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This article examines the evolution of Japan’s policy towards the community of Japanese researchers working abroad, tentatively referred to as the scientific diaspora. It traces the formation characteristics of this community in the 21st century and questions the legitimacy of recognizing it as a ‘scientific diaspora’. The article presents a periodization of Japan’s course towards the ‘scientific diaspora’, encompassing four stages. To verify the collected data, an interview with a representative of the Japanese ‘scientific diaspora’ in Russia was conducted. Among the main motives for the emigration of Japanese researchers abroad, underfunding and bureaucratization of science in Japan, an excess of non-research-related tasks, and a general decline in the international prestige of national science were identified. The authors conclude that Japan’s policy towards the ‘scientific diaspora’ until the second half of the 2010s was overshadowed by general diaspora policies. Currently, the largest organization of Japanese scientists abroad, UJAW, is under close government scrutiny. The analysis confirms the status of communities of Japanese scientists abroad as a scientific diaspora. It is established that decision-makers in scientific policy consider that scientific workers do not completely sever ties with their homeland and can contribute to achieving Japan’s strategic development goals.

Engaging with the 'transnational turn' in collective memory studies, this article examines how national and transnational elements intersect in cultural memory-making of the Pacific War in contemporary Japan. Through a case study of a recent Japanese television drama (Two Homelands, 2019) about Japanese Americans who were caught up between two countries at war, it argues that the incorporation of transnational Nikkei memories into Japanese national war memory on a popular cultural level both challenges and reinforces the dominant war narratives in Japan. Ultimately, Two Homelands uses Nikkei voices and their wartime experience of racial discrimination and internment to reinterpret Japan's role in the Pacific War and promote the revisionist-nationalist narrative of the war. As such, the drama exemplifies the desire within Japan to rehabilitate the persisting cultural trauma of the war and defeat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 1990, a revised immigration law offered foreigners of Japanese descent (nikkei) the right to work for unlimited duration in Japan. Many nikkei came from Latin America to take on blue-collar jobs in the country’s factories. Homi Danchi, a working-class housing complex in Toyota, Japan, has since become known for its Brazilian immigrant community. Drawing on in-depth interviews, this study analyzes the self-narrated biographies of three Brazilian immigrants who actively participate in community activism in Homi. Applying Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice and his critique of the “biographical illusion,” this article examines how the abstract ideology of Japanese-style multiculturalism (tabunka kyōsei) is understood and practiced at a local level. It argues that our narrators’ practical desires to recreate multicultural community in Homi reapply abstract multicultural values to a local context, thereby implicitly acknowledging multiculturalism’s symbolic capital and limiting the extent of activism to Homi. Applying the symbolic capital of multiculturalism to everyday practice, in turn, makes activism meaningful and imagines a community of fellow actors, albeit to the exclusion of outsiders. Multiculturalism thereby becomes a question not primarily of coexistence, but of community-building. We also underline the role that narration of one’s own history plays in mediating between individual experience and community belonging, contributing to methodological debates about Bourdieu’s biographical method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A stock market is known as a secondary market which plays the role of buying and selling stocks and securities. The efficiency of the market depends upon how quickly the market assimilates new information. The market consists mainly of three types of market-weak form, semi-strong form, and strong form. The weak form of market efficiency indicates that all the previous market prices and information are fully displayed in stock prices in the semi-strong form of the market. The stock prices reflect all the publicly available information. In the case of strong form, the market is said to be efficient when the stock prices display all the information, where insider information is of no use. Any new information that helps to alter the prospect of the organisation's potential profitability must instantly be displayed in the stock prices without delay. The Tokyo Stock Exchange (NIKKEI) began on 9th July 1950. The Tokyo Stock Exchange (NIKKEI) measures the performance of 225 large, publicly owned companies in Japan from a wide array of industry sectors. It is a price-weighted index operating in Japanese Yen (JP¥). The purpose of this paper is to test the market efficiency of the Tokyo Stock Exchange (NIKKEI) by using the daily time series data from the period 1st April 2010 to 31st March 2020. The study applied various statistical tools and techniques, including run tests, unit root tests, and VR tests. The study examines the market efficiency of the Tokyo Stock Exchange (NIKKEI) by considering the daily closing index prices and also observed that the null hypothesis of the daily returns of the indices is rejected and accepted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The efficient market hypothesis dominates in the studies on the effectiveness of stock market performance, one illustration of which is the presence of calendar anomalies of different nature. The advent of the Adaptive Market Hypothesis calls into question both the presence of such anomalies and the effectiveness of the stock market. To confirm the effective market hypothesis, the time series behaviour of the rates of return of the most significant global stock indices and a local Ukrainian PFTS Stock Index has been investigated in the work. According to the study results, the efficient market hypothesis has not been confirmed; the results partially confirm the adaptive market hypothesis. To confirm the hypothesis that global stock markets have an impact on local stock exchanges, a pre-selected sample of time series of stock index rates of return was used. The Granger causality test was used for this purpose. To determine whether the time series of the dynamics of the stock index rates of return are stationary, the advanced Dickie-Fuller test was used since it takes into account the possible autocorrelation in residuals. The Phillips-Perron test was used as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The destruction of Okinawa after the Pacific War led Okinawans to look for new interpretations of their past to overcome the hardships of the present and imagine a new future. Although scholars have recently examined Okinawans' memory politics, they have paid little attention to the history of Okinawans in South America and their memory construction during the American occupation of the Ryukyu Islands between 1945 and 1972. To fill this gap, this article analyzes Okinawans' diasporic memory narratives in Argentina in conjunction with transnational memories circulating between 1945 and 1965. Community leaders in Argentina during this period intended to construct a compelling remembrance narrative that could support their identity claims in the face of an uncertain future for their home islands. While this process was shaped by existing transnational discourses, Okinawan immigrants in Argentina negotiated and accepted only those ideas that fit their local agenda and served as sources of diasporic identity and pride. Even if Okinawan immigrants claimed to be Japanese, these memories need to be analyzed as strategies to rebalance asymmetrical power relationships within Japanese immigrant society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes how Japanese studies can expand its relevance, approached from my perspective as a Philippine postcolonial historian. In the course of my research on the Japanese locals of Davao and Guam, Japanese studies has been essential. Japanese imperial history has provided me with a regional perspective that transcends the limits of Philippine national historiography and has given me access to source materials about the localities under study. As I became invested in Japanese studies, I realised that Philippine historiography has much to contribute back. A Philippine perspective can question the limits of the concept of who is Japanese, particularly in the case of Filipino-Japanese and CHamoru-Japanese mestizos. Moreover, Japanese historiography, which is still in many cases limited to the archives, may source alternative approaches or methodologies from its Philippine postcolonial counterpart, which has for decades been experimenting with methods of writing more inclusive national histories. More broadly, by conversing with specialists of areas with which Japan has been historically connected, I suggest that Japan scholars can not only extend Japanese studies’ relevance beyond its own field but also infuse it with new ideas and approaches.

