Japan is currently the only advanced industrial democracy with a fourth-generation immigrant problem. As other industrialized countries face the challenges of incorporating post-war immigrants, Japan ...continues to struggle with the incorporation of pre-war immigrants and their descendants. Whereas others have focused on international norms, domestic institutions, and recent immigration, this book argues that contemporary immigration and citizenship politics in Japan reflect the strategic interaction between state efforts to control immigration and grassroots movements by multi-generational Korean resident activists to gain rights and recognition specifically as permanently settled foreign residents of Japan. Based on in-depth interviews and fieldwork conducted in Tokyo, Kawasaki, and Osaka, this book aims to further our understanding of democratic inclusion in Japan by analyzing how those who are formally excluded from the political process voice their interests and what factors contribute to the effective representation of those interests in public debate and policy.
Hiroshima Minear, Richard
2018., 20180605, 2018, 1990
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"I'll search you out, put my lips to your tender ear, and tell you. . . . I'll tell you the real story--I swear I will."--from Little One by Toge Sankichi Three Japanese authors of note--Hara Tamiki, ...Ota Yoko, and Toge Sankichi--survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima only to shoulder an appalling burden: bearing witness to ultimate horror. Between 1945 and 1952, in prose and in poetry, they published the premier first-person accounts of the atomic holocaust. Forty-five years have passed since August 6, 1945, yet this volume contains the first complete English translation of Hara's Summer Flowers, the first English translation of Ota's City of Corpses, and a new translation of Toge's Poems of the Atomic Bomb. No reader will emerge unchanged from reading these works. Different from each other in their politics, their writing, and their styles of life and death, Hara, Ota, and Toge were alike in feeling compelled to set down in writing what they experienced. Within forty-eight hours of August 6, before fleeing the city for shelter in the hills west of Hiroshima, Hara jotted down this note: "Miraculously unhurt; must be Heaven's will that I survive and report what happened." Ota recorded her own remarks to her half-sister as they walked down a street littered with corpses: "I'm looking with two sets of eyesthe eyes of a human being and the eyes of a writer." And the memorable words of Toge quoted above come from a poem addressed to a child whose father was killed in the South Pacific and whose mother died on August 6th--who would tell of that day? The works of these three authors convey as much of the "real story" as can be put into words.
The historiography of the Cold War has long been dominated by American motivations and concerns, with Southeast Asian perspectives largely confined to the Indochina wars and Indonesia under Sukarno. ...Southeast Asia's Cold War corrects this situation by examining the international politics of the region from within rather than without. It provides an up-to-date, coherent narrative of the Cold War as it played out in Southeast Asia against a backdrop of superpower rivalry.
When viewed through a Southeast Asian lens, the Cold War can be traced back to the interwar years and antagonisms between indigenous communists and their opponents, the colonial governments and their later successors. Burma, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, and the Philippines join Vietnam and Indonesia as key regional players with their own agendas, as evidenced by the formation of SEATO and the Bandung conference. The threat of global Communism orchestrated from Moscow, which had such a powerful hold in the West, passed largely unnoticed in Southeast Asia, where ideology took a back seat to regime preservation. China and its evolving attitude toward the region proved far more compelling: the emergence of the communist government there in 1949 helped further the development of communist networks in the Southeast Asian region. Except in Vietnam, the Soviet Union's role was peripheral: managing relationships with the United States and China was what preoccupied Southeast Asia's leaders. The impact of the Sino-Soviet split is visible in the decade-long Cambodian conflict and the Sino-Vietnamese War of 1979.
This succinct volume not only demonstrates the complexity of the region, but for the first time provides a narrative that places decolonization and nation-building alongside the usual geopolitical conflicts. It focuses on local actors and marshals a wide range of literature in support of its argument. Most importantly, it tells us how and why the Cold War in Southeast Asia evolved the way it did and offers a deeper understanding of the Southeast Asia we know today.
Why have traditional views of national identity in South Korea--views that for years drove a demand for reunification--been challenged so dramatically in recent years? What explains the growing ...ambivalence and even antagonism of South Korean young people toward unification with North Korea? Emma Campbell addresses these related puzzles, exploring the emergence of a new kind of nationalism in South Korea and considering what this development means for the country's future.
