Download or read book Think Global Fear Local written by David Leheny and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-05 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1999, responding to international concerns about the sexual exploitation of children, the Japanese Diet voted unanimously to ban child prostitution and child pornography. Two years later, in the wake of 9/11, Junichiro Koizumi's cabinet radically shifted government counterterrorism policy toward new military solutions, and away from an earlier emphasis on law enforcement. Although they seem unrelated, these two policies reveal the unintended consequences of attempts to enforce international norms at the national level. In Think Global, Fear Local, David Leheny posits that when states abide by international agreements to clamp down on transnational crime and security concerns, they respond not to an amorphous international problem but rather to more deeply held and proximate fears. Although opponents of child prostitution and pornography were primarily concerned about the victimization of children in poor nations by wealthy foreigners, the Japanese law has been largely used to crack down on "compensated dating," in which middle-class Japanese schoolgirls date and sometimes have sex with adults. Many Japanese policymakers viewed these girls as villains, and subsequent legal developments have aimed to constrain teenage sexual activities as well as to punish predatory adults. Likewise, following changes in the country's counterterrorism policy, some Japanese leaders have redefined a host of other threats—especially from North Korea—as "terrorist" menaces requiring a more robust and active Japanese military. Drawing from sources as diverse as parliamentary debate records and contemporary film and literature, Leheny uses these two very different cases to argue that international norms can serve as political tools, allowing states to enhance their coercive authority.
Download or read book State of Fear written by Michael Crichton and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 817 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times bestselling author Michael Crichton delivers another action-packed techo-thriller in State of Fear. When a group of eco-terrorists engage in a global conspiracy to generate weather-related natural disasters, its up to environmental lawyer Peter Evans and his team to uncover the subterfuge. From Tokyo to Los Angeles, from Antarctica to the Solomon Islands, Michael Crichton mixes cutting edge science and action-packed adventure, leading readers on an edge-of-your-seat ride while offering up a thought-provoking commentary on the issue of global warming. A deftly-crafted novel, in true Crichton style, State of Fear is an exciting, stunning tale that not only entertains and educates, but will make you think.
Download or read book The Rules of Play written by David Leheny and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-05 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Japanese government seeks to influence the use of leisure time to a degree that Americans or Europeans would likely find puzzling. Through tourism-promotion initiatives, financing for resort development, and systematic research on recreational practices, the government takes a relentless interest in its citizens' "free time." David Leheny argues that material interests are not a sufficient explanation for such a large and consistent commitment of resources. In The Rules of Play, he reveals the link between Japan's leisure politics and its long-term struggle over national identity. Since the Meiji Restoration, successive Japanese governments have stressed the nation's need to act like a "real" (that is, a Western) advanced industrial power. As part of their express desire to catch up, generations of policymakers have examined the ways Americans and Europeans relax or have fun, then tried to persuade Japanese citizens to behave in similar fashion—while subtly redefining these recreational choices as distinctively "Japanese." In tracing the development of leisure politics and the role of the state in cultural change, the author focuses on the importance of international norms and perceptions of Japanese national identity. Leheny regards globalization as a "failure of imagination" on the part of policymakers. When they absorb lessons from Western nations, they aim for a future that has already been revealed elsewhere rather than envision a locally distinctive lifestyle for citizens.
Download or read book Empire of Hope written by David Leheny and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-15 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Empire of Hope asks how emotions become meaningful in political life. In a diverse array of cases from recent Japanese history, David Leheny shows how sentimental portrayals of the nation and its global role reflect a durable story of hopefulness about the country's postwar path. From the medical treatment of conjoined Vietnamese children, victims of Agent Orange, the global promotion of Japanese popular culture, a tragic maritime accident involving a US Navy submarine, to the 2011 tsunami and nuclear disaster, this story has shaped the way in which political figures, writers, officials, and observers have depicted what the nation feels. Expressions of national emotion do several things: they construct the boundaries of the national body, they inform and discipline appropriate expression, and they depoliticize messy problems that threaten to produce divisive questions about winners and losers. Most important, they work because they appear to be natural, simple and expected expressions of how the nation shares feeling, even when they paper over the extraordinary divergence in how the nation's citizens experience each incident. In making its arguments, Empire of Hope challenges how we read the relations between emotion and politics by arguing—unlike those who build from the neuroscientific turn in the social sciences or those developing affect theory in the humanities—that the focus should be on emotional representation rather than on emotion itself.
Download or read book Civilizations in World Politics written by Peter J. Katzenstein and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-09-10 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A highly original and readily accessible examination of the cultural dimension of international politics, this book provides a sophisticated and nuanced account of the relevance of cultural categories for the analysis of world politics. The book’s analytical focus is on plural and pluralist civilizations. Civilizations exist in the plural within one civilization of modernity; and they are internally pluralist rather than unitary. The existence of plural and pluralist civilizations is reflected in transcivilizational engagements, intercivilizational encounters and, only occasionally, in civilizational clashes. Drawing on the work of Eisenstadt, Collins and Elias, Katzenstein’s introduction provides a cogent and detailed alternative to Huntington’s. This perspective is then developed and explored through six outstanding case studies written by leading experts in their fields. Combining contemporary and historical perspectives while addressing the civilizational politics of America, Europe, China, Japan, India and Islam, the book draws these discussions together in Patrick Jackson’s theoretically informed, thematic conclusion. Featuring an exceptional line-up and representing a diversity of theoretical views within one integrative perspective, this work will be of interest to all scholars and students of international relations, sociology and political science.
