Representation Of Japan Research Articles

From Home to Corner Office: How Work–Life Programs Influence Women's Managerial Representation in Japan

Although researchers have suggested that work–life programs (WLPs) help increase the representation of women in management (WIM), stigmatization and gender stereotyping can prevent this beneficial effect. We adopt a contingency approach by taking the roles of time, gender context, and the purposes of different practices into consideration and examine the effects of WLPs on WIM longitudinally. Our analysis of a sample of Japanese public firms spanning 14 years addresses endogeneity concerns and shows that: (1) increases in WLPs are weakly associated with subsequent increases in the proportion of WIM within firms; (2) this positive effect is stronger in organizations where the percentage of female employees is growing; and (3) there is no evidence to suggest an effect in the opposite direction. We further propose different temporal patterns by which the effects of flexibility practices (e.g., remote work) and resource practices (e.g., childcare benefits) emerge due to the varying degree of changes in job structures and work norms involved in their implementation. Our analysis provides supportive evidence that the effects of flexibility practices that require more changes inconveniencing decision-makers, users, and coworkers take longer to emerge compared to resource practices that incur fewer changes and inconveniences. These findings contribute to a more detailed understanding of the WLPs–WIM relationship and offer insights for research on WLPs and women's career advancement.

Pedagogical Pleasures and Perils of Teaching During the Pandemic: Japanese History and YouTube

ABSTRACT In this article, I focus on the role of YouTube as a pedagogical tool and its associated media literacy issues. In the courses I have taught since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, I have included short videos produced by well-known YouTube history channels alongside required readings to stimulate student engagement with historiographical issues. Students respond positively to these videos, which they also seek out themselves. However, YouTube history channels are increasingly producing polished and entertaining videos that do not clearly cite sources and gloss over historiographical inaccuracies or misrepresentations. YouTube videos on Japanese history should be selected and utilised carefully. Media literacy skills and academic readings are essential to students’ ability to critically view and understand these media representations of the past. Therefore, I argue that it is important for Japanese Studies students to develop critical media literacy skills and be aware of the role and power of social media sites such as YouTube in the creation and representation of Japan and Japanese history.

Gender Representation in Japan’s National and International Diplomacy

Summary How do we account for the discrepancy between the number of Japanese women serving in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and the number in United Nations (UN) organisations? This article identifies where women and men are located in both national and international diplomacy. I argue that in ministries of foreign affairs around the world, institutional rules and norms account for the low numbers of women in these organisations. This research makes a new contribution to the literature by demonstrating that institutional rules and norms at the UN provide many opportunities for Japanese women to engage in diplomatic work, in contrast to national MFAs where norms and rules tend to circumscribe women’s participation. I argue that women choose to seek out these opportunities to fulfil their goals. Thus, this article investigates women’s agency in pursuing careers in international affairs as well as the effect of institutional rules and norms.

Electoral Rules, Nomination Strategies, and Women’s Representation in Japan and Taiwan

AbstractJapan and Taiwan conducted similar electoral reforms in 1994 and 2005. Following the transition from the single nontransferable vote (SNTV) to the mixed-member majoritarian (MMM), at the district level, both countries’ numbers of female representatives have increased, contrary to expectations. What, then, explains the increase in Japan’s and Taiwan’s women’s representation at the district level? We argue that electoral systems can only partly explain the variation in female representation and that the critical factor explaining women’s representation is not the women’s electability, but the earlier stage of nomination. This article examines continuity and change in the candidate selection methods of major parties in Japan and Taiwan and identifies factors that may affect the likelihood of women becoming candidates. Although major parties have adopted different nomination strategies following the reforms, the increase in female representatives has been associated with the centralized process, and whether a woman is an incumbent or not is key to her nomination. Moreover, path dependence matters, and given that Taiwan had more female incumbent representatives than Japan under the SNTV, this might explain the differences in the starting point for female representation between Taiwan and Japan when both switched to the MMM and there was a persistent gap between the two countries.

한국영화에서 일본과 재일교포 표상: 일본에 대한 동경과 불안 (한일 국교 정상화~1970년대)

이 논문에서는 반일감정과 일본에 대한 동경이 공존하는 속에서 한국사회가 전후일본과 마주하게 되는 1965년 한일 국교 정상화 이후 한국영화 속 일본 표상에 대해 분석한다. 영화 속 일본 표상을 통해 일본을 동경하는 대중의 욕망·감정뿐만 아니라 냉전질서 속에서 국가권력의 일본에 대한 우호적 태도의 일단을 읽어 낼 수도 있다. 일본을 배경으로 하는 영화들은 재일교포를 일본에서 한국으로 이동하게 하여 그들을 등장시킨다. 이에 한국인의 국가정체성, 일본에 대한 복잡한 태도·감정과의 관계 속에서 재일교포를 표상하는 양상도 검토한다. 한국영화 속 재일교포는 본격적으로 일본을 드러내는 것에 대한 한국사회의 불안감을 엿볼 수 있게 하는 존재라고 볼 것이다.

