Routledge Contemporary Japan Series – serie
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248 produkter
248 produkter
2 124 kr
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Examining a wide range of Japanese videogames, including arcade fighting games, PC-based strategy games and console JRPGs, this book assesses their cultural significance and shows how gameplay and context can be analyzed together to understand videogames as a dynamic mode of artistic expression.Well-known titles such as Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid, Street Fighter and Katamari Damacy are evaluated in detail, showing how ideology and critique are conveyed through game narrative and character design as well as user interface, cabinet art, and peripherals. This book also considers how ‘Japan’ has been packaged for domestic and overseas consumers, and how Japanese designers have used the medium to express ideas about home and nation, nuclear energy, war and historical memory, social breakdown and bioethics. Placing each title in its historical context, Hutchinson ultimately shows that videogames are a relatively recent but significant site where cultural identity is played out in modern Japan.Comparing Japanese videogames with their American counterparts, as well as other media forms, such as film, manga and anime, Japanese Culture Through Videogames will be useful to students and scholars of Japanese culture and society, as well as Game Studies, Media Studies and Japanese Studies more generally.
676 kr
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This book is about why and how central and local governments clash over important national policy decisions. Its empirical focus is on the local politics of Japan which has significantly shaped, and been shaped by, larger developments in national politics. The book argues that since the 1990s, changes in the national political arena, fiscal and administrative decentralization, as well as broader socio-economic developments have led to a decoupling of once closely integrated national and local party systems in Japan. Such decoupling has led to a breakdown of symbiotic relations between the centre and regions. In its place are increasing strains between national and local governments leading to greater intra-party conflict, inter-governmental conflicts, and more chief executives with agendas and resources increasingly autonomous of the national ruling party.Although being a book primarily focused on the Japanese case, the study seeks to contribute to a broader understanding of how local partisans shape national policy-making. The book theorizes and investigates how the degree of state centralization, vertical integration for party organizations, and partisan congruence in different levels of government affect inter-governmental relations.Japan’s experience is compared with Germany, Canada, and the UK to explore sources of multi-level policy conflict.
778 kr
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Japanese literature and film have frequently been approached using lenses such as language, genre and ideology. Yet, despite a succession of major social traumas that have marked, and in many ways shaped and defined much of modern Japan, Japanese fiction and cinema have not often been examined psychoanalytically.In this book, David Stahl conducts in-depth readings and interpretations of a set of Japanese novels and film. By introducing the methodology of trauma/PTSD studies, Stahl seeks to provide a better understanding of the insights of Japanese writers and directors into their societies, cultures and histories. In particular, by building on the work of practitioner-theoreticians, such as Pierre Janet and Judith Herman, Stahl analyses a number of key texts, including Kawabata Yasunari’s Sleeping Beauties (1961), Enchi Fumiko’s Female Masks (1958) and Imamura Sho- hei’s Vengeance is Mine (1979). Consequently, through using concepts of social trauma, dissociation, failed mourning, revenge and narrative memory, this book sheds new light on the psychological aftereffects and transgenerational legacies of trauma depicted in Japanese works.Trauma, Dissociation and Re-enactment in Japanese Literature and Film will be of interest to students and scholars of Japanese Literature and Cinema, as well as those interested in Japanese History and Trauma Studies.
2 258 kr
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After Japan's defeat in August 1945, some Japanese children were abandoned in China and raised by Chinese foster parents. They were unable to return to Japan even during the mass repatriation carried out by the Japanese government in the 1950s. Most of them returned to Japan in the 1980s. They are called Japanese war orphans. They are victims of the Sino-Japanese War and have been exploited and abandoned by the Japanese government. They are also "border people" who have lived in the interstices between two nations, China and Japan, and are migrants who have exploited the gap in economic development between Japan and China to seek individual happiness.Modern East Asia underwent drastic social change. These drastic social changes affected the lives of the Japanese war orphans and their families in a variety of ways. Over the years, Zhong has interviewed Japanese war orphans, their Chinese foster parents, and Japanese volunteers. The title is an interview-based sociological study of the issue of Japanese war orphans. The first half of the Japanese war orphans' lives were spent in China, and the latter half in Japan. It brings to the fore the dramatic personal histories of the Japanese war orphans surviving in the interstices between two nation-states. Through analyzing the issue of Japanese war orphans, the research on the subject makes the following three points: (1) the powerlessness of civilians caught up in modern warfare and the long-lasting effects of modern warfare on the life histories of individuals and their families; (2) the nature of the modern nation-state, which exploits and abandons its citizens as though they were expendable; and (3) immigration as a product of modernization gaps.Scholars pursuing studies in both Japanese society & Chinese society and historians of the Sino-Japanese war would find this an ideal read.
