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| 1 |
ID:
092216
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2009.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Although the islands of the Northern Marianas are famous for the ferocity of the battles of June and July 1944 and their subsequent role as crucial military airbases for the defeat of Japan, they are less well known as the site of the first US occupation of a Japanese territory. During the battles and in their wake, the civilian population of Saipan was herded into internment camps, where they were kept until early 1946. This article considers Japanese civilian experiences of life in Saipan under Occupation, the tensions between the administration of the camp and the internees, and the way in which the experience reflected and reshaped the understanding of the enemy, both in Japanese and in American eyes.
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| 2 |
ID:
092242
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2009.
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This paper looks at the Japanese whaling policy and inquires into what lies behind its direction. The policy has many features and the longer Japan continues with its research whaling, the more controversial the policy becomes. Reasons put forward by the government, such as the maintenance of its culture and the utilization of the whale resource, have not convinced Western nations of its legitimacy. This paper argues that attempts to bring about a resumption of commercial whaling are less about maintaining traditions than about providing opportunities to the vested interests of the Japanese 'Whaling Iron Triangle'. This triangle is the driving force behind Japan's whaling policy
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| 3 |
ID:
092241
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2009.
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Beginning in the 1890s, Protestant churches in Tokyo offered a new kind of social space that encouraged an open, verbal communication of ideas about a modern and improved Japan. Such churches differed dramatically from the majority of Japanese secular and religious gathering spaces that were directly influenced by their strong ties to state authority. At church, pastors and respected lay speakers told listeners to individually imagine the nation and their appropriate places within it. Speaking and listening with the men were many educated, socially minded women who had just been barred from various forms of public life. These men and women used the church space to imagine and realize alternative versions of a new Japan. To analyze the discursive distinctiveness of Tokyo's Protestant churches, this paper examines laymen's speeches made before the Women's Group of Tokyo's most socially active church, Hong?, sermons in Tokyo's two largest Kumiai (Congregationalist) churches, Hong? and Reinanzaka, and the accounts of attendees influenced by both.
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| 4 |
ID:
092212
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2009.
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This paper reviews the state of Japanese language teaching today, discussing 'things to celebrate' to 'things to lament and think about'. The former include the 'normalisation' of Japanese language teaching, its strength at all levels (particularly in numerical terms) and the achievement of a home-grown Australian capacity in Japanese studies. The latter centre on the high rates of attrition in Japanese, the dissatisfaction of learners which leads to this, and the corrosive effects of failure, not only on the learners themselves, but on the community's future expectations. It surveys six phases in the history of Japanese language teaching, and previews the results of a major research project on the views of students of Japanese in primary and secondary schools, discussing the implications of these views and experiences for the directions in which we must move in future.
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| 5 |
ID:
092221
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2009.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This essay proposes a critical reading of After Dark by Murakami Haruki, published in 2004. I primarily focus on the ways in which this text attributes safety and danger, home and risk, or the quotidian and the extraordinary. I argue that the narrative style that Murakami employs here evokes in readers a longing for being safe at home and a sense of being content with the way things are. It presents the nature of space as heterogeneous, hence with a potential danger constantly lurking over it. Women are placed at the heart of such a heterotopic enclosure, projecting the clich d desire of the male gaze, which is represented by the voice of the narrator. Jean-Luc Godard's 1965 film Alphaville is one of the key references Murakami makes in this text. In this film misogyny and self-reference are strategically employed to perform a critique of history. Reading After Dark in the light of Alphaville, I question the value of Murakami's narrative strategy.
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| 6 |
ID:
092222
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2009.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Matsuura Hisaki's novel Hant?[Peninsula] contains a highly saturated critical and poetic space, allowing us to probe the boundaries of Japan's periphery and the limits of the experience of interiority. An analysis of the structure and the narrative devices of the novel leads to the creation of a spatial model conceptualizing the idea of 'peninsula' as an existential and literary trope. The 'peninsula' is also a reversible notion combining the narrative of a private experience of seclusion with critical commitment for reconsidering modern Japan's cartography.
* 1Earlier versions of this essay were presented at the graduate seminar of Prof. Kawamura Minato (H?sei University, 12 June 2008) and the Cultural Typhoon (Sendai, 28 June 2008). I am grateful to Prof. Kawamura for his valuable suggestions, to Prof. Matsuura Hisaki for an interesting discussion (June 2008) and to the anonymous readers of Japanese Studies for constructive feedback.
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| 7 |
ID:
092243
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2009.
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This article examines the Japanese literature on the current phenomenon of low fertility in Japan, which persists despite the understanding shared by most Japanese that children are valued. By reviewing existing research on low fertility in Japan, the article examines the emergence of low fertility and introduces a new perspective that links the phenomenon to the larger context of social change in Japan. Analysis of the literature reveals that low fertility is paradoxically accompanied by a persistent or enduring desire to have children, as stated by a majority of interviewees. This paradox between desire and behaviour signifies social change that demonstrates both discontinuity and continuity of marriage- and family-related practices and processes in Japanese society.
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