Kantei diplomacy? Japan's hybrid leadership in foreign and security policy

This article operationalizes Japanese leadership in foreign and security policy, specifically the Abe administrations’ consistent China balancing. It will do so to dispel instances of Premier-centered diplomacy and posit that Abe's diplomatic agenda has rested on a ‘hybrid’ policy-making authority, where the leverage enjoyed by the Prime Minister's office (the Kantei) rested on little-appreciated politicized personnel appointments and demotions within the bureaucratic apparatus, specifically the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Moreover, successful Japanese leadership has functioned especially when operating within the scope of the US strategic framework towards East Asia. While structural constraints, such as the ever-present influence of the USA and bureaucratic coordination, may constrain options, effective leadership in foreign policy-making can indeed make a difference within those boundaries.     

Tominaga Nakamoto and the Origin of Japan's Oriental Studies

Tominaga Nakamoto, a Japanese scholar of the early 18th century, changed the basic pattern of Japans Buddhist and Confucianist studies with his books Shutsujō Kōgo (Words after Enlightenment) and Okina no Fumi (The Writings of an Old Man). In the former book, based on his analysis of Chinese culture in terms of Confucianism and Indian culture from the viewpoint of Buddhism, he compared Indian, Chinese and Japanese culture and summarized their characteristics with the words “fanciful”, “elegant” and “simple” respectively. In the meantime, in combing through the development of Buddhism he put forward a set of key concepts in relation to his research methodology, extending his domain from country-specific studies to Asia regional studies and finally Oriental studies. In the latter book, he used the concept “makoto”, roughly meaning “practicing the good”, to synthesize the Way of the three nations. His study transformed Japanese Confucianism and Buddhism from a system of belief to an academic field. Despite his rational analysis and criticism of the traditional oriental culture, Tominaga consciously identified with it and inherited it. As the first scholar in early modern Japan who developed his own research methodology, Tominaga is the trailblazer of Oriental studies.     

近代日本内阁首相产生机制研究

近代日本在内阁更迭之际,拥有任命内阁首相大权的天皇,不直接指定继任首相,而是就首相人选咨询于一些特殊集团,这些集团将他们认为合适的人选奏荐给天皇,再由天皇降旨给被奏荐者,命其组阁,从而形成了独特的产生继任内阁首相时的奏荐机制。首先从制度层面分析这种奏荐机制何以能够产生和存在;进而分析参与奏荐的元老、以内大臣为首的宫中、重臣等势力的构成及性质;并依据不同时期参与奏荐的主体的演变,将奏荐的历史过程分为几个阶段进行阐述。通过奏荐产生内阁首相是近代日本有别于其它国家的一种政治现象,体现了近代日本天皇制非立宪的一面。     

Global attributes or local literacy? International students in Japan’s graduate employment system

International students graduating from Japanese universities are becoming an important component of graduate recruitment strategy in globalising Japanese firms. They are praised for possessing exactly the kinds of attributes seen as lacking in their Japanese counterparts – such as intercultural communication skills, self-confidence and a competitive spirit. Their value is also emphasised in national policies addressing the human resource challenges of globalisation. Higher education policy-makers, too, are increasingly conscious of the need to connect efforts to attract international students to Japan with strategies to maximise their utility in the Japanese workforce. To succeed in the job market, however, international students are required to conform to the conventions of graduate job-hunting. Career support services offered by universities and third-party intermediaries tend to focus on bringing students into line with these conventions rather than developing alternatives thereto. This article explores this interface between policies and practices surrounding international graduate job-seekers, analysing the positions of several different stakeholders – including the job-seekers themselves – in order to develop a more critical understanding of the possible outcomes of current moves towards internationalisation of higher education and employment in Japan and the future of the graduate job-placement system itself. The article highlights a paradox whereby the ‘global’ attributes that underpin the expectations placed on international students originally are overshadowed by a concern with testing local socio-cultural literacy through the application of the conventional norms and practices of the graduate job hunt.     

Kawabata's views of language and the postwar construction of a literary genealogy

Abstract

This paper shows the ways in which, in the immediate post-war period (1945–1951), Kawabata Yasunari (1899–1972) reflected on his earlier, pre-war literary career and re-envisioned his postwar literary trajectory by constructing a new genealogy of the modern novel in Japan, in relationship to the intricate issues of the literary styles of the modern novel, ‘national language’ (kokugo), and the literary tradition. By examining his Shin bunshō tokuhon (New Guide to Literary Language, 1950), which presents Kawabata's past and present views of literary language, I will argue that Kawabata's changing views of language and literary style must be understood in the context of contemporary debates over national language policy and language reform movements. I will show the manner by which Kawabata formulated his views of language in dialogue with his two rival writers: Yokomitsu Riichi (1898–1947) in the prewar period and Tanizaki Junichirō (1886–1965) in the postwar period. As we shall see, the death of his close literary colleague Yokomitsu in 1947 and Tanizaki's unflagging literary exploration during and following the war prompted Kawabata to position himself in a genealogy of modern Japanese literary writers as well as in relationship to the linguistic and literary tradition of Japan.     

