Displaying the Worldview of Japanese Fascism: The Tokyo Thought War Exhibition of 1938

ABSTRACT:

This essay explores an imperial state exhibition held in Tokyo in 1938 and explains how the exhibition displayed a fascist worldview of historical crisis and national regeneration that was taking shape in Japan in the late 1930s. The exhibition – entitled the Thought War Exhibition (Shisōsen tenrankai) – was curated by the Japanese state's newly formed Cabinet Information Division (Naikaku jōhōbu) and held in Takashimaya Department Store in downtown Tokyo. Comprised of materials related to the Communist International, the Spanish Civil War, the national liberation struggle in China, and the communist and anticolonial movements inside the Japanese Empire, the Exhibition portrayed Japan's invasion of the Chinese mainland in 1937 as an extension of a global thought war against communism, requiring all imperial subjects to purify themselves of foreign influences and mobilize for national thought defense. While on the surface this Exhibition was an example of prewar state propaganda, it also expressed a fascist worldview that was coalescing in the Japanese state in the late 1930s. This essay investigates how this fascist worldview was exhibited in a sequence of displays, including dioramas, panoramas, illuminated maps, and display cases, and how these displays revealed constitutive contradictions that underwrote the formation of fascism in Japan.     

The use of tactical polygraph with sex offenders

Abstract

Little is known about current re-entry practices, nor the extent to which they facilitate re-entry, reintegration and, ultimately, desistance from future offending. Göbbels, Ward and Willis recently developed the Integrative Theory of Desistance from Sex Offending (ITDSO), which comprehensively describes the individual desistance process in four phases. In the current research, the re-entry phase of the ITDSO was used as a theoretical framework to evaluate current re-entry practices in five North American sex offender treatment programmes. Inductive thematic analyses were conducted using interview data from programme directors and final client assignments. Eleven themes were identified. Findings are discussed in relation to their fit with the ITDSO and suggestions are made for improving re-entry practices so that they better promote desistance.     

A human rights-based practice framework for sexual offenders

Abstract

Human rights create a protective zone around people and allow them the opportunity to further their own valued personal projects without interference from others. In our view, the emphasis on community rights and protection may, paradoxically, reduce the effectiveness of sex offender rehabilitation by ignoring or failing to ensure that offenders’ core human interests are met. In this paper we consider how rights-based values and ideas can be integrated into therapeutic work with sex offenders in a way that safeguards the interests of offenders and the community. To this end we develop a rights-based normative framework (the Offender Practice Framework: OPF) that is orientated around the three strands of justice and accountability, offender needs and risk, and the utilization of empirically supported interventions and strength-based approaches. We examine the utility of this framework for the different phases of sex offender practice.     

Modeling Dependencies in International Relations Networks

Michael D. Ward Department of Political Science, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195 e-mail: isere{at}msn.com Despite the desire to focus on the interconnected nature ofpolitics and economics at the global scale, most empirical studiesin the field of international relations assume not only thatthe major actors are sovereign, but also that their relationshipsare portrayed in data that are modeled as independent phenomena.In contrast, this article illustrates the use of linear andbilinear random–effects models to represent statisticaldependencies that often characterize dyadic data such as internationalrelations. In particular, we show how to estimate models fordyadic data that simultaneously take into account: (a) regressorvariables, (b) correlation of actions having the same actor,(c) correlation of actions having the same target, (d) correlationof actions between a pair of actors (i.e., reciprocity of actions),and (e) third-order dependencies, such as transitivity, clustering,and balance. We apply this new approach to the political relationsamong a wide range of political actors in Central Asia overthe period 1989–1999, illustrating the presence and strengthof second- and third-order statistical dependencies in thesedata.     

