54 research outputs found

    Abject failure to Abenomics: the strategic narrative rebirth of Abe Shinzo

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    Abe Shinzƍ served as Prime Minister of Japan from September 2006 to September 2007, and again from December 2012 to September 2012. His first term made him one of the shortest-serving Japanese prime ministers; his second made him the longest-serving premier in the nation’s history. This radical transformation in fortunes raises important questions about how political actors can reinvent themselves and alter public opinion of their own capacity to lead. This thesis argues that the projection of a compelling political narrative of national economic regeneration played a key role in Abe Shinzƍ’s political transformation. I examine this reconstruction of political fortunes through the lens of a strategic narrative framework. Although other academic research has analysed Abe’s transformation through examination of his policies and political networks, there has been a lack of studies exploring how Abe communicated his new political approach to his audiences. Strategic narrative research in the field of International Relations has shown that stories and their formation by political actors play a critical role in shaping the discursive environment in which politics are done. Through careful analysis of the stories Abe Shinzƍ told during the LDP presidential election campaigns of 2006 and 2012, the general elections of 2012 and 2014, and the Upper House elections of 2007 and 2013, I demonstrate that Abe’s effective deployment of strategic narratives was a crucial factor in his re-emergence as a central figure in post-war Japanese politics and introduce a strategic narrative framework to domestic Japanese politics for the first time. By forming and projecting a compelling narrative focused on a set of economic policies known as ‘Abenomics’, Abe placed himself at the centre of a story of national regeneration; by arguing narratively that Japan’s continued economic recovery was inextricably linked to the success of Abenomics, Abe was able to lead his party to three successive election victories. I also demonstrate Abe’s narrative flexibility, examining the complexification of his strategic narrative over time, introducing the concept of ‘Proactive Contribution to Peace’ as he sought to link his story of national economic regeneration to one of greater Japanese contribution to global security. Crucially, these narratives were also broadly accepted by Abe’s domestic and international media audiences, allowing ’Abenomics’ to become the dominant narrative about the direction of Japanese politics, both within and outside of the country. Overall, I offer a new account of Abe Shinzƍ’s re-emergence as the central figure in Japanese politics and demonstrate the persuasive power of strategic narratives in the setting of domestic politics

    Spiritual Ends

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    What role does religion play at the end of life in Japan? Spiritual Ends draws on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews to provide an intimate portrayal of how spiritual care is provided to the dying in Japan. Timothy O. Benedict shows how hospice caregivers in Japan are appropriating and reinterpreting global ideas about spirituality and the practice of spiritual care. Benedict relates these findings to a longer story of how Japanese religious groups have pursued vocational roles in medical institutions as a means to demonstrate a so-called “healthy” role in society. Focusing on how care for the kokoro (heart or mind) is key to the practice of spiritual care, this book enriches conventional understandings of religious identity in Japan while offering a valuable East Asian perspective to global conversations on the ways religion, spirituality, and medicine intersect at death. “Timothy Benedict has produced a work brimming with wisdom drawn from his work as a chaplain as well as a broad understanding of the place of religion in the lives of contemporary Japanese people.” — HELEN HARDACRE, Reischauer Institute Professor of Japanese Religions and Society, Harvard University “Benedict offers a highly original perspective and new insightful material, providing a critical approach to the debate about spiritual care and spirituality.” — ERICA BAFFELLI, Professor of Japanese Studies, University of Manchester “Spiritual Ends reveals an unassuming approach to spiritual care that privileges human connections at life’s end.” — JACQUELINE STONE, author of Right Thoughts at the Last Moment: Buddhism and Deathbed Practices in Early Medieval Japan “A discerning study of pain and comfort at the end of life, and a story of the invention of spirituality in Japan, which traffics between medical, psychological, and religious thought.” — AMY B. BOROVOY, Professor of East Asian Studies, Princeton Universit

    Aspired communities: The communities of long-term recovery after the 3.11 disaster in the town of Yamamoto

