Showing papers in "Journal of Japanese Studies in 2008"

The Great Kanto Earthquake and the Culture of Catastrophe and Reconstruction in 1920s Japan

Abstract: This article explores the Great Kanto Earthquake as a window into Japan of the 1920s and examines how this disaster was interpreted and used for political, ideological, and social ends. I suggest that a wide cross-section of commentators described the disaster as an act of divine punishment to admonish Japan’s subjects for leading what many claimed were self-centered, immoral, and extravagant lifestyles. I further argue that the disaster nurtured a strong sense that Japan possessed an unparalleled opportunity not only to rebuild Tokyo to reflect and reinforce new values but also to reconstruct the nation and its people. In doing so, the 1923 calamity fostered a culture of catastrophe and reconstruction that amplified discourses of moral degeneracy and national renovation in interwar Japan.

Competing to be Really, Really Good: The Behind-the-Scenes Drama of Capability-Building Competition in the Automobile Industry (review)

Abstract: １ Ｃｏｍｐｅｔｉｔｉｏｎ ｉｎ Ｃａｐａｂｉｌｉｔｙ Ｂｕｉｌｄｉｎｇ ２ Ｗｈｙ Ｃａｒｓ？ ３ Ｔｈｅ Ａｎａｔｏｍｙ ｏｆ Ｏｒｇａｎｉｚａｔｉｏｎａｌ Ｃａｐａｂｉｌｉｔｙ ｉｎ Ｍａｎｕｆａｃｔｕｒｉｎｇ ４ Ｔｈｅ Ｈｉｓｔｏｒｙ ｏｆ Ｃａｐａｂｉｌｉｔｙ Ｂｕｉｌｄｉｎｇ ｉｎ ｔｈｅ Ａｕｔｏｍｏｂｉｌｅ Ｉｎｄｕｓｔｒｙ ５ Ｃａｐａｂｉｌｉｔｙ Ｂｕｉｌｄｉｎｇ ａｓ ａｎ Ｅｍｅｒｇｅｎｔ Ｐｒｏｃｅｓｓ ６ Ｃｏｍｐｅｔｉｔｉｏｎ，Ｃｏｎｆｌｉｃｔ，ａｎｄ Ｃｏｏｐｅｒａｔｉｏｎ ７ Ｔｈｅ Ｃｈａｓｅｒｓ ａｎｄ ｔｈｅ Ｃｈａｓｅｄ ８ Ｔｈｅ Ｎｅｖｅｒ‐Ｅｎｄｉｎｇ Ｓｔｏｒｙ ｏｆ Ｃａｐａｂｉｌｉｔｙ‐Ｂｕｉｌｄｉｎｇ Ｃｏｍｐｅｔｉｔｉｏｎ

Failure to Protect Refugees?: Domestic Institutions, International Organizations, and Civil Society in Japan

Abstract: This article explores why Japanese government policies, despite major reforms, still do not comply well with international norms of protecting refugees. There has been great progress in the growth of nongovernmental organizations and civil society, the strong presence of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Japan, and the reduction of structural constraints on the ability of organizations to influence government policy. Despite these steps, lack of access to the Ministry of Justice and ideational constraints have hindered efforts by nonstate actors to reform refugee policies toward greater compliance with international norms of protection.

Ume Kenjirō and the Making of Korean Civil Law, 1906-1910

Abstract: In 1906 Itō Hirobumi invited Ume Kenjirō (1860–1910), a drafter of the Meiji Civil Code, to oversee the creation of a modern legal system in protectorate Korea. Ume's legal reform, which focused on writing a Korean civil law and establishing modern judicial administration, was imbued with nineteenth-century natural law theory, and it proceeded under the assumption of the continuing existence of an independent Korea. Cut short by annexation, Ume's saga in Korea highlights the insight and tensions underlying colonial legal reform and presents a powerful case that legal development under Japanese influence needs to be considered from a perspective detached from the nationalist paradigm.

Japanese Education and the Cram School Business: Functions, Challenges and Perspectives of the Juku (review)

Abstract: toral system and interparty dynamics. Politically, the power of bureaucrats was declining relative to political parties, and this brought policy debates about the role of civil society into the Diet, which is more visible to the public. The dominance of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was also less pronounced. The LDP’s need since the early 1990s to find coalition partners has made it more sensitive to the demands of potential partners. Pekkanen presents a detailed and convincing account of the political debates surrounding the formation of the 1998 NPO Law. He shows that while there was definitely resistance to the formation of the new law, and considerable debate as to how far it should go in opening the door and providing support to civil society groups, Japan’s regulatory environment has become far more open to NPOs than it was in the past. The 1998 NPO Law has made it easier for groups to obtain legal status without having to undergo bureaucratic screening or be subject to administrative guidance, as was the case until the law went into effect. Pekkanen’s work is a must-read for all interested in questions of civil society, democracy, and social capital in Japan. It will also be enlightening for those who are not specialists on Japan but are eager to understand how political opportunity structures and institutions can shape the possibilities open to civil society groups. This is a well-researched and thoughtfully argued study with a wealth of data, historical examples, and comparative analysis. For those wishing to know more about how the policy changes of the late 1990s and early 2000s have affected Japan’s civil society, however, readers will have to look elsewhere. It is an area rich for future research possibilities.

