{"title":"Making Our Own Destiny: Single Women, Opportunity, and Family in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Tokyo","authors":"Anne Aronsson","doi":"10.1093/ssjj/jyac031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ssjj/jyac031","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44320,"journal":{"name":"Social Science Japan Journal","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89967101","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Prisoners of the Empire: Inside Japanese POW Camps","authors":"Jeremy A. Yellen","doi":"10.1093/ssjj/jyac024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ssjj/jyac024","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44320,"journal":{"name":"Social Science Japan Journal","volume":"41 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82162563","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Hate on the Bookshelves: Explaining the Phenomenon of Anti-Korean Hate Books in Japan","authors":"Ulv Hanssen, Eun Hee Woo","doi":"10.1093/ssjj/jyac021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ssjj/jyac021","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Books containing hate speech against Koreans and the Chinese have become a common sight in Japan’s bookshops. The publication of ‘hate books’ has increased in tandem with the struggles of the publishing industry and the deterioration of Japan’s relations with South Korea and China. This article seeks to explain the causes of Japan’s hate book phenomenon, with a particular focus on books targeting Koreans. While South Korean researchers have mainly identified rising nationalism in Japan as the key factor, Japanese analysts label peculiarities in the Japanese publishing industry as the main cause of hate books. We argue that both these explanations are necessary but ultimately insufficient because they ignore each other’s key findings. We propose a synthesized explanation that takes account of both the role of nationalism in creating demand and the unique structure of the Japanese publishing industry, which tends to incentivize the supply of hate books. The article also shows that nationalism only translates into hate book demand in times of diplomatic crisis.","PeriodicalId":44320,"journal":{"name":"Social Science Japan Journal","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89146691","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tōchi no dezain: Nihon no kenpō kaisei o kangaeru tame ni (Constitutional Design of Government: To Think about ‘Constitutional Amendments’ in Japan)","authors":"Christian G. Winkler","doi":"10.1093/ssjj/jyac018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ssjj/jyac018","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44320,"journal":{"name":"Social Science Japan Journal","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90095408","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ties of Possibility: Selecting Future Founders in Tokyo’s Start-up Ecosystem","authors":"Bjol R Frenkenberger","doi":"10.1093/ssjj/jyac017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ssjj/jyac017","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article focuses on seed-stage start-up fundraising in the ‘village’ (mura), an assemblage of actors in Tokyo’s start-up scene characterised by first-time founders in their 20s or early 30s and their supporters. I analyse how efforts to secure funding unfold between founders and venture capitalists (VCs). Anthropological explorations of start-ups are rare, and my research is based on one of the first long-term fieldwork-based studies in a Japanese context. The material used in this article stems from 12 months of multi-sited fieldwork and 39 further semi-structured para-ethnographic interviews. Both founders and VCs stress the importance of embodied and affective pitch performances. Interlocutors invoke and describe such practices in-depth and separate them from ‘rational’ analysis. The overall focus on convincing performance seems to enforce particular founder role ideals that stress confident top–down communication styles rather than the negotiation of shortcomings or critical open discourse. This preference for confident top–down communication appears partly informed by the uncertainty within which start-ups and VCs act. The findings of this article suggest that seed-stage fundraising conventions in Tokyo reflect a preference for particular affective performance ideals, which extend beyond the economic analysis of the business case itself.","PeriodicalId":44320,"journal":{"name":"Social Science Japan Journal","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81781499","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Masculinity and Body Weight in Japan: Grappling with Metabolic Syndrome","authors":"M. Monden","doi":"10.1093/ssjj/jyac019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ssjj/jyac019","url":null,"abstract":"on the concept of the somatic self, Castro-Vázquez explores how Japanese men think about, express and interpret their experiences concerning bodyweight control.Based on an extensive ethnographic investigation, this book offers a compelling analysis of male obesity and overweight in Japan from a symbolic interactionism perspective to delve into structure, meaning, practice and subjectivity underpinning the experiences of a group of middle-aged, Japanese men grappling with body weight control. Castro-Vázquez frames obesity and overweight within historical and current global and sociological debates that help to highlight the significance of the Japanese case. By drawing on evidence from different locations and contexts, he sustains a comparative perspective to extend and deepen the analysis.A valuable resource for scholars both of contemporary masculinity and of medical sociology, especially those with a particular interest in Japan.","PeriodicalId":44320,"journal":{"name":"Social Science Japan Journal","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88773703","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Nihon no safety net no kakusa—rōdō shijo no henyō to shakai hoshō (Inequality of the Safety Net in Japan—The Transformation of the Labour Market and Social Security)","authors":"Ryuichi Tanaka","doi":"10.1093/ssjj/jyac015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ssjj/jyac015","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44320,"journal":{"name":"Social Science Japan Journal","volume":"31 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84800503","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Global Coffee and Cultural Change in Modern Japan","authors":"Stephanie Assmann","doi":"10.1093/ssjj/jyac016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ssjj/jyac016","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44320,"journal":{"name":"Social Science Japan Journal","volume":"23 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90495659","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Japan’s Extreme Infrastructure: Fortress-ification, Resilience, and Extreme Nature","authors":"Michael R. Fisch","doi":"10.1093/ssjj/jyac011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ssjj/jyac011","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 How have massive concrete walls become thinkable as resilient infrastructure for an extreme nature, and what will collective life become in the shadow of such concrete resilience? These questions hold increasing importance as cities and nations throughout the world contemplate the construction of giant concrete barriers to resist the forces of extreme weather and rising sea levels. This article turns to Japan’s ‘fortress-ification’ of its northeast coast with giant concrete seawalls in wake of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake in order to explore the convergence of resilience thinking, concrete walls, and extreme nature. Treating fortress-ification as an empirical phenomenon and analytic, the argument tracks the emergence of fortress-ification as a manifestation of a kind of resilience thinking that derives from a synthesis of logics of disaster prevention and disaster reduction. Ultimately, the argument posits that the resilience thinking behind fortress-ification engenders adaptation to extreme nature without providing meaningful environmental mitigation. The result is disaster infrastructure with highly questionable efficacy that seals the population within an ecologically empty present while restricting access to better alternative ecological futures.","PeriodicalId":44320,"journal":{"name":"Social Science Japan Journal","volume":"51 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78400045","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}