• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.52
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• pp.223-251
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• 2018

This paper comparatively considered how Korea and Japan address the concept of 'postwar' in descriptions of their literary history. In Japan, 'postwar' refers to the period after World War II (Asia-Pacific War). This word implies a variety of contexts such as collapse, poverty, confusion, calendar reform, reconstruction and restoration as well as a series of historical events such as war, war defeat, and American occupation; and so it has been treated in Japanese society a significant period. In the history of Korean literature, it is after national liberation that the word 'postwar' appeared; however, it has usually indicated 'the period after the Korean War.' The question is that although the term of postwar refers to periods after different wars, Koreans used the term of postwar also in the same way as Japan, and their concept of postwar overlaps with the concept of prewar or postwar used in Japan, and accordingly, side effects are produced that fail to grasp properly the independent characteristics and significance of the Korean War. In conclusion, the Korean War brought about contrasting effects on the history of Korean and Japanese literature. While the Korean War meant a start after the war in Korean literature, it became a turning point marking the end of postwar in Japanese literature. Such different perceptions on postwar also have major implications in that perceptions represent postwar discourses in today's Korea and Japan.

• Analyses & Alternatives
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.163-202
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• 2020

This paper examines how Japanese society produced and reproduced a distinctively gendered history and memories of the experience of WWII and colonialism in the postwar era. We argue that these gendered narratives, which were embedded in postwar debates about the Peace Constitution and comfort women, have engendered contradictions and made the historical conflicts with neighboring countries challenging to resolve. On the one hand, this deepens conflict, but on the other, it also generates stability in East Asia. After Japan's defeat in WWII, the American Occupation government created the Peace Constitution, which permanently "renounces war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes." The removal of the state's monopoly on violence - the symbol of masculinity - resulted in Japan's feminization. This feminization led to collective forgetting of prewar imperialism and militarism in postwar Japan. While collectively forgetting the wartime history of comfort women within these feminized narratives, the conservative movement to revise the Peace Constitution attempted to recover Japan's masculinity for a new, autonomous role in international politics, as uncertainty in East Asia increased. Ironically, however, this effort strengthened Japan's femininity because it involved forgetting Japan's masculine role in the past. This forgetting has undermined efforts to achieve masculine independence, thus reinforcing dependence on the United States. Recurrent debates about the Peace Constitution and comfort women have influenced how Japanese political elites and intellectual society have constructed distinctive social institutions, imagined foreign relations, and framed contemporary problems, as indicated in their gendered restructuring of history.

• 동북아역사논총
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• no.59
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• pp.150-186
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• 2018

This paper explains what Japanese progressive liberalism was in postwar Japan by clarifying Maruyama Masao's "Cold War Liberalism," focusing especially on his realism and nationalism searching for "democracy" and "peace" in the context of the early Cold War Japan. Maruyama's Cold War liberalism can be grasped from two perspectives: how the Cold War defined his liberalism and how Maruyama interpreted the Cold War as a liberalist in postwar Japan. The liberal interpretation of the Cold War captures the spatial manifestations of liberalism in the Cold War while Cold War liberalism was to grasp the temporal succession of modern Japan. Maruyama revealed his liberal thinking by combining it to his idea of nationalism and realism. He was concerned about the reshaping of the fascist atmosphere provoked by anti-communism emerging from 186 | 동북아역사논총 59호the Cold War confrontation structure. He sought "neutrality" and "peace" to overcome the so-called "two worlds" of the Cold War. And he stressed the importance of "fair judgment" and "autonomous association" to restrain the fascistic atmosphere in postwar Japan. For Maruyama, subjectivity aimed at the concept of "nation" rather than "citizen," and nationalism was a condition for "democracy" and "peace" in postwar Japan. Maruyama's critical liberalism worked through nationalism and realism.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.211-240
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• 2020

This essay examines the questions that existing high-teen related studies are missing: "What is high-teen?". It is a foreign language originated from Japanese, spoken only in Japan and Korea among the post-war pan East Asian pop culture scenes. High-teen is based on the 'teenager' formed in the United States. It should be understood not just as a subcategory of popular culture but as an important ideological allegory of post-war Japanese politics. To learn this concept, this essay archeologically researches the origin of high-teen's meaning and analyses the political meaning of the early high-teen contents of Ueda Hirao which related to postwar politics and ideology in Japan. Existing research regarding high-teen tends to be limited to the peripheral and fragmentary areas. On the other hand, this paper will be the beginning of a discussion on high-teen in a more expanding perspective as an East Asian postwar history.