668 kr
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Japanese Studies has provided a fertile space for non-Eurocentric analysis for a number of reasons. It has been embroiled in the long-running internal debate over the so-called Nihonjinron, revolving around the extent to which the effective interpretation of Japanese society and culture requires non-Western, Japan-specific emic concepts and theories. This book takes this question further and explores how we can understand Japanese society and culture by combining Euro-American concepts and theories with those that originate in Japan. Because Japan is the only liberal democracy to have achieved a high level of capitalism outside the Western cultural framework, Japanese Studies has long provided a forum for deliberations about the extent to which the Western conception of modernity is universally applicable. Furthermore, because of Japan’s military, economic and cultural dominance in Asia at different points in the last century, Japanese Studies has had to deal with the issues of Japanocentrism as well as Eurocentrism, a duality requiring complex and nuanced analysis.This book identifies variations amongst Japanese Studies academic communities in the Asia-Pacific and examines the extent to which relatively autonomous scholarship, intellectual approach or theories exist in the region. It also evaluates how studies on Japan in the region contribute to global Japanese Studies and explores their potential for formulating concrete strategies to unsettle Eurocentric dominance of the discipline.
Japan's Quest for Stability in Southeast Asia
Navigating the Turning Points in Postwar Asia
Häftad, Engelska, 2019
668 kr
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More than any other region in the world, Asia has witnessed tremendous change in the post-war era. A continent once engulfed by independence and revolution, and later by the Cold War and civil war, has now been transformed into the world’s most economically dynamic region. What caused this change in Asia? The key to answering this question lies in the post-war history of maritime Asia and, in particular, the path taken by the maritime nation of Japan. Analysing the importance of Japan’s relationship with Southeast Asia, this book therefore aims to illustrate the hidden trail left by Japan during the period of upheaval that has shaped Asia today—an era marked by the American Cold War strategy, the dissolution of the British Empire in Asia, and the rise of China. It provides a comprehensive account of post-war maritime Asia, making use of internationally sourced primary materials, as well as declassified Japanese government papers. As such, Japan's Quest for Stability in Southeast Asia will be useful to students and scholars of Japanese Politics, Asian Politics and Asian History.
2 124 kr
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A comprehensive analysis of the various terrestrial natural landscapes and habitats within Japan, and the efforts to sustain and conserve them and sustain landscape services.In 2011, Conservation International designated the Japanese islands collectively as one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots. They are rich in biodiversity, but also densely populated and so human impacts have led to many species being classed as endangered though few have become extinct during recent decades. Sugimura evaluates the effects of landscape changes, government policies and economy on the forest ecosystems and services of Japan. He then contemplates how a rich variety of wildlife species have been able to survive, albeit in limited numbers, despite the rapid expansion of Japanese economic activities in the 20th century. In addition, there appear to be correlations between uniqueness of biodiversity, types of landscape use and the attitudes of local communities towards natural landscapes.A vital introduction for international environmentalists, geographers and environmental scientists looking to understand Japan’s unique ecosystems and their experiences with human activities.
2 188 kr
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Drawing 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.
Locating Heisei in Japanese Fiction and Film
The Historical Imagination of the Lost Decades
Inbunden, Engelska, 2019
2 124 kr
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This book provides the first interdisciplinary examination of the popular fiction and film of the “lost decades” of Japan’s Heisei period (1989–2019).Presenting original analysis of major Heisei writers, filmmakers, and manga artists, the chapters examine the work of Urasawa Naoki, Kurosawa Kiyoshi, Murakami Haruki, and Shinkai Makoto, among others. Through the work of these cultural figures, the book also explores the struggle to define the history of Heisei—three decades of economic stagnation, social malaise, and natural disaster. In particular, it explores the dissonance between the dominant history of Japan’s recent past and the representation of this past in the popular imagination of the period. In so doing, this book argues that traumatic events from the years leading up to Heisei complicate the narration of a cohesive sense of history for the period, requiring works of fiction and film to explore new connections to the past.Incorporating literary and film theory to assess the works of culture, Locating Heisei in Japanese Fiction and Film will be useful to students and scholars of Japanese culture, society, and history.
