Japan at the Crossroads

Japan at the Crossroads
Author: Nick Kapur
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2018-08-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674988485

In spring of 1960, Japan’s government passed Anpo, a revision of the postwar treaty that allows the United States to maintain a military presence in Japan. This move triggered the largest popular backlash in the nation’s modern history. These protests, Nick Kapur argues in Japan at the Crossroads, changed the evolution of Japan’s politics and culture, along with its global role. The yearlong protests of 1960 reached a climax in June, when thousands of activists stormed Japan’s National Legislature, precipitating a battle with police and yakuza thugs. Hundreds were injured and a young woman was killed. With the nation’s cohesion at stake, the Japanese government acted quickly to quell tensions and limit the recurrence of violent demonstrations. A visit by President Eisenhower was canceled and the Japanese prime minister resigned. But the rupture had long-lasting consequences that went far beyond politics and diplomacy. Kapur traces the currents of reaction and revolution that propelled Japanese democracy, labor relations, social movements, the arts, and literature in complex, often contradictory directions. His analysis helps resolve Japan’s essential paradox as a nation that is both innovative and regressive, flexible and resistant, wildly imaginative yet simultaneously wedded to tradition. As Kapur makes clear, the rest of the world cannot understand contemporary Japan and the distinct impression it has made on global politics, economics, and culture without appreciating the critical role of the “revolutionless” revolution of 1960—turbulent events that released long-buried liberal tensions while bolstering Japan’s conservative status quo.

Japanese Foreign Policy at the Crossroads

Japanese Foreign Policy at the Crossroads
Author: Yutaka Kawashima
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2003-10-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0815796153

The post–World War II paradigm that ensured security and prosperity for the Japanese people has lost much of its effectiveness. The current generation has become increasingly resentful of the prolonged economic stagnation and feels a sense of drift and uncertainty about the future of Japan's foreign policy. In J apanese Foreign Policy at the Crossroads, Yutaka Kawashima clarifies some of the defining parameters of Japan's past foreign policy and examines the challenges it currently faces, including the quagmire on the Korean Peninsula, the future of the U.S.-Japan alliance, the management of Japan-China relations, and Japan's relation with Southeast Asia. Kawashima—who, as vice minister of foreign affairs, was Japan's highest-ranking foreign service official—cautions Japan against attempts to ensure its own security and well-being outside of an international framework. He believes it is crucial that Japan work with as many like-minded countries as possible to construct a regional and international order based on shared interests and shared values. In an era of globalization, he cautions, such efforts will be crucial to maintaining global world order and ensuring civilized interaction among all states.

When Empire Comes Home

When Empire Comes Home
Author: Lori Watt
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2020-03-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 1684174902

"Following the end of World War II in Asia, the Allied powers repatriated over six million Japanese nationals from colonies and battlefields throughout Asia and deported more than a million colonial subjects from Japan to their countries of origin.Depicted at the time as a postwar measure related to the demobilization of defeated Japanese soldiers, this population transfer was a central element in the human dismantling of the Japanese empire that resonates with other post-colonial and post-imperial migrations in the twentieth century.Lori Watt analyzes how the human remnants of empire, those who were moved and those who were left behind, served as sites of negotiation in the process of the jettisoning of the colonial project and in the creation of new national identities in Japan. Through an exploration of the creation and uses of the figure of the repatriate, in political, social, and cultural realms, this study addresses the question of what happens when empire comes home."

Industry at the Crossroads

Industry at the Crossroads
Author: Robert Cole
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 117
Release: 2020-08-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0472902040

The mood of the first U of M U.S.-Japan Auto conference in January 1981 could only be described as electric. People wanted to know what our problems were and how we could begin to solve them. Inherent in the latter issue was the questions, what could we learn from the Japanese? One left the conference with a sense that there was a call for action, a mandate to address the problems facing industry. The mood, about a year later, at the March 1982 U.S.-Japan Auto Conference was far more subdued. While undoubtedly this reflected the stream of statistics confirming the continually depressed state of the industry, another dynamic was possibly operating as well. Whereas the 1981 conference was "electric," a state of mind which flowed from a certain frustration at seemingly overwhelming difficulties and often vague expectations of what we might learn from the Japanese, the 1982 conference was more "workmanlike" in the sense that speakers discussed specifically what progress was being made in addressing problems. This more subdued, pragmatic approach continued throughout wand was reinforced by workshops held the day after the main conference. Instead of discussing the virtues of the Just-In-Time system in Japan, speakers addressed the practical problems of introducing such a system in the U.S. firms. Instead of railing about the benefits or failings of regulation of the industry, they discussed what we could reasonably expect from regulation. Instead of exhorting the industry to adopt Japanese practices willy-nilly, they focused on some of the limitations of the Japanese model in a range of different areas. Instead of trying to identify some magic key to Japanese success in the automotive industry, they discussed the interrelationships among various factors. At the same, they continued to explore the basic issues transforming the auto industry worldwide. In this connection, they sought to unravel some of the complexities associated with the internalization of the auto industry and trade obligations under the GATT.

