The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus Newsletter
 
Newsletter No. 26. 2013    

July 1, 2013    
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Greetings!

 

 Women and disaster . . . Mire Koikari examines the ways in which Japanese state and society have crafted the role of women and family in disasters, natural and human, from the 1923 earthquake through the war and on to 3.11 and its aftermath. 

 

 

 Check out the most widely read articles at APJ . . . in the last month, last year, last five years and all time: at Top Ten Articles on our home page.

 

 

Asia Pacific Journal NEW Free Downloadable Course Readers!!!

 

The Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus announces the release of our second set of volume-length e-book compilations of essays on selected topics with explanatory introductions by scholars. The volume editors have chosen articles from the archive that lend themselves particularly well to classroom use and work well as a set.All volumes have been peer-reviewed, in addition to the initial review process before each article was originally posted, and we have permission from all verified copyright holders.

Students like the fact that the articles areavailable 24-7, are storable on-line, searchable, and cost nothing to them. The readers can also be highlighted, annotated, printed, and include convenient bookmarks to navigate to the beginning of each article.

 

New Course Readers:

** The Japanese Empire: Colonial Lives and Postcolonial Struggle edited by Kirsten Ziomek

** Japan's "Abandoned People" in the Wake of Fukushima edited by Brian Earl

** Public Opinion on Nuclear Power in Japan after the Fukushima Disaster edited by Brian Earl

** The Politics of Memory in Japan and East Asia edited by Sven Saaler & Justin Aukema

 

They join the 2012 publications:

  1. War and Visual Culture edited by Hong Kal and Jooyeon Rhee.
  2. Environmental History edited by Eiko Maruko Siniawer.
  3. War in Japanese Popular Culture edited by Matthew Penney.
  4. Women and Japan's Political Economy edited by Valerie Barske.  

The topics of other volumes currently in preparation include:  

** Japan and the American-led Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

** Ethnic Minorities and Japan.

** Globalization and Japanese Popular Culture: Mixing It Up.

** Japanese Intellectual Currents of the Twentieth Century.

** Putting Okinawa at the Center.

 

To Download a Volume: The volumes are downloadable from the Asia-Pacific Journal website as searchable PDFs. From the home page, please click on the button marked Course Readers at the top and center of the page, or go directly to the course reader page. Interested viewers may download a copy of any reader by clicking on the appropriate link at the course readers home page and entering their email address. In addition, viewers may directly download the table of contents of each course reader for a preview of the volume.

 

The Editorial Board for this project consists of Mark Caprio; Rikkyo University; Lonny Carlile, University of Hawai'i, Parks Coble, University of Nebraska; Sabine Fr�st�ck, UC-Santa Barbara; A. Tom Grunfeld, Empire State College; Laura Hein, Northwestern University; James Huffman, Wittenberg University; Jeffrey Kingston, Temple University-Japan; Susan Long, John Carroll University; Laura Miller, University of Missouri, St. Louis; Mark Ravinia, Emory University; Mark Selden, APJ-Japan Focus; Stephen Vlastos, University of Iowa.

 

If you are interested in creating a volume yourself, wish to participate as a reviewer and editor, have suggestions for new topics, or want to discuss another aspect of this project, please contact Laura Hein at [email protected].

 

Although the course readers are free, we welcome donations to support the Journal and this initiative; please note the red button Sustaining APJ on the left side of the APJ home page.

 

 ***

 

All recent articles  are now available on Kindle, as are several recent articles. If you experience any difficulty in accessing them, please let us know at [email protected].

 

 

Our home page has a category Featured Articles. This will take you to the most widely read articles of recent times and over our decade of publication. Check it out to discover some of the most important work that has appeared in the journal..

What have been the most widely read articles at APJ? To find out, click on "Top Ten Articles" at the top of the home page, for the top articles of the last month, last year, last five years and last decade.

