Reinventing Nagasaki: the Christianization of Nagasaki and the revival of an imperial legacy in postwar Japan

This paper explores how Nagasaki was reinvented from an imperial city to an “International Cultural, Christian city” and elicits the continuity of Japanese imperialism in postwar Nagasaki as well as the discontinuity between the war and postwar periods in the city. The paper seeks to determine what history and whose memory have been excluded or erased in the process of remaking Nagasaki into an international Christian city; it examines the particular historical and political conditions that enabled Nagai Takashi, Urakami Catholics and Kitamura Seibou’s Memorial Peace Statue to symbolize Nagasaki’s atomic bomb memory and postwar city identity as an “International Christian city” that “prays.” While Nagai is widely known as a spiritual, religious leader in postwar Nagasaki/Japan, and Kitamura’s Peace Memorial statue dominates Nagasaki’s commemoration space, this paper analyses how US dominance over Japan enabled the country to rehabilitate its imperial past and to revive the imperial legacy by appropriating the GHQ’s (General Headquarters of the Allied Powers’) demilitarization and Christianization policies. It argues that Nagasaki’s postwar reconstruction signifies the failure of what Kuan-Hsing Chen (2010 Chen, Kuan-Hsing. 2010. Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization. Durham and London: Duke University Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) calls the “deimperialization” of Japanese consciousness and subjectivity.     

The right to evacuation: the self-determined future of post-Fukushima Japan

Abstract

Since the Fukushima disaster in March 2011, rights advocacy has been gaining traction in Japanese politics. This paper argues for the rationale that led to the current legal development in post-Fukushima Japan—the Nuclear Disaster Victims' Support Act, which emphasizes the right to evacuation—and presents the grassroots struggle against public authorities. The right to evacuation is the right of citizens to avoid exposure to radioactivity by allowing victims—in this case, the victims of Fukushima—to choose their living location, whether that means permanently evacuating to a new area, returning to their original homes after evacuation, or remaining where they are (i.e., not evacuating). In any of these situations, necessary support from the government is guaranteed. I claim that while the right to evacuation represents a vision about how people in Fukushima can choose to survive and develop their own self-determined future, it requires a set of tools to achieve it. As such, this paper also argues the ways in which Japanese civil society groups play a significant role in helping bring the grassroots voices of people in Fukushima to the law-making process, as well as actual implementation. Advocacy to achieve such a fundamental human right is gradually progressing and moving away from the perception of being merely a criticism of government; rather, advocates are presenting alternatives and giving government a chance to change itself.     

Independence and obedience in the United States and Japan

Are some Americans and Japanese beginning to think more similarly about independence and obedience? Middle-class adult respondents from the suburbs of Chicago and Tokyo (U.S.: 43 males and 54 females: Japan: 71 males and 80 females) were surveyed about their sex-role values. This report focuses on two values which have been recognised as constituting fundamental differences between Japanese and Americans: personal independence and obedience. The survey used a metric multidimensional scaling technique called Galileo^®. Analyses of the data and results of other comparative studies suggest that any convergence taking place between the two societies is occurring primarily within American society. There is growing evidence, including the findings of this study, that Americans are moving away from their traditional stress on the importance of the individual in society. The Japanese respondents did show a more liberal conceptualization of the ideal woman with respect to obedience, however, there was no indication that this less traditional image of women extended to their other traditional roles in society.     

Narrativizing trauma,activating awareness: Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nanking and its afterlives

ABSTRACT

When Iris Chang published The Rape of Nanking in 1997, exactly sixty years after the Nanjing Massacre, the subtitle The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, called attention to one of the greatest human tragedies in the twentieth century. As a powerful historic reminder, The Rape of Nanking aims “to understand the event so that lessons can be learned and warnings sounded.” This paper focuses on Chang’s role as a writer/fighter who uses words to fight forgetfulness with a forceful narrative concerning one of the most dreadful traumas in the collective psyche of the Chinese people. It produces quite a number of “afterlives,” including different Chinese translations in Taiwan and mainland China, a nanking winter (2008), a play by the second-generation Chinese Canadian playwright Marjorie Chan, Nanjing Requiem (2011), a novel by the first-generation Chinese American novelist Ha Jin, and The Nanjing Massacre: Poems (2013), a collection of poems by the third-generation Chinese Hawaiian poet Wing Tek Lum. Furthermore, the docudrama Iris Chang: The Rape of Nanking (2007), directed by Bill Spahic and Anne Pick, presents a filmic representation of the short fascinating life of this passionate writer. This paper discusses how Chang, role as a writer and activist, fights against amnesia with remembrance as well as her rich legacy to the world across linguistic, generic, and semiotic boundaries. Chang’s text and its afterlives strive to give voice to those nameless war victims as a step towards truth, justice, reconciliation, and peace.     

