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A group of nearly five dozen progressive American and Japanese lawmakers are calling on President Biden to employ a "robust diplomatic approach" to ease tensions between the U.S. and Taiwan and China, and to avoid what they view as increasing potential for conflict in the Taiwan Strait.
"A potential conflict would be disastrous, and we remain concerned that the possibility remains unacceptably high," the lawmakers said in a letter to the president on Friday. "Hostilities would produce grave harm to the physical, economic, and social well-being of the people of the United States and Japan, the people of Taiwan and China, and the most vulnerable and disadvantaged people across the world."
The lawmakers' letter, led by the Congressional Progressive Caucus in the U.S. and the Progressive Caucus Japan in that country's Diet, comes as Beijing has increasingly asserted its military prowess around Taiwan, with China's President Xi Jinping restating the importance of reunifying Taiwan with the Chinese mainland. Meanwhile, Taiwan's new president, Lai Ching-te, who has in the past been a fierce proponent of Taiwan's independence, has since moderated his views, voicing support for the status quo, saying that "Taiwan is already an independent sovereign country."
The CPC, PCJ letter says that the recent $8 billion military package authorized for Taiwan should be accompanied by a "robust diplomatic approach" that prioritizes "easing mutual misperceptions and misunderstandings that can undermine long-standing diplomatic agreements and precipitate violent military conflicts."
Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), one of the letter's signatories, said in a press call on Friday that it's important for progressives to "call out" China's aggressive regional behavior, but added, "The fact that many members of both the CPC and PCJ are speaking with one voice in this letter is a testament to our mutual commitment to peace and stability,"

This article aims to achieve several goals. Theoretically, engaging with two theoretical approaches of Western intelligence culture which emerged in the past twenty years, this article aims to devise a new approach to better understand Japan's intelligence culture as a non-Western intelligence culture. Policy-wise, this article contextualizes the English-speaking intelligence policy discussion for Japan to join the 'Five Eyes' intelligence alliance. It delineates the origins of the 'Five Eyes' and the ideation and considerations for Japan to join the 'Five Eyes.' Empirically, it examines the historical development of Japan's intelligence system from before the First World War to the 2010s. By identifying the patterns along the interface between international dynamics and domestic politics that have entangled Japan's intelligence system after the Second World War, it argues that Japan's subversionoriented intelligence culture has been prevented from developing by the United States. Finally, based on the lessons learnt, in the light of ancient Chinese and Indian strategic thought, this article reflects upon the cultural uniqueness of Japan's intelligence culture through the prism of 'subversive ontology.'

"This book explores the hundred-year history of the relationships between Japanese media and social subjects through an analysis of the connections between cinema audiences and five significant discursive terms in the Japanese language: minshū (the people), kokumin (the national populace), tōa minzoku (the East Asian race), taishū (the masses), and shimin (citizens). Roughly speaking, as far as their relations with cinema are concerned, the term "the people" circulated from the 1910s through the 1920s, "the national populace" from the 1930s through the 2010s and even to the present day, "the East Asian race" from the late 1930s up to the mid-1940s, "the masses" from the late 1920s to the present, and "citizens" from the 1960s through the present. The overlap between the terms indicates that the history of Japanese social subjects has unfolded not in a linear, but in a multilayered manner. Each period has also been bound up with various political and economic issues which have impacted on that very history. These include the presence of capitalism, total war, imperialism, democracy, social movements, post-Fordism, neoliberalism, the network society, and the risk society. In each context, such terms as "the people," "the national populace," "the East Asian race," "the masses," and "the citizens" have not necessarily been deployed in terms of a set of lexically defined, fixed, and stable meanings; rather, they all have entailed certain discrepancies and contradictions among a diverse range of standpoints, while at the same time changing their different interpretative valence according to historical context. In addition, these concepts have sometimes been used to define the self and at other times to define a given other. Moreover, the terms have not only been enunciated through discourses; they have also been enacted by physical bodies. The overall purpose of this book, therefore, is to empirically and analytically elucidate a dynamic, multi-layered history of cinema audiences in Japan as part of a larger relationship between media and social subjects and examines cinema audiences as simultaneously shaped by and shaping social history. In so doing, it brings a new perspective to the history of Japanese society and culture in its global context from the early twentieth century up to the early twenty-first century"--

