The narrative explores the life of Taro Yashima, a Japanese artist who navigated his identity between his allegiance to Japan and his wartime collaboration with the U.S. during WWII. It highlights the complexities of transnational identity, nationalism, and the struggles faced by Japanese Americans, illustrating how Yashima's experiences challenge traditional historical frameworks that simplify loyalties into binaries. By examining Yashima's commitment to mutual humanity amidst legal and emotional struggles, the paper sheds light on the intricate relationships between national identity and personal narratives in the context of war and diaspora.

The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 2007

2000

other organizations, but as individuals in order to promote the well-being of the peoples concerned."Z From the beginning, however, an atmosphere of non-partisanship proved difficult to maintain. The opposition ofthe Japanese delegation to the presence of an informal delegation from Korea at the initial 1925 meeting compelled the organizing committee to agree that Korea would not be allowed independent representation at future conferences. At the 1929 conference in Kyoto, the first English-language version of the (spurious) "Tanaka Memorial" appeared, sparking conflict between the Chinese and Japanese delegations that, in the words of historian Paul F. Hooper, "effectively previewed the subsequent Manchurian crisis." In 1934, the Institute moved its research headquarters to Tokyo partly in order to make its voice more effectively heard in Asia, but the Japanese government, disliking IPR publications critical of its Manchuria policy, worked indirectly through the Japanese Council to force the office's return to New York. By 1937, when the IPR launched an "Inquiry Series" into the causes of the Sino-Japanese War, majority opinion within the organization sympathized with China. The Japanese Council protested the Series' bias to no avail, and not long afterward withdrew from the IPR under government pressure. 3 The higher the IPR's profile among policy makers, the more difficult it was to preserve its nature as a forum for dispassionate discussion. One of the contributors to the Inquiry Series was E. Herbert Norman, who at one point in the 1930s served as a research associate of the IPR's International Secretariat. The son of Canadian missionaries, Norman lived in Japan from the time of his birth in 1909 until his graduation from Kobe's Canadian Academy in 1926. He spent the next decade-and-a-half abroad, studying in Canada, England, and the United States. At the time of Japan's invasion southward into China in 1937, he was pursuing a Ph.D. in Japanese and Chinese history at Harvard. He

for her trust, for her helpful advice, and for her fondness for disClosure, not only as a 'vanity publication,' but also as a pedagogic tool for training the next generation of editors, authors, and reviewers. A 'thank you' is also due to Naomi Norasak for all of the behind-the-scenes work she does.

2008

We certifY that we have read this dissertation and that, in our opinion, it is satisfactory in scope and qualifies as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History.

Reviews in History, 2010

Modern Fiction Studies, 2014

Japanese Language and Literature, 2021

In an article from 1978 critic Isoda Kōichi recalls how, at a point when he had been researching the influence of the American-led occupation on Japanese literature, he found himself "unable to control my various deep emotions" and "pour[ing] forth tears of compassion." 1 "What I keenly felt," he explains, "was the low stature of Japanese of that time in regard to the great authority of the occupying army." 2 For this reason, two events that occurred three days after the occupation had ended were particularly moving to Isoda. 3 One was that on May 1, 1952, Shinbun Akahata (しん ぶ ん 赤 旗), the communist periodical whose publication had been prohibited by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), resumed publication. The other was the so-called "Bloody May Day Incident," which occurred on the same date. Some 400,000 people demonstrated under the aegis of Sōhyō (総評), the General Council of Trade Unions of Japan, in regard to a raft of issues. These included support for workers' demands, opposition to Japan's rearmament, opposition to a proposed anti-subversive activities law, opposition to U. S. military bases, and the United States' continued occupation of Okinawa. 4 Of the Marxian economics that had led so many Japanese to join the communist party and to demonstrate, Isoda observes that it "had the glittering appeal of a secret teaching." 5 He recalls how, in overstepping the boundaries of the approved gathering place, Jingū Gaien, and "rampaging through" the "off-limits" Kōkyomae Plaza, the demonstrators committed an "illegal act" (不法行為 fuhō kōi). 6 Among other of its repercussions, this "illegal act" effectively purified the demonstrators' idealism, melding them into a "fated community" (運命共同体 unmei kyōdōtai). 7 And, for Japanese across the board-"whom MacArthur had said had the spiritual maturity of twelve year-olds"-it restored a measure of dignity. 8 In other

The Journal of Asian Studies, 2021

AI

Journal of American-East Asian Relations, 2010

Edited abstract from doctoral Thesis “Appropriate Japan: How Western Art prepared a Nation for War”, 2020