从"烛影斧声"谈赵匡胤之死

开宝九年(976年)十月二十日,刚届知天命之年的赵匡胤猝然崩逝,而在这之前,无论是正史、稗史都没有他患病的记载,直至十月十九日,尚未见他因不适而辍朝,次日突然撒手而去,使人疑窦丛生,从而给后世留下了一桩聚讼不决的公案.     

An identity based on being different: A focus on Biethnic individuals in Japan

Three focus groups of Biethnic¹ individuals who, for the most part, grew up in Japan were conducted. A total of 13 Biethnic individuals participated. Cooley's Looking-glass Self Theory was used as our theoretical framework. Cooley argued that in the same way we look into a mirror to discover our appearance, we see ourselves through the eyes of other people. Therefore, other people's reactions largely influence the way we see ourselves. This hypothesis was supported by our focus group data; all respondents regarded themselves as Biethnic only after others pointed it out to them.Our results were in some ways similar to existing Biracial identity models. We, too, found that there were multiple responses to being Biracial. We called them: Unique Me, Model Biethnic, and Just Let Me Be Japanese. Like other researchers, we also found that various factors were influential in shaping Biracial identity. Ethnicity of the non-Japanese parent, family structure, and living environment seemed to have largely shaped our respondents’ experiences.     

Young precariat at the forefront: anti-nuclear rallies in post-Fukushima Japan

Japan suffered a catastrophic disaster on March 11, 2011. The earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear radiation leakage from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant devastated the northeastern part of the country and threatened the entire country and beyond with the risk of radiation. Nowadays, movements against nuclear power plants are emerging across the country. The crisis indeed provides a chance for Japan to forge a new energy policy. However, the activists' claims are not narrowly limited to such energy issues. They call for a fundamentally fairer society and propose alternative ways of life, regarding nuclear power plants as symbols supporting the economic development that Japan enjoyed over the post-Second World War period. As an ethnography, this paper documents the 60,000-citizen Goodbye Nuclear Power Plants (Sayonara Genpatsu) rally that mobilized in central Tokyo on September 19, 2011, as well as the Occupy Tokyo action on October 15, 2011 Occupy Tokyo オキュパイ東京. 2011. “Occupy Tokyo, the Rally and Demonstration in Shinjuku” “オキュパイ東京新宿の集会とデモ.” YouTube video, 9:19, from a demonstration recorded on October 15 and posted on October 17, done by Shinya Adachi. http://youtube/FoKkhRAkwJU  [Google Scholar], presenting the real voices of the rally participants against nuclear power. In particular, I will focus on the voices of young precariat participants, the major actors in the anti-nuclear rally who were generated from and revealed as the negative result of Japan's neoliberal economic policy, held since the 2000s. Further, I argue that their mounting anger might be a trigger for new post-neoliberal politics in post-Fukushima Japan.     

Acculturation attitudes and adaptation among South Korean residents in Japan: The mediating role of coping strategies

Acculturation processes and intergroup experiences of minority groups have been little studied in East Asian societies, including Japan. The number of migrants in Japanese society is steadily increasing, suggesting that the country is a new immigration destination in the 21st century. Therefore, further research on the acculturation processes of immigrants in Japan is warranted. This study examined the relationships among acculturation attitudes, coping strategies, and psychological adjustment in a sample of South Korean newcomers living in Japan. The results of this study support the integration hypothesis, which states that balanced acculturation attitudes that favor engagement in both the host and home cultures lead to higher levels of psychological and sociocultural adaptation. Assimilation attitudes did not contribute significantly to adaptation. Different coping strategies employed by individuals during interethnic discrimination mediated the links between individual acculturation attitudes and the two aspects of adaptation. By linking acculturation attitudes and relevant social behaviors, this study sheds light on the role of coping strategies as mediators of the relationships between acculturation attitudes and psychological and sociocultural adjustment in ethnic minority groups.     

万安古镇

文化名邑休宁位于古徽州腹地,虽是面积不大、旧时人口才十几万的山区小县,但自宋嘉定至清光绪年间,却出了19名状元,于是休宁被人称为中国“第一状元县”.南宋淳熙《新安志》载：“休宁俗,亟多学者.”古代学者以清代戴震为杰出代表,而新中国的70多位皖籍院士中,休宁籍的竟也占了6位.     