A review of the monograph "Immigrant Japan: Mobility and Belonging in an Ethno-Nationalist Society" by Gracia Liu-Farrer, Cornell University Press (New York), 2020.

In introducing this special issue on Japanese outside of Japan, this article sets the scene by providing an overview of the genesis and trajectories of the Japanese diaspora which examines the history of international population movements, demographic transitions, educational orientations and language situations in the resulting communities. It touches upon: (a) the disappearance of the oldest nihon machi (Japan towns) formed by fleeing samurai and traders as refugee and trade diasporas; (b) the emergence of Nikkei (Japanese ancestry) identities in Japanese labour diaspora communities; (c) the obsolescence of varieties of Japanese learnt/acquired during childhood in imperial diaspora contexts, along with the employment and integration of Japanese borrowings in the local languages; (d) the contrast in the social lives and language situations in global Japanese diaspora communities between affluent long-term residents living within Japanese norms, on the one hand, and, on the other, permanent residents seeking personal freedom from these norms; and (e) the contrasting social realities in contemporary Japan of returnee children of Japanese diplomats and expatriate Japanese business executives as a new privileged class, on the one hand, and returnee Nikkei Latin Americans working as foreign labourers in Japan, on the other. Given the wide range of historical and socio-economic contexts in which the Japanese diaspora found itself, we conclude that it continues to provide a rich seam of potential sociolinguistic enquiry, which may provide an illustrative framework serving as a possible model for the historicised analysis of diasporic sociolinguistic complexities in other world contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay is a review of the monograph 'Okinawans Reaching Australia' by John Lamb (Hesperian Press, 2019).

The rising fame of multiethnic and multiracial or ‘mixed’ celebrities in Japan, such as tennis player Naomi Osaka, has brought into focus the roles of Japan’s Nationality Law and understandings of nationality and citizenship in shaping identity. According to Article 14 of Japan’s Nationality Law, persons holding multiple nationalities must choose to forfeit all but one before the age of 22. In this article I aim to address how multiethnic and multiracial youths of Japanese descent in Australia are approaching the ambiguities surrounding their citizenship and nationality rights. To do so I will closely examine to what extent the Nationality Law affects their future decisions and identities by drawing upon evidence from in-depth interviews I conducted with mixed Japanese youth who are the child of one Japanese parent and one non-Japanese parent and live in Australia. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital, I argue that mixed Japanese youth in Australia perceive citizenship less as an agent of identity and more as an index of socioeconomic opportunity. My findings demonstrate that these individuals actively strive to maintain their dual citizenship and strategically align their cultural capital to realise meaningful cross-cultural careers that communicate between Australia, Japan, and their own mixed identities.

