Pub Date : 2023-10-23DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2023.2272827
Rebecca K. Britt, Katharina Barkley
AbstractThe present study examines the communication of members in an online community designed for both native and foreign residents living in Japan. The community serves as a platform for members to discuss various topics related to lifestyle, health, food, fashion, among other topics. Using a topic model, we analyzed a mid-size sample (n = 150k) to identify the primary topics of discussion and the potential benefits of participation. The findings indicate that health, lifestyle, travel within and outside of Japan, financial and domestic advice seeking, and temporal discussions for foreigners were the main themes discussed. We discuss the implications of these results and suggest future research directions, such as exploring sensitive topics among Japanese residents and examining the role of mediated communication in society.Keywords: social capitalhealthpublic communicationJapanese online communityonline communities Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Data deposition, supplemental files and figuresThe data files for the study are uploaded and available on OSF.io.Additional informationFundingThe research was supported by the Public Opinion Lab housed in the College of Communication and Information Sciences at the University of Alabama.Notes on contributorsRebecca K. BrittDr. Rebecca K. Britt is the Associate Dean for Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity in the College of Communication and Information Sciences at the University of Alabama. Her research specializes in computational social science, network analysis and health communication. She is a member of the Japan-U.S. Communication Association at the National Communication Association. Email: rkbritt@ua.eduKatharina BarkleyDr. Katharina Barkley is a Full Time Lecturer at Seinan Gakuin University specializing in intercultural corporate communication who has adapted Western crisis communication theories for the Japanese context. She is a member of the Japan-U.S. Communication Association at the National Communication Association.
摘要本研究考察了一个为居住在日本的本地和外国居民设计的在线社区的成员之间的交流。社区为会员提供了一个讨论生活方式、健康、食品、时尚等各种话题的平台。使用主题模型，我们分析了一个中等规模的样本(n = 150k)，以确定讨论的主要主题和参与的潜在好处。调查结果显示，健康、生活方式、在日本境内外旅行、寻求财务和国内建议以及与外国人的时间讨论是讨论的主要主题。我们讨论了这些结果的意义，并提出了未来的研究方向，如探索日本居民中的敏感话题，并研究中介沟通在社会中的作用。关键词:社会资本健康公共传播日本网络社区网络社区披露声明作者未发现潜在的利益冲突。数据存档、补充文件和数据本研究的数据文件已上载至osf .io网站。附加信息基金本研究由阿拉巴马大学传播与信息科学学院的公众舆论实验室提供支持。作者简介:rebecca K. BrittDr。丽贝卡·k·布里特(Rebecca K. Britt)是阿拉巴马大学传播与信息科学学院负责研究、奖学金和创意活动的副院长。她的研究专长是计算社会科学、网络分析和健康传播。她是日美同盟的成员。全国通信协会下属的通信协会。邮箱:rkbritt@ua.eduKatharina卡塔琳娜·巴克利(Katharina Barkley)是濑南学院大学(Seinan Gakuin University)的全职讲师，专门研究跨文化企业沟通，她将西方危机沟通理论应用于日本环境。她是日美同盟的成员。全国通信协会下属的通信协会。
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Pub Date : 2023-10-09DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2023.2260806
Andrea Boccardi
{"title":"<i>Alegal: Biopolitics and the Unintelligibility of Okinawan Life,</i> Annmaria M. Shimabuku, Alegal: Biopolitics and the Unintelligibility of Okinawan Life,Fordham University Press, New York, 2019, 219 pp.","authors":"Andrea Boccardi","doi":"10.1080/09555803.2023.2260806","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09555803.2023.2260806","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44495,"journal":{"name":"Japan Forum","volume":"57 25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135094552","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}
Pub Date : 2023-09-30DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2023.2260791
Jake Northey
{"title":"Rethinking Locality in JapanSonja Ganseforth and Hanno Jentzsch (eds.), Rethinking Locality in Japan, Nissan Institute/Routledge, Oxon and NY, 2022, 288 pp.","authors":"Jake Northey","doi":"10.1080/09555803.2023.2260791","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09555803.2023.2260791","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44495,"journal":{"name":"Japan Forum","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136280245","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}
Pub Date : 2023-09-14DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2023.2258139
Miyabi Goto
