Volume 3 Number 2 Hegemony and Resistance in the Asia-Pacific

Cover image: © Tevita HAVEA Push and Pull 2005 

Graduate Journal of Asia-Pacific Studies 

www.arts.auckland.ac.nz/gjaps


Volume 3, Number 2, December 2005 

Hegemony and Resistance in the Asia-Pacific 

Editorial 


Visual essay 

Tevita Havea, Push and Pull 

Creative writing 

Tonglu Li, The Final Confession of Mistress Wang 

Articles 

1. Elena Kolesova, Struggle from the Margins: Hokkaido 

Popular Education Movement in the Towering Shadow of 

the Japanese Examination System (1950-1969) 

2. Athena Nguyen, I’m Not Racist, I Eat Dim Sims!: The 

Commodification and Consumption of Asianness within 

White Australia 

3. Elena Atanassova-Cornelis, Japan and the ‘Human Security’ 

Debate: History, Norms and Pro-active Foreign Policy 

Visual essay 

Brydee Rood, Habitat – with an interview by Winsome Wild 

Reviews 

1. Kathy Ooi, review of Sharon Carstens, Histories, Cultures, 

Identities: studies in Malaysian Chinese worlds 

2. Margaret Barnhill Bodemer, review of Christoph Giebel, 

Imagined Ancestries of Vietnamese Communism: Ton Duc Thang 

and the Politics of History and Memory 

3. Tim Neale, review of Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the shore 

4. Chris Payne review of Tom Mes, The Midnight Eye Guide to 

New Japanese Film and Donald Richie, The Japan Journals 1947- 

2004 

Article abstracts and biographical notes 

3-5 

6-12 

13-26 

27-44 

45-57 

58-74 

75-85 

86-89 

90-92 

93-96 

97-102 

103-106 

2 



3:2 (2005), 3-5 

EDITORIAL Volume 3, Number 2, December 2005 


WELCOME TO Volume 3 Number 2 of the Graduate Journal of Asia-Pacific Studies. In 

this edition contributors have addressed the theme of ‘Hegemony and Resistance in 

the Asia-Pacific’. 

Individual and community experience in the Asia-Pacific region is characterised by 

deep disparities drawn along the lines of class, race, gender, sexuality, (dis)ability, 

nationality, and faith. These disparities are the material evidence of continued 

domination of certain groups by others through a combination of political and 

ideological means — or hegemony. While the scope of this conceptualisation of 

hegemony might differ from Gramsci’s original, there is no doubt that his assertion 

that the exercise of power pervades life from macro- to micro-experience still holds 

true. Indeed, if we are to glance quickly at our own nations’, cities, neighbourhoods 

or even homes — as some of the contributors to this edition do — then the exercise of 

hegemonic power will become only too apparent. Concomitantly, power, in the 

Foucaultian sense, is never a zero-sum game. Instead, power is always contingent, 

always in the making, never complete and always subject to contestation and 

resistance. Moreover, because hegemonic power pervades all aspects of our lives, 

the opportunities to resist it or at least contest its meanings are also ever present. The 

contributions in this issue offer different approaches to understanding hegemony 

and resistance in the Asia-Pacific region. Ranging from everyday experience to 

institutional politics and from consumption to security, they each remind us of the 

continued centrality of questions of power to an understanding of the Asia-Pacific 

region and indeed the world. 

The sculpture of Tevita Havea, a Tongan-born Australian artist, boldly adorns the 

cover and revolving homepage. Drawing on his experience of moving between 

Tongan and Australian society, Havea illustrates the deep tension that can exist 

between cultures and cultural systems. He addresses the theme of ‘Hegemony and 

Resistance’ by considering the ‘push and pull’ of different influences on his life and 

reminding us of the difficulty involved in resisting the ‘collective weight’ of culture. 

Working with the refinement of glass and the rawness of traditional materials 

Havea’s work is a testament to the possibility for individuals and groups to resist 

hegemony and create new hybrid subjectivities. 

Tonglu Li abruptly shifts our focus from this very contemporary experience of 

transnationality to the site (and sight) of a bloody Lingchi execution in Imperial China. 

His creative writing piece, ‘The Final Confession of Mistress Wang’, challenges 

gendered roles in traditional literature by making space for female experience in 

Editorial: Hegemony and Resistance in the Asia Pacific 3

what is typically a male narrative. The central character of his story, Mistress Wang, 

speaks, thinks and dreams as her executioners slowly disembowel her. As she does 

so we learn of the complex interpersonal webs that have brought Mistress Wang to 

her current situation and the ways in which her actions have challenged and 

undermined her gendered role in Imperial China. The story reveals issues of 

hegemony and resistance that are relevant across cultures and indeed across different 

historical contexts. 

Resistance to normative power is also an important theme in the first article by Elena 

Kolesova. Her article discusses local resistance to the development of the Japanese 

examination system. Often framed within discourses of economic nationalism, the 

highly disciplined Japanese approach to academic achievement has been the subject 

of both praise and criticism from international commentators. Kolesova, however, 

examines actions of a small popular education movement from Hokkaido, Japan’s 

northern-most island, and their attempts to challenge the national approach to 

education. Through her analysis, Kolesova illustrates how the representation of 

popular consensus around issues like education can often shroud discursive and 

material resistance to state hegemony. 

Shifting our attention from educational pedagogy to racialised consumption 

practices, Athena Nguyen discusses the hegemonic construction of ‘Asianness’ in 

contemporary white Australia. While leaving room for resistant interpretations, 

Nguyen purposefully makes visible the desire for difference and novelty that is at 

the centre of consuming ‘Asia’ in everyday products. She argues that such 

consumption cannot be the basis for shared cultural interaction but only continued 

patterns of racial domination and exploitation in everyday life. 

In the third article of this edition, Elena Atanassova-Cornelis brings us back to the 

discourses and practices of the Japanese state. In contrast to Kolesova’s article 

however, Atanassova-Cornelis identifies the ways that the development of Japanese 

foreign policy has served as part of the ongoing contestation around the concept of 

‘human security’. Atanassova-Cornelis argues that the unique approach to 

interpreting human security in Japan reflects the ongoing intersection of historical 

norms, policy preferences and pressure from the international community. 

In the second visual essay, Brydee Rood challenges us to reconsider the environment 

we live in and the way that we perceive the everyday objects that surround us. By 

modifying the look and purpose of apparently ‘meaningless’ objects, Rood reveals 

the way that our understanding of such objects is the result of assumed uses and 

constructed meanings. Rood’s arrangements are accompanied by an intriguing 

interview with Art Editor Winsome Wild that delves into the broader context for 

Rood’s work and places it both internationally in Japan and Mexico and locally in 

Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand. 

This edition also features reviews of five recent publications. Of note, Kathy Ooi 

discusses Histories, Cultures, Identities: studies in Malaysian Chinese worlds, a recent 

publication from Singapore University Press that challenges the homogenous 

4 


epresentation of overseas Chinese communities. Likewise, Margaret Barnhill 

Bodemer’s review of Imagined Ancestries of Vietnamese Communism: Ton Duc Thang and 

the Politics of History and Memory reveals the ongoing power struggles that occur in 

the construction of national histories. Tim Neale and Chris Payne round off the 

review section with excellent reviews of Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore 

(Neale), Tom Mes’s The Midnight Eye Guide to New Japanese Film (Payne) and Donald 

Richie’s The Japan Journals 1947-2004 (Payne). 

In other matters, a call for papers for Volume 4 Number 1 will be issued following 

the publication of this edition of GJAPS. The theme for that edition, ‘Navigating the 

Future: Asia-Pacific pathways’ will encourage contributors to consider the multiple 

types of movement and mobility (or lack of it) that contribute to the current 

experience of the Asia-Pacific region. 

Finally, this edition marks another development in the relatively short history of 

GJAPS. It is the first edition published under a largely reorganised editorial 

committee. As such, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate outgoing 

editor Michael O’Shaughnessy and all the other committee members who have 

departed – your contribution to the success of GJAPS has been invaluable. I would 

also like to thank all of the new and continuing committee members who have put so 

much effort into making this edition a reality. 

Francis Leo COLLINS 

University of Auckland 

Editorial: Hegemony and Resistance in the Asia Pacific 5


3:2 (2005), 6-12 

Push and Pull 

Tevita HAVEA 

Australian National University 

1. Push and Pull (2005) 8 

2. Mapa (2005) 9 

3. Voodoo Chime 1 (2005) 9 

4. Modern Primitive (2005) 10 

5. Voodoo Chime 2 (2005) 11 

6. Untitled (2005) 11 

7. Maea (2005) 12 

ARTIST’S STATEMENT 

I am part of an old culture full of myths, but I live in a modern 

world full of facts. There are so many contradictions... 

I AM forever bound to an ancient Tongan culture that deeply influences the way I 

think and feel. Like any community, there are burdens that come with the privilege 

of belonging. There are religious demands, strict family traditions and rituals that are 

both beautiful and intimately stifling. Contemporary culture no longer respects 

ancient myths, viewing them as nothing more than mere superstition. Rituals such as 

scarification, circumcision, tattooing or piercing may be viewed as extreme and 

savage, as irrelevant to the complexities of modern life. Yet the ancient rituals and 

traditions that all members of a community go through that physically alter the body, 

binds an individual emotionally and spiritually to a family, community and culture 

forever, through a physical and psychical transformation. Beneath the surface of 

primal ideology there is wisdom and truth. Through these rituals and initiations you 

are drawn to something greater than yourself, you find pieces of who you are and 

where you fit in. 

My work is fed by the in-betweens of culture, the tension between opposing 

forces, the privilege and burden of belonging to a Tongan community and living in a 

western country. It is the tension between the rawness of the ‘primitive’, and the 

‘refinement’ of contemporary culture that I voice within my work. It is the "push and 

pull" of different influences that I attempt to reconcile and to balance. The pull of 

culture is seductive; the gravity of its hypnotic push is reinforced by the recruitment 

of each new member, and the collective momentum is fueled by the convictions of 

each person. It is challenging to struggle against the collective weight and break the 

unbreakable. The majority of my life has been spent in the Western world and it has 

6 


opened my eyes to new possibilities. These contradict many of my early traditional 

perceptions and in the attempt to break away from some of my romantic Polynesian 

notions, I find myself in-between worlds. There are always contradictions when there 

are two opposing forces, but instead of one dominating the other, I aim to create 

pieces that are neither ancient nor contemporary, but operate to explore the tensions 

of the space between. Rituals may vary from culture to culture but the effect is the 

same, we are seduced by our culture and are drawn to something greater that is 

universal. 

Ofa atu 

Tevita Havea is a contemporary artist who was born in Tonga and moved to Sydney 

at the age of ten. Tevita studies Visual Art at the Australian National University 

School of Art, majoring in glass and sub-majoring in sculpture. 

Havea/Push and Pull 7

© Tevita HAVEA Push and Pull (2005) 

8 


© Tevita HAVEA Mapa (2005) 

© Tevita HAVEA Voodoo Chime 1 (2005) 


© Tevita HAVEA Modern Primitive (2005) 

10 


© Tevita HAVEA Voodoo Chime 2 (2005) 

© Tevita HAVEA Untitled (2005) 


© Tevita HAVEA Maea (2005) 

12 


The Final Confession of Mistress Wang 

Tonglu LI 

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 


3:2 (2005), 13-26 

Introduction 

THIS IS a short story about Mistress Wang, a figure that appeared in both Water 

Margins and the Plum in the Golden Vase. You might already know why and how she 

was killed by reading the two novels, or by watching the TV serial based on the first 

novel. Plainly speaking, she brought Ximen Qing, the rich, corrupted merchant, and 

Pan Jinlian — the Golden Lotus — together, and provided room for their adultery. 

Of course, she did not do this for free. Ximen Qing paid her handsomely. However, 

the story did not develop into a romantic one. Wang encouraged Pan to murder her 

husband Wu Da (Wu the Elder), after Wu confronted Pan about her affair with 

Ximen Qing. Mistress Wang was highly involved, and so also met her destiny. In the 

bandit-centred fiction Water Margins, Pan and Ximen were killed by Wu Song, out of 

revenge for the murder of his elder brother. Mistress Wang was executed with 

Lingchi 1 by the government in Dongping Fu (Prefecture of Dongping, 东平府 ), the 

higher authority of her hometown Qinghe Xian (Clear Water County, 清河县 ). Wu 

Song witnessed the process before his own exile. In The Plum in the Golden Vase, the 

author borrows the bloody plot from Water Margins and makes it the starting point 

for the Pan Jinlian-Ximen Qing centred erotic story. He also made some 

modifications to facilitate his narrative intentions. As a result, Mistress Wang was 

killed by Wu Song after he returned home years later from his exile. In my writing, I 

followed the first ending but moved the execution scene back to Clear Water in order 

to make it more spectacular. 

Mistress Wang was indispensable in making the affair between Ximen Qing 

and Pan Jinlian happen in both novels. However, she remained a marginal figure 

and did not get much attention from either author. My initial intention was to 

explore Wang’s motivations assisting Pan Jinlian and Ximen Qing. Besides her 

marvelous techniques of deploying the affair, what is in her mind Is it something 

more than money Is it revenge on men Is it for voyeuristic pleasure Or is it a 

desire to feel powerful by manipulating people of higher social status To explore 

these I need to reconstruct her life story, her bubble-like dreams and her struggles to 

squeeze into the society. Only by doing this can we fabricate a “logic” for her life 

story and the world she lived in from her perspective. 

This, of course, is not an endeavor to restore the real historical moment, if there 

is one. It intends to re-imagine a woman, whose life deserves to be the subject of 

many books, based on the relatively plain accounts in the two novels mentioned 

above. However, textualization of her life is as difficult as trying to build a solid 

statue referring to a pale shadow. Therefore, in this short piece the presentation of 

her mind is more than the elaboration of everyday life. Stylistically, it might be said 

that there is some similarity with Lu Xun’ s Old Tales Retold in that I include some 

Li/The Final Confession of Mistress Wang 13

eferences to contemporary terms, events and discussions, which interrupt the flow 

of narration. They might do this, but they also expand the textural space. Mostly, 

however, it is for fun, because the execution scene is too serious. Finally, I followed 

my pen and I produced a Mistress Wang – a victimized victimizer, a contaminated 

contaminator, who should have cried but had to smile and who could be any woman 

at her time and in her situation. 

The story is framed within the site of her execution. I could not help putting 

certain weight on the reactions of the onlookers of the execution, their excitement, 

and their desire to see the bloody scene. This concern is really inspired by modern 

Chinese writers, especially Lu Xun. However, I had no intention of casting 

aspersions on these people from a so-called “elite” perspective, not only because I 

could be one of them, but also because everyone could be one of them. I was just 

curious about how the pedagogical-intent of the violent scene that the government 

used to threaten its citizens was transformed into a spectacle or a carnival. I also 

doubted whether this phenomenon had extinguished today, rather than being 

transformed into other scenes. Now let us go into the story. 

