Pub Date : 2022-04-13DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2022.2056625
Junliang Huang
{"title":"Spatiality, destruction, and the individual in Takeda Taijun’s Sekai: an exposition and critique","authors":"Junliang Huang","doi":"10.1080/09555803.2022.2056625","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09555803.2022.2056625","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44495,"journal":{"name":"Japan Forum","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43367501","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 : 2022-04-12DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2022.2058590
W. Robertson
{"title":"‘Chinese ideographs belong to a childhood age […] but Japan has now become a man’: graphic ideologies and language reform in The Japan Times","authors":"W. Robertson","doi":"10.1080/09555803.2022.2058590","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09555803.2022.2058590","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44495,"journal":{"name":"Japan Forum","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-04-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49421753","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 : 2022-03-15DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2022.2046132
Ian Neary
PM Abe Shinzo’s final year as PM was accompanied by opposition party criticism for his alleged use of taxpayers’ money to reward his supporters at cherry blossom viewing parties. At around the same time two of his cabinet colleagues were forced to resign amid allegations of having breached election campaign regulations. In the case which involved the husband and wife politicians Katsuyuki and Anri Kawaii, this led to the prosecution of Katsuyuki on vote buying charges, a verdict of guilty and a fine of ¥1.3M. Later, three years in prison was handed down in June 2021. The reporting of these scandals in the media gives the impression that little has changed since the 1970s when reports of the corrupt practices engaged in and inspired by Tanaka Kakuei made it appear to be an integral if unacceptable dimension of political activity in Japan. Carlson and Reed show this conclusion to be unfounded. Their analysis of the combined impact of a series of measures both great and small mainly dating from the 1990s draws them to the ‘optimistic conclusions’ that political reforms have been effective in reducing the incidence of political corruption even if the transparency that has allowed this to happen has had the paradoxical and unintended consequence of making the voting public more aware of that which continues to exist. They present an excellent political science case study that steers clear of statistical data derived from an operational definition of corruption in favour of a conceptual definition of the problem. Rather than marshal statistics of the percentage of citizens who paid bribes or police statistics on election law violations, their research began by looking for ‘anything that seemed to pervert the democratic process’ (p 160). Had they adopted the former approach they admit they would have missed much of the story. Moreover, they would not have been able to reach their two central findings:
{"title":"Matthew M Carlson and Steven R Reed, Political Corruption and Scandals in Japan","authors":"Ian Neary","doi":"10.1080/09555803.2022.2046132","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09555803.2022.2046132","url":null,"abstract":"PM Abe Shinzo’s final year as PM was accompanied by opposition party criticism for his alleged use of taxpayers’ money to reward his supporters at cherry blossom viewing parties. At around the same time two of his cabinet colleagues were forced to resign amid allegations of having breached election campaign regulations. In the case which involved the husband and wife politicians Katsuyuki and Anri Kawaii, this led to the prosecution of Katsuyuki on vote buying charges, a verdict of guilty and a fine of ¥1.3M. Later, three years in prison was handed down in June 2021. The reporting of these scandals in the media gives the impression that little has changed since the 1970s when reports of the corrupt practices engaged in and inspired by Tanaka Kakuei made it appear to be an integral if unacceptable dimension of political activity in Japan. Carlson and Reed show this conclusion to be unfounded. Their analysis of the combined impact of a series of measures both great and small mainly dating from the 1990s draws them to the ‘optimistic conclusions’ that political reforms have been effective in reducing the incidence of political corruption even if the transparency that has allowed this to happen has had the paradoxical and unintended consequence of making the voting public more aware of that which continues to exist. They present an excellent political science case study that steers clear of statistical data derived from an operational definition of corruption in favour of a conceptual definition of the problem. Rather than marshal statistics of the percentage of citizens who paid bribes or police statistics on election law violations, their research began by looking for ‘anything that seemed to pervert the democratic process’ (p 160). Had they adopted the former approach they admit they would have missed much of the story. Moreover, they would not have been able to reach their two central findings:","PeriodicalId":44495,"journal":{"name":"Japan Forum","volume":"73 1","pages":"412 - 414"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59513976","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 : 2022-03-15DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2022.2056229