Blind Musicians and Supernatural Worlds: Animated Representations of Japan's Mysterious Biwa Hōshi

Blind Musicians and Supernatural Worlds: Animated Representations of Japan's Mysterious Biwa Hōshi

Contesting the Myths of Samurai Baseball: Cultural Representations of Japan's National Pastime by Christopher T. Keaveney

Contesting the Myths of Samurai Baseball: Cultural Representations of Japan's National Pastime by Christopher T. Keaveney

Japanese Media at the Beginning of the 21st Century: Consuming the Past by Katsuyuki Hidaka

Reviewed by: Japanese Media at the Beginning of the 21st Century: Consuming the Past by Katsuyuki Hidaka Ken Coates (bio) Japanese Media at the Beginning of the 21st Century: Consuming the Past. By Katsuyuki Hidaka. Routledge, London, 2017. xii, 190 pages. $155.00, cloth; $49.95, paper; $44.95, E-book. Hidaka's award-winning Japanese Media at the Beginning of the 21st Century is an important book, a personal translation of his 2014 study. It was selected as the Outstanding Book for 2015 by the Japan Communication Association, an appropriate recognition for an insightful study about the intersection of historical understanding and the representation of Japan's postwar miracle in film and television. As described by Hidaka, the book was extremely well received at the time of publication in Japanese, selling well with the public and attracting critical acclaim. Japanese Media at the Beginning of the 21st Century brings together two important themes: the transformation of Japanese society in the postwar era and Japan's effort to come to terms with the dramatic transitional decades of the 1960s and 1970s. For the Western world, these decades saw the relegation of most memories of Japan's wartime aggression to the background and the emergence of a new narrative, one based on economic resurgence, a reputation for technological innovation, and global prominence. Subsequently, as Japan entered the years of stagnation and its place in global [End Page 191] affairs was taken over by a resurgent China, nostalgia for the halcyon days of the 1960s and 1970s surged. So did the recollection of the difficulties of this era, including serious ecological damage, protests over Narita Airport, rapid urbanization, and the related decline of small-town Japan. The author builds his case systematically and convincingly. The introduction outlines several of the key theoretical and conceptual aspects of the topic. There is an excellent study of the social role of nostalgia, both in terms of national awareness and the potential misrepresentation of the past. Hidaka demonstrates the particular weakness of Japanese journalism in handling this era, arguing: "It is unfortunate that Japanese newspaper articles discussing Showa nostalgia are never based on an understanding of the intricate historical context of the meaning of nostalgia" (p. 10). While the realization that contemporary journalism is often shallow and uninformed is hardly a revelation, this section provides an important foundation for the study. Hidaka seeks to demonstrate that what seem harmless misrepresentations of the recent past can, in fact, undercut contemporary understandings of social and economic forces in the country. As he notes, "it should be called a complex and critical engagement with the recent past aimed at retrospection, and in which love and hate, remorse, dissatisfaction, reflection on past wrongs, rebuttals, apologies, justifications, and so forth are intermingled" (p. 13). This study begins with an extensive analysis of historical and historiographical nostalgia in Japan. Hidaka draws extensively on recent social science research on the role of memory in public affairs. He contrasts the complex understanding of memory among social scientists with the superficial use and misuse of historical recollection by journalists. He demonstrates that post–World War II nostalgia has become a prominent part of Japanese discourse and public conversation, affecting the political system and public affairs generally. This conceptually rich chapter includes a lengthy reflection on the role and meaning of history and outlines innovative approaches to the understanding of collective memory. Here, as throughout the study, Hidaka uses extensive content analysis of popular media, specifically television programs and movies, to highlight the preoccupation with the 1960s and 1970s and the prevailing Japanese view that this was an era of positive transformation in the country. The second chapter finds the foundation of Showa nostalgia in films like Tokyo Tower and Mom and Me, and Sometimes Dad. This film and others celebrated the dramatic—stunning, in fact—economic growth of the 1960s, a macroeconomic miracle that was matched by a related increase in personal incomes and quality of life. The author skillfully shows how the Tokyo Tower became a widely (misused) symbol of Japan's rise to economic prominence. As he notes, "a sense of antagonism toward Japan's post-war [End Page 192] history may have...

