Routledge Contemporary Japan Series
About the Book Series
The aim of this series is to publish original, high-quality work by both new and established scholars on all aspects of contemporary Japan.
Japanese Culture Through Videogames
1st Edition
By Rachael Hutchinson
December 18, 2020
Examining a wide range of Japanese videogames, including arcade fighting games, PC-based strategy games and console JRPGs, this book assesses their cultural significance and shows how gameplay and context can be analyzed together to understand videogames as a dynamic mode of artistic ...
Party Politics in Japan: Political Chaos and Stalemate in the 21st Century
1st Edition
Edited
By Ronald J. Hrebenar, Akira Nakamura
September 30, 2020
The Japanese political system is a parliamentary democracy and was the first western style government in Asia when the parliamentary system was adopted in the 1880s. It has a multiparty system, free elections, and a parliament that functions much the same way that any other democratic parliament ...
The Japanese Communist Party: Permanent Opposition, but Moral Compass
1st Edition
By Peter Berton, Sam Atherton
August 14, 2020
This book provides an historical overview of the Japanese Communist Party from its foundation to the present. It outlines the development of the party, explores its stance on key issues and discusses how the party has set a high moral tone, avoiding compromising coalitions with other parties, being...
Animism in Contemporary Japan: Voices for the Anthropocene from post-Fukushima Japan
1st Edition
By Shoko Yoneyama
June 30, 2020
‘Postmodern animism’ first emerged in grassroots Japan in the aftermath of mercury poisoning in Minamata and the nuclear meltdown in Fukushima. Fusing critiques of modernity with intangible cultural heritages, it represents a philosophy of the life-world, where nature is a manifestation of a ...
Zainichi Korean Women in Japan: Voices
1st Edition
By Jackie J. Kim-Wachutka
June 30, 2020
Presenting the voices of a unique group within contemporary Japanese society—Zainichi women—this book provides a fresh insight into their experiences of oppression and marginalization that over time have led to liberation and empowerment. Often viewed as unimportant and inconsequential, these women...
Japan’s Colonial Moment in Southeast Asia 1942-1945: The Occupiers’ Experience
1st Edition
By Nakano Satoshi
May 07, 2020
The first-ever attempt to paint a full-scale portrait of the Japanese Occupation of Southeast Asia during the Asia-Pacific War (1942–5). This book draws on the huge body of available narrative—military documents, bureaucratic records and personal accounts of combatants and civilians, including ...
Political Sociology of Japanese Pacifism
1st Edition
By Yukiko Nishikawa
May 07, 2020
While Japanese pacifism is usually seen as a national policy or an ideology rooted in the provision of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, it cannot be adequately understood without grasping Japanese social discourses on peace, war and justice. The perspective of political sociology provides a ...
Gender and the Koseki In Contemporary Japan: Surname, Power, and Privilege
1st Edition
By Linda White
August 08, 2019
The Japanese koseki system is the legal and social structure keeping record of all Japanese citizens. Determined by the Civil Code and the Koseki Law, for activists challenging it, the koseki is also an ideological structure, which has produced patriarchal control through single-surname households....
Japan's Quest for Stability in Southeast Asia: Navigating the Turning Points in Postwar Asia
1st Edition
By Taizo Miyagi
May 21, 2019
More than any other region in the world, Asia has witnessed tremendous change in the post-war era. A continent once engulfed by independence and revolution, and later by the Cold War and civil war, has now been transformed into the world’s most economically dynamic region. What caused this change ...
Rethinking Japanese Studies: Eurocentrism and the Asia-Pacific Region
1st Edition
Edited
By Kaori H. Okano, Yoshio Sugimoto
March 21, 2019
Japanese Studies has provided a fertile space for non-Eurocentric analysis for a number of reasons. It has been embroiled in the long-running internal debate over the so-called Nihonjinron, revolving around the extent to which the effective interpretation of Japanese society and culture requires ...
Local Politics and National Policy: Multi-level Conflicts in Japan and Beyond
1st Edition
By Ken Victor Leonard Hijino
January 23, 2019
This book is about why and how central and local governments clash over important national policy decisions. Its empirical focus is on the local politics of Japan which has significantly shaped, and been shaped by, larger developments in national politics. The book argues that since the 1990s, ...
Trauma, Dissociation and Re-enactment in Japanese Literature and Film
1st Edition
By David Stahl
January 17, 2019
Japanese literature and film have frequently been approached using lenses such as language, genre and ideology. Yet, despite a succession of major social traumas that have marked, and in many ways shaped and defined much of modern Japan, Japanese fiction and cinema have not often been examined ...