Kara Juul
Japan’s education system has long been a source of fascination for people from a wide variety of fields: from those who wished to emulate it during the heyday of the economic boom, to those who focused on what it had to say about Japan more broadly – warts and all. The debate over whether the Japanese education system can be said to be ‘equal’ has raged for a similar length of time. Classic texts in the genre, such as Cummings (1980) and Rohlen (1983) are frequently juxtaposed to highlight the two sides – with the former arguing that schooling is egalitarian, and the latter underlining the features that complicate that view. Some recent scholarship provides a more comparative education approach, positioning the Japanese system in the globalised debate on equality (Kariya and Rappleye 2020); other works trace the evolution of the concept of equality (and related or competing terms such as egalitarianism and meritocracy) throughout Japanese education policy and the views of the people who make it (Okada 2012). In contrast, Okano’s focus is firmly on the current results of such changes on students themselves. Education and Social Justice in Japan provides an updated evaluation of schooling in Japan; invaluable considering the huge social, economic, and demographic shifts since Okano’s previous book on the subject (Okano and Tsuchiya 1999) was released. This book not only covers what the developments in schooling have been in the intervening thirty years, but also their impact on minorities and disadvantaged pupils and what this means for social justice in the Japanese education system. The book opens by defining what social justice means for the purposes of Okano’s research: both the ‘distribution’ of educational opportunity and the mechanisms by which its content is decided. A thorough look at the history of Japanese schooling until 2019, and its role in shaping Japan into what it is today, follows. Reforms and their reception are also covered, with Okano pointing out that these were less radical than what is often assumed from reactions at the time. Having set the scene, the book pivots to examining specific aspects of Japanese schooling and how things have changed (or not) for students in this system. Okano first focuses on the experiences of children from CLD (culturally and linguistically diverse) groups. Japan is still often assumed to be a homogenous society, and this chapter systematically disabuses the reader of this notion by following students from both longestablished minority backgrounds (such
{"title":"Education and Social Justice in Japan","authors":"Kara Juul","doi":"10.1080/09555803.2022.2056229","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09555803.2022.2056229","url":null,"abstract":"Japan’s education system has long been a source of fascination for people from a wide variety of fields: from those who wished to emulate it during the heyday of the economic boom, to those who focused on what it had to say about Japan more broadly – warts and all. The debate over whether the Japanese education system can be said to be ‘equal’ has raged for a similar length of time. Classic texts in the genre, such as Cummings (1980) and Rohlen (1983) are frequently juxtaposed to highlight the two sides – with the former arguing that schooling is egalitarian, and the latter underlining the features that complicate that view. Some recent scholarship provides a more comparative education approach, positioning the Japanese system in the globalised debate on equality (Kariya and Rappleye 2020); other works trace the evolution of the concept of equality (and related or competing terms such as egalitarianism and meritocracy) throughout Japanese education policy and the views of the people who make it (Okada 2012). In contrast, Okano’s focus is firmly on the current results of such changes on students themselves. Education and Social Justice in Japan provides an updated evaluation of schooling in Japan; invaluable considering the huge social, economic, and demographic shifts since Okano’s previous book on the subject (Okano and Tsuchiya 1999) was released. This book not only covers what the developments in schooling have been in the intervening thirty years, but also their impact on minorities and disadvantaged pupils and what this means for social justice in the Japanese education system. The book opens by defining what social justice means for the purposes of Okano’s research: both the ‘distribution’ of educational opportunity and the mechanisms by which its content is decided. A thorough look at the history of Japanese schooling until 2019, and its role in shaping Japan into what it is today, follows. Reforms and their reception are also covered, with Okano pointing out that these were less radical than what is often assumed from reactions at the time. Having set the scene, the book pivots to examining specific aspects of Japanese schooling and how things have changed (or not) for students in this system. Okano first focuses on the experiences of children from CLD (culturally and linguistically diverse) groups. Japan is still often assumed to be a homogenous society, and this chapter systematically disabuses the reader of this notion by following students from both longestablished minority backgrounds (such","PeriodicalId":44495,"journal":{"name":"Japan Forum","volume":"34 1","pages":"275 - 277"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47254458","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 : 2022-02-11DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2022.2033301
