No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II
Abstract
Drawing on a vast range of Japanese sources and illustrated with dozens of astonishing documentary photographs, Embracing Defeat is the fullest and most important history of the more than six years of American occupation, which affected every level of Japanese society, often in ways neither side could anticipate. Dower, whom Stephen E. Ambrose has called "America's foremost historian of the Second World War in the Pacific," gives us the rich and turbulent interplay between West and East, the victor and the vanquished, in a way never before attempted, from top-level manipulations concerning the fate of Emperor Hirohito to the hopes and fears of men and women in every walk of life. Already regarded as the benchmark in its field, Embracing Defeat is a work of colossal scholarship and history of the very first order. John W. Dower is the Elting E. Morison Professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for War Without Mercy.
... With regard to the early part of this period (1945)(1946), which is the most relevant to this study, SCAP officers had great confidence in the full reconstruction of Japan by American leadership because many of them learned from the successful experience of the 1930s New Deal, which reconstructed the U.S after the Great Depression through public programs. Reform policy was designed "to ensure that Japan would not again become a menace to the United States or to the peace and security of the world" (Dower 1999). ...
... In order to do that, SCAP abolished the Japanese military, and implemented a wide range of policies to eliminate the root causes of Japan's entry into the war, such as dismantling combined Japanese financial groups that had monopolies, enacting women's suffrage and releasing farmland to make it available for tenant farmers (Dower 1999). ...
... In the war-time period in the United States, the media worked to evoke hostility against Japan. They published and broadcast militaristic and Emperor-centric characters from Imperial Japan with exaggerated expressions -combined stereotypes about race and culture created by American media (Dower 1999). The visitors' impressions of Japan's environment, evident from many written accounts, are derived from this differentiation between "them and us". ...
... Markmiðið var róttaekt en einfalt; það átti að afvopna Japan og gera landið að friðsaelu lýðraeðisríki. Viðbrögðin voru blendin en engu að síður virðast flestir Japanir hafa tekið breytingunum fagnandi (Dower 1999). ...
... kristín ingvarsdóttir skírnir samskipti íslands og japans … einnig heyrt að jarðskjálftar vaeru daglegt brauð, og að ýmislegt sem Japanir baeru sér til munns vaeri miður kraesilegt" (Matthías Viðar Saemundsson 1987: 108 (Dower 1999) og The American Occupation of Japan (Schaller 1985). ...
Icelandic-Japanese relations: 60 years of diplomatic relations. The paper is written in Icelandic.
... 4. Dower (2000);Bix (2001). 5. ...
... Indeed, he saw it as simply formalizing what had been Toyota's prior commitment to labor-management 13). See also, Chomsky (1991) and Dower (1999). cooperative relations. ...
Analyzes why Lean Enterprise's view of people cannot be deduced from its management guidance.
... However, sectors of agriculture in Japan still have only a small segment compared with the industrial and technology sectors. Nevertheless, in "Embracing Defeat," Dower [9] wrote that the hunger situation in the country between 1941 and 1949 resulted in the "procurement troops" who specialized in obtaining rural produce for sale in the cities, so in 1945, the government of the country extended food quality and nutritional intake for the improved life quality of the Japanese. In the information that will be presented, the agricultural evolution in the country continues under conditions in the climate and geography influence agricultural practices and cropping systems in the country. ...
The aims of the paper are to present a Japanese agricultural phenomenon and to describe the effect that perceptions of agricultural policy have had on agricultural phenomena. The methodology comprises a survey of famers' agricultural practices (interviews with 40 key informants conducted from 8-18 May 2016 in Tokyo). The patterns of agriculture are 1) agricultural treatment, and 2) small farms that almost use Kasetpranit (elaborate agriculture). Moreover, Japan's many policies and strategies regarding agriculture are focused on using partner countries and joint ventures to make products to support the Japanese people. However, Japan has a zone for agricultural production in which it is able to control the quality of agricultural production; in this good environment, Japan produces high-quality products. By applying Japanese agricultural concepts, other countries can improve their situations.
... Luego de la rendición incondicional de Japón en 1945, los cambios en el escenario político, ideológico y cultural eran tan profundos y de gran alcance como cualquier otro momento en la historia del país, cambios repentinos con pocos paralelos aparen- tes en el mundo. 69 Un doloroso ejemplo es que el Emperador, quién había sido ele- vado a la categoría de dios viviente durante gran parte de la década anterior, rompió el precedente de silencio imperial, anunció la rendición de Japón y luego anunció la renuncia a su propia divinidad. La ocupación de los aliados sería principalmente un asunto manejado por Estados Unidos y los cambios en la estructura política y social japonesa serían rápidos y decisivos: se adoptó una nueva Constitución en noviembre de 1946, orientada a eliminar las influencias autoritarias y reconstruir (o revigorizar, dependiendo de la noción previa que se tenga de Japón) las instituciones democrá- ticas. ...
