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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]

During the Second World War, the Japanese state enacted sweeping education reforms designed to prime the population for Total War. The policies of the National Education Ordinance of 1941 aimed to strengthen collective loyalty and self-sacrifice for the state. Military drill and ceremonial rituals were the outward manifestation of wartime education. But this article examines how teachers borrowed an aspect of progressive 'whole-person' education from the more liberal pre-war era—'daily life writing' (seikatsu tsuzurikata)—to shape children's dispositions and consciousness. Through such reflective diary writing, children would learn to internalize the ideal behaviours and attributes of the Total War civilian. By comparing education discourse with samples of children's writings, teachers' written feedback, and interviews of former students of an elementary school affiliated with the Ministry of Education, I show how reflective diary writing, despite its progressive origins as a means of self-expression for self-actualization and social critique, could be co-opted by right-wing Japanese ultra-nationalism for its potential as a means of self-censorship, self-monitoring, and self-control. At the same time, its practice did help children endure the hardships of war and defeat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the consequences of nationalist unrest? This paper utilizes two original datasets, which cover 377 city-level anti-Japanese protests during the 2012 Senkaku/Diaoyu Island crisis and the careers of municipal leaders, to analyse the downstream effects of nationalist unrest at the subnational level. We find both political and economic consequences of China's 2012 protest demonstrations against Japan. Specifically, top Party leaders in cities that saw relatively spontaneous, early protests were less likely to be promoted to higher office, a finding that is consistent with the widely held but rarely tested expectation that social instability is punished in the Chinese Communist Party's cadre evaluation system. We also see a negative effect of nationalist protest on foreign direct investment (FDI) growth at the city level. However, the lower promotion rates associated with relatively spontaneous protests appear to arise through political rather than economic channels. By taking into account data on social unrest in addition to economic performance, these results add to existing evidence that systematic evaluation of leaders' performance plays a major role in the Chinese political system. These findings also illuminate the dilemma that local leaders face in managing popular nationalism amid shifting national priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During August and September 2012, Sino-Japanese conflict over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands escalated. Alongside street demonstrations in China, there was an outpouring of public sentiment on China's leading micro-blog, Sina Weibo (微波). Using human and computer-assisted content analysis, we exploit original Weibo data to measure how public sentiment in China fluctuated over the dispute, and ask two questions. First, how cohesive and volatile were online nationalist sentiments? Second, we measure government censorship of Weibo in order to ask which sentiments did authorities allow to be expressed, and when? We first find that many of the micro-bloggers' harshest invective was directed not at Japan but at their own government. Second, while censorship remained high across topics for most of the dispute, it plummeted on 18 August – the same day as bloggers' anger at Beijing peaked. These observations suggest three theoretical explanations: two are instrumental-strategic (“audience costs” and “safety valve”) and one is ideational (elite identification with protesters). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In contrast to most studies of cultural nationalism, which tend to focus on literary style, narrative devices, or the static visual arts, in this article Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei analyzes the ways that Japanese actors deploy physical and vocal techniques in portraying gender and ethnic ambiguity. Expanding on her recent work on actor-dancer Itō Michio (1893–1961), she uses the concept of J-centrism (Japancentrism) to demonstrate how modern Japanese performing bodies (in both traditional and contemporary genres) imply political meaning – her title being a riff on Susan Sontag's famous essay ‘Fascinating Fascism’. While not suggesting that the artists under consideration promulgate fascism, Sorgenfrei maintains that the Japanese aesthetic preference for gender and ethnic ambiguity fuels the politics of Japanese cultural nationalism, even when the performers or directors adamantly disavow rightist, nationalistic ideologies. Through a focus on analysis of selected performances by Bando Tamasaburō and theoretical writings by Suzuki Tadashi, Sorgenfrei suggests that the performance of ambiguity by a single actor implies the ‘universality’ and cultural superiority of the Japanese body. Professor Emerita of Theatre at UCLA, Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei is a specialist in Japanese theatre and intercultural performance, and was recently a Research Fellow at the International Research Institute in Interweaving Performance Cultures at the Free University, Berlin, where she researched the work of Japanese dancer Itō Michio. She is the author of Unspeakable Acts: the Avant-Garde Theatre of Terayama Shūji and Postwar Japan (University of Hawaii, 2005) and co-author of Theatre Histories: an Introduction (Routledge, third edition 2015). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Over the last three decades, a considerable body of English-language academic work has shed much light on Japan's empire-building project in Greater China during the first half of the twentieth century. At the same time, Japanese-language studies of the country's pre-war financial history have also grown in leaps and bounds. Yet, to date, neither body of literature seems to have fully examined what might appear to the naked eye as one of the critical pre-war junctures, where Japanese financial history converged on imperial policy and Chinese nationalist responses thereto.1 This paper will therefore aim to fill part of the gap by examining how the Yokohama Specie Bank, arguably the backbone of Japanese finance in China Proper, was affected by Chinese anti-foreign boycotts throughout the pre-war era (1842–1937). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 2010–12, Sino-Japanese relations deteriorated without the Yasukuni Shrine or Chinese human rights violations in the forefront. To improve relations, attention should turn to what I label the ideological, sectoral, and horizontal dimensions of a national identity gap between these countries. They have each figured in the decline and offer more promise than the temporal dimension, with its symbols of wartime memories, and the vertical dimension, where sensitive Chinese internal affairs are at stake. The sectoral dimension comprises political, economic, and also cultural national identity, each of which has grown more intense in China, while cultural identity is still a force in Japan. Establishing an East Asian community is now the centerpiece in the hope that the horizontal dimension will be an impetus for mutual understanding, yet the notion of community is repeated with no sign of a shared vision of the outside world, whether the US role or the international arena and regionalism. With South Korea, their partner in trilateralism and North Korea's transformation at the crux of all three of these dimensions, this paper emphasizes the way divergent views of the peninsula keep growing in importance for bilateral relations. It suggests ways to reframe relations through cooperation over Korea. As difficult as Korean relations are for both states, it is a test case for their identity gap. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper focuses on Shibuya-kei, a style of independent popular music that emerged in Japan in the late 1980s and which has been influential in the popularisation of J-pop worldwide. Although usually treated as a uniquely Japanese musical genre, Shibuya-kei was from its inception defined by an ostentatious internationalism, fusing jazz, easy listening and bossa nova with British, American and French retro-pop styles. Tracing the international itineraries of Shibuya-kei musicians and the role of Western musicians and labels in promoting it outside Japan, this paper characterises Shibuya-kei not as just another J-pop genre but as a transnational soundscape, a collaborative project produced by a network of musicians circulating between Japan and the UK, the US, France, Germany, Spain and Brazil. As such, the paper suggests, it requires us to rethink the place of the national in relation to popular music. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Based on ethnographic interviews, this paper examines how Japanese hip-hop DJs distinguish themselves in the global marketplace in ways that reflect on Japan's two self-images: its impenetrable uniqueness and its adeptness at assimilating other cultures (cf. Ivy, Iwabuchi). Following the autoexoticist strategies of Takemitsu and Akiyoshi, DJ Krush and Shing02 draw on Japanese uniqueness by integrating Japanese instruments (e.g. shakuhachi, shamisen, taiko), genres (biwa narrative), and aesthetics (ma, imperfection) into their works; Evis Beats takes a more parodic approach. At the DMC World Championships, Japanese DJs including DJ Kentarō have competed on the basis of eclecticism and originality in assimilating multiple sound sources. While countering the stereotype of the Japanese as imitators, this emphasis on originality may place some contestants too far from prevailing trends, putting them at a disadvantage. Both strategies imply that Japanese artists experience anxieties regarding their authenticity, necessitating strategies to differentiate themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Japanese history is a part of the long history of Northeast Asia. Since Japan began to form a unified nation from the time of Shotoku-Taishi (AD. 574-622) in the early seventh century, it continued to cultivate a rather independent culture. In its long history, the most catastrophic era was the Asian-Pacific War in 1931-45, ending with the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The recovery from the aftereffects and trauma of the War Japan has initiated is the topic I would like to write here as a problem of memory and reconciliation with other countries involved in the War. In 2006, Prime Minister Jyun-ichiro Koizumi, when he worshiped at Yasukuni Shrine, spoke in the meeting of news reporters that “The freedom of the heart is protected by our Constitution, and cannot be violated by anyone.” It was completely unspeakable to me that Mr. Koizumi, in his official role as Prime Minister, made use of the Japanese Constitution for the purpose of defending his personal right to worship at Yasukuni Shrine. A half of the nation, however, accepted this way of speaking. As long as we Japanese insist on and are not liberated from Yasukuni Shrine, we cannot become reconciled and co-exist with other nations, because this shrine is seen as the symbol of the Japanese past militarism which was centered on the Emperor. But the situation around Yasukuni becomes more complex if we go probe beneath the political