Sonia Favi
Abstract Tourist guidebooks are powerful instruments of public diplomacy: as supposedly ‘impersonal’ descriptions, intended for ‘average’ readers, they can be used to subtly promote careful national narratives, and to draw the attention of foreign publics to a country’s soft power. This article analyses, in this light, the English-language tourist guidebooks of Japan published by the Society called Kihinkai (Welcome Society, 1893–1912), the earliest Japanese organization for the promotion of inbound tourism. It relates them to the popular handbooks of Japan published by the British House of Murray, which were adopted as their model. Murray’s handbooks ‘created’ Japan as an international tourist destination for a majority of English-speaking travellers, responding to common travel tropes and expectations about the country. The Kihinkai’s guidebooks engaged with them in the form of ‘autoethnographic’ texts, adopting their style and language, as a way to partake in their established reputation of authoritativeness. At the same time, they carefully reframed their narrative of Japan, in a way that was coherent with the Kihinkai’s general ‘diplomatic’ strategy – born of the background of its founders and supporters, and of the coming together of private and public sector interests.
{"title":"Negotiating the nation: public diplomacy and the publication of English-language tourist guidebooks of Japan in the Meiji period (1868–1912)","authors":"Sonia Favi","doi":"10.1080/09555803.2022.2033301","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09555803.2022.2033301","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Tourist guidebooks are powerful instruments of public diplomacy: as supposedly ‘impersonal’ descriptions, intended for ‘average’ readers, they can be used to subtly promote careful national narratives, and to draw the attention of foreign publics to a country’s soft power. This article analyses, in this light, the English-language tourist guidebooks of Japan published by the Society called Kihinkai (Welcome Society, 1893–1912), the earliest Japanese organization for the promotion of inbound tourism. It relates them to the popular handbooks of Japan published by the British House of Murray, which were adopted as their model. Murray’s handbooks ‘created’ Japan as an international tourist destination for a majority of English-speaking travellers, responding to common travel tropes and expectations about the country. The Kihinkai’s guidebooks engaged with them in the form of ‘autoethnographic’ texts, adopting their style and language, as a way to partake in their established reputation of authoritativeness. At the same time, they carefully reframed their narrative of Japan, in a way that was coherent with the Kihinkai’s general ‘diplomatic’ strategy – born of the background of its founders and supporters, and of the coming together of private and public sector interests.","PeriodicalId":44495,"journal":{"name":"Japan Forum","volume":"35 1","pages":"172 - 194"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-02-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43243491","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 : 2022-02-09DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2022.2033300
Warren A. Stanislaus
Abstract This article examines the overlooked phenomenon of how black British grime music artists intentionally and selectively remix Japanese pop cultural artifacts to carve out a hybrid cultural space that gives voice to their urban realities and articulates counterhegemonic black subjectivities. From the early 2000s, at the same time as state-centered discourses of ‘Cool Japan’ emerged to explain the global rise of Japanese pop culture, grime artists were already on their own terms sampling Japanese video games and anime to articulate emergent feelings of ‘coldness’, which reflects their sense of alienation on the margins of British society. The author introduces ‘Cold Japan’ as the other Cool Japan, and a way of understanding this fundamentally intertwined mode of cultural hybridity and being that forms the essence of black Britain’s grime. This article uses the cyborg figure to disclose how grime artists transform Cold Japan into a site of countercultural resistance to subvert their oppression by self-generating and embodying transgressive posthuman identities. Examining how selected ‘cold’ Japanese pop cultural elements and technologies entangle with urban black life and identity formation in 21st century Britain, the article contributes to discussions on the impact of transnational flows of Japanese pop culture and cultural hybridization.
