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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]

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]

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 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]

The book "How Goethe Became Japanese" by Stefan Keppler-Tasaki examines the cultural appropriation of Goethe in Japan. The study shows that Goethe plays a significant role in Japan's cultural self-understanding. The book covers various topics such as the reception of Goethe in Japanese German studies, his influences on the discourse of suicide and popular culture, as well as his connection to Buddhism. Other German-speaking authors such as Gottfried Benn and Thomas Mann are also discussed. The book provides insight into German-Japanese relations and the reception of Goethe in Japan. [Extracted from the article]

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]

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]

This article explores a reactionary, and ultimately failed, medical dietary movement that sought to counter the influence of Western nutritional sciences at the turn of the twentieth century. Its supporters looked to the early modern past to create a vision of traditional Japanese foodways based on whole grains, unpolished rice, and locally grown vegetables, a nutritional regimen they called cerealism. In articulating a Japanese national diet, cerealism offered a new promise to not only recapture Japan's food culture but its national subjectivity by envisioning native eating habits that could build both superior physique and quality of character. The intrusion of the Western staples of bread and meat, supporters feared, could cause the downfall of the Japanese nation on bodily, spiritual, and economic grounds. Cerealism thus sought to upend the universal claims of Western medical science by posing a simple question: Was there such a thing as Japanese nutrition? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