梦过清河 2 

迷蒙紫蝶翩翩舞 

王婆 

3 

茶肆依然在 

过遍长街无人识 

醒来还忆当日路 

古城烟雨一梦游 

西门 

4 

衰草卧墙头 

闲看清河水东流 

几时明月照西楼 

The Street, the Butterfly 5 

For some people, the crowded dust-swirling streets are a stage. To enjoy it, you can 

either be an actor, or a spectator. For some people, the final scene of their life is 

performed on this stage. They know that their destiny will not be different from that 

of others whom they watch on this stage for fun. 

This of course was five hundred years ago. Today the streets are taken over by 

cars and, since we have evolved to become more modern and civilized, some scenes 

are not appropriate for public anymore, especially as entertainment. For example, we 

can still kill criminals or enemies, but for the risk of contamination, especially of our 

children, or to show our benevolence to these dead people, we do not allow 

ourselves to see it. And nobody shares the excitement with Ah Q, who once said, 

“Have you seen a decapitation Amazing! Amazing!” 6 As substitutes, people turn to 

TV or film to have fun. Five hundred years ago, when there was no TV or film, 

people could still get the same pleasure by other means, just by going into the streets, 

even in the provincial town Clear Water County in Shandong, Central Kingdom. As 

you can guess now, a fantastic scene, which has been and would be repeated for 

many years and on many streets has finally become a favourite enjoyment, a 

spectacle making many eyes pleased and excited: Lingchi-ing a criminal. 

It is an ordinary sunny day on the Main Street of Clear Water Country. When 

birds start chirping and the peddlers start to bring out their commodities, the 

residents are just getting out of their dreams when bowing to each other with smiles 

and greetings. Mistress Wang, who has already become part of a legend, a bloody 

revenge, after months of imprisonment, sees the sunshine and the familiar streets for 

14 


the first time. It is for the first time in her life she realizes how beautiful and splendid 

a thread of sunshine is when it comes through the grey branches and twigs, and how 

lovely the street is when so many people and cabs flow over it with their many 

sounds and voices. But it is all too late for her. Soon she will become a spectacle to be 

enjoyed by her former neighbors and unfamiliar people. “You will be cut to 

thousand pieces” has been her favorite curse to those who tried to pay less or not pay 

in her teahouse. Soon she will know how it tastes. She has been in the audience of 

executions for a long time. There have been performances of beheading, cutting in 

two at the waist, tearing a body limb from limb by five horses, and so on. But even 

the most delicate Lingchi could not attract her any more after so many. The scene is 

not a book in which you can always find new meaning. Today she becomes the 

actress on the stage. There are many spectators and the performance will be long. 

Why so long They say the longer you suffer the better for the people to release their 

hatred. When she sees the smiles on familiar faces, a chill passes over her body. 

“My brothers, could you make it quick Still remember the free tea” 

“Don’t call us that, Mistress Wang. You are a smart person. You are too smart. 

If you only sell tea, who dares to put you here Furthermore, this is our job. You are 

dead anyway. If we give you a quick death, people would not allow us and we will 

be fired. It is so hard these days to find a job.” 

“I see. Would you do me a favor telling my son Wang Chao ( 王潮 ) 7 to bury me 

He is in Yuncheng city doing business now.” 

“Don’t you worry about anything, Mistress Wang! Once we send you on your 

way, everything will be fine.” 

The sun is rising and people are gathering. They are waiting for THAT moment. 

Finally, she is tied on the frame called wood donkey. Her mouth is also tied up to 

prevent her from cursing the sacred. The executors are very good at their job. She is 

processed so quickly and neatly that it looks like they are showing off. Her clothes, 

bought with the silver Ximen Qing paid her, now worn and ragged, are torn off. 

People start to scream and comment on her body; maybe they wonder how such a 

weak and pale body can contain such an energetic “evil” soul, which brought several 

people into death. 

“Oh! Look! Still white and tender…” 

“What a pity! I cannot… I should have…” 

“Hahaha… What are you thinking about She could be your mother!” 

“Hi! Young men, watch your mouths! And learn something ethical…” 

“You want me to learn something moral How about you and your 

daughter-in-law… isn’t she good” 8 

“She deserves it! The evil bitch! I have known from the beginning that she is 

evil…I never let my family go to her teahouse. She is a “professor” to teach men to 

steal and women to sell themselves. Unless I have to borrow something…” 

“Amida Buddha 9 ! It is a sin, a sin. People only follow their desires…revenge 

followed by revenge, where is the end Go home! Go home! Witnessing the 

destroying of evil doesn’t make you saint. Ai! The sky is falling and nobody listens to 

me…” 

More and more people are gathering. 

People. She has been one of them, and spit on other criminals. She knows 

almost all of them. They go to her teahouse, ask for others’ secrets, or ask her to get 


them a wife… But today in their eyes she becomes an alien, something they can 

enjoy. And how familiar these conversations are! Nothing is new under the sun. 

The execution finally starts. Piece by piece, every cut is accurate and stimulates 

a scream—not from her, but from the onlookers. Is it painful She can feel it but she 

cannot say it out loud. Pain cannot accumulate endlessly. To a point it will make you 

numb, just as when you drink too much. Yes, drinking. It seems even you can watch 

it calmly. People become cloudy; their voices become fussy, like the flow of spring a 

river. Nobody knows since when, a butterfly always flies up and down in front of 

her eyes. For a moment she will think, 

“Am I dreaming Where are you from Why are you here Are you coming to 

take me away Do you want to know my life story, my butterfly I cannot speak, but 

you can hear me. Am I right” 

The colourful butterfly, with the silent and slow fluttering of its wings, calms 

her down, and leads her to her past for the first time, and for the last time. She was 

too busy before, but what for And now she would not be busy ever again. There is 

no more need for calculations, fabrications, and no need for hard work. Isn’t it good 

… What year was it And what season was it when all that happened What place 

What really happened Things pass like floating cloud and smoke. But their shadows 

would be impressed in your dreams. … 

The Dreams 

“My dreams are very short, as short as this street is.” 

“Mistress Wang, they call me now. Since they started calling me a “girl”, I realized 

how poor we were. I dreamed of having mirror, but could not afford one. But 

through their eyes I saw myself. ‘She is so ordinary-looking that she even cannot 

become a courtesan as her sisters two do.’ This was what I heard. But what is good to 

be a courtesan, my butterfly Every thread of their smiles in front of their clients, 

every smile is accompanied by drops of tears in their own small room. My sisters 

told me. I know my parents expected a son, but they always got useless girls. They 

complained to each other and I became the scapegoat, the vent for their anger and 

despair. They hated me and ignored me, even when I tried to help in the kitchen—I 

am embarrassed to say, that was not a kitchen.” 

“My butterfly, you might not believe it. I even did not get a formal first name. 

There are so many flowers and plants, but they did not bother to pick one as my 

name. Orchard, chrysanthemums, lotus—no, forget about lotus. Before I was married, 

I was Wang the third girl. After that I was attached to my husband Wang Zhu, they 

called me “the-one-in-Wang Zhu’s-house”. And since the bastard died drunk and 

young, I am simply Mistress Wang. But does a name really matter Did I lose 

anything … Yes, sometimes I did not know who I was.” 

“I dreamed about flying away to a place where no one knows me and I live 

together with only cute animals like hares, deer and goats. No tigers, no wolves and 

no foxes. Oh, those foxes. They always come into the human world in the guise of 

attractive women. They are beautiful. But since when did they start to enchant those 

shameless men My dreams were broken when I opened my eyes and saw my 

parents’ faces. They came again later like the little pitiful mice.” 

“Nobody played anything with me because I did not even have an item of 

clothing without holes and patches on it. Sometimes I stood by the door watching 

16 


little girls playing. But my mother would curse me, ‘you little cheap thing, do you 

want to sell yourself Nobody wants to pay for you! Go back to wash and clean!’ You 

see, my dreams were always incomplete, as fragmented as the footprints on today’s 

street.” 

“Technically—this term might be embarrassing, but I like it, I like anything that 

can be handled, can be divided. Technically, I did not have a dream about my life at 

all. I was married to a man before I started dreaming about a man. I did not get 

anything from my parents—they did not have anything. Only my two sisters gave 

me a set of new clothes and a mirror—I used it once and I did not like my face. Now 

it might be rusted and dusted. And I did not cry when I left my home. I had nothing 

to cry for—neither did my parents. And I did not know what my husband paid them 

for getting me. I did not care about it.” 

“My marriage was not so bad because my husband did not beat me. A woman 

like me was just not his type. I am not attractive to him, maybe to any men. He 

inherited some property and started to gamble and drink with other guys. They went 

to brothels together. Sometimes he even brought those bitches home. Nobody could 

stop him. He was totally drowned in his desires. I could not stop him since nothing 

in the house belonged to me. I pleaded to some seniors of his clan to stop him. They 

were angry that his father did not give them anything and they did not say a word. I 

was desperate. What could a woman do” 

“I did not care about him any more after we had our son. ‘I will rely on you, 

my son.’ I said this to my son, who was still not able to speak a word. Maybe I 

should tell you, my butterfly. It was me who gave my son a name, Wang Chao 10 . I 

hoped that he always remembered to come back to me. As trustworthy as the tide, no 

matter how far away he goes. Now of course he is not here, and I am grateful for it. 

Oh my son, how could he face this, how could he endure the rumors behind his back 

if he was here, and could he have face to continue living here Maybe he will go to 

the water margins, but please don’t! Always remember, my son, even if you are as 

hard as steel, the government is the stove. Never try to confront the rule. If you want 

subvert it, abide by it first and remake for your own purposes.” 

“Also, I had to start calculating the daily expenses. I had to plan for the future 

of my son. Where would the money come from Sometimes the dead bastard 

brought back some money and I had to skillfully steal little pieces. For several years I 

saved several taels of silver. One day my husband was found dead in the street. 

Some people said that his friends murdered him because he won lots of money that 

night. I cried for help from the mayor, but no one came to talk about it. They just 

followed the procedures and filled out some forms, as if it was an X-files case. 11 Later 

on I found out why. The mayor received lots of money from some people. For a 

moment maybe I should let my son go to the water margins. My butterfly, I do not 

want to tell you about my feelings of powerlessness and humiliation. The dead ghost 

never came into my dream to give me a hint, or to tell me if he hid some money 

somewhere I did not know about, for our son. But he never came to visit me. He 

definitely had already forgotten us and started to play with other female ghosts in 

hell.” 


The Becoming of Mistress Wang 

“From then on I forgot about my dreams. I had to find a way out to raise my son. 

Anything unpractical would be minimized, unless my son liked it. I had to make 

detailed plans, to budget every penny, and to do risk analysis for managing our daily 

life.” 

“The untimely death of my husband was my rebirth. Before he died, you know, 

even though he did nothing, as long as he was there, my heart was at peace. And no 

rumors went after me, and no need to contact with so many people. My butterfly, 

you might think I am playing philosophical games to talk about Laozi’s ‘the 

usefulness of uselessness’; 12 I am not. I am telling the truth because after that my 

heart became empty and I had to fill it with something. The outside pressures 

seemed to emerge from nowhere when there was not a man in the household. I had 

to play the role of a father as well as a mother. I wanted to cry. But since crying could 

not bring any help, so I held back my tears.” 

“My parents would not allow me to go back to their home since I would be a 

burden, and a widow always brought inconvenience for them. To tell you the truth, I 

would rather beg to raise my son than step into their house again. But they showed 

interest in my son. Yes, my son, whom nobody can take away from me.” 

“Since my husband’s death, many bachelors came to help me. But I could see 

from their slant eyes what they wanted. I refused all their offers first. No man is 

reliable. But men can be manipulated. They look strong, but are driven by their 

desires. Later on, I thought why not use them I kept my distance with them, 

stimulated some jealousy and let them compete with one another, always letting 

their imagination and hopes live. I did not care about the rumors. My son was still 

young and he understood nothing.” 

“Although I could have had my choice for remarriage, I did not remarry for the 

sake of my son. A woman is always a mother first. I did not want my son to be 

despised, to be bullied. Furthermore, where would I find a reliable man in the 

county You want me to find a boor and move to the countryside No way. Those 

boors are as dumb as wood trunks. When they come to the city, you can see from 

their astonished face how dumb they are! Can you imagine feeding pigs and chicken 

everyday I had to find a better way out. Of course, this was my real thinking at that 

time. Now I do not like urban life anymore. It is too crowded and there is not a single 

day that you can avoid the gaze of other people. There are too many desires and you 

will easily be drowned in the sea of lust and appetites.” 

“I had nowhere to go, so I stayed home. Luckily my relatives did not come to 

get the house since I had a son. I thought it over, and finally I turned my house into a 

teahouse. I spent most of my savings on renovating and decorating. However, 

opening a teahouse is not as simple as making tea and selling it. The bachelors still 

came to help, but they were not powerful—if they were, they had already got women. 

There were gangsters, permits from government, tax, fees, and so on. At the 

beginning the gangsters came with dead flies in their hands and they put them into 

the teapots. They said that I served them dirty tea and they broke everything. They 

threatened to send me to see the mayor unless I paid them a protection fee. I did 

some calculations, and realized that, to consider all of these costs, I would be 

bankrupt in no time.” 

18 


“To continue my teahouse business I had to sleep with the gangsters, low 

officials, and others in power. Sex seemed the last capital for me to invest and I had 

to invest wisely. Yes, I was not pretty, but I was young. For them I was a free lunch. I 

satisfied them, whether they were old or young, handsome or ugly, as long as they 

helped me with my business, but I came to hate men more and more. When I slept 

with those men, I sent my son to the bank of Clear Water River. I sometimes could 

not hold my tears when he told me, ‘mom, I do not want to look at the water 

anymore’. Sometimes at night when I could not sleep, I persuaded myself, if I could 

not change the way of the world, I change my will, my way of seeing things. Why 

not enjoy the men who came to me Why not take licentiousness as a compliment 

But when seeing my son there, I would blame myself for what I did and what was in 

my mind. Yes, his mother could not be a lady of pleasure. I must hate each of them! 

Gradually, I started fights among these men. I let them go against each other for my 

revenge, for the humiliation I got, and to bury the shame. But I would leave the most 

powerful as reserve and back up. The world is a game and you have to know how to 

play. You damn stupid men! You think you were playing me You were all played 

by me.” 

“I imagined and calculated at night when I woke up from nightmares—I did 

not have dreams anymore, I only had nightmares, in which I tried climbing up a cliff 

but I always fell down to the abyss. I hated the chaotic daytime, but I was afraid of 

the quiet nights. My only hope was my son. I saved more and more silver and my 

son was growing up well. But I did not send him to school. Why not If he succeeded, 

he would leave me and became one of the corrupted officials. If he failed he would 

become useless, except for becoming a poor teacher or serving the illiterate rich or 

perverted powerful by his sour literary hackwork—to me that was an even lower 

status than the street women. Therefore I sent him to be an apprentice in business. I 

was glad that he enjoyed it. He did not inherit any bad habits from his father. I 

would have beaten him to death if he did.” 

“I was becoming old. For a woman forty is too old. I do not know or care how 

the poor and sour literati elaborate and sigh for the passing of time. By looking at my 

hands I knew I had become old. All the men lost interest in me and turned to 

younger ones. I became old therefore I had to behave like an old woman. But this 

was not a bad thing. After so many years, the teahouse had changed me. After so 

many years, I had built up a network and nobody dared to make trouble with me. I 

knew how to make those bastards yield with my softness, or with hardness 

concealed in softness. I saw through those cowards. They only knew to bully the 

weak and fear the strong.” 

