Category: English
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...
Japan’s contribution to nihilistic Islamism
The AHA’s flagship journal American Historical Review doesn’t run Japanese articles all that often and, to be honest, interesting ones even more rar...
CFP: ASPAC 2005
I’m a big fan of sub-national academic conferences. The nationals are fine, of course: I’ve gone to quite a few, some even when I wasn’t looki...
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...
Successful Sakoku?
Talking about the semi-seclusion policies of the Tokugawa polity in class recently, and a student asked “was it a successful policy?” I had already ...
Movie: 2009 Lost Memories
I recently watched the 2001 Korean science fiction movie called 2009 Lost Memories (2009 로스트메모리즈, IMDB entry) w...
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...
What If
Jonathan Dresner, our most active member here at Frog in a Well has an interesting posting at Cliopatria on the 1000 top OCLC library books by purchase. Dresner...
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...
Farewell, Soseki
I’m going to miss Natsume Soseki. I know, he’s been dead for a long time (are there any plans in the works for centennial editions or celebrations, ...
Why I love classical literature
From Yoshida Kenkō’s Tsurezuregusa, aka Essays in Idleness (Stephen Carter translation in McCullough’s Classical Japanese Prose, p. 416) 189 Today y...