‘The Production of Space’, in: Frans Jacobi, Imagine, Space Poetry, Copenhagen, 1996, unpaginated.

The Production of Space

This paper will examine the repercussions of the Sino-Japanese territorial dispute for bilateral trade. Using interviews with businesses, scholars, and government officials in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Tokyo, and data gathered from policy papers and businesses, this paper argues that the traditional seikei bunri (separation of politics and economics) relationship that existed between Japan and China in the post-World War II period has given way to a more confrontational relationship in which economic pressure can be and has been applied as a means to press Japan on bilateral issues. It argues that understanding the way in which frictions arising from territorial disputes have affected the Sino-Japanese trading relationship may hold implications for the handling of similar disputes across North- and South-East Asia.

Territorial Disputes, Trade and Diplomacy: Examining the Repercussions of the Sino-Japanese Territorial Dispute on Bilateral Trade

Irrungen - Wirrungen: Die Kurilenfrage und die russisch-japanischen Beziehungen

The roles of communication on a regional conflict: Antipathy, nationalism, and conflicts among China, Japan, and South Korea

This study is a diachronic investigation into how coverage of writing reform in The Japan Times used, manipulated, and discarded graphic language ideologies between 1897 and 1981. Through this novel data set and analytical focus, the study expands on extant understandings of Japanese debates over the script, utilizing a newspaper known for hosting voices and concerns absent in many other Japanese presses to evidence how ideologies about language use(rs) evolved in response to social concerns surrounding over a century of the reform debate. Ultimately, analysis of 469 articles shows that while The Japan Times generally advocated for romanization, the ideologies surrounding its coverage of script debate were not singular or static. Beliefs that scripts are ‘progressive’, ‘barbaric’, ‘Japanese’, and ‘foreign’ were used to both support and attack kanji, kana, and romanization, and the power of individual ideologies changed rapidly in response to fluctuating social conditions and power structures. As a result, we see that graphic ideologies about script were a highly flexible and important element of Japanese script discussions, with framings rapidly borrowed, reformed, and discarded by all sides of the debate to participate in changing dialogues on what made a writing style best for the future of Japan. 

‘Chinese ideographs belong to a childhood age […] but Japan has now become a man’: graphic ideologies and language reform in The Japan Times

This paper deconstructs Japanese media discourses of Japan’s territorial disputes in selected newspapers in English – namely The Asahi Shimbun, The Japan News and The Japan Times from 2002 to 2018....

Media discourses of territorial disputes in Japan

Geopolitical imaginations are disseminated in a variety of media forms. Looking at everyday user-generated content, popular culture on the internet enables insightful encounters. This paper analyses a community on the social platform Reddit, where so-called Polandballs are shared. These satirical comics, where countries are portrayed as ball-shaped characters, coloured according to national flags, represent diverse geopolitical assemblages. The paper argues for utilising an assemblage approach to track the dynamic and interlinked content creations and discussions by members of the community. Contrary to the Western-centric orientation in the community, the representations of Singapore by Singaporeans and non-Singaporeans are analysed. This highlights narratives which are usually subdued in general geopolitical discourses, which concentrate on countries perceived as important on the world stage. The findings indicate that content creators discuss economic prosperity, international relations, and structural vulnerabilities from different angles. There are popular depictions, yet some offer alternative discourses. Further, audiences challenge perceptions through their active engagement in the assemblages and through including external discursive elements. Hence, the paper shows a suitable application of assemblage thinking when discussing everyday negotiations of geopolitical discourses in hitherto neglected social media spaces and emphasises the role of non-institutionalised geopolitical content creation. 

Simon Wellisch

Papers

Media discourses of territorial disputes in Japan

Tringapore – Singapore in geopolitical comics