“And I found out that actually there were two kinds of capital that women 

could have: their body, and their language. As a young child, and throughout my life, 

I was never a good talker. But I learned how to talk in order to change my situation. 

Why are human beings superior to animals and birds Because the human being can 

talk. Sometimes things could be settled down not by actions, but by how you put it 

into words. A teahouse is also an information center of the county. I kept listening to 

the talk and came to know all about the residents, stories, or events from other places 

I had no hope of visiting. I knew all about people in the county. My information was 

much richer than the mayor’s. They said I was illiterate. But if someone read to me I 


would understand and remember it. And I knew how to weave it into my talk. What 

was the use of only knowing the dead words in books but nothing else” 

“Slowly, I became a matchmaker. I forget when --maybe the third year after my 

husband’s death. It doesn’t matter, it won’t be written in the official history. But I 

really enjoyed it. It was not only for money—I had enough of that to last me out my 

days. It also gave me a sense of control: finally I got my day in which someone asked 

me for favour. I liked manipulating things. Isn’t it good to arrange two peoples’ fates 

with your own delicate talking I did not have to take effort in watching other 

people’s secrets; they were transparent to me. Nothing could escape my eyes in this 

small county. Yes, a person is like a yard surrounded by a high wall. You are only 

perceived as the always-closed gate, the wall and the top half of the trees, or the 

graffiti on the wall. But I could get into every corner of the yard. Those rich women, 

pretentious, condescending; once I knew them better I stopped admiring them. They 

were no better than me. Maybe nobody is better than you, if you know how to look 

at things. Decorated with jade and gold and enclosed behind the wall, how could 

they know about the outside world without talking with me, or with the nuns They 

could only imagine having affairs with others, even with their brothers-in-law, sonsin-law 

or servants. Yes, many times I knew they really exercised their imagination. 

Only the stupid husband did not know. But you also need to be careful when doing 

business. Leave enough room to step backward. People did not want to trust my 

words. But I did not force them; they were just amused by their own imagination. 

People did not like me because I knew about them. But they couldn’t live without me. 

I’m the thread to weave their dreams together. How can they imagine that they 

belong to the same community without making the secret of others public” 

“Gradually my son grew up. Just looking at his beard and broad shoulders 

satisfied me. I was expecting this day but was also afraid of its coming. He liked 

doing business so much and he was always far away. Another trouble was also 

coming: to get him a wife. But what kind of wife would she be I had been a 

matchmaker for such a long time and it should not have been difficult for me to 

select from the available girls. But it was only because I was a matchmaker that I 

could not make a choice. Just like a doctor cannot treat his family; a teacher cannot 

teach his children. And there is no good woman at all in the eyes of mother-in-law. I 

was lucky not having a mother-in-law, but I do not understand how a young woman 

can be so evil. A woman competing with me to cook for my son, another woman 

washing his clothes for him, and taking my son away to a place I did not know, all 

these were the nightmares I had. Yes, nobody is reliable, even a son, needless to say a 

daughter-in-law. Yes, in this world only the shiny silver is the most intimate to you. 

It’ll never betray you.” 

The Historical Project 

“Being Pan Jinlian might be every woman’s nightmare if you see how she died. 

However, Ximen Qing, I can say, is every man’s paradigm. Maybe you will say Wu 

Song. But Wu Song is not human. He lives in another world and this world is just his 

hotel. That’s why he does not like women, and why he can kill so cold-bloodedly. 

Any man who takes this world as home would care about his desire and get 

satisfaction. You may say that being the Emperor is every man’s biggest dream, but 

can an emperor really enjoy what he possesses, as Ximen Qing did Most emperors 

20 


ecome impotent under the pressure from inside and out. Maybe Ximen Qing is the 

real paradigm for men. Drinking, eating, man, woman, music, travel, silver, power, 

donkey-like organ, which one is not on your list Please do not argue with me. I have 

seen through men. The more I know about them the more I hate them, except for my 

son. But I need to use them.” 

“You might have known, and all others have known what I did to them. 

People talk about it excitedly as if sipping a cup of tea. They call me a matchmaker, a 

madam. But people can only be seduced by their own imagination and they will 

follow their desires to death without noticing. If they do not want to do it in the first 

place, how can I interfere I just provided tactics and a third space for them.” 

“I will tell you some stories behind the story, my butterfly. I really enjoyed this 

case, though I got trapped in it. It was my biggest success, as well as my biggest 

failure. To bring two married persons together is more challenging than normal 

matchmaking. You always need to consider failure first and make up your plan with 

your participants together, taking environmental elements, scripts—what kind of 

words you are going to use— and materials into consideration. However, the result 

mostly depends on their performance. It is as subtle and difficult as commanding a 

battle. Remember how Zhuge Liang did in the War of the Red Cliff He is the 

paradigm in our profession.” 

“People say that I conspired with Ximen Qing, No. I planned it with Pan Jinlian, 

to seduce Ximen Qing. When Pan Jinlian and Wu Da first moved here, I knew at first 

sight how deep was Pan’s dissatisfaction with her situation. A young woman like her 

deserves a better partner. She looks like a doll. No! That’s too heavy. She is a 

butterfly flying so gently. If I were a man, I would definitely catch her and pierce her 

heart so that she could never fly away 13 . One day Pan came to visit me and we talked 

for a long time. Gradually I knew her intentions. There was a volcano in this woman 

but she did not know where the vent was. I knew this woman’s agony and ambition. 

It was at that moment that I knew how to help her. Our dialogue went like this: 

‘I can find you a satisfactory man, but you cannot be too anxious. By the way, 

what will you do to your husband’ 

‘What are you talking about I did not mean to… I do not know, I do not 

know.’ 

‘Don’t be shy in front of me. Who am I I know what you want, even if you 

yourself do not.’ 

‘He is not so potent. And seeing him makes me sick. I prefer staying in the dark 

night although I do not want to sleep…’ 

‘You know Ximen Qing He is a successful man. He has everything. I can find 

ways to let him come to my teahouse. And you just stand by your door often. 

Opportunities come for those who are prepared.’ 

‘… …’ 

‘Do you know how to deal with men Show them something, but do not 

approach them. Your value will fall dramatically if you offer yourself to them 

directly. The best way to conquer a man is to let him conquer you.’ 

‘But… how…’ 

‘I will bring him here. When he passes your door, hit him slightly with your 

door curtain. Stay for a few seconds and firmly return to your home. That’s the bait 

for him.’ 


‘If he asks me about you, that means we can continue our plan. Next step, I will 

make the whole plan seem like HIS plan with me, so you are innocent of the whole 

thing. And you need to perform well to be innocent. I will tell him some strategies to 

use. Of course I will let him spend lots of money.’ 

‘It sounds amazing. Where did you learn this I never knew this.’ 

‘Let’s do it slowly and make it as tantalizing as possible. That will increase 

your value in his eyes. ’ 

‘How can I pay you back for this… You are always nice to me. And I am just a 

useless housewife…’ 

‘Do not worry. We are neighbours and we need to support each other. If you 

can marry him, do not forget me when you enjoy your life. I will get my money from 

him and he will pay me willingly for the present.’ 

‘Of course. Of course. But how about the dwarf How can I face him if I…’ 

‘I asked you at the beginning just for knowing your mind. Do not worry about 

it now. Let’s wait and see. It is like crossing the river by touching the stones on the 

bottom. Isn’t it more stimulating when there is a minor danger in our plan’ 

As you know, our plan was carried out. I got my money. The money itself is 

not important. But by seeing the aura of the shiny silver you can imagine you are 

more powerful and you words get better endorsement. Sometimes, sitting in front of 

the door to guard for them, listening and imagining what they were doing in my bed, 

I thought about myself. Too many things had gone forever before I had a chance to 

enjoy them. I am proud of them and I’m jealous too…” 

“I am still feeling no regret for what I did. Ximen Qing is a tall tree and Pan 

Jinlian is the very Chinese wisteria ( 紫藤 ) born to take root in this tree. That dwarf 

Wu Da, he was too short for a plant like Pan to grow on. I have to admit that he was 

a good guy. He was satisfied with what he had and what he did. Everyday he passed 

by my door, greeting me with smile, no matter if I answered back or not. Is there any 

other guy in the county who can endure his wife’s curse and infidelity without 

saying a word but handing a cup of warm tea to her with smile But he is too good 

for his short figure. You might say, physical appearance does not matter, and people 

can construct their identities however they like. 14 But how can you get out of the trap 

of your body Call it a house or a prison. No way! Yes, I feel pity for him. Everybody 

pitied him and made fun of him: 

‘Hi! Wu Da. Your pies are not tasty. Your wife has two better steamed buns. 

Can 

I 

buy them from her’ 

‘Be careful my brother, do not let my brother Wu Song hear this…’ So was his 

consideration. Maybe it was because he was so weak and short that he had to be 

good. Could he kill a chick I prefer being a street woman to living with him, if I 

could make my own choice. Pan Jinlian — people called her Golden Lotus — was a 

gift to him which he did not deserve.” 

“But how many times have the calculator and the schemer forgotten to 

calculate for themselves Yes. Even Zhuge Liang miscalculated once or twice. I 

helped her to kill her husband! Yes, it was only a miscalculation. Killing him was not 

in our plan. But you know, killing a person is the same as writing a book. You will 

never be able to follow your initial plan, and you will never know the result until the 

end of your writing. It is for human to plan and Heaven to accomplish. The world 

22 


has its way and you cannot totally construct it in you own way. Yes, I forgot to count 

Wu Song. I thought this over and over in the prison where all I could do was waiting 

for food and listening to the horrible cries. If I could come back in the next life and 

still be me I would definitely do the same thing, but also definitely come up with a 

better plan.” 

“Those were my stories. My butterfly, you might be able to read books. When 

people put me in their books, what is my position Do you think my life is a footnote 

to others’ texts You can see me on many pages of their stories. Nevertheless, nobody 

would pay attention to me, unless he is confused about the text. The main characters 

would definitely be Wu Song or Ximen Qing. They killed more and destroyed more 

so they are taken more seriously. I stay at the bottom in a smaller font. But don’t I 

deserve a footnote, and can I become a text Do not laugh at me, my butterfly. I feel 

more and more empty now and I want to fill up with words. They hurt my body to 

destroy my soul. But I have already buried my soul. I see the grass waving in the 

wind and butterflies playing around. Are you from there” 

“Are you still listening to me there, my butterfly Maybe you are not coming to 

take me away. Maybe you are only an illusion. I will stop talking to you. My whole 

life is doomed by my talking and I am going to stop forever now.” 

The Final Cry 

“I am going to stop. … But… my son… I am lucky you are far away from home. 

When you have dreams, come back to me. But do not come back to the place where I 

spent my life. This is not a good place to live. Find yourself a wife, take care of her, 

and do not let her become a matchmaker. … Find a small village and become a 

farmer. Do not come to the city …“Do not cry for me, when you… …” 

The butterfly is still there, fluttering up and down in front of her like a falling 

leaf in the wind, or a thread of phantomlike smoke. It seems that nobody notices this 

creature, not even the executors. Mistress Wang makes a cry, like your cry in 

nightmare, tried your best though, still voiceless. 

Nobody heard it, and nobody even listened since everyone was busy. The 

enjoyment of the demonstration of Lingchi-ing overtook everything: They seem to get 

eternal joy from her pain. They are thirsty for a naked body and its destruction, 

thirsty for the secret behind the skin, thirsty for blood. The red blood, white bone, 

yellow fat, and burgundy flesh are exposed under the warm sunlight. The scene 

arouses their innermost desire so that many people open their mouths and forget to 

blink their eyes. Later on, when Ah Q shows off in front of them with his “Have you 

seen a decapitation Amazing! Amazing!” they might reply with “Have you seen a 

Lingchi Much more amazing! Much more exciting! ” Year after year we do not know 

how many similar scenes have been played out, or how many audiences there have 

been. But it does not matter any more, all from dust has returned to dust, even the 

streets and cities. But is this excitement completely extinguished Is the blood all 

dried out It might hide in the dust, so that when I set foot in it, it will haunt me to 

the end of my life, and then you. It is something you cannot wash away. 

The executors are also eager to show off their accurate and dexterous technique. 

They display each piece to the crowd and each time it arises screaming, “Beautiful! 

Magnificent! Bravo!” She is still alive. But she does not feel anything solid. Her body 

is being taken away piece by piece and her feeling, like the icy surface of a river 


under the warm sunshine, is slowly melting, extinguishing. She is becoming a life 

without body. The only thing she can do is dream in her illusion. 

This performance is so pleasurable to watch that people even forget about time, 

just like when they have fun in a good dream. And, as always, a good dream is 

inevitably short. It is reaching the epilogue when it arrives at the intersection where 

the main street joins the riverbank. The river still flows quietly, and it does not care 

what is happening in the human world. It has been seeing too many of these. 

Humans always try to make a river with their blood. They dream a Crimson River 

for their favourite crime scene. 

Everything is becoming red. It is the sunset glow. Why is it red It has been 

dyed by too much blood. On the half-dried, weeping green willows, crows are 

gathering. Sometimes one or two will fly up and then settle down. They might see 

something human beings cannot. Do they also dream about what we do not 

Finally, the last drop of her blood is drifting down. It comes from her heart, 

travels a long way and meanders along the bones. It is scared travelling outside and 

alone. But it eventually farewells the broken, reaches the yellow earth and penetrates 

into it. They call the town Clear Water because the river is always clear. People even 

can see fish or grass in it. But almost everyday red blood is shed in it. Why is blood 

red It makes people excited, even though they do not know why. This is why people 

like to kill each other. How much blood would people shed on this narrow street 

When will the blood be washed away into the river The answer is blowing in the 

wind. 15 When the dust settles down, all people will go back home and close their 

doors to have their dreams. The street will be the same as yesterday. 

Mistress Wang, yes, she has watched too many of these scenes. And today she 

is finally on the stage. What is the difference between he who is watching and he 

who is being watched The street will still be the same as yesterday. After a while, 

people will talk about her in another teahouse, just like they talked about others in 

her teahouse, and after another while, people will forget her and will expect a new 

show. [Red dust rises and falls everyday until today. Five hundred years later, I, a 

dreamer from a neighboring province, am standing on the ruins of Clear Water town 

under the cold crescent moon, dreaming of meeting that butterfly.] Maybe someday 

some (un)lucky guy from Shandong University will find this last drop of her blood. 

He will do some DNA analysis and successfully clone for us a Mistress Wang. 16 And 

she will be a new spectacle on TV, newspapers and the internet. Of course, what 

people see are only her copies and she cannot see those who enjoy watching her at all, 

not like today on the street. At that time, Mistress Wang, will you still remember 

your story And will you find a new way to retell it But most important of all, do 

you want to come back 

24 


NOTES 

1 It was one of the cruelest punishments in imperial China. The executed (supposed to be a criminal 

who had committed hideous crimes) would be killed by being cut off the flesh and organs piece by 

piece. The execution could last several days before the executed dies. As Professor Rania Huntington 

pointed out, I mistakenly took the term Lynch (the pronunciations are so similar to each other!) in my 

first draft. Before finding a better term in English, I will use the Pinyin to represent it. 

