Japanese Studies

As can be easily recognised, the title of this paper alludes to a famous statement by Robert N. Bellah. In his article “Values and Social Change in Modern Japan,” originally published in 1970, Bellah identified “worldly affirmativeness, the opposite of denial” as “the ground bass […] of the Japanese tradition.” This may, at first sight, seem to be consistent with my rather provocative notion of the ‘secular ground bass of pre-modern Japan.’ Is “worldly affirmativeness” not actually a key feature of ‘secularity,’ and of ‘modernity’ for that matter? However, Bellah’s argument runs in the very opposite direction. Contrary to what one might expect, worldly affirmativeness, in Bellah’s view, did not pave the way for secularity but, rather, prevented it. The reason is, says Bellah, that the alleged ground bass of worldly affirmativeness was responsible for the ‘failure’ of the early modern Japanese to actualise the moment of transcendence that had been recognised and strongly emphasised by medieval Buddhist thinkers already. I adopt a completely different approach. I aim to demonstrate that the medieval Japanese had already developed a set of epistemes with a longue durée, which turned out to be favourable for appropriating modern Western concepts of secularity in the 19th century, because they clearly distinguished between two social domains, which we – from a modern perspective – would label roughly as ‘religion’ on the one hand and ‘politics’ on the other. In other words, we find social structures and related systems of classification that come quite close to the ideal type of secularity as originally defined by Monika Wohlrab-Sahr and Marian Burchardt, namely: “institutionally as well as symbolically embedded forms and arrangements for distinguishing between religion and other societal areas, practices and interpretations.”

Several states have put in place a set of parental leaves. Through a documentary research, the purpose of this article is to compare the province of Quebec, that has a successful paternity leave, and Japan, where only a small proportion of Japanese fathers use parental weeks. In 2015, it was nearly 79% of Quebec’s fathers who had taken a leave, with an average of 7 weeks. On the contrary, in Japan, they are still very few to use the public programs available, around 3.16 % in 2016. Many reasons can explain the success of Quebec’s policy, among others historical factors. In the reform of the Civil Code of Quebec in 1977, the father's status changed from "paternal power" to "parental authority" to be shared equally with the mother, a responsibility that both parents retain after separation or divorce. It confirms to fathers their status of "parent" who has not only a monetary obligation (alimony), but also a minimum amount of time to spend with his child. In Japan, the role of the father is not considered as strongly. Fathers face the “flexibility stigma”, a notion that implies that the need for work-life accommodations is still associated with female employees, because the role of the father is to be a “good provider”, as promoted by the traditional breadwinner ideal. Companies use frequently the practice of tanshin funin (単身赴任) which spaces contacts between the father and his children. Furthermore, in a divorce, parental authority is transferred to one of the parents, usually the mother who will then fully assume custody.
世界の幾つかの政府がこれまで育児休暇法を成立させた。本論文においては、多くの文献や論文を検証した上で、カナダ東部のケベック州と日本における育児休暇法の適用状況を比較する。2015年の統計によれば、ケベック州では79%もの父親が平均７週間の育児休暇を利用している。それに対して日本ではほぼ同時期の2016年の時点で育児休暇を利用する父親は僅かに3.16%に止まっているのだ。両者の、こうした大きな違いを説明しようとして、すでに多くの考察がなされている。それは歴史的に説明できると主張する学者もいて、ケベック州で見られる成果は1977年の同州における民法改正によるものとされる。それまでの「権力」としてみなされていた「父親の立場」が、改正以降は母親と共有すべき「親の権威」と変わったことにあると指摘するのだ。これ以降、父親か母親かに拘らず、別居や離婚の後も両親は同じ権利と義務を持って育児にあたるべきということになったからだ。従って、父親は妻と別れた後も（養育費という形で）財政的に貢献をするだけでなく、最低限の時間を子供と過ごすことが義務付けられた。これ対して日本では、父親の役割はケベック州ほど重要なものとはみなされていない。基本的には「子育て」という役割は「時間に余裕のある」母親の方にあると思われているからだ。事実、何世紀にも渡って、日本では父親が「生活費を稼ぐ」役割を演じてきたからである。会社側にも「単身赴任」という、既に定着した慣行をしばしば社員に命じ、父親でもある社員は次第に自分の子供との接触を失っていく。これに加えて、離婚の際に親権はしばしば母親に与えられるから、養育義務はほぼ自動的に母親のものとなる。