Download or read book Governing Insecurity in Japan written by Wilhelm Vosse and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-27 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the end of the Cold War, Japan's security environment has changed significantly. While, on the global level, the United States is still Japan's most important security partner, the nature of the partnership has changed as a result of shifting demands from the United States, new international challenges such as the North Korean nuclear programme and the rapid rise of China. At the same time, Japan has been confronted with new, ‘non-traditional’ security threats such as international terrorism, the spread of infectious diseases, and global environmental problems. On the domestic level, demographic change, labour migration, economic decline, workplace insecurity, and a weakening impact of policy initiatives challenge the sustainability of the lifestyle of many Japanese and have led to a heightened sense of insecurity among the Japanese public. This book focuses on the domestic discourse on insecurity in Japan and goes beyond military security. The chapters cover issues such as Japan’s growing perception of regional and global insecurity; the changing role of military forces; the perceived risk of Chinese foreign investment; societal, cultural and labour insecurity and how it is affected by demographic changes and migration; as well as food insecurity and its challenges to health and public policy. Each chapter asks how the Japanese public perceives these insecurities; how these perceptions influence the public discourse, the main stakeholders of this discourse, and how this affects state-society relations and government policies. Governing Insecurity in Japan provides new insights into Japanese and international discourses on security and insecurity, and the ways in which security is conceptualized in Japan. As such, it will be of interest to students and scholars working on Japanese politics, security studies and international relations.
Download or read book A Sociology of Japanese Youth written by Roger Goodman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book puts forth a sociology of Japanese youth problems showing that the Japanese media draw on an equally, if not more, perplexing gallery of social categories when it discusses youth than affluent Western societies such as the US or UK and that Japan is no less replete with social problems involving young people and no less capable of generating hysteria over the fate of its youth than affluent Western societies such as the US or UK.
Download or read book Handbook of Contemporary Japanese Religions written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2012-09-03 with total page 674 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Representing work by some of the leading scholars in the field, the chapters of this handbook survey the transformation and innovation of religious traditions and practices in contemporary Japan. Readers will find lively scholarly studies about changes in the traditional institutions of Buddhism and Shinto, vivid examples of social activism as well as the so-called “new religions,” examination of the relationship between religion and the state, and analysis of the religiosity of individuals encompassed by “spirituality,” pilgrimage and tourism, and the marketing of religions. This groundbreaking collection of scholarly papers helps to map out the fascinating complexity and dynamism of religion in contemporary Japanese society and culture.
Download or read book After Anarchy written by Ian Hurd and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2008-07-21 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher description
Download or read book Reimagining Japanese Education written by David Blake Willis and published by Symposium Books Ltd. This book was released on 2011-05-16 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sparked by the confluence of accelerating domestic transformation and increasingly explicit impacts from ‘globalization’, the Japanese education system has undergone tremendous changes during the turbulence of the past decade. This volume, which brings together some of the foremost scholars in the field of Japanese education, analyzes these recent changes in ways that help us ‘reimagine’ Japan and Japanese educational change at this critical juncture. Rather than simply updating well-worn Western images of Japan and its educational system, the aim of the book is a much deeper critical rethinking of the outmoded paradigms and perspectives that have rendered the massive shifts that have taken place in Japan largely invisible to or forgotten by the outside world. This ‘reimagining’ thus restores Japan to its place as a key comparative link in the global conversation on education and lays out new pathways for comparative research and reflection. Ranging widely across domains of policy and practice, and with a balance of Japanese and foreign scholars, the volume is also indicative of new directions in educational scholarship worldwide: approaches that center global interactions on domestic education and contribute to a far greater recognition of the polycentric, polycontextual World unfolding today. This book will be of keen interest to scholars of education worldwide, as well as those working in and across anthropology, sociology, policy studies, political science, and area studies given that contemporary transformations in Japan at once reflect and approximate political, social, and educational shifts occurring throughout the World in the early decades of the 21st century.
Download or read book Critical Issues in Contemporary Japan written by Jeff Kingston and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new and fully updated second edition of Critical Issues in Contemporary Japan provides undergraduate and graduate students with an interdisciplinary textbook written by leading specialists on contemporary Japan. Students will gain the analytical insights and information necessary to assess the challenges that confront the Japanese people, policymakers and private and public-sector institutions in Japan today. Featuring a comprehensive analysis of key debates and issues confronting Japan, issues covered include: A rapidly aging society and changing employment system Nuclear and renewable energy policy Gender discrimination Immigration and ethnic minorities Post-3/11 tsunami, earthquake and nuclear meltdown developments Sino-Japanese relations An essential reference work for students of contemporary Japan, it is also an invaluable source for a variety of courses, including comparative politics, anthropology, public policy and international relations.