2 

I composed this poem and put it at the beginning of the story in order to demonstrate the style of 

classical Chinese story writing. Here is my tentative translation: 

Dreaming of the Clear Water Town 

Following the hazy purple butterfly 

In the misty drizzle, I toured the ancient city 

Still there, was the teahouse of Mistress Wang 

Lying on the wall of Ximen’s Mansion , was the withered grass 

Passing along the long street and nobody recognized me 

Leisurely, I went to watch the Clear Water River flowing east 

Awakened, still recollecting the memory on the road I walked 

Since when, the bright moon started to shed light on the western chamber 

3 

In Chinese it means “Wang the old lady”. 

4 

Western Gate, it is also a pun for the surname of Ximen Qing. 

5 

The butterfly might remind us the butterfly in Zhuanzi’s dream. One day Zhuanzi dreamed about 

a butterfly. But when he woke up, he was not sure whether the butterfly was in his dream or he was in 

the dream of the butterfly. But it might be a fantasy. Some people will dream about beautiful things 

during their slowly dying process. By introducing the tenderest into the most violent scenery, I intend to 

shed an otherworldly light on the mundane world. The narrative function of the butterfly is to take the 

role of the listener which makes Mistress Wang’s confession possible. It is also possible to bring Madame 

Butterfly or M. Butterfly into discussion. 

6 

The hero in Lu Xun (1881-1936)’s The True Story of Ah Q, who likes to show off his knowledge and 

experience from city to residents in his village. 

7 

This name only appears in The Plum in Golden Vase and Wang Chao does have an affair with Pan 

Jinlian after she has been expelled to wait for remarriage in Wang’s house. 

8 

This detail is drawn from The Plum in the Golden Vase, chapter 33. 

9 

“ 阿弥陀佛 !” 

10 

Chao ( 潮 ) in Chinese means “tide”. 

11 

The X-Files is an American TV serial which focuses on the investigation of inexplicable events by 

two FBI agents. 

12 

无用之用。Mistress Wang might have overheard it from the talk of her clients in the teahouse. 

13 

Puccini: Madame Butterfly. 

14 

This refers to the discussion about Chineseness in a seminar I am taking with Professor Poshek Fu. 

In cultural studies, identity is mainly considered a cultural construction shaped by power, ideology, and 

politics, which makes it a nonessential-thing. The racial and biological model has been totally trashed. I 

agree with this paradigm of imagining our identity in general. At the same time I am always amazed by 

the body: we can politicize them as much as we like, however, the elements which constitute the 

“surface” of us (body shape, skin color, biological gender, appearance, and in Wu Da’s case, figure) 

cannot be totally ignored or reduced since they are not auxiliary markers which can be erased and 

modified. If identity is a cultural construction, it is more like a construction based on these solid 

physical features rather than based on a free-floating imagination like Gardens of Babylon. 

15 

“How many years can a mountain exist 

Before it is washed to the sea 

Yes and how many years can some people exist 

Before they're allowed to be free 

…… 

The answer my friend is blowing in the wind 

The answer is blowing in the wind” 

--Bob Dylan, “Blowin’ in the wind’ 


16 

This is only one of the possible endings for the story. Ending is always difficult since it will shut 

up all other possibilities that the previous text provides with a definite one. In other words, the linearity 

and singularity of time could not be violated in narration. 

26 



3:2 (2005), 27-44 

Struggle from the Margins: Hokkaido Popular 

Education Movement in the Towering Shadow of the 

Japanese Examination System (1950-1969) 

Elena KOLESOVA 


RECENTLY THE topic of national examinations has come under close scrutiny in the 

New Zealand media, particularly following the introduction of the National 

Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA). This is particularly noticeable at the 

beginning and end of the academic year as examinations take place and results are 

distributed. But what makes the NCEA system of assessment such a controversial 

topic among teachers, parents, educational administrations, politicians, as well as the 

students themselves Thinking in broader terms, how well do exams in any country 

help students achieve a high level of scholarship Do exams encourage obedient 

behavior from students towards their teachers when internal assessment components 

are included What are the links between the examination system and the economic 

development of a country These are just a few possible questions that naturally 

follow from contemporary debates on education. 

The current controversy over NCEA is part of a worldwide phenomenon. The 

debates about the future of education, how to accelerate achievement, and generally 

what kind of education our children and society need in the next ten to fifty years, 

take place all around the globe including America, Western and Eastern Europe, 

Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. In this regard, a comparative perspective, 

e.g. a precedent from Japan, may help us contextualise the NZ situation as well as 

shed some light on wider international debates. 

The newest reforms to the national Japanese curriculum in 2002 brought forth 

the issue of the importance of the examination system in bringing the whole 

education process back to life. 1 The new national curriculum can be described as 

more flexible and less pressured, or yutori kyoiku as it is referred to in Japanese. 

However, this curriculum reform has not brought much relief to teachers, students 

and parents. The main reason for such a fiasco is that entrance examinations to 

mainstream universities, as well as the entrance examinations for more prestigious 

universities, have not been adjusted to the new national curriculum standards. 2 

These examinations are still based on the previous extended curriculum and it seems 

that the Ministry of Education (MOE) cannot do anything to change the situation. At 

the other end of these debates there are those who criticize the education reforms for 

lowering the standards of the national curriculum and for generally lowering 

standards of academic achievement among Japanese students, particularly among 

those from low income families. These parents often cannot afford to send their 

children to private schools that do not follow the education reforms for 

implementing yutori kyoiku, and also cannot pay for cram school where children can 

Kolesova/Struggle from the Margins 27

fill in the gaps left by the revised school curriculum and new entrance examinations. 

There is an obvious contradiction between the attempts of the Japanese government 

to answer calls from Japanese society to simplify the curriculum and move away 

from the “examination hell” that has been partly caused by an over-cramped school 

curriculum and the actual outcome of the simplification of the curriculum. 

In this article I examine the development of the Japanese education system 

during the 1950s and the 1960s when links between the education system and 

especially between the examination system and economic development were 

particularly explicit. I argue that the importance of scholastic achievement promoted 

during the 1950s and 1960s was not built upon actual scholastic achievement by 

students but rather upon the image of such achievement. To this end, I will use the 

discourse produced by members of the Hokkaido Popular Education Research 

Movement (Hokkaido PERM) composed predominantly of school teachers, 

university scholars and parents, who believe the examination system that appeared 

in Japan during the 1950s and early 1960s often had a negative effect on learning. 

The Popular Education Research Movement (PERM) traces its history from the 

Jiyū Minken Undō (Popular Rights Movement) that was started in Japan in the early 

1880s. 3 In the following years, the movement attracted school teachers, students, 

university lecturers as well as parents and members of the public who were 

interested in the discourse on education, and who were generally dissatisfied with 

the official education system. It is possible to say that the PERM developed as a 

discursive resistance to the education course promoted by the MOE. The Japan 

Teacher’s Union (Nikkyōso) established in June 1947, with its focus predominantly on 

protecting the economic interests of teachers and securing their freedom to conduct 

research, could not answer the request of some less politicised teachers to conduct 

independent pedagogical research. The PERM offered a potential alternative to those 

teachers who wished to take an active position in society and who were at the same 

time dissatisfied with both the MOE and Nikkyōso and their strong political 

orientations. 

The Hokkaido PERM is one of the branches of the national PERM and it 

occupies a special niche in the history of the national PERM due to the fact that 

during the 1920s Hokkaido together with Tohoku - the northern part of Honshu - 

became a cradle of the Life Essay Writing Movement. Teachers who were involved 

with essay writing education encouraged their students to record their life 

experience in the form of diaries, essays and poems. Essay writing teachers utilised 

students’ records for constructing the distinctive Hokkaido identity. The essay 

writing education was these teachers’ attempt to manifest Hokkaido differences and 

contrast them with the controlling and homogenising power of the centre reflected in 

national curriculum. By constructing local identity, teachers believed that they could 

empower themselves and their students and thus create better Dosanko or people of 

Hokkaido. The focus on local material also made the learning process easy to 

comprehend for Hokkaido students. After the end of World War II, Hokkaido 

teachers continued to voice their criticisms about the official education course and 

subsequently the PERM gained a new energy during the 1950s and 1960s when rapid 

economic development made a strong impact on the education environment by 

strengthening the examination system and creating a perception of the importance of 

28 


academic achievement for later success in life. From this perspective, the Hokkaido 

PERM is well deserving of our attention. 

I will start with a brief introduction of the broader notion of economic 

nationalism developed during the 1950s and the early 1960s. This will be followed 

by the MOE’s response to economic nationalism with a focus on the development of 

gakureki shakai - transliterated into “society of academic records” or “society based on 

academic records”. Finally, I will provide the response of a small group of local 

teachers associated with the Hokkaido PERM to the proposed official changes of the 

education system. This last part reflects my attempts to reconstruct the picture of 

Japanese education through the eyes of local teachers and in this way adds a specific 

novelty to research on Japanese education where there is a general absence of 

analysis of local education. 

Economic nationalism and a new task for national education 

The economic development of Japan during the 1950s and 1960s is well described by 

historians, economists, and sociologists inside and outside of Japan. Bai Gao, who 

wrote extensively on the subject of Japanese industrial policy and economic ideology 

during the period, emphasises two distinct stages in the evolution of a new form of 

Japanese identity based on economic nationalism. 4 He refers to the first stage, during 

the 1950s, as “fragmented nationalism”, and the second stage, beginning in the 1960s, 

as “unified nationalism”. 5 In this regard, Gao attributes the diversity of opinions 

among Japanese politicians concerning Japan’s role in international affairs and its 

relations with the US as the main reason behind the fragmented nature of Japanese 

nationalism during the 1950s. He also attaches importance to the fact that the 

government “placed primary emphasis on the interests of business, especially the big 

firms, showing little consideration for the economic welfare of the working class, 

which resulted in strong resistance from the progressive forces”. 6 In this way, such 

prioritisation failed to unite people under the banner of a new economic policy 

because it left them feeling there were no immediate benefits for themselves. 

However, from the beginning of the 1960s Japanese politicians realised that 

national pride also required a solid material basis. Recognition of the importance of 

economic growth at the top level of government hierarchy, even ahead of Japan’s 

international political status, coincided with a growing acceptance of economic 

nationalism by the majority of the population. The change in the public view of 

economic nationalism as their personal goal and national purpose was closely linked 

with the introduction of the National Income Doubling Plan of 1960. The plan was 

introduced by Ikeda Hayato, the then new Prime Minister, who was both a 

professional financial banking expert and a protégé of Yoshida Shigeru - the author 

of the economic nationalism doctrine. 7 The National Income Doubling Plan 

promised economic benefits to the Japanese public in return for their full support of 

the economic nationalism policy. The plan also included space for increased public 

participation in economic management. In this regard, Bai Gao refers to the 

increased public acceptance of the high-growth thesis in state industrial policy as a 

shift from the “political season” to the “economic season”. 8 

The 1950s was a decade when external factors including, first and foremost, the 

division of the world between the capitalist block centred around the US and the 

communist block centred around the USSR during the Cold War, had a major impact 


on Japanese politicians and on the nation’s wider progressive forces. After the Allied 

Occupation of Japan ended in 1952, Japanese politicians and the Japanese public 

generally faced a new task of finding their own place and new identity in the world. 

As the example of the Korean War (1950-53) demonstrated, Japan could enjoy 

significant economic benefits from their military ties with the United States even if it 

had to sacrifice its wider political independence. The extension in 1960 of the Japan- 

U.S. security treaty, although followed by a strong anti-treaty movement in Japan 

against the emerging role of Japan as a military satellite of the US, was recognised by 

historians as the last major public protest on the way to establishing a new national 

policy on economic growth. In this way, military expenditure was kept to a 

minimum while economic growth became the first and only priority of a new 

national political course. 

The development of economic nationalism as a national goal and new form of 

national identity in the 1950s and early 1960s also had a major impact on education. 

Just as the Japanese leaders during the Meiji era recognised the importance of 

education to national unification and promoted nationalism according to the kokutai 

(national polity) and shūshin (morality) ideologies, the Japanese leadership of the 

1950s and 1960s regarded education as the primary tool for promoting economic 

nationalist ideology. In light of this, Prime Minister Yoshida’s address to the Diet in 

1953 called for a re-examining of the educational reforms enacted at the end of the 

war and supported the promotion of patriotism as a keystone for national 

independence. 9 In this way, education was again the principal focus of attention for 

Japanese politicians due to its perceived importance in the realisation of the nation’s 

economic goals as well as for supporting Japan on the international stage. 

The MOE’s response to economic nationalism 

The implementation of economic nationalism on such a scale required full national 

mobilisation - a task that bore strong similarities to the promotion of militaristic 

nationalism in the pre-war era. The drive for “economic mobilisation” required the 

central government to take on a similarly prominent role as it had previously in the 

pre-war decades. Consequently, education authorities tried to amend the post-war 

democratic reforms in order to reassert the MOE’s controlling power over education 

and knowledge. The MOE amendments included several direct measures that 

shifted education management away from local authorities and back to the MOE. 

Other long-term changes were made that enabled the government to implement its 

controlling mechanisms away from the public eye and were in this way at once 

extremely effective and much harder for people to resist. In this regard, the changes 

in education reflected the “reverse course” (gyaku kōsu) that started around 1948-49 

as one of the first visible signs of the Cold War in Japan. The reverse course was 

partly driven by the fear of the Japanese government and the American occupation 

government of the increasing power of the Left in Japan. The meaning of the reverse 

course was in reversing those democratic reforms which took place in Japan in the 

first two to three years immediately after the end of the war in August 1945. 

Among the most significant changes was the replacement in 1956 of the 1948 

Board of Education Law with the Law Pertaining to the Organisation and 

Management of Local Education, 10 which strengthened government control over 

educational content. 11 The general idea behind the changes to the boards of 

30 


education system was to replace the democratic principle of local boards elected by 

local communities with a government appointment system coordinated by governors 

(at the prefectural level) and mayors (at the municipal level). The introduction in 

1957 of the Teacher Evaluation System (kinmu hyōtei) 12 and the revision in 1958 of the 

1947 Course of Study (Gakushū Shidō Yōryō) gave the MOE legally binding power 

over the educational content taught in schools. 13 The 1958 revision made it 

mandatory for teachers to teach directly to the curriculum rather than to teach 

“based on” the curriculum. Up to 1958, the curriculum was “provisional” and 

therefore gave teachers a degree of autonomy in which to alter the material 

according to their own vision and interpretation. However, the implementation of 

the new Course of Study eliminated this autonomy. All of these changes moved in 

the direction of restricting local power and the autonomy of teachers and local 

education boards, which increased the power of the MOE. 

These changes also extended to the control of textbooks. Horio Teruhisa, a 

liberal historian of Japanese education and a participant of the national PERM, points 

out that, whilst the draft law on textbooks attracted strong criticism both inside and 

outside the Diet, after 1957 “the original aims of this draft (altering the machinery for 

textbook certification and authorization, revising the criteria for authorization, and 

conferring legally binding power on the Course of Study) were actually realized.” 14 

In light of this, the right to incorporate local content, which had existed for a brief 

period immediately after 1945, was lost again. However, the fact that teachers lost the 

right to choose appropriate textbooks gradually became a less important issue when 

compared with that of the monolithic nature of textbooks. As Christopher Barnard’s 

analysis of the fifty five officially approved post-war history textbooks reveals, these 

textbooks were very similar: they used similar language and presented a similar 

narrative and facts - they even used the same photographs and illustrations. 15 Their 

great similarity reflected the MOE’s total power over the authorisation of textbooks. 

