Suchergebnisse

In 1942, proletarian writer, Takeda Rintarō, was sent from Japan to the Dutch East-Indies (Indonesia) as part of the Sendenbu (propaganda squad), where he led the literature section in the Keimin Bunka Shidōshō (cultural center) in Jakarta. Jawa sarasa documents Takeda Rintaro's activities and cultural experiences in Java, Indonesia, after he returned to Japan in 1944. Most Japanese literature and cultural writings about Nanyō or Nanpō ("South Islands" - South Asia and the Pacific, including Indonesia) from this era reference the concept of Imperialism in Asia. In the pre-war period, stereotypes such as dojin (local primitive) and tōmin (islander) defined South Island people as being lesser than or "other" than the Japanese people. Japanese literary depictions of tropical Eden's and exotic "uncivilized people" reflect similar perceptions and writings by Western authors towards Asia in the 19th century. This paper explores Takeda Rintarō's perspectives of "otherness" in prewar discourses about Indonesia. Through the influence of "The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" propaganda concept, the ideology of "sameness" was becoming a hegemonic cultural idea in Takeda's writings about Indonesia. Conversely, however, Takeda's depiction of the double-occupation of Java, with the political rule of Holland and economic domination of daily life by Chinese immigrants, implied criticism of Japan's administrative policies regarding economic exploitation in Java. Takeda's criticisms of Japanese policy are bedded in his emotion for the nature, culture and people of Indonesia.

This article examines whether mayors' social capital increases local governments' performance. Putnam suggests that politicians' social networks with residents may deteriorate political transparency and thus decrease performance. However, no direct relationships have been clarified. So, we focus on the Philippines as a case and conduct a survey on national representative 300 cities and municipalities in 2011. We find that (1) by distributions, among three indexes of performance as dependent variables, valuing fundamentals of governance have the highest scores. Social governance and administrative governance follow. Among mayors' networks as independent variables, mayors meet residents most, and local politicians, provincial politicians, and the central government officers follow. (2) By regression analyses, meeting residents promotes social governance, while meeting central government officers increases administrative governance. Multi-level analyses support these results. Therefore, mayors' social capital increases local governments' performance. Yet different social capital promotes different performance.

Since the 1980s, arguments for a multicultural Japan have gained considerable currency against an entrenched myth of national homogeneity. Working Skin enters this conversation with an ethnography of Japan's "Buraku" people. Touted as Japan's largest minority, the Buraku are stigmatized because of associations with labor considered unclean, such as leather and meat production. That labor, however, is vanishing from Japan: Liberalized markets have sent these jobs overseas, and changes in family and residential record-keeping have made it harder to track connections to these industries