This book explores the historical writings of postwar Japanese Marxists - who were, and who continue to be, surprisingly numerous in the Japanese academic world. It shows how they developed in their historical writing ideas of 'radical nationalism', which accepted presupposed ideas of Japan's 'ethnic homogeneity', but which they saw as a 'revolutionary subject', creating a sphere of radical political action against the state, the American Occupation and global capital. It compares this approach in both prewar and postwar Marxist historiography, showing that in the postwar period ideas were more elaborate, and put much more emphasis on national education and social mobilization. It also shows how these early postwar discourses have made their way into contemporary ethnic nationalism and revisionism in Japan today. The book's rich and interesting analysis will appeal not just to historians of Japan, but also to those interested in nationalism and Marxism more generally.

This timely look at a neglected corner of Japanese historiography spotlights the decade following the end of World War II, a time in which Japanese society was undergoing the transformation from imperial state to democratic nation. For certain working and middle-class women involved in education and labor activism, history-writing became a means to greater voice within the turbulent transition. Women's History and Local Community in Postwar Japan examines the emergence of women’s history-writing groups in Tokyo, Nagoya and Ehime, using interviews conducted with founding members and analysis of primary documents and publications by each group. It demonstrates how women appropriated history-writing as a radical praxis geared less toward revolution and more toward the articulation of local imaginations, spaces and memories after World War II. By appropriating history as a praxis that did not need revolution for its success, these women used connections established by Marxist historians between history-writing and subjectivity, but did so in ways that broke rank from nationally-referenced renditions of history and memory. Under conditions in which some women saw history as a field of articulation that remained dominated by men, they put into practice their own de-centered versions of history-writing that continue to influence the historical landscape in contemporary Japan.

How did East and West Germany and Japan reconstitute national identity after World War II? Did all three experience parallel reactions to national trauma and reconstruction?History education shaped how these nations reconceived their national identities. Because the content of history education was controlled by different actors, history education materials framed national identity in very different ways. In Japan, where the curriculum was controlled by bureaucrats bent on maintaining their purported neutrality, materials focused on the empirical building blocks of history (wh.

How did East and West Germany and Japan reconstitute national identity after World War II? Did all three experience parallel reactions to national trauma and reconstruction? History education shaped how these nations reconceived their national identities. Because the content of history education was controlled by different actors, history education materials framed national identity in very different ways. In Japan, where the curriculum was controlled by bureaucrats bent on maintaining their purported neutrality, materials focused on the empirical building blocks of history (who? where? what?) at the expense of discussions of historical responsibility. In East Germany, where party cadres controlled the curriculum, students were taught that World War II was a capitalist aberration. In (West) Germany, where teachers controlled the curriculum, students were taught the lessons of shame and then regeneration after historians turned away from grand national narratives. This book shows that constructions of national identity are not easily malleable on the basis of moral and political concerns only, but that they are subject to institutional constraints and opportunities. In an age when post-conflict reconstruction and reconciliation has become a major focus of international policies, the analysis offers important implications for the parallel revision of portrayals of national history and the institutional reconstruction of policy-making regimes.

The 1970s were a period of dramatic change in relations between Japan and the People's Republic of China (PRC). The two countries established diplomatic relations for the first time, forged close economic ties and reached political agreements that still guide and constrain relations today. This book delivers a history of this foundational period in Sino-Japanese relations. It presents an up-to-date diplomatic history of the relationship but also goes beyond this to argue that Japan's relations with China must be understood in the context of a larger “China problem” that was inseparable from a domestic contest to define Japanese national identity. The China Problem in Postwar Japan challenges some common assertions or assumptions about the role of Japanese national identity in postwar Sino-Japanese relations, showing how the history of Japanese relations with China in the 1970s is shaped by the strength of Japanese national identity, not its weakness.

"In the formative years of the Japanese labor movement after World War II, the socialist unions affiliated with the General Council of Trade Unions (the labor federation known colloquially as Sohyo) formally endorsed the principles of women’s equality in the workforce and put in place measures to promote women’s active participation in union activities. However, union leaders did not embrace the legal framework for gender equality mandated by their American occupiers; rather, they pressured thousands of women labor activists to assume supportive roles that privileged a male-centered social agenda. By the late 1950s, even Japan’s radical socialist unions had reestablished the primacy of conservative gender norms, channeling women’s labor activism to support political campaigns that advantaged a male-headed household and that relegated women’s wage-earning value to the periphery of the household economy. By showing how unions raised the wages of male workers in part by transforming working-class women into middle-class housewives, Christopher Gerteis demonstrates that organized labor’s discourse on womanhood not only undermined women’s status within the labor movement but also prevented unions from linking with the emerging woman-led, neighborhood-centered organizations that typified social movements in the 1960s—a misstep that contributed to the decline of the socialist labor movement in subsequent decades."

No detailed description available for "Art and Engagement in Early Postwar Japan".

Cultures of Modernity and the U.S.-Japan Cold War Alliance reconsiders the origins of postwar U.S.-Japan relations by focusing on “modernization” ideologies that the Americans and the Japanese shared in the 1940s–early 1950s. Mobilizing a wealth of English and Japanese-language sources, the author identifies parallel groups of modernist thinkers in America and Japan – including politicians, bureaucrats, intellectuals, scholars, and journalists – and follows how different strands of thought played out within an evolving political environment, forming a “middle ground.” Despite their differences, both the Americans and the Japanese believed in the progressive view of history, considered Japan to be still underdeveloped, and therefore agreed on the advisability of democratizing Japan – which included constitutional reform. Whether proponents or opponents of the U.S.-Japan Cold War alliance system, they also shared the vision of Wilsonian internationalism and devised similar designs for a postwar Asian order where Japan would rejoin. Thus, by showing how the confluence of modernist cultures helped forge a postwar relationship between the two, this study contributes to the field of postwar U.S.-Japan relations by supplementing and reorienting the scope of scholarship, one that has been predominantly America-centered and framed along the line of diplomatic narratives informed by Cold War politics.

A Companion to Japanese History provides an authoritative overview of current debates and approaches within the study of Japan’s history. Composed of 30 chapters written by an international group of scholars Combines traditional perspectives with the most recent scholarly concerns Supplements a chronological survey with targeted thematic analyses Presents stimulating interventions into individual controversies

Mass Media, Consumerism and National Identity in Postwar Japan addresses Japan's evolving nationalism and national identity in relation to its newly rising consumerism during the two decades from 1952 to 1972, through a study of the transformation of the print media and the market for weekly and monthly magazines. Martyn Smith argues that the transformation of the print media in the 1950s and 1960s expanded the possibilities for social, individual and national identities in Japan. From the late 1950s, the growth in the market for weekly magazines was fuelled by the huge potential for advertising revenue, the rapid development of the Japanese economy, and the necessity for the growth of a consumer society. This resulted in the merging of national identity with individual subjectivity – which this book describes as 'national subjectivity' – as the Japanese media promoted individual consumption to aid the recovery of the Japanese nation as a whole. Examining housewife magazines such as Fujin Koron, Fujin no Tomo and Fujin Gaho, as well as news magazines such as Mainichi Graph and Asahi Graph, and publications aimed at young people – Shukan Heibon and Heibon Punch – Smith shows how the relationship of nationalism to everyday life is best understood by taking into account the changing nature of consumption in the period. By presenting an alternative to the traditional 'top-down' narrative of state-driven economic nationalism, this book therefore makes a unique contribution to the study of postwar Japanese history and Japanese nationalism.