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An essay is presented regarding the realist magic and invented Tokyo, Japan in the novel "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle," by Murakami Haruki, and the short story "Helix," by Yoshimoto Banana from her book "Lizard." It explores how the literary works reflect to the globalized city of Tokyo. The author notes how Okada, the character in the novel, entered to his consciousness by exploring an old well in an abandoned house. Moreover, the explosion of an office building in the short story is discussed.

Interwar Japanese authors who sought to convey the power of the city called for the creation of literary realism based on incongruous images that represented the times. They used the buzzword 'nansensu' to describe aspects of Tokyo that epitomized their historical moment and to position themselves against proletarian literature, which they attacked for not presenting the realities of modern life. Although glamorizing poverty, nansensu literature made ordinary occurrences alluring and critiqued social conditions. Ryutanji Yu (1901-92), then widely read but now rarely studied, exemplified the aspirations of nansensu literature. He was also the spokesperson for the New Art School (Shinkō geijutsu-ha), the coalition to which most authors engaged in this literary trend belonged. A former medical student with a lifelong interest in cacti, Ryutanji had an eye for urban details. Ryutanji's 'street nonsense', to borrow the title of his 1930 anthology, magnified common Tokyo spectacles to expose how the city shaped human subjectivity and cultural production. I explore how Ryutanji used nansensu lightheartedly to critique places and practices that were becoming part of daily life, expose paradoxes underlying Japan's capitalist growth and parody the act of writing. Ryutanji's career provides insights into the publishing industry of the time and his stories reveal the contradictions of urban modernity during a complex historical period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japanese foreign policy after the Second World War has been an empirical puzzle for International Relations theory, particularly for neoreatist approaches. Neorealism suggests that, firstly, economic strength is directly related to military strength and, secondly, that potential rivals do not cooperate with each other due to relative gains concerns. The theory proves to be weak with regards to the development in military spending of the two dominant powers in East Asia: Japan and China. Moreover, neorealist theorizing fails to account for the growing trade between the two powers, as well as for the expanding network of cooperative relationships in East Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]