In the decades around the turn of the twentieth century, Buddhists in imperial Japan, the British Raj, and the American empire developed lay-oriented youth groups. These groups' members developed intertwined ethnoreligious and national identities informed by Buddhists' relative status in these three empires. This article describes the trans-imperial development of early Buddhist youth groups, examines how these groups developed nationalist politics that were often intertwined with ethnic identity, and considers how the concept of "Buddhist youth" flattened differences unite lay Buddhists across various divides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan has been criticised internationally for its reluctance to accept refugees. In the late 1970s, however, the Japanese government decided to implement special measures to accept refugees from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Between 1978 and 2005, 11,319 Indo-Chinese refugees were resettled in Japan. In this article, I analyse newspaper discourses on the acceptance of Indo-Chinese refugees and the subsequent arrivals of Chinese asylum seekers in Japan. While opening Japan's borders and accepting Indo-Chinese refugees was perceived favourably as a process Japan should experience from the 1970s to the late 1980s, asylum seekers arriving by sea in Japan were perceived as a threat in 1989, when many Chinese were found to be included among them. I explore these changing newspaper discourses with reference to the concepts of national identity, kokusaika and governmental belonging. Any discussion of the acceptance of others into a nation becomes inextricably bound up with the notion of national identity. In the case of Japan in the 1970 and 1980s, the concept of kokusaika (internationalisation) was pertinent because it intersected with such discussions. A theoretical perspective is offered by Ghassan Hage's notion of 'governmental belonging', whereby those in a dominant position claim the power to position others in the nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The US media's coverage of the comfort women issue has primarily focused on three main aspects: human rights, nationalist conflict, and security. First, American newspapers and magazines asked the Japanese government to apologize to the former comfort women by revealing the misery of their lives through a discussion of human rights. However, that discussion not only reflected the East-West power imbalance, but even served to promote voyeurism and sexual fantasies. Second, following the end of the Cold War, as tensions between South Korea and Japan over the issue have escalated, US media have increasingly taken a position as middleman, indifferent to the history of these women. The US media have scolded both South Korea and Japan for their nationalistic conflict. Third, the US media began to employ a security discourse on the comfort women issue as the controversy between South Korea and Japan deteriorated to a level that threatened the interests of the United States in East Asia and disrupted the Obama administration's "Pivot to Asia" strategy. US media have played the role of midwife for the birth of the 2015 South Korea-Japan Comfort Women Agreement by shaping and disseminating a security discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Issues regarding nationalism have been increasing since the 1990s on an international scale. This article reviews and summarizes the current state of sociological studies concerning Japanese nationalism and the changes therein, as many sociologists in Japan have focused on nationalism and its related problems. The first half of the article examines historical sociological studies about the emergence and development of nationalism in Japan, which demystify the fictions concerning Japan's ethnic and cultural homogeneity and describe the specific historical roots of this myth. The latter half of the article reviews various aspects of modern sociological works on Japanese nationalism. While some studies empirically show various forms of nationalism, others demonstrate political components of Japanese nationalism or inquire about this recent phenomenon and related issues that have arisen since the 2010s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I demonstrate how long-term multigenerational minorities and Japanese residents engage in the current socio-political discourse of "multicultural coexistence" society (tabunkakyōsei shakai), which had not previously been integral to the vocabulary of national rhetoric in Japan until the 2000s. I argue that the lack of clear definition and goals of multicultural coexistence by the current Japanese government generates obstacles in the attempt to build a multicultural society. While local municipalities' programs, such as multilingual services and lifestyle support, are certainly needed, long-term foreign residents with linguistic and cultural competence are suspicious of the concept of multicultural coexistence due to their own embodied marginalized positions. Taking a local municipality's intercultural event as a point of reference, this paper explores how long-term minority residents perceive their positions at the crossroads of seemingly paradoxical forces of multicultural trends and an ongoing national identity founded upon ethnic homogeneity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the intensification of nationalist discourses in Japanese society since the 1990s. One influential interpretation of this process sees it as a reaction to the economic crisis in Japanese society beginning in the 1990s. The aim of this article is to reevaluate this interpretation, stressing that the current nationalist discourse can actually be better understood if we consider not only the recent crisis, but also how this crisis is part of the wider context of profound transformations that Japan has faced after World War II. By analyzing the works of major Japanese social thinkers, this paper elaborates an interpretation in which nationalism emerges not simply as a reaction to a single event, but rather as a longer and more complex process, in which different and even contradictory discourses are formed, appropriated and reinterpreted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As in much of the world, the Coronovirus pandemic has dominated South Korean politics in 2020. Compared to other countries, Seoul's approach has been highly nationalist and politicized, as the ruling party lauded its pandemic response as the global standard and linked it to a larger, leftist-nationalist agenda. This "pandemic-leftist" discourse peaked around the April 15 midterm elections, but subsided the following month, as domestic and foreign setbacks arose. To explain, firstly, a competitive-nationalist race to flatten the infection curve encouraged the government to infringe on the civil liberties of infected patients, and society to stigmatize them. Other countries contained Covid-19 without such rights violations and stigma. Secondly, critics distinguished between the government's relative success in pandemic response and its general failures in economic and foreign policies. Instead of asking other countries to learn from one's country, each country would do well to learn from the experiences of others and to continually improve its own policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This case study examines the goals of 13 Japanese graduate students who studied abroad, and situates those goals in the larger context of Japanese society. The study abroad objectives of the Japanese government and some Japanese universities are compared and problematised. The authors conducted three interviews of each study abroad participant separately in English and Japanese, once before and twice after they studied abroad for one to four months. The purpose of the interviews was to determine, in detail, the students' goals and expectations before going abroad and what they could accomplish after their short-term studies abroad. It was found that 7 out 13 students indicated that they could accomplish their research goals, and many students felt a greater sense of confidence and worldliness and said they improved their English language skills. All but one student felt that the study abroad experience had changed them in positive ways. Except for learning English and being globally minded, the goals of the government, universities and students did not seem to