Everyday Fascism in Contemporary Japan

This dissertation uses the concept of fascism in order to examine the socio-culture of contemporary Japan. Defined in terms of its commodity structure, fascism turns out to be a relevant concept to Japan not only prior to and during the Asia-Pacific War (1931-1945) but also from the postwar days to date. Against various forms of culturalism that claim that the country is essentially totalitarian and its culture is innately violent, I will argue that the country has shared fascist conditions with those other countries and regions that operate in the mode of mechanical reproduction. While the overall mode of mass-reproduction has been further articulated by different moments, such as late capitalism or post-modernism, the cultural and political condition of reducing singular lives and events into standardized forms has continued in these countries and regions roughly since the 1920s. My view will expand the horizon of studies of fascism, which has hitherto been limited to Europe between the two World Wars. At the same time, the view of fascism's generality should not be blind to local inflections and historical specificities. In this dissertation, I will examine such trans-war Japanese institutions as the ideologies of emperorship, formation of the petty bourgeois class, and corporatist organizations of gender and locality. My dissertation will ethnographically investigate the way in which these institutions have interacted with the country's modern capitalist everyday to result in fascist violence. The specific sites in which my ethnographies take place are the contemporary Tokyo and Yokohama suburbs (Chapters 1 and 3) and the Yasukuni Shinto Shrine in Tokyo (Chapters 2 and 4), among others. These ethnographies will elucidate how the categories of class, gender, and generation crisscross everyday pleasures and anxieties of commodification. Lastly and not least importantly, another historically specific element of postwar Japanese fascism is memories and traces of its prewar violence exercised on other Asians and Pacific Islanders. The problem of ill mourning seems to critically ground the postwar Japanese formation of fascist potentialities. The last chapter will discuss contemporary Japanese efforts for mourning and the accompanying issue of ethics

History, memory, trauma in contemporary British and Irish fiction

History, Memory, Trauma in Contemporary British and Irish Fiction to monografia poświęcona zagadnieniom historii, pamięci i traumy, ich wzajemnym relacjom oraz sposobom ich przedstawiania i funkcjonowania w wybranych powieściach dwojga współczesnych pisarzy brytyjskich: Pat Barker i Kazuo Ishiguro, oraz dwóch pisarzy irlandzkich: Sebastiana Barry i Johna Banville’a. W części teoretycznej książki, autorka przedstawia stan badań nad burzliwą relacją pomiędzy historią a fikcją literacką, szeroko rozumianą pamięcią oraz teorią traumy. Część analityczna została podzielona na dwie sekcje: „Historia i trauma”, oraz „Pamięć i trauma”. W sekcji pierwszej, analizując powieści Pat Barker (The Regeneration Trilogy, Another World, Double Vision) i Sebastiana Barry (The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty, A Long Long Way, The Secret Scripture i On Canaan’s Side), autorka zestawia pojęcia traumy zbiorowej i traumy indywidualnej, podkreśla podobieństwa i różnice w podejściu do I wojny światowej wynikające z różnych doświadczeń historycznych Brytyjczyków i Irlandczyków. Autorka stawia również hipotezę, że trauma jest szczególnie odpowiednim tropem dla pisarzy podejmujących próbę rewidowania historii – białe plamy historii często zakrywają głębokie rany. W sekcji drugiej autorka porównuje twórczość Kazuo Ishiguro (A Pale View of Hills, When We Were Orphans) i Johna Banville’a (Eclipse, Shroud, Ancient Light) wskazując na liczne podobieństwa w podejściu obu pisarzy do zagadnienia pamięci indywidualnej i tożsamości, które, jak dotąd, nie zostały opisane w licznych opracowaniach krytycznych na temat twórczości tych słynnych pisarzy. Odczytanie omawianych utworów przez pryzmat pojęcia pamięci narracyjnej i pamięci traumatycznej pozwala na uzasadnienie zabiegów fabularnych i formalnych, które dotąd uważano za niejasne lub niekonsekwentne. Posługując się interdyscyplinarnymi narzędziami badawczymi wypracowanymi między innymi przez Cathy Caruth, Shoshanę Felman, Dominica LaCaprę i Irene Kacandes, autorka przedstawia nowatorskie propozycje interpretacji utworów znanych i tłumaczonych na język polski pisarzy.History, memory and trauma as well as their complex interrelations have been lying at the centre of interdisciplinary academic debates since the end of the previous century. These are also themes with which contemporary writers and other artists are increasingly preoccupied in their work. History, Memory, Trauma in Contemporary British and Irish Fiction is an attempt at analysing the relationship between history, memory and trauma in the selected novels of Pat Barker, Sebastian Barry, Kazuo Ishiguro and John Banville. The author examines the notion of memory in a variety of contexts: collective memory in the historical novels of Barker and Barry, individual memory as a foundation of the sense of self in the novels of Banville and Ishiguro, and traumatic memory in the novels of Barry and Ishiguro. By applying the theoretical framework of trauma studies to the work of those renowned writers, History, Memory, Trauma offers new interpretations of their novels. The author demonstrates that contemporary fiction moves beyond mere representation of trauma and engages the reader in the role of co-witness who enables the process of working through trauma

