Asian Research

Japan and the High Treason Incident

Edited by Masako Gavin, Ben Middleton

Series: Routledge Contemporary Japan Series

The ‘High Treason Incident’ rocked Japanese society between 1910 and 1911, when police discovered that a group of anarchists and socialists were plotting to assassinate the Emperor Meiji. Following a trial held in camera, twelve of the so-called conspirators were hanged, but while the executions...

Published May 1st 2013 by Routledge

Negotiating Censorship in Modern Japan

Edited by Rachael Hutchinson

Series: Routledge Contemporary Japan Series

Censorship in Japan has seen many changes over the last 150 years and each successive system of rule has possessed its own censorship laws, regulations, and methods of enforcement. Yet what has remained constant through these many upheavals has been the process of negotiation between censor and...

Published April 15th 2013 by Routledge

Sound, Space and Sociality in Modern Japan

Edited by Joseph D. Hankins, Carolyn Stevens

Series: Routledge Contemporary Japan Series

This book argues that sound – as it is created, transmitted, and perceived – plays a key role in the constitution of space and community in contemporary Japan. The book examines how sonic practices reflect politics, aesthetics, and ethics, with transformative effects on human relations. From...

To Be Published July 9th 2013 by Routledge

Manga and the Representation of Japanese History

Edited by Roman Rosenbaum

Series: Routledge Contemporary Japan Series

This edited collection explores how graphic art and in particular Japanese manga represent Japanese history. The articles explore the representation of history in manga from disciplines that include such diverse fields as literary studies, politics, history, cultural studies, linguistics,...

Published September 3rd 2012 by Routledge

Mental Health Care in Japan

Edited by Ruth Taplin, Sandra J. Lawman

Series: Routledge Contemporary Japan Series

Mental health, including widespread depression, a high suicide rate and institutionalisation, is a major problem in Japan. At the same time, the mental health care system in Japan has historically been more restrictive than elsewhere in the world. This book looks at the challenges of mental health...

Published June 20th 2012 by Routledge

Nationalism, Political Realism and Democracy in Japan

The thought of Masao Maruyama

By Fumiko Sasaki

Series: Routledge Contemporary Japan Series

Masao Maruyama was the most influential and respected political thinker in post-WWII Japan. He believed that the collective mentality, inherent in the traditional Japanese way of thinking, was a key reason for the defeat in WWII and was convinced that such thought needed to be modernized. In this...

Published May 28th 2012 by Routledge

Japan's Local Newspapers

Chihoshi and Revitalization Journalism

By Anthony Rausch

Series: Routledge Contemporary Japan Series

Japan is one of the world’s most literate societies. Its national newspapers are the most read newspapers in the world, and the country also has a very vibrant local newspaper sector. This book assesses the vital role local newspapers play in the development of local communities, as well as...

Published April 11th 2012 by Routledge

Superhuman Japan

Knowledge, Nation and Culture in US-Japan Relations

By Marie Thorsten

Series: Routledge Contemporary Japan Series

This book examines the imaginative narratives that shaped the attitudes of Americans (and others) toward Japan. Focusing on cultural aspects of economic nationalism and US-Japan relations during the trade war Marie Thorsten uses examples from public discourse, film, documentaries, novels, acts of...

Published March 12th 2012 by Routledge

The Ethics of Japan's Global Environmental Policy

The conflict between principles and practice

By Midori Kagawa-Fox

Series: Routledge Contemporary Japan Series

This book examines the Japanese government policies that impact on the environment in order to determine whether they incorporate a sufficient ethical substance. Through the three case studies on whaling, nuclear energy, and forestry, the author explores how Western philosophers combined their...

Published January 18th 2012 by Routledge

Dealing with Disaster in Japan

Responses to the Flight JL123 Crash

By Christopher Hood

Series: Routledge Contemporary Japan Series

Just as the sinking of the Titanic is embedded in the public consciousness in the English-speaking world, so the crash of JAL flight JL123 is part of the Japanese collective memory. The 1985 crash involved the largest loss of life for any single air crash in the world. 520 people, many of whom had...

Published September 11th 2011 by Routledge

Japan in the Age of Globalization

Edited by Carin Holroyd, Ken Coates

Series: Routledge Contemporary Japan Series

The multiple and diverse forces of globalization have, indeed, affected Japan significantly over the past decades. But so, it must be said, has Japan influenced a variety of critical global developments - globalization is not a one-way street, particularly for a nation as economically influential...

Published August 8th 2011 by Routledge

Social Networks and Japanese Democracy

The Beneficial Impact of Interpersonal Communication in East Asia

By Ken'ichi Ikeda, Sean Richey

Series: Routledge Contemporary Japan Series

Many who critique democracy as practiced in East Asia suggest that the Confucian political culture of these nations prevents democracy from being the robust participatory type, and limits it to a spectacle designed to create obedience from the public. Certainly some East Asian nations have had...