dimension, because memory is always deeply connected with the problem of identity regardless of whether it is personal or collective. For some conservative groups, the formation of modern Japan starts from the Meiji Restoration in 1868, which seeks to center the identity of the modern state in the Emperor, rather than in the democracy starting from the end of the War on August 15, 1945. The difference in the memory of the starting points of modern Japan between conservatives and others shapes the different identities in present-day Japan, sometimes becoming a hindrance to form a civil society. I will call this situation “Yasukuni fundamentalism” in today’s Japan. The purpose of the present paper is to propose a way to overcome this Yasukuni fundamentalism by developing a public philosophy and by its application to today’s civil society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the late 19th century many Chinese leaders have studied abroad, mostly in Japan, the US or the former Soviet Union. Recently, thousands are returning from studying overseas. Is this new cohort of returnees more internationalist than Chinese who do not study abroad? If their values differ and they join China's elite, they could influence China's foreign policy. Drawing on surveys of returnees from Japan and Canada over the past 15 years, we compare their views on "co-operative internationalism" and "assertive nationalism" with the attitudes of China's middle class drawn from a nationwide survey in 2006. Our returnees are both more "internationalist" than the middle class and less nationalistic. So they are likely to support China's increasing international role and perhaps constrain China's growing nationalist sentiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Particularistic spending has played a storied role in Japanese politics, but during the last decade of LDP rule, expenditures on roads, bridges, agricultural projects, and the like steadily lost ground to more programmatic outlays on social welfare, science and technology, and public order (but not defense or foreign aid). Prime Minister Koizumi played an important role in this shift, but the trends preceded him and continued under his much weaker successors. The end of the Cold War, increasing foreign investment, and the weakness of the domestic economy probably played mostly minor roles in the decline of particularism. The aging of Japanese society, not least in rural areas, created direct pressure for programmatic spending, while partisan upheaval, the growing share of floating voters, and reforms to the electoral and administrative systems created both an incentive and a greater capacity to redirect attention to the concerns of median voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, some Japanese prime ministers have exhibited a nationalistic tendency, particularly in their foreign policies. The increasing nationalistic appeal by recent leaders marks a sharp contrast with previous leaders, who were unwilling to cause friction with other countries and thus took more centrist positions. More interestingly, those recent leaders, including Koizumi Junichiro, previously adopted a more modest stance. This article seeks to explain the increase in nationalistic appeal, particularly between 2001 and 2006, among Japanese leaders by focusing on some important changes in the Liberal Democratic Party's (LDP's) presidential election procedures. Drawing on the study of US primary elections, I argue that the increase in the weight of rank-and-filers' votes vis-à-vis the LDP Diet members' votes in the LDP presidential election encouraged some candidates to take more ideologically extreme positions. In other words, much like US primaries, the LDP presidential elections can have a tendency to pull some candidates toward extreme positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past few decades, cooperation between Korea and Japan has increased and deepened, but frictions continue to persist. Which direction is the relationship between Korea and Japan heading? This is the question that this article attempts to address. From an analytical standpoint, this article applies contemporary international relations theories - realism, liberalism, and constructivism - to the pattern of cooperation and conflict in Korea-Japan relations. After reviewing both optimistic and pessimistic positions drawn from diverse perspectives, the author makes a synthesis, where he suggests the case for cautious optimism. What we find in reality is long-term progress in an upward movement, interrupted by recurring frictions in the short term. Empirical evidence supports the case that Korea-Japan relations are making steady progress towards deeper, heightened, and multi-layered cooperation. However, such issues as historical controversy and territorial disputes are the hurdles that both nations need to overcome. Whether Korea and Japan can maximize the effects of optimism, while they effectively minimize the impacts of pessimism will determine the nature of the ties between the two countries. Cooperation between the two countries is not necessarily guaranteed, but we find irreversible trends of improved cooperation over time. However, lingering suspicions, submerged nationalist sentiments, and sporadic surges of extremism remain. They should be carefully managed by the leaders of the two countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Around 1907, 1987, and 2007 Japan faced a crossroads in defining internationalism and Asianism, determining their relative priorities, and assessing their relevance for national identity. Similarities can be found in the far-reaching changes occurring in Japan's external environment in the three periods and in the importance of setting a new direction for strategic thinking. Misjudgments in