Category: 昭和
Talks about the Showa period
More Former Japanese Soldiers
There has been some news in the last two days about the possibility that two more Japanese soldiers left behind in the Philippines being “discovered”...
It’s final’s week: Discuss
Via HNN’s Breaking News, a New York Times quickie: JAPAN: HOLIDAY FOR HIROHITO Japanese lawmakers overwhelmingly voted to honor Emperor Hirohito by renami...
Nationalistic Internationalism
Prehistory: You could almost write Japan’s entire modern history as the drive for respect from the rest of the world. Starting with the unequal treaties o...
Resource: Kamikaze Images
Wesleyan’s William Johnston forwarded this to H-Japan: a web archive of Kamikaze images. It looks like a very rich, and responsibly constructed, collectio...
China’s use of Japanese history
Young Chinese aren’t well educated in history, and there’s little evidence of much interest. They know what the state wants them to know (“pos...
List of Intellectuals
I just finished making a little list of the various Japanese intellectuals mentioned in Victor Koschmann’s essay on “Intellectuals and Politics̶...
Breaking News: WWII won’t go away
OK, that’s not all that surprising at this point. But I was a bit taken aback when three articles all about separate aspects of WWII in Japan showed up in...
Faith and Foreign Policy
There is lots of talk about the importance of faith and the use of religious or crusader vocabulary in the US president’s justification of his foreign pol...
A New Constitution for Japan?
I love constitutions. They’re great texts for teaching, they are fantastic touchstones for discussion and, of course, they are crucial to the definition o...
Iris Chang’s Death
Iris Chang is dead, apparently by her own hand as a result of depression. Her work on the Nanjing Massacre brought her fame and attention, of all kinds. She was...
Minamata Justice
Japan’s Supreme Court ordered the government to pay compensation to additional victims of one of the most egregious and troubling cases of environmental i...