Japan's "War Orphans": Identification and State Responsibility

Abstract: In the chaotic aftermath of Japan’s loss in the Asia-Pacific War, thousands of Japanese infants and children were stranded in northeast China and remained there for decades as the foster children of Chinese households. Subsequently, more than two thousand of these “war orphans” have belatedly returned with their families to Japan, where they have faced tremendous difficulties adjusting to Japanese society. This article critically examines the reasons for the Japanese government’s failure to expeditiously repatriate and successfully resettle the war orphans in Japan and considers the war orphans’ grievances in light of their recent compensation lawsuits against the government.

Recovering from Success: Innovation and Technology Management in Japan (review)

Abstract: What I do have trouble with is characterizing all these basic social characteristics as “rules.” As West seems to admit when he refers to the Japanese preference for “private ordering,” “the structure of American legal institutions,” or “the structure of Japanese media institutions” as “rules” (p. 8), they seem much more like social structure than norms of behavior. Of course, as is argued to be the case with the group affi liations of Japanese politicians, social structure can be infl uenced or even determined by rules, even as most narrowly defi ned as legal rules. But as the causal connection between the rule and the phenomenon becomes indirect, the intervention of other factors becomes more likely and the argument weakens. Furthermore, an explanatory shift from “rules” to “structure” would not mean surrendering to the “obscure” and “circular” explanations of the (straw person?) culturist and would not seem to take West far from his central goal in the book, which was not to identify the “precise equation of the relation . . . between scandal and law.” Rather, West’s intent is to demonstrate that “the differences between Japanese and American scandals lie not in broad strokes— chrysanthemums and swords—but in the devilish details, the fi ner points of the stories” and that “a careful parsing of the rules and the facts with a comparative lens reveals parallels and subtle distinctions in incentives, relationship, egos, taboos, and perversions that make secrets, sex, and spectacle in both nations a bit less mysterious” (p. 329). West succeeds admirably in this broader goal and tells lots of good stories along the way, but I am still not sure I understand what it is about the panties. Maybe an anthropologist could pick up where the law professor leaves off.

Minority Success, Assimilation, and Idenity in Prewar Japan: Pak Chungǔm and the Korean Middle Class

Abstract: During the 1930s, an entrepreneurial class began to form within the overwhelmingly working-class Korean minority community in prewar Japan. This article examines how certain Koreans attained socioeconomic success and how they became assimilated into Japanese society in the process. As a case study, it focuses on the career of prewar Japan's most successful Korean en-trepreneur-turned-politician, Pak Chungŭm, to reveal how the internalization of Japanese values that came with success disconnected such individuals from the vast majority of Koreans residing in Japan, while offering them only a problematic sense of identification with the Japanese.

The Meiji Constitution: The Japanese Experience of the West and the Shaping of the Modern State (review)

Abstract: cies. The reason for this weakness might be that most of the contributors are relatively newcomers to this fi eld. In the introduction to the volume, Walker makes a heroic effort to bring all the contributions together by interweaving lengthy synopses of each essay with an analysis of Takahata Isao’s animated fi lm Heisei tanuki gassen ponpoko (Heisei badger wars, 1994). Perhaps the editors could have been more heavy-handed in their work with some of the manuscripts. Nonetheless, the book is important and I do not hesitate to recommend it to those interested in human-animal relations or in Japanese history.