match and there were no formal evaluation systems set up for comprehensively measuring and determining if students are actually achieving any goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses a case involving the dismissal of a tenured faculty member at Hiroshima City University of Japan. The university dismissed a Korean woman associate professor after filing a criminal complaint against her, leading to a house raid, her arrest and media coverage. After 11 days of detention, the Hiroshima Prosecutor's Office decided not to indict her because they could not find criminal intent on her part. With the suspicion of the university's fabrication of her criminality looming large, she was dismissed within a few hours of her release. The university's attempt to purge a critical foreign faculty member from the university campus, faculty housing and the country of Japan was an almost complete success until the case became an international controversy with counter-media exposure and the formation of a transnational support network. This case reveals a volatile mixture of race- and gender-based discrimination, administrative incompetence and politicised financial subsidy as a backdrop to violations of human rights and academic freedom. The present article shows that the rights' violations in this case are closely connected to rising nationalism, the politicisation of educational subsidy and ideological human agencies with a set of professional agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses how the approach towards sexual minorities has shifted from exclusion to inclusion between the mid‐1980s and the present, and explores how the view that Japan is more tolerant of sexual minorities than the USA and Europe actually limits discussions on citizenship. An examination of the AIDS crisis and the Fuchu Youth Center court case in the 1980s and 1990s shows that gay men were regarded as a threat to national identity, seen to endanger Japan and whose sexuality was deemed to be unintelligible. In a word, their citizenship was denied. In the 2010s the ruling Liberal Democratic party issued a report on sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) issues, which examined measures aimed at achieving equality for those who suffer from SOGI discrimination. While sexual minorities became an object of inclusion, only partial and circumscribed citizenship was granted. Although the report ostensibly aims to promote SOGI diversity, it relegates the existence of minorities to the private sphere, and limits diversity by demanding the acceptance of a "tolerant culture" predicated on heterosexism and gender norms. By positioning their diversity effort in Japan's "tolerant traditional culture," the party inadvertently incorporates nationalism and renders it central to their approach towards SOGI diversity. This article concludes that the discourse that the Japanese state is tolerant of sexual minorities undermines the recognition of sexual minorities' citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Out of a concern with the often implicit western‐centricity of theories of nationalism which are currently dominant, the article proposes to shift the focus of analysis onto the working of human agency in our understanding of nations and nationalism. Drawing from insights from the history of ideas, it argues that, contrary to the modernist account, the rise of nationalism of Japan can be traced back to the rise of Kokugaku in the eighteenth century when westernisation/modernisation had not yet reached Japan. Kokugaku scholars were engaged with intense collective self‐reflection and proposed answers to the question who the Japanese were and what Japan should be without adopting the formula of national imagination generated in the West. The article suggests that a focus on human agency has the potential to free inquires into non‐western parts of the world from the deeply embedded western‐centricity of conventional social theories, thus enriching our understanding of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is generally accepted that the "invention of tradition" is the product of two combined phenomena : on the one hand, government intervention in the economy resulting from the establishment of contemporary nation-states, and on the other hand, the process of "commodification". In Japan, the "commodification of traditions" is being carried out at a tremendous pace in the run-up to the Tokyo Olympics. The short-term objective is to attract foreign tourists to Japan in order to stimulate the country's economy, and at present, the search for a "Profitable Cultural Heritage" has become the driving force of the Japanese nation's cultural and economic policies. The Edo period, during which a traditional culture created by the people was born, is at the heart of this process of commodification. The "commodification of Edo", which appears through clothing trends, historical fictions and movies, and also video games, tends to present a one-sided vision of this period, a vision of a society devoid of any contradiction, which is at the origin of what we will call "representations of the Good Old Edo." Moreover, the construction of these "representations" also constitutes a means for the nation-state to encourage the integration of a national consciousness among Japanese people, leading them to turn away from current problems to contemplate with nostalgia the traditions of a happy society. After first analyzing the constitution and evolution of "representations of the Good Old Edo", we will examine in detail the creation of the "Tokyo cultural resources district," which is at the heart of a series of political measures aimed at transforming cultural heritage assets into tourist resources, and at the center of the cultural program of the Tokyo Olympics. Finally, we will highlight in a concrete way the various problems related to this project. Beyond the matter of the Tokyo Olympics, it seems important to us that historians get to work in order to counter the wave of cultural nationalism caused by the spread of these "representations of the Good Old Edo". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1990s the "comfort women" system has received much attention in Japanese academic research, media, and society. This article first introduces the foundation built by historians such as Yoshimi Yoshiaki (吉見義明) who have combed through historical data, and their debates with right-wing nationalists on critical issues such as coercion in the "comfort women" system and "comfort women" becoming "sex slaves." Then it summarizes how gender studies scholars like Ueno Chizuko (上野千鹤子) use oral histories and memory studies methods to explore the position of survivors and analyze the foundation of empirical histories, rethinking and critiquing the patriarchal legacies, gender oppression, and nationalistic mindset manifested in the issue of "comfort women." Finally the article will zoom in on the discussion in Japan sparked by the Park Yu-ha (朴裕河) book Comfort Women of the Empire (Korean: Cheguk ŭi wianbu, Japanese: Teikoku no ianfu, Chinese: Diguo de weianfu) to reveal how Japanese scholars used the opportunity to further the focus on "comfort women's" subjectivity and the rich and varied nature of the original history and thus more deeply rethink issues of imperialism, colonialism, and nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is about family, community, and war memory. It is based on oral histories from Kin Town in Okinawa, Japan, an agricultural community and the site of Camp Hansen, a military base for U.S. Marines. Before World War II, emigrants from Kin migrated to Hawai'i, the Americas, and the Philippines. This article describes their experiences during World War II in the Philippines and it also discusses why memories of Davao and the Philippines continue to be a source of conflicting emotions for members of this community, several of whom were repatriates, and their extended families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the efforts by evangelical Christians in Japan to oppose the planned amendments to the country's constitution. Also cited are the plan by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to establish Japan's self-defence force, the ecclesiology of Abraham Kuyper as a guide for Christians to oppose issues related to nationalism in Japan, and the support of Prime Minister Abe Shinzo of the proposed constitutional revision.