Download or read book Education in East Asia written by Pei-tseng Jenny Hsieh and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-05-23 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Education in East Asia is a comprehensive critical reference guide to education in the region. With chapters written by an international team of leading regional education experts, the book explores the education systems of China, Hong Kong, Japan, Macao, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea and Taiwan, covering local regional developments in each country as well as recent reforms and global contexts. Including a comparative introduction to the issues facing education in the region as a whole and guides to available online datasets, this handbook will be an essential reference for researchers, scholars, international agencies and policy-makers at all levels.
Download or read book Engagement with North Korea written by Sung Chull Kim and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2010-07-02 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines how and why nations have persuaded North Korea to cooperate on topics such as nuclear policy.
Download or read book Refugees Women and Weapons written by Petrice R. Flowers and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-24 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a world dominated by considerations of material and security threats, Japan provides a fascinating case for why, and under what conditions, a state would choose to adopt international norms and laws that are seemingly in direct conflict with its domestic norms. Approaching compliance from within a constructivist framework, author Petrice R. Flowers analyzes three treaties—addressing refugee policy, women's employment, and the use of land mines—that Japan has adopted. Refugees, Women, and Weapons probes how international relations and domestic politics both play a role in constructing state identity, and how state identity in turn influences compliance. Flowers argues that, although state desire for legitimacy is a key factor in norm adoption, to achieve anything other than a low level of compliance requires strong domestic advocacy. She offers a comprehensive theoretical model that tests the explanatory power of two understudied factors: the strength of nonstate actors and the degree to which international and domestic norms conflict. Flowers evaluates how these factors, typically studied and analyzed individually, interact and affect one another.
Download or read book Japan in the Heisei Era 1989 2019 written by Noriko Murai and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-02-21 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Japan in the Heisei Era (1989–2019) provides a retrospective and multidisciplinary account of a society in flux. Featuring analyses from leading scholars around the globe, this textbook examines the evolving contexts of Japan throughout the Heisei era and how longstanding verities and values have been called into question. Asking what this holds for Japan’s future relations with the world and within its own communities, chapters delve beneath the layers of a complex and increasingly diverse society, exploring topics including simmering ethnonationalism, economic torpor, political stagnation, and cultural dynamics. Features of this textbook include: Analysis of key social issues ranging from immigration, civil society, press freedom, politics, labour and the economy, to diversity, the marginalisation of women, Shinto, and Aum Shinrikyo Evaluation of the legacy of Emperor Akihito on war memory, the imperial institution, art, regional relations, and constitutional revision Multidisciplinary insights from both the social sciences and humanities Rich illustrations for visual analysis of developments in contemporary Japanese literature, film, art, and pop culture Providing students with dynamic analyses of how contemporary Japanese society continues to transform, this textbook is essential reading for students of Japanese Studies, including Japanese culture, society, history, and politics. The Introduction and Chapter 19 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
Download or read book Introducing Japanese Popular Culture written by Alisa Freedman and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-04-18 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Specifically designed for use in a range of undergraduate and graduate courses, while reaching specialists and general readers, this second edition of Introducing Japanese Popular Culture is a comprehensive textbook offering an up-to-date overview of a wide variety of media forms. It uses particular case studies as a way into examining the broader themes in Japanese culture and provides a thorough analysis of the historical and contemporary trends that have shaped artistic production, as well as politics, society, and economics. As a result, more than being a time capsule of influential trends, this book teaches enduring lessons about how popular culture reflects the societies that produce and consume it. With contributions from an international team of scholars, representing a range of disciplines from history and anthropology to art history and media studies, the book covers: Characters Television Videogames Fan media and technology Music Popular cinema Anime Manga Spectacles and competitions Sites of popular culture Fashion Contemporary art. Written in an accessible style with ample description and analysis, this textbook is essential reading for students of Japanese culture and society, Asian media and popular culture, globalization, and Asian Studies in general. It is a go-to handbook for interested readers and a compendium for scholars.
Download or read book Rights Make Might written by Kiyoteru Tsutsui and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-03 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the American Sociological Association's 2019 Asia and Asian American Section Book Award Winner of the American Sociological Association's 2019 Political Sociology Section Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Book Award Since the late 1970s, the three most salient minority groups in Japan - the politically dormant Ainu, the active but unsuccessful Koreans, and the former outcaste group of Burakumin - have all expanded their activism despite the unfavorable domestic political environment. In Rights Make Might, Kiyoteru Tsutsui examines why, and finds an answer in the galvanizing effects of global human rights on local social movements. Tsutsui chronicles the transformative impact of global human rights ideas and institutions on minority activists, which changed their understandings about their standing in Japanese society and propelled them to new international venues for political claim making. The global forces also changed the public perception and political calculus in Japan over time, catalyzing substantial gains for their movements. Having benefited from global human rights, all three groups repaid their debt by contributing to the consolidation and expansion of human rights principles and instruments outside of Japan. Drawing on interviews and archival data, Rights Make Might offers a rich historical comparative analysis of the relationship between international human rights and local politics that contributes to our understanding of international norms and institutions, social movements, human rights, ethnoracial politics, and Japanese society.
