Rethinking Postwar Okinawa

Rethinking Postwar Okinawa PDF

Author: Pedro Iacobelli

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2017-11-22

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 1498533124

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This collection provides a multidisciplinary study of postwar and contemporary Okinawa. The contributors analyze the unique social and cultural transformations that have occurred outside the context of American military control or US–Japan relations.

Cultural and Social Division in Contemporary Japan

Cultural and Social Division in Contemporary Japan PDF

Author: Yoshikazu Shiobara

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-07-30

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 1351387871

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The recent manifestation of exclusionism in Japan has emerged at a time of intensified neoliberal economic policies, increased cross-border migration brought on by globalization, the elevated threat of global terrorism, heightened tensions between East Asian states over historical and territorial conflicts, and a backlash by Japanese conservatives over perceived historical apologism. The social and political environment for minorities in Japan has shifted drastically since the 1990s, yet many studies of Japan still tend to view Japan through the dominant discourses of “ethnic homogeneity (tanitsu minzoku shakai)” and “middle-class society (so ̄churyu ̄-shakai)” which positions the exclusion of minorities as an exceptional phenomenon. While exclusionism has been recognized as a serious threat to minority groups, it has not often been considered a representative issue for the whole of Japanese society. This tendency will persist until the discourses of tanitsu minzoku shakai and so ̄churyu ̄-shakai are systematically debunked and Japan is widely recognized as both multiethnic and socio-economically stratified. Today, as with most advanced capitalist countries, serious social divides occasioned by the impacts of globalization and neoliberalism have destabilized Japanese society. This book explores not only how Japanese society is diversified and unequal, but also how diversity and inequality have caused people to divide into separate realities from which conflict and violence have emerged. It empirically examines the current situation while considering the historical development of exclusionism from the interdisciplinary viewpoints of history, policy studies, cultural studies, sociology and cultural anthropology. In addition to analyzing the realities of division and exclusionism, the authors propose theoretical alternatives to overcome such cultural and social divides.

Rethinking Japanese History

Rethinking Japanese History PDF

Author: Yoshihiko Amino

Publisher: U of M Center for Japanese Studies

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781929280704

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

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

Teaching Postwar Japanese Fiction

Teaching Postwar Japanese Fiction PDF

Author: Alex Bates

Publisher: Modern Language Association

Published: 2023-01-17

Total Pages: 199

ISBN-13: 160329595X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

As Japan moved from the devastation of 1945 to the economic security that survived even the boom and bust of the 1980s and 1990s, its literature came to embrace new subjects and styles and to reflect on the nation's changing relationship to other Asian countries and to the West. This volume will help instructors introduce students to novels, short stories, and manga that confront postwar Japanese experiences, including the suffering caused by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the echoes of Japan's colonialism and imperialism, new ways of thinking about Japanese identity and about minorities such as the zainichi Koreans, changes in family structures, and environmental disasters. Essays provide context for understanding the particularity of postwar Japanese literature, its place in world literature, and its connections to the Japanese past.

A Cultural History of Postwar Japan

A Cultural History of Postwar Japan PDF

Author: Oliviero Frattolillo

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-07-14

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 1000909670

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book is a political and cultural history of the early postwar Japan aiming at exploring how the perception and cultural values of everyday life in the country changed along with the rise of the kasutori culture. Such a process was closely tied with both a refusal of the samurai culture and the interwar debate on modernity, and it resulted in a decadent way of life, exemplified by intellectuals such as Sakaguchi Ango. It depicts a short-lived radical cultural and social alternative, one that forced people to rethink their relationship to the kokutai, modernity, social roles, daily practices, and the production of knowledge. The subjectivity and daily practices in those years were more important in shaping the cultural identities of the Japanese than the new public ideology of the nation. This challenges some Euro-American historical notions that the new private sphere has emerged in Japan as an effect of the country’s Americanization, rather than from within it. This work not only looks at the immediate aftermath of WWII from the perspective of Japan, but also tries to rethink Westernization in the light of its global appropriation. This volume is addressed to specialists of Japanese or Asian history, but it will also attract historians of the United States and readers from political and intellectual history, cultural studies, and historiography in general.

