The Constitution, Human Rights and Pluralism in Japan: Alternative Visions of Constitutions Past and Future

Recent moves by the Abe administration to change the Japanese constitution may result in the most fundamental change to Japanese political life since the 1940s. Although there has been widespread debate on the possible revision of Article 9 - the constitution's Peace Clause - other profound implications of the push for constitutional change have received scant attention. This special issue edited by Tessa Morris-Suzuki and Shinnosuke Takahashi aims to take a broad view of constitutional debates in Japan today by posing two key questions: "What is the purpose of the constitution?" and "What does the constitution mean for a culturally plural and diverse society?"

Performing Ethnic Harmony: The Japanese Government's Plans for a New Ainu Law

On 14 May 2018 the Japanese government’s Council for Ainu Policy Promotion accepted a report sketching the core features of a much-awaited new Ainu law which the Abe government hopes to put in place by 2020.1 The law is the outcome of a long process of debate, protest and legislative change that has taken place as global approaches to indigenous rights have been transformed. In 2007, Japan was among the 144 countries whose vote secured the adoption of the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: a declaration which (amongst other things) confirms the rights of indigenous peoples to the land they traditionally occupied and the resources they traditionally used, and to restitution for past dispossession.2 As a response to this declaration, in 2008 both houses of the Japanese parliament voted unanimously (if rather belatedly) to recognize the Ainu people as an indigenous people, and the government embarked on a ten-year process of deliberation about the future of Ainu policy. The main fruit of those deliberations is the impending new law. But how far will this law go in fulfilling Japan’s commitment to the UN Declaration? Will it, in fact, be a step forward on the path of indigenous people from colonial dispossession towards equality, dignity and ‘the right to development in accordance with their own needs and interests’? Will it take account of the vigorous debates that are occurring within the Ainu community about key aspects of indigenous rights, including the voices of those whose demands are at odds with the aspirations of the Japanese government?3 To answer those questions, it is necessary to look a little more closely at the way in which the pursuit of indigenous rights has played out in Japan over the past three decades or so

The 'comfort women' issue, freedom of speech, and academic integrity: A study aid

In December 2020, an article by J. Mark Ramseyer of Harvard University about the so-called 'comfort women' issue was published in the International Review of Law and Economics. This article caused widespread controversy amongst scholars, many of whom responded with serious criticisms of its content. On the other hand, some commentators argued that Ramseyer's critics were seeking to suppress his right to express controversial opinions. In the past few years, there has been widespread international debate both about the protection of free speech and about problems of assessing the quality of knowledge and distinguishing well-founded information from 'fake news'. Against that background, this study aid aims to encourage debate about ways to maintain research integrity while protecting free speech, and uses the example of the Ramseyer article to provide illustrative material. This is the first in a series of responses on the “comfort women” issue prompted by the Ramseyer article

Disaster and Utopia: Looking Back at 3/11

This article takes the notion of the ‘disaster utopia’ as a starting point for reconsidering the impact of the Japanese triple disaster of 11 March 2011 (3/11). It has often been observed that disasters may lead to utopian longings for a better world, and that these may, in some cases, lead to long-term social and political change. Drawing particularly on the ideas of Charles Fritz and Rebecca Solnit, the article briefly surveys the history of ‘disaster utopianism’ in Japan before exploring the specific versions of the search for ‘world renewal’ that emerged from 3/11. I argue that the ideas put forward by Fritz and Solnit can help us to reassess some of the widely accepted images of the response to 3/11. The 2011 disaster generated visions of a new world which, although profoundly divergent in their social implications, shared a common vocabulary centred upon terms such as saisei (regeneration) and kizuna (bonds of community). Exploring trends in postwar Japan through the prism of the ‘disaster utopia’ can, I suggest, shed new light on the processes of political change that have affected Japan in the years since 3/11.This work was supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC) Laureate Fellowship project [FL120100155]