Social Change in Japan, 1989-2019
Social Status, Social Consciousness, Attitudes and Values
Inbunden, Engelska, 2020
2 124 kr
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Based on extensive survey data, this book examines how the population of Japan has experienced and processed three decades of rapid social change from the highly egalitarian high growth economy of the 1980s to the economically stagnating and demographically shrinking gap society of the 2010s. It discusses social attitudes and values towards, for example, work, gender roles, family, welfare and politics, highlighting certain subgroups which have been particularly affected by societal changes. It explores social consciousness and concludes that although many Japanese people identify as middle class, their reasons for doing so have changed over time, with the result that the optimistic view prevailing in the 1980s, confident of upward mobility, has been replaced by people having a much more realistic view of their social status.
2 124 kr
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Over the last 70 years, Japanese Studies scholarship has gone through several dominant paradigms, from ‘demystifying the Japanese’, to analysis of Japanese economic strength, to discussion of global interest in Japanese popular culture. This book assesses this literature, considering future directions for research into the 2020s and beyond.Shifting the geographical emphasis of Japanese Studies away from the West to the Asia-Pacific region, this book identifies topic areas in which research focusing on Japan will play an important role in global debates in the coming years. This includes the evolution of area studies, coping with aging populations, the various patterns of migration and environmental breakdown. With chapters from an international team of contributors, including significant representation from the Asia-Pacific region, this book enacts Yoshio Sugimoto’s notion of ‘cosmopolitan methodology’ to discuss Japan in an interdisciplinary and transnational context and provides overviews of how Japanese Studies is evolving in other Asian countries such as China and Indonesia.New Frontiers in Japanese Studiesis a thought-provoking volume and will be of great interest to students and scholars of Japanese and Asian Studies.The Introduction and Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
622 kr
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The Japanese koseki system is the legal and social structure keeping record of all Japanese citizens. Determined by the Civil Code and the Koseki Law, for activists challenging it, the koseki is also an ideological structure, which has produced patriarchal control through single-surname households.Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Tokyo, this book engages with issues of gender hierarchy and structural inequality in Japanese society. Studying several decades of feminist activism and critique of the koseki system, it analyses the strategies of activists who have creatively circumvented koseki rules in order to maintain their natal names in marriage. It examines the case studies of members of the fūfubessei (separate surname movement) and the movement to end discrimination against children born out of wedlock, and in so doing this book illuminates the contradictions in current family law and koseki practice that have animated a generation of feminists in Japan.Demonstrating the effect of the koeski on family, gender, and national identity, this book will be useful for students and scholars of Cultural Anthropology, Gender Studies, and Japanese Studies in general.
Avant-Garde Art and Non-Dominant Thought in Postwar Japan
Image, Matter, Separation
Inbunden, Engelska, 2020
2 188 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
This book offers a reassessment of how "matter" – in the context of art history, criticism, and architecture – pursued a radical definition of "multiplicity", against the dominant and hierarchical tendencies underwriting post-fascist Japan. Through theoretical analysis of works by artists and critics such as Okamoto Taro, Hanada Kiyoteru, Kawara On, Isozaki Arata, Kawaguchi Tatsuo, and Nakahira Takuma, this highly illustrated text identifies formal oppositions frequently evoked in the Japanese avant-garde, between cognition and image, self and other, human and thing, and one and many, in mediums ranging from painting and photography, to sculpture and architecture. In addition to an "aesthetics of separation" which refuses the integrationist implications of the human, the author proposes the "anthropofugal" – meaning fleeing the human – as an original concept through which to understand matter in the epistemic universe of the postwar Japanese avant-garde. Chapters in this publication offer critical insights into how artists and critics grounded their work in active disengagement, to advance an ethics of nondominance.Avant-Garde Art and Nondominant Thought in Postwar Japan will appeal to students and scholars of Japanese studies, art history, and visual cultures more widely.