Published July 20th 2011 by Routledge

Legacies of the Asia-Pacific War

The Yakeato Generation

Edited by Roman Rosenbaum, Yasuko Claremont

Series: Routledge Contemporary Japan Series

When we look in detail at the various peripheral groups of disenfranchised people emerging from the aftermath of the Asia–Pacific War the list is startling: Koreans in Japan (migrants or forced labourers), Burakumin, Hibakusha, Okinawans, Asian minorities, comfort women and many others. Many of...

Published December 16th 2010 by Routledge

Japan-Bashing

Anti-Japanism since the 1980s

By Narrelle Morris

Series: Routledge Contemporary Japan Series

The aim of this book is to examine and analyse the phenomenon of ‘Japan-bashing’, from its invention and popularisation in the United States in the late 1970s to the emergence of other national variants, including in Australia and Japan, to its gradual decline in the late 1990s. It is the first...

Published November 2nd 2010 by Routledge

The Quest for Japan's New Constitution

An Analysis of Visions and Constitutional Reform Proposals 1980-2009

By Christian G. Winkler

Series: Routledge Contemporary Japan Series

This book examines the many attempts over the last three decades to revise Japan’s constitution. As the book shows, these attempts at revision have been relatively conservative, aiming to embed in the constitution visions of a different future for Japan. Specific reforms advocated include: enabling...

Published September 22nd 2010 by Routledge

Challenges of Human Resource Management in Japan

Edited by Ralf Bebenroth, Toshihiro Kanai

Series: Routledge Contemporary Japan Series

Human resource management systems differ across corporations around the world. Japan has unique characteristics that create specific challenges for HRM and there is currently a lack of research focusing on Japanese HR issues available to westerners. This book examines the major challenges and...

Published August 25th 2010 by Routledge

Language Life in Japan

Transformations and Prospects

Edited by Patrick Heinrich, Christian Galan

Series: Routledge Contemporary Japan Series

Despite its monolingual self-image, Japan is multilingual and growing more so due to indigenous minority language revitalization and as an effect of migration. Besides Japan's autochthonous languages such as the Ainu and Ryukyuan languages, there are more than 75,000 immigrant children in the...

Published July 28th 2010 by Routledge

Translation in Modern Japan

Edited by Indra Levy

Series: Routledge Contemporary Japan Series

The role of translation in the formation of modern Japanese identities has become one of the most exciting new fields of inquiry in Japanese studies. This book marks the first attempt to establish the contours of this new field, bringing together seminal works of Japanese scholarship and criticism...

Published July 28th 2010 by Routledge

Postwar History Education in Japan and the Germanys

Guilty Lessons

By Julian Dierkes

Series: Routledge Contemporary Japan Series

How did East and West Germany and Japan reconstitute national identity after World War II? Did all three experience parallel reactions to national trauma and reconstruction? History education shaped how these nations reconceived their national identities. Because the content of history education...

Published March 2nd 2010 by Routledge

Perversion and Modern Japan

Psychoanalysis, Literature, Culture

Edited by Nina Cornyetz, J. Keith Vincent

Series: Routledge Contemporary Japan Series

How did nerves and neuroses take the place of ghosts and spirits in Meiji Japan? How does Natsume Soseki’s canonical novel Kokoro pervert the Freudian teleology of sexual development? What do we make of Jacques Lacan’s infamous claim that because of the nature of their language the Japanese people...

Published December 8th 2009 by Routledge

The Rise of Japanese NGOs

Activism from Above

By Kim D. Reimann

Series: Routledge Contemporary Japan Series

Over the past two decades, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have exploded in number and emerged as a new force in international and transnational politics. Why, however, do some countries nonetheless have more active NGO sectors than others? Using the case of Japan, this book uncovers...

Published November 3rd 2009 by Routledge

Japanese Aid and the Construction of Global Development

Inescapable Solutions

Edited by David Leheny, Kay Warren

Series: Routledge Contemporary Japan Series

Instead of asking the usual questions about Japanese aid — Why is Japanese aid so different from that of other donors? Is Japanese aid effective? — this collection takes it as axiomatic that Japanese aid actors are now working in a contentious environment affected by changing global norms of aid....

Published October 7th 2009 by Routledge

Homosexuality and Manliness in Postwar Japan

By Jonathan D. Mackintosh

Series: Routledge Contemporary Japan Series

Japan’s first professionally produced, commercially marketed and nationally distributed gay lifestyle magazine, Barazoku (‘The Rose Tribes’), was launched in 1971. Publicly declaring the beauty and normality of homosexual desire, Barazoku electrified the male homosexual world whilst scandalising...

Published September 29th 2009 by Routledge

Marriage in Contemporary Japan

By Yoko Tokuhiro

Series: Routledge Contemporary Japan Series

The phenomenon of bankonka – ‘postponement of marriage’ – is increasingly reported in contemporary Japanese media, clearly illustrating the changing patterns of modern lifestyles and attitudes towards marriage, personal obligation and ambition. This is the first book in recent years to explore the...

Published September 23rd 2009 by Routledge