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    I argue in this thesis that we can understand the various ways in which community is ontologized as a tangible, affective and compelling social reality through the analytical lens of the future orientation of collective aspiring. The social and material lives of the residents in the disaster-stricken Tohoku region of northeast Japan were drastically altered after the Great East Japan Earthquake and the tsunami on March 11 in 2011. Based on eight months of ethnographic fieldwork in 2014–2015 in the town of Yamamoto, I seek to understand in this PhD thesis how the local communities were recovering during the still-ongoing reconstruction then. The main objective of this thesis is to offer analytical tools to explore how people come to interpret, experience and feel their social existence as community. I understand community in this research as embodied, materially grounded yet symbolical and discursive by drawing from the practice theory approach. The definition of community has long been debated, romanticized and nostalgized. Instead of as a particular grouping or identity, I analyze community as a process of mutually constitutive enacting and envisioning in social practices. I explore this process in light of the teleological character of human activity that is based on a constant reinterpretation of the past and a striving towards the future in the present. I argue that the various forms of sociality that are interpreted, experienced and felt as community can be understood through the future orientation of a collective aspiring of desired futures as shared objectives. As such, community is not a result but the process of collective aspiring in itself that I have divided into action-oriented pursuing and affectively charged yearning. The ethnographic analysis of collective aspiring illustrates how multiple, ambiguous, overlapping and even conflicting experiences and interpretations of community emerged in post-disaster Yamamoto. My findings elaborate the community concept by highlighting the role of temporality and the future particularly in social life. This suggests that disaster recovery can be perceived as the process of restoring the capability to envision and to enact the future in and of a place, both individually and collectively. I also highlight the sense of agency in social practices, the felt, embodied and social security and the role of spatiality in collective aspiring.Ehdotan tĂ€ssĂ€ tutkimuksessa tulevaisuusorientoitunutta kollektiivista tavoittelua kĂ€sitteelliseksi linssiksi, jonka lĂ€pi tarkastelemalla voidaan ymmĂ€rtÀÀ yhteisön ontologisoimista reaaliseksi, tunteisiin vetoavaksi ja jopa pakottavaksi sosiaaliseksi todellisuudeksi. Koillis-Japanin Tohokun alueen asukkaiden sosiaalinen ja materiaalinen todellisuus muuttui 11.3.2011 Suuren ItĂ€-Japanin maanjĂ€ristyksen ja tsunamin seurauksena. TĂ€mĂ€ vĂ€itöskirjatutkimus perustuu kahdeksan kuukauden etnografiseen kenttĂ€työhön Yamamoton kaupungissa 2014–2015, ja pyrin siinĂ€ ymmĂ€rtĂ€mÀÀn paikallisten yhteisöjen toipumista pitkĂ€aikaisen jĂ€lleenrakennuksen keskellĂ€. Tavoitteenani on tarjota analyyttisiĂ€ työkaluja lisÀÀmÀÀn ymmĂ€rrystĂ€ siitĂ€, miten ihmiset tulkitsevat, kokevat ja tuntevat sosiaaliset suhteensa yhteisönĂ€. YmmĂ€rrĂ€n yhteisön fyysisesti ilmentyvĂ€nĂ€ ja materiaalisena, mutta myös symbolisena ja diskursiivisena soveltaen kĂ€ytĂ€nneteoriaa. Yhteisön kĂ€site on ollut pitkÀÀn kiistelty, romantisoitu ja nostalgisoitu. Tietyn ryhmĂ€n tai identiteetin mÀÀritelmĂ€n sijaan analysoin yhteisöÀ toisiaan molemminpuolisesti luovien toimimisen ja visioimisen prosessina. Tarkastelen tĂ€tĂ€ prosessia ihmistoiminnan teleologisen luonteen valossa jatkuvana menneisyyden tulkintana ja tulevaisuuteen suuntautumisena nykyhetkessĂ€. VĂ€itĂ€n ettĂ€ sosiaalisten suhteiden monien muotojen tulkitsemista, kokemista ja tuntemista yhteisönĂ€ voidaan ymmĂ€rtÀÀ haluttujen tulevaisuuksien kollektiivisen tavoittelun tulevaisuusorientoitumisen kautta. Yhteisö ei ole siis tulos, vaan kollektiivinen tavoittelu itsessÀÀn, jonka olen jakanut toimintaorientoituneeseen pyrkimiseen ja tunnelatautuneeseen kaipaamiseen. Etnografinen analyysi kuvaa, miten monia pÀÀllekkĂ€isiĂ€ ja jopa ristiriitaisia yhteisöjĂ€ muotoutui katastrofin jĂ€lkeisessĂ€ Yamamotossa. Löydökseni tarkentaa yhteisön kĂ€sitettĂ€ korostamalla ajallisuuden ja erityisesti tulevaisuuden merkitystĂ€ sosiaalisessa elĂ€mĂ€ssĂ€. TĂ€ten katastrofista toipuminen voidaan nĂ€hdĂ€ prosessina, jossa yksilöllinen ja kollektiivinen kyky visioida ja toteuttaa paikkasidonnaista tulevaisuutta pyritÀÀn palauttamaan. Korostan myös toimijuuden tunnetta sosiaalisissa kĂ€ytĂ€nteissĂ€, turvallisuutta tunnettuna, koettuna ja sosiaalisena sekĂ€ spatiaalisuuden roolia kollektiivisessa tavoittelussa

