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A bamboo curtain descended on Upper Burma in May 1942. Little news filtered in or out. The warp and weft of everyday civilian life during the Japanese occupation is something of a mystery. In 1945 Rev. Stanley Vincent compiled an important booklet, Out of Great Tribulation , containing the wartime recollections of Burmese Methodists. 1 Two army chaplains (Acheson and Brown-Moffett) wrote brief accounts of separate visits they had made to the Chin States during 1944. In August 1945 Rev. U Po Tun wrote a long
This book tells the story of critical avant-garde design in Japan, which emerged during the tumultuous 1960s and continues to inspire contemporary designers today. The postwar avant-garde milieu gave rise to a ground-breaking popular visual language and garnered tremendous attention across the fields of product design, graphic design, fashion design, and architecture. It created conceptually challenging artefacts and made decisions that radically altered the course of Japanese design history. The avant-garde works that were created in the sphere of popular culture communicated a form of visual and material protest inspired by the ideologies and critical theories of the 1960s and 1970s, which were concerned with feminism, body politics, the politics of identity, and, later, ecological, anti-consumerist, and anti-institutional critiques as well as an emphasis on otherness. These designers were driven by passion, anger, and a desire to critique and change society and introduce the avant-garde political thinking of the 1960s and subversive visual and material practices into the heart of consumer culture starting from the 1980s. Their creations thus combined two seemingly contradictory concepts: luxury and the avant-garde. By presenting the new arena of avant-garde Japanese design that is operating as a critical sociopolitical agent and involves an encounter between popular culture, postmodern aesthetics, critical theory, and new economic rules, the book carries the common discourse on Japanese design beyond aesthetic concerns and especially beyond ‘beautiful’ or ‘sublime’, revealing the radical aesthetic of the designed objects that forms an interface leading to critical social protest.
This book provides the first comprehensive analysis of Japan’s new security
partnerships with Australia, India, countries and multilateral security
structure in East Asia, as well as with the EU and some of its member
states.
Most books on Japanese bilateral relations focus exclusively on the
Japanese perspective, the debate in Japan, positions of Japanese government
leaders and parties, or the public discourse. This edited volume is organized in
pairs of chapters, one each analysing the motivations and objectives of Japan,
and a second analysing those of each of the most important new security
partners.
After solely relying on the United States for its national
security needs during the Cold War, since the end of the Cold War, Japan has
begun to deepen its bilateral security ties. Since the mid-2000s under LDP and
DPJ administrations, bilateral security partnerships accelerated and today go
beyond non-traditional security issue are as and extend far into traditional
security and military affairs, including the exchange and joint acquisition of
military hardware, military exercises, and capacity building. It is argued, that
these developments will have implications for the security architecture in the
Asia-Pacific.
This book is a primer for those interested in Japan’s security
policy beyond the US-Japan security alliance, non-American centred bilateral and
multilateral security cooperation through the eyes of Japanese as well as
partner country perspectives. It is also an ideal as a course reading for
graduate courses on regional security cooperation and strategic partnerships,
and Japanese foreign and security policy.
The image of Japan does not immediately evoke that of a colonial power. This may have to do with Japan’s position as a latecomer into the club of predominantly European colonisers. Another explanation lies in the fact that its power and influence were not felt beyond Asia and did not seriously challenge the political and military supremacy of Western powers until the late 1930s. Yet Japan has a fairly long history of colonialism, which started within its own realm, and of population settlement abroad. Historians of
8 Governance in Japan: the implications of the research The downfall of the DPJ in December 2012 was unsurprising, given its growing unpopularity (Reed et al. 2013: 34–46). Defeating the Yoshihiko Noda government in the general election of 16 December 2012, the LDP’s Shinzō Abe won his second term as Prime Minister. After his first brief tenure between 2006 and 2007 was widely seen as a failure, not many expected a revival. Therefore, his return as the premier in December 2012 was received with surprise. The power of Abe’s LDP-led Coalition administration has
This book explores the transformation of the Japanese state in response to a variety of challenges by focusing on two case studies: Information and Communications Technology (ICT) regulation and anti-monopoly regulation after the 1980s, which experienced a disjuncture and significant transformation during the period, with particularistic approaches embracing competition. The case studies set up the state as the key locus of power, in contrast to pluralist and rational choice schools, which regard the state as insignificant. The analytical framework is drawn from key theories of governance and the state including the concepts of the core executive and the regulatory state. The book explores the extent to which there is asymmetric dominance on the part of Japan’s core executive through an examination of recent developments in the Japanese regulatory tradition since the 1980s. It concludes that the transformation of the Japanese state in the two case studies can be characterised as Japanese regulatory state development, with a view that the state at a macro level is the key locus of power. This book explores the transformation of the state and governance in a Japanese context and presents itself as an example of the new governance school addressing the state, its transformation, and the governance of the political arena in Japanese politics and beyond, setting out a challenge to the established body of pluralist and rational choice literature on Japanese politics.
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
We have it on good authority that, at least up to 1900, the images of, and attitudes to, Japan commonly held in the Western world did not amount to ‘taking Japan seriously’. Whether Japan’s astonishing successes in arms and industry thereafter dispelled the ‘cherry-petal exoticism’ which characterised Victorian perspectives on the Island Empire is less certain. Some
Introduction Since around 2010, the prevailing perception of threat in Japanese public opinion and official policy circles has been centred on the possible dangers posed by a rising China. Specific incidents such as repeated Chinese maritime and aerial incursions into the Senkaku Islands, which are also claimed by Beijing, certainly reinforce these perceptions. The angst and anxiety of a declining Japan being eclipsed by its giant neighbour undoubtedly marked the so-called zeitgeist . In this sense, one might argue that traditional geopolitical
Introduction T he sharp change in Tokyo’s strategy towards regional security multilateralism well illustrates Japan’s decentring from the US after the Cold War, even while nonetheless serving, at least so far, to support, if not strengthen, the Japan–US alliance. This chapter examines how Japan has used regional multilateralism since 1991 for several purposes: to help keep the US engaged in the region; to reassure Japan’s neighbours that Tokyo would not again threaten their security, even as it began playing a