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]

Culinary nationalism is not unique to Japan, although its performance by the Japanese government has received significant attention and criticism as exemplified in its so-called "sushi police" program. This and other counterpart programs were explicit attempts to "authenticate" Japanese food abroad, which the government eventually rescinded in response to backlash from within and outside Japan. However, new, diversified, and intensified forms of "authentication" and "certification" systems for Japanese food have been created by the government in recent years, apparently reinvigorated by the inscription of Japanese food, that is, washoku, as Intangible Heritage under the UNESCO in 2013. This article investigates culinary nationalism among the proponents of Japanese food in the context of the heritagization of washoku, with particular reference to the accreditation and certification systems for Japanese food. A number of quasi-official recognition schemes for Japanese restaurants abroad were already in place before heritage inscription, but current systems have taken on a renewed vigor in light of UNESCO recognition. Government-sponsored culinary competitions have also emerged in the period around the inscription; the performance of nationalism in such contexts are also examined, especially through the case of sushi, perhaps the most representative of Japanese food. Subsequently, the social and cultural contexts as well as the consequences of culinary nationalism in Japan are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In popular narratives, intellectual and media analysts believe the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute between China and Japan is a contestation for potential hydrocarbon reserves and other maritime rights which are per se divisible, but nationalism – particularly on China side – and relative power change between the two competing claimants make these territories increasingly indivisible and the dispute war-prone. Based on a review over People's Daily's coverage of the disputes and other secondary information, this article reveals a different scenario by highlighting the political meanings of disputed territories for national cohesion and regime self-preservation. It finds, Beijing's strategic moves in the disputes are influenced by its efforts at different occasions to de-legitimate Republic of China at Taiwan and defend its core interests – namely Taiwan and the "One-China" principle, to appease the patriotism in Hong Kong and facilitate the latter's stable reversion to China in 1990s, and what is more, to rally popular support at home. In addition, Beijing's Diaoyu/Senkaku strategy did not follow a carefully calculated path, but was mostly reactive to the contingencies and ultimately took shape through the incremental accumulation of previous policies and behaviours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Free and easy access to an unusually rich variety of sources (primarily books, newspapers, and periodicals) is the hallmark of the Database of Sources Concerning the War of Resistance against Japan and Modern Sino-Japanese Relations (Kang Ri zhanzheng yu jindai Zhong Ri guanxi wenxian shuju pingtai), launched in 2017. Continuously expanding with new uploads, this database contains both familiar and rare sources for the study of not just the two topics that make up the database name but also many other aspects of Republican China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Cool Japan' is an instance of Japanese government's nation branding exercise as part of its soft power projection in which the unique selling point is identified as Japanese national identity. In this paper, I examine the relationship between Cool Japan and Japanese national identity and highlight a tension in the construction. Cool Japan is about emphasizing Japan's attractiveness for public diplomacy, while the top-down nature of the branding undermines the imagery that the branding is designed to convey. I show that policy elites resolve this tension by invoking the traditional Japanese identity narratives that construct Japan into both a non-Western and an un-Asian entity, reproducing the myth of Japanese uniqueness. I argue that the elite narratives surrounding Cool Japan readily replicate the language reminiscent of prewar identity construction. Despite the contemporary popularity of manga and anime, the purported 'coolness' of these products are framed within older constructions of Japanese Self that can trace their pedigree back to the nineteenth century. Using the minutes of committee meetings, policy documents, as well as media interviews given by policy- and business elites, I show that Cool Japan is effectively a twenty first century rendition of the familiar Japanese identity construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editors discuss migration, nationalism and immigration regime in Japan.

