{"id":5375,"date":"2007-05-02T03:42:36","date_gmt":"2007-05-02T08:42:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.froginawell.net\/japan\/2007\/05\/whats-new\/"},"modified":"2014-08-30T14:02:37","modified_gmt":"2014-08-30T14:02:37","slug":"whats-new","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/2007\/05\/whats-new\/","title":{"rendered":"What&#8217;s New?"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>The University of Hawai&#8217;i at Manoa Center for Japanese Studies has a new <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/cjs\/pennino_index.html\">collection of Occupation-era photographs<\/a>. I&#8217;m struck by two things in particular: the persistence of traditional production, agriculture and fishing methods; the repatriated soldiers, who seem quite happy to be home.<\/li>\n<li>Nothing new <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.historians.org\/news\/187\/japanese-history-texts-draw-fire-from-china-and-korea\">here<\/a>: Japanese textbooks omit Japanese atrocities<sup id=\"rf1-5375\"><a href=\"#fn1-5375\" title=\"see also &lt;a href=&quot;http:\/\/hnn.us\/roundup\/entries\/37110.html&quot;&gt;this&lt;\/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http:\/\/hnn.us\/roundup\/entries\/37174.html&quot;&gt;this&lt;\/a&gt; \" rel=\"footnote\">1<\/a><\/sup> , draw fire from <a href=\"http:\/\/news.xinhuanet.com\/english\/2007-04\/03\/content_5930950.htm\">China, Koreas<\/a>.<sup id=\"rf2-5375\"><a href=\"#fn2-5375\" title=\" At the same time, &lt;a href=&quot;http:\/\/hnn.us\/roundup\/entries\/37654.html&quot;&gt;China&lt;\/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http:\/\/hnn.us\/roundup\/entries\/38203.html&quot;&gt;Korea&lt;\/a&gt; are moving ahead with joint historical projects with Japan \" rel=\"footnote\">2<\/a><\/sup> However, it&#8217;s worth noting that this was from Andrew Bell, writing at the official blog of the American Historical Association. It&#8217;s nice to see Asian history getting some note, though it would be even nicer if it wasn&#8217;t the same-old, same-old. For a really fresh take on the textbook\/nationalism question, I highly recommend <a href=\"http:\/\/japanfocus.org\/products\/details\/2403\">Ian Condry&#8217;s article<\/a> about alternative media and non-nationalistic historical visions in Japan.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/hnn.us\/blogs\/entries\/38103.html\">Kevin Murphy noted<\/a> the appearance of a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/04\/18\/world\/asia\/18japan.html?ex=1178164800&#038;en=605b38fad4c0070d&#038;ei=5070\">new report on WWII &#8220;comfort women&#8221;<\/a> and US collusion in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freep.com\/apps\/pbcs.dll\/article?AID=\/20070426\/NEWS07\/704260484\/1009\/NEWS07\">Occupation era &#8220;comfort stations&#8221; for US GIs<\/a>. This got more attention than usual because it <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/templates\/story\/story.php?storyId=9843328\">coincided with PM Abe&#8217;s<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/04\/25\/world\/asia\/25cnd-abe.html?_r=1&#038;hp&#038;oref=slogin\">visit to the US<\/a>. Interestingly, <a href=\"http:\/\/hnn.us\/roundup\/entries\/38242.html\">he did apologize<\/a> (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/worldNews\/idUST7434620070422\">repeatedly<\/a>), and President Bush accepted him at his word. However, apologies have no <a href=\"http:\/\/hnn.us\/roundup\/entries\/38176.html\">legal weight<\/a>, it seems, and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iht.com\/articles\/2007\/04\/24\/news\/slaves.php\">&#8220;apology fund&#8221;<\/a> attempt to privatize absolution failed miserably. (<a href=\"http:\/\/hnn.us\/roundup\/entries\/38152.html\">Non-sexual slave laborers<\/a> also denied compensation, so at least they&#8217;re consistent). You can find the whole Congressional Research Service report <a href=\"http:\/\/japanfocus.org\/products\/details\/2405\">here<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>In the &#8220;read it or not, you&#8217;re going to have to have an opinion&#8221; category, comes an announcement of a new broadside volley in the <a href=\"http:\/\/hnn.us\/roundup\/entries\/37562.html\">Atomic Bomb historiography<\/a>, a bold attempt edited by Robert James Maddox to present the full array pro-bomb arguments against &#8220;revisionists.&#8221; Gar Alperovitz and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa are named as particular targets of these essays. The press release (that&#8217;s all it is, so don&#8217;t expect a balanced review) contains not the slightest hint that an honest scholar could doubt the ineffable wisdom of history as it happened, a Panglossian view with a real edge.