Japan Story

by Christopher Harding

  18 FRAGMENTS

  On the tsunami of 2011, see Andrew Gordon, A Modern History of Japan, 3rd edn (Oxford University Press, 2014); Richard Lloyd-Parry, Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan’s Disaster Zone (Jonathan Cape, 2017); author interviews with survivors and families of victims (October 2017). On Yanase Takashi, see Nakamura Keiko, Yanase Takashi, Meruhen no majutsushi: Kyūjyū nen no kiseki [‘Yanase Takashi, Wizard of Fairytales: A Ninety-Year Journey’] (Kawadeshoboshinsha, 2009); Yanase Takashi, Jinsei nante yume dakedo [‘Life is But a Dream’] (Fureberukan, 2005) and Anpanman Densetsu [‘Anpanman Legend’] (Fureberukan, 1997); ‘1945 nen natsu o tazuneru (3) – Yanase Takashi san: Anpanman kometa omoi’ [‘Enquiring after the Summer of 1945 (3) – Yanase Takashi: Thoughts on Anpanman’] in Asahi Shimbun, 15 July 2015; ‘Jidai no shogensha (8)’, Yomiuri bukkuretto, 48 (2005); Fukuda Ikehiro, ‘Itadakimaasu! Anpanman – nihonteki na inshoku no kansei o taigen suru hīrō’; Kuresawa Takemi, ‘Bunshin to shite no kyarakutā’; Yokota Masao, ‘Minna daisuki “Soreike! Anpanman” no shinrigaku’; and ‘Interview: Yanase Takashi: subete wa un ni michibikarete – hīrō’ no shōzō’: all in Yuriika: Yanase Takashi Anpanman no kokoro [Eureka Special Edition: ‘Takashi Yanase: the Heart of Anpanman’] (Seidosha, 2013); ‘Yanase Takashi-san shibō: “Anpanman” sakusha, 94 sai’, in Asahi Shimbun, 16 October 2013; ‘Yanase Takashi-san shibō – 94 sai’ in Yomiuri Shimbun, 16 October, 2013; ‘Anpanman ni takushita yume – ningen – Yanase Takashi’, NHK website, 30 October 2013. On Japanese pop culture, see Roland Kelts, Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the US (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); Yasushi Watanabe and David L. McConnell, Soft Power Superpowers: Cultural and National Assets of Japan and the United States (Routledge, 2008); Douglas McGray, ‘Japan’s Gross National Cool’, Foreign Policy, 130 (2002). On the SDF during the 2011 crisis, see Giuseppe A. Stavale, ‘The GSDF During the Post-Cold War Years, 1989–2015’, in Robert D. Eldridge and Paul Midford (eds), The Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force: Search for Legitimacy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017); Yezi Yeo, ‘De-Militarizing Military: Confirming Japan’s Self-Defense Forces’ Identity as a Disaster Relief Agency in the 2011 Tohoku Triple Crisis’, Asia Journal of Global Studies, 5:2 (2013). On Operation Tomodachi and its aftermath, see Juan Carlos Rodriguez, ‘9th Circ. Agrees to Speed Up Sailors’ $1B Fukushima Suit’, Law 360 (5 April 2016); Yuri Kageyama, ‘Sick US Sailors and Marines Who Blame Radiation Get Support From Japan’s Ex-Leader’, Navy Times, 7 September 2016; Julian Ryall, ‘US Sailors Who “Fell Sick From Fukushima Radiation” Allowed to Sue Japan, Nuclear Plant Operator’, The Telegraph, 23 June 2017; Bianca Bruno, ‘Judge: Sailors’ Fukushima Radiation Case Doesn’t Belong in US’, Courthouse News Service, 5 January 2018. On the Fukushima disaster, see Gordon, A Modern History of Japan; Alexis Dudden, ‘The Ongoing Disaster’, Journal of Asian Studies, 71:2 (2012); Richard J. Samuels, ‘Japan’s Rhetoric