America’s “Lost Decade”
Paul Krugman wrote a column in which he argued that the last decade in the US has been a waste of time, economically speaking: But from an economic point of vie...
Category: Current/Recent Events
The Bow
Via my old friend Scott Eric Kaufman I learned that President Obama’s visit to Japan was drawing criticism from the American right (I also learned that Pr...
Soft and Fuzzy Historic Events
Last time I lived in Japan, the LDP lost control of the Diet, and for a year and a half there was a Socialist Prime Minister in charge of an implausible coaliti...
Academia/bibliography/Current/Recent Events/Economic/General/globalization/Historiography/Japan/Nationalism/Pedagogy/Teaching
Adjusting to the new narrative
My China-side colleague, Alan Baumler, noted that China seems to have supplanted Japan as the go-to model for economic development. This has, he says, required ...
Academia/China-Japan/Current/Recent Events/General/globalization/International Affairs/Japan/Korea-Japan/Nationalism/Political/Politics/平成/昭和
ASPAC Blogging: Japan’s Political Present and Future
My copanelists on Saturday were political scientists, and it was a good update for me on what what’s going on with Japan in the last ten years or so. R...
Dangerous Data
By now most of you have probably heard of the erasure of buraku — the segregated communities of Japanese outcastes — from Google Earth.1 The continu...
Samurai-related events, Bowers Museum
The Bowers Museum in southern California opens a new exhibition this Sunday, “Art of the Samurai: Selections from the Tokyo National Museum.” In con...
Sumo and tradition
The NYTimes Lede blog [thanks, Mom!] linked Michael Phelps’ marijuana scandal to a scandal in Japanese sumo1 which has resulted in four retirements. They ...
Only in Japan: Yakuza Sued
The New York Times is reporting on tensions between the Dojinkai and the civilians living in the neighborhood of their headquarters. Two features of this are wo...
New Media and Japanese Studies
WARNING: those of you interested in Japanese studies but not in internet technologies, new media, and the whole question of how digital learning does or doesn&#...
Migration, Nationalism, Empire
Tessa Morris-Suzuki’s recent Japan Focus article, “Migrants, Subjects, Citizens: Comparative Perspectives on Nationality in the Prewar Japanese Empi...
Academia/Archives/China-Japan/Current/Recent Events/General/Historiography/Japan/Memory/photography/War
Archival Incidents, or What is it with Pictures?
Sean Malloy has withdrawn the pictures once touted as “newly discovered” photographs of Hiroshima in the immediate aftermath of the atomic bombing. ...
China-Japan/Current/Recent Events/General/Historiography/Japan/Korea-Japan/Memory/Nationalism/Okinawa/War/昭和
How do you say “Fast of the First Born” in Japanese?
I was thinking about whether to even attempt a contribution to the latest symposium on the role of historical animosities — and their appeasement — ...
Macroeconomics never gives you more than an overview
Stephen Roach, Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia has an op-ed in the New York Times (UPDATE: reprinted in Japan Focus) arguing that Japan’s post-bubble rece...
Disparity Studies
In my discussion of the job market I said “I only saw two Korea positions, which seems about par for previous years: at some point, though, Korea position...