Textbook authors were forced by the education authorities to produce new textbooks 

almost like clones. The ethos of textbook production became, in Barnard’s words, 

“just do what everyone else does”. 16 

The following comments by Takeda Masanao, a professor in the Faculty of 

Education at Hokkaido University and lifetime participant in the Hokkaido PERM, 

illustrate the continuity of post-1945 education administration with that of the pre- 

1945 period: 

Although post-war education was originally based on the principle of 

“government advice” (shidō) rather than the principle of “government order” 

(meirei), as it had been before and during the war, very soon after the war we 

began to notice how the old system of government control began to reappear 

again in a tightening of control over education by the MOE. 17 

In this regard, Takeda suggests continuity between meirei and shidō. In order to 

protect itself from potential criticism by teachers, parents and pupils, who were not 

completely blind to the redirection of controlling power back to the centre, the MOE 

took strong steps to tighten control over both teachers and pupils. One such measure 

was the new Teacher Evaluation System introduced in 1957. 


At the heart of the Teacher Evaluation System lay an assessment of each 

teacher’s “loyalty and love of education” as judged by school principals. 18 

Professional qualities such as subject knowledge or class management skills were 

deemed less important in comparison. However, what made this system so 

powerful from the point of view of the expanding central control over teachers was 

its secrecy. For instance, promotions of teachers were decided upon by school 

principals and boards of education exclusively on their assessment of a teacher’s 

support for the government’s education goals. The principal’s report was never 

shown to the teacher. 19 

Moreover, the “invisible” control mechanisms that the MOE applied against 

teachers reflect the Panopticon character of the modern state and its disciplinary 

function. As described by Michel Foucault, those who obtain central power often 

remain in the shade of the controlling “tower”, while those who are controlled are 

always in the light and often do not even know when they are being observed. 20 This 

“invisibility” of controlling power makes those who are controlled always ready for 

observation and forces them to behave in the manner demanded of them. Fear 

therefore becomes the driving force behind the behaviour of the observed subjects. 

In the case of teachers, they knew that their career trajectory and even their 

redeployment to a new school - a regular practice in Japan - depended on such secret 

observations made by the school hierarchy. Such fear-based mechanisms of teacher 

control represent a very effective measure to prevent teachers from expressing any 

kind of resistance. 21 Yet, it was the students who formed the principal basis of 

educational control. The future prospects of students were determined on the one 

hand by the results of the Scholastic Achievement Test and, on the other, by a 

document known as naishinsho (confidential report), the primary function of which 

was, and still is, to control pupils’ behaviour and minds. 22 

Horio describes the Scholastic Achievement Test, which was introduced in 1961 

in the following manner: 

The aims of this testing were (1) to determine the extent to which textbooks 

were being used in conformity with the goals set forth in the official Course of 

Study, and (2) to determine the attitudes and opinions conveyed to the 

students through the instruction provided by their teachers. 23 

In this regard, the Scholastic Achievement Test served the government’s 

purpose of guaranteeing ever greater control over the content of education, textbooks, 

and consequently over teachers, parents and last, but not least, students. This test 

has played a major role in shaping the gakureki shakai image. In a number of 

prefectures, liberal teachers joined the JTU to bring the Scholastic Achievement Test 

to court for violating the democratic nature of the Fundamental Law of Education. 

However, despite these small and occasional victories, the overall implementation of 

the Scholastic Achievement test at the national level and its main educational 

principles remained a major victory for the MOE during the 1950s and 1960s. 

Gakureki shakai denotes “society of academic records” or “society based on 

academic records”. The crux of gakureki shakai lies in pupils’ achievement to gain 

entry into prestigious schools which surpasses the mere image. Passing entrance 

examinations to elite schools required pupils to fulfil and exceed the expectations of 

32 


the pedagogy based upon rote-learning that required very little critical 

understanding of the subject matter. In other words, whilst gakureki shakai creates the 

image of a more “educated” society, educational achievements are measured purely 

by records of examination results. This is what Ronald Dore has termed “diploma 

disease”. 24 In this regard, Gakureki shakai symbolises not only the competition and 

selection of students based on examination results, but also an exam preparation 

style based primarily on the rote-learning of a large quantity of data, which in the 

case of the humanities subjects, such as history, social sciences, languages, etc., is 

often not compatible with the subject matter as it requires very little critical or 

creative thinking. 25 Moreover, the exam preparation is so daunting (a circumstance 

not unique to Japan!) that it is hard to imagine how it could stimulate any student’s 

appetite for knowledge. In light of this, it is not surprising that the process is 

nicknamed “examination hell” (shiken jigoku). 26 

Hemmi Masaaki, a professor in the Faculty of Education at Hokkaido 

University, describes gakureki shakai as follows: 

In practice there is a contradiction between gakureki shakai and the teacher’s will 

to make lessons easy to understand for everybody. The contradiction lies in the 

methods of teaching which are required for examination preparation and 

which don’t stimulate creative skills. There are not many people in Japan who 

would be positive about the gakureki shakai, but at the same time there is an 

attitude that you can’t help it or that nothing can be done (sho ga nai). And 

because of this consensus it is very difficult to change the situation and to break 

the gakureki shakai. The best teachers can do at the moment is to make lessons 

which are easy to understand. 27 

The connection between gakureki shakai and the ideology of economic 

nationalism manifests itself in Japan’s changing pattern of employment, beginning in 

the 1950s when large corporations began to exclusively employ graduates from 

universities and particularly give preference to those from the most prestigious 

institutions. In this way, whilst a degree from a prestigious university does not 

necessarily guarantee a high level of scholarship, it does nonetheless demonstrate the 

commitment on the part of the graduate to hard work, i.e. to a high level of discipline, 

as well as a good understanding of social norms which guarantee harmony, 

consensus and stability. And during this period in particular, this is what companies 

required of their employees in Japan. 

With reference to Refsing’s model of contemporary education based on four 

basic functions of education in industrialised societies, namely education, 

socialisation, selection and depository, the appearance of gakureki shakai indicates that 

the depository or “safekeeping” function of education started to play an increasingly 

significant role in Japanese society during the 1950s. 28 With the promotion of the 

lifetime employment system, at least in large corporations, and the government’s 

emphasis on maintaining low levels of unemployment throughout the country, it 

became very important to keep the younger generation away from the employment 

market for at least an extra two to four years. The universities thus started to become 

“depositories”, where young people could be retained and socialised in an 

appropriate manner until the economy was ready to utilise them. In this regard, the 


employment system promoted and supported gakureki shakai and the examination 

system. This in turn contributed towards the establishment of a very close 

relationship between the business sector, government authorities and educational 

institutions. 

Hemmi uses the popular Japanese expression sho ga nai (it cannot be helped), to 

describe the public perception of gakureki shakai. This suggests that Japanese parents 

grudgingly accept the myth about Japanese education, that a “better education” 

guarantees their children and themselves a better or “brighter” future. The question 

that naturally rises is: what defines a “better education” In the context of gakureki 

shakai, “better education” is reflected in the school ranking system based on hensachi 

(standard deviation scores). Hensachi is a numeral scale of scholastic achievement 

that grades all schools according to the number of students passing entrance exams 

into prestigious universities. Schools subsequently get compared according to 

hensachi, whereby those schools with higher numbers of students entering 

prestigious universities are regarded as providers of “better education”. In this way, 

a numeral scale of scholastic achievement is the main criterion for evaluating the 

“better education” of students. 

Since the Meiji era, school education as a form of institutionalised learning has 

had very little in common with actual knowledge, a point that is usually overlooked 

by the public. 29 In this context, gakureki shakai can be regarded as a very powerful 

and partially invisible mechanism of central control, not only over students and 

teachers, but also over Japanese society at large. 

During the 1950s naishinsho became another “invisible” form of student control 

by their teachers, which was likewise very difficult to challenge due to its secretive 

nature. Horio describes naishinsho as: 

…a confidential report used as a means of evaluation by upper secondary 

schools when deciding whom they will admit. These reports are issued with 

the signature of the student’s lower secondary school principal based upon 

information provided by the student’s classroom teachers regarding character, 

behavior, and course grades. Although the student of course knows his grades, 

he is not provided access to the crucial information regarding his ranking on 

the predetermined five-stage scale which is used to classify students’ behavior 

relative to one another. Moreover, because neither students nor their parents 

are allowed to see these reports, challenge their validity, or make appeals to 

have them altered, the system of naishinsho reporting has come to function as 

the “invisible whip” used to keep Japanese students in line. 30 

Naishinsho was introduced in Japanese schools in the pre-war years, but the real 

“importance” of it coincided with the era of high economic growth of 1950-1973. 31 In 

this way, Naishinsho became one of the pillars of gakureki shakai as, together with 

examination results, it represented the pathway to a more prestigious high school 

and university, and thereon to a more prestigious workplace such as a government 

office or large private company. Naishinsho also made it hard for the public to 

influence or challenge the administrative power of school officials because of the 

report’s “invisible” nature. If you do not know what to challenge how can you 

challenge it In this way, Naishinsho made use of a similar principle of fear to that 

34 


used within the teacher evaluation system, whereby students must always perform 

because of the constant observation from their teachers and where their future 

success in life is tightly connected to an “academic career” dependent on naishinsho. 32 

In light of this, Horio correctly points out the interdependency between the control of 

the authorities over teachers and of the teachers over their students. He writes: “The 

seriousness of this problem is compounded by the fact that in altogether too many 

cases teachers are themselves totally unaware of the ways in which they have been 

transformed into agents of the State’s encroaching administration of our inner, 

private lives.” 33 This interlinking in the context of Japanese education resembles the 

Foucauldian category of “power networks”, which contribute to the construction of 

the State. 34 The interlinkages between the examination system, gakureki shakai, the 

teacher evaluation system, teacher in-service training (which is discussed later in this 

article), and naishinsho demonstrate the existence of constant control of one group 

over another for the purpose of aiding the functioning of the State. 

The development of visible and invisible mechanisms of central control over 

education and its participants was also related to government legislation in the 1950s 

that emphasised the “neutral” character of education. 35 The official motivation 

behind the promotion of neutrality in education was “to protect” pupils “at high 

school and below, who are not yet capable of independent judgement” from being 

politically influenced by their teachers. 36 In reality, the “neutral” education proposed 

by the MOE was evidently far from “neutral”. 

In his book Language, Ideology, and Japanese History Textbooks, Christopher 

Barnard uses the notion of “naturalised ideology” to describe the language of 

Japanese high school history textbooks. 37 According to Barnard: 

An ideology obtains its strength and pervasiveness from the very fact that it is 

dominant, for it is precisely when we are living in the midst of a dominant 

ideology that it is difficult to become aware of this. We can easily see other 

ideologies, but ours are not noticeable or identifiable because they have become 

naturalized, and are thus powerful. 38 

Barnard’s definition of naturalised ideology suggests that what Japanese 

officials tried to call “neutral” education was none other than the dominant State 

ideology. In this way, he argues that a naturalised discourse of high school history 

textbooks “express an ideology or set of related ideologies that serves various group 

interests within Japan”. 39 

The call for “neutral” education blended in smoothly with the Scholastic 

Achievement Test and the development of gakureki shakai. Teachers were not 

required to develop intellectual curiosity or interest among their students, or even a 

joy of learning that will nurture individual opinions and judgements. Instead, 

students were required to absorb and process a large amount of “neutral” knowledge. 

In this way, education by “neutral” knowledge was called in economic terms 

hitozukuri (making people): the construction of hard-working, disciplined subjects 

equipped with the technical skills necessary for the era of fast economic growth. 

During the 1950s and 1960s the links between economic development and official 

education policy were reflected in the creation of a labour force which required 


people to be compliant and obedient to the mode of production. This mode of 

production discouraged independent analysis and critique. 

The overall changes within the Japanese education system during the 1950s 

and early 1960s demonstrates, first and foremost, the significant success of the 

Japanese authorities in reversing the basic democratic principles of education that 

were introduced in the immediate post-war era. As a result of the educational 

changes of the 1950s, the MOE regained most of its power over educational 

administration, teachers, students, parents and content. The high-economic growth 

imperative of national policy required collective national support similar to the Meiji 

era when the State focused on building a strong empire under the slogan Fukoku 

Kyōhei “Rich Nation, Strong Army”. Referring again to Refsing’s four major functions 

of modern education: education, socialisation, selection and depository, it is logical 

to suggest that from the 1950s the MOE returned to prioritising once more, as had 

been the case during the Meiji era and inter-war years, the socialisation, depository 

(“safekeeping”) and selection functions over the education function. There is no 

argument that these three functions, and in particular the socialisation function, play 

a very important role in human development. However, my main point is that in 

Japan, priority is consciously given to the socialisation, depository and selection 

functions of education leaving the education function as an unwanted child of the 

MOE. In this way, socialisation in the Japanese context is usually equivalent to 

disciplining. The legacy of the disciplining or controlling function in Japanese 

education had a strong presence in the 1950s. The strong emphasis on the 

examination score fitted nicely within such a structure due to its emphasis on 

developing such qualities as discipline, hard work and obedience, instead of real 

scholarship that promotes original thinking and challenges the establishment. 

Therefore, this focus on discipline contributed to the training up of a generation of 

young Japanese who were subsequently rendered incapable of expressing resistance 

or taking a more active role in civil societySuch conditions led Yoshida to adopt a 

sceptical view of the “maturity” of the post-war democracy in his 1961 memoirs: 

The so-called democratic form of government is still in its infancy in my 

country.… So far we see little indication that its spirit has come to live among 

us.... Years must pass before what is now new and strange to us in democratic 

politics becomes common-sense procedure. 40 

In this regard, the scepticism, if not cynicism, of government authorities 

towards democracy in post-occupation Japan, when combined with the antidemocratic 

changes in education and the more democratic legislation such as the 

new Constitution and the Fundamental Law of Education, reflected the complexity 

of the period. However, there were some local teachers in the 1950s and the 1960s 

who objected to the development of an education system based on the promotion of 

economic values through the examination system. 

The response of teachers associated with the Hokkaido PERM to the official 

education policy during the 1950s and the 1960s 

By the end of the 1950s there were approximately 60 teacher groups and 

organisations in Hokkaido involved in issues of educational discourse. 41 The drastic 

36 


ideological transformations in management systems toward centralised control that 

took place under the conservative government led to an increase in discursive 

activities on the part of teachers as well as the formation of new groups and 

organisations of educationalists in the 1950s. One further development that also 

influenced teachers’ activities was initiated by the MOE as early as 1945 in the form 

of a seminar on education policy for education leaders. 42 This was the first top-down 

“in-service training” for teachers, referred to in Japanese as kenshū. Already during 

the 1940s, in-service training had become a compulsory form of staff development 

for teachers throughout Japan. 