Circulation and Appreciation of Chinese Artworks in Modern Japan

“Circulation and Appreciation of Chinese Artworks in Modern Japan ”, part of “Art and Collection” series published by Shanghai Calligraphy and Painting Press in 2014 and authored by Tomita Noburu, reviews the history of the export of Chinese antiques in modern times based on numerous original materials and detailed studies of provenance. With a unique perspective, in-depth analysis and concrete evidence, this book is considered a valuable reference for the research of the circulation and appreciation of Chinese artworks.     

Training in culture: the case of aikido education and meaning-making outcomes in Japan and the United States

This study investigated whether a relationship existed between instructional style and points of emphasis in the training context of the martial art aikido and the perceptions which practitioners of aikido generated for aikido-related concepts. The findings were gathered within and compared across aikido training settings in two cultures — Japan and the United States. Analysis of the quantitative and qualitative data gathered for this investigation revealed several potent differences between the manner in which Japanese and American aikido practitioners represented their understandings of aikido-related concepts. Differences in the manner in which aikido practitioners in Japan and the United States represented their understandings of aikido reflected the teaching emphasis observed in the respective cultures. It was concluded that aikido instructors represented the values of their own culture in the context of aikido training, and thus served as important mediating forces influencing the meaning which practitioners generated for aikido. An additional finding revealed that in neither culture were participants able to accurately represent how practitioners in the “other” culture structured their understandings of aikido. It was reasoned that both cultural groups generated faulty perceptions of how the “other” group understood aikido because they utilized a similar pattern of projection, using their own meanings of aikido to represent the understandings of practitioners in the “other” cultural group.     

解读墨子思想体系的核心

墨子思想有没有一个体系?有。这个体系,见于《墨子》的《鲁问篇》:子墨子游,魏越曰:“既得见四方君子,子则将先语?”子墨子曰:凡入国,必择务而从事焉。国家昏乱,则语之尚贤、尚同;国家贫,则语之节用、节葬;国家熹音湛湎,则语之非乐、非命;国家淫僻无礼,则语之尊天、事鬼;国家务     

Moralization of Japanese cultural norms among student sojourners in Japan

This study investigated the relationship between different domains of cultural adaptation among international students in Japan and the moralization of culture-specific norms. Newcomers may adapt certain norms of the host culture and ascribe moral meanings to initially nonmoral activities or objects. Building on the existing model of sociocultural adaptation, we investigated how different types of sociocultural adaptation are associated with the moralization of Japanese cultural norms. For international students in Japan, there are three aspects of sociocultural adaptation: academic, daily living, and interpersonal. Our results showed that cultural adaptation in the interpersonal domain, but not in the academic and daily living domains, predicted harsher moral judgments of behaviors that violated Japanese cultural norms. These findings suggest that international students who are well adjusted in the interpersonal domain gain an understanding of what is sanctioned in the Japanese cultural context and come to see certain behaviors as morally appropriate. We discuss several implications for further investigating the moralization of certain behaviors within the context of acculturation.     

赵姓族谱分析

赵姓是我国古老的姓氏之一，也是在全国分布较广的姓氏。赵姓在《百家姓》中居第一位，按人口比例，赵姓为中国的第七大姓。     

The Troubled Life of an Habitual Offender in Colonial Greenland

This article investigates how law and order was handled in the Danish colonies in Greenland during the period ranging approximately from 1911 to 1953. The Greenlandic author Peter Gundel’s frequent episodes of conflict with the law provide the framework for the analysis. The article deals with how – and through what specific techniques – procedures related to law and order worked to establish, maintain, or reform identities in colonial Greenland. It is argued that social practices within the field of law and order were characterized by the colonial administration’s tactical deployment of a specific version of Greenlandic culture.     

The role of communication content in an ethnically diverse organization

A research on the content of communication at work, job attitudes and unequal treatment was conducted in an ethnically diverse organization in the Netherlands comprising 504 ethnic majority and 113 ethnic minority employees. Ethnic minority employees experienced less person-related communication at work and perceived higher levels of unequal treatment of minorities than ethnic majority employees. However, compared to their ethnic majority colleagues, ethnic minority employees reported higher levels of work-related communication and more positive attitudes towards their job. Regression analyses revealed significant relations between communication content and employees’ job attitudes, with positive relations between both role-related and person-related communication and job satisfaction and positive relations between both organization-related and role-related communication and organizational identification.