Law Commons^™

Bridging Troubled Waters: China, Japan, And Maritime Order In The East China Sea. By James Manicom. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2014. Softcover: 266pp., Lowell Bautista

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

In this book, James Manicom contests the orthodox view that the strategic rivalry between China and Japan will escalate into a fullblown military conflict. The book concedes that the East China Sea will be the likely medium for Sino–Japanese military rivalry and cyclical tensions will persist; however, it makes the compelling case that cooperation will endure.

Enduring Debates: Closing The Gender Gap In Japan, Vera C. Mackie

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Women in Japan voted and stood for office for the first time on 10 April 1946. It was the country's first postwar election and the first election after the Japanese government amended the Electoral Law to include women. Of the 79 female candidates, 39 were elected to Japan's national parliament, the Diet. Seventy years on, what is the state of gender relations in Japan? What issues now stimulate feminist campaigns and activism?

Sex, Censorship And Media Regulation In Japan: A Historical Overview, Mark Mclelland

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Over the past several decades alarmist reports about the supposed dangers of the sexualised nature of much Japanese popular culture have regularly featured in the English-language press. It has been claimed that Japan is 'awash' in all kinds of pornography, including child pornography (Larimer 1999; Fallows 1986: 38) and that insufficient attempts are made by the authorities to properly regulate the expression of sexual matters. A major concern of such reporting has been the supposed 'dark side' (McGinty 2002) of the manga (comics) which are ubiquitous in Japan and, since the 1980s, have become popular with young people worldwide. International …

'How To Sex'? The Contested Nature Of Sexuality In Japan, Mark J. Mclelland

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

There has been a tendency in English and other European-language reporting on Japan to stress the strangeness and otherness of Japanese values, particularly in regard to sexuality. Reports of Japanese immorality go back as far as the sixteenth century when the first Jesuit visitors to the country were appalled by open displays of cross-dressing and male-male sexual relations (Cooper 1965). After the ‘opening’ of Japan in the mid-nineteenth century, Victorian visitors were alternately intrigued and shocked by the government-regulated prostitution that took place in Japan’s many pleasure quarters. Commentators have noted how the figure of the geisha, in particular (albeit …

Introduction: Art And Activism In Post-Disaster Japan, Alexander Brown, Vera C. Mackie

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

On 11 March 2011, the northeastern area of Japan, known as Tōhoku, was hit by an unprecedented earthquake and tsunami. The disaster damaged the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, one of a number of such facilities located in what was already an economically disadvantaged region.2 This led to a series of explosions and meltdowns and to the leakage of contaminated water and radioactive fallout into the surrounding area. Around 20,000 people were reported dead or missing, with a disproportionate number from the aged population of the region. Nearly four years later, hundreds of thousands of people are still displaced: evacuated …

Migrant Workers In Contemporary Japan: An Institutional Perspective On Transnational Employment., Hironori Onuki

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Migrant Workers in Contemporary Japan is primarily concerned with changes in social institutions within the context of globalization and the implications of these changes for the lifestyles of people living and working in Japanese society.

New Media, Censorship And Gender: Using Obscenity Law To Restrict Online Self-Expression In Japan And China, Mark J. Mclelland

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The widespread take-up of Internet technologies from the mid-1990s has proven challenging to nation states that seek to limit access to ideas, information or images that the political class considers dangerous or inappropriate for the general population. As a largely deterritorialized technology, the Internet allows access to material that circumvents national legislatures and ignores local ratings systems and in so doing facilitates all kinds of inter-cultural and transnational flows of communication. Different countries have different sensitivities regarding the kinds of material that should not be freely available to their citizens and although the entry of such material is closely scrutinized …

The Developmental State Model: A Comparative Analysis Of Japan Approach And The New Developmental State In South America, Gabriel Garcia

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

This is a working-in-progress paper on the Developmental State Model: a Comparative Analysis of Japan's Approach and the New Developmental State in Brazil. The case of Brazil was the topic of a book published in 2013 edited by Trubek, Alviar Garcia, Coutinho and Santos titled 'Law and the New Developmental State, the Brazilian Experience in Latin American Context'. The volume contains contributions that argue a 'new' developmental state model is emerging in Brazil. A preliminary literature review suggests that the Brazilian government has incorporated in its development policies some of the features that defined the Japanese developmental state a few …

Book Review: The Art Of Censorship In Postwar Japan. Studies Of The Weatherhead East Asian Institute. By Kirsten Cather, Rowena G. Ward