This work explores John Dewey's reception and re-reception in the Japanese context. Although Dewey's two month visit to Japan in the spring of 1919 coincided with the hopeful Taishō democracy movement, his ideas appear to have made little impact in a political, intellectual, and educational landscape dominated a complex interplay of traditional neo-Confucian, nativist, and German ideas. Yet the story does not end there: following World War II, there was a remarkable Dewey 'boom' across Japan lasting more than a decade that far surpassed Dewey's original reception in 1919. Here we find Dewey central to revamped reform debates and a focal point for the reinterpretation of Japan's prewar educational history. Given this curious resurgence-cum-paradox of increasing interest in Dewey, few national contexts would seem to hold more evidence than Japan in support of the idea that political and ideological shifts qualify definitions of what counts as educational 'knowledge'.
... This is the one worker who will work relentlessly and incessantly to promote and advance the interests of his/her company. The bizarre extremes of Japanese culture can be attributed to its strict work culture and its highly regimented and polite society (Dower, 1999;LaFeber, 1999;Kincaid, 2014). Since 1969, when a 29 year old shipping department worker of the largest newspaper in Japan dropped dead with a stroke, a phenomenon of sudden death has swept through Japan's working world. ...
This book is concerned with the development of iron and steel industry
in Japan after Second World War (WW2). This industry was a basic,
fundamental industry, which was the key ingredient of the
modernization of Japan. Understanding the Japanese development is
important for several reasons: First, Japan became leading nation in
production of iron and steel although it is a resource scared country.
Japan took leading position because of the technological advancement
in that industry, as well as due to the various government protectionist
interventions that provided the time for technological improvements.
Second, it is very important for the society to cope with the internal and
external environment and provide for the welfare of their people.
Japan’s economic development remains a model for many developing
countries proving that there is no meaningful and sustainable
industrialization and economic development without the development
of some basic industry. Therefore, it is extremely important to
understand how Japan achieved what it has been able to.
After WW2, Japanese government has played an important role in
nurturing, supporting and developing certain industries and creating the
industrial structure of the country. Government played the crucial role
in development of economic and technological infrastructure, in
providing exchanges of information between private agents, as well as
protecting certain industries from foreign competition and enabling
Japanese companies to acquire the time to learn and gain the
experience, adopt technologies and become competitive, not just at
domestic, but at the international market. In the economic literature, there are a lot of arguments for and against
the government’s protection.
However, all economists agree that there is a need for the evaluation of
the protectionist measures. In that sense, this book will provide an
explanation for the protection in Japanese iron and steel industry, as
well as the evaluation of the protection.
Japanese economic development after WW2 has been, and still is, a
topic of major interests in the economic literature. Knowing what
happened in Japan gives the contribution to our understanding of the
economic growth, in modern era, as well. This book, therefore, can be
seen as a major contribution to the economic development theory.
... Certamente não seria difícil mostrar como a maioria dos "fatos" que esse revisionismo toma por objetivamente válidos encontra na realidade pouco respaldo na historiografia sobre o Japão do pós-guerra (e.g. Dower, 1999;Oguma, 2002). No entanto, mais do que testar a veracidade do conteúdo desse discurso, o objetivo deste artigo é examinar sua formação e seu desenvolvimento, sem entrar necessariamente no mérito de suas teses. ...
Resumo Este artigo analisa o fortalecimento de discursos nacionalistas no Japão a partir da década de 1990, bem como suas repercussões internas e externas. Embora seja comum interpretar esse nacionalismo como um mecanismo psicológico de compensação para lidar com a “ansiedade” deflagrada pela crise econômica que passou a afetar a sociedade japonesa na época, este trabalho argumenta que podemos compreender melhor o fenômeno como o resultado de mudanças recentes nas condições estruturais mais amplas da sociedade japonesa. Serão discutidos dois fatores estruturais em particular: no âmbito interno, o cenário político-partidário japonês, e, no âmbito externo, a posição do Japão no contexto do leste asiático, tendo em vista especialmente sua interação com a China e com a Coreia do Sul.
Japanese communists, released from long imprisonment by the GHQ, thoroughly betrayed American expectations. More alarmingly, MacArthur and his loyal staff discovered the infiltration of the leftists within his GHQ in Tokyo and quickly removed them. This chapter discusses the GHQ’s internal turmoil over handling communists and the influence of the US Cold War strategies on occupation policies.
Initial reforms, such as dismantling the kokutai (national polity), offered Japanese communists rare opportunities to engage in political activities for the first time in the nation’s history. These startling US reforms greatly encouraged Japanese communists.
The unrest within occupied Japan grew increasingly violent due to communist agitations. Marxism became popular among students and Marxist professors, ousted during the war, returned to teach as heroes. With Japan’s worsening food shortage, student activism became radical. Communist infiltration into universities compelled the GHQ to send Eells nationwide in 1949. Eells demanded that all communist professors be dismissed to protect academic freedomAcadmic freedom.
Iijima Aiko was a Japanese feminist activist who co-founded, with critic Matsuoka Yōko (1916–1979), the “Committee of Asian Women Who Fight Discrimination=Aggression (Committee of Asian Women)” (1970–1980), a group considered to have been the forerunner of Japan’s second wave women’s liberation movement. The Committee of Asian Women attempted to critique and diminish the gender-based discrimination against women and a more global kind of discrimination and aggression fueled by imperial ambitions and racism. This included both Japan’s past imperialist aggression in Asia (specifically in the years 1931–1945) and America’s wars in Asia against Korea and Vietnam. The symbol “=” in between “discrimination” and “aggression” symbolized the group’s belief that discrimination was a form of aggression, and that aggression was a form of discrimination. The group faced a crisis in 1975 and officially dissolved in 1980. Iijima’s desire to simultaneously work on women’s liberation and socio-political reform resulted from her earlier experience as a member of the Japanese Communist Party (JCP), which she joined in 1949.