Nobuo Shimahara defines kenshū as “mastery through study” and breaks inservice 

training in contemporary Japan into four different types. 43 The first and 

second of these belong to a “top-down” model, where all arrangements for in-service 

training were made at the level of the MOE, Boards of Education or National 

Education Centre in Tokyo. 44 The third and the fourth types of in-service training 

centred on teachers organising their own training. 45 Shimahara refers to these last 

two types as “bottom-across”, rather than “bottom-up”, methods of training. Indeed, 

for Shimahara only the fourth type of in-service training was completely 

independent of government control and maintained full financial independence. 46 

For Horio the in-service training introduced by the MOE and particularly its 

attempts at minimising the independence of the fourth type of in-service-training 

represented an invasion of teachers’ privacy and a denial of their academic freedom 

and right to learn. 47 He points out that in-service training was used “as a means of 

forcibly counteracting independent research, and as a vital link in the system of 

controlling teachers’ advancement through Ministry-administered teacher 

evaluations”. 48 

In this regard, the emergence of some 60 teacher groups and organisations in 

Hokkaido during the 1950s was a response to the development of in-service training. 

The details behind the agendas and activities of these 60 groups are complex, and we 

do not need to dwell on them here. We can note that the efforts of many 

participating teachers to unite these groups under the umbrella of a single 

organisation resulted in the establishment on 12 January 1961 of the Hokkaido 

Popular Education Research Association or Hokkaido Association. In a broader 

context, 1960 had been a year of violent popular unrest, mass demonstrations and 

labour unrest throughout Japan. In particular, demonstrations against the 

ratification of the Japan-US Security Treaty drew hundreds of thousands of 

protesters to the Diet building. Moreover, conflict between “progressive” and 

“conservative” political camps over future national policy continued and the strike at 

the Miike coal mines in Kyushu in 1960 was one of the pivotal incidents in Japanese 

labour history owing to the fact that some six million workers went out on strike. 49 

The Hokkaido Association was established at the peak of these popular movements: 

a factor that emboldened the most radical Hokkaido teachers who were unwilling to 

accept conservative changes in education. 

The main goal of the Hokkaido Association was to gain autonomy from the 

government that would in turn enable participant organisations and groups to 

conduct “independent” pedagogical research. 50 

In this regard, the 1950s represented a formative period for Hokkaido teachers 

involved with the PERM. The discourse on the formation of the Hokkaido 


Association nearly overshadowed the actual response made by various teacher 

groups and organisations to the changes in education during the decade. However, 

teachers’ discussion on national economic policy helped them to formulate critical 

positions against the official education course. 

Hokkaido Association members were highly critical of the high economic 

growth policy during the 1950s and the early 1960s for two principal reasons. Firstly, 

they perceived industrialisation to be a major destructive force against Hokkaido’s 

traditional industries of fishing, farming (including rice production), forestry and 

coal mining. In addition, they believed industrialisation also diminished the quality 

of regional life, with immediate and negative consequences for local children. 51 The 

pressure of economic modernization in Hokkaido resulted in the depopulation of 

rural areas while the cities grew in size. 52 This was a common phenomenon across 

Japan. One effect of this in the education sector was the closure of schools in areas 

with declining populations due to the associated fall in student numbers. Elsewhere, 

schools had to incorporate large numbers of students from outlying areas with the 

consequence that class rolls often exceeded the limit of 40 prescribed by the MOE. In 

practice, there was little understanding at the school level of the difficulties 

experienced by the families of their pupils, referred to by the Hokkaido Association 

as the “victims” of kasoka, which means separation or spreading. For instance, when 

their fathers lost their jobs, students often stopped coming to school, in part because 

they felt shame on behalf of their family, but also because they often had to work to 

supplement the family income. 53 According to the Hokkaido Association, even 

where teachers were aware of the individual struggles of their students, the 

oversized classes and the insistent focus on delivering the school curriculum and 

preparing compulsory tests and examinations provided little room for teachers to 

develop more “human” contacts with their pupils. 54 As teachers belonging to the 

Association pointed out, under such circumstances teacher-student relations became 

weaker but also the relationships between children and their ability to make new 

friends was also seriously affected. The issue of the academic achievement of pupils 

as a result of growing class sizes was also mentioned in teachers’ discussions. 

However, the academic argument was generally overshadowed by the argument that 

the development of social skills of students was suffering as a result of growing class 

sizes. This reminds us again that in Japanese schools the socializing function 

overshadows the academic side of education. 

On the one hand, as a result of kasoka, families were forced to move around 

Hokkaido and children experienced difficulties developing new friendships after 

arriving at a new place. On the other hand competition between students based on 

test and exam results appeared as a form of selection and contributed to a growing 

isolation among children. 55 Teachers from the Hokkaido Association suggested that 

competition between pupils measured by test results was reflected in a growing 

sense of frustration among children. The children’s frustration manifested itself in 

increasing incidences of bullying and a higher suicide rate. 56 Association teachers 

claimed that both the growing examination pressure and the demographic shift in 

Hokkaido came from a similar source - Japan’s high economic growth. Dislocation 

and frustration with their studies negatively impacted pupils’ physical and 

emotional wellbeing. 

38 


Furthermore, from the second half of the 1960s, the Hokkaido Association 

immersed itself in discussions about the effects of industrialisation on the education 

of Hokkaido children. The Association began to question the belief that “economic 

growth would bring greatest happiness to the majority of Japanese people.” 57 They 

emphasised the fact that people’s actual living conditions were getting worse due to 

rising prices and increased transport expenses. In this regard, the Hokkaido 

Association’s questioning of the effect of economic growth on people reflected the 

nation-wide trend. However, due to the fact that Hokkaido still remained behind in 

economic terms from the centre, the Hokkaido Association often led this national 

trend. 

Through a comparison of local conditions with those in central Japan, the 

Hokkaido Association concluded that Hokkaido could not benefit from the new 

industrial policy as much as other regions. The main reason was that most people in 

Hokkaido were either self-employed or employed in small or medium-sized 

enterprises, and were thus unable to enjoy the same benefits as employees of large 

companies. Under the “lifetime employment system” salary workers or salary men 

(sarariiman) employed by large companies received a wide array of benefits: housing 

loans, medical insurance, financial support for their children’s education, company 

resorts, and even assistance with weddings and funerals. The working conditions 

and salaries of those employed in small and medium-sized enterprises, the case of 

the majority of Hokkaido workers, did not progress to the same extent as those who 

worked for larger companies under the conditions produced by the government’s 

high growth policies. 58 

One of the principal activities of the Hokkaido Association was the 

organization of the annual research conference. The conferences were open not only 

to Association members but to all teachers and members of the public interested in 

education. The number of conference participants grew from 1000 participating in 

the first all Hokkaido conference in 1962 to 4500 people in 1970. 59 In addition to 

annual research conferences, the Hokkaido Association also organized annual winter 

conferences, various meetings, seminars, workshops for teachers and parents 

consistent with its aim of promoting democratic education ideas within local 

communities of Hokkaido. Publication activities were another major business of the 

Hokkaido Association. The Minkyō journal became the publishing arm of the 

Hokkaido Association and four to six annual issues of the journal were usually 

produced. Various teaching manuals and preparation guides for Hokkaido students 

were another example of publishing activities and in many cases brought substantial 

income for the Association because of their popularity among teachers. 

The Hokkaido Association criticised the reintroduction of a course on moral 

education in the school curriculum and stricter school rules, which represented an 

official response by the MOE to growing disciplinary problems in schools during the 

1960s. 60 In the view of Association teachers, stricter school rules and moral education 

would not solve the problems that arose when students struggled to understand the 

school curriculum while under the constant pressure of the examination system. As 

an alternative to the official measures, the Hokkaido Association advocated the 

incorporation of local knowledge into the school curriculum and its adaptation to 

make it more relevant for students and easier to understand. 61 Although the 

emphasis on local content had been one of the fundamental principles of the 


Hokkaido PERM from its pre-war years, a discernible shift in the ideology of the 

Hokkaido Association took place in the late 1960s. Only a few years earlier, teachers 

had strongly opposed the Scholastic Achievement Test and argued that all 

democratic forces should unite together to make a strong case against the growing 

pressure wrought on schools by the examination system. However, by the late 1960s, 

the Association shifted its attention towards the task of finding optimum ways of 

preparing students for exams and making the school curriculum more intelligible to 

them. Therefore, to an extent there was a shift away from trying to eliminate the 

main cause of the problem - the examination system - towards finding a treatment 

for the symptoms, i.e. finding the best ways to help students prepare for exams. To 

use a medical analogy, it resembled a doctor dispensing medication to ease the 

symptoms rather than eliminate the cause of the illness. 

During the 1960s, the Hokkaido Association criticised the effects of the 

government’s high economic growth policy on the Hokkaido economy and its flowon 

effects on the education of Hokkaido children. The most important point in the 

teachers’ arguments was that high economic growth did not necessarily guarantee an 

immediate improvement in living standards for Hokkaido people and that the 

constant emphasis on tests and examinations destroyed the will of students to learn 

and achieve. The solutions put forward by the Association during the 1960s, such as 

the incorporation of local and relevant knowledge into the school curriculum, were 

not easily applicable to an environment where centralised control favoured the 

standardisation rather than diversification of education. The emphasis on local 

knowledge has two agendas. The first one was connected with nurturing a 

Hokkaido-specific identity or Dosanko as a continuation of the pre-war Essay Writing 

Education mentioned at the beginning of this article. As for the second agenda, it 

reflected the teachers’ general belief that as long as the school curriculum is relevant 

to the everyday life of students it should enhance students’ learning abilities. As 

Hayakawa Norihiro reflects on the discourse of the Hokkaido Association during the 

1960s: 

Initially we criticised the growing influence of the examination system on 

education. However, at a certain point we realised that all our attempts to 

influence education authorities and to change the examination system didn’t 

bring about any positive results. While we spent all our energy debating the 

issue of the examination system, our pupils continued to suffer because they 

could not understand the curriculum. We have not changed our overall 

negative attitude about the examination system, but we did change our tactics 

and tried to refocus our activities on making the school curriculum more 

relevant to the local life of our children. It was not an easy task given the 

increasing controlling power of the MOE, but this was at least what we were 

able to do in the conditions of the 1960s and 1970s. 62 

Conclusion 

The excessive focus on examination remains one of the key characteristics of the 

Japanese education system. The Hokkaido PERM teachers I met during my visits to 

Hokkaido in 1990-92 and in 1999 pointed out the growing resistance to education 

among students, which takes such forms as ijime (bullying) and tōkōhyoki (school 

40 


phobia), where children refuse to go to school. This occasionally leads to hikikomori 

where pupils lock themselves in at home, hidden away from the outside and inside 

worlds including their family members, schools and society at large. The teachers 

explained to me the heavy involvement of the State at all levels of the education 

process in Japan, from making decisions about the school curriculum, rules and 

ceremonies, to the appointment of new teachers. They talked about the 

disempowerment of teachers and how they have become passive subjects of the 

education process as a result of tight central control over their work. As Yoneyama 

Shoko, author of The Japanese High School: Silence and Resistance, has observed: “there 

are layers of censorship in and around Japanese high schools including what 

students, parents, teachers, librarians and sometimes even local communities can say 

or do.” 63 A similar situation applies in primary and intermediate schools. 64 The 

teachers from the Hokkaido Association pointed out how the contemporary 

education system, the administration and curriculum, aims to produce loyal, 

obedient and well-disciplined ‘subjects' (rather than ‘citizens’) who are blind to the 

possibility of mounting a challenge to the State, and how this ironically has become a 

source of stagnation for economic development. 65 

The criticism of teachers from the Hokkaido Association of the education 

system in the 1990s, following the education curriculum reforms of 2002 and the 

ensuing debates about these reforms and the present state of education in Japan, 

clearly indicate that the Japanese education system no longer meets the demands of 

the business community in Japan. The Japanese examination system promotes 

memorization as opposed to analytical thinking based on intellectual curiosity. 

Japanese students are pushed into continuous tests and exams during their school 

life, and become well- disciplined workers. It would be hoped, as new examination 

systems are evaluated such as the NCEA in New Zealand, that the overseas 

experience of one of the most economically successful East Asian countries can be 

looked to and lessons learnt not just from its achievements but also from its mistakes. 

Therefore, it is clear that creating a balance between the creativity sparked within the 

classroom environment and the wider discipline required to complete tests and 

exams still remains a challenge for educational systems around the world. 


NOTES 

1 

For a detailed analysis of debates on the recent education reforms in Japan see, for example, R. 

Tsuneyoshi, ‘The New Japanese Education Reforms and the Achievement “Crisis” Debate’, Educational 

Policy, vol. 18 No 2, (2004), pp.364-394 

2 

Ibid., p.388 

3 

E. Kolesova, Challenging the System: Education and Resistance in Hokkaido, Japan, Ph.D Dissertation. 

Auckland: Auckland University, 2004, p.7. 

4 

B. Gao, Economic Ideology and Japanese Industrial Policy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 

1997, p.228. 

5 

Ibid., p.230. 

6 

Ibid., pp.239-40. 

7 

Ibid., pp.225-80. 

8 

Ibid., p.247. 

9 

Quoted in: T. Horio, Educational Thought and Ideology in Modern Japan: State Authority and Intellectual 

Freedom, University of Tokyo Press, Tokyo, 1988, p.147. 

10 

Horio, p.142; S. Yoneyama, The Japanese High School: Silence and Resistance, Routledge, London, 1999, 

p.81. 

11 

Horio, p.164. 

12 

Ibid., p.215. 

13 

Ibid., p.214. 

14 

Ibid., p.164. 

15 

C. Barnard, Language, Ideology and Japanese History Textbooks, Routledge Curzon, London, 2003, 

especially pp.48, 166-7. 

16 

Ibid., p.167. 

17 

Takeda Masanao, August 1997, personal communication. 

18 

Horio, p.215. 

19 

Ibid. 

20 

M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of Prison, Pantheon Books, New York, 1977, especially 

pp.200-10. 

21 

Irie Shigemi described the reaction to her joining one of the Hokkaido Association’s regional 

circles when she started teaching in the early 1970s at a primary school in Nopporo, now a suburb of 

Sapporo. The school principal, who already knew about her involvement with the Hokkaido 

Association, advised her to withdraw from the Hokkaido Association immediately in his first meeting 

with her. He confronted her with the threat that if she did not follow his advice he would give her such 

a “bad’ report at the end of her first year that she would be unable to obtain a new appointment at any 

“good” school in the Sapporo area. Irie recalled her feelings at the time: “I was young and married. I 

felt ashamed but I did not want to be re-appointed far away from home. Although I did not like what 

the principal said to me I had to listen. And I ended my participation in the PERM.” Irie Shigemi, 

Interview, August 1997. She expressed her regrets about this decision at the time. Irie’s case represents 

a good example of how education authorities use fear to manipulate and control teachers in Japan. 

22 

The word “naishinsho” consists of three different hieroglyphs. Nai means “inside”, “in”, shin 

means “word”, “statement” and sho refers to a “letter”, “note”, “book”. If we bring these three 

meanings together it will sound something like “internal written report” or “confidential (private) 

report”.: A. Nelson, Japanese-English Character Dictionary, Charles E. Tuttle, Vermont, 1974. 

