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In light of today’s global boom in landmark architecture, urban megaprojects and reconstructions of cultural heritage buildings, this paper analyses two large-scale reconstruction projects at iconic historical locations in Japan: the Heijō Palace in Nara and Dejima in Nagasaki. Since the 1990s, the two projects have recreated long-lost built environments, gradually transforming the sites, turning them into museums and exhibition spaces and giving rise to thorough reform of the surrounding urban fabric. In this paper I trace the involved agents’ motivations to engage in historical reconstruction from early-phase experimental efforts to legitimise the sites’ protected status to present-day politico-economic mobilisations of important historical locations to boost city attraction values. In this way, I link these two unfolding projects in Nara and Nagasaki to issues of urban boosterism, heritage production and the facilitation and commodification of tourist experiences of past realities. Approaching the reconstructions as contemporary heritage in traditional guise, the paper argues that both sites revolve materially, spatially and thematically around the master-metaphors of flow, growth and intercultural connectivity that characterise the present age. Elucidating processes of authentication and intersections of ideological and economic interests in and around the two sites, the paper asks in what ways Japanese cities exploit lost iconic localities and reconstructed heritage under post-industrial conditions marked by globalisation and intense cultural-economic competition.

The desire for global recognition presented by the team behind the Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town, around its opening in September 2017, not only confirms that a global hierarchy within the art world still persists. It also results in a paradoxical dilemma for the artists on display. While praising the museum for the opportunities it provides, this chapter shows how the artists exhibited there simultaneously experienced ambivalence in a space where they cannot necessarily express themselves with the same local elements in their artworks as some of them would have liked. The artists are thus caught between vaguely defined ideas about being locally anchored and globally connected, in a setting expecting them to be both at the same time, producing global art that is locally grounded enough to be part of a museum exhibiting art from “Africa and its Diaspora” to international visitors. This is the dilemma the artists face: if they want a chance to show and sell their art to the world, they have to adapt to the Zeitz MOCAA’s rather unclear curatorial definitions of what art from Africa is, and replace some place-specific elements in their artworks with others.

Focusing empirically on transcultural phenomena in-and-out of China, South Korea, and Indonesia, the three papers in this special section of The Journal of Transcultural Studies interrogate important aspects of transcultural circulations and exhibitions of objects between Euro-America and the Asia-Pacific, both historically and currently.

Unrealized architecture is culturally significant. Although they remain imaginary, unrealized buildings happen to a community, often leaving unintended material and social traces. This article argues that unbuilt projects contribute actively to the production of locality and the meaning of neighborhoods and institutions. Drawing on theoretical investments from Appadurai and Yaneva, this article analyzes motifs of locality and globality in long-lasting controversies surrounding two unrealized Japanese-designed extension projects to European museum buildings: the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and the Institut Valencià d’Art Modern in Valencia. The analysis demonstrates that despite their spectacular confrontations, supporters and opponents in both cases shared similar notions of the affected neighborhoods and museums as meaningful social and cultural spaces. The controversies revolved around whether or not the Japanese-designed expansions would violate or reawaken perceived local energies and qualities. Engaging a little-studied dimension of cultural globalization, the article asks: what sort of locality emerges from unmaking globality-inflected monumental architecture?, Unrealized architecture is culturally significant. Although they remain imaginary, unrealized buildings happen to a community, often leaving unintended material and social traces. This article argues that unbuilt projects contribute actively to the production of locality and the meaning of neighborhoods and institutions. Drawing on theoretical investments from Appadurai and Yaneva, this article analyzes motifs of locality and globality in long-lasting controversies surrounding two unrealized Japanese-designed extension projects to European museum buildings: the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and the Institut Valencià d’Art Modern in Valencia. The analysis demonstrates that despite their spectacular confrontations, supporters and opponents in both cases shared similar notions of the affected neighborhoods and museums as meaningful social and cultural spaces. The controversies revolved around whether or not the Japanese-designed expansions would violate or reawaken perceived local energies and qualities. Engaging a little-studied dimension of cultural globalization, the article asks: what sort of locality emerges from unmaking globality-inflected monumental architecture?

Cabinet scandals and minister resignations happen frequently in Japan. In recent years, political opponents and the mass media have approached such cases as occasions for pursuit of the prime minister’s ‘appointive responsibility’. Based on comprehensive source material since 1989 but focusing particularly on 2006–2012, this paper introduces appointive responsibility as an object of critical analysis. Emphasizing that the notion has distinct ideological implications, I pinpoint the rhetorical techniques and strategic rationale underlying appointive responsibility and show that the phenomenon operates in two logically opposed forms. The first form follows a causality principle and presents the prime minister as inappropriately ignorant. The second one operates according to a representative logic and revolves around inappropriate knowledge. Outlining and problematizing both forms, the paper analytically unravels key aspects of a new paradigm of executive leadership and responsibility in Japanese political discourse. The paper contributes to a better qualitative understanding of responsibility constructs in recent Japanese politics and delivers a focused critical examination of appointive responsibility as a key rhetorical vehicle for tapping into frustrated public expectations of political leadership.