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The practice of censorship is a divisive issue that is often justified on moral reasons rather than aesthetic or legalistic ones. It is perhaps because of the claims to morality rather than to the law that it is relatively rare for censorship (or more accurately in Japan’s case, obscenity) to be the subject of criminal trials. Yet, in Japan, from the occupation years through to the present day, there has been on average one high profile censorship trial per decade. In The Art of Censorship in Postwar Japan, Kirsten Cather considers seven such censorship trials held between the 1950s and …

Conclusion: Reflections On The Rhythms Of Internationalisation In Post-Disaster Japan, Vera Mackie

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

On 7 Jul 2012. a concert was held at Makuhari Messe near Tokyo. The concert was part of a growing movement against nuclear power in the wake of the triple earthquake-tsunami-nuclear disaster in northeastern Japan on 11 March 2011. The headline performers were the Japanese band Yellow Magic Orchestra and the German band Kraftwerk. Since the earliest days of Yellow Magic Orchestra. band leader Sakamoto Ryuichi has forged an international career as a performer and composer, moving between Tokyo, New York and other global cities. In recent years, he has used his public profile to argue for environmental sustainability, so …

Gigantic Shipbuilders Under The Imo Mandate Of Ghg Emissions: With Special References To China, Japan And Korea, Yubing Shi

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

To address greenhouse gas emissions from international shipping, the International Maritime Organization has adopted technical and operational measures, and discussed the possibilihj of adopting market-based measures. China, Japan and South Korea are major shipbuilding nations in the world, and have differing responses towards the IMO's regulatory initiatives. This paper conducts a comparative assessment of these three countries' positions on regulatory principles of the greenhouse gas issue, and concludes that their differentiated perspectives on this matter reflect their different regulatory interests. It is significant to take their differentiated interests into account in the developing regulatory regime to avoid disproportionate burdens being …

New Women, Modern Girls And The Shifting Semiotics Of Gender In Early Twentieth Century Japan, Vera C. Mackie

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

No abstract provided.

Academic Employment And Gender Equity Legislation In Australia And Japan, 1970-2010, Kirsti Rawstron

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine the rate of change of men and women's employment as university academic staff in Australia and Japan; and, drawing on quantitative methods, show differences in the rate of change since the introduction of anti-sex discrimination legislation. The author also includes a discussion of programmes designed to increase female participation in academic positions to provide background to the existing changes.

Design/methodology/approach - Using statistics published by the Ministries of Education of both countries, a time series of female participation at each level of academic staff was constructed. Breakpoint analysis is used …

Japan's Biopolitical Crisis: Care Provision In A Transnational Frame, Vera Mackie

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

In this article I consider recent policies on care provision in Japan, including the employment of immigrant workers. My discussion is framed by Michel Foucault's concepts of ‘biopower’ and ‘biopolitics’: a mode of governmentality focused on the management of populations. In the current age of economic globalization, however, biopolitics also crosses national boundaries. Raewyn Connell has described a ‘global gender order’ whereby gender relations are shaped by power structures which transcend the level of the nation-state. This involves the connections between different local gender orders and gender orders which transcend the scale of the nation-state. The migration of care workers …

Feminism And The Nation-State In Japan, Vera C. Mackie

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The first Japanese edition of the book appeared at the height of debates about the interpretation of the Asia-Pacific War, debates which were also linked to conflicts about how the past should be represented in school textbooks.2 Much of this controversy revolved around the issue of enforced military prostitution/military sexual slavery.3 In 1991 Kim Hak-Sun (1924–1997) was one of the few women to come out in public in her own name to narrate her experiences in the enforced military prostitution system and demand an apology and compensation from the Japanese government. She was soon joined by survivors from Korea and …

Post-3.11 Australia-Japan Co-Operation: Facing Non-Traditional Security Challenges: Items Of Sentimental Value, Anne A. Collett

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

To those for whom this talk and the photographs that accompany it may cause distress, I apologise, and hope that what I have to say will be taken in the spirit intended - that is, as a tribute to those who worked to find ways to alleviate distress, heal wounds, offer comfort and repair damage. This talk offers me (and I hope you as an audience) an opportunity to think through the meaning of 'connection', and the meaning of photographs, their relationship to collective memory and community, and their capacity to allow survivors and those who witness tragedy intimately or …

Book Review: Sato And Imai (Ed): Japan's New Inequality: Intersection Of Employment Reforms And Welfare Arrangements., Kirsti Rawstron

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Japan’s New Inequality is a study of the effects of changes in welfare arrangements and employment reforms in Japan since the collapse of Japan’s Bubble Economy in the late 1980s. This volume draws heavily on theories and methods of social stratification studies to explore three general areas: regular and non-regular divisions in labour markets (i.e. between permanent full-time and non-permanent part-time employees); changes in employment structures for women and the self-employed; and changes in family structure, the ageing population and welfare provisions. This volume provides a concise and up-to-date picture of income, wealth and employment inequalities in Japan.