• Korean Journal of Comparative Education
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.1-22
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• 2017

This study aims to examine the continuity of national education between prewar and postwar Japan in the context of nationalism and citizenship education by considering the direction and process of educational reform which has been a turning point in Japanese education policy. It explores the limitations of educational reform at the normative level and institutional and procedural level. Meiji Japan needed to form a united group to support modernization while also cultivating obedient people who supported the emperor, and the modern education system played a major role in achieving this task. After Japan's defeat in World War II, the nation sought to change the framework of authoritarian nationalism inherent in Japanese traditional through educational reforms and achieve the goals of democratization and non-militarization. The postwar educational reform has transformed the educational structure, but democracy and peace orientation have not been rooted internally. Under the backdrop of the Cold War, the education returned to the inverse.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.10 no.1 s.25
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• pp.49-54
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• 2006

Special educations for gifted students have not been given enough attention in Japan with a little exception. Indeed, such educations were sometimes despised in Japan by teachers and parents as well as by boards of education, because one of the features of postwar education system in Japan was an excessive egalitarianism. The other is cramming of knowledge in school education, which is necessary for high school graduates to pass entrance examinations for famous universities such as University of Tokyo, or Kyoko University. However, in 1997, some trials of special educations for gifted students started. The Ministry of Education, Sports, Culture, Science and Technology admitted 'skipping a year to enter universities.' In this paper, the following three topics would be discussed. 1. Enrollment of high school students aged 17 into Chiba University. 2. Summer seminars conducted by Japan Mathematics Foundation of Olympiad. 3. Super Science High School Program funded by the Ministry of Education.

• Asian Journal of Innovation and Policy
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.92-115
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• 2012

The problem Japanese universities face is exactly the same as that of German universities: no international recognition in world rankings of universities despite their high levels of postwar economic and technological developments. This was indeed one reason why world-class Japanese firms, such as Toyota and Sony, have avoided working closely with Japanese universities for R&D partnership and new technology commercialization. To resolve this problem, the Japanese government has continuously implemented aggressive policies of the internationalization, privatization, liberalization, and privatization of universities since the onset of the economic recession in 1989 in order to revitalize the Japanese economy through radical innovation projects between universities and firms. National projects of developing medical robots for Japan's ageing society are some of the ambitious examples that emphasize feed-forward learning in innovation. However, this paper argues that none of these programs of fostering university-firm alliances toward feed-forward learning has been successful in promoting the world ranking of Japanese universities, although they showed potentials of reinforcing their conventional strength of introducing $kaizen$ through feedback learning of tacit knowledge. It is therefore argued in this paper that Japanese universities and firms should focus on feedback learning as a way to motivate firm-university R&D alliances.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.47
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• pp.27-51
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• 2017

This paper considers opposition between lawyers to defend human rights which the Pacific Constitution of Japan guarantees and the public power represented by the prosecution's judicial power centered on sentencing in the 'Chatterley Trial' that was a Japanese representative literary trial which occurred after World War II. The lawyers' assertion is against the public power which reminds us of the Press Act before the war defeat. Although censorship is banned in the constitution, and it can be said that it is not a dimension just to protest the check of custom but the struggle not to reenact the past Japan.

• Journal of the Daesoon Academy of Sciences
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• v.18
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• pp.81-99
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• 2004

This text discusses trends in the construction of religions since the Meiji Era, using Konkokyo and Restoration Shintoism as examples. The construction of religions is applied here as the process of a deliberate acceptace of religious images as a discourse of "Civilization" endowed with "kyougi" or "Doctrine" and "kyousoku" or "Rules of Instruction." Winding through a meandering path, these constructed religions do not take precedence over "Jikyou" or "State Religion." Yet, "Jikyou" for a while was fixed in its own fragemented self-imagery. As for Shinto, in 1900, the Office of Shinto Shrines became independent from the Office of Shrines and Temples in the Department of Domestic Affairs, and clearly Shinto and Shinto Shrines were part of secular state ideology. In the Bakumatsu and Meiji Periods, it ultimately was cut off from Restoration Shinto, thereby achieving this development on its own. This tells of the formation of an entirely new and modern Shinto within a secular "Jikyou." Konkokyo, moreover, as a religion establishes "kyousoku" and "kyougi." As a Shinto sect, it takes steps on the path toward recognizing a self-identity, namely as religious Shinto. As a result, dogmatization and systemization progress, and "Byoukinaoshi" or "illness-recovery" from the Tokugawa Period weathers. Also, as for progress in the Shinto religious order, from its foundation, the characteristics of a unified state and religion emerge, and thus there is an acceptance of significant restrictions. This dillema continues to persist as a problem in postwar Japan. Shedding light on Tokugawa Era practice also sheds light on where we can now take religious concepts.

• International Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.1-15
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• 2006

The purpose of the study is to examine how the apartment housing became common and how it became the main structure type of housing in Korea, as well as the social backgrounds. The study also focuses on how such phenomenon caused the housing problems which become social problems, and how new trials in terms of housing supply were performed to provide solutions to meet various housing needs of households. The purpose was accomplished by the examination of related literature since the liberation from Japan in 1945 to the early 1990s. In fact, it was uncommon to have apartment housing as the main figure of housing style. However, it became the major housing culture in Korea. Even if there have been lots of blames for apartment housing for last forty years, they were able to settle in Korea. Major reasons for such phenomenon include desperate needs for a larger quantity of housing due to industrialization, urbanization, etc.