The future of Asia seems to largely depend on the effective management of cities and metropolitan regions. Emerging approaches to urban governance in Asia, addressing social, economic and environmental challenges in a more sustainable way, are well acknowledged. Competition and global aspirations of cities in Asia are at the same time considered major drivers of their urban growth. Less attention, however, is placed on the consequences of urban growth on the everyday life in localities. These are not only passive recipients but also as active agents, capable of responding to competition and global aspirations of cities. Moreover, localities are relevant for their growing importance for inclusive urban governance, which aims to foster community development, collaborative economies, grassroots placemaking or expansion of local autonomy. The 2021 special issue of Asian Studies journal, therefore, aims to explore the diverse consequences of urban growth on the transformation of localities in urban Asia by addressing the following key questions:

● How does urban growth affect everyday life in localities across Asia?
● How do localities sustain or resist competition and global aspirations of cities in Asia?
● What is the importance of localities for building just and sustainable cities in Asia?

The special issue aims to bring together contributions from scholars in human geography, urban and regional planning, environmental management, landscape architecture, urban sociology and anthropology, cultural studies or political sciences, which can contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the local transformations in urban Asia. It aims to focus on residential neighbourhoods, traditional commercial areas and markets, streets and alleys or urban parks, for instance, to explore how everyday practices and shared identities, embedded in localities, affect and are affected by the urban change. These localities are seldom part of global financial centres, shopping malls or speculative mega projects but belong to multifaceted civic spaces, where diverse social groups can mingle and coexist.

Next from its focus on a comprehensive understanding of localities, the special issue also wants to engage with a locally informed understanding of the local transformations in urban Asia. Cities in Asia were often studied in relation to and based on the methodological tools and explanatory frameworks, borrowed from the Global North, without challenging their relevance for particular Asian urban contexts. This not only restricts the understanding of cities in Asia but also possibilities to challenge general urban theory. The special issue, therefore, aims to bring together contributions that critically address the local transformation in urban Asia while challenging established methodological tools within Asian urban contexts. Theoretical or empirical contributions are welcome from scholars, researchers, PhD students and other experts, particularly from those using a qualitative research approach.

Previously unpublished original contributions should be submitted online by July 1st, 2020 (http://revije.ff.uni-lj.si/as).

The author attempts to analyze several categories of the Japanese political culture of the Nara period of the 7th–8th centuries AD, such as harmony (wa 和), and righteousness (gi 義). The author supposes that the existential disposition of trust forms the basis for such categories. In Confucian tradition, this disposition is expressed through trustworthiness (sin 信). The article begins with an overview of the Japanese political culture of the Nara period in order to clarify the place of wa, gi, and sin in Japanese political thought. The author pays close attention to the roles of language and myth in Japanese culture as well. It is argued that political culture is a sort of superstructure for language, which is a substructure. Since language is the logos of culture as a whole, it is possible to identify the existential meanings of categories of political culture that are ontologically rooted in language. The author claims that the patterns of political thinking in Japanese tradition are reflected in myth. In order to prove this, the authors offers an analysis of the use of such characters as wa 和 and gi 義 in the Japanese chronicles Kojiki and Nihongi, highlighting the variety of their meanings and the close connection with trustworthiness as their basis.

Автор предлагает проанализировать категории политической культуры Японии периода Нара (VII–VIII века) — согласие ва 和 и должное ги 義, предполагая, что в их основании кроется экзистенциальный принцип доверия, выраженный конфуцианской категорией доверительности син 信. Начиная с краткого обзора политической культуры исследуемого периода, автор артикулирует значение всех исследуемых категорий в топике японского политического мышления. Отдельное внимание уделено роли языка и мифа в японской культуре, т. к. автор исходит из убеждения, что политическая культура является своего рода надстройкой над основанием, коим является язык, будучи логосом культуры в целом, благодаря чему становится возможным выявить онтологически укорененные в языке экзистенциальные смыслы категорий политической мысли. Приходя к выводу, что в японской традиции миф в наибольшей степени отражает закономерности политического мышления, в заключительной части работы автор анализирует употребление иероглифов ва 和 и ги 義 в текстах японских мифолетописных хроник «Кодзики», «Нихонги» и «Сёку нихонги», поочередно проясняя оттенки их значений и обнаруживая в них доверительную основу.