<\/li>\n<li>Speaking of broadsides, Vietnam War revisionist (here it&#8217;s a <i>good<\/i> thing) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nysun.com\/article\/53422?page_no=1\">Mark Moyar couldn&#8217;t find a job<\/a> and the usual arguments about politicization in the academy are offered by the usual suspects. Note, however: he&#8217;s applied for &#8220;more than 150&#8221; jobs in &#8220;over five years.&#8221; US history positions routinely attract 80-150 applications; I don&#8217;t know how many jobs my Americanist colleagues usually apply to in a job search year, but even in my little Asian history corner of the market I&#8217;ve had years in which I made 20 applications. He sounds like a strong candidate almost anywhere (and it sounds like he&#8217;s made the short list a fair number of times), but I&#8217;ve seen plenty of searches from both sides and the process is never a simple head-to-head c.v. weigh-off: This is what makes it hard for candidates, I admit, but it also means that it&#8217;s awfully hard to conclude anything, even from a <i>lot<\/i> of rejections. He&#8217;s teaching at a <a href=\"http:\/\/hnn.us\/blogs\/entries\/38359.html\">better school than I am now, and suing a top-tier program<\/a>, to boot.<\/li>\n<li>There is a high liklihood that almost two hundred <a href=\"http:\/\/www.religionandspirituality.com\/currentEvents\/view.php?StoryID=20070412-084850-6663r\">Japanese Christian martyrs<\/a> of the pre-seclusion era will be beatified later this year. I haven&#8217;t been able to find a press report online with more details: every report I&#8217;ve seen echoes this one in highlighting the &#8220;pacifist samurai&#8221; angle. <\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/hnn.us\/roundup\/entries\/37317.html\">Takamatsuzuka tomb restoration work<\/a> begins<\/li>\n<li>Collaboration doesn&#8217;t pay? The South Korean government is going to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newsday.com\/news\/nationworld\/world\/wire\/sns-ap-skorea-japan-collaborators,0,828285.story\">seize assets owned by the descendants of collaborators<\/a> going back to members of the cabinet which signed the annexation treaty in 1910. I can see this going one of three ways: it gets tied up in court and never goes any further; a very high bar is set for the definition of &#8220;collaboration&#8221;, leading to generations of debate about the historicity and utility of such definitions, not to mention considerable acrimony regarding boderline cases; a vague definition of collaboration results in a flood of cases, lawsuits, historical geneological and pseudo-historical disputes, charges of favoritism, deeper corruption and the release of massive quantities of new and interesting historical materials into the public sphere. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr class=\"footnotes\"><ol class=\"footnotes\" style=\"list-style-type:decimal\"><li id=\"fn1-5375\"><p >see also <a href=\"http:\/\/hnn.us\/roundup\/entries\/37110.html\">this<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/hnn.us\/roundup\/entries\/37174.html\">this<\/a> &nbsp;<a href=\"#rf1-5375\" class=\"backlink\" title=\"Return to footnote 1.\">&#8617;<\/a><\/p><\/li><li id=\"fn2-5375\"><p > At the same time, <a href=\"http:\/\/hnn.us\/roundup\/entries\/37654.html\">China<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/hnn.us\/roundup\/entries\/38203.html\">Korea<\/a> are moving ahead with joint historical projects with Japan &nbsp;<a href=\"#rf2-5375\" class=\"backlink\" title=\"Return to footnote 2.\">&#8617;<\/a><\/p><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The University of Hawai&#8217;i at Manoa Center for Japanese Studies has a new collection of Occupation-era photographs. I&#8217;m struck by two things in particular: the persistence of traditional production, agriculture and fishing methods; the repatriated soldiers, who seem quite happy to be home. Nothing new here: Japanese textbooks omit Japanese atrocities1 , draw fire from&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[166,102,174,119,129,63,183,189,192,198,84,206],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-china-japan","category-currentrecent-events","category-english","category-historiography","category-japan","category-korea-japan","category-occupation","category-photography","category-us-japan","category-war","category-206"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9yoH3-1oH","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5375"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5587,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5375\/revisions\/5587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}