This chapter considers what various instantiations of marriage between Japanese and non-Japanese people can mean for dominant identity narratives reifying essentialized forms of Japaneseness. Particularized discourses within Japanese society which set out to capture Japanese culture in essentialized forms and frameworks are examined. Attention is drawn to the way Japanese society has been written about as one in which powerful discourses of Japaneseness are said to exert an influence over prevalent beliefs in the homogeneity and uniqueness of the Japanese people. Such beliefs as they are captured in scholarship and popular writings seeking to homogenize the Japanese people are reified at a cost to minoritized, indigenous, and transnational cultures. Equally likely to be marginalized through majoritarian discourses which decomplexify hybridity and diversity are mixed marriages and multiethnic individuals. Paralleling ideologies of uniqueness are beliefs in the superiority of the Japanese people over the peoples of Africa and other parts of Asia. The chapter ends with an important observation that multiethnic individuals are liable to be treated as foreigners in Japanese society as part of legitimating the myth of Japanese purity, even though many of such individuals may identify themselves unreservedly as Japanese and may well be bona fide Japanese nationals.KeywordsJapaneseness
Nihonjinron
HomogeneityMinorities
The cult previously known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, called the Unification Church (UC), was launched to the forefront of public discussion around the globe following the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe in July 2022. The cult itself is no stranger to controversy given its history, however, this incident was particularly disruptive as Japan faced a politician’s assassination motivated by social problems caused by a Christian religious group along with the revelation of widespread connections between the said group and the ruling political party. This chain of events inflicted a damaging influence on Japan’s democracy, an outcome that requires a closer inspection of its roots. To achieve such a goal, this study turns toward factors that allowed the UC to achieve political influence in Japan during the country's pre- and post-World War II political history. In addition, religious groups in Japan, including controversial cults such as Aum Shinrikyo and the UC provide important case studies in public relations and fast development under the title of the “cult controversy”. However, many of the previous studies were insufficient regarding their scope, and there was no uniform technique for presenting or assessing the usually brief opinions on the UC's actual overall influence on Japan's democratic system. However, many of the previous studies were limited in scope. Moreover, there were only a few uniform techniques for presenting or assessing views on the core/overall influence of UC on Japan's democratic system. This study aims to expand the limitations of the literature by bridging previous views based on the historical and recent factors. Through qualitative analysis of archival data as well as existing literature, it is found that the rivalries of certain political figures, pre-WWII rivalries rooted in political ideological differences, and Occupation-era policies were factors that allowed UC to take root in Japan. These factors were explored to reveal early perspectives on UC. As a result, it is found that the rapid and deep organization of UC paved the way for political expansion in post-WWII Japan at the expense of potential social problems.
The context of reception is crucial in establishing different mobility pathways for migrants within host societies. Given that access to government resources is increasingly reserved for citizens and permanent residents and most states provide relatively few avenues to naturalization or permanent residence, host country human capital and social networks are often vital for upward social mobility. I use a variety of research methods including 60 semi‐structured interviews, over 800 hour of participant and non‐obtrusive observation, and ethnography from a 14‐month period in 2011–2012 in the greater Tokyo metropolitan area to investigate how Sub‐Saharan African migrants pursue mobility within Japanese society. I theorize that there are two distinct groups of long‐term staying migrants in Japan: one initially incorporated as unskilled laborers and another initially incorporated as skilled laborers. Migrants initially incorporated as skilled workers have comparatively greater access to state resources and discretion to incorporate as individuals. Migrants initially incorporated as unskilled laborers must rely on the intervention of native‐born individuals in order to experience upward mobility. These findings suggest that visa status is an important signal of initial migrant incorporation trajectory and a significant moderating factor for individual outcomes and social mobility in Japan.
Buddhism and Comparative Constitutional Law offers the first comprehensive account of the entanglements of Buddhism and constitutional law in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Tibet, Bhutan, China, Mongolia, Korea, and Japan. Bringing together an interdisciplinary team of experts, the volume offers a complex portrait of “the Buddhist-constitutional complex,” demonstrating the intricate and powerful ways in which Buddhist and constitutional ideas merged, interacted and co-evolved. The authors also highlight the important ways in which Buddhist actors have (re)conceived Western liberal ideals such as constitutionalism, rule of law, and secularism. Available Open Access on Cambridge Core, this trans-disciplinary volume is written to be accessible to a non-specialist audience.
Psychology is a discipline with global influence, but continues to neglect disadvantaged minorities and continues to adopt an incorrect model of science. This volume explains what has gone wrong, and what steps should be taken for psychology to become a constructive international force. Historically, psychologists have focused only on causal explanations of behavior, neglecting normatively regulated behavior and intentionality. By giving greater importance to context and collective processes, moving from 'societies to cells,' psychologists can better understand and explain individual behavior. Poverty is an extremely powerful context that shapes cognitions and actions, with destructive consequences for disadvantaged individuals. The advocation of 'be happy psychology' and 'resilience' as solutions to problems faced by the disadvantaged leads to entrenched group-based inequalities, with the poor stuck at the bottom. Moving forwards, this volume proposes that psychologists should focus on normative systems to ultimately foster a more balanced field of study for the future.