    Comparative Perspectives on Gender Equality in Japan and Norway

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    This book compares perspectives on gender equality in Norway and Japan, focusing on family, education, media, and sexuality and reproduction as seen through a gendered lens. What can we learn from a comparison between two countries who stand in significant contrast to each other with respect to gender equality? Norway and Japan differ in terms of historical, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. Most importantly, Japan lags far behind Norway when it comes to the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Report. Rather than taking a narrow approach that takes as its starting point the assumption that Norway has so much ‘more’ to offer in terms of gender equality, the authors attempt to show that a comparative perspective of two countries in the West and East can be of mutually benefit to both contexts in the advancement of gender equality. The interdisciplinary team of researchers contributing to this book cover a range of contemporary topics in gender equality, including fatherhood and masculinity, teaching and learning in gender studies education, cultural depictions of gender, trans experiences and feminism. This unique collection is suitable for researchers and students of gender studies, sociology, anthropology, Japan studies and European studies

    The Ethics of Affect

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    Based on ongoing fieldwork in the Akihabara neighborhood of Tokyo, specifically a targeted subproject from 2014 to 2015, this book explores how and to what effect lines are drawn by producers, players and critics of bishƍjo games. Focusing on interactions with manga/anime-style characters, these adult computer games often feature explicit sex acts. Noting that the bishƍjo, or “cute girl characters,” in these games can appear quite young, legal actions have been taken in a number of countries to categorize and prohibit the content as child abuse material. In response to the risk of manga/anime images encouraging underage sexualization, lawmakers are moved to regulate them in the same way as photographs or film; triggered by images, the line between fiction and reality is erased, or redrawn to collapse forms together. While Japanese politicians continue to debate a similar course, sustained engagement with bishƍjo game producers, players and critics sheds light on alternative movement. Manga/anime-style characters trigger an affective response in interactions with their creators and users, who draw and negotiate lines between fiction and reality. Interacting with characters and one another, bishƍjo gamers draw lines between what is fictional and what is “real,” even as the characters are real in their own right and relations with them are extended beyond games; some even see the characters as significant others and refer to them using intimate terms of commitment such as “my wife.” This book argues for understanding the everyday practice of insisting on lines, or drawing a line between humans and nonhumans and orienting oneself toward the drawn lines of the latter, as demonstrating an emergent form of ethics. Occurring individually and socially in both private and public spaces, the response to fictional characters not only discourages harming human beings, but also supports life in more-than-human worlds. For many in contemporary Japan and beyond, interactions and relations with fictional and real others are nothing short of lifelines

    Comparative Perspectives on Gender Equality in Japan and Norway

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    This book compares perspectives on gender equality in Norway and Japan, focusing on family, education, media, and sexuality and reproduction as seen through a gendered lens. What can we learn from a comparison between two countries who stand in significant contrast to each other with respect to gender equality? Norway and Japan differ in terms of historical, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. Most importantly, Japan lags far behind Norway when it comes to the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Report. Rather than taking a narrow approach that takes as its starting point the assumption that Norway has so much ‘more’ to offer in terms of gender equality, the authors attempt to show that a comparative perspective of two countries in the West and East can be of mutually benefit to both contexts in the advancement of gender equality. The interdisciplinary team of researchers contributing to this book cover a range of contemporary topics in gender equality, including fatherhood and masculinity, teaching and learning in gender studies education, cultural depictions of gender, trans experiences and feminism. This unique collection is suitable for researchers and students of gender studies, sociology, anthropology, Japan studies and European studies

    Radioactive Governance: The Politics of Expertise after Fukushima

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    This dissertation focuses on Japanese public and state responses to the release of radioactive contamination after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. I argue that the Fukushima nuclear disaster has led to the emergence of new forms of expertise in governing radioactive risks. These include techniques of governance that attempt to normalize peoples relationships with nuclear matter as an everyday concern. They also include decentralized strategies that empower victims of the disaster by providing access to technoscientifc practices of radiation monitoring and delegating radiation protection from the state to the citizens. My findings uncover a major shift in how societies have formerly organized responses to radioactive risks. In the aftermath of nuclear accidents, scholars have criticized central authoritarian decisions, in which state management of radioactive hazards was associated with politics of secrecy, victimhood, or public knowledge deficit. At stake in Fukushima is an increased normalization of citizens relationship with residual radioactivity, which is transformed into an everyday concern, rather than being represented as something exceptional. This is not only done by state experts, but equally via the increased activity of citizen scientists that collectively monitor residual radioactivity. My research is a significant departure from traditional sociocultural works that predominantly focus on micro-scale studies, such as how prior sociocultural factors influence a group understanding of radioactive risks. By highlighting major shifts in the structure of expertise and the regulation of life amidst toxic exposure, my research highlights how the management of contamination risks is evolving in an era where the impacts of modernization represent permanent marks on the planet

