This study investigates the political consciousness, identity, and cultural resilience of Okinawan emigrants to mainland Japan, focusing on the Hyogo Prefecture Okinawan Association. Using surveys and interviews, it highlights how Okinawans navigate migration challenges while preserving their heritage. Key findings reveal a strong affinity for Okinawa among members who were first-generation Okinawan, while younger generations showed a shift toward broader Japanese identification. Cultural practices, such as Okinawan cuisine and traditional events, have remained essential but were less common among younger members. Most respondents opposed the concentration of US military bases in Okinawa, though views on economic dependency and base removal were divided.

Discussions on populism in Japan have often been overlooked in the comparative politics literature. However, as theoretical and empirical discussions progress, the need for more Japanese contributions to expand observers’ understanding of the global populist phenomenon is evident now more than ever. The sudden rise of Ishimaru Shinji as a populist figure in the 2024 Tokyo gubernatorial election sparked claims that “social media populism” has arrived in Japan. However, although social media certainly played a role in propelling Ishimaru’s popularity during his campaign, limiting considerations of populism to election campaign performances overlooks a greater question: What happens when populists are elected? This article suggests that the Ishimaru phenomenon needs to be contextualized with examples of distinct practices of populist governors. This article argues that, in a neoliberal era of “political reform” (seiji kaikaku) populist political entrepreneurs have introduced “innovations” to governing practices as a way to personalize the executive in pursuit of their policy agendas. Specifically, three governing practices of the populist governors Hashimoto Tōru and Koike Yuriko are identified and considered as a “populist playbook” from which Ishimaru, and future populists, will likely borrow.

This article introduces “CALL4,” a bilingual (Japanese and English) website created in 2019 to bring attention to public interest cases litigated in Japan’s courts. The open-access CALL4 website (https://www.call4.jp/) is designed to both stimulate public interest and raise money for litigation costs through crowdfunding. It presently covers more than 80 cases. CALL4 has become a standard reference for news reporters, lawyers, and others concerned with public interest cases. The site has also raised significant funding. This article profiles the founders and their strategies for reaching a broad audience to support public interest cases, including a significant reliance on student volunteers.

This article situates the Manchukuo Red Cross Society (MRCS) within the historiography of the Kwantung Army’s project to create an independent state in Northeast China, friction with Japanese interest groups already established in Manchuria, and the participation of ordinary Manchurians in state-sponsored organizations. It argues that the Kwantung Army’s sponsorship of a Manchukuo “national” Red Cross society reflected the accelerating pace of the Shinkyō government’s institutional development and pursuit of international recognition as a sovereign state. It also shows that the MRCS project encountered, and only partially overcame, opposition from on the one hand, the Japanese Red Cross Society (JRCS), which, since the Russo-Japanese War had established a strong institutional presence in Manchuria that it was reluctant to relinquish and, on the other hand, from the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), whose president deferred to the Swiss Foreign Ministry and overrode senior staff in refusing the MRCS membership status. Nevertheless, once established, the MRCS developed into a multi-ethnic and multi-national humanitarian organization that mobilized both the Chinese population and the Japanese immigrant community, engaged with local governing authorities, and enlisted thousands of common people in the movement, and to this extent, furthered the Kwantung Army’s nation-building project.

This research note explores an iconic female fraudster, who achieved celebrity criminal status with a substantial fanbase, by analyzing her status as an empowering female figure and the sociocultural context in contemporary Japan. In due course, we attempt to fill the notable research gap regarding the phenomenon of a female fraudster becoming a “celebrity criminal” from a post-feminist perspective. By analyzing online and interview materials, this article demonstrates that the highlighted otherness in Young’s “transgressive other” (Young 2007, 2011) is hardly applicable. We shed light on instrumentalized femininity shared among young women challenging the pre-existing normative femininity in contemporary Japan.

This article examines Himizu (2012) by Sono Shion, analyzing the protagonist’s classroom and shanty house as key sites in post-3/11 Japan. Drawing on Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, the study shows how these spaces function as zones where discourses of reconstruction, wa, sontaku, kizuna, and gaman are enforced and contested. While the classroom shifts from ideological apparatus to heterotopia of deviation, the shanty house enables care amid exclusion. Overall, the article advances debates on post-disaster cinema and spatialized trauma.