AbstractThis article examines early twentieth-century Japanese writer Kajii Motojirō’s short story ‘Remon’ (‘The Lemon,’ 1925) and explores the intersection of Kajii’s descriptions and an emerging urbanscape in Kyoto. Turn-of-the-century Kyoto undertook a massive scale of urbanization, remaking itself as a resurgent imperial capital. Instead of taking note of transformations of the scenery or the frenzies of new experiences, ‘Remon’ illustrates the narrator’s movement unintelligibly suspended in Kyoto’s back alleys. The repeated juxtaposing of different forms of representational media in the narrative also creates intermedial confusion, intensifying the sense of perceptual uncertainty. The article contends that reading the descriptions of ambiguous in-betweenness in the text reveals Kajii’s writerly engagement with the urbanization of Kyoto and leads us to a reevaluation of Kajii’s investment in literary modernism.Keywords: Kajii Motojirō‘Remon’ literary modernismintermedialityKyotourbanization AcknowledgementsThe author wishes to express her gratitude to Yanie Fécu, Takashi Miura, Megan Sarno, Douglas Slaymaker, Megan Steffen, and Ron Wilson for continued support and encouragement that they offered her at various stages of the project.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 In this article I primarily draw on the original 1925 version published in literary coterie magazine Aozora (Blue sky) (Kajii Citation1925, 1–8) and consult with the 1966 reprint in Kajii Motojirō zenshū to identify what appear to be obvious typographical errors in the first publication (Kajii [Citation1925] 1966a, 7–13). I have referred to and modified William Tyler’s Citation2008 translation ‘The Lemon’ from Modanizumu: Modernist Fiction from Japan, 1913–1938 when quoting Kajii’s text in this article (Tyler Citation2008, 334–339). All other translations are mine unless otherwise noted.2 The first collection had two volumes and came out from Tokyo-based publisher Roppō Shobō. The first volume contains forty short stories including ‘Remon,’ the second has six short stories, as well as essays, letters, and diaries. The Roppō Shobō version was a limited edition with five hundred copies printed for each volume, which indicates that it did not circulate widely to establish Kajii’s position beyond the literary community (Yodono and Nakatani Citation1966b, 590–591).3 Suzuki Sadami indicates that later scholars’ ungrounded conflation of Kajii’s biography with his works—what Suzuki calls biographical-reductionism (sakka shishitsu kangen shugi)—prevented thorough formal analyses of Kajii’s writings and complicated the categorization of Kajii in Japanese literary history (Suzuki Citation2001, 566). One of the early examples of such reductionism can be found in Kobayashi Hideo’s 1932 essay entitled ‘Kajii Motojirō to Kamura Isota,’ in which Kobayashi locates Kajii’s own ‘inclination’ (shishitsu) toward ‘simplicity and unmediated-ness’ (
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Pub Date : 2023-08-21DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2023.2247413
Linda Galvane
{"title":"Kingdom of the Sick: A History of Leprosy and Japan","authors":"Linda Galvane","doi":"10.1080/09555803.2023.2247413","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09555803.2023.2247413","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44495,"journal":{"name":"Japan Forum","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42006500","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}
Pub Date : 2023-08-17DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2023.2247400
L. Proietti
{"title":"Lorraine Plourde, Tokyo Listening: Sound and Sense in a Contemporary City,","authors":"L. Proietti","doi":"10.1080/09555803.2023.2247400","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09555803.2023.2247400","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44495,"journal":{"name":"Japan Forum","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45849691","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}
Pub Date : 2023-08-08DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2023.2254793
Lucile Druet
Abstract The field of postwar Japanese and international fiction has seen an expanding corpus of texts revolving around kimono. Many works, while tapping into the intricacies of sartorial traditions, contain actualized narratives of young girls and women experiencing or remembering kimono in prewar, postwar, and contemporary Japan. In these stories, the kimono—ever persisting, at times resisting—helps the protagonist to discover self-confidence and agency as they deal with loss, social expectations, family, and national history. This article focuses on Hayashi Mariko’s short story collection Stories about Kimono (Kimono o meguru monogatari, 1997) and her more recent novel The Imperial Visit to Ohara: The Story of an Obi-Making Family (Ohara gokō: Obi ni ikita kazoku no monogatari, 2014b). These two narratives work within all of these parameters and illustrate how authors can write consistently about the multiple meanings within kimono. Through analyzing how Hayashi describes kimono outfits and their implications, this article also explores how, as a literary device, the kimono connects with the concept of reality effect; emphasizes the power of the feminine gaze in Japanese literature; and reveals how the limits between fiction and reality can be broken down. When inspired by the specific mode of dress that is kimono, writers can prompt new inspirations for women to create their own stories with it, discarding the cliché of ‘yamato nadeshiko’ (lit: Japanese pink carnations, used to evoke Japanese demure, feminine beauty) to explore darker and/or more embodied experiences.