{"title":"From Cool Japan to Cold Japan: grime cyborgs in Black Britain","authors":"Warren A. Stanislaus","doi":"10.1080/09555803.2022.2033300","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09555803.2022.2033300","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article examines the overlooked phenomenon of how black British grime music artists intentionally and selectively remix Japanese pop cultural artifacts to carve out a hybrid cultural space that gives voice to their urban realities and articulates counterhegemonic black subjectivities. From the early 2000s, at the same time as state-centered discourses of ‘Cool Japan’ emerged to explain the global rise of Japanese pop culture, grime artists were already on their own terms sampling Japanese video games and anime to articulate emergent feelings of ‘coldness’, which reflects their sense of alienation on the margins of British society. The author introduces ‘Cold Japan’ as the other Cool Japan, and a way of understanding this fundamentally intertwined mode of cultural hybridity and being that forms the essence of black Britain’s grime. This article uses the cyborg figure to disclose how grime artists transform Cold Japan into a site of countercultural resistance to subvert their oppression by self-generating and embodying transgressive posthuman identities. Examining how selected ‘cold’ Japanese pop cultural elements and technologies entangle with urban black life and identity formation in 21st century Britain, the article contributes to discussions on the impact of transnational flows of Japanese pop culture and cultural hybridization.","PeriodicalId":44495,"journal":{"name":"Japan Forum","volume":"35 1","pages":"271 - 294"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-02-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42104191","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 : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2020.1718180
Sachiko Kawai
Abstract This paper argues that commodities such as blinds, flooring materials, and food supplies are valuable historical sources for understanding the power of Heian and Kamakura royal women. Vases and bowls excavated from the Noto Peninsula, for example, show that Premier Royal Lady Kōkamon-in (1122–1181) played an important role during the twelfth century in starting Suzu stoneware production at her Wakayama Estate and stimulated interregional commerce. From this growing industry, she gained economic benefits and strengthened her political networks. Another contemporary female landlord, Senyōmon-in (1181–1252), implemented a due-collection plan for obtaining material objects that maintained the livelihood of her palace. Mundane items including household furnishing articles supported her economic well being while buttressing her political and cultural influence over the course of her life. By collecting various items from her estates, such as blinds, curtains, and mats, she supported her adopted children and widened her human networks. With the effective use of such material goods, she could seek political allies and align with leading courtiers who participated in decision-making meetings at court. As a whole, the above case studies show that series of innocuous data such as excavated ceramic pieces and recorded object types can be used to reveal a level of significant cultural, political, and religious influence.
{"title":"Empowering through the mundane: royal women’s households in twelfth and thirteenth century Japan","authors":"Sachiko Kawai","doi":"10.1080/09555803.2020.1718180","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09555803.2020.1718180","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper argues that commodities such as blinds, flooring materials, and food supplies are valuable historical sources for understanding the power of Heian and Kamakura royal women. Vases and bowls excavated from the Noto Peninsula, for example, show that Premier Royal Lady Kōkamon-in (1122–1181) played an important role during the twelfth century in starting Suzu stoneware production at her Wakayama Estate and stimulated interregional commerce. From this growing industry, she gained economic benefits and strengthened her political networks. Another contemporary female landlord, Senyōmon-in (1181–1252), implemented a due-collection plan for obtaining material objects that maintained the livelihood of her palace. Mundane items including household furnishing articles supported her economic well being while buttressing her political and cultural influence over the course of her life. By collecting various items from her estates, such as blinds, curtains, and mats, she supported her adopted children and widened her human networks. With the effective use of such material goods, she could seek political allies and align with leading courtiers who participated in decision-making meetings at court. As a whole, the above case studies show that series of innocuous data such as excavated ceramic pieces and recorded object types can be used to reveal a level of significant cultural, political, and religious influence.","PeriodicalId":44495,"journal":{"name":"Japan Forum","volume":"34 1","pages":"1 - 24"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42204754","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 : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2022.2046131
Tine Walravens, P. O'Shea, Nicolai Ahrenkiel
Abstract The Fukushima nuclear disaster posed food safety risks on an unprecedented scale in Japan. In its immediate aftermath, information on the scale and the extent of the contamination of the food chain was scarce. Facing an anxious public, the government was tasked with defining and ensuring food safety amidst uncertainty. Via three case studies spanning from 2011 to 2020, this article draws on risk communication theory to analyze the Japanese government’s response to food safety risks after Fukushima and its development over time. It finds that initial responses did not take the food-related risks facing consumers seriously. Instead, the response was aimed at mitigating the economic risks faced by producers. This increased both public confusion and uncertainty, and consumer avoidance. Over time, the government’s response has improved, and elements of the policy have shifted towards more inclusive and interactive practices. Still, the article finds that ten years after Fukushima, the governmental risk communication is primarily aimed at correcting and dismissing consumer concerns while expressing certain fatigue with ongoing consumer avoidance. The article shows how the goal of risk communication changes from reassuring to correcting, and finally to closure. While the risk communication’s main message remains consistent and simple – local produce is safe, eat local produce -, its target audience also differs. The article demonstrates that on top of ongoing shortcomings in terms of participation, the actual content of the government’s risk communication also fails to assist in informed decision-making. Instead, the government makes the decision for the citizen.
