Uneasy Warriors

Following World War II, Japan's postwar constitution forbade the country to wage war or create an army. However, with the emergence of the cold war in the 1950s, Japan was urged to establish the Self-Defense Forces as a way to bolster Western defenses against the tide of Asian communism. Although the SDF's role is supposedly limited to self-defense, Japan's armed forces are equipped with advanced weapons technology and the world's third-largest military budget. Sabine Frühstück draws on interviews, historical research, and analysis to describe the unusual case of a non-war-making military. As the first scholar permitted to participate in basic SDF training, she offers a firsthand look at an army trained for combat that nevertheless serves nontraditional military needs.

"This is one of the best—most surprising, insightful, provocative—books I've read on the complex interplay of memory, militarism and masculinity. Japan specialists will be sure to find it thought-provoking. But it should also be 'must reading' for all students of masculinity, femininity, militarization, and soldiering. This is comparative feminist ethnography at its smartest."—Cynthia Enloe, author of The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire "Uneasy Warriors presents a rare and intimate view into the psychological and social workings of the Self-Defense Forces. As the US and Japanese governments gear up to change the Japanese anti-war constitution, this book is even more important for understanding what the consequences will be."—Catherine Lutz, author of Homefront: A Military City and the American 20th Century "Sabine Frühstück expertly describes the ambiguous status of the Japanese Self Defense Forces. The book reveals insights gained from several years of sustained research, including a stint "in uniform" at an army base near Mt. Fuji. Frühstück's observations about the SDF's public relations emphasis on "cute" popular cultural media are timely and trenchant, as are her analyses of the militarization of masculinity and femininity."—Jennifer Robertson, author of Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan

Taking the “tidal wave” of memory in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century as its starting point, this monograph explores collective memory of World War II in East Asia (1937–1945) through film. Weiss argues that Chinese, Japanese, and American remembrance of World War II is intertwined in what she terms a “memory loop,” the transnational mediation and remediation of war narratives. Gender is central to this process, as the changing representation of male soldiers, political leaders, and patriarchal father figures within these narratives reveals Japanese and Chinese challenges to each other and to the perceived “foundational” American narrative of the war. This process continues to intensify due to the globally visible nature of the memory loop, which drives this cycle of transmission, translation, and reassessment. This volume is the first to bring together a collection of Chinese and Japanese war films that have received little attention in English-language literature. It also produces new readings of popular war memory in East Asia by revealing the gendered dimensions of collective remembrance in these films. “This awesome book shows how Chinese and Japanese films about the Second World War both reflect and shape memories of that conflict. Moreover, by analyzing movies about the war and the ensuing ‘competing masculinities,’ Amanda Weiss skillfully discloses their impact on subsequent conceptions of race, gender, and identity. Highly recommended.” —Kam Louie, University of Hong Kong “Amanda Weiss, who views film as a significant mode of popular memory traveling beyond national border, discovers a loop of mutual interaction in the representation of Chinese and Japanese war films deeply intertwined with the nationalism of both countries. Her skill in capturing the intersection of cross-border memories in visual images such as the Tokyo Trials, warrior, rape, and reconciliation is remarkable. This is a transcendent achievement that could only be accomplished by Weiss, who fully understands both Japanese and Chinese languages and deeply understands the movements of consciousness among the people of these countries during her long stay in Japan and China.” —Shunya Yoshimi, University of Tokyo 日本語原文： 1980年代以降、日本と中国の戦争映画は、まったく異なる方向に向かい、それぞれナショナリスティックな語りを発達させてきたと考えられている。しかし、映画とはトランスナショナルな大衆的記憶の技術であると考えるヴァイスは、この両国のナショナリズムと根深く結びついた戦争映画の表象に、国境を越える相互の作用や反作用のループがあることを発見していく。彼女が東京裁判、戦士の表象、レイプ、和解といった映像イメージの中に国境を越える記憶の交錯を捉える手際は鮮やかである。本書はそれ自体、日中の言語を完全に理解し、日本で長く暮らす中でこの国の人々の意識のうごめきを深く理解し、フィルム・スタディーズはもちろん、アジアの近現代史やカルチュラル・スタディーズ、ジェンダー・スタディーズを知悉したヴァイスでなければできない越境的な達成である。

This edited volume explores political motives, discourses and agendas in Japanese manga and graphic art with the objective of highlighting the agency of Japanese and wider Asian story-telling traditions within the context of global political traditions. Highly illustrated chapters presented here investigate the multifaceted relationship between Japan’s political storytelling practices, media and bureaucratic discourse, as played out between both the visual arts and modern pop-cultural authors. From pioneering cartoonist Tezuka Osamu, contemporary manga artists such as Kotobuki Shiriagari and Fumiyo Kōno, to videogames and everyday merchandise, a wealth of source material is analysed using cross-genre techniques. Furthermore, the book resists claims that manga, unlike the bandes dessinées and American superhero comic traditions, is apolitical. On the contrary, contributors demonstrate that manga and the mediality of graphic arts have begun to actively incorporate political discourses, undermining hegemonic cultural constructs that support either the status quo, or emerging brands of neonationalism in Japanese society. The Representation of Politics in Manga will be a dynamic resource for students and scholars of Japanese studies, media and popular cultural studies, as well as practitioners in the graphic arts.

This book introduces a multilayered approach to the study of democracy, combining specific knowledge of Japan with theoretical insights from the literature on democratization. It examines different aspects of Japanese democracy—historical, institutional, and sociocultural—to provide a conscious understanding of the nature and practice of democracy, both in Japan and beyond. The book's chapters give testimony to the dynamic nature and continuity of Japanese democracy and analyze its strengths and weaknesses. The central argument of this book is that Japan’s democratization should be seen as a multilayered experience shaped by the gradual process of absorbing democratic ideas, forming democratic institutions, and practicing democratic behaviors and rituals at various levels of society. As the case of Japan shows, democracy is neither a structured formula nor only a set of democratic laws and institutions, but a continuous, gradual process.