651 kr
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“I regard Higuchi’s book as particularly valuable because it highlights dimensions of somaesthetics that have not been sufficiently explored. I refer not only to the various traditional Japanese somatic disciplines whose somaesthetics aspects Higuchi reveals, but also to central topics far beyond Japanese culture.”-Foreword by Richard ShustermanHiguchi, one of the pivotal scholars in introducing Shusterman’s somaesthetics to Japanese audiences in the early 2000s, provides insight into how this philosophy has developed in Japan, and the affinity it has developed with a non-Western culture. Dividing his insights into the categories of innovation, practice, and educational implications, Higuchi presents the Japanese perspective on somaesthetics, with contributions from four of his students. They develop the philosophical discussion of areas such as the aesthetics of sport, bodily knowing, learning as mimesis, and learning culture through language. In this way, the book illuminates the philosophy of somaesthetics using Japanese experience and research while presenting a unique perspective on Japanese culture. This book will be of especial interest to scholars of Japanese culture, and of the philosophy of aesthetics and education.
626 kr
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Japan is not only the oldest society in the world today, but also the oldest society to have ever existed. This aging trend, however, presents many challenges to contemporary Japan, as it permeates all areas of life, from the economy and welfare to social cohesion and population decline. Nobody is more affected by these changes than the young generation. This book studies Japanese youth in the aging society in detail. It analyses formative events and cultural reactions. Themes include employment, parenthood, sexuality, but also art, literature and language, thus demonstrating how the younger generation can provide insights into the future of Japanese society more generally. This book argues that the prolonged crisis resulted in a commonly shared destabilization of thoughts and attitudes and that this has shaped a new generation that is unlike any other in post-war Japan.Presenting an inter-disciplinary approach to the study of the aging trend and what it implies for young Japanese, this book will be useful to students and scholars of Japanese culture and society, as well cultural anthropology and demography.
640 kr
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The first-ever attempt to paint a full-scale portrait of the Japanese Occupation of Southeast Asia during the Asia-Pacific War (1942–5). This book draws on the huge body of available narrative—military documents, bureaucratic records and personal accounts of combatants and civilians, including diaries, memoirs and collected correspondence—most of which have previously been either unknown or unavailable to non-Japanese readers. It examines how the Japanese imperial adventure in Southeast Asia sped up the collapse of the Japanese Empire as a whole, not only through its ultimate military defeat in the region, but also due to its failure as an occupier from the very beginning.Nakano explains the significance of the Japanese Occupation of Southeast Asia as a learning experience for the occupiers, whether soldiers on the frontlines or civilians on the home front. He uses a synthesis, overlay and juxtaposition of a selection of these narratives, to reassemble the narrative as a whole. This brings into focus the outlook of those Japanese who set out for Southeast Asia with the purpose to urge the region’s occupied people to collaborate with Japan to transform the region into an integral part of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Many would eventually discover that what required change was Japan and its whole approach to colonial rule, as was realized so quickly in the postwar era. The original Japanese version was published as Tonan Ajia senryo to Nihonjin: Teikoku Nihon no kaitai [The occupation of Southeast Asia and the Japanese: The dismantling of the Japanese Empire]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2012. ISBN: 430922542X.
622 kr
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While Japanese pacifism is usually seen as a national policy or an ideology rooted in the provision of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, it cannot be adequately understood without grasping Japanese social discourses on peace, war and justice. The perspective of political sociology provides a more in-depth understanding of Japanese pacifism and helps us to find the reasons for the critical changes that have occurred in Japan’s policies since the mid-2000s. These changes include sending its self-defense force to Iraq and Afghanistan outside UN missions and the enactment of new security legislation in 2015. Nishikawa explores Japanese pacifism in a changing domestic and regional context, from the perspective of political sociology. Getting to grips with the social bases of politics, she examines whether Japan is likely to remain a pacifist country or retain its pacifist image in changing regional and global context. This book comprehensively examines Japanese pacifism by fully examining the social forces in action. Employing a multidisciplinary approach, the book contributes to theoretical debates on political sociology as well as Japanese and Asian studies. Japan is in an important transitional period and Japanese pacifism is being brought into question in changing national and international contexts.
2 124 kr
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Why are there so few Japanese women involved in the political system? In 2019, Japanese women made up 10% of the national Lower House, 21% of the Upper House, and 14% of local assemblies. According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, this places Japan 164th out of 193 countries when it comes to women’s representation in the legislature. The percentage of women in the Lower House has only increased by fewer than two percentage points since women gained full suffrage and the right to stand for election in Japan in 1946. Eto analyses the various factors that have led to women’s low presence in the Japanese legislature. She evaluates ways in which it might be possible for Japan to catch up and, in doing so, examines how Japanese society continues to perpetuate gender-rigid expectations of people. This text is a valuable study for scholars of Japanese politics and society, and for readers with an interest in the broader issue of the representation of women in politics.
