AFTERWORD: CROSS-CULTURAL IMPLICATIONS OF JAPANESE HERITAGE LANGUAGE POLICIES AND PRACTICES

Scholars of regions where multiple languages are spoken have much to gain by considering heritage language education, individual identity, and state power through these ethnographic and historical cases that focus on Japan and the Japanese diaspora. The articles in this two-part collection offer insights into the interrelationships of linguistic hierarchies and political economy, the navigation of ethnic and racial subjectivities, and the ways children and adolescents claim belonging to various communities through their linguistic practices. The articles interrogate not only heritage but remembrance and the ways individuals may produce identity through language in everyday interactions and institutional settings.     

Corporate governance in Germany: The changing role of the banks

The article analyses the different channels ‐ industrial stakes, supervisory board mandates, proxy voting ‐ by which German banks can exert influence on industrial companies. The central thesis is that even where the banks have such influence they do not dominate the companies. A recent empirical study on the effects of the alleged bank dominance over industrial companies with detrimental effects on their performance is shown to contain major methodological mistakes. The relationship between banks and industry is undergoing some distinct changes. Banks have substantially reduced their industrial stakes as well as their representation on supervisory boards, which underlines that they are not striving for industrial leadership. Despite a clear trend in the German corporate sector to pay increasing attention to shareholder value and to provide more transparency in accounting, it seems premature to expect the German capital market, including the corporate governance system, to incorporate fully the Anglo‐Saxon model in the immediate future.