Maritime security is one of the most vulnerable domains to climate change. The Quad comprising India, Japan, Australia, and the U.S., shares concerns of impending climate change-induced maritime security challenges in the Indo-Pacific region. Climate change can catalyse intensified competition for resources and control over sea lanes leading to increased maritime violence. Thus, climate change can derail the collective goals for which the Quad was established – a free, open, prosperous, and inclusive Indo-Pacific region. It is therefore critical for the Quad to understand this emergent threat and how it is altering the geopolitical system in order to secure its strategic and economic interests.

This paper addresses three major issues. First, it provides an empirical understanding of the threats to maritime security in the Indo-Pacific that emerge from climate change. It shows how these challenges potentially impede the Quad’s goals of securing a free and open Indo- Pacific and a rules-based order. Secondly, the paper analyses the collective efforts the group has undertaken over the years to address climate change and maritime security in the region through its Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation Package (Q-CHAMP) and beyond. Thirdly, the study focuses on prospects for cooperation among the Quad countries, taking into consideration the recent change in administration in the US. We ask what collaborative maritime security mechanisms can the parties devise to strengthen the proposals in the Quad Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation Package (Q-CHAMP)? We argue that cooperation on climate change will not only augment climate preparedness in the Indo-Pacific region but also enhance the Quad’s legitimacy and durability as a minilateral grouping.

This Research Note is based on interviews with stakeholders and advocates for child safeguarding in Japan’s entertainment industries conducted by the researchers in Tokyo in July 2024. We argue that, if, as suggested by new legislation, there is an intention to apply UK-style “safeguarding” understandings to prevent reoccurrence of child sexual abuse such as that perpetrated by Johnny Kitagawa in Japan, there are four key barriers to overcome that necessitate increased information-sharing and cooperation between stakeholders in government and industry: precarious work, a reluctance to regulate, a lack of industry accountability, and a lack of societal awareness of child sexual abuse and its impacts.

Kōmei School was the first public school for children with physical disabilities in Japan and emerged from reformist, child-centered influences during the 1920s to early 1930s. This work examines the school’s history to reveal the place of children with disabilities in Japan’s compulsory school system. Administrative exemptions for decades blocked children with disabilities from “compulsory” education, denying them access to school. Kōmei School was established to provide opportunities to a few of many young Japanese individuals with physical challenges and proved to be a source of innovation. However, “abled” Japanese schoolchildren in compulsory schools were considered future national resources, and children with disabilities were not. Consequently, abled pupils were evacuated from Tokyo and other cities to safety in the 1944 mass evacuation policy, while Kōmei’s children with mobility challenges were abandoned to face air raids in Tokyo. Under a regime that assessed children as nascent military resources, the nationality of Kōmei’s pupils was denied, and even their humanity was questioned. After the war, children with physical disabilities remained devalued by the rapidly growing economy. As a result, the designation “compulsory” that would secure their right to an education, require their attendance in school, and guarantee that government would assure their place in school was not codified until 1979.

Sanseitō is a fringe Japanese political party founded during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic that has won several seats in the National Diet since 2022. Initially coming to prominence as a promoter of anti-vaccine narratives, the party has since promoted a conspiracist worldview that connects to more conventional right-wing nationalism and addresses a much broader range of issues and beliefs. In this article we outline the core tenets of this worldview and examine how attention to its construction as a participative political ideology sheds light on the party’s political actions and motivations.

This article examines the little-known experiences of children born of Chinese mothers and Japanese fathers who had consensual relationships during and after the Second Sino-Japanese War in China, with a specific focus on those who migrated to Japan after 1972. To understand how and why they—in their own words—“returned” to their “homeland,” this article analyzes historical circumstances as well as Sino-Japanese children’s experiences, identities, and belonging in comparison with other groups of “children born of war” in different historical and geopolitical settings. Their long-neglected stories point to a missing part in narratives of the 8-year war.