Our home page has a number of important features. There is a powerful search engine that permits search by author, title, and keyword, found in top left of the home page. For most purposes, author's surname or a keyword entered in Title is most useful. Another is a regularly updated guide to the more than 100 articles we have published on the 3.11 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear power meltdown which is transforming Japanese politics and society, and is reshaping issues of nuclear power and energy policy in that nation and globally. Articles are arranged topically. In addition, we have added a guide to some of the most important, and liveliest, online and print sources on 3.11 including blogs and websites.  Second, the list of articles now indicates all those available in Japanese translation or original, as well as other languages.

Many thanks to all who contributed to our annual fund-raiser. APJ will continue to be available free to all in 2013. If you missed the opportunity to join our sustainers, you can still do so by going to the red sustainer button on our home page to contribute via Paypal or credit card. Or, if you prefer, we can accept checks on US banks: write to us at http://[email protected].  Thank you for your support. 

More than 6,000 people now subscribe to APJ, either through our Newsletter or the more than 2,700 who follow us  through Twitter or Facebook, whose numbers are growing steadily. Please consider joining them by clicking at the appropriate link on our home page.       

 

We invite authors, publishers and directors to bring their books, films and events on East Asia and the Pacific to the attention of our readers. See the home page for information about presenting relevant books and films at our site and for examples of authors, publishers and filmmakers who are presenting their work at the Journal.

Contact Japan Focus by email at
[email protected]

To access our full archive with more than 2,000 articles, and to view the most widely read articles through their titles or via our index, go here. 
  
Subscription information
The Asia-Pacific Journal is freely available to all. We invite those who wish to support our work by allowing us to make technical upgrades, defray technical, mailing and maintenance fees, and to enable us to expand our output since the 3.11 earthquake and tsunami. Recommended support level: $25 ($10 for students and residents of developing countries); $40 for institutions including libraries, research centers, government offices. If you experience difficulty in subscribing, write to us with the error message at [email protected] 
Mire Koikari, Training Women for Disasters: Gender, Crisis Management (Kiki Kanri) and Post-3.11 Nationalism in Japan

  

On September 2, 2011, Takarajimasha, a publisher known for its popular magazines, printed an oversized PR piece in the leading national newspapers in Japan. Splashed across the pages of the Asahi, Yomiuri, Mainichi, Sankei, Nihon Keizai, and Nikkan Gendai was the 1945 black-and-white photograph of General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, emerging from his plane, Bataan, at Atsugi Airport outside Tokyo to commence his reign as head of the occupation forces in Japan  

In 2011, when the nation was barely recovering from a 9.0-magnitude earthquake that had hit the Tōhoku region, this iconic image of MacArthur was combined with the caption, "Ii kuni tsukurō, nando demo" (Let's build and rebuild the country, however repeatedly), where "ii kuni" would invoke - through Japanese wordplay (goroawase) the founding year of the Kamakura shogunate. Adding more to this already heavily symbolic representation, Takarajimasha chose to publish the piece on September 2, the anniversary of Japan's official surrender to the Allied Powers and the inaugural day of the Noda Cabinet following the demise of Prime Minister Kan as a result of his failure in handling "3.11," the national crisis triggered by the triple disasters of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown (Takarajishama 2011).   

 

Mire Koikari is Associate Professor of Women's Studies Department at the University of Hawaii. Her recent publications include Pedagogy of Democracy: Feminism and the Cold War in the US Occupation of Japan (Temple University Press, 2008). She is currently working on a research project, "Making Homes, Building Bases: Women, Militarism, and Cold War Transnationalism in the US Occupation of Okinawa," in which she examines the link between domesticity, militarization, and post-war empire building in Cold War Okinawa. The author thanks Tomiyama Ichirō, Matsuda Motoji, and Gwyn Kirk for their insights, comments, and conversations. 

 

Recommended citation: Mire Koikari, "Training Women for Disasters: Gender, Crisis Management (Kiki Kanri) and Post-3.11 Nationalism in Japan," The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 11, Issue 26, No. 1. July 1, 2013."