Local Citizenship in Recent Countries of Immigration: Japan in Comparative Perspective (review)

Abstract: Migrant labor is widespread across Europe, North America, and increasingly in East Asia as economic growth and diversifi cation of advanced industrialized countries lure workers from developing countries across borders. In response to labor migration, national governments in recent countries of immigration have struggled to reinterpret or reform existing immigration laws and entitlement schemes in light of changing economic and demographic realities. Takeyuki Tsuda, in this edited volume, makes an exciting and unique argument that local citizenship rights and social services conferred on immigrants by local governments and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are more viable, enforceable, and expansive than formal, transnational, and global citizenship from nation-states or intergovernmental organizations, albeit this benefi t of local citizenship may be an uneven one. While Chikako Usui provides an overview of Japan’s changing demography, Katherine Tegtmeyer Pak, Keiko Yamanaka, and Deborah J. Milly present empirical data on activities of local governments and NGOs including social integration programs and welfare services. Amy Gurowitz then offers an international legal context in which these local actors employ their local activism for foreigners in Japan. Harlan Koff, Belen Agrela, Gunther Dietz, and Timothy C. Lim situate Japan’s local citizenship comparatively among other countries that have experienced recent immigration, such as Italy, Spain, and South Korea. The volume brings together prominent U.S.-based scholars who are actively working on Japan’s immigration. It contributes to contemporary theories of immigration by de-linking citizenship from nation-states and introducing an innovative way to understand and theorize membership rules and entitlements through the activism of local actors. Although not intended as a systematic and disciplined comparison, the book also makes an important and interdisciplinary contribution to the study of comparative immigration politics in recent countries of immigration by stressing the activism of local offi cials and NGO activists. As such, this book is a pioneer work in comparative immigration study that focuses on a non-Western country in an international perspective. Certain readers, however, will be annoyed by the book’s lack of focus on its salient points and disappointed with the data that exclude important developments of the last fi ve years. The book contains repeated data, un-

The Female Danjūrō: Revisiting the Acting Career of Ichikawa Kumehachi

Abstract: Ichikawa Kumehachi (1846?–1913) is best remembered in the history of Japanese theater as the first female disciple of the renowned kabuki actor and head of the Naritaya house, Ichikawa Danjūrō IX. This article reconsiders the complex relationship of these two important actors, arguing that Kumehachi's career cannot be reduced simply to her association with Danjūrō. Although she received intangible benefits from this prestigious connection, her career was largely independent of his. Ultimately, she was typecast as an "old-school" kabuki actress and viewed as the "female Danjūrō," which precluded her from making her reputation in the emerging "new-school" genres.

Modern Japanese Cuisine: Food, Power and National Identity (review)

Abstract: are widely varied and diffi cult to categorize under one particular framework, except that of positioning Japanese popular culture within an increasingly transnational world. While the editors do touch on this aspect in the introduction, an even fuller discussion might have helped make the book more effective as a general textbook. Nevertheless, it should be emphasized that each article on its own is well researched, thoughtful, and thought provoking. The pieces in this volume explore Japanese popular culture more widely and more deeply than those in previous compilations. Both students and scholars will have much to learn from it.

Japanese Bridges: A Translation of Yasuda Yojūrō's "Nihon No Hashi"

Abstract: Yasuda Yojūrō’s 1936 “Nihon no hashi” (Japanese bridges ) was among the most influential essays of its time. A discursive reflection on the place of Japanese bridges in the Japanese cultural imagination, “Nihon no hashi” earned Yasuda, the inspirational center of the Japanese Romantic Movement, the fervent devotion of his readers during the 1930s and the vilification of intellectuals after the war. Yasuda’s aura, projected from this essay as from no other, made him an emblem and embodiment of an age and a spirit. To many of his readers, in essays like “Nihon no hashi” Yasuda provided an antidote to a spiritual and cultural crisis in the beautification of sacrifice and violence; to later critics like Ōoka Makoto, Yasuda and his writing were toxic, to be treated like “radioactive substance disposed of deep in the sea.” This translation of “Nihon no hashi” attempts to give a sense of the power and strangeness of the original work by preserving its slippery and at times maddeningly opaque expository slides.

Language and Japanese Society: Mainstream, Minorities, and Modernity

Abstract: is not obvious what purpose this compendium of journalistic accounts and personal experiences serves. If promoting reform is the purpose, the author needs to write in Japanese from a position of some authority, although this raises the question of whether the Japanese really need yet another foreigner telling them what is wrong with their country and how to fi x it, adding to what they already get in large doses from The Japan Times. Beginning in the mid-1990s, when it belatedly dawned on foreign observers that Japan’s ascent to world economic and technological domination had come to an end, publications on Japan declined sharply in number and became much more critical. Japan shifted from being a target of admiration to a target of denigration even though not all that much within Japan had changed. Whether it was the intent of the author or not, this book and his earlier Japanese Higher Education as Myth can easily be read as being more of a validation of “the American model” than as an objective study of Japan. It will reassure Americans that even if Japanese companies, or at least Toyota, are still better at building popular automobiles than American fi rms, that even if Japanese schoolchildren still score well above American schoolchildren in international tests, Japanese higher education is a disaster and a wasteland, with other segments of the society not far behind, and, moreover, the Japanese need foreign observers, especially Americans, to tell them what is wrong with their country in general and their education in particular.