Histories of democracy in modern Japan often position ‘democracy’ itself as an elite, introduced, inorganic facet of post-defeat Japan’s reconstruction by outside influences. However, analysis of discourses and texts prior to this revisionist narrative reveal a much more complex and continuous intellectual history at play. Ishizaka Yōjirō’s (1900–1986) run-away hit Aoi sanmyaku (Blue mountain range, 1947) was a timely and highly influential serialised work in The Asahi Shimbun, which was quickly republished as a novel and then adapted into a massively successful film in 1949. In this discussion the work both uses and challenges a feudalism versus democracy binary, and reveals strong intellectual continuities between prewar and post-war thinking regarding modernity. The work also challenges the positioning of relationships between school-age male and female students as a symbol of democracy and modernism in this era. Through Ishizaka’s use of debate and humour, this work is not an account of the failings of democracy, or its success, but rather an exploration of the tensions that emerge with attempts to implement these discourses.
Kokutai (national polity) was notoriously the ideological organising principle of imperial Japanese society in the early twentieth century, but the end of WWII saw it replaced by a more nation-oriented view of the relationship between the state and the people. This change led to an interpretation of the nation that prioritises ethnic nationalism, although its key text, the Postwar Constitution seems to invite a more civic interpretation. This paper argues that the change and this inconsistency should be analysed in terms of two modern myths – the myth of kokutai and the myth of homogeneous ethnos. The key to the influence of these myths lies in their symbolic representation in the 1889 Meiji and 1947 Postwar Constitutions, and how their historically contingent interpretation formalised relations between the people and the state. These interpretations produced contesting narrative articulations of the myths, among which first statist and later ethnic nationalist narratives emerged dominant, but in both cases remained in tension with other narratives.
In this chapter, ideologized conventional understandings of Japanese monoculture and uniformity are seen to have an influence on the ways in which social relations are reproduced and approaches to education uncritically structured and standardized. Schooling and its collaborating structures become channels for reinforcing essentialized understandings of identity and social norms with implications for corresponding ways in which Japanese people living overseas conduct their lives and businesses. Set patterns in which children are schooled within a nihonjinron (tenets of Japaneseness) ideology reveal normalizing tendencies that promote uniformity in its most culturalist of forms. The significance of corresponding acts of regularization is found in the way children are put through regimes of cram tutoring, ‘banking’, drilling, and overlearning as largely unquestioned aspects of their education.
The critical accounts of the way in which Japanese after-school cram tutoring is carried out begin with its exclusivity and idiosyncratically spatialized characteristics that suggest the reappropriation of Singaporean spaces for the purposes of consolidating Japanese identity positionings, besides money-making. Narratives relating to family trajectories and aspirations vis-à-vis costly cramming programs are critiqued for their circumscribed data-bound conceptualizations of academic success. Based on deficit understandings of teaching and learning that make the inherent repetitive drilling an intensely time-consuming commitment, Japanese cram tutoring is seen dominated by big industry players, epitomizing the involvement of private enterprise in education and the life-worlds of families. The guarded nature of the industry draws attention to stark contrasts between the public and private faces of Japan-in-Singapore as a bifurcated phenomenon.
This article explores the concept of covenantal pluralism in a context of postwar Japan, with a focus on the legal framework separating the state from religion and guaranteeing the rights of religious minorities. The article argues that while there are relatively few instances of sectarian strife, the lack of agreement on how to interpret the category of religion, in particular in relation to Shrine Shinto, continues to lead to struggles between different camps. The article also questions the feasibility of covenantal pluralism as an ideal in a country where national identity is so closely linked to ideas of social homogeneity.
This study examines the revolution of ideas surrounding the body in 1950s Japan from the perspective of two women dancers, Noh dancer Tsumura Kimiko (1902–74) and butoh dancer Motofuji Akiko (1928–2003). By contrasting one mid-twentieth-century view—that the postwar era offered a chance to “liberate” individual bodies—with the backdrop of continued control over bodies exercised by large institutions, I first show that this perceived rupture was not as stark as it initially appears. Moreover, I show how Tsumura and Motofuji rejected popular ideas about the body's purpose to forge their own. This allowed them to critique and confront the issues that popular views presented, particularly for disabled or gendered bodies. These issues involved increasing urbanization and the treatment of bodies based upon their desirability. This article argues that Tsumura's and Motofuji's conceptions of “body” challenged gender norms and presented new ideas about how to live.
The battles of the Pacific War formally ended between mid-August and early September, 1945. However, the declarations of peace and surrender ceremonies that occurred during this time did not end informal battles across the Asian continent. Renegade Japanese military personnel refused to lay down their arms and repatriate quietly to their country. Some combed the waters between Japan and Korea in search of returnees attempting to repatriate with financial and material means in excess of that which the United States military governments allowed. Others sought to disrupt the occupation process by patrolling the streets of Korean cities and engaging in illegal and often violent activities. Koreans also caused problems by joining the Japanese in their postwar adventures or by harassing Japanese preparing to return to Japan and the Korean sympathizers who attempted to help them. Reportage of such actions appeared in the G-2 Periodic Report , which kept a daily record of such actions. These documents today open windows into the chaotic situation that the postwar era brought to Japanese and Koreans. Primarily through these reports, this paper sees the postwar belligerence that continued beyond official declarations of cease fire and peace in 1945 as kindling that sparked the broader conflicts of the late 1940s, and evolved to all-out war from the summer of 1950.