of Crisis: Prospects for Change After 3.11’, Journal of Japanese Studies, 39:1 (2013); Daniel P. Aldrich, ‘Trust Deficit: Japanese Communities and the Challenge of Rebuilding Tohoku’, Japan Forum, 29:1 (2017); Martin J. Frid, ‘Food Safety: Addressing Radiation in Japan’s Northeast After 3.11’, Asia-Pacific Journal, 31:3 (August 2011) and ‘Food Safety in Japan: One Year After the Nuclear Disaster’, Asia-Pacific Journal, 12:1 (March 2012); Hrabrin Bachev and Fusao Ito, ‘Agricultural Impacts of the Great East Japan Earthquake – Six Years Later’, Munich Personal RePEc Archive, April 2017; on plans to evacuate Tokyo during the 2011 crisis: Andrew Gilligan, ‘Fukushima: Tokyo was on the Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe, Admits Former Prime Minister’, The Telegraph, 4 March 2016. On the progress of Abenomics by mid-2017, see ‘The Quiet but Substantial Successes of Abenomics’, Financial Times, 1 May 2017. On Abe’s strategic plans for Japan, see Lawrence Repeta, ‘Japan’s Democracy at Risk’, Asia-Pacific Journal, 28:3 (July 2013); Carl F. Goodman, ‘Contemplated Amendments to Japan’s 1947 Constitution’, Washington International Law Journal, 26:1 (2016); ‘Abe’s Master Plan’, The Economist, 18 May 2013; Gavan McCormack, ‘Japan: Prime Minister Abe Shinzō’s Agenda’, in Asia-Pacific Journal, 14:24 (2016); Mina Pollmann, ‘Japan’s Controversial State Secrets Law: One Year Later’, The Diplomat, 9 December 2015. On plans for the 2020 Olympics, see ; Yukari Easton, ‘Tokyo 2020 and Japan’s Soft Power’, The Diplomat, 31 August 2016; Danielle Muoio, ‘Tokyo is Getting Ready to Host the Most Advanced Olympics Ever’, UK Business Insider, 23 March 2016. On Japan’s matsuri tradition, see Helen Hardacre, Shinto: A History (Oxford University Press, 2017). On depression in Japan, see Junko Kitanaka, Depression in Japan: Psychiatric Cures for a Society in Distress (Princeton University Press, 2011); Hiroshi Ihara, ‘A Cold of the Soul: A Japanese Case of Disease Mongering in Psychiatry’, International Journal of Risk and Safety in Medicine, 24 (2012); Christopher Harding, ‘How Japan Came to Believe in Depression’, BBC News Magazine, 20 July 2016. On the media and music, see David McNeill, ‘Japan’s Contemporary Media’, in Jeff Kingston (ed.), Critical Issues in Contemporary Japan (Routledge, 2014); especially on Saitō Kazuyoshi, Noriko Manabe, The Revolution Will Not be Televised: Protest Music After Fukushima (Oxford University Press, 2016) and Manabe, ‘Uprising: Music, Youth, and Protest Against the Policies of the Abe Shinzō Government’, Asia-Pacific Journal, 12:32 (2014); Ian F. Martin, Quit Your Band! Musical Notes from the Japanese Underground (Awai Books, 2016); Carolyn Stevens, Japanese Popular Music: Culture, Authenticity, and Power (Routledge, 2008). On Japan’s demographic time-bomb and associated attitudes, see Richard Ronald and Allison Alexy (eds), Home and Family in Japan: Continuity and Transformation (Routledge, 2011); ‘How Does Japan Compare?’, in The Pursuit of Gender Equality: An Uphill Battle, OECD Publications, 4 October 2017; Hirano Yūko, ‘Foreign Care Workers in Japan: A Plan Without a Vision’, Nippon.com, 13 February 2017; Hiroyuki Nakata, ‘Attitudes