Article Nine on Film
Kei Yamamoto, writing for the citizen newspaper JANJAN, has reviewed the film Japan’s Peace Constitution (邦題 『映画 日本憲法』). The film is directed by John Junk...
Category: Japan
Sex, Lies, and Okinawa
For anyone interested in Okinawa and the history of journalism in Japan, David Jacobson over at Japan Media Review has recently reported on a new lawsuit by a j...
Summer Reading Notes: Turnbull
After our discussion of the 1590s wars, I did pick up Stephen Turnbull’s Samurai Invasion: Japan’s Korean War, 1592-1598. The book is a great read, ...
Akihito as the Sovereign of Japan?
Asahi Shinbun reports that the LDP has accepted plans to push for changing the name “Self-Defense Force”(「自衛隊」) to “Self-Defense Military̶...
Post-Anpo Apostasy
During my search for a short article on Anpo (the anti U.S.-Japan Security Treaty movement in 1960), Konrad mentioned that he would be interested in hearing abo...
Oe and Millenarian Movements
I have spent the last few days working on a syllabus for a course titled “Anthropology of Social Movements,” and I figure I could use some help from...
Dewey In Japan
Naoko Saito takes John Dewey’s visits to Japan as a starting place for questions about “Education for Global Understanding” [registration requ...
1590s Military Technology Gaps
I recently ran across two separate references to the Hideyoshi invasions of Korea, both of which credited Hideyoshi’s initial success to firearms. That di...
Hinomaru Mystery
Over at H-Japan, there’s a discussion about the Hinomaru, Japan’s national flag. I was intrigued and clicked over to Wikipedia. I knew that the sun ...
Self-Intro: Tak Watanabe
Hi, I’m Tak Watanabe, and I’ve just recently joined Frog in a Well. I am a cultural anthropologist who is keenly interested in the history of Japan....
The May 15 Incident (1932): Inukai & Chaplin
Hi I’m Tak Watanabe, and I’m new here. (Thanks Konrad for the invite!) I’ll post a self-introduction soon, but in the mean time I wanted to po...
Information v. Imperium
This week’s Japan Focus brings discussion of the past, present and future of the Japanese imperial institution. I’m particularly intrigued by the st...
Updates: Textbook and Constitutional revision
The Tri-national textbook I wrote about here has been published. The South Koreans, at least, are taking it pretty seriously [via Ralph Luker], with national di...