    Bitcoin and the Japanese Retail Investor

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    The objective of this research is to examine the Bitcoin rally of 2017 as it occurred in Japan and establish a greater context for why it was the Japanese retail investors that propelled the nation to being the largest trader of the cryptocurrency at the end of the year. This dissertation begins with the examination of the technical and economical properties of Bitcoin by classifying it as fulfilling two roles: that of a means of payment and that of an investment commodity. Following that is a description of Bitcoin’s roots and the history of its non-speculative usage. These chapters serve as a base for examining the cryptocurrency’s role in Japan. The third chapter examines the Japanese retail investor and the Japanese retail investment landscape with a focus on the question of the low rates of risk-asset participation in face of a favorable investment environment. Historical context is drawn upon to argue that the present situation, wherein most financial assets are kept as cash, is rather the result of the historical path dependence than the present-day conditions in which Japanese retail investors operate. The final chapter addresses the question of high-risk activities in the form of gambling and margin trading by a group of predominantly middle-aged men and connects this propensity to engage in zero-sum games with Bitcoin’s success in Japan. The author argues that the solitary practice of high-risk financial activities enabled by trusted institutions is separate from the general savings tradition that suffered shocks following the low interest-rate regime and that it was the high-risk gambles that became the primary cause for the popularity of Bitcoin. The dissertation concludes with the argument that the success of Bitcoin in 2017 had been in no small part achieved precisely by inverting the hard-line libertarian values of its creators and making it a centrally-held commodity offered by a banking-like institution with a strong public presence

    Dilemmas of Adulthood

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    In Dilemmas of Adulthood, Nancy Rosenberger investigates resistance in a longitudinal study of more than fifty Japanese women over two decades. The women represent a generation straddling the roles of post-war modernity and the possibilities of late modernity. By exploring the challenges these modern Japanese women pose to cultural codes, Rosenberger's work speaks to broader questions about how change happens in our global-local era. Rosenberger's analysis establishes long-term resistance as a vital type of social change in late modernity where the sway of media, global ideas, and friends vies strongly with the influence of family, school, and work. Women are at the nexus of these contradictions, dissatisfied with post-war normative roles in family, work, and leisure and yet, in Japan as elsewhere, committed to a search for self. The women's narratives and conversations recount their ambivalent defiance of social norms and attempts to live diverse lives as acceptable adults

    "They don't understand how we feel": An affective approach to improving the 'best practice' of community-based post-disaster recovery

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    This thesis presents a critical investigation into the community-based approaches on post-disaster recovery, approaching the subject through the case of Japan after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. Community-based approaches form a part of the general participatory turn over the last decades, with the purpose of engaging citizens into decision-making processes by following four key principles: participation, empowerment, resilience and proximity. The popularity of these approaches has given rise to their status as the global 'best practice' in the field of development, and post-disaster recovery more specifically, thus warding further attention and investigation. Despite the popularity of these approaches, I will show how community-based approaches often lead to inconsistent outcomes, and communal dissatisfaction toward the processes themselves remain prevalent. In Tohoku, this dissatisfaction was emphatically articulated by majority of the participants through the utterance kimochi ga wakaranai (they don't understand how we feel). The thesis therefore asks, why does dissatisfaction remain rife despite the adoption of community- based recovery in Tohoku? While many authors propose that this dissatisfaction is primarily a procedural problem leading from a gap between theory and practice, I argue that the problem is related to the epistemological and methodological starting points of recovery that divide recovery and trajectories for the future into endogenous and exogenous domains and discourses. Where the exogenous discourse of the authorities emerged from motivations to understand how this disaster was able to take place and how in the recovery vulnerabilities that led to its onset could be minimised, for the locals it was the affective intensities of their personal experiences and intimate daily existence within the post-disaster landscape that drove their understanding of the events and desired shape for the future of their communities. Through the ethnographic data analysis, the research finds the dominant exogenous discourses did not resonate with their localised daily experience of the recovery, with the discrepancy in the visions creating tensions and dissatisfaction toward the recovery process and paradoxically distancing the communities from the 'community-based' recovery
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