Due to the complex nature of stock market prediction, it has been a trending area of interest. This paper presents a comparison of the prediction by inputting different classifiers. Furthermore, the results of the comparison are done on an accuracy basis. Each machine learning algorithm is tested against the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations System (NASDAQ), New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), Nikkei, and Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE). Furthermore, several machine learning algorithms are compared with a normal and a leaked data set. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

El Jardín Japonés de Buenos Aires se ha convertido en uno de los paseos turísticos destacados de la ciudad. En él se concentran los principales monumentos de la historia de las relaciones entre ambos países. Por otra parte, su actual administración, ha reunido allí las principales expresiones con las que, en Argentina, se identifica a la cultura japonesa. Este trabajo busca presentar cómo surgió y por qué también podríamos considerarlo consecuencia de la globalización de la cultura japonesa, qué particularidades tiene la forma de difusión de esta cultura y en el caso de la Argentina, se analizará la forma en que esas expresiones iniciaron lo que podría interpretarse como un proceso de creolización. Es decir qué sucede con las expresiones japonesas cuando se integran en otro contexto cultural, ver no solo su transformación, sino también sus transmisores que dejan de ser japoneses y se convierten en nikkei

This research aims to survey the development and current state of Japanese taiko music in Brazil, specifically São Paulo, as a musical genre and cultural practice. Its specific goal is to exhibit hybrid samba-taiko percussion performance as a practice which provides Japanese-Brazilians with a space to express, construct, and realize their hybrid sociocultural identities in spite of the restrictive racial and musical constructs of contemporary Brazilian society.It provides the background to this conflict of cultural identity with a historical narrative of Japanese immigration to Brazil, and a discourse on the Brazilian cultural ideology of racial democracy. This project also serves to familiarize readers with taiko as a musical genre by outlining the historical development of kumidaiko musical practice in Japan and its development in Brazil, and to define samba-taiko’s hybrid musical characteristics through an analysis of contemporary music examples. Overall this research iterates samba-taiko’s role of emerging significance to Japanese-Brazilian culture.

For diaspora communities, they often stand as material reflections of the process of cultural continuity and assimilation. In the case of forced immigrants, such as the incarceration of roughly 120,000 Nikkei (Japanese Americans) during World War II, the degree to which they were able to reconstruct features of the gardens of their homelands is particularly instructive. Using primary sources in public archives, we investigate how interned Nikkei used gardening to endure their incarceration and to recultivate their traditional relationships with nature. For Nikkei internees, gardens provided a wealth of material and psychological benefits. Because the camps were typically at locations largely devoid of vegetation, gardens provided a means to making their forced incarceration in hostile landscapes more habitable. Most importantly, because camp gardens were explicit celebrations of Japanese heritage, they constituted subtle acts of political resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes how Japanese studies can expand its relevance, approached from my perspective as a Philippine postcolonial historian. In the course of my research on the Japanese locals of Davao and Guam, Japanese studies has been essential. Japanese imperial history has provided me with a regional perspective that transcends the limits of Philippine national historiography and has given me access to source materials about the localities under study. As I became invested in Japanese studies, I realised that Philippine historiography has much to contribute back. A Philippine perspective can question the limits of the concept of who is Japanese, particularly in the case of Filipino-Japanese and CHamoru-Japanese mestizos. Moreover, Japanese historiography, which is still in many cases limited to the archives, may source alternative approaches or methodologies from its Philippine postcolonial counterpart, which has for decades been experimenting with methods of writing more inclusive national histories. More broadly, by conversing with specialists of areas with which Japan has been historically connected, I suggest that Japan scholars can not only extend Japanese studies' relevance beyond its own field but also infuse it with new ideas and approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Orientation: The global financial markets have been severely affected by the influence of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). Across the board, most of the financial markets have experienced a very sharp decrease in trade as a consequence of this pandemic. Investors sometimes choose to include such assets in order to diversify portfolios and also at the same time distribute risk away from the usual financial markets. As the global economy begun to falter under the influence of COVID-19, the value of holding fine art as an alternative investment increased. Research purpose: This article examines the implications of the impact of COVID-19 on the financial markets and the global art markets. This article explores the real impact of COVID-19 on the respective stock markets and then compared it against the global art price index, both in European euro and American dollar. Motivation for the study: The impact of COVID-19 will have numerous spill over effects into other sectors of the economy, one such sector being the market for fine art. Fine art as an investment item has many desirable qualities to an investor and can act as an alternative investment asset because of its ability to hold value. Research approach/design and method: Five financial markets are analysed in this study, namely the German DAX, the American Dow Jones, the Japanese Nikkei and the London Stock Exchange and the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE), by using a combination of market simulations and forecast techniques, including Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA), Generalized Auto-Regressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (GARCH), Monte Carlo simulation and Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) techniques. The real impact of COVID-19 is assessed on the respective stock markets and then compared against the global art price index, both in European euro and American dollar. Main findings: The findings show that there is a significant positive influence on holding fine art as an alternative investment, especially as the levels of market risk increase because of COVID-19. Practical/managerial implications: The impact of an economic or social crisis has led to a diversification of trade in investments. Similar to currency portfolios been diverted into gold trade to mitigate risk due to political or social unrest, equity trading has mitigated some risk into alternative forms of investment. Contribution/value-add: This article highlights the nature of portfolio diversification into fine art as an alternative investment, brought about due to extreme market conditions.

