Rethinking Japanese Studies

Rethinking Japanese Studies PDF Author: Kaori Okano
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1351654969
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Get Book

Book Description
Japanese Studies has provided a fertile space for non-Eurocentric analysis for a number of reasons. It has been embroiled in the long-running internal debate over the so-called Nihonjinron, revolving around the extent to which the effective interpretation of Japanese society and culture requires non-Western, Japan-specific emic concepts and theories. This book takes this question further and explores how we can understand Japanese society and culture by combining Euro-American concepts and theories with those that originate in Japan. Because Japan is the only liberal democracy to have achieved a high level of capitalism outside the Western cultural framework, Japanese Studies has long provided a forum for deliberations about the extent to which the Western conception of modernity is universally applicable. Furthermore, because of Japan’s military, economic and cultural dominance in Asia at different points in the last century, Japanese Studies has had to deal with the issues of Japanocentrism as well as Eurocentrism, a duality requiring complex and nuanced analysis. This book identifies variations amongst Japanese Studies academic communities in the Asia-Pacific and examines the extent to which relatively autonomous scholarship, intellectual approach or theories exist in the region. It also evaluates how studies on Japan in the region contribute to global Japanese Studies and explores their potential for formulating concrete strategies to unsettle Eurocentric dominance of the discipline.

Rethinking Japanese History

Rethinking Japanese History PDF Author: Yoshihiko Amino
Publisher: U of M Center for Japanese Studies
ISBN: 9781929280704
Category : Japan
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book

Book Description
A call to reconsider Japanese history from the perspective of the deep past

Rethinking Japan

Rethinking Japan PDF Author: Arthur Stockwin
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498537936
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Get Book

Book Description
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.”

Rethinking Japanese Public Opinion and Security

Rethinking Japanese Public Opinion and Security PDF Author: Paul Midford
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804772177
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book

Book Description
Rethinking Japanese Public Opinion and Security argues that Japanese public opinion matters and has acted to prevent overseas military deployments involving combat while increasingly supportive of a more normal military establishment capable of autonomously defending Japanese territory.

Rethinking Locality in Japan

Rethinking Locality in Japan PDF Author: Sonja Ganseforth
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000415406
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 343

Get Book

Book Description
This book inquires what is meant when we say "local" and what "local" means in the Japanese context. Through the window of locality, it enhances an understanding of broader political and socio-economic shifts in Japan. This includes demographic change, electoral and administrative reform, rural decline and revitalization, welfare reform, as well as the growing metabolic rift in energy and food production. Chapters throughout this edited volume discuss the different and often contested ways in which locality in Japan has been reconstituted, from historical and contemporary instances of administrative restructuring, to more subtle social processes of making – and unmaking – local places. Contributions from multiple disciplinary perspectives are included to investigate the tensions between overlapping and often incongruent dimensions of locality. Framed by a theoretical discussion of socio-spatial thinking, such issues surrounding the construction and renegotiation of local places are not only relevant for Japan specialists, but also connected with topical scholarly debates further afield. Accordingly, Rethinking Locality in Japan will appeal to students and scholars from Japanese studies and human geography to anthropology, history, sociology and political science.

Rethinking Japanese Modernism

Rethinking Japanese Modernism PDF Author: Roy Starrs
Publisher: Global Oriental
ISBN: 9004211306
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 561

Get Book

Book Description
By adopting an open, multidisciplinary, and transnational approach, this book sheds new light both on the specific achievements and on the often-unexpected interrelationships of the writers, artists and thinkers who helped to define the Japanese version of modernism and modernity.

Rethinking Identity in Modern Japan

Rethinking Identity in Modern Japan PDF Author: Yumiko Iida
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134564651
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338

Get Book

Book Description
This volume is a major reconsideration of Japanese late modernity and national hegemony which examines the creative and academic works of a number of influential Japanese thinkers. The author situates the process of Japanese knowledge production in the interface between the immediate historical and the wider socio-economic and politico-cultural contexts accompanying the Japanese post-war experience of modernity. This book will be of great value to anyone interested in the history of contemporary Japanese culture and society.

Rethinking "Japanese studies" from practices in the Nordic region

Rethinking Author: Liu Jianhui
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 261

Get Book

Book Description


Rethinking Japan Vol 2

Rethinking Japan Vol 2 PDF Author: Adriana Boscaro
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135880816
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 422

Get Book

Book Description
These papers explore the debate over new directions in Japanese studies.

Rethinking Japan Vol 1.

Rethinking Japan Vol 1. PDF Author: Adriana Boscaro
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135880530
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 366

Get Book

Book Description
These papers explore the debate over new directions in Japanese studies.