Hopkins’s American Empire is quite illuminating in his comparative analysis and detailed account of the dependent territories in the Caribbean and the Pacific. He convincingly demonstrates that the American empire was not exceptional, though distinct, and that it shared more commonalities than differences with other Western colonial powers. This essay attempts to shed light on some other aspects that Hopkins’s analysis of the ‘insular empire’ did not fully cover in his work. It employs the term ‘informal empire’ rather than hegemony to grasp the distinct characteristics of American empire-building and highlights the dialectical process of interaction between America’s anti-colonial tradition, on the one hand, and the imperial impulses, on the other. In contrast with Hopkins’s portrayal of the United States as ‘an aspiring hegemon,’ it argues that the interwar years were a transitional stage of U.S. empire-building that subsequently transformed itself into a fully-fledged informal empire during the Cold War years. The article shows that the Cold War order was hierarchical and coercive, and similar to the old imperial order embodied by the European colonial powers. It shares Hopkins’s view that the first signs of the decline of U.S. power appeared in the 1970s but disagrees about the rate the trend developed. It contends that the decline was rather gradual and winding, though cumulative, and that the United States managed to remain an informal empire for some time after the ending of the Cold War.
There is likely no version of Anne of Green Gables more mythologized than Muraoka Hanako’s 1952 Japanese translation, Akage no An. While many arguments have been offered to explain Anne’s Japanese success, this article moderates some of the more sensationalized while also situating the book within Japan’s wider cultural history.
This article reinterprets Asian industrialization during the Cold War through the lens of a forgotten commodity: the South Korean wig. Wigs were critical to Asia’s “miraculous” economic growth—a US$1 billion industry in 1970, as well as the number two export in South Korea and number four in Hong Kong at the height of export-oriented industrialization. The article makes a methodological argument, suggesting that we see industrialization differently when we “follow” a commodity transnationally—from the heads of rural South Koreans to the hands of Seoul factory workers to the shoulder bags of Korean American peddlers to the heads of African American women—and when we integrate bottom-up and top-down views of the commodity’s “life.” Only by taking this global perspective can we see how U.S. imperialism shaped the ways people and things moved across borders and oceans and how Cold War commodities were haunted by the lives of the people who touched them.
One of the most important global issues we face today is rising inequality in both developed and developing countries. Even if the inequality between countries has converged with the economic growth of emerging states, domestic inequality has worsened. In regional terms, even if the overall economic gap has lessened, African countries still lag behind those in other regions. To change this situation, industrial sector development is certainly important, but to catch up, what African countries need to do is twofold. The first is to move their production possibility frontier (PPF) outward (movement of the PPF curve itself) with innovations. The second way is to assist average firms to reach their production possibility frontier using existing technology (movement toward the frontier). However, these changes may not be enough to tackle the issue of rising inequality in each country. We cannot expect the benefit of industrial development or firm growth to easily trickle down to the poor. Then, how can we make industrial development work for the poor? This chapter tries to answer this question looking back at Japan’s experience.
Over the past ten years, Mila Ganeva has written two books in the series Screen Cultures: German Film and the Visual published by Camden House. Both studies map German visual culture in relation to female agency, starting with the Weimar years, 1918–1933, in the first book, and moving on to what the Germans call the “long decade”, stretching from 1939–1955, in the second. In the latter volume, Ganeva focuses on film and fashion from the perspective of German female consumers and spectators, and it is immediately obvious that her engagement with cinema is presented without any auxiliary theoretical discussion regarding the remits of either mass culture or visual studies. In particular, the study would have benefitted from a short introduction of the “rubble film” (films set in a city or landscape of ruins), preferably based on Robert Shandley’s study, which is also referenced in the book’s bibliography. I find it particularly odd that she does not link her own study more intimately with Hester Baer’s work on the topic in order to map out her subject matter for the reader, in the introductory chapter (Dismantling; “Film”).
From August 1945 to September 1951, the United States had a unique opportunity to
define and frame how it would approach its foreign relations in the Asia-Pacific region. As the dominant power in the Pacific after World War II and claiming direct authority over vanquished Japan, the United States had the liberty to design its own post-war vision for the entire region. Until 1951, American State Department diplomats and government planners, attempted—ultimately unsuccessfully—to harmonize the competing motivations of lingering World War II multilateralist idealism and Cold War geopolitics in a postcolonial, postwar world. This thesis examines U.S.-Korean relations in context of how both sides grappled with the requirements of addressing a history of colonialism and wartime sacrifice, which came to be overshadowed by American Cold War-inflected concerns. U.S. policymakers ultimately shelved multilateralist defense schemes such as the Pacific Pact, which would have been a NATO in Asia.