Modernism,gender and consumer spectacle in 1920s’ Tokyo

A lot has been written about how, in the first decades of the twentieth century, cinema validated new perceptual structures and how these affected literary narrative. But the department store was also a vital part of the mobile spectacle of modernity. Ginza and its department stores provided experiences of urban flâneuring and visual consumption that would have important effects on gender and subjectivity. This essay focuses on three short stories published between 1922 and 1931, all set in department stores or on the Ginza: Tanizaki Jun'ichirō’s ‘Aoi hana’ (The Blue Flower, 1922), Itō Sei's ‘M hyakkaten’ (The M Department Store, 1931) and Yokomitsu Riichi's ‘Nanakai no undō’ (Seven Floors of Exercise, 1927). The stories share a radically experimental modernist form: fragmented interior monologues, montage-like juxtapositions, abrupt shifts of narrative perspective. They are also connected in their preoccupation with looking, with the drama of seeing and being seen. My analysis traces how the domain of vision becomes a place of struggle over subjectivity, how gendered visual hierarchies are undermined and at least temporarily reversed.     

Abe's Fall: Leadership and Expectations in Japanese Politics

On becoming prime minister in 2006, Abe Shinzō was feted as the ‘prince’ of Japanese politics. A year later, Abe's Liberal Democratic Party had suffered a major electoral defeat and Abe's time as his country's leader was over. As a study of political leadership, this article seeks to explain the leadership outcomes of Abe's brief prime ministership, in particular the dramatic fall in public support Abe suffered during his tenure. It is argued that, despite the difficult circumstances Abe faced, the nature of his political demise cannot be fully accounted for by structural factors alone. It is also necessary to understand the role played by Abe himself and, in particular, his flawed leadership strategy. In the end, Abe's political demise followed a basic logic: high expectations followed by disillusionment characterised by sudden plunges in approval—a tragedy of hubris leading to nemesis.     

Meiji Japan's China solution to Tokugawa Japan's China problem

The underlying concern of this article is with the function and purpose of the normative imaginary of ‘China’, Chūgoku (Zhongguo) or Chūka (Zhonghua) in the Japanese discourse up to and around the mid-nineteenth century; namely, how it was deployed to make sense of the historical situation facing the contemporaries amid the combined internal and external crises and how it structured the range of options available to them. To exemplify this, we first turn to the debate of the shape of the polity that straddled the critical decades of 1850s–1860s. The self-conscious restoration of a past political ideal was the ostensible justification of the revolutionary overhaul, but in terms of the models of polity, there existed very different versions and understandings of what past could or should be restored. In the classical conceptual language of politics, the choice was between the hōken and gunken model. While the year 1871 saw a closure that cast Meiji as a gunken revolution, the debate continued beyond and the shift of preferences from hōken to gunken needs to be explained. In arguing for Meiji as a ‘Chinese revolution’, we can further point to the surprising degree of overlap between the concerns of earlier Edo-period commentators and the actual factors of the revolution when it finally arrived. Lastly, the normative imaginary of China is shown to have served as the key mediating filter for processing and appropriating the West both before and after the Meiji revolution.     

Japanese Cultural Diplomacy in Action: The Zenrin kyōkai in Inner Mongolia, 1933-45

In studies of Japanese “cultural diplomacy” between 1933 and 1945, the part played by the Zenrin kyōkai (Good Neighbour Association), a semi-official humanitarian organisation that provided medical assistance and educational opportunities to the Mongols and Hui (Han Chinese Muslims) living on the fringe of the Chinese Republic, has been largely overlooked. Dismissed by some as merely a front for intelligence-gathering operations, this article re-examines the operations of the Zenrin kyōkai, both in Inner Mongolia and in Japan, and argues that the relationship between it and the military was more complex than earlier studies have shown. In particular, the humanitarian activities of the Zenrin kyōkai went beyond military control and set the organisation apart from the other main agents of Japanese “cultural diplomacy” active in the region. Although not always successful in its attempts to woo the local population, the Zenrin kyōkai was a crucial instrument of the Japanese imperial project in the region and a reflexion of the complexity of that project.