Transnational Identities on Okinawa’s Military Bases

Transnational Identities on Okinawa’s Military Bases PDF

Author: Johanna O. Zulueta

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2019-09-27

Total Pages: 129

ISBN-13: 9813297875

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book considers the role of civilian workers on U.S. bases in Okinawa, Japan and how transnational movements within East Asia during the Occupation period brought foreign workers, mostly from the Philippines, to work on these bases. Decades later, in a seeming “reproduction of base labour”, returnees of both Okinawan and Philippine heritage began occupying jobs on base as United States of Japan (USFJ) employees. The book investigates the role that ethnicity, nationality, and capital play in the lives of these base employees, and at the same time examines how Japanese and Okinawan identity/ies are formed and challenged. It offers a valuable resource for those interested in Japan and Okinawa, U.S. military basing, migration, and mixed ethnicities.

The American Occupation of Japan and Okinawa

The American Occupation of Japan and Okinawa PDF

Author: Michael S. Molasky

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2005-08-12

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 1134652798

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Through careful analysis of literary texts and attention to writers and works long excluded from Japan's postwar literary canon, this book introduces fresh perspectives on the occupation era.

Rethinking the San Francisco System in Indo-Pacific Security

Rethinking the San Francisco System in Indo-Pacific Security PDF

Author: Yoneyuki Sugita

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-06-20

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 9811912319

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This remarkable collection commemorates the 70th anniversary of the 1951 San Francisco Peace Conference by revisiting the important legacies of both the Peace Treaty and the US-Japan Security Treaty have had on the peace and stability of the Asia-Pacific. Drawing on multiple perspectives, the volume conveys the hopes and fears that the authors have for the domestic and international politics of the region. In a post Trumpian world marked by the US-China tensions amidst a raging pandemic, the region’s continued prosperity looks exceedingly grim. Would the arrangements made in 1951 continue to have relevance for an Indo-Pacific region beset by great power rivalry and potential conflict fuelled by contending nationalisms, clashing interests and territorial disputes? Through a rigorous debate based on the latest empirical developments, the volume explores various ways where by the spirit and legacies of San Francisco arrangements can be meaningfully preserved and enhanced. In order for the region stronger and more prosperous in the post-pandemic world, the countries have to come together to enhance the existing security architecture to contain great power rivalry and ensure that a regional order capable of addressing problems of the 21st century eventually evolves.

The Translocal Island of Okinawa

The Translocal Island of Okinawa PDF

Author: Shinnosuke Takahashi

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2024-06-13

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 135041154X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The Translocal Island of Okinawa reveals the underrepresented memories, visions and actions that are involved in the making of Okinawan resistance against its subordinated status under the US-Japan security system beyond the narrowly defined political, cultural and geographical borders of locality. As Okinawa's base politics is a problem deeply rooted in the context of East Asia, so is the history of the people's protest movement. The issue examined in this book is the arbitrary distinction of scale between 'local', which tends to be employed for a particular territory demarcated by a cohesive culture, and 'regional', a larger area that consists of myriad localities. Locality, Shinnosuke Takahashi here argues, is neither self-evident, fixed nor homogenous but is established through historical processes that involve interaction, conflict and negotiation of individuals and communities across territorial and cultural boundaries. This book reveals the novel concept of Okinawa as a translocal island which offers a way to understand locality in the context of Okinawan activism as a product of multiple cultural and human flows, as opposed to the conventional way of framing the local community as fixed, internally cohesive and rigidly bordered. It makes an exciting contribution to the field of modern Japanese and East Asian studies by stimulating discussions on the richness and scale of local civic activism that is increasingly becoming a key political feature of the East Asian region.