While some countries take relatively generous attitudes towards immigrants, other countries retain illiberal stances towards them. Why can the latter retain their first strict immigration policies? What mechanism would guide the countries towards more liberal attitudes? This article addresses these questions, with focusing on refugee policy in Japan. Japan has kept its strict and illiberal policy on accepting refugees. In 2016, she recognised only 26 cases as refugees among 10,901 asylum applications. Why can Japan retain its strict and illiberal refugee policy? Firstly, due to the sudden dissolution of the empire after World War II, the mono-ethnic understanding of nationhood and citizenship has remained in Japan. Then, in the institutional aspect, the Ministry of Justice retains its power in charge of immigration and refugee policies. Although there is a sign that international pressure makes the illiberal refugee policy a bit lax, like recently having an increasing number of asylum applicants from various countries and accepting Syrians as students not as refugees, no decisive factor is found to guide Japan towards more generous stance to accept refugees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the Japanese colonial period, Korea's reading public paid close attention to Chinese revolutions against Japanese and Western empires. Korean nationalists viewed China's revolutionary struggles as important for liberating Korea from Japan, a stance that reveals a transnational basis of Korean nationalism in the colonial era. One such nationalist was Sin Ŏnjun (1904–38), Tong'a Ilbo 's Shanghai-based correspondent, who played a critical role in conveying the momentous events in contemporary China to colonized Koreans. Drawing on Sin's example, this article shows how Sino-Korean transnationalism constituted Korea's left-wing, progressive nationalism in the 1930s. Although Sin Ŏnjun was a nationalist rather than a communist, he highlighted the communist struggles in China in his dispatches. He saw communism as the only viable way of solving China's internal and external problems, although he, at the same time, disapproved of Chinese communists' "terrorist methods." This article argues that this position also reflected his stance in favor of a broad communist-nationalist alliance in the Korean independence movement. He saw Korea's liberation agenda as closely related to the revolutionary events in China, thus accomplishing a synthesis between Korean nationalistic and social aspirations and an East Asia–wide transnational paradigm of a universal emancipatory struggle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study explored the strength of national identification and intergroup attitudes of Chinese youth (n = 591, aged 12-15) toward the Chinese, the Americans, the Japanese, and the South Koreans. The participants were asked to fill in a questionnaire and write down reasons why they 'like' or 'dislike' the four groups. The results showed a consistency in in-group favoritism. Gender and age were both related to Chinese youths' national identifications and their national intergroup attitudes. Confucian ethics, media influence and historical complex were identified as main factors that may contribute to their attitudes toward the four groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]