Sirens of the Western Shore: The Westernesque Femme Fatale, Translation, and Vernacular Style in Modern Japanese Literature (review)

Abstract: about consumption. Zwicker also uses apparently stable title counts to argue that changes in printing technology had little impact on the publication of literature in the nineteenth century, but print runs would be the defi nitive measure. For Zwicker’s argument, perhaps a more critical problem is that title counting says little about who is reading a book. Comparing Meijiperiod publishing rates of “modern novels written in Japanese,” “Edo fi ction” in reprint, and translations of foreign literature, Zwicker cites the low number of foreign titles as evidence of the limited impact of European fi ction (pp. 149–50). Whether the general public was reading European fi ction matters little to arguments on European infl uence, however, which always stress what writers read. (Why Zwicker distinguishes in this case between “modern novels” and “Edo fi ction”—described as “the previous dominant form”—is unclear.) Perhaps to head off such objections, Zwicker says that literary history that does not rely on quantitative methods is “anecdotal” and inadequate by itself, although he uses anecdote effectively (p. 146). Many of the most compelling arguments in Practices of the Sentimental Imagination come from good reasoning based on a group of sources, as in the author’s history of the use of shōsetsu and painstaking formal analyses of works such as Tora no maki and Hototogisu. However incomplete, Zwicker’s quantitative investigations contribute to a grasp of the materiality of literary form that places the economic, ideological, and aesthetic work of literature at the center of a research agenda. Zwicker’s willingness to reconsider under the rubric of the rise of the novel two periods normally kept at arm’s length likewise opens avenues for investigations crossing the false division between premodern and modern that structures, and hobbles, the study of Japanese literature. This bold book, written with a great deal of dash, deserves attention.

Japan after Japan: Social and Cultural Life from the Recessionary 1990s to the Present (review)

Abstract: a ¥300,000 fi ne. In other countries with antitraffi cking legislation, a crime of this nature would typically result in a prison sentence of 10 years or more. At the time, all human traffi cking crimes were prosecuted and punished as violations of the Immigration Law or Employment Security Law, which carried lighter punishments and fi nes than those under the criminal code. In 2004, the Japan Network Against Traffi cking in Persons (JNATIP) appealed to Diet members about the need for efforts to address the human traffi cking problem and aggressively lobbied for an action plan on counter-traffi cking measures. JNATIP members were invited to study groups of Diet members from various political parties, where they provided data on victims of traffi cking in persons and exchanged ideas. In December 2004, the Japanese government adopted an action plan to combat human traffi cking. Members of JNATIP expressed concern that the original action plan focused mainly on the punishment of perpetrators and collaborated with academics to lobby the government to also consider the protection of victims and assistance in their rehabilitation. Before the Diet approved the conclusions of the Palermo Protocols on traffi cking in humans in June 2005, the government revised its penal code to criminalize the buying and selling of persons. The revision granted victims special residency status to protect them even if they had overstayed their visas so that they could receive medical treatment before returning to their home countries. The Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare has also left an opening for progressive local governments to establish free medical plans (muryō keikaku shinryō) to assist traffi cking victims who cannot pay their medical fees. Meanwhile, the Interministerial Liaison Committee has sent directives to relevant government offi ces throughout Japan on how to protect victims. As a result of these directives, police no longer treat traffi cking victims, mostly overstayed foreign prostitutes, as criminals, and immigration offi cials do not automatically deport them. Overall, the argument in this book is exciting and innovative, but its organization and supporting data could be improved.

A History of Nationalism in Modern Japan: Placing the People (review)

Abstract: popular sovereignty, providing a framework for further evolution of social and political norms. Takii’s book is not meant to be a standalone guide to the framing of the Meiji Constitution and would be insuffi cient for that purpose. But as a supplement, telling the human story in cross-cultural perspective, it is a welcome addition to the literature. His account includes many anecdotes of the participants’ interactions among themselves as well as with their European hosts. The result is a readable intellectual history that will supplement earlier accounts of this crucial phase in Japanese legal and political history. Finally, it is important to mention that the edition by the International House of Japan is beautiful, with several photographs of the oligarchs and a fi ne translation by David Noble.