This paper offers an in-depth analysis of the massive political scandal of 2023–2024, in which dozens of lawmakers from Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) received undeclared funds from their factions. First, it provides a detailed timeline of the scandal and places it within the broader historical context of political scandals in Japan. Next, it examines the roles and actions of key participants, including power actors (politicians, secretaries, whistleblowers, prosecutors, and the prime minister) and media actors (mainstream newspapers, tabloid magazines, and political papers). Finally, the paper discusses two possible outcomes of the scandal: an optimistic scenario, where the scandal spurs meaningful reforms, and a pessimistic scenario, where it results in minimal or no transformative change.

Drawing on ethnographic research from Amami Ōshima, southern Japan, this paper documents the ways in which contemporary societies, from the hamlet to the nation state, are wrestling with opposing forces of environmental and economic sustainability and discusses the fractures this creates for people and ecosystems. It uses as a case study the protest to stop the construction of a seawall being built in Katoku, an ocean hamlet in Amami, based within the buffer zone of the island’s United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Natural Heritage Site. Rather than being built with the primary aim to protect “people and property,” I suggest this infrastructural intervention is a symbolic declaration of risk management and repository of huge economic value for the island and prefecture. The background to the paper is the return of a cache of color photographs taken by an American anthropologist in the 1950s and the 70th anniversary of the reversion of Amami in 1953 from US military to Japanese control. The paper considers the contemporary ramifications of policy instituted in the post-World War II period, that has sought to maximize the potential of “remote” areas and continues to favor growth and development at the expense of the health of multispecies island communities.

Reading, writing, and literary engagements are often assumed to be solitary practices, but looking at the places where books are sold and discussed, and amateur literature written, reveals the relational side to this creative engagement. This article presents an ethnographic study of haiku composition in Booktown Jimbōchō in Tokyo, Japan, an area known for its literary bookstores, to explore how the social practices of literature unfold. Sketching the social life of a bar in Jimbōchō, I explore collaborative creativity through an ethnographic study of a bi-monthly haiku meeting that takes place in this social space.

Examining Olympic opening and closing ceremonies from the perspective of relational creativity, this article analyzes the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics’ opening ceremony and the 2016 Rio Games’ Japanese closing ceremony—both experimented with transitory meanings exploring alternative representations of Japan. We consider them as cases of relational creativity; the Nagano opening ceremony explored the fusion of local religious traditions and Western influences, while the Rio closing ceremony experimented with meanings of urban cosmopolitanism, consumerism, as well as cultural and social inclusivity.

Tokyo Governor Koike Yuriko’s vision of a city where everyone can “shine” masks systemic contradictions in Japan’s future-making endeavors. While public proclamations frame Tokyo as inclusive and equitable, actions by Koike’s administration reveal abiding inequities. These efforts align with decades-long projects, most recently manifested in Society 5.0 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which prioritize market-driven growth while erasing systemic concerns of poverty and homelessness. Ethnographic insights from advocacy groups highlight the necessity of cultivating meaningful alternatives that emphasize empathetic dignity—a critique that underscores the necessity of reimagining Japan’s trajectory beyond performative policies of technologically mediated utopia futures.

This paper aims to analyze the impact of the Incidental Process activated during the UNESCO Memory of the World (MOW) 2022/23 nomination cycle and the Memory of the World Regional Committee for Asia and the Pacific (MOWCAP) 2021/22 nomination cycle. The Incidental Process is a mechanism that allows a Member State to contest nominations submitted by other Member States in the inscription process of the MOW Register. Japan became the first Member State to initiate the Incidental Process in 2022, contesting five nominations submitted by Korea and China. Japan’s initiative, seemingly part of its decade-long campaign, concentrated on identifying the elements in the nominated documents that would evoke the image of perpetrators and removing them from inscription. However, the MOW and MOWCAP responded in different ways to the contestation, which highlighted several contentious issues that were not effectively addressed by the General Guidelines. Furthermore, the disputes surrounding Japan’s contestation revealed the institutional weakness of the International Advisory Committee (IAC), the main operational body of the program. This paper, after examining the extraordinary situations that arose during the MOW and MOWCAP inscription process, attempts to identify the origin of the contentious issues and suggests the need to implement the provisions of the Incidental Process for the future operation of the MOW.