Abstract.  This paper examines how Japanese‐speaking children interpret implicit variables and the anaphor zibun'self' when both are concerned with referential and quantificational subjects and antecedents in conjoined stripping structures with a case marker. In previous studies on the availability of sloppy readings in child Japanese, it has been unclear whether the attested sloppy reading really stems from LF copying of linguistic antecedents. Those studies employed null object and soo‐su'do so' constructions; however, there is debate about whether these constructions are instances of surface or deep anaphora.To show whether Japanese‐speaking children have unambiguous accessibility to bound‐variable or sloppy interpretations in the grammar of Japanese, I did three experiments using a stripping construction with a case marker, which is considered to involve LF copying of linguistic antecedents (Fukaya & Hoji 1999). It has been shown that Japanese‐speaking children are able to associate implicit variables and zibun as a bound variable with referential and quantificational antecedents and that sloppy readings are available in child Japanese. This study provides evidence that, in both child and adult grammars, the Japanese stripping construction with a case marker involves LF copying of an antecedent IP and is therefore an instance of surface anaphora.

A survey of Japan's new religions (1) shows "ancestor worship" (2) to have played an important part in various religious bodies (3), as a means for attaining happiness for the living. Generally speaking, new religions advocate that the adequate veneration of ancestors leads them to enter a "blissful state", as a result of which they can bring happiness to their living descendants (4). At the same time, the new religions also teach that lack of proper consolation for ancestors results in misfortune for the living (5). This tendency to put importance on ancestor worship is a particular feature of the Reiyu‐kai group of new religions which denotes those religious bodies which were established by schism within Reiyu‐kai (lit. the Spirit Friends' Society) and by the subsequent re‐splitting of those bodies (6) which resulted. The parent organization, Reiyu‐kai, is a large‐scale new religion of lay Nichiren origin (7), which was founded by Kakutaro Kubo and Kimi Kotani in 1925, and its doctrine of memorial rites for ancestors, concentrating on the combination of ancestor worship and faith as found in the Lotus Sutra, draws upon that of the Bussho Gonen movement founded by Toshizo Nishida (8).