Colonialism, Migration and Fear of the Foreign in Japan

Issues of immigration and the rights of foreigners in Japan have been the focus of much debate in recent years. On the one hand, the spectre of falling birth-rates and declining population have encouraged some far reaching proposals to open Japanese society to much larger flows of immigration. On the other, the current economic crisis and rising unemployment have been accompanied by growing signs of unease about the presence of foreign workers in Japan. Meanwhile, Japan has begun very cautiously to increase its acceptance of asylum seekers, and has quietly allowed the resettlement on its shores of almost 200 'returnee-refugees' from North Korea. In this article, I argue that current debates about immigration, refugees and foreign residents in Japan cannot be understood without tracing a process of repeated border crossings that goes back to the days of the prewar Japanese empire. Beginning from the present and working backward, I seek to trace these border-crossings, and to show how the shadows of empire are still today cast across Japanese discourse about migration and foreigners

The Neverending Story: Alternative Exchange and Living Politics in a Japanese Regional Community

The Ueda Ma~yu alternative currency group offers an example of the innovative way in which living politics is shaping communities in Japan. The group was amongst hundreds of local currency schemes which emerged in Japan in the early twenty-first century, and has proved one of the most successful. Rather surprisingly, Japan�s local currency boom was inspired by a TV documentary about the ideas of the German fantasy writer Michael Ende. In this chapter, Morris-Suzuki places the work of Ueda Ma~yu in the context of the global alternative currency movement and shows how the group�s success is based on the social environment in which it operates, and on its creative use of a currency as a basis for building a wider community of alternative values

Prologue - The 1950s: Postwar, Transwar, Cold War, Korean War

This chapter is an introductory chapter to this volume (of which I am the editor). It examines and questions conventional approaches to the periodisation of mid-twentieth century Japanese history. The period of the 1950s is generally labelled "the postwar era" by historians of Japan. However, some historians have recently observed that this emphasises the discontinuity created by Japan's defeat in war, and overemphasises the notion of a "new start" after the war. They have proposed the term "transwar", covering the period from the 1930s to the 1960s, instead. Others prefer to use the term "Cold War era". In my introductory chapter, however, I suggest the use of the term "the Korean War era", to describe Japan's 1950s history, because I believe this term brings to the fore important connections between Japan and its Asian neighbours which are obscured by terms such as "the postwar era" or "the Cold War era"

Indigenous Rights and the 'Harmony Olympics'

The dynamics of Japan's indigenous rights struggles are not well understood, but the 2020 Tokyo games may spark serious debate on restoring and promoting the social, cultural, economic and political rights of the Ainu people. It appears that people from throughout Japan and the world curious about Ainu culture may be disappointed in the Olympic ceremonies and the new Upopoy National Ainu Museum and Park that opens in 2020. The Olympic moment offers an opportunity to embrace diversity, but probably will highlight the limits of the Japanese state's willingness to recognise the rights of Ainu as indigenous people

Japan's Living Politics: Grassroots Action and the Crises of Democracy

The first two decades of the twenty-first century have witnessed a rise of populism and decline of public confidence in many of the formal institutions of democracy. This crisis of democracy has stimulated searches for alternative ways of understanding and enacting politics. Against this background, Tessa Morris-Suzuki explores the long history of informal everyday political action in the Japanese context. Despite its seemingly inflexible and monolithic formal political system, Japan has been the site of many fascinating small-scale experiments in 'informal life politics': grassroots do-it-yourself actions which seek not to lobby governments for change, but to change reality directly, from the bottom up. She explores this neglected history by examining an interlinked series of informal life politics experiments extending from the 1910s to the present day

Liquid Area Studies: Northeast Asia in Motion as Viewed from Mount Geumgang

Area studies has always been controversial. Over the decades, the field has been criticized for lacking theoretical rigor and accused of complicity with the political agendas of the Cold War. More recently, controversy has tended to focus on the notion of "area" itself. The image of the area as a territorial block, bound together by long-standing geographical and cultural forces has come under increasing critical scrutiny. Debates on the notion of area, the author argues, have the potential to invigorate and enrich area studies. In this article, the author draws on critical area studies approaches proposed by scholars Arjun Apadurai, Willem van Schendel, and others and outlines the notion of "liquid area studies" to draw out themes for future debate and research. As one approach to the development of liquid area studies, this article suggests that we might reverse the normal macrolevel focus on the definition of areas. By focusing instead on microlevel studies of the shifting webs of connection that link a particular locus to the wider world it is possible to shed some new light on the social and cultural meaning of area in historical perspective. This article explores one case study drawn from Korean history as a framework for exploring possible future directions in liquid area studies