The Philippines And Japan In America's Shadow, Peter M. Sales

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

This book grew out of three intensive workshops and a great deal of collective brainstorming. The hard work has been worthwhile. As edited compilations go, this is a valuable collection that provides a number of insights into the occupation by the US of the Philippines from the beginning of the twentieth century and of Japan after the Pacific War. The project as a whole bears out the value of a collective enterprise that is planned and executed carefully and with a commonality of purpose. Many of the ideas that emerge from the shared focus are illuminating.

Care, Social (Re)Production And Global Labour Migration: Japan’S ‘Special Gift’ Toward ‘Innately Gifted’ Filipino Workers, Hironori Onuki

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA)1 concluded by the Japanese and the Philippine governments on 9 September 2006, was described in the Japanese media as a ‘new step toward opening Japan’s labour market’ (Asahi Shimbun 2006b). Similar to Japan’s previous free trade treaties with Singapore, Mexico and Malaysia, the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA) mainly concerns tariff reduction to facilitate bilateral exchanges of goods and services (Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) 2006).2 Yet, its distinctive feature is its facilitation of the movement of ‘natural persons’ – more specifically, the JPEPA allows for the Philippines to send up to 400 nurses and …

Migrant Workers As Political Agents—Analysis Of Migrant Labourers’ ‘Production Of Everyday Spaces’ In Japan, Hironori Onuki

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

While specifically focusing on the context of Japan (one of the major destinations of Asian as well as other migrant workers), my research investigates the concrete, contingent and situated practices of global labour migration. the primary research question of my project is: how far and in what ways are global labour migrations implicated in as well as resisting the neoliberal restructing of global political economy? The central hypothesis is that migrant worders, as political subjects, and their everyday social practices not only participate in and depend on but also contest and negotiate the neo-liberal re-configurations of labour-capital relation in the …

Left Behind: Japan's Wartime Defeat And Stranded Women In Manchukuo, Rowena G. Ward

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The zanryu fujin (stranded war wives) are former Japanese emigrants to Manchukuo who remained in China at the end of the Second World War. They were long among the forgotten legacies of Japan's imperialist past. The reasons why these women did not undergo repatriation during the years up to 1958, when large numbers of former colonial emigrants returned to Japan, are varied but in many cases, the 'Chinese' families that adopted them, or into which they married, played a part. The stories of survival during the period immediately after the entry of the Soviet Union into the Pacific War on …

"Hating 'The Korean Wave'" Comic Books: A Sign Of New Nationalism In Japan?, Rumi Sakamoto, Matthew Allen

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The internet has become an increasingly influential medium throughout East Asia. In this article we examine the case of Kenkanryu ('"Hating 'The Korean Wave'"), a manga published in 2005 in hard copy, but available online as a web comic for many months prior to print publication. We argue that the content, while nationalist, xenophobic, and 'toxic' is only one of a number of other, media-related reasons for the sales success of this comic in Japan. Other factors are the influence of online chat groups, the web as a means of communicating and selling ideas and products, and the internet-savvy way …

The Allied Occupation Of Japan - An Australian View, Christine De Matos

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The Japanese Occupation is generally remembered as primarily an American affair and as a dichotomous relationship between Japan and the United States. However, it was an Allied Occupation, and, despite the persistence of selective historical memories, there was a distinct and at times contentious Allied presence, contribution, and experience. The Occupation provided a terrain on which the victor nations, believing their social, economic and political values vindicated by victory, competed to reshape the character of Japan's modernity. One Ally that participated in this process, and often acted as a dissenting voice, was Australia. Examining the involvement of additional participants in …

The Myth Of Homogeneity And The 'Others': Foreign Labour Migration And Globalization In The Case Of Japan, Hironori Onuki

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

This essay will examine the multi-dimensional dynamics of global labor migrations participating in and facilitated by globalization, by analyzing Japan's contemporary experience of rapidly intensified foreign labor immigration. Japan has not considered itself as a country of immigration until recently. Since Japan's prewar self-modernization period, conservative political discourse has conceptualized the modern nation-state as a racially homogeneous entity. This discourse established the cultural and political foundation for Japanese identity, and Japan's relationship with the outside world. Consequently, the incorporation of culturally and ethnically different Others has been deemed a threat to the harmony of Japan's homogeneous society. Yet, beginning in …