The Ming–Qing transition as turning point

Many histories of China have attempted to impose outside interpretive methods upon the Chinese past. In this essay, Mizoguchi works from within the Chinese tradition to understand how changing ideas of economics (and in particular the conflict between private land ownership by the ruler and by the common people), literature, philosophy, religion, and politics all combined to make the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the subsequent Qing Dynasty a time of great change in the ways in which Chinese thinkers understood their history and present.     

Quickest descent line during alpine ski racing

Time differences between medalists at Olympic or World Cup alpine ski races are often less than 0.01 s. One factor that could affect these small differences is the line taken between the numerous gates passed through while speeding down the ski slope. The determination of the ‘quickest line’ is therefore critical to winning races. In this study the quickest lines are calculated by direct optimal control theory which converts an optimal control problem into a parameter optimization problem that is solved using a nonlinear programming method. Specifically, the problem is described in terms of an objective function in which state and control variables are implicitly involved. The objective function is the time between the starting point and finishing gate, while state variables are positions of the ski-skier systems on a ski slope, rotational angles of skis, velocities, and rotational velocity at a discrete time, i.e., a node. The control variable at each node is the skier-controlled edging angle between the ski sole and snow surface. Equations of motion of the ski-skier system on a ski slope are numerically satisfied at the midpoint between neighbouring nodes, and the original problem is converted into a nonlinear programming problem with equality and inequality constraints. The problem is solved by the sequential quadratic programming method in which numerical calculations are carried out using the MATLAB Optimization Toolbox. Numerical calculations are presented to determine the quickest lines of an uphill and a downhill ski turn with a starting point, first gate, and second gate (finish line) having been successfully carried out. The quickest line through four gates could not be calculated due to numerical difficulty. Instead, the descent line was respectively calculated for an uphill and downhill turn and simply added, giving a resultant time that represents an upper bound.     

Factors determining the spin axis of a pitched fastball in baseball

In this study, we wished to investigate the factors that determine the direction of the spin axis of a pitched baseball. Nineteen male baseball pitchers were recruited to pitch fastballs. The pitching motion was recorded with a three-dimensional motion analysis system (1000?Hz), and the orientations of the hand segment in a global coordinate system were calculated using Euler rotation angles. Reflective markers were attached to the ball, and the direction of the spin axis was calculated on the basis of their positional changes. The spin axis directions were significantly correlated with the orientations of the hand just before ball release. The ball is released from the fingertip and rotates on a plane that is formed by the palm and fingers; the spin axis of the ball is parallel to this plane. The lift force of the pitched baseball is largest when the angular and translational velocity vectors are mutually perpendicular. Furthermore, to increase the lift forces for the fastballs, the palm must face home plate.     

Another May Fourth

The May Fourth Movement is most often understood as a precursor to the China that emerged under the rule of Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party. In this essay, Mizoguchi presents an alternative reading of May Fourth, one envisioned by Liang Shuming as more deeply rooted in Chinese tradition than the heavily Marxian, class-based May Fourth later positioned as the forebear of the Cultural Revolution.     

The 1911 Revolution: a reassessment

Why is the period from the Opium War through the Republican era in recent Chinese history treated by so many scholars of different stripes as a decline of China itself, rather than as a decline simply of the dynastic order? What is the nature of the Republican period? What role has the centralization and decentralization of power played through these years – and is it limited to the Republican period, or is it part of a much longer trend in Chinese history? Why have so many scholars fixated on the Opium War at the beginning of Chinese modernity? Mizoguchi asks these penetrating questions and makes telling comparisons with Japan over roughly the same period of time.     

Culture = politics: the emergence of new cultural forms of protest in the age of freeter

This paper examines new cultural and political movements that have developed outside of traditional leftist politics since the early 1990s in Japan. The new movements, including Dame‐ren, the Cardboard House Art movements in Shinjuku and recent anti‐war protests on the Iraqi war, were mainly led by young people, in particular, the freeter generation, who did not experience the leftist politics of the 1960s. These movements are different from traditional Marxist political ones and even from the new social movements in the 1960s and 1970s in the sense that they incorporate more cultural practices such as art, music, dance and performance into their political activities. The paper also explores the historical background against which the new movements were born and have developed since the end of the Bubble economy. It sees freeters, young part‐time workers, as emerging, new political actors that have appeared through the transition of a mode of production from Fordism to post‐Fordism. The transformation of society, economy and politics, known as ‘post‐modernization’ or recently as ‘globalization’, has asked us to re‐consider and re‐define the basic concepts such as class, proletariat, power, labour and work which we once shared. The paper tries to locate, through a critical examination, the new movements within a broader context of anti‐neo‐liberalism and anti‐globalization and find political potentiality within it.     

China as method

This is one of Mizoguchi Yūzō’s famous polemical essays in which he rethinks the problems of Japanese sinology. He contends that China has been essential to constructing Japanese identity and consequently Japanese sinologists developed what he calls a “sinology without China.” That is Japanese sinologists projected a subjective image of China and such visions of China said more about Japan than they did about China. In contrast to this, Mizoguchi attempts to outline a sinology that takes China as method and uncovers the internal dynamics of Chinese history. Towards the end of the essay, he also discusses the ideological implications of such a shift in focus. In short, previous sinologists often took something like Western modernity as a method and forced China into this framework. Against this, Mizoguchi underscores the specific logics of Chinese history and hopes then to construct a new universality grounded in specific spatio-temporal logics around the world.     

Shoulder and elbow kinematics in throwing of young baseball players

In this study we compared the kinematic features of the throwing motion between young baseball players of different age groups. Forty-four Japanese baseball players aged 6.1 to 12.3 years who regularly played baseball, including pitchers and position players, had their throwing actions analyzed three-dimensionally using high speed videography. Of this sample, 26 players aged above 9 years of age were categorized as the senior group, while the remaining 18 were categorized as the junior group. Senior group throwers had greater height and body mass, and produced a greater ball speed than junior group throwers. The throwing arm movement of senior group throwers was similar to that of adult skilled players. However, in the junior group throwers, the shoulder horizontal adduction angle was larger during the arm acceleration phase, and the maximum angular velocities of elbow extension and shoulder internal rotation occurred later than in senior group throwers. These results indicate that players aged above 9 years can acquire a mature throwing arm movement, while players younger than that will use an immature motion. A possible reason why these differences were shown is that the official baseball is relatively heavy for junior group throwers; they would be better advised to use a lighter ball in throwing practice.