Rethinking Japan's China policy: Japan as an Accommodator in the Rise of China
For the last four decades Sino-Japanese relations have been characterized by steadily growing economic and sociocultural interactions. Yet, greater interdependence has developed in tandem with bilateral tensions. Many analysts have attempted to explain the latter as a result of Japan trying to balance or contain the burgeoning growth of Chinese capabilities. In this article, we question and qualify this widespread understanding of Japan's response to China's rise by examining how Japan has handled China's rise between 1978 and 2011. More precisely, how has Japan dealt with China's long-term...
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The 'abnormal' state: Identity, norm/exception and Japan
The term ‘abnormal’ has frequently been used to describe post-war Japan. Together with the idea that the country will, or should have to, ‘normalise’ its foreign and security policy, it has been reproduced in both academia and Japanese society. Why is Japan branded as ‘abnormal’, and from where does the desire to ‘normalise’ it come? Drawing on a relational concept of identity, and the distinction between norm and exception, this article argues that the ‘abnormality–normalisation nexus’ can be understood in terms of three identity-producing processes: (1) the process whereby the Japanese...
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Quiet power: Japan's China policy in regard to the Pinnacle Islands
How should Japan's foreign policy or role in the world be characterized? This question has been under discussion for some four decades, and answers have often been put in terms of ‘power’. By using a new framework for analyzing foreign policy – what is called ‘relational power analysis’ – this article aims to offer a conceptually more coherent picture of Japan's foreign policy or role in the world in terms of power. It does so by assessing a ‘litmus test’ for Japan's foreign policy, namely the dispute with China over the Pinnacle (Diaoyu/Senkaku) Islands. In particular, the article analyses...
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Japón: ¿Asegurando la cooperación o cooperando para su seguridad?
A seis décadas de ser donador, Japón emprendió una reforma de su Carta de Ayuda Oficial para el Desarrollo (aod ). En febrero de 2015 cambió su nombre a la llamada Carta de la Cooperación para el Desarrollo (ccd). El nuevo do- cumento establece, de manera clara, el nexo de la cooperación internacional para el desarrollo (cid ) con los temas de seguridad e interés nacional. Las estrategias estipuladas en la ccd han levantado un debate sobre si Japón está alejándose de su política pacifista. En este sentido, el presente artículo considera que, si bien la nueva Carta...
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‘Beyond 2015: Nihilism and Existentialist Rhetoric in Neon Genesis Evangelion’
Published in: Journal of International and Advanced Japanese Studies, 1 (2016), pp.35-43. Generally categorized as low art, Japanese manga and anime draw insufficient overseas critical attention, regardless of their enormous cultural influence in East Asia. Their popularity not simply proved the success of cultural industrialization in Japan, but also marks a series of local phenomena, reflecting social dynamicity and complexity, that deserve interdisciplinary analysis. During the lost decade in the 1990s, which many scholars studied with economic accent (Katz 1998, Grimes 2001, Lincoln...
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コンテクスト化の合図からみたリスナーシップ ―異文化間対話におけるゴシップの分析からの考察
The aim is to explore intricate relationships between social identity and listenership in the contemporary world. This paper is specifically intended to be an empirical study of listenership behavior in intercultural encounters, in which contextually-situated and macro-social identities are intertwined, from a linguistic-anthropological perspective. The data are taken from an interaction between Australian and Japanese speakers who engage in gossip mainly in Japanese. Through analysis, I suggest that the notion of “contextualization cue” (Gumperz 1982) can conceptualize various kinds of...
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