Diese Dissertation befasst sich mit dem Thema Anglizismen in der japanischen Sprache und versteht sich als Beitrag zur europäischen Anglizismendiskussion. Japanisch und Englisch verbindet eine relativ kurze, aber intensive Phase des Sprachkontaktes, geprägt und vorangetrieben vor allem durch die Rolle Amerikas bei der Öffnung des Landes. Seit 1945 ist die Zahl der Anglizismen in der japanischen Sprache sprunghaft angestiegen und stellt nun etwa 9% des Gesamtwortschatzes dar. Trotz dieser Zahlen sind Anglizismen im Japanischen nicht annähernd ein so heiß diskutiertes Thema wie in deutschsprachigen Ländern. Auf dieser Grundlage untersucht diese Arbeit die Geschichte des englisch-japanischen Sprachkontakts, die Einflüsse und Einstellungen, die ihn bis in die Gegenwart geprägt haben, sowie die Funktionen von Anglizismen und ihren vorbildhaften Integrationsprozess im Japanischen. Danach soll die Problematik des Gebrauchs und Verständnisses von Anglizismen aus verschiedenen Perspektiven näher beleuchtet werden, um dann zu zeigen, welche Antworten Politik und Gesellschaft darauf geben. Als empirischer Teil, schließlich, wird geprüft, wie sehr ein gut konstruierter Kontext zum Verständnis schwieriger Anglizismen beitragen kann, indem japanische Testpersonen nach der Bedeutung von 50 schwierigen Anglizismen mit und ohne Kontext befragt werden. Daraus soll ersichtlich werden, dass es möglich ist, die Bedeutung selbst schwieriger Anglizismen aus dem Kontext abzuleiten, und sie deshalb per se kein Kommunikationshindernis darstellen, wie oft behauptet wird. Dies soll dabei helfen zu zeigen, dass selbst in Ländern wie Japan, die viel mehr von Anglizismen betroffen sind als deutschsprachige Länder, die Sprache nicht untergeht und Kommunikation nicht verunmöglicht wird, sondern dass eine liberalere Einstellung, welche Wörter nicht an ihrer Herkunft bemisst, sondern an ihrer Funktion, viel dazu beitragen kann, ein Anglizismenproblem erst gar nicht entstehen zu lassen. ; This paper is concerned with the topic of Anglicisms in the Japanese language and is meant as a contribution to the Anglicism discussions in Europe. Japanese and English have had a relatively short, but intensive period of language contact, which was especially characterized by the role America played in the opening of the island country. Since 1945, the number of Anglicisms in Japanese has skyrocketed and now amounts to some 9% of the total vocabulary. Despite this fact, the topic of Anglicisms has never been a subject of such fierce discussions as in German-speaking countries. In this paper, I first take a look at the history of English-Japanese language contact, as well as the influences and attitudes that have shaped the relationship of the two languages. As a next step, the functions and the exemplary process of integration of Anglicisms in Japanese will be examined. Thereafter, the issue of comprehension and use of Anglicisms will be closely analyzed, together with the reactions by politics and society. Finally, an empirical part will explore the role of context in the understanding of difficult Anglicisms. For that cause, a number of Japanese test persons will be asked to define 50 difficult Anglicisms without and then in context. This will show that even the meaning of difficult loanwords can be derived from context and that loanwords by themselves therefore do not represent an obstacle to communication as is often postulated. The aim is to illustrate that even in countries like Japan, which are confronted with Anglicisms in much bigger numbers than German-speaking countries, the national language does not perish and communication does not break down. Rather, the results suggest that a more liberal attitude towards language, which defines words not by their origin but by their function, could help prevent Anglicisms from being perceived as a problem in the first place. ; eingereicht von Johannes Scherling ; Abweichender Titel laut Übersetzung der Verfasserin/des Verfassers ; Text teilw. in dt. und in japan. Sprache ; Graz, Univ., Diss., 2009 ; OeBB ; (VLID)206890

Abstract
This essay examines how universities in non-Western, non-English-speaking countries respond to global competition in higher education, where English has become dominant due to "linguistic imperialism." I pose critical questions about how these institutions can not only endure but thrive amid global competition, and whether intensified global competition has improved the quality of education. Focusing on Japan, I explore both successful and challenging aspects of globalization in its institutions of higher education. While Japan achieved success in adapting during the late nineteenth century, the emphasis on learning foreign languages, including English, diminished after World War II. The Japanese case illustrates the complex trade-offs between ensuring educational equity and global competitiveness, and highlights the evolving dynamics and challenges faced by universities as well as policymakers in non-English-speaking countries in the global higher-education landscape.

Annotation Gambling with Virtue rings with the voices of women speaking openly about their struggle to be both modern and Japanese in the late twentieth century. It brings to the fore the complexity of women's everyday lives as they navigate through home, work, and community. Meanwhile, women fashion selves that acknowledge and challenge the social order. Nancy Rosenberger gives us their voices and experiences interspersed with introductions to public ideas of the last three decades that contribute significantly to the opportunities and risks women encounter in their journeys. Rosenberger uses the stage as a metaphor to demonstrate how everyday life requires Japanese women to be skilled performers. She shows how they function on stage in their accepted roles while effecting small but significant changes backstage. Over the last thirty years, Japanese women have expanded their influence and extended this cultural process of multiple arenas to find compromises between the old virtues of personhood and new ideals for self. They conform, maneuver, and make choices within these multiple stages as they juggle various concerns and desires. By the 1990s their personal choices have made a difference, calling into question the very nature of these multiple arenas