Through a series of short-term tactical decisions, U.S. diplomats also transformed the San Francisco Peace Treaty with Japan from a post-war agreement of reconciliation and moral redress into a Cold War device that would reinstate Japanese strategic advantages, albeit under American control. Emblematic of this shift was the exclusion of Korea from both the peace treaty itself and its complementary defense negotiations. State Department officials avoided the responsibility of resolving persisting wartime issues even while attempting to implement a new postwar vision for Asia. U.S. diplomats had long-standing racialized assumptions about Korean cultural and political inferiority which corresponded with Americans’ growing distaste for rehashing the legacy of Japanese imperialism in Asia. The stark reality was that Cold War geopolitics had left little room for long-term multilateralist visions for the future. By failing to address Korean concerns in the San Francisco Peace Treaty and its complementary defense structure, the U.S. in turn generated a postwar design for the Asia-Pacific guided solely by efforts to maximize American tactical advantages in both diplomatic and military contexts, to its long-term detriment.
In 1959, UNESCO published a catalogue of Eastern films suitable for Western audiences, titled ‘Orient. A Survey of Films Produced in Countries of Arab and Asian Culture’. The aim of the catalogue was to familiarise Western audiences with Eastern cultures through cinema. The catalogue lists seven general characteristics of Eastern cinema to distinguish it from its Western counterpart and to provide ready-made interpretations of the essential characteristics of the Eastern world. Of the 139 feature films listed in the catalogue, five were directed by Kurosawa Akira – the biggest number of films by a single director. This article provides an analysis of the five Kurosawa films within the frame provided by the characterisations in the catalogue in the political framework of World War II and its aftermath. Reading the cultural differences listed in the catalogue as a means of constructing the East in Western eyes, the article suggests UNESCO’s world was defined neither in terms of the contemporaneous geopolitical polarisation of the Cold War nor the ongoing decolonisation process. Instead, the catalogue served the purpose of proposing a cultural intervention in geopolitics, providing a reimagining of political realities constructed on a cultural basis and given a concrete form through cinema.
The collapse of the Japanese Empire in 1945 plunged East Asia into a state of flux and upheaval, making necessary the redrawing of geopolitical borders and the redefining the “boundaries” of nationality, language, and legal status. As part of this broader process, Koreans in occupied postwar Japan, via the platform of the magazine Democratic Korea (Minshu Chōsen), advocated for a joint process of decolonization and deimperialization whereby both Koreans and Japanese could construct a society free of imperial hierarchies. U.S. Military Occupation policy and censorship, however, thwarted these efforts and disallowed the possibility for the inclusion of a Korean subjectivity within the space of the Japanese nation. Facing intense political pressure, Koreans in Japan started to shift toward a “non-national” Zainichi Korean subjectivity distinct from the two Korean-nation states established in 1948. Further, through analyzing the case of Koreans in occupied Japan, this article sheds light on the broader impact of occupation censorship on postwar Japanese society and how the post-imperial transition to a nation-state model was a tumultuous one.
The outcome of World War II was determined by the complex interplay between economic determinism and contingent factors that included fighting quality and will. The war ended with the complete defeat of the German and Japanese autarkic‐colonial projects in both western and eastern Eurasia and with the survival and strengthening of their Soviet and Chinese opponents. The number of overseas facilities declined with the postwar demobilization, but many were consolidated into large regional bases designed for long‐term occupation. In India, wartime industrialization strengthened business elites tied to the Indian National Congress (INC), while Britain's mobilization of Indian personpower had the unintended consequence of boosting support for Indian independence. America's postwar military occupation allowed it to reconstruct Japan as a loyal ally, economic partner, and military outpost, but it had no such purchase in China. The war in Korea consolidated the military and geopolitical balance that emerged in Asia after World War II.
Economics can in fact be used to promote human rights. While others make distinctions between the intentional use of nuclear material as a part of a weapons system, on the one hand, and the inadvertent release of material in a nuclear accident on the other, the author points out that for those affected by the release, the distinction may not really be meaningful. Therefore, he refers to both collectively as ‘nuclear releases’. The author then turns to the connections between nuclear issues and disability. Some are positive; others are not. Disablement often leads to a downturn in economic performance. But, the relationship does not work only one way. Economic downturn (almost inevitable after nuclear releases) can lead to psychological disablement in far greater number than the physical consequences from the release. Also, regardless of who provides care to those who were disabled prior to the release (whether family members or paid service providers), disabled persons are generally less adaptable to major life changes caused by disasters, including nuclear release. This increased need for service for service following disaster occurs at precisely the time when there is less tax revenue to cover the needs of the population. Considering the impact of the United Nations Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. the author argues that this Treaty requires States to be forward-looking and proactive to protect persons with disabilities. Finally, he puts forward some tentative thoughts on how a State might choose to fund the needs of persons with disabilities in the event of a nuclear release.
Tracing the controversies surrounding commercial blood procurement in Japan, this article inquires into the reconfiguration of social boundaries, bodies, and substances through blood banks. In Japan, designated day laborers’ enclaves, known as yoseba, became major pools of not only cheap labor force, but also of vital substances in the mid-twentieth century. Despite recurrent public health scandals, commercial blood banks continued to resurge in these districts, until they were completely replaced by the centralized donation-based Red Cross system in 1990. Analyzing media reports, published accounts, and policy papers, this article demonstrates how “sold blood” collected by commercial blood banks became the quintessence of “bad blood” in the process of this transition. Although blood donation is considered as an occasion to celebrate social solidarity today, this article shows that the specter of “bad blood” continues to haunt the body politic of Japan.