Accurate STR allele designations at the FGA and vWA loci despite primer site polymorphisms

Polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based STR DNA typing systems are used extensively in the field of human identification. Under optimal PCR conditions, the amplicon yield from both alleles of an STR locus is expected to be approximately equivalent. However, it is reasonable to expect that rare genomic sequence polymorphisms will co-localize with well-designed primer sets and induce allele imbalance or "dropouts". Two samples were identified in the course of genotyping thousands of individuals with AmpF/STR Profiler Plus that showed strong disparity in amplitude peak height of heterozygous peaks at the loci vWA and FGA. These samples were reamplified at reduced annealing temperature in an attempt to balance the peak heights. Nucleotide sequencing documented polymorphisms at the PCR primer binding sites of the affected alleles. The results indicate that reducing the annealing temperature to improve primer-binding efficiency at the mismatch and employing an alternative multiplex enhanced the data from both samples. Reducing annealing temperatures could provide a simple general solution to improving data quality for samples where polymorphisms are suspected to cause allele imbalance. Finally, we report on additional polymorphisms surrounding the vWA locus in a genetically diverse population.     

Toxicologic findings in suicide: a 10-year retrospective review of Kentucky medical examiner cases

Toxicologic analysis is an integral component in the investigation of suicide and requires correlation with a detailed scene inspection, with an extensive exploration into the decedent's medical and social background to uncover suicidal ideation or intent and a postmortem examination of the body. In this review, the authors analyzed 2864 cases classified as suicide upon autopsy and toxicologic examinations between 1993 and 2002 in the Kentucky Division of Medical Examiner's Services. Blood and urine were collected in 95.0% and 72.3% of cases, respectively. A total of 32.5% of the victims had negative blood toxicologic results, and 52.7% of urine toxicology screens yielded no drugs. Analysis of the data indicated that 3 times as many women had taken antidepressants and more than twice as many had consumed opioids. Drug toxicity ("overdose") ranked as the third (9.9%) leading cause of suicide after firearm injury (67.5%) and hanging (13.7%). Women succumbed to drug toxicity more than men (27.5% versus 5.9%). Of the overdose deaths, 66.5% had a negative blood alcohol concentration (BAC), while antidepressants, opioids, and benzodiazepines were detected in blood in 54.4%, 37.4%, and 29.2% of the subjects, respectively. The collection of these data serves the goals of public health and clinicians in devising strategies for suicide prevention.     

Location, Location, Location: An MCMC Approach to Modeling the Spatial Context of War and Peace

This article demonstrates how spatially dependent data witha categorical response variable can be addressed in a statisticalmodel. We introduce the idea of an autologistic model wherethe response for one observation is dependent on the value ofthe response among adjacent observations. The autologistic modelhas likelihood function that is mathematically intractable,since the observations are conditionally dependent upon oneanother. We review alternative techniques for estimating thismodel, with special emphasis on recent advances using Markovchain Monte Carlo (MCMC) techniques. We evaluate a highly simplifiedautologistic model of conflict where the likelihood of war involvementfor each nation is conditional on the war involvement of proximatestates. We estimate this autologistic model for a single year(1988) via maximum pseudolikelihood and MCMC maximum likelihoodmethods. Our results indicate that the autologistic model fitsthe data much better than an unconditional model and that theMCMC estimates generally dominate the pseudolikelihood estimates.The autologistic model generates predicted probabilities greaterthan 0.5 and has relatively good predictive abilities in anout-of-sample forecast for the subsequent decade (1989 to 1998),correctly identifying not only ongoing conflicts, but also newones.     

A transcultural perspective on women and madness: The case of the mystical affliction

The paper seeks to examine spirit possession in women of traditional societies and syncretic subcultures as a symptom of personal maladjustment and as a form of social protest based on psychosocial, role-related pressures. This is accomplished by consideration of predisposing, precipitating and reactive factors involved in the possession reaction. Analysis of four case histories and availability of cross-cultural data indicate that the precipitation of pathological possession is rooted in the oppressive nature of the female role and that stresses experienced by traditional women are not unlike the difficulties of women in developed, industrialized societies. The possession response, however, is colored by traditional beliefs and superstitions; consequently, hysterical and anxiety symptoms are interpreted in light of the magical model of disease with the pathological reaction attributed to possession by malevolent spirits.