Japanese women in grassroots politics: building a gender-equal society from the bottom up

Abstract

The 1979 UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women highlights the importance of equal participation of women in public life. Since the early 1960s, women in Japan have voted in elections at significantly higher rates than men. However, Japanese women's equal participation in policy formulation and decision making lags far behind major democracies. Gender equality is stated under the Japanese Constitution, but social practices are far from equal. There are no legal constraints on Japanese women's right to candidacy for public office, but they are far underrepresented in local and national elected assemblies. In 1999 an important landmark in the substantial progress towards gender equality took place when the Japanese government, for the first time, legally denounced the stereotyped division of roles on the basis of gender and described men and women as equal partners. An unprecedented amount of legislation, together with policy changes and organizational reform at the national level were introduced from this state-led initiation. In the same year, women's grassroots groups were rapidly moving beyond the reach of policy, organizational, and legal changes; they successfully conducted a major nationwide campaign for ‘More Women to Assemblies¡’ and increased the number of elected women representatives at the local level at an unprecedented rate. The purpose of this article is to assess the potential of increased women's political voices in Japan, which can be seen as an alternative way of solving the problems of political disengagement in the male-dominated representative democracy. To this end, the article examines the course of watershed events in 1999 towards a gender-equal society in Japan, with special emphasis on the importance of grassroots missions in eliminating barriers to Japanese women's political participation.     

A chance for a breakthrough in Russo-Japanese relations: will the logic of great power relations prevail?

Under Mori Yoshiro the Japanese government energetically pursued Russia's new leader, Vladimir Putin. Progress was achieved, as Putin recognized the 1956 treaty in which Moscow pledged to return two islands. From the summer of 2000, however, a backlash could be detected. The architects of the initiative not only failed to make their case to Japanese politicians, but also became the object of two years of attacks, leading to Suzuki Muneo's ouster from the LDP and arrest and to Togo Kazuhiko being fired as ambasador to The Netherlands. Under Koizumi Junichiro Japan lost interest, while the media feasted on the image of foreign policy being hijacked. Lost in the media frenzy and setback to relations was the case for why Tokyo and Moscow need each other as great power partners in the face of rising Chinese power and overwhelming US power. Since both parties sided with the US war against terror, the logic of cooperation has become clearer. A general outline for an interim agreement is well understood on both sides, but a breakthrough is unlikely soon.     

未名庐学记：卞崇道及其日本哲学思想研究管窥

卞崇道先生是中国日本哲学思想研究领域中“过渡时代的领军人物”,作为新的历史时期日本哲学思想史学科基础的坚定夯实者、高层次中日哲学思想研究学术交流事业的杰出组织者和胸怀全局并及时总结学科发展、关心青年一代成长的循循善诱的引领者,卞先生在当代中国日本哲学思想研究的学术发展进程中留下了浓墨重彩的一笔。     

Haplotype analysis of 17 Y-STR loci in a Japanese population

We analyzed 17 Y-STR loci (DYS19, DYS389I, DYS389II, DYS390, DYS391, DYS392, DYS393, DYS385a/b, DYS438, DYS439, DYS456, DYS458 and DYS464a/b/c/d) in 252 Japanese males using three multiplex PCR typing systems. Two variants were found at DYS385a/b. A total of 244 different haplotypes were observed, of which 239 were found in single individuals. The haplotype diversity for the 17 loci was 0.996.     

政府在日本金融制度演化中的作用

作者认为,日本金融行政的思想滥觞于明治维新以来的近现代经济发展史,日本政府通过学习西方金融制度引导本国金融制度的变革方向,在制度实施过程中各种关系的博弈过程形成了日本金融制度演化的路径。这种依靠政府力量推动的金融制度演化方式是造成日本完成经济追赶后无法赶超的一个主要原因。     

华侨与抗战关系研究述评

学界关于华侨与抗战关系的研究已有一定进展,在专著、学术文章、相关研究资料以及各种相关研讨会等方面取得了一定成果。但尚有一定的不足。     

儿童虐待的法律规制——以日本法为视角的分析

为了有效防止儿童虐待,日本已经建立起一套完整、成熟的儿童虐待法律保护体系.反观中国,由于规制儿童虐待的法律之不足,儿童虐待故未得到有效抗制;对于非家庭成员实施的儿童虐待行为,刑法中也无合适的罪名加以处罚.因此,完善儿童虐待的法律保护体系势在必行.     

Ernest Satow's Early Career as Diplomatic Interpreter

This article is concerned with Satow's seven years as diplomatic interpreter in the Japan of the fateful 1860s. He was sent first to Peking because the Foreign Office in its ignorance thought that Japanese was very similar to Chinese, but this detour did at least enable him to meet there another notable British diplomatic interpreter, Thomas Wade. He soon learned better about Japanese, and once he had mastered it fluently he became a privileged observer of traditional society and culture in the crucial period when it was being shaken by the first rumblings of the Meiji era. He was therefore able to render outstanding service to his head of mission, who was himself an ex-interpreter. Satow went on to enjoy a long and distinguished career in the diplomatic corps, rising from interpreter to ambassador.     

日本古代小说的佛学烙印与文化成因

日本古代小说大都具有浓郁的佛学色彩,净土、无常、果报是最典型的三个侧面。净土思想是日本佛教的主流且具有明显的现世特征:平安物语的净土信仰成为救赎宫廷贵族脱离苦难的精神支柱;中世战记物语的净土信仰多与死亡紧密相连,成为对战乱中人们渴求来世幸福的终极关怀。无常是日本小说尤其是中世物语中最浓墨重彩的一笔,无常既是对人间永无常住的感性叹息,也是对盛者必衰社会法则的理论解释,更成为武家社会切身感受的生死观。因果报应思想贯穿日本小说史的始终,它与宿世、轮回、转生等观念互为表里,成为孕育日本怪异小说流行的土壤之一,并表现出与儒家劝惩观念相结合的世俗化趋势。     

The collaboration of ‘ghostwriting’ and literature – the case of Kawabata Yasunari

Abstract: Kawabata Yasunari is Japan's first Nobel Prize recipient for literature and thus an emblem of the modern Japanese writer, but as this essay demonstrates, this writer's career, like that of so many throughout Japan's premodern and modern history, is spanned by the curious practice of ghostwriting. Taking up the specific case of Kawabata, the article exposes a wider conflict between the modern West's notion of the original artist, underwritten by its idea of individualized creativity, and modern Japan's persistent adherence to ghostwriting's more collaborative premodern concept of creativity. Subjecting fine-grained literary historical analysis to its far-reaching theoretical consequences for the modernness of modern literature, Japanese and otherwise, this essay shows how the spectre of Kawabata's ghostwriting haunts our contemporary, and therefore possibly anachronistic, understanding of ‘modern’ literary practice.