{"title":"‘Let's eat Fukushima’: communicating risk and restoring ‘safe food’ after the Fukushima disaster (2011-2020)","authors":"Tine Walravens, P. O'Shea, Nicolai Ahrenkiel","doi":"10.1080/09555803.2022.2046131","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09555803.2022.2046131","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The Fukushima nuclear disaster posed food safety risks on an unprecedented scale in Japan. In its immediate aftermath, information on the scale and the extent of the contamination of the food chain was scarce. Facing an anxious public, the government was tasked with defining and ensuring food safety amidst uncertainty. Via three case studies spanning from 2011 to 2020, this article draws on risk communication theory to analyze the Japanese government’s response to food safety risks after Fukushima and its development over time. It finds that initial responses did not take the food-related risks facing consumers seriously. Instead, the response was aimed at mitigating the economic risks faced by producers. This increased both public confusion and uncertainty, and consumer avoidance. Over time, the government’s response has improved, and elements of the policy have shifted towards more inclusive and interactive practices. Still, the article finds that ten years after Fukushima, the governmental risk communication is primarily aimed at correcting and dismissing consumer concerns while expressing certain fatigue with ongoing consumer avoidance. The article shows how the goal of risk communication changes from reassuring to correcting, and finally to closure. While the risk communication’s main message remains consistent and simple – local produce is safe, eat local produce -, its target audience also differs. The article demonstrates that on top of ongoing shortcomings in terms of participation, the actual content of the government’s risk communication also fails to assist in informed decision-making. Instead, the government makes the decision for the citizen.","PeriodicalId":44495,"journal":{"name":"Japan Forum","volume":"34 1","pages":"79 - 102"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42262619","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 : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2022.2043929
C. Schieder
In Mobilizing Japanese Youth, Christopher Gerteis examines how various leaders in Japan sought to connect with and influence the generation growing up in the immediate postwar, a process he dubs ‘the making of the Sixties generation.’ Gerteis’ analysis focuses on non-state institutions that he identifies as representing the political ‘Far Left’ and ‘Far Right’ and concludes that their efforts to mobilize youth generally faltered, in no small part because of their inability to adjust to new class and gendered realities. The five chapters of the book focus on the poster campaigns of S ohy o (Nihon R od o Kumiai S ohy ogikai; General Council of Trade Unions), the rise and fall of the Japan Red Army, NHK public opinion surveys, and the postwar activities of interwar-era rightists Kodama Yoshio and Sasakawa Ry oichi. As this range of organizations suggests, the discussion is far-ranging and Gerteis includes diverse sources as well: from activist magazines to punk music lyrics and manga, which give a sense of the wide array of media in which generational identity and mission was defined and expressed. Perhaps the most important question addressed in this book is that of how the interwar and wartime generation defined the postwar generation. In Chapter One, on S ohy o’s failure to connect with a younger generation of blue-collar and pink-collar workers, as in Chapter Four, on shady right-wing Kodama Yoshio’s inability to recruit from either b os ozoku biker gangs or younger Far Right activists, we get a sense of how the ‘Sixties generation’ was forged relationally with members of an older generation, whom they often rejected, even as their general ideological concerns would seem to align. For example, Kodama had been recruited into Far-Right politics ‘from the ranks of the interwar-era lumpenproletariat,’ but he found that the postwar b os ozoku he attempted to engage was not ‘rebels looking for a cause.’ Similarly, right-leaning youth were disgusted by how the transwar generation on the Far Right, including Kodama, had cooperated with the Americans to maintain personal influence in the postwar period (116–117). The Chapter Two discussion of young leftist radicals, and the splits among them, likewise offers a sense of how some youth interpreted their relation to society and the older generation. Gerteis focuses on the Japan Red Army, the punk band Z uno Keisatsu, and postwar blue-collar activist Wakamiya Masanori’s trajectory from New Left radical to proprietor of a noodle shop that also functioned as a kind of ‘salon’ for day laborers and students, all of them critical of ‘the New and