622 kr
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Why are there so few Japanese women involved in the political system? In 2019, Japanese women made up 10% of the national Lower House, 21% of the Upper House, and 14% of local assemblies. According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, this places Japan 164th out of 193 countries when it comes to women’s representation in the legislature. The percentage of women in the Lower House has only increased by fewer than two percentage points since women gained full suffrage and the right to stand for election in Japan in 1946. Eto analyses the various factors that have led to women’s low presence in the Japanese legislature. She evaluates ways in which it might be possible for Japan to catch up and, in doing so, examines how Japanese society continues to perpetuate gender-rigid expectations of people. This text is a valuable study for scholars of Japanese politics and society, and for readers with an interest in the broader issue of the representation of women in politics.
Challenging Nuclear Pacifism in Japan
Hiroshima's Anti-nuclear Social Movements
Inbunden, Engelska, 2023
1 988 kr
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Is Japan abandoning its pacifism? The Japanese government has claimed it is doubling its defense spending and has announced a plan to equip itself with the capability to “counterattack” enemy bases overseas, a departure from the nation’s postwar consensus. Shedding new light on Japan’s pacifism and Hiroshima’s role in it, Yuasa investigates the events of postwar Japan and how it catalyzed a range of challenges to public sentiment. Japan’s Constitution stipulates the renunciation of war and forbids using force to settle international disputes. This radical shift has been led by Fumio Kishida, the prime minister, whose constituency is Hiroshima, the atomic-bombed city symbolizing Japan’s postwar pacifism. This book is about Hiroshima’s local nuclear politics and popular consciousness about pacifism. Based on published and unpublished local documents and participant observation, it describes how postwar global and national power has formulated local politics and discusses the impact of local struggles on national and global politics. The key concept is “imaginary”. Institutionalized imaginary effectively channels people’s suppressed desires and emotions into coordinated action in the society. The current political crossroad of Hiroshima and Japan is interpreted as a terrain constructed over the last half century by three paradoxically coexisting and competing pacifist imaginaries, namely constitutional, anti-nuclear, and nuclear pacifism. They were, however, significantly destabilized by the Fukushima nuclear disaster and a newly invented “proactive pacifism”. This book is an essential reading for scholars and students interested in Japanese postwar history and nuclear issues in general.
Challenging Nuclear Pacifism in Japan
Hiroshima's Anti-nuclear Social Movements
Häftad, Engelska, 2025
581 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
Is Japan abandoning its pacifism? The Japanese government has claimed it is doubling its defense spending and has announced a plan to equip itself with the capability to “counterattack” enemy bases overseas, a departure from the nation’s postwar consensus. Shedding new light on Japan’s pacifism and Hiroshima’s role in it, Yuasa investigates the events of postwar Japan and how it catalyzed a range of challenges to public sentiment. Japan’s Constitution stipulates the renunciation of war and forbids using force to settle international disputes. This radical shift has been led by Fumio Kishida, the prime minister, whose constituency is Hiroshima, the atomic-bombed city symbolizing Japan’s postwar pacifism. This book is about Hiroshima’s local nuclear politics and popular consciousness about pacifism. Based on published and unpublished local documents and participant observation, it describes how postwar global and national power has formulated local politics and discusses the impact of local struggles on national and global politics. The key concept is “imaginary”. Institutionalized imaginary effectively channels people’s suppressed desires and emotions into coordinated action in the society. The current political crossroad of Hiroshima and Japan is interpreted as a terrain constructed over the last half century by three paradoxically coexisting and competing pacifist imaginaries, namely constitutional, anti-nuclear, and nuclear pacifism. They were, however, significantly destabilized by the Fukushima nuclear disaster and a newly invented “proactive pacifism”. This book is an essential reading for scholars and students interested in Japanese postwar history and nuclear issues in general.
Japan’s Nationalist Right in the Internet Age
Online Media and Grassroots Conservative Activism
Inbunden, Engelska, 2021
2 124 kr
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Japan’s nationalist right have used the internet to organize offline activism in increasingly visible ways.Hall investigates the role of internet-mediated activism in Japan’s ongoing historical and territorial disputes. He explores the emergence of two right-wing activist organizations, Nihon Bunka Channel Sakura and Ganbare Nippon, which have played a significant role in pressure campaigns against Japanese media outlets, campaigns to influence historical memorials, and campaigns to assert Japan’s territorial claim to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. Taking a multi-disciplinary approach, he analyses how activists maintained cohesion, raised funds, held protests that regularly drew hundreds to thousands of participants, and used fishing boats to land activists on disputed islands. Detailing events that took place between 2004 and 2020, he demonstrates how skilled social actors built cohesive grassroots protest organizations through the creation of shared meaning for their organization and its supporters.A valuable read both for scholars seeking insight into the dynamics surrounding Japan’s history disputes and territorial issues, as well as those seeking to compare Japanese right-wing internet activism with its counterparts elsewhere.