The Aesthetics of Kawaii and Politics in the Representation of Japan

The Aesthetics of Kawaii and Politics in the Representation of Japan

Migration, Whiteness, and Cosmopolitanism: Europeans in Japan by Miloš Debnár

Reviewed by: Migration, Whiteness, and Cosmopolitanism: Europeans in Japan by Miloš Debnár Rotem Kowner Migration, Whiteness, and Cosmopolitanism: Europeans in Japan. By Miloš Debnár. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 235 pages. Hardcover, $99.99/€85.59. European migration to Japan began in earnest only some 160 years ago. One might argue that it started with the few hundreds of Jesuits who lived in Japan during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, or with the small handful of employees residing in the Dutch factory in Dejima during the subsequent two centuries. But in essence, both of those groups were short-term sojourners; they came for religious or trade purposes rather than for the sake of migration as such. The true age of migration began only with the forced opening of Japanese ports in the 1850s, which was followed by the country’s rapid modernization. Despite periodic swelling and shrinking in numbers, the flow of Europeans to Japan has continued ever since. Admittedly, the influx has always been small; despite the recent growth in the population of Europeans in Japan to around 60,000 (as of 2014), this number represents a mere 0.05 percent of Japan’s total population, less than 0.01 percent of Europe’s population, and as little as 2.7 percent of the foreigners living in the country. Given these minuscule percentages, it is natural to ask why this group deserves exhaustive study in the form of an academic book such as the one under review, written by Doshisha University sociologist Miloš Debnár. The answer to this question lies in this group’s importance, both real and symbolic, and in what it reveals about the host country. Europe and Europeans have undoubtedly played an important role in Japanese modernization and are still ascribed significance and respect out of proportion to the relative size of their representation in Japan or to Europe’s current impact on Japan’s economy and politics. Debnár’s specific reasons for focusing on this group are described in the book’s introduction, where he states that he is interested in the migration of “individuals from the Global North, West, or of people of white race” and “aims to contribute to . . . recent attempts [at] deconstructing the image of highly privileged migrants” (pp. 2–3). Deconstructing assumptions pertaining to countries of origin, type of migration, white privilege, and cosmopolitanism, he argues, “shows the complex character of social relations that migrants create and sustain in receiving societies” (p. 3). Japan was chosen as a representative of highly developed, non-Western countries, with the goal [End Page 164] of providing new insights into the increasing diversity exhibited in present-day migration and the outcomes of this trend. Despite its seemingly explicit sociological objectives, Migration, Whiteness, and Cosmopolitanism is more than just a case study on global migration in the twenty-first century. The book’s seven chapters offer an up-to-date look at fascinating aspects of Japanese society as well as the country’s intercultural relations and its unending love-hate relationship with the West. Following an informative introduction, chapter 2 provides an overview of the modern history of European migration to Japan and its current demographic structure. The next chapter focuses on three major types of migration: that involving high-skilled laborers or professionals, that related to international marriage, and that involving students. Debnár then takes up the “white privilege” enjoyed by Europeans living in Japan and the manner in which they transform this into various forms of capital. This is followed by one chapter investigating the limits and meanings of whiteness in the migrants’ everyday experience and another exploring the issue of cosmopolitanism as associated with Europeans. Chapter 7 ends the book by summing up its main findings and discussing their larger implications. Methodologically speaking, the book draws primarily on interviews with fifty-seven Europeans conducted between 2008 and 2012. Representing twenty-two countries as well as various ages and occupations, most of Debnár’s interviewees had resided in Japan for five to ten years. Although the book could have been enriched by the further use of primary sources, some of the interviews provide thought-provoking insights into...

戦後雑誌メディアの〈他者〉表象をめぐる産業論的見地からの考察

戦後雑誌メディアの〈他者〉表象をめぐる産業論的見地からの考察

Advocating Policy Interests in Local Politics : Women’s Substantive Representation in Japan and South Korea

Advocating Policy Interests in Local Politics : Women’s Substantive Representation in Japan and South Korea

Handling heterogeneity in English geography textbooks 1850–2000

Teaching demands engagement with a diverse world. When teaching about distant places, school textbooks commonly employ mediation devices of comparison, contrast and narratives of change. To what extent are such pedagogical strategies inherently othering? This question is addressed in the context of representations of Japan in English geography textbooks from 1850 to 2000. A process of detailed qualitative analysis was applied to the books, focussing on language structures, but also considering visual elements. Although the nature of comparison and change narratives varied over time, there was an enduring power dynamic within their construction. It is important to recognize this dynamic because of the widespread use of such taken-for-granted strategies. This is relevant not only to geography education but to any discipline in which the world is represented. Can other ways of constructing the world offer an alternative approach?