For the first time in its history, 国際日本学会, the International Association of Japan Studies, the IAJS, in December 2018, held a second day of events run and presented by students, academics, and activists. More than 120 people signed up to it. It was the IAJS directors who devised this innovation to transform and enlarge the IAJS conference proper, now in its 14th year, into a hotbed of discussion, debate, and reevaluation of assumptions and presuppositions regarding the question of what is Japan Studies. We wished to find a better way for teachers and students at Toyo, Waseda, Nihon, Teikyo and other big universities in the metropolitan area and beyond, to collaborate transversally (Cole & Bradley, 2018), both inside and outside of the classroom.

The introduction of haiku to the Western world was a major cultural event that initiated an expanding movement that over time has quietly permeated Western thinking and behavior as evidenced by its manifold use and expression in Western poetry, literature, science, philosophy, academia, culture, psychology, business, commerce, and technology, and which has challenged Western ethical foundations. Haiku has directly or indirectly affected everyone. Trumbull’s history of the Western haiku movement seems to naturally fall into three clear phases: 1) the Initial phase, 1853-1945; 2) the Great Expansion, 1946-1968; and 3) the explosive Multicultural Global Integration, 1969-2019. This paper shows how the practice of haiku has already benefited individuals and society in such areas as multicultural values, imagination, integration, mental health, well-being, professional development, stress reduction, personal expression, linguistic eloquence, technology, business and commerce, scientific innovation, aesthetic appreciation, and more. But this only hints at the possibilities of further exploration and study.

For decades, Europe has played an important role in Japan in different aspects of life. After the First World War, the United States claimed its place as a world leader and during the same time, Russia gained attention because of the Russian Revolution. Nevertheless, Europe remained an important player in the world and to Japan during the 1910s and 1920s. An interesting question to pose is what the exact role of Europe in Japan was. A straightforward way to examine the role that European countries played in Japan and the way they were portrayed to the Japanese public is by using an entertainment source of the 1920s. In the 1910s and 1920s, Japanese entertainment was blooming and especially women’s magazines saw an increase in publications. However, the role and portrayal of European countries in Japan has rarely been studied directly by using these Japanese women’s magazines. Analysing the whole of Europe, however, would make this whole research less detailed. For this reason, this paper focuses on two countries. The first being France that was on the Allied side during the First World War, and the second being Germany on the losing side.

This thesis presents an analysis of two Japanese women’s magazines and investigates how France and Germany were portrayed and described in these magazines. From these portrayals and descriptions the role these countries played to the Japanese readers becomes clear. The researched Japanese women’s magazines are Fujin Kōron and Josei. Josei’s publication period is simultaneously the exact research period of this thesis, namely May 1922 until May 1928. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the role France and Germany played for the readers, mainly middle-class women, of these magazines. This brings us at the research question of this thesis: “What was the role of France and Germany in Japanese women’s magazines, specifically Fujin Kōron and Josei, during the 1920s?”.

The research method to analyse the descriptions and roles of France and Germany is to examine articles in the selected magazines. The analysed articles are selected on basis of the articles’ titles. This means that titles with “France” (furansu フランス, ふらんす, 仏蘭西 or 仏国) and “Germany” (doitsu ドイツ, どいつ or 独逸), and titles with “Paris” (pari パリ, ぱり or 巴里) and “Berlin” (berurin ベルリン, べるりん or 伯林) were selected for this research. Since it is the goal of this research to focus specifically on France and Germany, this reasoning has been followed in order to avoid these articles that might talk more broadly about other European and Asian countries, or even the United States, which would make the research itself less detailed. From the titles and the contents of the articles, one can examine the themes that were being discussed and then analyse how these themes differed for each country. In order to examine whether there is a difference in the themes and contents published based on the location of the magazines, articles have been selected from two different magazines, Fujin Kōron and Josei. These magazines were based respectively in Tokyo and Osaka, two of Japan’s centres. While there were Japanese translations of European literary works published in both magazines as well, those are not analysed and the preference is given to articles such as essays, criticisms and diaries. Illustrations and photographs are taken in consideration for this research, but only when they were visualized in the selected articles or when they were titled after the researched countries and cities.

