The decline of British power in Asia, from a high point in 1905, when Britain’s ally Japan vanquished the Russian Empire, apparently reducing the perceived threat that Russia posed to its influence in India and China, to the end of the twentieth century, when British power had dwindled to virtually nothing, is one of the most important themes in understanding the modern history of East and So…
This chapter adopts methodological cosmopolitanism to revisit the Maria Luz Incident (1872), a colourful diplomatic episode that involved two civil suits brought before a court created for the specific purpose of adjudicating whether the ship’s captain ill-treated and abused his Chinese ‘passengers’ while the ship was anchored for repairs in Yokohama Port. The chapter argues that the Mari…
The chapter analyzes the cycle of the anti-nuclear movement that followed the Fukushima accident in March 2011. Employing functional typology, the chapter categorizes the movement’s organizations into seven types (direct action, research and education, policy advocacy, aid, watchdog, legal, and other) and shows that the post-Fukushima wave of protests was much broader in scope and more divers…
The first book that deals with the territorial cults of early Japan by focusing on how such cults were founded in ownerless regions. Numerous ancient Japanese myths and legends are discussed to show that the typical founding ritual was a two-phase ritual that turned the territory into a horizontal microcosm, complete with its own ‘terrestrial heaven’ inhabited by local deities. Reversing M…
This book examines the diverse prosody of compound nouns in Kansai Japanese, with a special focus on a class of compounds with particularly variable prosody, whose unique prosody is potentially endangered due to their structure and influence from Tokyo Japanese. These compounds serve as important evidence for recursion in prosodic structure in theories of the syntax-prosody interface, as they s…
This open access book argues that Japan-ROK security relations were formed in the process of adjusting the threat perception gap and policy conflict between the two countries. Conventional analyses using a “cooperation or conflict” dichotomy are too limited to capture the complex coordination of interests that security relations entail. In comparison, this book focuses on how, as they inter…
This open access book assesses the profound impact of Japan’s aspirations to become a great power on Japanese security, democracy and foreign relations. Rather than viewing the process of normalization and rejuvenation as two decades of remilitarization in face of rapidly changing strategic environment and domestic political circumstances, this volume contextualizes Japan’s contemporary in…
This Open Access book includes chapters on the key turning points in modern Japanese history from the Meiji Restoration to Japan-China diplomatic normalization in the 1970s and beyond. The topics covered include the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War, the First and Second World Wars, the Manchurian Crisis, the US Occupation, postwar Japan-China relations, and postwar decolonization…
This is the first Open Access book introducing more than 20 of Japan’s leading innovative entrepreneurs from the 17th century to the present. The author outlines the innovative business models created by entrepreneurs including SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son, Fast Retailing (Uniqlo)’s Yanai Tadashi, Honda’s Soichiro Honda, Sony’s Akio Morita, Panasonic’s Konosuke Matsushita, and Toyota’…
This Open Access book provides a comprehensive analysis of political reforms in Japan since the 1990s, emphasizing the role of ideas in shaping their goals and outcomes. For more than fifteen years following the collapse of Japan’s economic bubble, politicians, business people and academics tackled a range of institutional reforms. The sweeping changes they enacted—covering almost…