the first two periods are reviewed in order to draw lessons for responding to today's challenges. A distorted outlook on internationalism led to rejection of shifts in US thinking welcomed elsewhere in the global community. Now as attention focuses on debates over the Six-Party Talks as a test of internationalization and over the East Asian Community and regionalism as a test of Asianism, it is possible that the riveting impact of the "abductions" issue, as with the "Northern Territories" issue 20 years earlier, will remain a symbol that trumps a strategic approach toward Asia at a moment of far-reaching regional reorganization. Shortcomings in dealing with the concepts internationalism and Asianism are connected; at the very time the Japanese struggle with one, they are also at an impasse over the other. The same set of factors may be at work: an absence of agreed principles on which to anchor foreign policy; fragmented strategic thinking that loses sight of interconnections and the big picture; and national identity that excessively separates Japan from global forces that transform politics and society and that narrowly compartmentalize the historical developments that shaped relations with Asian countries without capturing the fundamental regional dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the Japanese invasion of Rehe, a province of China, in 1933. The author examines the conflict in light of nationalistic movements in China in the 1920's and 1930's. Japan's activities in northeastern China at that time, the article states, provided the Chinese Nationalist Party, the Guomindang, with a critical test of its ability to defend China. The use of non-resistance by China's president, Jiang Jieshi, in the face of Japan's attack is examined. Also discussed are China's expectation of foreign intervention to stop Japan's attack.

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The article discusses the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945, which has become an issue in modern China. It mentions that during the Mao era, the issue of the war disappeared amidst celebrations of the victory of the Communist party and the establishment of the People's Republic. However, during the reform era, a nationalist initiative by the government led to the resurfacing of memories regarding the war. Through scholarly literature and patriotic publications, the Chinese public viewed itself as a victim of Japanese atrocities.

China has undergone a media revolution that has transformed the domestic context for making foreign policy as well as domestic policy. The commercialization of the mass media has changed the way leaders and publics interact in the process of making foreign policy. As they compete with one another, the new media naturally try to appeal to the tastes of their potential audiences. Editors make choices about which stories to cover based on their judgments about which ones will resonate best with audiences. In China today, that means a lot of stories about Japan, Taiwan, and the United States, the topics that are the objects of Chinese popular nationalism. The publicity given these topics makes them domestic political issues because they are potential focal points for elite disagreement and mass collective action, and thereby constrains the way China's leaders and diplomats deal with them. Even relatively minor events involving China's relations with Japan, Taiwan, or the United States become big news, and therefore relations with these three governments must be carefully handled by the politicians in the Communist Party Politburo Standing Committee. Because of the Internet, it is impossible for Party censors to screen out news from Japan, Taiwan or the United States that might upset the public. Common knowledge of such news forces officials to react to every slight, no matter how small. Foreign policy makers feel especially constrained by nationalist public opinion when it comes to its diplomacy with Japan. Media marketization and the Internet have helped make Japan China's most emotionally charged international relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though the argument runs counter to much of the detailed scholarship on the subject, Britain's decision in 1921 to terminate its alliance with Japan is sometimes held in general historical surveys to be a major blunder that helped to pave the way to the Pacific War. The lingering sympathy for the combination with Japan is largely due to an historical myth which has presented the alliance as a particularly close partnership. The roots of the myth lie in the inter-war period when, in order to attack the trend towards internationalism, the political right in Britain manipulated memory of the alliance so that it became an exemplar of 'old diplomacy'. It was then reinforced after 1945 by post-war memoirs and the 'declinist' literature of the 1960s and 1970s. By analysing the origins of this benevolent interpretation of the alliance, this article reveals how quickly and pervasively political discourse can turn history into myth and how the development of myths tells us much about the time in which they were created. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the experience of Japanese consular police force in the Sino-Korean border region of Jiandao in China from 1909 to 1937. Concern over the enormous population of Korean nationals in the area; Problem over Chinese nationalism; Result of an uprising of Korean and Chinese communist rebels; Obsolence of the consular system following the abolition of extraterritoriality in Manchuria.

Recounts the Blood-Pledge Corps Incident of 1932 during the nationalist extremism era in Japan. Rise of the Ketsumeidan; Historical significance of the Ketsumeidan incident; Victory of defendants in the Ketsumeidan trial.