Towards Immigration in an Ageing Society’ (RIETI Discussion paper series 17-E-095, June 2017); Emma Jacobs, ‘Out of Office: the Fathers Bringing up Baby’, Financial Times, 13 March 2016. On ‘care-bot’ technology: Jon Emont, ‘Japan Prefers Robot Bears to Foreign Nurses’, Foreign Policy, March 2017; Leo Lewis, ‘Can Robots Make Up for Japan’s Care Home Shortfall?’, Financial Times, 18 October 2017. On the history of LGBT rights in Japan, see Jeffrey Angles, Writing the Love of Boys: Origins of Bishōnen Culture in Modernist Japanese Literature (University of Minnesota Press, 2011). On Ainu history and culture, see Brett L. Walker, The Conquest of Ainu Lands: Ecology and Culture in Japanese Expansion, 1590–1800 (University of California Press, 2001); Richard M. Siddle, ‘The Ainu: Indigenous People of Japan’, in Michael Weiner (ed.), Japan’s Minorities: The Illusion of Homogeneity (Routledge, 1997); Katarina Sjöberg, The Return of the Ainu: Cultural Mobilization and the Practice of Ethnicity in Japan (Psychology Press, Abingdon, 1993); Kyosuke Kindaiti, Ainu Life and Legends (Board of Tourist Industry, Japanese Government Railways, 1941); Yoichi Tanaka, ‘Ainu People Today’, in Focus, 36 (Asia-Pacific Human Rights Information Center, 2004); Tessa Morris-Suzuki, ‘Still a Way to Go for Japanese Minorities’, East Asia Forum, 11 May 2015. On Okinawan history and culture, see ‘Introduction’ in Glen D. Hook and Richard Siddle (eds), Japan and Okinawa: Structure and Subjectivity (Routledge, 2002); Matt Gillan, Songs from the Edge of Japan: Music-making in Yaeyama and Okinawa (Routledge, 2012); Ina Hein, ‘Constructing Difference in Japan: Literary Counter-Images of the Okinawa Boom’, Contemporary Japan, 22:1–2 (2010); D. L. Bhowmik and Steve Rabson (eds), Islands of Protest: Japanese Literature from Okinawa (University of Hawaii Press, 2016); Steve Rabson, ‘Being Okinawan in Japan: the Diaspora Experience’, Asia-Pacific Journal, 10:12 (2012). On Zainichi Koreans, see John Lie, Multiethnic Japan (Harvard University Press, 2004); Martin Fackler, ‘New Dissent in Japan is Loudly Anti-Foreign’, New York Times, 28 August 2010; Sonia Ryang & John Lie (eds), Diaspora Without Homeland: Being Korean in Japan (Global, Area, and International Archive, University of California Press, 2009). On the history of disability rights in J
apan, see Carolyn Stevens, Disability in Japan (Routledge, 2013); Katharina Heyer, Rights Enabled: The Disability Revolution, from the US, to Germany and Japan, to the United Nations (University of Michigan Press, 2015); Shirasawa Mayumi, ‘The Long Road to Disability Rights in Japan’, Nippon.com, October 2014. On the Burakumin, see Christopher Bondy, Voice, Silence, and Self: Negotiations of Buraku Identity in Contemporary Japan (Harvard University Press, 2015); Ian Neary, ‘Burakumin in Contemporary Japan’, in Michael Weiner (ed.), Japan’s Minorities (Routledge, 1997); ‘New law to fight bias against ‘burakumin’ seen falling short’, Japan Times, 19 December 2016. ‘Vulgar’ is from an interview with Setouchi Jakuchō conducted by the author in October 2012. ‘Defray the expenses’ and ‘You are therefore requested’ are from Kindaiti, Ainu Life and Legends.

