Suzuki Izumi's (1949-1986) short story "Onna to onna no yo no naka" (A World of Women and Women) was published in 1976, at the time when the genre of separatist feminist utopia was flourishing in the ...West. Worlds of women in the context of Western literature have been viewed as part and parcel of the feminist movement and debates of the 1970s and 1980s and some attempts have been made to look at Suzuki's story through the same lens. However, this essay claims that "A World of Women and Women" should be examined as an expression of discomfort experienced by women in society rather than as a possible blueprint for a better social order or utopian feminist vision. I contend that Suzuki's work reflects the contemporary cultural atmosphere of disappointment both with the state and with protest movements, with what the philosopher Yoshimoto Takaaki called "communal illusion." The story is a critique of a discursive space near and dear to Suzuki's heart - the world of shōjo narratives (narratives aimed at girls and young women), constructed as an insular space that precludes real engagement with the reality of having to live in a world in which men do exist.
•Weathering of arenite sandstone with sparse calcite cement is a chain reaction.•Important weathering process is pore opening caused by dissolution of calcite.•Calcite is dissolved by sulfuric acid ...generated by pyrite oxidation.•After the dissolution of calcite, pore spaces are connected and become wider.•Mineralogical changes are mostly limited near the ground surface.
We conducted a multifaceted analysis of the weathering zones of arenite, containing a minute amount of calcite cement, based on mineralogical, chemical, and physical properties. The survey targeted sandstone with mudstone interbeds belonging to the Cretaceous Izumi Group. The survey revealed that the weathering mechanism is a chain reaction; the most important process is the pore opening between the grains caused by the dissolution of calcite cement in the initial stage of weathering. Subsequently, the pores between the grains connect and widen, separating the sand grains within the sandstone. This primary weathering action may be a major difference from wacke. During calcite dissolution in the initial stage, sulfuric acid generated by pyrite oxidation in sandstone plays an important role. Chlorite breaks down as calcite dissolves; however, iron resulting from the breakdown disappears only after the pore water has been replaced by acidic water.
Sandstones with advanced diagenesis are dense and hard, and it was previously assumed that thick weathering zones could not develop because they were less susceptible to weathering. However, we discovered that weathering caused arenite with a minute amount of calcite cement to disintegrate into grains down to a depth of 30 m. The surface layer of the weathered arenite lost fine particle fraction and crept to form a fragile soil layer susceptible to landslides.
Histories of wartime Japan often focus on the Japanese home islands after Japan's surrender to Allied forces on 15 August 1945. Japanese citizens living in Korea, Manchuria, and elsewhere in the ...far-flung Japanese Empire are usually left out of the historiographical record. In a new book about the evacuees-hikiagesha-from the defunct Empire, Shimokawa Masaharu presents a vivid, harrowing portrait of the suffering of those who had to make their way back to Japan after the end of the Greater East Asia War. In particular, Shimokawa focuses on Izumi Sei'ichi, who established a sanatorium and abortuary in Fukuoka for women who had been raped by enemy soldiers.
Asian hesperornithiforms are extremely rare in contrast to North American records; thus, their diversity in Asia during the Cretaceous is unclear. Maastrichtian hesperornithiform materials have been ...reported from both fluvial and marine deposits in North America but only from fluvial deposits in Asia. Asian hesperornithiforms from Maastrichtian deposits have been considered as freshwater taxa because of their occurrence from fluvial sediments and their histological features. Here, we report the first hesperornithiform record from marine Maastrichtian deposits in Asia. It is represented by an isolated left tibiotarsus from the inter-arc basin deposit of the Kita-ama Formation (lower Maastrichtian), Izumi Group of southwest Japan. It has a shallow tibial incision, fibular crest extending to the mid shaft, and laterally angled lateral articular surface. Although its phylogenetic position within Hesperornithiformes is ambiguous, these characters are similar to non-hesperornithid hesperornithiforms. Unossified proximal and distal epiphyses indicate that this individual was immature. A remarkably thick cortical area of the tibiotarsus suggests that this hesperornithiform was a sea-dwelling bird and that the habitat of this group during the Maastrichtian extended to both terrestrial and marine environments in Asia and North America.
•We report a new material of a hesperornithiform from the lower Maastrichtian of southwest Japan.•This is the first Hesperornithiformes from the Maastrichtian marine deposits in Asia.•This indicates Maastrichtian hesperornithiforms inhabited both terrestrial and marine environments in Asia and North America.
Detrital zircon U-Pb ages were measured for nine non-fossiliferous sandstones from the uppermost Izumi Group, a “Late Cretaceous” forearc clastic sequence in the eastern Izumi Mountains of western ...Kii Peninsula, SW Japan. Seven out of nine sandstones yielded Paleocene grains. These results confirm that the uppermost Izumi Group was deposited in the Paleogene (Selandian-Thanetian or younger), extending the total depositional duration of the group to ca. 27 myr, almost double the previous estimate. The new age data raise the possibility that a stratigraphic interval across the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction boundary may be preserved within the group. The occurrence of Paleogene strata further constrains the onset of the low-angle Median Tectonic Line to post-Paleocene.
Like many crustal-scale fault zones, the Median Tectonic Line (MTL) fault zone in Japan preserves fault rocks that formed across a broad range of physical conditions. We examined the architecture of ...the MTL at a large new outcrop in order to understand fault behaviours under different crustal levels. The MTL here strikes almost E–W, dips to the north, and juxtaposes the Sanbagawa metamorphic rocks to the south against the Izumi Group sediments to the north. The fault core consists mainly of Sanbagawa-derived fault gouges. The fault zone can be divided into several structural units, including two slip zones (upper and lower slip zones), where the lower slip zone is more conspicuous. Crosscutting relationships among structures and kinematics indicate that the fault zone records four stages of deformation. Microstructures and powder X-ray diffraction (XRD) analyses indicate that the four stages of deformation occurred under different temperature conditions. The oldest deformation (stage 1) was widely distributed, and had a top-to-the-east (dextral) sense of slip at deep levels of the seismogenic zone. Deformation with the same sense of slip, then became localised in the lower slip zone (stage 2). Subsequently, the slip direction in the lower slip zone changed to top-to-the-west (sinistral-normal) (stage 3). The final stage of deformation (stage 4) involved top-to-the-north normal faulting along the two slip zones within the shallow crust (near the surface). The widely distributed stage 1 damage zone characterises the deeper part of the seismogenic zone, while the sets of localised principal slip zones and branching faults of stage 4 characterise shallow depths. The fault zone architecture described in this paper leads us to suggest that fault zones display different behaviours at different crustal levels.
•Detail of the Median Tectonic Line fault zone architecture at a large outcrop•Four stages of deformation were recorded with different kinematics/temperatures.•Each stage of deformation is characterised by different fault zone architectures.•Different behaviours of the fault zone at different crustal levels are suggested.