The gradually evolving establishment of totalitarianism in Japan enforced the decline of the nation’s civil society and with the increasingly conservative cultural climate, artists familiar with international progressive styles in the 1920s and 1930s, turned to figurative painting supporting national propaganda. Many artists positively hailed the involvement of the Military Information Bureau to embark on the systematic mobilisation of artists and became active agents in wartime culture. Some to avoid inscription as soldiers and others truthfully internalized the dominant wartime ideology with their belief. In response to the new policy, the military and political leadership sought the consolidation of the art community to keep it in step with the regime’s objectives. They initiated an important cultural reform to revitalize the state-sponsored art exhibition. Furthermore the official war documentary painting program Sensô kirokuga fostered a fighting spirit among the Japanese people, as well as documented the war with the help of renowned painters of the art community. The 'Army Art Association' Rikugun Bijutsu Kyōkai became the main grouping, coordinating the very much needed artists, photographers, and directors. As the military wanted a lasting record, the Army Art Association published three fundamentals for an ideal and realistic war documentary painting sensōga: (1) realism shajitsu, (2) group composition of figures, and (3) facility with drawing. Although the Military Information Bureau never had a shortage of new talent to work with, because of the specific techniques required, the most prolific war painters were those who were trained in Europe. The text describes the institutional structures and explains the most important protagonists who were involved in the artistic implementation of the coverage. Quite a few of the formerly very critical artists worked in the service of state propaganda and actively helped to inspire the population to support the war. This period of Japanese art history has often been forgotten, and this article is intended to help us remember it. リクルートされた創造性。日本の芸術家はいかにして西洋の手法で戦争を語ることができたか 日本では全体主義が徐々に確立され、市民社会が衰退し、保守的な文化風潮が強まる中、1920年代から1930年代にかけて国際的に進歩的なスタイルに親しんだ芸術家は、国家のプロパガンダを支える具象画に転向していったのです。 多くの芸術家は、軍情報局が芸術家の組織的な動員を開始したことを積極的に歓迎し、戦時文化の積極的な担い手となった。ある者は兵士としての徴兵を避けるために、またある者は戦時中の支配的なイデオロギーを信念を持って真摯に内面化した。 この新しい政策に呼応して、軍と政治の指導者たちは、芸術界を政権の目標に歩調を合わせるために、その統合を模索した。 彼らは重要な文化改革に着手し、国主催の美術展を活性化させた。また、「戦争記録画」は日本人の闘争心を鼓舞し、美術界の著名な画家の協力を得て、戦争を記録した。陸軍美術協会が中心となって、必要な画家、写真家、監督を集め、理想的で写実的な戦争記録画の基本原則を3つ発表しました。 (1）写実、（2）人物の集団構成、（3）デッサンの巧みさ。 軍国情報局では、新しい人材に事欠くことはなかったが、特殊な技術を必要とするため、最も多くの戦没画家がヨーロッパで修行した人たちであった。 本文では、制度的な構造を説明し、取材の芸術的な実施に携わった最も重要な主人公たちについて解説している。 かつて非常に批判的だった芸術家のうち、かなりの人数が国家宣伝のために働き、国民に戦争支持を鼓舞することに積極的に貢献した。 日本美術史のこの時期は、しばしば忘れ去られてきたが、この記事はそれを思い出す一助となることを意図している。

2009

The International Journal of Asian Studies, 2008

The 1950s in Japan are usually considered to be marked by pacifism or a “victim consciousness” related to World War II, together with a rejection of war and of the military. Yet attention to the popular press and other sources designed to reflect and appeal to a mass audience, rather than magazines carrying debates among intellectuals, shows that throughout the 1950s the recent war was a much more dynamic issue than typically has been recognized, and that former soldiers were far from universally reviled. Connections with the war, in turn, remained an integral part of the evolving sense of nation in Japan. This article examines the vitality of the war as a major and direct theme in political, social and cultural discourse in the 1950s, focusing on soldiers' involvement in politics, issues relating to Class B and C war criminals, films about the war, and the emergence of a new cultural hero in the form of Kaji, the soldier who is the central figure in the novel and filmThe Human ...

The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 2011

Although international consensus has it that the Japanese people are unusually reluctant to face their own wartime past, this generalization has never been entirely true, as regular readers of The Asia Pacific Journal already know. Like human beings everywhere, since 1945 Japanese have debated the lessons of war and disagreed about its meaning among themselves. And, also like people everywhere, many Japanese regret both official policies and widespread individual behaviors of the past. They not only desire reconciliation with Koreans, Chinese, and other Asians, but also recognize that, as Japanese, they cannot dictate its terms. Some have already entered into cross-national dialogue about the war and the colonial violence that reached its crescendo during the war years. Moreover, precisely because reflection on such issues is uncomfortable, they struggle over how to do so, often turning to oblique or refracted approaches, what Dora Apel calls "the sideways glance," such as through literary or artistic expression. 1 Both this ambivalence and these strategies are human rather than Japanese traits. Visual artists, filmmakers, and fiction writers have far more experience expressing complex and contradictory emotions than do historians, so their prominent role in memory studies

Legacies of the Asia-Pacific War: The Yakeato Generation, 2010

This book investigates the genealogy of the Yakeato (焼け跡) generation or those Japanese, who experienced the final stage of the war during their adolescent period. The book investigates generational issues of disenfranchised people emerging from the aftermath of the Asia–Pacific War along the lines of other minorities such as Koreans in Japan (migrants or forced labourers), Burakumin, Hibakusha, Okinawans, Asian minorities, comfort women and many others. Several of these groups have been discussed in a large corpus of what we may call ‘disenfranchised literature’, and the research presented in this book intends to add an additional and particularly controversial example to the long list of the voice- and powerless. The presence of members of what is known as the yakeato sedai (焼け跡世代) or the generation of people who experienced the fire-bombings of the Asia–Pacific War is conspicuous in all areas of contemporary Japan. From literature to the visual arts, from music to theater, from architecture to politics, their influence and in many cases guiding principles is evident everywhere and in many cases forms the keystone of modern Japanese society and culture.

Hitotsubashi Journal of Social Studies, 1998

Japan Forum, 2021

Review of Christopher Harding's excellent recent 'The Japanese: A History in Twenty Lives.'

The Journal of Japanese Studies, 2009

Journal of Japanese Studies, 2011

Japanese foreign policymakers before the early 1930s are described typically as Western-oriented pragmatists who were resistant to Pan-Asianist doctrines. This essay presents the case of Uchida Yasuya, Japan's foreign minister in parts of the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s who was also a Pan-Asianist in his early career. Uchida's case illustrates how Pan-Asianist beliefs were easily reoriented to support the new policy goal of a Japanese mainland empire following the Russo-Japanese War. Because he was foreign minister during the Manchurian Incident, Uchida's views also shed light on the question of when Pan-Asianism began to meaningfully impact foreign policy in the 1930s.

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