  EPILOGUE

  On ghostly phenomena in the wake of the 2011 disasters in Japan, see Kiyoshi Kanebishi, ‘Religious Layers of History Opened Up by the “Apparition Phenomena” After the 2011 Tōhoku Earthquake and Tsunami Disaster: Utilizing the Theory of the Gift Relationships of the Deceased Becoming Intimate’ (working paper), in Kanebishi (ed.) Yobisamaseru reisei-no shinsaigaku [‘Studying the Awakened Spirituality of the 2011 Tōhoku Disaster’] (Shin-yo-sha, 2016); Richard Lloyd-Parry, ‘Ghosts of the Tsunami’, London Review of Books, 36:3 (February 2014) and Lloyd-Parry, Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan’s Disaster Zone (Jonathan Cape, 2017); Okuno Shuji, Tamashii demo ii kara soba ni ite [‘Stay With Me, Even as a Spirit’] (Shinchosha, 2017). On religion and distress in contemporary Japan more broadly, see Christopher Harding, Fumiaki Iwata and Shin’ichi Yoshinaga (eds), Religion and Psychotherapy in Modern Japan (Routledge, 2015). This chapter also draws on interviews conducted in Japan in October 2017 with Taniyama Yōzō, Kaneta Taiō, Kanebishi Kiyoshi, Okuno Shuji, Ioannis Gaitinidis, Murakami Aki, Kuroki Aruji and Matsuda Hiroko. ‘It was a moonlit night’ is the author’s translation of ‘Story 99’ in Yanagita Kunio, Tōno no Monogatari (1910). ‘Thousands of people had just died’ is from Kuroki Aruji, interview with the author, October 2017.

  Illustration Credits

  Kosawa Heisaku (© Kosawa Family Archive); Setouchi Harumi (© Kyodo News)

  Edo Castle. Drawing by Kazuo Hozumi, from Akira Naito, Edo no machi: kyodai toshi no tanjō (1982)

  A street scene in Edo (© City of Edinburgh Council/Edinburgh Libraries)

  Ground-plan of Dejima (Courtesy of Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague, shelf number KW 114 L 22, plate after page 264)

  A Banquet on Dejima (© Collection of Nagasaki Museum of History and Culture)

  Hokusai, Great Wave off Kanagawa (c.1830) (© H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929/The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

  Portrait of Commodore Perry (© Honolulu Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs Walter F. Dillingham, in memory of Alice Perry); Foreign Ship (© Collection of Nagasaki Museum of History and Culture)

  Fukuzawa Yukichi (© National Diet Library, ‘Portraits of Modern Japanese Historical Figures’)

  Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, Surrender of the Rebels (c.1880) (© John Stevenson/Corbis Historical/Getty Images)

  Saigō Takamori (© National Diet Library, ‘Portraits of Modern Japanese Historical Figures’); Rumours About ‘Saigō Star’ (© Chronicle of World History/Alamy Stock Photo)

  Kageyama Hideko (© Chronicle of World History/Alamy Stock Photo); Itagaki Taisuke (© National Diet Library, ‘Portraits of Modern Japanese Historical Figures’)

  The Rokumeikan (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

  George Ferdinand Bigot, Monday at the Rokumeikan (1887) (© Chronicle of World History/Alamy Stock Photo); George Ferdinand Bigot, Imitation (1877) (© Chronicle of World History/Alamy Stock Photo)

  Kobayashi Eitaku, Izanagi and Izanami Creating the Islands of Japan (c.1885) (© Art Collection 3/Alamy Stock Photo)

  Itō Hirobumi (© National Diet Library, ‘Portraits of Modern Japanese Historical Figures’); Gotō Yoshikage, Illustration of the Imperial Diet of Japan (1890) (© 2018, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

  A family meeting: From Chokei Dōjin, Katei no Kairaku (1902)

  Toyohara Chikanobu, A Mirror of Japanese Nobility (1887) (© 2018, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

  Utagawa Toyukuni III, The Origins of Sacred Dance at the Heavenly Cave (c.1856) (© ART Collection/Alamy Stock Photo); Hiratsuka Raichō (Public domain, from Seitōsha, c.1913)