23 

Horio, p.181. 

24 

R. Dore, The Diploma Disease: Education, Qualification and Development, University of California 

Press, Berkeley, 1976. 

25 

Although personally during my study in Japan I did not have the opportunity to take part in the 

school exams, I did have the opportunity to do a Japanese language proficiency test (Nihongo Noryoku 

shiken) and a number of Japanese language tests which were based on the Japanese Proficiency test, and 

also to look at the content of entrance examinations from intermediate school to high school, and from 

high school to the university. They were all based on multi-choice answers and tested a student’s 

memory more than a student’s abilities to think logically. 

26 

K.B. Pyle, The Making of Modern Japan, D.C. Heath and Co., Massachusetts, 1996, p.258. 

27 

Hemmi Masaaki, January 1999, personal communication. 

42 


28 

These four categories can in turn be broken down in the following manner: (1) education: teaching 

basic academic skills, such as reading, writing, arithmetic, science, and other general skills. 

(2) socialisation: training docile members of society, who are obedient and loyal to the State and who 

generally behave in accordance with their society’s core values. 

(3) selection: channelling and distributing “educated” subjects according to the requirements of the 

labour market based on the examination system. 

(4) depository: “safekeeping” and holding of young people “until they are ready for the labour market, 

and especially until the labour market is ready for them”. For more information, see: K. Refsing, 

‘Japanese Educational Expansion: Quality and Equality’, in R. Goodman and K. Refsing, eds., Ideology 

and Practice in Modern Japan, Routledge, London, 1992, p.119. 

29 

Horio, p.48. 

30 

Ibid., p.279-80. 

31 

Kyōiku kōjiten (The Concise Education Dictionary), Iwanami Shōten, Tokio, 1990, pp.207-208. 

32 

My interviews with junior high school teachers in 1997 and 1999 gave me the impression that 

naishinsho still played an important role as a controlling mechanism used by the school administration 

against their students, although in certain cases it had become more liberal. A few teachers from 

Hokkaido and Tokyo pointed out that they preferred to show the students what they had written about 

their character in naishinsho. At the same time because I did not obtain any statistical data showing the 

decline (or rise) in the importance of naishinsho in the selection process, I am unable to offer any further 

judgements except that most of my interviewees confirmed that they prefer to be open with their 

students about the content of the reports. However, because the mechanism of naishinsho is still in place, 

and the MOE does not seem to have any intention of eliminating it, the opportunity to control student 

behaviour via this report still remains. 

33 

Horio, p.280. 

34 

M. Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, Harvester Wheatsheaf, New 

York, 1980, p.122. 

35 

See, for example ‘Maintaining the Neutrality of Education’ (Kyōiku no Chūritsu no Iji ni tsuite 

[Tsūtatsu]), July 8, 1953, in E.R. Beauchamp and J.M. Vardaman, Japanese Education since 1945: A 

Documentary Study, An East Gate Book, New York, 1994, pp.135-6; ‘Report Concerning the Preservation 

of Political Neutrality of Teaching Staff’, January 18, 1954, in Beauchamp and Vardaman, pp.136-40; 

‘Law No.157: Concerning Temporary Measures for Ensuring Political Neutrality in Compulsory 

Education’, June 3, 1954, in Beauchamp and Vardaman, pp.140-1. 

36 

‘Report Concerning the Preservation of Political Neutrality of Teaching Staff.’ January 18, 1954. In: 

Beauchamp and Vardaman, p.137. 

37 

Barnard, especially pp. 49, 55-56, 165-70. 

38 

Ibid., p.21. 

39 

Ibid., p.22. 

40 

Yoshida Sigeru, quoted in: R.J. Samuels, Machiavelli’s Children, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 

2003, p.203. 

41 

‘Minkan Kyōiku Kenkyū Dantai no sōshiki to kastudō’ (Formation of the Popular Education Research 

Association and its Function), Hokkai Kyōiku Hyōron, 14, 12 (1961), p.8. Some of these groups used kai, 

meaning “group” or “association”, in their names while others used dantai, meaning “organisation” or 

“association”. An “organisation” usually has a clearly defined structure while a “group” may be a 

number of people who gather together and form a recognisable unit. Consistent with the Japanese 

terms I use both “group” and “organisation” when referring to organisations affiliated with the PERM 

in the 1950s. 

42 

N.K. Shimahara, Teaching in Japan: A Cultural Perspective, Routledge Falmer, New York, 2002, p.74. 

43 

Ibid., p.61. 

44 

Ibid., p.63. 

45 

Ibid. 

46 

Ibid. 

47 

On the topic of in-service training, in particular, see Horio, pp.246-78. 

48 

Ibid., p.253. 

49 

Pyle, p.238. 


50 

Quoted in: K. Funayama, ‘Hokkaidō ni okeru minkyō undō no hatten: Senzen kara Dominkyō kessei ni 

itaru’ (Development of the Popular Education Movement in Hokkaido: From Pre-War Years Towards 

the Formation of Dominkyo), Minkyō, 19, (1971), pp. 53-54. 

51 

The destruction of traditional Hokkaido industries was a constant theme in the annually published 

Minkyō “Statement of Activities” and also in many teachers’ writings. 

52 

From the late 1950s until the 1990s industrial development in Hokkaido resulted in a massive 

redistribution of population in the region. According to Yamada Sadaichi, about 230,000 families 

worked in the agricultural sector in the 1960s, but by 1997 this number had fallen to just 75,000. Given 

that the average number of family members was five in Hokkaido during the 1950s and the 1960s, this 

corresponds to a decrease in the rural population of about 800,000 people, most of whom moved to 

Sapporo. While the population of Hokkaido as a whole rose relatively slowly from 5,073,156 in 1961 to 

5,643,647 in 1990, the population of the city of Sapporo grew from around 500,000 in the 1960s to over 

1,800,000 by 1998. Based on interviews with S. Yamada and M. Takeda; M. Onema, Hokkaidō sangyōshi 

(Industrial History of Hokkaido), Hokkaido University, Hokkaido, 2002. 

53 

Yamada Sadaichi, January 1999, personal communcation; Hayakawa Norihiro, August 1997 and 

January 1999, personal communication. 

54 

’1971 nen Katsudō Hōshin’ (1971 Statement of Activities), Minkyō, 17, (1971), p.86. 

55 

‘1970 nen Katsudō Hōshin’ (1970 Statement of Activities), Minkyō, 14, (1970), p.77. 

56 

‘1971 nen Katsudō Hōshin’, p.84. 

57 

Ibid. 

58 

Ibid. 

59 

E. Kolesova, p.177. 

60 

See, for example “Course of Study for Junior High Schools: Moral Education.” 1969. In: 

Beauchamp E.R. and Vardaman J.M. (eds.) (1994) op.cit., pp.168-170. 

61 

Takeda M. (1976) “Dōminkyō no kessei to jū go nen no katsudō.” (Formation of Dōmunkyō and 

fifteen years of its activities.) In: Nihon no Minkan Kyōiku. (Popular Education in Japan.) No. 10, 

pp.138-146. 

62 

Hayakawa Norihiro, January 1999, personal communcation. 

63 

Yoneyama, p.69. 

64 

Japanese schooling is divided into primary schools (shōgakkō) for children aged six to 12 years, 

intermediate schools (chūgakkō) for 12 to 15 year olds and high schools (kōtōgakkō) for 15 to 18 year olds. 

65 

This comment about the inability of students to express their resistance arose out of my interview 

with Henmi Masaaki, Professor of Education at Hokkaido University. He indicated that among his 

university students there were many who had certain disagreements with the university authorities but 

they did not know how to organise themselves or express their resistance. Henmi suggested that these 

students never had a chance to learn at school how to “organise themselves and form their own 

opinions”. Henmi Masaaki, January 1999, personal communication. 

44 



3:2 (2005), 45-57 

I’m Not Racist, I Eat Dim Sims!: 

The Commodification and Consumption of Asianness 

within White Australia 

Athena NGUYEN 

Monash University 

‘I shop, therefore I am’ 

IN OUR current capitalist society, we need to consume to live. Whether it is a 

conscious or unconscious process, we consume to construct our identities, we 

consume to partake in society, we consume in the pursuit of happiness and we even 

consume to rebel. Virtually everything can now be bought and sold at a price and 

nothing remains sacred in a world regulated by the laws of demand and supply. 

Rather than being an apolitical space of mindless activity, however, consumption is 

infused with politics, privilege and power. It is an arena in which contestations over 

‘inequality, individualism, identity, and social and economic stratification’ 1 take 

place. These contestations include struggles over racial identity and racial politics in 

which the consumption of signs of Otherness plays a significant role. Whilst signs of 

Otherness may lend themselves to a plurality of interpretations and allow for a level 

of ‘free play’, signs of Otherness are not endlessly polysemic. The development and 

manipulation of signs of Otherness within society is directed and constrained by 

dominant discourses around race, gender, sexuality and class, making the 

production and interpretation of particular signs of Otherness more prevalent than 

others. Within the West, the signification of ‘Asianness’ has tended to be constrained 

by the dominant racial discourse of ‘Orientalism’. 2 As a country whose dominant 

culture is of British heritage, the discourse of Orientalism has influenced Australia’s 

perception of its Asian neighbours. Australia’s unique position as a ‘white’ country 

located in the Asia-Pacific has meant that Australia has needed to interact with Asia 

for economic, security and humanitarian reasons. This has at times weighed heavily 

on the white Australian psyche which has struggled to negotiate between the 

competing tensions of ‘multicultural’ and racially tolerant policies and a lingering 

fear of the ‘teeming millions’ of its Asian neighbours. The commodification and 

consumption of Asianness, both as physical objects and ‘signs’, plays a pivotal role in 

white Australia’s negotiations with Asian culture(s). The commodification of 

Asianness which has reduced Asian cultures to consumable objects and attempts to 

reap the economic value of ‘exoticism’ has often operated within, and can reproduce, 

Orientalist ideologies and discourses around Asia. Rather than being an expression 

of progressive racial awareness, the consumption of Asianness works to domesticate 

the threat of difference and can detract from a real engagement with racial politics. 

Of late, there has been somewhat of a ‘theorrhoea’ around 

modern/postmodern 3 consumer society. A noticeable feature of these studies is the 

large extent to which they have been ‘whitewashed’ 4 and have lacked an awareness 

www.arts.auckland.ac.nz/gjaps 45

of race and culture, or more specifically, as I would argue, have taken the 

white/Western academic perspective as the (unacknowledged yet authoritative) 

perspective on consumer society. Tim Edwards asserts that this is largely due to the 

‘very Whiteness of consumer society itself’. 5 Whilst it is unmistakable that the level 

of consumption often discussed by theorists is only possible in affluent countries, 

most of which are situated in the ‘West’ where Whiteness is the normative ethnicity, 

the West is not only white. Many different cultures and races co-exist within the 

West and impact on the West from the ‘outside’. Hence, Western consumer society is 

full of racial politics and ideological racism. 

The interaction of race and consumption, however, has usually only been 

visible when the consumption is practiced by those who are other than white. The 

continuing tradition of racializing the practices of people of colour has allowed the 

practices of those who are white to remain invisible and hence, evade scrutiny and 

questioning. A progressive exploration of the racial politics of consumption in the 

West, therefore, should not only concern the consumption practices of ‘ethnic 

minorities’ – whose existence has always been explicitly racialized – but also the 

(racial) consumption practices of the white majority who have often escaped 

racialization. If the ‘issue’ of ‘ethnicity’ is only raised when the consumption is 

practised by those whose ethnicity is not white, then the focus on the ‘special case’ of 

people of colour will continue to allow Whiteness to remain ‘colourless’ and will 

leave the normativity and power of Whiteness intact. As Richard Dyer writes in his 

book, White, there is more at stake in scrutinising Whiteness than simply filling in a 

gap in the research. 6 Rather, it involves dislodging Whiteness from its privileged 

position of ‘neutrality’ and invisibility which enables it to maintain its power. 7 This 

paper will, therefore, concern itself with not only exploring how Asian products are 

commodified within Orientalist constructs but also the operation of ‘Whiteness’ at 

the moment of the consumption of these commodities. 

There are, as always, difficulties theorizing race and culture. As articulated by 

Bonnie Honig, culture ‘is a way of life, a rich and timeworn grammar of human 

activity, a set of diverse and often conflicting narratives whereby communal 

(mis)understandings, roles and responsibilities are negotiated’. 8 The fluid nature of 

culture makes it difficult to capture as it is continually being transformed through 

political contestations by members from within the culture, as well as, forces outside 

of it. Hence, to use such broad terms as ‘white Australian’ and ‘Asian’ is problematic 

due to its sweeping homogenization of both groups and its dependence on 

essentialist and stereotyped understandings of ‘White’ and ‘Asian’. The term ‘white 

Australian’ overlooks the differences that exist between Australians who are white, 

including their cultural and racial understandings of themselves and their ancestry 

(e.g. Irish, French, Canadian). Furthermore the term ‘Asian’ is similarly 

homogenizing as it collapses the great distinctions between different Asian cultures 

and races (e.g. Indian, Vietnamese, Korean). It is also problematic in the sense as to, 

where one should draw the line of what areas of the world should be considered 

‘Asian’ 9 Despite the generalizations made by these terms, however, they continue to 

be employed and reveal the prevailing criteria used – such as skin colour - to 

distinguish between these two groups. 

46 


‘I sign, therefore I am’ 

Marx’s exploration of the process of commodification under capitalism, and 

semiological investigations into the functioning of signs and systems of signification, 

has helped lay the groundwork for Baudrillard’s work. 10 Semiotics, as originating in 

the work of Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Sanders Pierce, is based upon the 

idea that knowledge and understandings of the world arise from an organised 

system of signs, such as language. 11 Theorists following Saussure have used and 

extended semiology as a way of studying cultural forms beyond language such as, 

for example, the system of signification found in architecture, fashion or food. 12 

In For A Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign (FCPES), Baudrillard 

attempts to analyse the sign form through a critique of the political economy of the 

sign, just as the commodity form has been analysed through a Marxist critique of 

political economy. 13 Baudrillard argues that the consumption of these signs’ values 

now constitutes the primary form of consumption 14 and adds two ‘dimensions’ to 

Marx’s theory about the use and exchange values of commodities. 15 These are the 

‘differential logic of sign value’ and the ‘logic of symbolic exchange’. 16 The 

consumption of sign values, which are organized along a hierarchical ‘code’, socially 

integrates individuals into a system where their productive forces can be harnessed 

for the purposes of consumption. 17 The differentially valued signs meanwhile, serve 

to stratify consumers into ‘status groups’. 18 Consumption also serves as a system of 

communication through the production and exchange of coded values of the sign 

which communicates the ideological values or morality of the consumer. 19 Whilst 

sign values involve the positivity of the sign, symbolic exchange, on the other hand, 

exists beyond positive value. Instead, it exists in the realm of ‘ambivalence’ which 

Baudrillard suggests is radically different from the exchange value and sign value. 

