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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The article discusses the social role of Japanese girls during the period of total war from 1937 to 1945 through examining the girls' magazines "Shōjo no tomo (Girls' companion)" and "Shōjo kurabu (Girl's club)." The girls' magazines' relationship with the Japanese education system is discussed. The representation of the ideal Japanese girl, including as being willing to sacrifice for the nation, nursing wounded Japanese soldiers and in having strength over beauty, is also discussed. The author contends that girls' magazines transformed from a focus on fashion, domesticity and motherhood in pre-war Japan into a portrayal of the ideal girl as classless, ageless and genderless during the period of total war.

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

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

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

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

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

An essay is presented that discusses devotion to Sākyamuni (Siddhārtha Guatama, the Buddha) among Vinaya monks in Japan during the Meiji period of Japanese history, noting the development of their belief that the Buddha did not preach the Mahayana, a series of religious texts. This is said to have been a modern rejection of Mahayana Buddhism, which was predominant in Japan, by the developing cult of Sākyamuni, which viewed Hinayana Buddhist precepts as more authentic.

The article discusses the relation of Japanese Buddhism to the Japanese state education system during the Meiji period of Japanese history, noting the evolution of Buddhist approaches to the state education system. Topics include the roles of Shinto and Buddhist clergy as instructors, the role of religion in moral education, and the influence of Confucian thought on Japanese education.

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

Little is known about the impact of Western educational ideals in Japan during the Meiji (1868-1912), Taisho (1912-1926) and Showa (post-1926) eras, although, in reality, there was considerable interest among Japanese educators in Western thought and practice and there were numerous attempts to disseminate these ideas widely. This article highlights some of the more significant of these developments and attempts to assess their impact and their interpretation in a Japanese context. Translations of foreign philosophical and educational works on the one hand and the publication of teachers' magazines on the other were the two viaducts for what became little short of a Japanese educational movement that was one of the stepping stones to the modernisation of Japan and which has resonated down to the present. In this article this process is described through its chronological phases, during the period which saw Japan's transition from an intellectually isolated, inward-looking society into one which developed as a democracy and saw the coming of industrialisation before moving into a period of Fascist supernationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes the history of the Russian diaspora in Japan from 1858 to our days. The island of Hokkaido was the most attractive place for Russians thanks to its geographic position. There were Russian communities also in Nagasaki, Kobe, Tokyo and Yokohama. The article dwells on the main spheres of business and public activities of Russians in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an analysis of the ways in which Japanese corporations of the 1930s used the modernist style in commercial design, graphic arts and photography in order to promote their products. It also discusses modernism's concurrent use in Japanese culture for purposes of government propaganda. Examples drawn from trade journals and photography competitions are presented. The pioneering work of Kanamaru Shigene, who established a commercial photography studio and wrote for many photography magazines, is cited as emblematic of these trends.

The article discusses the Meiji revolutionary period in Japan and imperial efforts to merge politics with religion under a cult of Tennō worship and political socialization of the Japanese people. Particularly focused on are initiatives in national education to meld the imperial family's Shinto religion with popular traditional value systems to inculcate a sense of national unity. State schools are said to have been devised as minor Shinto shrines that promoted such aims as physical development, military strength, and loyalty to one's parents, ancestors, and the state.

The entry rate into the elite of university graduates who graduated with honor was higher than that of other graduates in Japan in the pre World War II period. What kinds of effects can explain this phenomenon? Three possibilities can be considered to explain it: first, honor graduates may be more successful in any job, so that there would naturally be a correlation between the university adaptability indicated by high grades and vocational success; second, they might have found it easy to gain sponsorship from established elite groups because of their honor grades, even if there were no necessary correlation between college grades and vocational success through severe competition; third, they may have found it easier to enter vocational sectors which were more accessible to the elite. The aim of this paper is to clarify how these three possibilities worked to create elites in the pre-war period, sampling mainly Summa Cure Laude graduates from Tokyo Imperial University. The main findings are as follows: (1) it is clear that Summa Cum Laude graduates entered jobs which were more accessible to the elite, such as Imperial University professorships or prestigious government positions; (2) they were more successful in whatever job they entered; (3) however, it is obvious that the Summa Cum Laude graduates received some special treatment in becoming Imperial University professors and were sometimes given advantageous positions and experiences as government officers, despite the fact that the competition for high elite positions in private companies was based on merit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explains that the international environment of East Asian regional politics from 1897 to 1910 triggered Korea's colonization. Effects of the structural transformation of the world system at the turn of the century on East Asian politics; Russia and Japan power contest over Korea and Manchuria; Japan's role in changing the political structure of East Asia; Korea's declaration of neutrality and its annexation by Japan.

Looks at the opening of Japanese silk trade with the West and argues that it was technological developments in Japan, and not the vagaries of nature, that provided Japan with its opening in the world silk market. The view of some that it was the devastating silkworm plague known as the `pebrine' that helped Japan enter the market; United States Commodore Matthew Perry, who sought to open Japan to the US; The manual on silk production entitled `Yosan Hiroku,' by Uekaki Morikuni; More.