  Two Buddhist monks (© Chronicle/Alamy Stock Photo); Inoue Enryō (© Art Collection 4/Alamy Stock Photo)

  A fumi-e ceremony (© Chronicle of World History/Alamy Stock Photo); Crucifixion (fumi-e plate) (©Heritage Image Partnership Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo); staue of ‘Maria Kannon’ (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

  Yamagata Aritomo (© National Diet Library, ‘Portraits of Modern Japanese Historical Figures’)

  ‘Japanese Suicide Squad Fight Bravely in a Naval Battle at Port Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War’ (© 2018, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

  Akutagawa Ryūnosuke (© National Diet Library, ‘Portraits of Modern Japanese Historical Figures’); Hayashi Fumiko (© The Asahi Shimbun via Getty Images)

  Tokyo in the 1920s (© Bettmann/Getty Images)

  Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Dancing Cats (c.1841) (Courtesy of William Pearl)

  ‘Modern girls’ (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Photographer: Kageyama Kōyō, ‘Beach pyjama fashion’, c.1928)

  Natsume Sōseki (© National Diet Library, ‘Portraits of Modern Japanese Historical Figures’)

  A tengu (Courtesy of the Humphries Family Trust)

  Kosawa Heisaku (© Kosawa Family Archive)

  Newspapers depicting the Taiwan Expedition of 1874 (Courtesy of Yosha Bunko collection, William Wetherall, www.nishike.com); ‘Jap the Giant-Killer’, from Punch (1894) (Courtesy of The Project Gutenberg EBook of Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 107, 29 September 1894. Retrieved 16 May 2018 [EBook #46738]); ‘Look Out John; It’s Loaded’ from the Tacoma Times (1904) (© Tacoma Times, courtesy of Washington State Library’s Digital Newspaper Program)

  The Battle for Shanghai (© FLHC/Alamy Stock Photo)

  The 26 February incident, 1936 (© The Asahi Shimbun via Getty Images); the Shōwa Emperor (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

  The Nanjing Victory Parade, 1937 (© Paul Fearn/Alamy Stock Photo)

  The Kōa Kannon statue (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

  D. T. Suzuki (Courtesy of Okamura Mihoko)

  Wheeler Airfield under attack (© Time Life Pictures/US Navy/the LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images); USS Shaw explodes during Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor (Courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, War and Conflict Number 1135 (NAID: 520590, NAIL Control Number: NWDNS-80-G-16871). National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD)

  Momotarō vs Mickey Mouse, from Omochabako shiriizu daisanwa: ehon 1936 nen (‘Toybox Series No. 3: Picture Book 1936’), J. O. Studio (1934); Momotarō no umiwashi (Momotarō’s Sea Eagles), Geijutsu Eigasha (1942).

  Popeye war stamps advert (Courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration (NAID: 514862, NAIL Control Number: NWDNS-44-PA-1256). National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD)

  An aerial view of a bomb-damaged Tokyo (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons); bodies and wreckage in Tokyo (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

  A train taking Tokyoites to the countryside in search of food (Courtesy of Tanuma Takeyoshi)

  Beate Sirota with Ichikawa Fusae (Courtesy of the family of Beate Sirota Gordon)

  Women voting for the first time, April 1946 (© The Mainichi Newspapers/Aflo)

  Akiyoshi Toshiko (© Metronome/Archive photos/Getty Images); Hampton Hawes (© GAB Archive/Redferns/Getty Images)

  ‘New Constitution, Bright Life’ (© National Diet Library of Japan)

  Sony’s TR-63 radio (© YOSHIKAZU TSUNO/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

  Crown Prince Akihito and Crown Princess Michiko (© Bettmann/Getty Images); Sakai Yoshinori opening the Tokyo Summer Olympic Games, October 1964 (© A
FP/Getty Images)

  The launch of the shinkansen, October 1964 (© The Asahi Shimbun via Getty Images); The Peanuts (© United Archives GmbH/Alamy Stock Photo)