Search Results

This chapter revisits the Japanese case of by asking whether Japan can and should pursue economic nationalism in the twenty-first century, or whether it should commit itself to the liberal multilateralism that has been the foundation of the post-war international economic system. Using the latest round of Japanese policy debate as a case study, the chapter highlights the potential opportunity for a mature and advanced industrial economy such as Japan to pursue economic nationalism while at the same time embrace liberal multilateralism. The chapter examines Japan’s search for industrial and trade policy to cope with new competitive challenges emanating from multilateral agreements by exploring the intense debate between the Japanese government and the civil aircraft manufacturers. By embarking on a partnership with private business, the Japanese government demonstrates the institutional basis for international competitiveness and its continuing engagement with economic nationalism in multilateral global markets.

This concluding chapter considers the theoretical questions of “the state” and the relationship among place, voice, and nostalgia. The four memory maps discussed in the preceding chapters are by no means mutually exclusive but overlap, often producing sub- or local-memory maps. The chapter attempts to integrate these memory maps in the transnational space covering Japan and China. It is argued that in remembering Manchuria, those who have appeared in this book depicted the Japanese state differently, depending on who they were and where in the present they stood. The memories of one person, whether he or she is a high-raking state official or an agrarian settler, never reveal the historical truth of the power of the Japanese state. But the memories of many people of different nationalities, classes, genders, and generations who try to remember at various points—the “presents”—bring us at least closer to such truth.

This chapter highlights the major steps taken by post-war Taiwan's anti-malaria efforts. It focuses on several themes that provide the analytical framework for understanding the Nationalist government's success: the legacy of the Japanese colonial state; the role, philosophy, and strategy of the Nationalist state in health planning and disease control in the mainland and in Taiwan; the dominance of the biomedical and technological approach in public health; the development and consequences of a global anti-malaria campaign; and the emergence of a postwar hegemonic political and economic order that helped to shape the politics of international health. It notes that to better understand the significance of malaria eradication in Taiwan, it is important to put the Nationalist government's anti-malaria programs in the broad historical perspective of developments in the colonial and postcolonial periods.

This chapter argues that Hoshi Pharmaceuticals in its heyday was not all that different from other large-scale drug companies of its time. It notes that it was a parable of an earlier era — characterized by collusive connections between state and industry, overheated, debt-financed expansion, and the dangers of peddling potential poisons as medicines. To sell its medicines, Hoshi, like other companies, wove a scientific, humanitarian, and democratic narrative of medicinal consumption that highlighted the allegedly objective and self-evident merits of modern medicine for curing disease and improving people's lives for the benefit of society as a whole. The chapter demonstrates, through the case of Hoshi, how the modern pharmaceutical industry developed outside of the research laboratory, deeply immersed and implicated in politics and society. Ultimately, the chapter displays — through a microhistory of the rise and fall of Hoshi Pharmaceuticals — the making of this industry and how it supported the Japanese state's efforts to mold individuals into healthy and productive citizens.

This chapter focuses on labor unrest among Korean women workers and the public debate among Korean reformers and the Japanese state about how to reassert control over this unruly group. It highlights the paradoxical image of the female worker as at once a helpless victim of economic oppression and an assertive activist. Her image as victim rendered her less threatening (i.e., as a ward of the state or of bourgeois philanthropy) while her activism raised the specter of social disruption and violence. As the economic crisis of the Japanese empire intensified in the 1930s, concessions to Korean female workers declined, leading to more militant strikes that were better organized both in terms of national and socialist ideology.

Okinawa is now considered as Japanese territory, without challenge from most world powers. However, this is debatable from a historical viewpoint. The Ryukyu Kingdom which dominated the islands was integrated into Japan in 1879. The transformation is seen by Wang Hui as a process of modernization. This chapter argues the issue from an international law perspective. It shows that Ryukyu was an independent State as demonstrated by the 1854 Ryukyu–US Treaty, although it sent regular tributes to China. The Japanese integration by coercion is not justifiable. The people of Ryukyu were willing to continue being a tributary State rather than part of Japan. Britain, as the greatest colonial power, did not object. China and the US attempted to intervene in this affair, but no treaty has so far been concluded. Therefore, the status of Ryukyu/Okinawa remains unresolved and may need to be revisited, while putting the history context into consideration.

This chapter analyzes the development of social policy language in postwar Japan. In the reconstruction era following the end of the World War II, welfare bureaucrats and experts called for a universal welfare state, but institutional legacies and partisan politics (politics of credit-claiming) developed occupationally fragmented social insurance programs complemented by firm specific welfare. The welfare state, however, remained a goal to attain during the period of rapid economic growth. The end of “Golden Thirty Years” changed the image of the welfare state drastically in Japan. The welfare state was criticized as a main cause of the so-called “European” or “English” disease, which meant economic stagnancy with big government. To avoid the “disease,” the Japanese-style welfare society was formulated as a goal of welfare policy. The Japanese-style welfare society was renamed as a welfare society with economic viability, which was employed efficiently in the administrative reform of the 1980s to review social security programs and restrain social spending. In the 1990s, gender equality became a key term to promote women’s labor-force participation and expand family care support programs. Entering in our new century, the idea of structural reform dominated political discourse.

This chapter examines the implications of depopulation for Japanese state and society during the period 800–1050. It begins with an overview of the rise of aristocracy in Japan following the decline of the system supported by the Taihō Code and the establishment of the provincial headquarters as a police agency. It then considers changes in court politics between 805 and 1050, with particular emphasis on the rise of the Northern branch of the Fujiwara family to dominance. It also discusses the impact of population decline on the Japanese economy, including agriculture and industry, domestic and overseas commerce, and on class, kinship, and gender relations. The chapter concludes with an assessment of aristocratic culture and the plight of commoners during the period.