Japanese StudiesPub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/10371397.2023.2178884
Celeste L. Arrington, Mark R. Bookman
{"title":"Policy Change in the Shadow of the Paralympics: Disability Activism and Accessibility Reforms in Japan","authors":"Celeste L. Arrington, Mark R. Bookman","doi":"10.1080/10371397.2023.2178884","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10371397.2023.2178884","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games provided Japanese stakeholders opportunities to pressure policymakers to pass reforms, including measures to improve accessibility. However, the Games alone are not sufficient to explain the scope and consequences of recent accessibility reforms. We argue that researchers must also consider the impact of historical contingencies such as decades of activism for accessibility by affected parties (tōjisha), the 3/11 ‘triple disaster,’ and Japan’s 2014 ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to understand how disabled persons’ organizations were able to leverage the Games to influence reforms. Drawing on government records, news media reports, and documents from disability advocacy organizations, we unpack several causal mechanisms that linked activism for accessibility to policy changes and thereby contribute to studies of minority social movements and policymaking in Japan. Our analysis of accessibility initiatives documents a ‘legalistic turn’ in Japanese governance, characterized by more formal rules and enforcement mechanisms. While the implementation of those initiatives was hampered by scarcity of human and material resources as well as the spread of COVID-19, they nevertheless improved accessibility for many individuals and encouraged conversations about equity and inclusion that persist into the present.","PeriodicalId":44839,"journal":{"name":"Japanese Studies","volume":"43 1","pages":"27 - 47"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45024182","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Japanese StudiesPub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/10371397.2023.2191839
Masaki Shibata
{"title":"Dialogic Positioning on Pro-Whaling Stance: A Case Study of Reported Speech in Japanese Whaling News","authors":"Masaki Shibata","doi":"10.1080/10371397.2023.2191839","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10371397.2023.2191839","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Hard news is often assumed to be ‘objective’ and ‘factual’, with little or no trace of a ‘subjective’ authorial point of view. However, what is often forgotten is that journalists still choose what information to divulge, and how to communicate that information. This article explores how whaling news is presented in Japanese hard news reports, examining the types of ‘voices’ quoted and how these voices are presented. Analysing 176 quotations from 33 news articles published between 2014 and 2018 on news relating to controversies over Japan’s whaling policy in relation to the International Whaling Commission’s 2014 ban on whaling, this article found that in most cases, pro-whaling voices (43%) are quoted far more frequently than anti-whaling voices (24%). However, in news reports on Japan’s resumption of whaling in 2015, pro-whaling voices became completely absent, because the Japanese journalists chose to quote foreign external voices that reject a pro-whaling point of view. Japanese journalists also incorporated emotional statements from local residents and fishermen in order to dramatise the issue and seek sympathy for those whose livelihood was threatened by the whaling ban.","PeriodicalId":44839,"journal":{"name":"Japanese Studies","volume":"43 1","pages":"71 - 90"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48480359","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Japanese StudiesPub Date : 2022-10-31DOI: 10.1080/10371397.2022.2141215
D. Miyao
{"title":"Transpacific Convergences: Race, Migration, and Japanese American Film Culture before World War II","authors":"D. Miyao","doi":"10.1080/10371397.2022.2141215","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10371397.2022.2141215","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44839,"journal":{"name":"Japanese Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44772427","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Japanese StudiesPub Date : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1080/10371397.2022.2138299
T. Aoyama, B. Hartley
{"title":"Introduction to Special Issue on Youth and Democracy in Post-War Japanese Culture","authors":"T. Aoyama, B. Hartley","doi":"10.1080/10371397.2022.2138299","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10371397.2022.2138299","url":null,"abstract":"This special issue examines representations and constructions of youth and democracy in literature, film, manga and other media aimed at, or featuring, children and young adults in the post-war period. How did the introduction of the new Constitution, freedom, equality, and democracy affect youth culture? How did writers, directors, artists, editors and readers or viewers deal with the defeat and the subsequent socio-economic and political changes? What kinds of media and activities were developed to disseminate the literature of the new era? Was there unambiguous discontinuity at the end