The Impact of the Russo-Japanese War (review)

Abstract: souls enshrined at Yasukuni include former soldiers of various ethnicities and religions” (pp. 272–73). I hope it will be suffi cient to ask, “with whose consent?” to indicate that Doak’s argument does nothing to resolve the Yasukuni issue. But in a broader sense, he may be correct in arguing that much of what appears to be ideological antinationalism in Japan is better described as a species of nationalism itself, an attempt to protect a fi guratively “pure” ethnos from political contamination. It is notable that Doak, following Saeki Keishi among others, faults imposed “postwar democracy” (and its supposed allergy to nationalism) for having made the people “hostile” to the state (p. 213). I think it is the corrupting effects of more than 50 years of single-party hegemony that has so deeply alienated certain (large) segments of the population. If anything, people’s expectations of what the state should provide the populace in the domain of welfare remain high and therefore subject to disappointment. Perhaps one area where there is “hostility to the state” is in the fi eld of education. Here, the cognizant ministry seems determined to wield an even heavier hand, as if in compensation for the forced retreat of the state from other areas of public policy. And I am not sure that the prime minister has a bully pulpit from which to appeal to the nation, however defi ned. Doak has written a quirky book. It is frequently original in its use of sources and there are more than a few arresting insights in its pages. The text, I am sorry to say, is distractingly littered with typographical and occasional spelling and syntactical errors. There are mistakes of fact that lead to overblown or untenable interpretations: the new constitution, Doak writes, went into effect on May 3, 1952 (p. 118), but the actual date was 1947; can it really be said that “from September 1945 to April 1952 there was no Japanese state” (p. 204)? There was never no constitution. Yes, Japan was occupied, but SCAP ruled through and required precisely the authority of “the Japanese state,” not least in the form of the “humanized” emperor who was its symbol, but, more to the point, that of the democratic institutions whose contentious existence began in those unprecedented years.

The Left in the Shaping of Japanese Democracy: Essays in Honour of J. A. A. Stockwin (review)

Abstract: expense of Japanese settlers. Another strength of Yamamuro might be his endless search of the primary data. But this perfection might paradoxically work as a disadvantage. There may be no theoretical consideration that will satisfy some social scientists nor discourse analysis that will satiate some scholars in cultural studies or intellectual history. The last (very minor) problem in the translation is that Xi Qia, one of the key Chinese collaborators from Jilin Province, is incorrectly spelled as Xi Xia, an error that continues to be repeated in some English-language studies.

Practices of the Sentimental Imagination: Melodrama, the Novel, and the Social Imaginary in Nineteenth-Century Japan (review)

Abstract: Buson’s poetry matters because it is proto-modern and because haiku is still hot stuff today. But neither he nor his poetry requires validation on such grounds. Crowley’s book shows that she knows a great deal about Buson and his circle. Perhaps in future work she will make more progress toward providing students and other readers with a corpus of translations and a set of explications that convey what is poetic in the architectonics and the subtle signifi cations of his verse miniatures.

Sino-Japanese Relations: Interaction, Logic, and Transformation (review)

Abstract: This is a very thorough and comprehensive study of the political, security, economic, and sociocultural aspects of Sino-Japanese relations. Chapters 2 and 3 give a factual overview of the two countries’ interactions in these areas; they are followed by three chapters dealing with the strategic calculations, perception, and identities of the players on both sides. A separate chapter weighs the impact of the United States on Sino-Japanese relations and tries to verify whether there is a triangular strategic dynamic between the three powers. Another chapter analyzes the global systemic impact and, fi nally, the author presents four case studies of major events in the bilateral relationship. In addition to 345 pages of text, there are a further 100 pages with sources and footnotes. The study is theoretically and methodologically eclectic since Wan considers this approach better to analyze the motivations and trends in the relationship. In the case of such a wide-ranging monograph, a review can pick up only a few issues. One such issue is Wan’s discussion about where each country situates the other in its own strategic vision. In the context of discussing the phenomenon of China and Japan pursuing similar but competing objectives, Wan states that both countries are heading toward becoming “normal countries.” According to his interpretation of Chinese perceptions, Japan is, however, seen as a block to China’s great-power aspirations because of Tokyo’s own great-power aspirations and closer links with the United States. Japan views China in the same way, that is, as a block to its great-power aspirations and increasingly as a security challenge, to which Tokyo has responded by hedging and strengthening its alliance with the United States. Interestingly, Wan points out strategic goals the two countries “should have or could have adopted for the bilateral relationship” (p. 124) (e.g., multilateral cooperation could have helped to advance their respective aspirations, or their common interest in combating terrorism and piracy), but they failed to do so because of Chinese people’s deep-rooted mistrust of Japan and the perception of a threat from a rising Japan. This is an important point, but it is strange that Wan seems to ignore the fact that China is also deeply suspicious of the U.S. interests behind Japan’s greater world-power aspirations. Moreover, the author tries to illustrate his point about China’s distrust by referring to Beijing’s growing hostility to Tokyo’s quest for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, contrasting this with the U.S.