago—its poetry, its deities, and its emperor—and hence may be considered 'cosmogonic' in orientation, the soteriologically grounded Japan-centrism of the medieval period articulates a framework that valorizes that which leads to the Buddhist end of salvation, or enlightenment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent colonial compensation lawsuits reflect the metamorphosis of historical grievances in collective public memory into tort claims in private law. This article provides a synthetic view of the nexus of colonial law and history in South Korea–Japan relations, focusing on cross-border litigation brought by former forced laborers and victims of sexual servitude known as "comfort women" during World War II. The concept of public policy (ordre public) in Korea, which has colonial origins, has long served law courts as the standard for deciding the validity of a juristic act. But of late heavy reliance on the general clauses of law in legal proceedings has risked turning history and law into handmaids of national spirit, muddling historical accountability and legal liability. Improvement of South Korea–Japan ties should start from a more accurate understanding of colonial laws and a rounded appreciation of their shared legal history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiculturalism has been a relatively recent trend in Korea and Japan. Since the 1990s, both countries have been witnessing a rising influx of immigrants, the majority of whom were labor migrants and marriage migrants. Labor migrants have been accepted only as temporary residents. Contrary to this, marriage migrants have been seen as permanent residents, who need to integrate into the family and society. Both the Korean and Japanese governments have been providing them with relatively easy access to permanent residency and naturalization. Despite this effort, marriage migrants experience legal vulnerability, and they experience prejudice and discrimination with their families and society. This problem, even though highlighted by politicians and academics, has been persisting in society, and it has usually been researched as a policy problem or phenomenon that happens independently of its societal surroundings. However, because unequal treatment of migrants is related to social conditions as well as legal and policy issues, this study approaches the problem by examining marriage migrants' citizenship on three levels: legal, social, and identity. The study elaborates the causes behind their mistreatment through national identity and related nationalism. Both Korea and Japan possess an ethnic sense of belonging; they are perceived as ethnically homogeneous, monocultural nations. Therefore, the integration of ethnically different migrants presents a significant challenge. Ethnic nationalism in both countries manifests also in its subform, nouveau‐riche nationalism. It is responsible for deep‐seated beliefs in cultural superiority and evaluating people based on their country of origin and skin color. The study demonstrates the impact of ethnic nationalism on the legal level of citizenship in both countries and elaborates that this impact has been more restrictive in Japan than in Korea. Furthermore, nouveau‐riche nationalism is shown to have a negative impact on the social and identity levels of citizenship in both counties, whereas in Japan social stigma and prejudices are shown to be more serious than in Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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China and Japan continue to partly live in the shadow of World War II (WWII) with recurrent expressions of anti-Japanese nationalism in China periodically ebbing bilateral relations. How does the Chinese government manage anti-Japan public manifestations of nationalism and what factors explain it? The government has to walk a fine line by managing the nationalism it has bred without undermining its own rule and considering elite divisions, heightened public nationalism, and the developments in its external environment. Six case studies from the Hu-Wen era provide a comprehensive understanding of what pertains to Chinese nationalism, the means used to express it, and more importantly the way the government chose to tackle them. While nationalism can be a mean of garnering legitimacy and exercising pressure on Japan to bend to its wishes, the Chinese government is embarked on the sinuous task of preventing an escalation beyond its control at both the domestic and international levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article will examine the way in which Koreans are mobilized in Kitano Takeshi's Outrage series and how their representations may be related to Kitano's vision of Japan. In order to do so, the article first places the Outrage trilogy in the context of Kitano's other films as well as previous representations of Koreans in Japanese yakuza (gangster) films in general. The article then continues to explore the role of Korean characters in Outrage Beyond and Coda and discusses the way in which the seemingly progressive transnational bonding and Korean representation may confirm Kitano's romantic nationalism or what I would call 'melancholic nationalism'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical media studies have long understood the role of the media in not just illuminating disputes between nations but in inflaming them. The media can be used to inform or distort the background and causes of conflict and arouse public opinion. This article surveys the potentially calamitous decline of public perceptions in China and Japan toward the other and asks if the media is a monitor of this decline or a party to it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrary to the Japanese Foreign Ministry's claim that Koreans never demonstrated any clear basis for its claims that it had taken effective control over Dokdo (Takeshima) before 1905, the Ministry ignores the critical role of the Korean media, especially major Korean newspapers such as the Hwangsŏng Newspaper and Dongnip Sinmun (Independent), in publicizing and mobilizing Korean nationalism through a sustained assertion of Korean