Japan beyond its borders: transnational approaches to film and media

Book synopsis: The present publication is the result of a collaborative project originally entitled ‘Japanese Transnational Cinema,’ whose aim was bringing together well-established scholars as well as young researchers working on innovative approaches towards Japanese cinema. The aim of this project is proposing new analytical methodologies and theoretical frameworks concerning the transnational complexities of film and media culture related to Japan and challenging the old ‘national’ paradigm by highlighting the limitations of studying film and media as a phenomenon confined to its national borders

European Approaches to Japanese Language and Linguistics

In this volume European specialists of Japanese language present new and original research into Japanese over a wide spectrum of topics which include descriptive, sociolinguistic, pragmatic and didactic accounts. The articles share a focus on contemporary issues and adopt new approaches to the study of Japanese that often are specific to European traditions of language study. The articles address an audience that includes both Japanese Studies and Linguistics. They are representative of the wide range of topics that are currently studied in European universities, and they address scholars and students alike

On the meaning of a cut : towards a theory of editing

This thesis looks at a variety of discourses about film editing in order to explore the possibility, on the one hand, of drawing connections between them, and on the other, of addressing some of their problematic aspects. Some forms of fragmentation existed from the very beginnings of the history of the moving image, and the thesis argues that forms of editorial control were executed by early exhibitors, film pioneers, writers, and directors, as well as by a fullyfledged film editor. This historical reconstruction of how the profession of editor evolved sheds light on the specific aspects of their work. Following on from that, it is proposed that models of editing fall under two broad paradigms: of montage and continuity. These are not meant to be mutually exclusive categories, but rather umbrella terms for co-existing approaches that are governed by different principles. A re-evaluation of the concept of découpage complements this perspective. It is argued that reinstituting this notion, with its many variants, can help us think separately about issues of film form normally addressed at earlier stages of production, and conceptually distinct from the tasks of an editor. Their specificity, it is suggested, can be examined more productively by honing in on a very narrow set of procedures used in editing. The spiral model of editing proposed here is an intervention that addresses a common issue with theorising editing, the fact that the scope of the activity cuts across a number of categories related to film form. Using historical, theoretical, and pragmatic lenses, the thesis offers a new elucidation of what it is we mean when we talk about editing

The internment of memory: Forgetting and remembering the Japanese American World War II experience

During World War II, over 100,000 Japanese American were confined in relocation and internment camps across the country as a result of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066. While many of their families were behind barbed wire, thousands of other Japanese Americans served in the US Army's Military Intelligence Service and the all-Japanese American 100th Infantry and 442nd Regimental Combat Team. These circumstances were largely public knowledge during the war years, but a pervasive silence on the subject became apparent in the decades following the war. Due to widespread racism and recognition of the hypocrisy evident in a democratic country confining its own citizens, many Americans were content to allow the Japanese American experiences to be forgotten. The destruction and scattering of communities through evacuation and resettlement and a sense of shame within the Japanese American community helped perpetuate the silence amongst Japanese Americans as well. Through the Civil Rights Movement, the social protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s, and ultimately through the redress movement in the 1980s, the Japanese American voice gradually entered the public consciousness. Following the discussion of the historical context for the WWII experiences of the Japanese Americans, this research analyzes the period of forgetting and the various factors that combined to allow for eventual change. An analysis of public commemoration through war memorials, museums, historic sites, community events, and the less traditional memorials of novels, artwork, and films reveals how members of the Japanese American community and sympathetic Caucasian Americans overcame racist opposition and demonstrated determination in their efforts to pay tribute to the sacrifices of the soldiers, preserve relevant sites, and provide for the education of current and future generations on the subject of the Japanese American experience. The research also demonstrates the diversity within the Japanese American community, by disproving the common stereotype of homogeneity within the "model minority," and revealing the strength of individualism within the community as a significant contributing factor to memorialization efforts

Food - Media - Senses: Interdisciplinary Approaches

Food is more than just nutrition. Its preparation, presentation and consumption is a multifold communicative practice which includes the meal's design and its whole field of experience. How is food represented in cookbooks, product packaging or in paintings? How is dining semantically charged? How is the sensuality of eating treated in different cultural contexts? In order to acknowledge the material and media-related aspects of eating as a cultural praxis, experts from media studies, art history, literary studies, philosophy, experimental psychology, anthropology, food studies, cultural studies and design studies share their specific approaches

Comics and Agency

This volume focuses on the attribution of agency across comics production (authorship and institutionalization), reception (appropriation and discursivation), and circulation (participation and canonization). Contributors from a range of different fields investigate the interrelations between individual, collective, and institutional actors within historical and contemporary comics cultures