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to use cognitive age to segment college‐educated Japanese seniors, a grouping of interest to many marketers both within and external to Japan. The intent is to demonstrate the nomological validity of the cognitive age concept by relating it to key externalities and to further assess the viability of cognitive age over chronological age in non‐Western segmentation research.Design/methodology/approachBoth hierarchical and non‐hierarchical clustering are employed to form segments of Japanese seniors based on their average cognitive age, as revealed by both Likert and semantic‐differential scaling. Differences are sought between the two clusters on key segmentation variables.FindingsThe results reveal that Japanese seniors who are younger, psychologically speaking, have more positive attitudes toward life satisfaction and aging than those respondents who are cognitively older. The psychologically younger respondents also tend to be more involved in activities and have better health along with economic comfort. The study further demonstrates, in a non‐Western setting, the predictive power of cognitive age over chronological age since the revealed cognitive age segments have the same chronological age.Practical implicationsThe fact that average cognitive age relates to one's health makes it a powerful segmentation variable in international segmentation research on the mature market. Basically, cognitive age reveals an aptitude and, when coupled with purchasing power, the viability of senior segments may be assessed more clearly and strategically.Originality/valueThe study validates the usefulness of cognitive age in global segmentation research and illustrates its potential as a better predictor of behavior than chronological age.

Japanese video games have been characterized as typifying contemporary postmodernity in the form of simulacra, both as a media form and in terms of their extensive localization for international markets, which creates user fantasies of Japaneseness that are not linked to an authentic or original Japan. These simulations are reappropriated by fans to create new content, in this case boys' love dōjinshi, which are in turn disseminated and consumed in an English-speaking online context. Fantasy role-playing video games, which often privilege heteronormativity and binary gender norms in their goals, narratives, and aesthetics, are among the most popular texts reimagined in this way. This study considers the concepts of simulation and database societies through an examination of the ways in which artificial contours of Japaneseness are constructed in the role-playing game series Final Fantasy VII's boys' love dōjinshi fandoms, how far these fan texts develop possibilities for the deconstruction of heteronormativity, and how transnational digitized consumption methods facilitate the intersection of these phenomena.

AbstractIt has been repeatedly shown that when asked to identify a protagonist's false belief on the basis of his false statement, English‐speaking 3‐year‐olds dismiss the statement and fail to attribute to him a false belief. In the present studies, we tested 3‐year‐old Japanese children in a similar task, using false statements accompanied by grammaticalized particles of speaker (un)certainty, as in everyday Japanese utterances. The Japanese children were directly compared with same‐aged German children, whose native language does not have grammaticalized epistemic concepts. Japanese children profited from the explicit statement of the protagonist's false belief when it was marked with the attitude of certainty in a way that German children did not – presumably because Japanese but not German children must process such marking routinely in their daily discourse. These results are discussed in the broader context of linguistic and theory of mind development.

The existing scholarship on middle and upper-class East Asian transnational families accompanying their children to English-speaking countries has mainly focused on long-term transnational migration pattern. However, we know less about the short-term pattern, and how it affects the subjectivities of migrants. By conducting a case study of Japanese women participating in oyako-ryūgaku (a short-term parent-child study abroad trip) with their children in Hawaii, we demonstrate how they constructed their transnational gendered subjectivities. We argue that not only motherhood and selfhood, but also wifehood is actively negotiated among the short-term transnational mothers through oyako-ryūgaku.

Abstract
Language users are known to have the ability to construe a given situation in several alternate ways. It is also known that being faced with one and the same situation, a speaker of one language may prefer to construe it in one way, while a speaker of another language may chose to construe it in another way. The present paper addresses this variability specifically with regard to speaker preference for either the 'subject-object contrast' type of construal or the 'subject-object merger' type of construal. It further suggests that there can be a parallelism (or 'homology') between a speaker's stance in linguistic encoding and a painter's stance in pictorial encoding, as can be observed in Japanese cultural artifacts.

AbstractThis study investigated whether English-language news media, which increased coverage of two large, well known private universities in Japan, increased their salience in the minds of international residents in Japan. Based on the agenda-setting theory of media influence, the authors made use of university enrollment trends as an indicator of public salience and found that the English-language media contributed to the growing prestige of the universities among the non-Japanese population. Academic reality in Japan underwent little change during that period with the top ranking government-funded universities, whose coverage in the English-language media did not increase, remained more prestigious within the local context, as is evident from local university rankings. This study also demonstrates that the media can exert an agenda-setting influence on institutions of higher learning, a domain that has not been traditionally investigated. The study also addresses the influences of the international, English-language press in the context of a non-English speaking country, Japan, and how the, "need for orientation" (NFO), might have been a factor.