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Introduction This chapter will discuss the legacy of the Obama administration of 2009–17 for US–Japan relations. It will highlight elements of change and continuity that characterised the Obama years in the realms of security and economic policy, as well as the significance of historical memory and the processes of reconciliation between the two countries. It will also discuss policy shifts promoted by the administration of President Donald Trump at around the halfway mark of his 2017–21 presidential term in office. The Trump presidency, it is argued, has
10 Remembering the Japanese occupation massacres: mass graves in post-war Malaysia Frances Tay The violence visited upon British Malaya during the Japanese occupation of December 1941 to August 1945 has prompted several historians to evoke comparisons with the atrocities that befell Nanjing.1 During this time, numerous civilians were subjected to mass killings, summary executions, rape, forced labour, arbitrary detention, and torture. In particular, the shukusei (cleansing) or daikensho (big inspection) operation of February to April 1942 – known locally as the
Waka and ryūka are short poems originating in Japan and the Ryukyu Islands, respectively. Waka has a very long history and flourished during the Heian period, which began around the year AD 800. The waka studied here belong to Ogura Hyakunin Isshu , a collection of 100 waka compiled around the first half of the thirteenth century, and the karuta game based on it. Waka – nowadays often referred to as tanka – is widely used in contemporary Japan, from the New Year recital at the
169 8 Japan in engagement and the discourses of civilisation If civilisational analysis is lacking with respect to Latin America, it has been far from inattentive when it comes to Japan. In previous chapters, Japan serves as an illustration of theoretical engagements with civilisational analysis, as well as illustrating different points of my own argument. The frequent choice of Japan is no coincidence: it has been a focal point of investigation for comparativists in the humanities, the social sciences and political economy with an interest in civilisations
Introduction Japanese peripheral rural communities have been undergoing a dramatic demographic and socio-economic decline, with many facing the concrete threat of disappearing over the next decades. This condition is the outcome of decades of out-migration, lack of local employment opportunities and cuts in essential public services, a situation
the Clara Barton Birthplace Museum ( Washington Post , 1921 ). Outside of the United States, too, the idea of a historical Red Cross museum found some followers. In Europe, an individual collector from Salzburg, Austria, curated a museum dedicated to humanitarian rescue missions, in 1929, and in Japan, a Red Cross museum opened its doors some years later. Unlike their American role model, both museums had only a marginal impact, however. The Japanese museum opened only temporarily for
a third never tell anyone about their experience ( McCleary-Sills et al. , 2016 : 225). A 2018 study on health and justice service responses in Northern Uganda confirmed that South Sudanese refugee survivors of sexual and gender-based violence and torture knew of the reporting system but at times questioned the effectiveness of the process ( Liebling et al. , 2020 ). Similarly, the Japan International Cooperation Agency Research Institute’s (JICA-RI) research on the
experienced this, and some have dared to describe this blindness. One was Jack London, the famous American writer sent to Korea to cover the Russo-Japanese war in 1904, who wrote, confused, of ‘black moving specks’, the ‘hubbub’, in short, ‘a war of ghosts’ (quoted in Audouin-Rouzeau, 2008 : 244). And when Le Figaro sent special correspondent Tanguy Berthemet to Sévaré (Mali) as France began its 2013 military operation (Operation Serval), he reported: ‘There is a war in
appears humane. Technology then is not anti-human. It is the only thing that might save us. A point made by the scientist Richard Gatling, who, trying to justify his invention of the gun, noted: ‘If war was made more terrible, it would have a tendency to keep peace among the nations of the earth.’ The same redemptive narrative would be promulgated by those responsible for the atrocious nuclear assault on Japan, in 1945. The tragedy, however, is that the more we seek to regulate or civilise violence by giving ourselves over to the technological account of human
.acordinternational.org/silo/files/conflict-and-gender-study--south-sudan.pdf (accessed 17 June 2021 ). Hutchinson , S. E. ( 1996 ), Nuer Dilemmas: Coping with Money, War, and the State ( Berkeley, CA : University of California Press ). JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) ( 2017 ), Country Gender Profile Republic of South Sudan Final Report , www.jica.go.jp/english/our_work/thematic_issues/gender/background/c8h0vm0000anjqj6-att/south_sudan_2017.pdf (accessed 22 August 2021 ). Jok , J. M. ( 1999 ), ‘ Militarism, Gender and Reproductive Suffering: The Case of Abortion in Western Dinka