sovereignty over Dokdo. By publishing articles which officially denounced Japanese intrusion into Dokdo or the Japanese government's feigned ignorance and disregard for such an act, or articles which explicitly discussed the long history of Korea's recognition of Dokdo and Ulleungdo as her nascent territories, Korean newspapers not only expressed Korean nationalism by incorporating anti-Japanese sentiment. They also emphasized Korea's ancient consciousness of national unity by clearly declaring that at the heart of such nationalism and rhetoric was a strong identification of Dokdo and Ulleungdo as Korea's historic territories. Korean newspapers were instrumental in publicizing Korean consciousness about Dokdo and Ulleungdo by not only reporting on Japanese intrusions into Dokdo, educating the Korean public on the ancient history of Dokdo and Ulleungdo, but also serve as crucial evidence proving that Japan willfully ignored Korea's national sovereignty and judicial authority to wrest away Korean sovereignty over Dokdo and Ulleungdo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we investigated the concept of nationalism as a vague sense of individual identity as belonging to a common nation, i.e. also-called 'cognitive nationalism', focusing particularly on how the latter is constructed in relation to sports. Previous studies of 'cognitive nationalism' have focused mainly on football and have examined the stereotyped concept that Japan's national teams or Japanese players are 'organized'. However, no empirical research has ever attempted to substantiate this stereotype. Therefore, to clarify whether Japan's national football teams and players can indeed be considered as 'organized', we evaluated this issue using quantitative and qualitative measures, focusing on players and teams featured in football magazines. Quantitative analysis revealed that the number of expressions affirmed by collective traits accounted for only about half of the total. Many expressions affirmed the personal and physical qualities of Japan's national teams or Japanese players. A detailed analysis of the collective traits revealed that in the early days, many expressions centered on collective tactics, whereas in more recent times references to pass work increased. Furthermore, it was shown that in the early period, the term 'organized' often had a qualitative connotation of 'playing collectively to make up for lack of personal and physical traits'. However, the meaning gradually changed, and recently the word 'organized' has been used in the sense of 'personal qualities of the Japanese nation', with a specific emphasis on unity or diligence. Consequently, we conclude that perceptions of Japan's national teams or Japanese players as being 'organized' are no longer dominant in articles featured in football magazines, and that the term 'organized' has developed some ambiguity of meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Observers of East Asia frequently claim that Japanese nationalism is on the rise, and that Tokyo is abandoning its longtime military restraint. To determine whether these trends are indeed occurring, we define and measure Japan's nationalism and military assertiveness; we measure whether they are rising relative to Japan in the past, and relative to seven other countries. Drawing from social identity theory, we distinguish between "nationalism" and a more benign "patriotism." We find in Japan (1) strong patriotism that is stable over time, and no evidence of rising nationalism. Furthermore we find that (2) military assertiveness remains generally low, but it has risen in terms of decreased institutional constraints and peacekeeping activities. Our findings have important implications for academic debates about nationalism and Japanese security policy, and for policy debates about a nascent balancing effort against China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well known that regime types affect international conflicts. This article explores political parties as a mechanism through which they do so. Political parties operate in fundamentally different ways in democracies vs. non-democracies, which has consequences for foreign policy. Core supporters of a party in a democracy, if they are hawkish, may be more successful at demanding hawkish behavior from their party representatives than would be their counterparts in an autocracy. The study draws on evidence from paired experiments in democratic Japan and non-democratic China to show that supporters of the ruling party in Japan punish their leaders for discouraging nationalist protests, while ruling party insiders in China are less likely to do so. Under some circumstances, then, non-democratic regimes may be better able to rein in peace-threatening displays of nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diasporas often play an underappreciated role in the movement of transnational capital in processes of urban place-making. In this case study, we tell a story of the ways in which Japanese international investment in the redevelopment of Los Angeles's historic Little Tokyo was negotiated by Japanese American community members. Archival research and a rare analysis of both Japanese and Japanese American redevelopment histories reveals a complex spatial politics characterized by both acceptance and refusal of Japanese corporations moving to develop the community as a symbol of Japan's post-war resurgence. This analysis brings to light the ways in which contentious micro-politics, driven by renewed transnational ethnic ties, can mediate immense urban economic transitions in neighborhoods facing crisis. Our conclusions reflect back upon planning and research concerning internationally financed development efforts in minority neighborhoods, calling for rigorous analysis of cultural identity and its spatial implications. • Transnational kinship and community dynamics influence the nature of global capital mobility • Global investments in ethnic neighborhoods can precipitate divisive community politics • Japanese investors utilized Nikkei communities in their post-war economic resurgence [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]