本ペーパーは1960 年代のアジアへ の展開をはじめる時期までの援助の歴史を振り返ったものである。この時期は終戦から、援助を日本が受けていた被援助国の時代を経て、日本が援助をアジアに展開していった時代である。本ペーパーが目的とするところは、 日本が被援助国であったときにどのようにアメリカの生産性向上支援を受容していたかを検証し、被援助国 としての経験がどのようなものであったかを導き出すことである。
その経験の特質は、第１に、アメリカの生産性向上・対日援助は東西冷戦の中で極めて戦略的な位置づ けの中で行われたものであったことであり、7 年間で 3,986 名の研修員を受け入れるなど極めておおきな規 模で実施されていた点である。第２に、日本において労使関係はもともと対立的であったが、援助を受け入 れていく中で協調的な労使関係に変化していったことである。つまり、協調的な労使関係は生産性向上に取り組む中でむしろ作り上げられてきたのである。そして、第３に、アメリカ・対日援助の受け入れに当たって、日本では政府ではなく民間セクター（とくに経済同友会）が援助の受け入れに中心的な役割を果たした ことである。むしろ政府は活発な民間の動きを補助的に支える役割を担ったのであり、これは理想的な産業 政策のあり方であったと言える。援助受け入れに当たって予算の半分（半年で 1 億 800 万円-1 億 3200 万 円）は日本が負担し、しかも政府ではなく大部分を民間が負担したのである。つまり、民間のコミットメントが高かったと言える。アメリカの援助規模はおおきかったにもかかわらず、現在の日本国内では生産性向上 について被援助国であったという認識はあまり持たれていない。それだけ日本においては生産性向上を政府、企業、労働者ともそれぞれが自らのものとして受容していったためと考えられる。 キーワード カイゼン、生産性、対日援助、民間セクター開発、産業政策
Dancing is illegal in Japan. That does not mean it doesn’t happen, and indeed nightclubs regularly stay open into the early hours. However, since 2010 police have begun reanimating Japan’s old fueiho cabaret law, dubiously used to crackdown on nightclubs. This has been a disaster for Japan’s vibrant underground music scene, an affront to freedom of expression, and evidence of a growing authoritarianism by elites who rely on vague legal and institutional practices. With a push back from Japan’s civil society in the form of the Let’s Dance Campaign, and a simultaneous alignment between domestic and international elites worried about the upcoming 2020 Tokyo Olympics, things may be beginning to change. This article explores the structures of power underlying this issue and speculates on the degree to which recent developments may be cause for alarm or cheer.
The Peanuts brand has commanded multimillion-dollar success in the challenging Japanese marketplace. The strength of the intellectual property developed by comic artist Charles M. Schulz and its resonance with fundamental Japanese tastes account for only part of the brand’s success. This study uses a historiographic methodology of ethnographic, interview, and archival research to examine the case of the Peanuts brand’s strategic approach to expansion in the Japanese market. The research findings indicate that (a) licensing is a strategically profitable model for adapting and logistically distributing a product to a new market, (b) active oversight structured into the licensing scheme is critical for maintaining brand integrity, and (c) division of authority that relies on localized partnerships within that structure of oversight is necessary to allow for the desired adaptation key to success.
In 1945, Japan was defeated in World War II. Since then, government domination and public anti-war sentiment has turned a “Pacifist Nation” identity into Japan’s national ideal, making postwar Japanese nationalism “pacifist.” In fact, the collective memory of “defeat,” as the cultural origin of postwar Japanese nationalism, has two meanings: the death of old Japan and the birth of new Japan, which has created solidarity in people’s imagination of Japan as a “pacifist community.”
Based on Benedict Anderson’s concept of an “Imagined Community,” this thesis analyzes how Japanese people “imagine” Japan as a Pacifist Nation at annual commemorations of “Defeat/War-End Memorial Day,” August 15. I show how popular media discourses have presented Japan as an “imagined Pacifist Nation” by surveying narratives in newspapers and political magazines published on August 15 from 1945 to 1972. I use the term “Pacifist Nationalism” to describe the empirical phenomenon of “imagining the community as a Pacifist Nation.”
In order to study “Pacifist Nationalism” in postwar Japanese society, this thesis follows the institutionalist approach of Rogers Brubaker and Horng-Luen Wang, defining “nation” as “a category of practice, an institutionalized form, and a contingent event,” (Brubaker, 1996: 21) and further adding a temporal dimension. I analyze how discourses in newspapers and magazines of August 15 have represented people’s imagination of the community, Japan, as a Pacifist Nation, and thus explain the emergence, practice, and change of Pacifist Nationalism in Japan.
The main analysis of this thesis can be divided into two parts: the first part (Chapter 3) describes how “Pacifist Nation” discourse emerged in 1945, and how it was practiced through annual rituals and anti-war movements in the 1950s; the second part (Chapter 4) discusses how discourses changed and were divided, rather than united, under rapid economic growth from 1960 to 1972, when two main forces, the conservative intellectuals and the New Left Movement activists, proved at odds. Finally, in the conclusion (Chapter 5), I state how the case study of postwar Japanese nationalism complements Anderson’s “Imagined Community,” providing a more diversified perspective in contemporary scholarship on nationalism.
