Masks in recent Chinese History
So this is a post that already seems outdated, but I thought I would do it anyway. Masks now mean something quite different than they did before, and I am sure ...
Category: Politics
Current Affairs
Chinese Manhua and social criticism
I have been preparing a paper for a conference here at IUP, but since the conference is postponed as we are on strike I thought I would share some of it with yo...
A Question of Credibility: The ASCK
Of late I have become depressed by what I see as a lack of credibility in some of the efforts to counter the flood of media reports and bombastic condemnations ...
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...
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/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...
The Crazy Guy for Prime Minister, Please
OK, admittedly I am supremely unqualified to write a post about the current prime ministerial vacancy in Japan. I’m a historian who works on the 16th cent...
Useful, Inconvenient History
President Bush cited John Dower regarding the potential for post-war democratization. Bush was using Dower’s Embracing Defeat to ridicule those who believ...
KTX female attendants – “contingent labour” fights back
There was a time in Korean labour movement history in the 1970s when it were the female workers who actually led the most militant part of the struggle. The rea...
The June struggle in the British newspapers
Over at my own blog I’ve decided to mark the anniversary of the events of June 1987 in South Korea by following contemporary reports from the British news...
Getting Out the Vote
In the weeks leading up to May 10th, 1948, the United States run interim Military Government in southern Korea was busy preparing the national assembly election...
Is there such a thing as an innocent nation?
Moving away from the news reports for the moment, something a bit more speculative. The above question is one that crops up in my mind every now and then when I...
Orthodoxy, or more revisionism? (History news round up II)
Time for part two of my history news round up. Another big history-related story toward the end of last year concerned a proposed new rightwing history textbook...