Japan’s Nationalist Right in the Internet Age
Online Media and Grassroots Conservative Activism
Häftad, Engelska, 2023
622 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
Japan’s nationalist right have used the internet to organize offline activism in increasingly visible ways.Hall investigates the role of internet-mediated activism in Japan’s ongoing historical and territorial disputes. He explores the emergence of two right-wing activist organizations, Nihon Bunka Channel Sakura and Ganbare Nippon, which have played a significant role in pressure campaigns against Japanese media outlets, campaigns to influence historical memorials, and campaigns to assert Japan’s territorial claim to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. Taking a multi-disciplinary approach, he analyses how activists maintained cohesion, raised funds, held protests that regularly drew hundreds to thousands of participants, and used fishing boats to land activists on disputed islands. Detailing events that took place between 2004 and 2020, he demonstrates how skilled social actors built cohesive grassroots protest organizations through the creation of shared meaning for their organization and its supporters.A valuable read both for scholars seeking insight into the dynamics surrounding Japan’s history disputes and territorial issues, as well as those seeking to compare Japanese right-wing internet activism with its counterparts elsewhere.
Social Change in Japan, 1989-2019
Social Status, Social Consciousness, Attitudes and Values
Häftad, Engelska, 2022
622 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
Based on extensive survey data, this book examines how the population of Japan has experienced and processed three decades of rapid social change from the highly egalitarian high growth economy of the 1980s to the economically stagnating and demographically shrinking gap society of the 2010s. It discusses social attitudes and values towards, for example, work, gender roles, family, welfare and politics, highlighting certain subgroups which have been particularly affected by societal changes. It explores social consciousness and concludes that although many Japanese people identify as middle class, their reasons for doing so have changed over time, with the result that the optimistic view prevailing in the 1980s, confident of upward mobility, has been replaced by people having a much more realistic view of their social status.
Animism in Contemporary Japan
Voices for the Anthropocene from post-Fukushima Japan
Häftad, Engelska, 2020
649 kr
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‘Postmodern animism’ first emerged in grassroots Japan in the aftermath of mercury poisoning in Minamata and the nuclear meltdown in Fukushima. Fusing critiques of modernity with intangible cultural heritages, it represents a philosophy of the life-world, where nature is a manifestation of a dynamic life force where all life is interconnected. This new animism, it is argued, could inspire a fundamental rethink of the human-nature relationship. The book explores this notion of animism through the lens of four prominent figures in Japan: animation film director Miyazaki Hayao, sociologist Tsurumi Kazuko, writer Ishimure Michiko, and Minamata fisherman-philosopher Ogata Masato. Taking a biographical approach, it illustrates how these individuals moved towards the conclusion that animism can help humanity survive modernity. It contributes to the Anthropocene discourse from a transcultural and transdisciplinary perspective, thus addressing themes of nature and spirituality, whilst also engaging with arguments from mainstream social sciences. Presenting a new perspective for a post-anthropocentric paradigm, Animism in Contemporary Japan will be useful to students and scholars of sociology, anthropology, philosophy and Japanese Studies.
725 kr
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Presenting the voices of a unique group within contemporary Japanese society—Zainichi women—this book provides a fresh insight into their experiences of oppression and marginalization that over time have led to liberation and empowerment. Often viewed as unimportant and inconsequential, these women’s stories and activism are now proving to be an integral part of both the Zainichi Korean community and Japanese society.Featuring in-depth interviews from 1994 to the present, three generations of Zainichi Korean women—those who migrated from colonial Korea before or during WWII and the Asia-Pacific War and their Japan-born descendants—share their version of history, revealing their lives as members of an ethnic minority. Discovering voices within constricting patriarchal traditions, the women in this book are now able to tell their history. Ethnography, interviews, and the women’s personal and creative writings offer an in-depth look into their intergenerational dynamics and provide a new way of exploring the hidden inner world of migrant women and the different ways displacement affects subsequent generations.This book goes beyond existing Anglophone and Japanese literatures, to explore the lives of the Zainichi Korean women. As such, it will be invaluable to students and scholars of Japanese and Korean history, culture and society, as well as ethnicity and Women’s Studies.
