Japan Viewed From Interdisciplinary Perspectives

The growth rate of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the Asia-Pacific region greatly surpasses the world average. When the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is better realized, then the world’s largest free trade zone will be firmly established. It seems that this region has a very rosy outlook indeed; however, this region also faces a large number of serious problems such as: atomic energy in Japan, conflicts about East Asian regional integration, the decline of the Japanese Official Development Assistance (ODA), and the TPP’s possible impact on the Japanese universal health insurance system. We now face a possible Sino-Japanese military conflict concerning the Senkaku Islands (or Diaoyutai Islands). In short, the Asia-Pacific region has both a rosy future and the potential influence from unstable and dangerous elements at work within the region at present. The main purpose of this book is to analyze historical development, whilst looking at the contemporary situation of Japan from interdisciplinary perspectives. This book asks three major questions: (1) Is this really globalization? (2) What are Japan’s relations with other Asian countries? (3) Do U.S.-Japan relations still matter? Fourteen leading scholars in their fields answer these questions from interdisciplinary perspectives.

Japan in the Heisei Era (1989–2019) provides a retrospective and multidisciplinary account of a society in flux. Featuring analyses from leading scholars around the globe, this textbook examines the evolving contexts of Japan throughout the Heisei era and how longstanding verities and values have been called into question. Asking what this holds for Japan’s future relations with the world and within its own communities, chapters delve beneath the layers of a complex and increasingly diverse society, exploring topics including simmering ethnonationalism, economic torpor, political stagnation, and cultural dynamics. Features of this textbook include: • Analysis of key social issues ranging from immigration, civil society, press freedom, politics, labour and the economy, to diversity, the marginalisation of women, Shinto, and Aum Shinrikyo • Evaluation of the legacy of Emperor Akihito on war memory, the imperial institution, art, regional relations, and constitutional revision • Multidisciplinary insights from both the social sciences and humanities • Rich illustrations for visual analysis of developments in contemporary Japanese literature, film, art, and pop culture Providing students with dynamic analyses of how contemporary Japanese society continues to transform, this textbook is essential reading for students of Japanese Studies, including Japanese culture, society, history, and politics.

This anthology analyzes societal and cultural aspects of modern Japan. It identifies the dynamic trend and undercurrent in Japan by addressing three key areas: modernization, internationalization, and memory and imagination. Using interdisciplinary and multi-language approaches, it discusses topics such as religion, ethnicity, civil society, art, public health, popular culture, war, identity and education. It is a valuable resource for scholars and graduate students with an interest in cutting-edge research analyses of Japanese / Asian studies.

This book offers a useful and extensive account of Japan’s past discoveries and present interactions with Muslim states and societies across Asia. Bearing in mind the U.S.-led global meta-narrative of Islam spoken in tandem with security and threats, this book examines how this reconciles with Japan’s self-proclaimed “values-based” approach to diplomacy across Asia in the twenty-first century. The author considers Japan’s historic conceptualization and learning of Islam, and its acute needs for access to markets and energy from Muslim-majority states in Asia. He also argues that Japan securitizes Islam in a manner distinct from Western, Russian, or Chinese securitization today, but that Japan promotes itself as a model for human security and development across an Asia inclusive of Muslim states. Japan’s approach to Islam and Muslim societies today offers much from which other great powers can learn.

Based on over two years of participant-observation in labor brokerage firms, factories, schools, churches, and people’s homes in Japan and Brazil, Sarah LeBaron von Baeyer presents an ethnographic portrait of what it means in practice to “live transnationally,” that is, to contend with the social, institutional, and aspirational landscapes bridging different national settings. Rather than view Japanese-Brazilian labor migrants and their families as somehow lost or caught between cultures, she demonstrates how they in fact find creative and flexible ways of belonging to multiple places at once. At the same time, the author pays close attention to the various constraints and possibilities that people face as they navigate other dimensions of their lives besides ethnic or national identity, namely, family, gender, class, age, work, education, and religion

The authors argue that with the election of the Abe Government in December 2012, Japanese politics has entered a radically new phase they describe as the “2012 Political System.” The system began with the return to power of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), after three years in opposition, but in a much stronger electoral position than previous LDP-based administrations in earlier decades. Moreover, with the decline of previously endemic intra-party factionalism, the LDP has united around an essentially nationalist agenda never absent from the party’s ranks, but in the past was generally blocked, or modified, by factions of more liberal persuasion. Opposition weakness following the severe defeat of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) administration in 2012 has also enabled the Abe Government to establish a political stability largely lacking since the 1990s. The first four chapters deal with Japanese political development since 1945 and factors leading to the emergence of Abe Shinzō as Prime Minister in 2012. Chapter 5 examines the Abe Government’s flagship economic policy, dubbed “Abenomics.” The authors then analyse four highly controversial objectives promoted by the Abe Government: revision of the 1947 ‘Peace Constitution’; the introduction of a Secrecy Law; historical revision, national identity and issues of war apology; and revised constitutional interpretation permitting collective defence. In the final three chapters they turn to foreign policy, first examining relations with China, Russia and the two Koreas, second Japan and the wider world, including public diplomacy, economic relations and overseas development aid, and finally, the vexed question of how far Japanese policies are as reactive to foreign pressure. In the Conclusion, the authors ask how far right wing trends in Japan exhibit common causality with shifts to the right in the United States, Europe and elsewhere. They argue that although in Japan immigration has been a relatively minor factor, economic stagnation, demographic decline, a sense of regional insecurity in the face of challenges from China and North Korea, and widening gaps in life chances, bear comparison with trends elsewhere. Nevertheless, they maintain that “[a] more sane regional future may be possible in East Asia.”

This cultural history examines representations of pleasure work during Japan’s transformation into a modern nation-state. It traces the figure of the prostitute in the context of Japanese nation- and empire-building immediately before and during the Meiji era.

Based on life history interviews of single mothers in Japan, this detailed study examines the socioeconomic consequences of becoming a single mother and pursuing a lifestyle outside of the married mother and housewife norm in contemporary Japan.