Japan in the American Century

Japan in the American Century
Author: Kenneth B. Pyle
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2018-10-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674989082

No nation was more deeply affected by America’s rise to world power than Japan. President Franklin Roosevelt’s uncompromising policy of unconditional surrender led to the catastrophic finale of the Asia-Pacific War and the most intrusive international reconstruction of another nation in modern history. Japan in the American Century examines how Japan, with its deeply conservative heritage, responded to the imposition of a new liberal order. The price Japan paid to end the occupation was a cold war alliance with the United States that ensured America’s dominance in the region. Still traumatized by its wartime experience, Japan developed a grand strategy of dependence on U.S. security guarantees so that the nation could concentrate on economic growth. Yet from the start, despite American expectations, Japan reworked the American reforms to fit its own circumstances and cultural preferences, fashioning distinctively Japanese variations on capitalism, democracy, and social institutions. Today, with the postwar world order in retreat, Japan is undergoing a sea change in its foreign policy, returning to an activist, independent role in global politics not seen since 1945. Distilling a lifetime of work on Japan and the United States, Kenneth Pyle offers a thoughtful history of the two nations’ relationship at a time when the character of that alliance is changing. Japan has begun to pull free from the constraints established after World War II, with repercussions for its relations with the United States and its role in Asian geopolitics.

The Making of Japanese Manchuria, 1904–1932

The Making of Japanese Manchuria, 1904–1932
Author: Yoshihisa Tak Matsusaka
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 550
Release: 2020-03-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1684173507

"In this history of Japanese involvement in northeast China, the author argues that Japan’s military seizure of Manchuria in September 1931 was founded on three decades of infiltration of the area. This incremental empire-building and its effect on Japan are the focuses of this book. The principal agency in the piecemeal growth of Japanese colonization was the South Manchurian Railway Company, and by the mid-1920s Japan had a deeply entrenched presence in Manchuria and exercised a dominant economic and political influence over the area. Japanese colonial expansion in Manchuria also loomed large in Japanese politics, military policy, economic development, and foreign relations and deeply influenced many aspects of Japan’s interwar history."

Japan's Peacekeeping at a Crossroads

Japan's Peacekeeping at a Crossroads
Author: Hiromi Nagata Fujishige
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2022
Genre: Asia
ISBN: 9788303088505

"This carefully researched book offers fascinating insights into three puzzles: why Japanese governments expanded their contributions to UN peacekeeping since the early 1990s; why Tokyo withdrew its military engineers from South Sudan in 2017; and what this means for future (limited) Japanese engagement in UN and other peace operations." - Stephen Baranyi, University of Ottawa, Canada "This book is the most comprehensive review to date of Japan's post-Cold War peacekeeping history. It should be essential reading for everyone who wants to understand Japan's contribution to UN peacekeeping." - Cedric de Coning, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, Norway "This book is a timely examination of the trajectory of Japanese contributions in this area of global security. The volume analyses Japan's changing international strategic and domestic motivations to engage in peacekeeping. It takes a fresh and critical approach and fills an important gap in the extant literature." - Christopher W. Hughes, University of Warwick, UK This open access book examines why Japan discontinued its quarter-century history of troop contribution to UN Peacekeeping Operations (1992-2017). Japan had deployed its troops as UN peacekeepers since 1992, albeit under a constitutional limit on weapons use. Japan's peacekeepers began to focus on engineering work as its strength, while also trying to relax the constraints on weapons use, although to a minimal extent. In 2017, however, Japan suddenly withdrew its engineering corps from South Sudan, and has contributed no troops since then. Why? The book argues that Japan could not match the increasing "robustness" of recent peacekeeping operations and has begun to seek a new direction, such as capacity-building support. Hiromi Nagata Fujishige is Associate Professor in the School of International Politics, Economics and Communications at Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo, Japan. Yuji Uesugi is Professor of Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding in the School of International Liberal Studies and the Graduate School of International Culture and Communication Studies, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan. Tomoaki Honda is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Chukyo University, Aichi, Japan.

Consuming Japan

Consuming Japan
Author: Andrew C. McKevitt
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2017-08-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 1469634481

This insightful book explores the intense and ultimately fleeting moment in 1980s America when the future looked Japanese. Would Japan's remarkable post–World War II economic success enable the East Asian nation to overtake the United States? Or could Japan's globe-trotting corporations serve as a model for battered U.S. industries, pointing the way to a future of globalized commerce and culture? While popular films and literature recycled old anti-Asian imagery and crafted new ways of imagining the "yellow peril," and formal U.S.-Japan relations remained locked in a holding pattern of Cold War complacency, a remarkable shift was happening in countless local places throughout the United States: Japanese goods were remaking American consumer life and injecting contemporary globalization into U.S. commerce and culture. What impact did the flood of billions of Japanese things have on the ways Americans produced, consumed, and thought about their place in the world? From autoworkers to anime fans, Consuming Japan introduces new unorthodox actors into foreign-relations history, demonstrating how the flow of all things Japanese contributed to the globalizing of America in the late twentieth century.

Significant Soil

Significant Soil
Author: Emer O'Dwyer
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 540
Release: 2020-05-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 1684175526

"Like all empires, Japan’s prewar empire encompassed diverse territories as well as a variety of political forms for governing such spaces. This book focuses on Japan’s Kwantung Leasehold and Railway Zone in China’s three northeastern provinces. The hybrid nature of the leasehold’s political status vis-à-vis the metropole, the presence of the semipublic and enormously powerful South Manchuria Railway Company, and the region’s vulnerability to inter-imperial rivalries, intra-imperial competition, and Chinese nationalism throughout the first decades of the twentieth century combined to give rise to a distinctive type of settler politics. Settlers sought inclusion within a broad Japanese imperial sphere while successfully utilizing the continental space as a site for political and social innovation.In this study, Emer O’Dwyer traces the history of Japan’s prewar Manchurian empire over four decades, mapping how South Manchuria—and especially its principal city, Dairen—was naturalized as a Japanese space and revealing how this process ultimately contributed to the success of the Japanese army’s early 1930s takeover of Manchuria. Simultaneously, Significant Soil demonstrates the conditional nature of popular support for Kwantung Army state-building in Manchukuo, highlighting the settlers’ determination that the Kwantung Leasehold and Railway Zone remain separate from the project of total empire."