No nation was more deeply affected by America's rise to power than Japan. The price paid to end the most intrusive reconstruction of a nation in modern history was a cold war alliance with the U.S. ...that ensured American dominance in the region. Kenneth Pyle offers a thoughtful history of this relationship at a time when the alliance is changing.
Japan since 1945 Gerteis, Christopher; George, Timothy S
2013/01/01, 2012, 2012-12-20
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Does Japan really matter anymore? The challenges of recent Japanese history have led some pundits and scholars to publicly wonder whether Japan's significance is starting to wane. The ...multidisciplinary essays that comprise Japan Since 1945 demonstrate its ongoing importance and relevance. Examining the historical context to the social, cultural, and political underpinnings of Japan's postwar development, the contributors re-engage earlier discourses and introduce new veins of research. Japan Since 1945 provides a much needed update to existing scholarly work on the history of contemporary Japan. It moves beyond the 'lost decade' and 'terrible devastation' frameworks that have thus far defined too much of the discussion, offering a more nuanced picture of the nation's postwar development.
One of the most striking developments in recent international politics has been the significant increase in security cooperation among European Union states. Seth Jones argues that this increase in ...cooperation, in areas such as economic sanctions, weapons production and collaboration among military forces, has occurred because of the changing structure of the international and regional systems. Since the end of the Cold War, the international system has shifted from a bipolar to a unipolar structure characterized by United States dominance. This has caused EU states to cooperate in the security realm to increase their ability to project power abroad and to decrease reliance on the US. Furthermore, European leaders in the early 1990s adopted a 'binding' strategy to ensure long-term peace on the continent, suggesting that security cooperation is caused by a desire to preserve peace in Europe whilst building power abroad.
Based on new and existing research by a world‐class scholar, this is the first book in twenty years to examine the dynamics of the entire American–Western European relationship since 1945. The ...relationship between the US and Western Europe has always been crucial, and current events dictate that it is becoming ever more so. In this book, the author analyses the balance between the cooperation and conflict that has characterized this relationship in the post‐war period. He examines talk of transatlantic drift, and the strain now apparent between the US and the nation states of Western Europe. The first nine chapters are, for the most part, arranged as a chronological account of the relationship. In the concluding Ch. 10 section, the author offers a topical view of the future of transatlantic interaction. Throughout the work, the author's much cited ‘“Empire” by invitation’ thesis is both put into practice and extended in time and scope. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in one of the most important and enduring international relationships of the last sixty years.
Historical surveys of postwar Japan are usually established on the grounds that the era is already over, interpreting "postwar" to be the years directly proceeding World War II. However, the ...contributors to this book take a unique approach to the concept of the postwar epoch and treat it as a network of historical time frames from the modern period, and connect these time capsules to the war to which they are inextricably linked. The books strength is in its very interdisciplinary approach to examining postwar Japan and as such it includes chapters centred on subjects as diverse as politics, poetry, philosophy, economics and art which serve to fill the blanks in the collective cultural memory that historical narratives leave behind.
Originally published in French, this new translation offers the English speaking world important access to a major work on Japan which has been greatly enriched by the translator's great accuracy and knowledge of English, French and Japanese language, history and culture.
Japan's Postwar will appeal to students and scholars of Japanese Studies and Modern Japanese History as well as historians studying the world after 1945.
Margaret Thatcher was one of the most controversial figures of modern times. Her governments inspired hatred and veneration in equal measure and her legacy remains fiercely contested. Yet assessments ...of the Thatcher era are often divorced from any larger historical perspective. This book draws together leading historians to locate Thatcher and Thatcherism within the political, social, cultural and economic history of modern Britain. It explores the social and economic crises of the 1970s; Britain's relationships with Europe, the Commonwealth and the United States; and the different experiences of Thatcherism in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The book assesses the impact of the Thatcher era on class and gender and situates Thatcherism within the Cold War, the end of Empire and the rise of an Anglo-American 'New Right'. Drawing on the latest available sources, it opens a wide-ranging debate about the Thatcher era and its place in modern British history.