644 kr
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This book provides an historical overview of the Japanese Communist Party from its foundation to the present. It outlines the development of the party, explores its stance on key issues and discusses how the party has set a high moral tone, avoiding compromising coalitions with other parties, being intolerant of corruption within its own ranks, and frequently and consistently opposing the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. The book also considers the internal nature of the party, which continues to have a mass membership, and which in recent years has softened its former somewhat rigid approach. The book emphasizes the importance for Japan of this moral approach as the conscience of the nation, especially as the present Abe government moves Japan to the right, even though the Japanese Communist Party has never gained power and is never likely to.
Avant-Garde Art and Non-Dominant Thought in Postwar Japan
Image, Matter, Separation
Häftad, Engelska, 2022
640 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
This book offers a reassessment of how "matter" – in the context of art history, criticism, and architecture – pursued a radical definition of "multiplicity", against the dominant and hierarchical tendencies underwriting post-fascist Japan. Through theoretical analysis of works by artists and critics such as Okamoto Taro, Hanada Kiyoteru, Kawara On, Isozaki Arata, Kawaguchi Tatsuo, and Nakahira Takuma, this highly illustrated text identifies formal oppositions frequently evoked in the Japanese avant-garde, between cognition and image, self and other, human and thing, and one and many, in mediums ranging from painting and photography, to sculpture and architecture. In addition to an "aesthetics of separation" which refuses the integrationist implications of the human, the author proposes the "anthropofugal" – meaning fleeing the human – as an original concept through which to understand matter in the epistemic universe of the postwar Japanese avant-garde. Chapters in this publication offer critical insights into how artists and critics grounded their work in active disengagement, to advance an ethics of nondominance.Avant-Garde Art and Nondominant Thought in Postwar Japan will appeal to students and scholars of Japanese studies, art history, and visual cultures more widely.
622 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
A comprehensive analysis of the various terrestrial natural landscapes and habitats within Japan, and the efforts to sustain and conserve them and sustain landscape services.In 2011, Conservation International designated the Japanese islands collectively as one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots. They are rich in biodiversity, but also densely populated and so human impacts have led to many species being classed as endangered though few have become extinct during recent decades. Sugimura evaluates the effects of landscape changes, government policies and economy on the forest ecosystems and services of Japan. He then contemplates how a rich variety of wildlife species have been able to survive, albeit in limited numbers, despite the rapid expansion of Japanese economic activities in the 20th century. In addition, there appear to be correlations between uniqueness of biodiversity, types of landscape use and the attitudes of local communities towards natural landscapes.A vital introduction for international environmentalists, geographers and environmental scientists looking to understand Japan’s unique ecosystems and their experiences with human activities.
622 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
The Japanese political system is a parliamentary democracy and was the first western style government in Asia when the parliamentary system was adopted in the 1880s. It has a multiparty system, free elections, and a parliament that functions much the same way that any other democratic parliament functions, however for much of its existence the Japanese party system has been dominated by one party. This fact is crucial to understanding contemporary politics in Japan, especially since the long term ruling party, the Liberal Democratic Party, is once again back in power. This book presents an up-to-date analysis of the political parties that make up the Japanese party system and their impact on Japanese politics and government. Given that the executive branch is selected as a result of the pattern of party numbers in the parliament, to understand Japanese politics and policy, one must first know the nature of the ruling and opposition parties and their leaders. Indeed, in the past decade the quality of Japan’s government has been closely associated with the strengths and weaknesses of Japan’s prime ministers and the dominant party in the system. This book focuses on a central question: why Japanese politics and government has been so dysfunctional in the past two decades? With this question in mind, the chapters provide key background information on Japanese politics and political parties; discuss each of the major political parties that have governed Japan since 1955; and finally, examine the December 2012 House of Representatives elections that returned the LDP to power, and the differences between the First (1955-1993) and the Second Post War Party Systems (1993- ).Party Politics in Japan provides a comprehensive analysis of the past sixty years of Japanese party politics. As such, it will be of great interest to students and scholars of Japanese politics and Asian politics, as well as to those interested in political parties and political systems more broadly.