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Civil Society and Postwar Pacific Basin Reconciliation
This book brings together discussions of leading aspects and repercussions of the Asia-Pacific War, which still have huge relevance today. From the development of war guilt to the vivid effect of art on bringing alive the realities of the war, it analyses a diversity of post-war issues in the Pacific Basin. Organised into five parts, the book begins by scrutinizing the conflicting attitudes towards Japanese post-war society and identifies the various legacies of the war. It also provides an examination of the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagaski, before studying contemporary civil society and analysing the way memories of the war have changed with time. Each of the chapters discusses the Japanese government’s inability to achieve reconciliation with its neighbours, despite the passage of over 70 years, and the denial of the atrocities committed by the Imperial Army. Arguing that this policy of continuous denial has triggered the rise of civil movements in Japan, this book will be useful to students and scholars of Japanese History and Japanese Studies in general.
The Asia Pacific War
"This book examines key aspects of the Asia Pacific War (1931-1945), that was initially waged between Japan and China, before Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor drew in the U.S.-led allied forces from 1941 to 1945. The first half of the book examines three interlocking components, the origins of the war; its impact on combatants and civilians; and its short-term legacy, including the huge changes that took place in the postwar governance of Japan. Part 2 explores the ongoing impact and legacy of the war for those in postwar Japan, and later generations, particularly through the examination of the ambiguity of state-led reconciliation with Japan's neighbors, the growth of dynamic civil reconcilia...
Modernism in Practice
Postwar modernist verse has been rarely discussed in English-language works on Japanese literature, despite the fact that it has been the dominant mode of poetic expression in Japan since World War II. Now readers of modern Japanese poetry in translation have gained an impressive intellectual and linguistic companion in their enjoyment of modern Japanese verse. Modernism in Practice combines close readings of individual Japanese postwar poets and poetry with historical and critical analysis. Five of the seven chapters concentrate on the life and work of such outstanding poets as Soh Sakon, Ishigaki Rin, Ito Hiromi, Asabuki Ryoji, and Tanikawa Shuntaro. Several of these writers have only come...
Examining Japan's Lost Decades
This book examines five features of Japan’s ‘Lost Decades’: the speed of the economic decline in Japan compared to Japan’s earlier global prowess; a rapidly declining population; considerable political instability and failed reform attempts; shifting balances of power in the region and changing relations with Asian neighbouring nations; and the lingering legacy of World War Two. Addressing the question of why the decades were lost, this book offers 15 new perspectives ranging from economics to ideology and beyond. Investigating problems such as the risk-averse behaviour of Japan’s bureaucracy and the absence of strong political leadership, the authors analyse how the delay of ‘lo...
Japanese Femininities
The corporate salaryman and professional housewife stand as hegemonic archetypes of masculinity and femininity in Japan. However, these rigid gender roles are being challenged by women who are seeking to move beyond the strictly defined confines of their traditional roles as caregivers and homemakers. Through interviews with a range of Japanese women, this book explores how women’s gender roles are both reified and undermined in Japan today, and uncovers the prevalent themes, or ‘discourses’, that are utilized to construct gendered identities. It shows that while dominant discourses formulate notions of femininity within the domestic sphere, these are simultaneously resisted and proble...
New Essays in Comparative Aesthetics
Comparative aesthetics is the branch of philosophy which compares the aesthetic concepts and practices of different cultures. The way in which the various cultures of the world conceive of the aesthetic dimension of life in general and art in particular is revelatory of profound attitudes and beliefs which themselves make up an important part of the culture in question. This anthology consists of entirely new essays by some of the leading, internationally recognised scholars in the field. The subjects addressed include the influence of Upanişadic thought on the classic Indian tradition in aesthetics and the way in which that tradition continues to have relevance to issues discussed today; h...
Perversion and Modern Japan
How did nerves and neuroses take the place of ghosts and spirits in Meiji Japan? How does Natsume Soseki’s canonical novel Kokoro pervert the Freudian teleology of sexual development? What do we make of Jacques Lacan’s infamous claim that because of the nature of their language the Japanese people were unanalyzable? And how are we to understand the re-awakening of collective memory occasioned by the sudden appearance of a Japanese Imperial soldier stumbling out of the jungle in Guam in 1972? In addressing these and other questions, the essays collected here theorize the relation of unconscious fantasy and perversion to discourses of nation, identity, and history in Japan. Against a tradi...
Japan-Bashing
The aim of this book is to examine and analyse the phenomenon of ‘Japan-bashing’, from its invention and popularisation in the United States in the late 1970s to the emergence of other national variants, including in Australia and Japan, to its gradual decline in the late 1990s. It is the first major book-length study of ‘Japan-bashing from a multinational perspective, one that attempts to place ‘Japan-bashing’ in its proper historical context and to examine its operation and legacy in the twenty-first century. Despite its importance in the study of discourses about Japan, as well as in understanding broader global changes in the late twentieth century and beyond, the phenomenon of...
Okinawan War Memory
As one of Okinawa's most insightful writers and social critics, Medoruma Shun has highlighted the problems and limits of conventional representation of the Battle of Okinawa, raised new questions and concerns about the nature of Okinawan war memory, and expanded the possibilities of representing war through his groundbreaking and prize-winning fiction, editorials, essays, and speaking engagements. Yet, his writing has not been analyzed in regard to how his experience and identity as the child of two survivors of the Battle of Okinawa have powerfully shaped his understanding of the war and his literary craft. This book examines Okinawan war memory through the lens of Medoruma’s war fiction,...
Manga and the Representation of Japanese History
This edited collection explores how graphic art and in particular Japanese manga represent Japanese history. The articles explore the representation of history in manga from disciplines that include such diverse fields as literary studies, politics, history, cultural studies, linguistics, narratology, and semiotics. Despite this diversity of approaches all academics from these respective fields of study agree that manga pose a peculiarly contemporary appeal that transcends the limitation imposed by traditional approaches to the study and teaching of history. The representation of history via manga in Japan has a long and controversial historiographical dimension. Thereby manga and by extensi...