{"title":"Mobilizing Japanese Youth: The Cold War and the Making of the Sixties Generation","authors":"C. Schieder","doi":"10.1080/09555803.2022.2043929","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09555803.2022.2043929","url":null,"abstract":"In Mobilizing Japanese Youth, Christopher Gerteis examines how various leaders in Japan sought to connect with and influence the generation growing up in the immediate postwar, a process he dubs ‘the making of the Sixties generation.’ Gerteis’ analysis focuses on non-state institutions that he identifies as representing the political ‘Far Left’ and ‘Far Right’ and concludes that their efforts to mobilize youth generally faltered, in no small part because of their inability to adjust to new class and gendered realities. The five chapters of the book focus on the poster campaigns of S ohy o (Nihon R od o Kumiai S ohy ogikai; General Council of Trade Unions), the rise and fall of the Japan Red Army, NHK public opinion surveys, and the postwar activities of interwar-era rightists Kodama Yoshio and Sasakawa Ry oichi. As this range of organizations suggests, the discussion is far-ranging and Gerteis includes diverse sources as well: from activist magazines to punk music lyrics and manga, which give a sense of the wide array of media in which generational identity and mission was defined and expressed. Perhaps the most important question addressed in this book is that of how the interwar and wartime generation defined the postwar generation. In Chapter One, on S ohy o’s failure to connect with a younger generation of blue-collar and pink-collar workers, as in Chapter Four, on shady right-wing Kodama Yoshio’s inability to recruit from either b os ozoku biker gangs or younger Far Right activists, we get a sense of how the ‘Sixties generation’ was forged relationally with members of an older generation, whom they often rejected, even as their general ideological concerns would seem to align. For example, Kodama had been recruited into Far-Right politics ‘from the ranks of the interwar-era lumpenproletariat,’ but he found that the postwar b os ozoku he attempted to engage was not ‘rebels looking for a cause.’ Similarly, right-leaning youth were disgusted by how the transwar generation on the Far Right, including Kodama, had cooperated with the Americans to maintain personal influence in the postwar period (116–117). The Chapter Two discussion of young leftist radicals, and the splits among them, likewise offers a sense of how some youth interpreted their relation to society and the older generation. Gerteis focuses on the Japan Red Army, the punk band Z uno Keisatsu, and postwar blue-collar activist Wakamiya Masanori’s trajectory from New Left radical to proprietor of a noodle shop that also functioned as a kind of ‘salon’ for day laborers and students, all of them critical of ‘the New and","PeriodicalId":44495,"journal":{"name":"Japan Forum","volume":"34 1","pages":"128 - 130"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48491676","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 : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2022.2041704
J. W. Treat
Abstract Legally, administratively and socially, citizenship adapts to the challenges of not only shifting geopolitics but to new infectious diseases that do not readily submit to the rule of nation-states. This essay looks at citizenship in Japan among other countries against the backdrop of the ongoing HIV/AIDS pandemic and the newer COVID-19, from the abject figure of the stigmatized homosexual in the former to quarantined foreigners aboard the cruise ship Diamond Princess in the latter. I conclude with the role of passports in Japanese writers, such as Tawada Yōko (1960-), who do not so much remap citizenship as question its utility.
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