This paper is a biographical case study that explores the distinct experiences of three Australian-born Japanese (hereafter, Nikkei-Australians) who volunteered for Australian military service during World War II: Mario Takasuka, Joseph Suzuki and Winston Ide. It examines the social and political context in which these soldiers lived, concluding that they faced a disconnect between the way they were viewed by the government, their local communities and themselves. Notions of identity and nationalism are also explored in the context of World War II and the White Australia Policy, and are compared with the experiences of non-European soldiers in Australia and Nikkei soldiers abroad. The paper also highlights the ambiguous position of Nikkei-Australian soldiers with respect to military enlistment. At the time, legislation allowed for Nikkei-Australians to be variously classified as loyal citizens capable of enlistment, as not sufficiently ‘Australian’ for duty, or as enemy aliens, depending upon how it was applied in each case. Because there was no uniform approach within the government for applying these laws, the experiences of Nikkei-Australians vastly differed, as illustrated by the stories of the individuals profiled in this study. These stories are important as they add to the growing body of knowledge around non-white Australians who served in World War II, and remind us of how the pro-white, anti-Japanese atmosphere within Australia at the time affected those within the community who did not fit the mould of the White Australian ideal.

This article discusses the process of Japanese emigration to Peru in the early-twentieth century, culminating in their extraordinary rendition from the same country at the hands of the United States government at the height of World War II, analyzing the processes through the lens of Seiichi Higashide's 1981 testimonio Adios to Tears (Namida no Adiosu). It follows Higashide's journey from Hokkaido, Japan to Ica, Peru, and finally, via rendition, to the United States, first to Crystal City internment camp in Texas before being 'paroled' as an 'undocumented immigrant' to Seabrook Farms, New Jersey to provide labour for a privately-held company. Higashide, along with many other Peruvian Nikkei of the same era, fell victim to a series of treaties, laws, and finally, global conflicts that ultimately rendered them stateless. Arguing that this history is the product of the fundamental irrationality of racializing global forces implicit in the notion of modernity, I suggest that its aftermaths continue to resonate today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The bivalence of Japanese Brazilians (Nikkei) as a source of stress and support for Japanese people living in Brazil was investigated to obtain ideas for developing positive relationships between them. We conducted semistructured interviews with 19 Japanese people on how they engage with Nikkei. A modified-grounded theory approach (M-GTA) was used to identify whether the relationship with Nikkei was a stress or support source. The results indicated that Nikkei were recognized as having both Brazilian and Japanese cultural traits. Japanese people unfamiliar with Brazilian life welcomed the Nikkei s intermediary cultural support and were comforted by their Japanese traits. However, their image as being old-fashioned Japanese people was problematic. Moreover, Japanese people were fond of Brazilian cultural characteristics, although they were concerned about specific differences. Furthermore, Japanese people were stressed when they sensed difficulties due to biculturalism, and when they could not choose relationships or maintain their distance from Nikkei. It is suggested that biculturalism should be appropriately studied, and intercultural social skills developed for building positive relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rising fame of multiethnic and multiracial or 'mixed' celebrities in Japan, such as tennis player Naomi Osaka, has brought into focus the roles of Japan's Nationality Law and understandings of nationality and citizenship in shaping identity. According to Article 14 of Japan's Nationality Law, persons holding multiple nationalities must choose to forfeit all but one before the age of 22. In this article I aim to address how multiethnic and multiracial youths of Japanese descent in Australia are approaching the ambiguities surrounding their citizenship and nationality rights. To do so I will closely examine to what extent the Nationality Law affects their future decisions and identities by drawing upon evidence from in-depth interviews I conducted with mixed Japanese youth who are the child of one Japanese parent and one non-Japanese parent and live in Australia. Using Pierre Bourdieu's theory of cultural capital, I argue that mixed Japanese youth in Australia perceive citizenship less as an agent of identity and more as an index of socioeconomic opportunity. My findings demonstrate that these individuals actively strive to maintain their dual citizenship and strategically align their cultural capital to realise meaningful cross-cultural careers that communicate between Australia, Japan, and their own mixed identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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