Since its founding in 1945, the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan (FCCJ) has been a haven for working journalists. From its origins at "No. 1 Shimbun Alley" in the ruins of Tokyo immediately after World War II, the club quickly took on a life of its own. At times it became like a miniature United Nations, meeting the needs of hundreds of foreign journalists from around the world, who used it as a working press center as well as a social oasis. Club members, who include several Pulitzer Prize winners, have personally witnessed and reported on some of the most momentous events of the last half century-the end of World War II and the occupation of Japan; the revolution in China; the Korean War; Vietnam and the student riots of the 1960s; the height of the Cold War; Japan's economic miracle and the subsequent collapse of the "bubble" economy; the death of Emperor Hirohito; and much more. Foreign Correspondents in Japan gives an intimate and colorful look at these journalists who covered Asia for the rest of the world during five decades of sweeping change, and provides first-person accounts of history as it was being written.

Japan is one of the most media-saturated societies in the world. The circulations of its "big five" national newspapers dwarf those of any major American newspaper. Its public service broadcasting agency, NHK, is second only to the BBC in size. And it has a full range of commercial television stations, high-brow and low-brow magazines, and a large anti-mainstream media and mini-media. Japanese elites rate the mass media as the most influential group in Japanese society. But what role do they play in political life? Whose interests do the media serve? Are the media mainly servants of the state, or are they watchdogs on behalf of the public? And what effects do the media have on the political beliefs and behavior of ordinary Japanese people? These questions are the focus of this collection of essays by leading political scientists, sociologists, social psychologists, and journalists. Japan's unique kisha (press) club system, its powerful media business organizations, the uses of the media by Japan's wily bureaucrats, and the role of the media in everything from political scandals to shaping public opinion, are among the many subjects of this insightful and provocative book.

What media content attracts audiences across cultures and what does not? What does the cross-cultural audience demand depend on? The author takes a new approach to understanding cultural barriers to the success of foreign media content by analyzing the entry strategies of Time Warner, Disney, Viacom, News Corporation, and Bertelsmann with regard to China, India, and Japan in terms of their respective localization efforts. In-depth interviews with companies' representatives give an insight into how they view the need for locally-produced media in these countries. The author develops and employs the Lacuna and Universal Model that provides a new theoretical classification of reasons for the cross-cultural success and failure of media content, as well as the Vertical Barrier Chain that locates cultural barriers in the wider context of legal, political, and economic barriers to successful entry into foreign media markets.

The popular image of Japanese society is a steroetypical one - that of a people characterised by a coherent set of thought and behaviour patterns, applying to all Japanese and transcending time. Ross Mouer and Yoshio Sugimoto found this image quite incongruous during their research for this book in Japan. They ask whether this steroetype of the Japanese is not only generated by foreigners but by the Japanese themselves. This is likely to be a controversial book as it does not contribute to the continuing mythologising of Japan and the Japanese. The book examines contemporary images of Japanese society by surveying an extensive sample of popular and academic literature on Japan. After tracing the development of "holistic" theories about the Japanese, commonly referred to as the "group model", attention is focused on the evaluation of that image. Empirical evidence contrary to this model is discussed and methodological lacunae are cited. A "sociology of Japanology" is also presented. In pursuit of other visions of Japanese society, the authors argue that certain aspects of Japanese behaviour can be explained by considering Japanese society as the exact inverse of the portayal provided by the group model. The authors also present a multi-dimensional model of social stratification, arguing that much of the variation in Japanese behaviour can be understood within the framework as having universal equivalence.

This edited collection analyzes the innovative changes in Japan’s foreign policy. Pursuing new relationships with South Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe, Japanese initiatives include regional peace-building and human security activities, Asian multilateralism, and the Indo-Pacific concept. This collection focuses on these evolving international relationships through Japan’s unique approach to political change and continuity.

A substantial book on the social practices and cultural attitudes of people producing, reading, watching and listening to different kinds of media in Japan, China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore and India.

This study is the first to assess the combined significance of the English-language newspapers of China, Japan and Korea in the period 1918-45. It not only frames the English-language press networks in the international media history of East Asia but also relates them to media developments in the ‘British world’ linking Fleet Street to the Empire and Dominions, and to the rise of the United States as a broker of international opinion on and in the Asia-Pacific. The English-language newspapers occupied a narrow but significant segment of the public sphere in East Asia in the inter-war years.As forums of opinion on Japanese, Chinese and Western interests in East Asia, they also served as vehicles of propaganda, particularly during the crisis-ridden 1930s and the Pacific War. With this examination of the media affiliations, editorial line, and access to official bodies in East Asia and theWest of most of the English-language newspapers published in East Asia in the period under review, the author demonstrates that these publications formed distinct networks in terms of the editorial positions they took vis-a-vis the key issues of the day, especially Japan’s imperial project in East Asia.

The Internationalization of Japan provides the English-speaking reader with the opportunity to hear what some of Japan's leading social scientists and other commentators have to say about the internationalization of their country as well as their country's impact overseas. The topic is of extreme importance now as the international community demands a greater Japanese contribution to international society as well as changes in Japan to facilitate foreign access. The book discusses the internationalization of politics, economy and society. Topics of special interest include the internationalization of Japanese capital, the response of Japanese society to foreign workers, local level initiatives for internationalization and the internationalization of education. To place the internationalization of Japan in comparative perspective there are chapters on Britain and the United States from a leading British and a leading American political scientist respectively. These two and the editors aside, all the contributors are highly regarded Japanese scholars or commentators.