Isabella Bird, Victorian globalism, and Unbeaten Tracks in Japan (1880)

ABSTRACTIsabella Bird’s Unbeaten Tracks in Japan (1880, written 1878) is one of the rare Victorian travelogues about Asia that has not only won continued readership and critical prestige in the West, but has also been frequently valued by readers in the country it describes as an insightful perspective by an outsider. Our introduction to this special issue on Bird’s travel writing of Japan creates multiple frameworks for understanding this text. We position it within post-1850 representations of Japan and travelogues of the country by women writers, the overall development of Bird’s literary career, and recent theories of Victorian globalism. We argue that Unbeaten Tracks can be read as simultaneously radical and conservative, sympathetic and denunciatory, staunchly imperial and anticipatory of postcolonial critique, making it a rich object of study and an important touchstone in Victorian travel writing. If Bird’s writing occasionally seems to confirm (and to revel in) familiar stereotypes of Victorian travellers as condescending, repressed, and parochial, it can also be linked to more recent understandings of a global nineteenth century already possessing cosmopolitan awareness and utopian horizons.

Isabella Bird, Rudyard Kipling, and the “bandobast” of East Asian travel

ABSTRACTIsabella Bird’s Unbeaten Tracks (1880) has often been read as a quest-narrative into the unknown interior of Japan, which centres on the resolute individualism of the female travel persona. This essay will instead regard Bird as a representative figure, insofar as (like other contemporary Victorian travellers) she is the beneficiary of newly established networks of trade, transport and communication in South-East Asia. I compare her journey with that of Rudyard Kipling, who undertook a similar Asian version of the Grand Tour in 1889, recounted in From Sea to Sea (1899). Focusing on Kipling’s idea of the “bandobast”, a Hindi word adapted into English to mean “systematic arrangement”, I explore the mutual interdependence of Victorian representations of Japan with other East Asian cultures, particularly China. Instead of contrasting masculine and feminine modes of response, I show how their overlapping itineraries allow engagement with the multicultural cosmopolitanism of the major cities of the region, and examination of the impact of aggressive Western expansionism in the final decades of the nineteenth century.

The Return of Seduction

The Return of Seduction Morgan Pitelka Shunga: Erotic Art in Japan by Rosina Buckland. New York: Overlook Press, 2010. Pp. 176. $45.00. Shunga: Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art by Timothy Clark, C. Andrew Gerstle, Aki Ishigami, and Akiko Yano. Leiden: Hotei Publishing, 2013. Pp. 536. $99.00. Seduction: Japan’s Floating World: The John C. Weber Collection by Laura W. Allen, Julia Meech, Eric C. Rath, and Melinda Takeuchi. San Francisco: Asian Art Museum, 2015. Pp. xx + 260. $50.00. Hokusai by Sarah E. Thompson, Hokusai Katsushika, Joan Wright, and Philip Meredith. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2015. Pp. 176. $29.95. Hokusai’s Great Wave: Biography of a Global Icon by Christine M. E. Guth. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2015. Pp. xvi + 256. $57.00 cloth, $20.00 paper. The cover of Rosina Buckland’s book, Shunga: Erotic Art in Japan (here after cited as Erotic Art), depicts the rapturous heads of a couple, kissing with their mouths open, tongues engaged, and eyes closed in a visible display of pleasure. The image projects passion and intimacy, but it is also rather chaste as a representation of sex, showing us only the heads and necks of the lovers. The actual woodblock print from [End Page 437] which this cover detail is excerpted, the middle image of Torii Kiyonaga’s 鳥居清長 The Scroll for the Sleeve (Sode no maki 袖の巻, 1785), in fact shows the full explicit scene of the couple during coitus, with the right-hand side of the print detailing the woman’s vagina, which holds the man’s largely obscured penis as he embraces her from behind and she holds up her left leg to allow easy entry. The image on the cover seems to present a visual argument for the primacy of idealized intimacy, making it useful as a public-facing, “family-friendly” representation of Japan’s early modern visual culture. The full print contained within the book’s pages, on the other hand, conveys the messy and vivid encounter of two bodies having sex. The gap between the two hints at the challenge of displaying and indeed studying early modern Japanese erotic art or “spring pictures” (shunga 春画), a key genre in the well-known field of “pictures of the floating world” (ukiyo-e 浮世 絵). This essay examines several recent exhibition catalogs and monographs that illustrate the visual culture of early modern Japan, including but not limited to erotic art, to consider the history and ongoing allure of shunga and ukiyo-e inside and outside of Japan. Buckland’s Erotic Art is not, strictly speaking, an exhibition catalog, but rather a history of the production of shunga “illustrated with artworks in the British Museum’s collection, many previously unpublished” (p. 7). The book begins with an overview of Japan’s erotic imagery, touching on attitudes, usage and formats, social and cultural contexts, and censorship. This section, like most pages of the book, is amply illustrated with full-color reproductions of prints and paintings that depict everything from courtesans with their lovers to cheating wives and husbands, with plenty of attention paid to singing and dancing among other activities in the period’s houses of prostitution. The second section, “Features of shunga,” details the contents of these erotic images and focuses considerable attention on correcting mistaken assumptions and beliefs among modern and Western viewers. Buckland notes, for example, that the majority of people shown in shunga were not sex workers but ordinary men and women; even when courtesans did appear, it was usually in encounters with their private or secret lovers rather than with clients. Buckland also emphasizes that the majority of shunga highlight pleasure rather than dominance, and they frequently display individuals or couples in the throes of passion while rarely displaying violence. The point here is to counter the perception of shunga as pornography, with all of the negative perceptions that adhere to that term. By [End Page 438] analyzing the content of the prints to emphasize female agency, diverse but recognizable characters, and a culture of intimacy that feels recognizable, this book seems to make the argument that the genre of shunga possesses positive, universalistic qualities. This is a compelling argument. Yet the...

