《Japan Forum》2012,24(2):207-229

Are women seemingly absent from detective fiction in interwar Japan because it is a ‘male’ genre, or because male writers as gatekeepers of the genre conspired to exclude them? The absence of women from the genre is conspicuous given the significant presence of female readers. A close examination of the leading detective fiction magazines from the era reveals that male editors were spurred to seek out female authorship, and there indeed were some female detective writers who made the transition from consumer to producer. In light of such active recruitment by male colleagues, the relative inactivity of female writers after their arrival to the literary scene is even more mysterious. Some clues to this second mystery can be found in a larger investigation of the social and economic issues involved in the writing profession itself. This attempt to recover the lost female voice in detective fiction foregrounds the roles of consumer and producer in the publishing industry and elucidates the intertwined nature of gender, money, and the practice of writing.  相似文献   

    

《Japan Forum》2012,24(2):141-161

Abstract

Often exploring the very margins of society and thus frequently dealing with issues of poverty, oppression, as well as structures of gender and ethnic discrimination, Kirino Natsuo's literature has been labeled ‘neo-proletarian’. This analogy to the leftwing literature of the 1920s and 1930s is, however, clearly misleading. Through a close analysis of exploitation in Metabola, this article shows that contemporary representations of the casualization of the workplace can instead be read as testifying to the emergence of ‘precarity’ as a literary mode. The irregularity and permanent insecurity that characterize precarity are reflected in the struggles of the main protagonist, a former factory temp worker who, after a total loss of memory, is forced to (re-)construct an identity from scratch and ends up with a multiply fissured, ambiguous self. The analysis reveals that Kirino, by skilfully combining entertainment and sharp social criticism, addresses precarity on two levels: while on the one hand depicting the harsh working conditions of factory temp workers, on the other she expands the concept to reveal the pervasiveness of exploitation in contemporary society.  相似文献   

    

《Japan Forum》2012,24(1):24-41

Abstract

Early works on the history of the tea ceremony during the modern period emphasise the roles of the modern industrialist elite and their connoisseurial appreciation of tea objects. They argue that their aesthetic value derived from the history of the tea ceremony and that the space provided by tea gatherings played a critical role in the collection and display of art objects in the modern period. This article focuses on the social life of the elite in Tokyo during the mid-to-late Meiji period and examines how the tea ceremony generated new socio-economic networks and cultural institutions. It suggests that the modern development of the tea ceremony was influenced not only by the modern industrialist elite, but by a broader set of actors from various social groups, with differing motivations, that transcended nationality and gender. Towards the end of the Meiji era, the tea ceremony prompted the emergence of new institutions and became a medium for public diplomacy.  相似文献   

    

《Japan Forum》2012,24(1):1-16

Abstract

State intervention to protect and support the agricultural sector represents a significant element in the political economy of most industrial countries. Central to this in the Japanese case has been the so‐called Food Control System, the regulatory structure within which the government has sought to ‘guide the market’ for rice throughout die post‐war period. The system had its origins in war‐time food rationing but continued to evolve, in response to changing economic and political pressures, until a crisis point was reached with the ‘Heisei Rice Riots’ of 1993/4 and the conclusion of the Uruguay Round agreement to open Japan's rice market to imports. The New Food Law, passed in the wake of these events, is thus widely seen as heralding the demise of the system which has determined how and at what price consumers have purchased their rice throughout the period of Japan's rise to economic super‐power status. In this article, which is derived from research for a comparative study of East Asian agricultural policy and institutions, the rise and fall of the Food Control System is viewed as a case study of the attempts of the ‘bureaucratic developmental state’ to manage the agricultural sector within the context of the industrial economy that Japan, like the other East Asian countries, has now become.  相似文献   

    

《Japan Forum》2012,24(2):211-219

Since 1992, a number of official and private documents relating to the use of 'comfort women' by the Japanese Imperial Army have come to light, and this has been followed by the publication of numerous articles. While these developments mark a watershed in wartime historiography, previous commentators have not only regarded the comfort women as a homogeneous group, but have tended to overestimate the involvement of Korean women. In this article, an attempt is made to redress this imbalance through an analysis of the recruitment and deployment of women from Southeast Asia. Most of the women from Southeast Asia were drawn from among the local population, while methods of recruitment differed markedly from those employed in Korea. The same can be said for China, where most comfort women were recruited locally. The comfort women system was introduced into Southeast Asia despite the opposition of Foreign Ministry officials who were equally determined to repatriate Japanese prostitutes from overseas territories. Although the military comfort women system was not unique to the Japanese military, it did represent an extreme case of systematic exploitation of women by the state.  相似文献   

    