of the war? Or is continuity evident in some aspects of the production, distribution, and reception of culture for young people? In other words, to what extent were the new policies – lauded by the post-war Constitution but often imposed in blunt-instrument fashion by Occupation authorities – resisted or at least modified for local hearts and minds by young and old alike? As Kenko Kawasaki and Laura Clark note in their contribution, furthermore, through disdain for popular culture – precisely the culture that appealed to the young – even ‘progressive intellectuals’ in the post-war era ‘failed to recognise’ those ‘elements of pre-war modernisation’ that were distinctly ‘separate from the post-war influence of the United States’ (Kawasaki and Clark, this issue). Each article in its own way scrutinises these critical issues of continuity and discontinuity, in addition to convention and innovation, while also considering the socio-cultural and political con-texts operating in the specific genres and texts presented. The project was initiated as a triple-panel for the 20th Biennial Conference of the Japanese Studies Association of Australia held at the University of Wollongong in 2017, the year that marked the seventieth anniversary of Japan’s post-war Constitution coming into effect. Under the conference theme of ‘Debating Democracy in Japan’, participants were invited to consider ‘the constitutional and legal system, democracy and civil society, the political economy of post-war Japan and the cultural imagining and reimagining of Japanese society over this period’. 1 As a group of researchers whose main field is literary studies, our panels aimed to contribute to the discussion of the","PeriodicalId":44839,"journal":{"name":"Japanese Studies","volume":"42 1","pages":"219 - 226"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42720532","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Japanese StudiesPub Date : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1080/10371397.2022.2134100
Kawasaki Kenko, Laura Emily Clark
{"title":"Girls (and Boys) Debating Democracy in Aoi sanmyaku","authors":"Kawasaki Kenko, Laura Emily Clark","doi":"10.1080/10371397.2022.2134100","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10371397.2022.2134100","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Histories of democracy in modern Japan often position ‘democracy’ itself as an elite, introduced, inorganic facet of post-defeat Japan’s reconstruction by outside influences. However, analysis of discourses and texts prior to this revisionist narrative reveal a much more complex and continuous intellectual history at play. Ishizaka Yōjirō’s (1900–1986) run-away hit Aoi sanmyaku (Blue mountain range, 1947) was a timely and highly influential serialised work in The Asahi Shimbun, which was quickly republished as a novel and then adapted into a massively successful film in 1949. In this discussion the work both uses and challenges a feudalism versus democracy binary, and reveals strong intellectual continuities between prewar and post-war thinking regarding modernity. The work also challenges the positioning of relationships between school-age male and female students as a symbol of democracy and modernism in this era. Through Ishizaka’s use of debate and humour, this work is not an account of the failings of democracy, or its success, but rather an exploration of the tensions that emerge with attempts to implement these discourses.","PeriodicalId":44839,"journal":{"name":"Japanese Studies","volume":"42 1","pages":"309 - 322"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44442195","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Japanese StudiesPub Date : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1080/10371397.2022.2136064
B. Sewell
{"title":"In the Ruins of the Japanese Empire: Imperial Violence, State Destruction, and the Reordering of Modern East Asia","authors":"B. Sewell","doi":"10.1080/10371397.2022.2136064","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10371397.2022.2136064","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44839,"journal":{"name":"Japanese Studies","volume":"42 1","pages":"359 - 361"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44689633","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Japanese StudiesPub Date : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1080/10371397.2022.2134099
B. Hartley
{"title":"Disrupting the Discourse of War: Nakai Hideo’s Youthful Template for a Free and Democratic Post-War Japan","authors":"B. Hartley","doi":"10.1080/10371397.2022.2134099","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10371397.2022.2134099","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article examines notions of democracy in the writing of post-war literary identity, Nakai Hideo (1922–1993). Although Nakai is known as a fantasy novelist, tanka poet/editor and essayist, the focus text here is Kanata yori (From afar), a diary produced during the final stages of the war. Entries were largely written while the future literary identity worked as a mobilised student in the Ichigaya offices of the Imperial Army General Staff Headquarters. Audaciously, given the writer’s war-time role, the work was scathingly critical of the military policies of the time. While written in wartime, the diary was