The Neutral View: Roland Barthes’ Representations of Japan and China

The Neutral View: Roland Barthes’ Representations of Japan and China

Going with the transnational flow in Bondi Tsunami

This paper explores the transnational flows and nationalizing forces affecting the representation of Japan in Rachael Lucas’ 2004 film Bondi Tsunami. I present an analysis of the strategic ways in which the film invites Japanese capital and tourism into Australia, as well as the ways in which it hybridizes Australian and Japanese stereotypes and sensibilities. I explore the ambiguous sexualization of the Japanese male, as well as the significance of both the road movie genre and the film’s attempts to create a hyperreal style. This paper argues that stereotype and representation in Bondi Tsunami offer us a ‘contact zone’ (following Rey Chow) that can potentially lead to imaginative cross-cultural exchange between Australia and Japan.

Election System Reforms and Women's Political Representation in Japan

Election System Reforms and Women's Political Representation in Japan

The shifting representation of Japan in Belgian comics, in fifteen years after WWII (1945-1960)

This paper focuses on how Japan was represented in the most popular Belgian comics at a particular period in time, right after the Second World War and just before the image of Japan as an economic superpower (that exported many commodities to Europe or the USA) became widespread from the 1960s on. Within the field of European comics, Belgian comics played a crucial role in the decades after the war with major artists such as Herge, Franquin, Jacobs, Vandersteen and many others. Moreover, the Belgian comics industry attracted many artists from other countries and exported her products to various countries (especially France). The comics published in dailies, journals and albums formed at that time an important means of entertainment for the youngsters (television started only in the 1950s in Belgium). Furthermore, the Belgian comics culture is interesting since it involves two different traditions: a French language one and a Dutch language one. In various stories, published between 1945 and 1960, we find representations of Japan. On the whole, two basic approaches of the Japanese Otherness stand out: - the “Yellow Peril”, strongly referring to the last World War (for instance Jacobs' Blake et Mortimer , Le Secret de l’espadon , Hubinon & Troisfontaines , Charlier's Buck Danny , Les Japs attaquent ). Usually these comics were drawn in a more realistic style. - the “touristic ancient or exotic Japan” without any reference to WWII (for instance Vandersteen Suske en Wiske , De Stemmenrover , Will & Ros y Tif et Tondu , Le Fantome du samourai ). Usually comics of this approach combine adventure and humour. The first kind of comics is typically for the comics produced in the first years after war, while the second kind is rather typical for the late 1950s. So, even in this brief period of 15 years already an important shift of the image of Japan is noticeable, from a belligerent enemy to an exotic and touristically interesting culture. The paper will offer a more detailed analysis of some examples and formulates some possible explanations for this shift.