《Japan Forum》2012,24(2):257-272

This article offers an interpretation of Akira Kurosawa's film Dreams, which is composed of eight independent short episodes, as an integrated artifact into which are woven various principles of classical Japanese literature and performing art. Identifying in the film such techniques as principles of association and progression used in anthologies of classical Japanese poetry, the concept of design and background poems, the jo-ha-kyū progression of the medieval performing arts, as well as noh's role play, not only enhances appreciation of the film's aesthetics and Akira Kurosawa's indebtedness to traditional Japanese art but also demonstrates the remarkable continuation of such traditional principles in modern Japanese media.  相似文献   

    

《Japan Forum》2012,24(3):335-345

Abstract

We analyse the amakudari practice in Japan focussing on the banking industry where officials from the regulatory authority obtain post-retirement jobs in private banks. A theoretical model is developed to investigate a new role that amakudari might play following the introduction of limited deposit insurance in 2005. It is generally expected that changing deposit insurance from full to limited will discipline Japanese banks' risk-taking behaviour because depositors will start monitoring their banks. However, our game-theoretic analysis suggests the possibility that this disciplinary effect could be reversed by the new role that amakudari may play. We assume that depositors are unsure about banks' riskiness and infer their riskiness from observing whether or not they hire amakudari officials, i.e. these amakudari officials play a crucial role as a signal to depositors. This signal, however, might malfunction. We show that, in order to create more post-retirement employment opportunities for their officials, the regulatory authority may weaken prudential regulation. Ironically and unexpectedly, the introduction of limited deposit insurance may make the whole banking industry riskier.  相似文献   

    

《Japan Forum》2012,24(1):133-163

This article examines the current dispute over whaling from the perspective of Japan, a country that is fiercely protective of its right to whale. It outlines the key role played by transnational environmental actors in defining and instituting an international norm of anti-whaling, symbolized in the passage of the moratorium on commercial whaling in 1982. This signalled a rejection of previously held attitudes towards the use of whales as natural resources and the embracing of a protectionist, hands-off approach. Support for this new stance however was not forthcoming from pro-whaling states Japan, Norway and Iceland.

By analysing Japan's original objection to the moratorium, its later compliance and its commitment to the resumption of limited commercial whaling, this article outlines the principles that underpin Japan's whaling policy. While the Japanese government views the whaling dispute as a threat to resource security and also a danger to inter-state respect for differences in custom and cuisine, the need to be perceived as a responsible member of international society exercises a major influence on the formation of Japan's whaling policy, conditioning its rule compliance and prohibiting the independent action pursued by other pro-whaling states. Recent developments in the whaling dispute, however, may be enough to dislodge Japan's commitment to the moratorium, which would impact upon the legitimacy of the International Whaling Commission itself.  相似文献   

    

《Japan Forum》2012,24(2):207-233

Abstract

While Japan has led the world in certain high-technology industries, such as automobiles and electronics, it has remained a minor player in the global pharmaceutical industry. Japan's leading pharmaceutical firms invest less in R&D and record lower sales than leading global firms. Japan remains a net importer of pharmaceuticals and few Japanese drugs are found outside the country. The global pharmaceutical industry is led by firms from the United States, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, rather than those from Japan.

This article explains why the pharmaceutical industry has remained largely in the second tier of Japan's dual economy. For the purposes of this paper, the dual economy refers to the pronounced divide observed between the globally competitive and non-competitive sectors of the Japanese economy. Japan's pharmaceutical industry long subsidised other sectors, including those in the competitive tier, by providing medicines at low prices for a universal health care system. This played a critical role in shaping the industry's domestic orientation. While no single reason explains why pharmaceuticals did not become one of Japan's first tier industries, the major reasons lay in the smaller size of Japanese firms, the lack of R&D incentives, and the government's protectionist policies.  相似文献   

    

《Japan Forum》2012,24(3):361-382

Abstract

The Japanese government introduced new social welfare policies and institutions during the late 1910s and 1920s that acknowledged the growing significance of the ‘social question’ in Japan and seemingly recognized that social and economic structures were responsible for an increasing number of urban poor. However, a moralistic approach to the solution of poverty remained prominent, which aimed at ‘guiding’ and ‘correcting’ poor families' behaviour, values and ‘thought’. This revealed the persistence of an assumption that the poor were poor due to their individual moral failings. The Relief and Protection Law of 1929 and social welfare institutions and practices defined the poor as morally undeserving and thereby marginalized and marked them as inferior to respectable members of Japanese society. Not only was relief inadequate to raise the poor out of poverty; discriminatory treatment and stigmatization excluded the poor from being full members of Japanese society, a situation that still affects Japanese social welfare policies and social attitudes today.  相似文献