not published until 1971. This situates the work squarely in the politico-literary space of the post-war era. Furthermore, the diarist undoubtedly longs for a future without the militarist authorities. Brief reference is also made to a 1969 fantasy text, 'Kokuchō-tan' (Odyssey of the Black Swan), which features a young twenty-something protagonist whom Nakai identified as his own young post-war self. Both works present as fertile territory for an investigation of youth and democracy in post-war Japan.","PeriodicalId":44839,"journal":{"name":"Japanese Studies","volume":"42 1","pages":"295 - 308"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44780537","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Japanese StudiesPub Date : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1080/10371397.2022.2134097
T. Aoyama
{"title":"From Tears to Laughter: Gender, Humour and Democracy in Ishii Momoko's Non-chan Kumo ni Noru","authors":"T. Aoyama","doi":"10.1080/10371397.2022.2134097","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10371397.2022.2134097","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Ishii Momoko (1907–2008) is arguably the most important and influential figure in Japanese children’s literature, not only as a prolific and award-winning writer and translator, but also as an editor of important series, a critic, and a pioneer of the children’s library movement. This article examines the significance of humour in her works, especially her acclaimed novel for children, Non-chan kumo ni noru (Little Non rides on the clouds, 1947), and its relationships with gender and democracy. The article first outlines Ishii’s activities in the pre-war, wartime, post-war and later periods, and the centrality of humour throughout her life. Despite the critical acclaim and popularity of her works, humour in Non-chan has been neglected in humour studies and studies of children’s literature. Through a detailed analysis of the quantity and quality of laughter in Non-chan, I argue that Ishii has skilfully depicted various functions of humour, including expression and sharing of merriment, consolation and diversion, healing, revelation, derision, protest and revolt. As Tsurumi Shunsuke (2001) theorised, humour has the potential to communicate with a diverse range of people and find democratic, non-violent solutions to what look like dark, desperate situations.","PeriodicalId":44839,"journal":{"name":"Japanese Studies","volume":"42 1","pages":"259 - 275"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44629642","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Japanese StudiesPub Date : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1080/10371397.2022.2139230
A. Rix
{"title":"Bridging Australia and Japan Volume 2: The Writings of David Sissons, Historian and Political Scientist","authors":"A. Rix","doi":"10.1080/10371397.2022.2139230","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10371397.2022.2139230","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44839,"journal":{"name":"Japanese Studies","volume":"42 1","pages":"355 - 357"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41993605","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Japanese StudiesPub Date : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1080/10371397.2022.2136063
P. Altbach
{"title":"Family-Run Universities in Japan: Sources of Inbuilt Resilience in the Face of Demographic Pressure, 1992–2030","authors":"P. Altbach","doi":"10.1080/10371397.2022.2136063","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10371397.2022.2136063","url":null,"abstract":"Minister to dissolve Parliament, and the issue of human rights in the Japanese Constitution are still relevant today. The Japanese Prime Minister must still act with caution in the light of sensitive party factional balances in considering when to go to an election. The human rights issues, notably freedom of speech, remain a problem more generally in Japanese society today (see Stockwin & Ampiah, 2017, for insights into this contemporary issue). The volume tells us much about David Sissons, the man and the scholar. A gentle and shy person, who did not chase personal fame or reputation, he was nevertheless dogged in his pursuit of the facts which would help answer the research problems he had posed. Probably best known today for this path-breaking historical research on the Australia–Japan relationship in its many avenues, Sissons was a familiar face at the Australian Archives reading room in Canberra for many years, where he would always provide advice to those who were trying to find their way around government documents and the associated complexities of the bilateral Australia–Japan relationship. Sissons’ important research, which has been brought to the light again in these volumes, reminds us of the quiet influence he had within the discipline over the many years when he was at the ANU, the relevance his research continues to have for scholars today, and the further impact that his collected papers at the National Library are likely to have into the future as they are accessed by other scholars.","PeriodicalId":44839,"journal":{"name":"Japanese Studies","volume":"42 1","pages":"357 - 359"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43147413","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}