Mystery Circles on Early Armor
What is that circular disk which early medieval samurai wear over their swords? Is it a weight, to keep it from flopping around while horseriding? That’s ...
Category: Japan
Hiroshima +50 (and +40)
I haven’t participated in that many “historic” events, but I’m now old enough that my early pictures qualify as historic documents, at l...
Hirohito’s last birthday
I’m almost done, I suppose, with the first phase of my image digitization and pedagogy project, namely scanning a significant chunk of my Japan slides and...
HNN, NYT Post Competing Japan Election Analysis
HNN has posted an extended version of the Soft and Fuzzy history I posted a few days ago. What I’ve added, for the general readership, is more background ...
Recipe for a New Japan? A Dash of Venus
The recent victory of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in the Lower House, just two years after its surprise victory in the Upper House, is only slightly les...
World War Wannabee: Russo-Japanese War?
Brett Holman notes a new contender in the “really First World War” sweepstakes — the Seven Years War and Napoleonic Wars being leading early c...
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...
Samurai Exhibit Pwned
The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco has been targeted by an anonymous artistic and political intervention that parodies the current Lords of the Samurai exhib...
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 ...
Cultural and Physical History Mystery
Michelle Damian, who I met at ASPAC, has a new post up in her project journal with an intriguing mystery: One type of vessel that has intrigued me is the massiv...
Imperial Visits and Attitudes
I just learned of the Japanese Emperor and Empress’ visit to Hawai’i [via]. It’s not the first time that a member of the Japanese Imperial fam...
Imperial Visits and Attitudes
I just learned of the Japanese Emperor and Empress’ visit to Hawai’i [via]. It’s not the first time that a member of the Japanese Imperial fam...
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...
ASPAC Blogging: Colonialism and Imperialism
There were quite a few papers at ASPAC this year which addressed Japan’s colonial and imperial relationships: my own discussion of migration as an aspect ...