This paper traces the history of a Japanese-funded annex to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam over the past twenty-five years. The analysis focuses on three key years in the building’s history: 1991, 1999, and 2015. Critically examining public debate and media coverage of the building in contemporary Dutch- and Japanese-language sources, I argue that changing claims and public perceptions of Japan reflected the country’s shifting economic fortunes and international position during the period. The sources consistently framed the Japanese-designed building within a language of dreams. However, the dreams gradually transformed from desires and nostalgic projections to sleepiness and inactivity. Japan, and the annex as its symbolic embodiment, remained a ‘place of dreams’, but the nature of those ‘dreams’ changed dramatically over the period studied., This paper traces the history of a Japanese-funded annex to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam over the past twenty-five years. The analysis focuses on three key years in the building’s history: 1991, 1999, and 2015. Critically examining public debate and media coverage of the building in contemporary Dutch- and Japanese-language sources, I argue that changing claims and public perceptions of Japan reflected the country’s shifting economic fortunes and international position during the period. The sources consistently framed the Japanese-designed building within a language of dreams. However, the dreams gradually transformed from desires and nostalgic projections to sleepiness and inactivity. Japan, and the annex as its symbolic embodiment, remained a ‘place of dreams’, but the nature of those ‘dreams’ changed dramatically over the period studied.

Kan man stole på, hvad folk siger, når man ikke ved, hvem de er? Forholdet mellem kildeanonymitet og troværdighed er forskelligt i mediesystemer rundt om i verden. Troværdighed er ingen universel størrelse, men en retorisk effekt der opstår på baggrund af faktorer som er kulturelt og systemisk indlejret. I Japan har seriøse nyhedsmedier et specielt forhold til udsagn fra anonyme kilder, og udstrakt brug af uidentificerede informanter står ikke i modsætning til journalistisk kvalitet og pålidelighed.

This paper investigates the rhetorical interconnections between synecdoche and representation in debates, controversies and political protest initiatives following the introduction into Taiwan of two Taiwan-related Japanese publications, one historical revisionist manga cartoon and one Japanese guidebook to prostitution in Taiwan. Doing so, this paper argues that these controversies revolved around discursive representations of exclusionary collective self-making and othering through specific techniques and deployments of the rhetorical figure of synecdoche. The aim here is to show how key political and mass-media agents have shaped their positions through the strategic deployment of synecdoche as a rhetorical catalyst for ascribing representative functions to ideological opponents, for engaging in explanation and speculation over motives, and for passing moral judgments on specific acts and utterances. At the same time, this paper shows how opponents have deployed a corresponding defensive strategy for diffusing synecdochical logic in order to escape such representative functions and to avoid the suggested large-scale responsibility.

Da Fukushima-ulykken udspillede sig i dagene efter den 11. marts 2011, forbløffede det medier i resten af verden, hvordan de japanske massemedier valgte at dække den meget alvorlige og eskalerende begivenhed. Mens vestlige nyhedsmedier efterspurgte større åbenhed og mere substans i de sparsomme informationer, de japanske myndigheder og TEPCO offentliggjorde, virkede de japanske aviser og det nationale TV- og radioselskab NHK (Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai) bemærkelsesværdigt tilfredse med blot at citere striber af officielle talsmænd og dele deres tvivlsomme udlægning af situationen som “stabil” og “under kontrol”. Og mens store internationale nyhedsnetværk viste bekymrende billeder, forhørte sig hos atomskeptiske eksperter og lod deres korrespondenter interviewe borgere, der var personligt berørt og fortvivlede over situationen, fastholdt de japanske medier blot myndighedernes opfordring til at bevare roen uden at give flere detaljer eller udfordre officielle kilder og udlægninger journalistisk. De japanske medier var tydeligt uvillige til at gribe dækningen an på en måde, der ville udfordre myndighedernes kommunikationsstrategi og skabe uro i befolkningen. Men det betød, at japanerne måtte konsultere enten udenlandske medier eller sociale netværkstjenester for at få mere nuanceret viden om den meget alvorlige atomkatastrofe, der var i færd med at udspille sig i deres land. (Forts.)

This article is a qualitative analysis of mass-mediated projections of relationships between public relations practitioners in the shape of activist groups and organizations, and subaltern stakeholders for whom they act as public representatives. Drawing my empirical examples from Japan and Taiwan and analysing the public relations implications of two politically sensitive and controversial cases, I question the nature of representative relations as reflected in mainstream mass media coverage in these two societies. Doing so, I raise concerns about the critical scope of scholarly interest in activism and the representation of other voices in public relations studies and draw on theoretical insights from Spivak, Guha, and others in order to untangle some of the complexities inherent in the mobilization of subaltern groups, here victims of historical abuse and maltreatment. The existence of such complexities in public and legal activism, I argue, remains largely ignored in public relations studies, despite the emergence of a new critical or postmodern paradigm.

Den japanske premierminister Hatoyama blev valgt sidste år som et frisk demokratisk pust. Han lovede et mere ligeværdigt forhold til USA - og at flytte den amerikanske base på øen Okinawa. Nu må han vælge mellem USA eller folkets vrede, da han ikke har kunnet finde en alternativ placering til basen. Hatoyama har ikke andre muligheder end at ydmyge sig overfor vælgerne og får derved sin egen taburet til at vakle. Udgivelsesdato: 12. maj