From the contents of these articles, one then can ultimately see which themes were important and how the researched countries, France and Germany, were portrayed to the Japanese readers. It is important here to remember that publishers always publish articles with a certain purpose in mind. This means that the themes and contents of these articles were narrated by the writers and may not always correspond with reality. To evaluate whether or not the contents are a 100 percent true or false is not the main purpose of this thesis. The contents of the articles are read the way they are, as the readers of the magazines did during the 1920s. From the visualizations and descriptions of the countries, it will then become clear which role(s) these countries played to Japanese housewives and which influence they exerted. As a hypothesis, this thesis surmises that for France, its role could be a source of inspiration for fashion and cuisine, as French cuisine has always been highly praised and Paris has been viewed as one of the capitals of fashion since the seventeenth century. For Germany, the hypothesis could be that Germany played an artistic and literary role, as there were many famous German painters, composers and writers during the eighteenth century. Perhaps there could even be political articles and content from Germany, as they for example achieved women’s suffrage in 1918.

In order to discuss what the themes of the articles and the roles of the respective countries were, a general overview and summary of the articles on France and Paris is provided in chapter 4 and the same is given for Germany and Berlin in chapter 5. In chapter 6, a comparative analysis between the selected countries and their capitals is provided based on articles with extremely similar titles and themes. These articles are “Futsu-kokujin no katei seikatsu” 仏国人の家庭生活 (“The Domestic Lives of French People”) and “Doitsujin no katei seikatsu” 独逸人の家庭生活 (“The Domestic Lives of Germans”) to compare France and Germany. “Pari de mita onna” 巴里で見た女 (“Women I Saw in Paris”) and “Watashi no hajimete mita Berurin fujin” 私の初めて見たベルリン婦人 (“The First Berlin Women I Saw”) are used to compare Paris and Berlin. A general overview and comparison between France and Germany based on all selected articles is given in chapter 6.3.

In this article, we describe the experiences of Polish war refugee children, isolated in Shanghai between the years of 1941-1945. Our research has studied a wide range of ar- chival material, including original documents relating to the transportation of Polish Jewish families to China, their settlement in Shanghai, the publication of a newspa- per, and the education of displaced children to retain their original identity, preparing them for eventual return to their homeland. Combining archival and documenta- ry research with personal interviews of survivors of the Shanghai ghetto, this article provides a testament to the lives of war refugee children in general by describing in detail the lives of interned Polish Jews.

なぜジョンを「バプテスト」と呼ぶのですか？彼は「悔い改め」のために人々を水中で洗礼したからです。なぜイエスを「バプテスト」と呼ぶのですか？罪を克服し、死の地から私たちを救うだけでなく、彼は「罪の悔い改め」のために私たちに洗礼を施すようになったからです。死からよみがえった後、彼は弟子たちに水ではなく天使の霊でバプテスマを授けました（ヨハネ20:22）。イエスは、復活後の「霊の天使のバプテスマ」の使命を開始し、今日も続けています。初期の使徒たちはそれを理解し、世界中の人々にイエスを紹介し、彼らの「霊天使バプテスマ」を援助するために出かけました。

Many have been said about manga, but being a fan of this great medium, I find there is no reason not to renew my enthusiasm on manga by describing in this lecture notes, why you should read and study manga. Manga (漫画, literally, “whimsical drawings”), a Japanese term, is an integral component of modern consciousness, one of the many pillars of today’s pop culture.

This paper analyzes the Taiko no Tatsujin (Bandai Namco, 2001/2018) franchise and the musical literacy it conveys. While previous accounts of game musical literacy have focused on the competence necessary to interpret references across media (van Elferen, 2016), this paper expands on the concept, including forms of musical participation such as live performances and oral traditions. The musical compositions included in Taiko no Tatsujin pertain to the Japanese phenomenon of media convergence known as media mix (Steinberg, 2012), as they have been previously popularized by anime and geemu ongaku (or game music) (Yamakami & Barbosa, 2015). However, the musical participation extends its references to the practice of Japanese taiko drumming, a largely oral, non-notated musical form, which cannot be reduced to a musical repertoire. The conclusions show that game musical literacy is constructed not only on media literacy, but also on various different forms of participation in musical performances, or musicking (Small, 1998), which concur in constructing game musical literacy. The musical culture associated with digital games is therefore expressed through a large variety of musical practices.