摘要在战后的日本和国际小说领域，围绕和服展开的文本越来越多。许多作品在挖掘错综复杂的服装传统的同时，包含了年轻女孩和妇女在战前、战后和当代日本体验或记忆和服的真实故事。在这些故事中，和服——一直坚持，有时抵制——帮助主人公在处理损失、社会期望、家庭和国家历史时发现自信和能动性。这篇文章聚焦于Hayashi Mariko的短篇小说集《关于和服的故事》（Kimono o meguru monogatari，1997）和她最近的小说《帝国访问大原：奥比制造家族的故事》。这两种叙述在所有这些参数范围内发挥作用，并说明了作者如何始终如一地书写和服中的多重含义。通过分析林对和服服饰的描述及其含义，本文还探讨了和服作为一种文学手段是如何与现实效果的概念相联系的；强调日本文学中女性凝视的力量；揭示了小说与现实之间的界限是如何被打破的。当受到和服这一特定着装模式的启发时，作家们可以为女性创造新的灵感，用和服创造自己的故事，摒弃“yamato nadeshiko”（点亮：日本粉色康乃馨，用来唤起日本端庄、女性美）的陈词滥调，探索更黑暗和/或更具体现力的体验。
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Pub Date : 2023-08-08DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2023.2248156
Daniela Moro
Abstract In Matsuda Aoko’s production, conventional feminist themes – such as gender roles, women and the working environment, marriage and maternity – merge with more contemporary topics linked to gender identity, sex and sexuality. The subjectivities that emerge from this scenario are often young characters (especially people in their thirties or forties, but also younger individuals), looking and fighting for their place in society. What comes to the fore is the evident need for the subjects to set themselves free from established roles and focus on what they wish to become, leaving societal constrictions aside. In this paper I focus on the novella ‘Sutakkingu kanō’, one of the most representative works by the author, and analyze its theoretical impact. I examine to what extent it challenges gender normativity and I reflect on the preponderant use of repetition in Matsuda’s style and its different outcomes. I also show how her works, which are generally focused on women’s characters, in reality defy the male-female dichotomy and reveal an urge for men too to set themselves free from established roles. By doing so, I aim to point out the impact of the great contemporary relevance of Matsuda’s works, which is arguably the reason behind her recent success.
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Pub Date : 2023-08-08DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2023.2248148
Christopher Smith
Abstract Asako, the protagonist of Wataya Risa’s 2004 novel Insutōru (Install), is a seventeen-year-old high school student who becomes fed up with the unrelieved sameness of late capitalist Japan. She is intensely aware of the value capitalist society places on her body, bearing as it does the desirable ‘brand’ of joshikōsei (female high-school student). As an act of defiance she stops attending school and throws away all her belongings and furniture, becoming a kind of hikikomori in order to remove herself from alienating Japanese society and capitalist mediation of her body and find some kind of authenticity. However, she comes to the realization that late capitalism is exitless, and her rebellion is doomed to failure. Salvation comes from an unlikely source: a neighbor elementary-school student who introduces her to a part-time job selling chatroom ‘sex’ on the internet. This paper argues that it is precisely the move into a social environment that is highly anonymized and heavily mediated by capital that allows Asako to come to terms with society. Online she plays the role of a 26-year-old housewife, allowing her to perform a different and adult femininity. Asako realizes that both capitalism’s discipline of her productivity and patriarchal society’s discipline of her body into a valuable commodity can be satisfied by inauthentic performance. In the end, Asako overcomes her angst by giving up on the need to discipline her authentic self into someone that can be accepted by a community or society that will provide meaning. Instead, she realizes that all of her interactions with friends, teachers, and society as a whole can be mere transactional performances. For Asako this is a kind of liberation, as she need only perform for society rather than discipline herself to become an authentic member of it.
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Pub Date : 2023-08-08DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2023.2257064
Rebecca L. Copeland, Nina Cornyetz
The essays gathered together in this special issue of Japan Forum, “Capitalism, Alienation, and Transgression in Contemporary Japanese Women’s Fiction” concern fiction written by contemporary Japanese women, most of whom remain virtually unknown to English-language readers. Despite the welcomed increase in translations into English of contemporary Japanese women’s writings, these writers have yet to find their way into English-language scholarship. One impetus of gathering them together here is thus to introduce them to a new readership. The best-known author within these
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