This paper considers the character of “reconstruction” in post-war Japan through an investigation of the relationship between Japanese people's national identity and the gaze of “America” by analyzing the process and content of Japanese tours for American tourists in 1947–48. I construct a hypothesis that recognition from the “West” and “America” has been important for modern Japan. The tours were conducted for the purpose of “reconstruction” and were organized in order to give tourists the impression that “Japan had already been reconstructed.” I conclude that the tourist industry in the Japanese occupation period was an actor that tried to achieve “symbolic reconstruction” by gaining recognition from the gaze of “America”.
The March–May 1937 Nagoya Pan-Pacific Peace Exhibition (NPPPE) promoted the Nagoya region as an industrial and cultural center of the empire. Though intended to show the city prospering in free-trade, capitalist peace, it was a ‘mega-event,’ large and complex enough to permit alternative interpretations, resistance, and even discord. The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) objected to a ‘peace’ expo, extracting various concessions from NPPPE organizers, including a national defense hall and live-fire demonstrations. This made the event appear a cynical misappropriation of the concept of ‘peace.’ However, underneath this bellicose veneer is evidence that even on the eve of all-out war, local business and government elites clung to a 1920s style vision of peace through international trade and intercourse rather than through autarky and military force. Nagoya could not prevent military interference in the peace expo, but the city’s commitment to an agenda diverging from those of the IJA and Tokyo testifies to the continued political diversity of Japan in the mid to late 1930s.
An interdisciplinary look at the dramatic changes in the contemporary Japanese family, including both empirical data and analyses of popular culture.
The Japanese family is at a crossroads of demographic change and altered cultural values. While the population of children has been shrinking and that of elders rising, attitudes about rights and responsibilities within the family have changed significantly. The realities of life in postmodern society have shaped both the imagined family of popular culture and the lived experience of Japanese family members. Imagined Families, Lived Families takes an interdisciplinary approach toward these dramatic changes by looking at the Japanese family from a variety of perspectives, including media studies, anthropology, sociology, literature, and popular culture. The contributors look at representations of family in manga and anime, outsider families and families that must contend with state prosecution of political activists, the stereotype of the absolute Japanese father, and old age and end-of-life decisions in a rapidly aging society with changing family configurations.
“…Hashimoto and Traphagan’s collection of essays is timely and welcome … Imagined Families, Lived Families could be utilized as a textbook in classes on postwar Japan, particularly in courses focusing on society or culture.” — Journal of Japanese Studies
“…the high quality of the essays and the presentation of original research not previously published makes this volume valuable.” — Pacific Affairs
“Japanese family patterns are undergoing explosive change. This volume vividly showcases some of the central features and exceptional cases of this domestic transformation. It is important reading for Japan studies and for a family sociology of late modernity.” — William W. Kelly, editor of Fanning the Flames: Fans and Consumer Culture in Contemporary Japan
Contributors include Akiko Hashimoto, Susan O. Long, Keiko McDonald, Susan Napier, Patricia Steinhoff, Mariko Tamanoi, and John W. Traphagan.
This article explores how the notion of American domesticity promoted by US occupation forces in postwar Japan was decoded and rearticulated by non-elite Japanese women, a social group that has been largely overlooked in studies of the global promotion of the American way of life during the early Cold War years. Specifically examined here is the case of Takehisa Chieko, an actress and the wife of an American officer, who enjoyed high visibility in popular women’s magazines as the embodiment of the idealised postwar American lifestyle. A reading of Takehisa’s magazine writings, interviews, and photographs suggests, however, that she was far from a passive recipient and transmitter of this cultural message. As such, a close unpacking of her rearticulation of the idea of American domesticity toward the particular socio-cultural fabric of postwar Japan reveals the particular nature of this supposedly universal American model. In demonstrating the various dilemmas that stemmed from confronting both the seductive and alienating features of the American way as promoted in occupied Japan, this study illuminates a point of rupture in the larger US global promotion of American domesticity as a means toward cultural hegemony and political containment in the early Cold War period.
Why do conservative nationalists in Japan continuously seek to revise the constitution despite the past failures, and what is the likelihood of successful revision and its impact on Japan's norm of pacifism and its use of force? The article offers an analytical framework for the issue based on national pride and national security, and argues that the ‘revisionists’ seek to create a new national identity, one that infuses a greater sense of national pride among the public and enables the exercise of collective self-defense, thereby removing Japan's postwar psychological and institutional limitations on nationalism and military activities. The LDP's 2012 draft is most explicit and ambitious in this regard, with the current revision attempt under Abe having the highest chance of success since the 1950s. Successful revision would significantly expand Japan's security activities, particularly within the framework of the US–Japan Security Alliance, and entail the end of Japan's unique postwar institutionalized pacifism, although the norm of pacifism will linger on as a constitutional principle. For a smoother return to the international military scene, the Japanese government must distance itself from historical revisionism and utilize its enhanced military role to promote regional public goods rather than merely protecting its narrow national interests.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.