Every city has built environments that are largely regarded as eyesores, for aesthetic, social, or moral reasons. Urban nightlife streets are examples of such “grimy heritage.” Not only shabby and disorderly, they also harbor forms of commercial sex, drinking cultures, and ephemeral nightlife cultures that many city residents and government officials consider undesirable. Sometimes their built forms are regarded as the enemy of genuine heritage architecture since they obscure more solid, carefully designed structures around them. However, in many cities, organic nightlife streets – developing in such spaces precisely because they were derelict or poorly regulated – serve important social functions as spaces of creativity and community formation. This paper examines the ways that such “grimy heritage” has developed in Shanghai and Tokyo, using examples from ethnographic research and historical sources, and addressing the question of the contribution of the “grimy heritage” to authentic, urban social life.

James Farrer. 2019. “Grimy Heritage: Organic Bar Streets in Shanghai and Tokyo”  Built Heritage Vol. 3, Issue 3, pp. pp. 73-85.

Abstract This essay analyzes the children’s imaginative play in Kazuo Ishiguro’s various novels, with a special focus on Never Let Me Go. Children often engage in various types of repetitive imaginative play, acting out stories about things that do not actually exist in order to avoid the pain of confronting their problems. An exploration of children’s play and the roles performed by the guardians and Madam helps us read the novel from a new perspective – the Mujo view of Buddhism. Mujo is the Buddhist philosophy which describes “the impermanence of all phenomena.” In Never Let Me Go, shadows of death weigh heavily on the reader as an unavoidable reminder of the nature of life. This brings Mujo to the Japanese readers’ minds. The Mujo view of Buddhism has imbued Japanese literature since the Kamakura Era (1185), and a reading of Never Let Me Go from the Mujo perspective sheds light on the condition of its protagonists. My analysis aims to introduce the Mujo doctrine to anglophone literary studies by foregrounding the poignancy and resilience found in Never Let Me Go.

To date kawaii (cute) culture, as it is performed by women in Japan, has been understood to be both a submissive and a subversive practice. This debate tends to frame kawaii texts as inherently infantile, and their use by women as either a form of submission to patriarchal forces, or as a mode of resistance to adult responsibilities.

Using an interpretivist lens, this paper seeks to complicate this understanding of kawaii texts through the use of emerging research into cuteness, affect, and play; and Takahara Eiri and Honda Masuko's conceptualisation of "the girl". Using Takahara and Honda's theory, this paper proposes that girlishness in the Japanese context: Places emphasis on affect; Is characterised by a longing to become like that which the individual adores and; Involves "radical self interest".

Drawing upon 20 qualitative interviews with female-identifying kawaii fashion practitioners in Tokyo, this paper examines how kawaii culture is understood by alternative communities in Japan. For the purpose of this paper, kawaii fashion is defined as clothing that is typically associated with the Harajuku scene, consisting of styles such as Lolita fashion, Decora fashion, Fairy kei and Hime fashion. Practitioners assemble outfits that draw upon both conventional and unconventional feminine texts to create looks that are bold, girly, and creative. Practitioners experience kawaii to be joyful, creative and exciting and that kawaii objects were used to contemplate new potentials for the self. These new potentials were guided by an underpinning wish to be seen as adorable and loveable by others, and thus the usage of fantastic feminine texts, such as princesses or dolls, complicates readings of this community as a subversion of gender norms.  This instance presents a complex instance of the shifting relationships between femininity and feminist practice.

O presente trabalho se  propõe a  analisar  a construção do tanuki, enquanto  personagem  em traduções de histórias folclóricas japonesas para o inglês, o francês e o português. O tanuki é um animal que existe naturalmente somente na Ásia e com forte folclore no Japão enquanto um yōkai. Como o tanuki faz parte de memória cultural própria do Oriente, existe uma problemática de tradução para o Ocidente de textos  com a presença  desse  folclore.    Após  situar  o  leitor  em  relação  aos  contextos biológicos  e  folclóricos  do tanuki,  minha  reflexão segue a  perspectiva  da  Análise  do  Discurso pecheutiana,  especialmente do conceito  de memória  discursiva, sobre a trajetória e os caminhos da tradução  de  histórias  folclóricas  japonesas.  Finalmente,  analiso trechos  de  traduções  de  dois tradicionais e relevantes contos folclóricos japoneses que contam coma presença do tanuki enquanto personagem principal: Kachi Kachi Yama e Bunbuku Chagama, possibilitando a análise em mais de um  contexto.O  objetivo  é compreender  que  elementos  textuais  são  utilizados  para  acessar  outros discursos que contribuam com a construção do personagem na história e de sua memória no ocidente.