Moreover, it has the potential to rupture the political economy of the sign. 20 

Mark Gottdiener calls Baudrillard’s early work ‘an exemplary exercise in 

materialist semiotics’. 21 Baudrillard’s later work, however, moves him from the sign 

value to the fatalism of symbolic exchange as he rejects Marxist ideologies and turns 

towards postmodernism. He eventually falls off the brink of reality into the 

‘hyperreal’, where the implosion of simulation and simulacra (which is at once 

meaningless and overflowing with meaning in an ecstasy of communication) has 

oversaturated and replaced ‘reality’. In Postmodern Semiotics, Gottdiener attempts to 

rescue material semiotics or ‘socio-semiotics’ by reinstating the material culture 

which he believes postmodern theorists have neglected in their descent into idealism, 

reductionism and fatalism. 22 Gottdeiner’s socio-semiotic model of the sign attempts 

to incorporate both the value system of the sign and the materiality of the sign’s 

expression 23 , thereby maintaining a grip on both the ‘commodification of reality’ and 

the ‘reality of commodification’. 24 While a level of ‘free play’ of signs is possible, he 

also acknowledges that the system of signification occurs within a ‘semantic field’ 

which constrains and directs the production, consumption and manipulation of 

signs. 25 Although Gottdiener points out that structures of power/knowledge, similar 

to those theorized by Foucault, are part of the exo-semiotic forces influencing and 

constraining the system of signification, he does not identify what these ‘hierarchical 

structures of power’ 26 are. 27 I argue that the structures of power/knowledge that 

influence the system of signification include dominant discourses on race, gender, 

class and sexuality. 

Nguyen/I’m Not Racist, I Eat Dim Sims! 47

The dominant racial discourse which influences the signification of Asianness 

in the West is Orientalism. According to Edward Said, Orientalism is a European 

construction which reflects not so much the Orient itself but rather the West’s 

construction of the Orient as its ‘contrasting image, idea, personality and 

experience’. 28 The Orient is constructed as a place of exoticism, mystery and danger 

whilst the West is seen as normal, known and safe; the Orient is sensual, sexual and 

animalistic whereas the West is civilized and proper; the Orient is spiritual, 

superstitious and traditional whilst the West is rational, progressive and Christian; 

and the Orient is infantilized and feminized, natural and virginal, waiting to be 

explored and conquered whereas the West is adult-like, cultured and masculine, 

ready to do the exploring and conquering. Rather than an apolitical ‘collective 

daydream’ 29 Said argued that ‘Orientalism was ultimately a political vision of reality 

whose structure promoted the difference between the familiar (Europe, the West, 

‘us’) and the strange (the Orient, the East, ‘them’).’ 30 Acknowledging his 

indebtedness to Foucault, Said argues that this ‘knowledge’ of the Orient is related to 

structures of power and domination through which the Orient could be controlled 31 

and through which imperialism and colonialism were legitimized. 32 Furthermore, this 

discourse on Orientalism did not fade away after the end of imperialism but 

continues to influence the perception of Asia within the West, 33 including the 

processes of commodification and consumption of Asianness within Western 

consumer culture. 

Passing through the local shopping centre, watching the advertisements on 

television and walking down Chinatown, it becomes clear that Orientalism acts as 

both a productive and restraining exo-semiotic force in the signification of Asianness. 

Orientalism both contributes to the production of particular signs of Asianness, as 

well as constrains the range of signs that may be attributed the quality of Asianness 

and the range of interpretations that these signs may take. Therefore, far from 

existing within a ‘colour-free’ zone, the system of signification and the 

commodification of reality is influenced by dominant discourses on race, culture and 

ethnicity. Features of the commodification of reality which are explored by 

Baudrillard, such as the collapse of signifier and signified, the self-referentiality of 

sign, and the rupture of time, history and depth, all interact with the discourse of 

Orientalism to reproduce particular signs of Asia and to produce particular forms of 

‘Asian’ commodities. 

This is not to imply, however, that the intersection of capitalism and race 

always creates a totalizing regime of regulation and domination. Although it may be 

true that within late capitalist societies consumption is, as Baudrillard argues, 

‘regulated, forced, instructed [and] stimulated’ 34 , this does not determine the use to 

which commodities can be put nor does it necessitate the indiscriminate acceptance 

of meanings encoded in signs at their moment of production or by dominant 

structures of power/knowledge. The consumption of commodities can be used to 

construct identities in opposition to the status quo and can be used in the 

maintenance of minority cultures in the face of pressures exerted by the dominant 

culture. 35 Furthermore, commodities can be re-signified at the point of consumption, 

opening up gaps in the regulatory regime for the renegotiation of racial discourses 

and thereby, disputing the overdetermination of the sign. Such re-significations and 

'subversive' uses of commodities can provide opportunities for resistance or 

48 


'freedom' within commodity culture. Therefore, the realm of consumption ultimately 

constitutes an arena of contestation of racial politics and not just a total domination. 

Baudrillard’s explorations of the system of signification stem from Saussure’s 

pioneering work on semiotics in which he argued that the sign consisted of the 

signifier, the signified and the arbitrary bond between them. 36 In an anti-Saussurean 

turn, Baudrillard collapses the distinction between signifier and signified and argues 

that the referent is no more ‘real’, ‘true’ or ‘final’ than the signifier. 37 Whilst 

Baudrillard takes this analysis to its nihilistic end in his later writings, his seminal 

postmodern focus is illustrated in the way he questions the existence of an 

underlying ‘reality’ or ‘truth’ (i.e. the referent). He argues that ‘the referent does not 

constitute an autonomous reality at all’. 38 Take, by way of illustration, the shelves of 

a supermarket. Products marketed for their Asianness are saturated with signs of 

Asia, however these signs lack both an autonomous reality and any ‘real’ connection 

to Asia as a region or as a group of people. An ‘Asian-style’ font for example that 

consists of brush-stroke calligraphy effects is used to signify ‘Asianness’ while 

actually forming English words, such as the brand names on Campbell’s ‘Asian’ 

range of soups and ‘Blue Dragon’ Asian sauces. Whilst the typography loosely 

alludes to Chinese or Japanese calligraphy, these ‘signs of Asia’ lacks any actual 

referent since Chinese and Japanese calligraphy constitute the formation of Chinese 

and Japanese characters rather than the romanized alphabets of the English language. 

Hence, the reality (and finality) of this signification of Asianness appears to be the 

sign itself. 

The commodification of Asianness also creates a homogenization of and 

flatness to Asian culture. In Baudrillard’s exploration of the commodification of 

home furnishings, he notes, as paraphrased by Kellner, that ‘in the new organization 

of objects and interiors, objects are no longer subjective, expressive, familial, 

traditional and decorative as they once were. They are functional, more homogenous, 

artificial and without depth’. 39 In the commodification of Asian culture, Asianness 

becomes standardized, sanitized and superficial. Signifiers of Asianness, such as 

chopsticks, 40 dragons, 41 and woks 42 , despite originating from different countries, lose 

their specific historical origins. Instead they come to take on some essential, timeless 

and locationless Asianness – a generic Asian. Likewise, characters from the 

Chinese script, for example, have come to stand for generic Asian. In their ability 

to stand for all of (homogenized) Asia, Chinese characters are written next to the 

‘Asian Foods’ sign in Coles supermarkets, despite the section also containing foods 

from India, Singapore, Japan and Greece. The ability of the Chinese script to 

represent all of Asia comes from its embodiment of Orientalist notions of Asia as 

different, mysterious and exotic, which is not found in ‘boring’ scripts such as 

Vietnamese. 

The isolation and amplification of Asian signifiers also ruptures a sense of time 

and space. According to Fredric Jameson, postmodern late capitalist society has 

ransacked history and culture, spewing forth a schizophrenia 43 of signification which 

ruptures temporal continuity and the coherency of language. This breakdown in 

temporal continuity and language causes signifiers to become isolated and 

disconnected, and amplifies the experience of the present. 44 The commodification of 

Asianness produces signs which are stripped of their historicity and whose 

communication of Asianness lacks the syntax of language. The colour red, for 


example, once associated with celebration, good luck and prosperity in China, now 

stands as a historically isolated and disconnected signifier of generic Asian. The 

colour red, especially when teamed with gold or black, 45 seals the commodity in an 

aura of Asianness. With the loss of its traditional associations, the colour red exists 

as a timeless yet eternally present, vividly amplified yet silent, sign of Asianness. 

This signification of Asianness is not just confined to foodstuff found in 

supermarkets. It also exists in other parts of Western culture, such as the fashion 

industry. Sara Ahmed, in her article on ‘Oriental-inspired’ fashion, notes the use of 

Asian culture and history in the production of a homogenous, depthless and 

amplified Asianness. 46 In her analysis of a fashion editorial in Marie Claire magazine 

(May 1994) called ‘The Orient’, she argues that the signifiers of Asianness are 

understood within the discourse of Orientalism and the binary of Occident/Orient. 47 

The images contained in the series depict a western construction of what, as written 

on the introductory page, the ‘natural elegance of Oriental style’ is supposed to be. 48 

The blurred Vietnamese backgrounds are never identified as ‘Vietnamese’ but come 

to stand for a homogenous Orient. 49 ‘Oriental objects’ such as bamboo hats appear 

repeatedly throughout the series of photographs, amplifying the signifiers that show 

how Asian the place really is. The Orient becomes surface and background. As 

‘surface’ fashion commodities are pieces of clothing to be put on and taken off by the 

white female model in a postmodern world of endlessly disposable identities. As 

‘background’, the set against which the white model poses is the environment 

against which her Whiteness and Westerness is defined. 50 The commodification of 

Asianness into a fashion accessory creates signifiers of Asian culture (or in this case 

Vietnamese culture) that are depthless, ahistorical, homogenous and functional. 

Stripped of depth and of a ‘real’, ‘final’ or physical referent, Baudrillard argues 

that signs derive their meaning instead from their relationship to other signs and 

their arrangement within a network of objects. 51 The self-referential nature of signs 

can be seen in the arrangement of Asian signifiers in the window display of 

Matchbox (a home furnishings store) which are organized in accordance to their 

differences and similarities with other signs of ‘other-worldliness’ in order to create 

an ambiance of exoticism. Dark wooden chopsticks and green-brown rice bowls, 

designed to appear as though they are ‘aged’, are arranged next to a ball of woven 

wooden ‘string’ from a non-specific, developmentally lagging, exotic part of the 

world. Furthermore there are miniature ‘aged’ wooden statues of monkeys wearing 

clothes that imply African origins. These objects have nothing in common except 

that they originate, in the European imagination, from far-away, exotic, tribal and 

mysterious places. Their coherence as a network of commodities is also signified 

through the earthy and weathered colours of green, brown, tan and orange, again 

signalling the relationship between the countries of origin and nature. This is in 

contrast to the ‘modern’ (Western) décor contained in the rest of the store, which 

emphasises cleanliness, functionality and contemporary innovation. The ‘advanced 

design’ and shiny metallic surfaces of different kitchen appliances signify that they 

are future-oriented rather than from a culture for which time appears to have been 

frozen. Again, the production and understanding of signifiers of Asianness (and 

Otherness) is framed within the dominant racial discourse of Orientalism. 

50 


‘I consume, therefore I am’ 

We no longer live in a world surrounded by other human beings. Instead, we are 

surrounded by objects and it is the consumption of these objects that, as Baudrillard 

argues, now dictates the rhythm of our life. 52 In this world of objects it is possible to 

consume and ‘know’ Asianness without ever needing to step beyond the comfort 

zone of one’s own culture. The sight, sound and taste of Asia can now be enjoyed in 

a threat-free, Western environment courtesy of commodified Asian products. Whilst 

alternative meanings of signs of Asianness may be generated and subversive uses of 

commodified Asian products found, dominant social constructions within 

mainstream Australian society of ‘what is Asian’, generate and perpetuate particular 

ways of understanding and knowing these signs. 

The commodification and Westernisation of Asian commodities makes these 

products more palatable to the Western consumer. Moreover it allows people to have 

a ‘taste’ of Asia without ever threatening the integrity of one's identity as white 

Australian. For example, one can consume Continental’s ‘Oriental fried rice’ on a 

familiar white dinner plate alongside one’s ‘meat and veg’, as pictured on the 

package. No understanding of Asian etiquette or customs surrounding meals is 

needed. No shift is required from the ‘individualistic’ Western cultural approach 

(where each family member’s meal is contained on a separate plate) to a more 

‘collectivist’ Asian method (where the substantial portion of the meal is eaten off a 

central plate together). The feel and sentiment of Asia, its philosophy and 

spirituality can even be experienced through purchasing Maxwell Williams 

‘Shanghai Chic’ chopsticks. The packaging of which informs the consumer that ‘these 

chopsticks enhance aesthetic feeling and create a sense of balance and well-being’. In 

consumer culture, commodities now mediate between people of different cultures, 

enabling an experience of Asia for white Australia without the threat of actually 

having to confront the Other. The need to only interact with Asia through 

commodified products also ensures that the extent to which Asianness is 

incorporated into one's life is under the control of the consumer, as it is they who 

have the power to accept, or reject, Asian commodities as they please. 

In this new consumer society, Baudrillard argues that consumption is no longer 

driven by the need for an object but rather by the desire for the sign. 53 In postmodern 

consumer society, the object has now taken on the value of the sign and it is the sign 

which is consumed. 54 Instead of a one-to-one connection between need and object, 

the desire for the sign manifests itself as a flirtation with one signifier to the next, and 

much like the symptoms of a psychosomatic disorder, cannot be quelled or satisfied 

through the attainment of any specific object/sign. 55 Suggesting a washing machine 

as an illustration of his idea, Baudrillard argues that its consumption is based on the 

desire for its signs of comfort or prestige. It is a desire which can be also directed at 

other objects with similar signification (e.g. cars, dishwashers). In the case of the 

washing machines, the desire to have it eclipses the desire to wash clothes. 56 

Under this analysis, it is the desire for the sign of Asianness which directs the 

consumption of commodified Asian products. As discussed above, the discourse of 

Orientalism can influence the understanding of signs of Asianness as arising from ‘a 

place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable 

experiences’. 57 The desire for such experiences in white consumer society translates 

to the desire for the consumption of particular commodity/signs which promise these 


experiences. It is the desire for the signifiers of exoticism, mysteriousness, 

spirituality, sensuality, tradition and difference which underpins the consumption of 

Asianness. The success of the commodification of Otherness, argues bell hooks, is 

because it offers ‘a new delight, more intense, more satisfying than normal ways of 

doing and feeling’. 58 For example, the commonality of vegetables such as pumpkin, 

potato and carrot within Anglo-Australian culture might result in these vegetables 

signifying not only comfort and familiarity but also boredom and routine. Hence, 

whilst consumers of Asian backgrounds may purchase Heinz’s ‘Asian’ range of 

soups as a Westernised substitute for the foods that they are used to, the white 

Australian consumer may pass by Heinz's 'regular' vegetable soups which are 

illustrated with 'boring' vegetables such as pumpkin and potato to purchase from 

their 'Asian' range which are illustrated with chillies, lime and exotic looking herbs 

because of their desire to consume the spice, excitement and novelty that such exotic 

foods signify. 

The desire to consume signs of Asianness is not only a desire for what these 

signs signify but also a desire for what the consumption of such signs communicates 

about the consumer. For Baudrillard, consumption forms a system of 

communication through the production and exchange of the coded values of the 

sign. 59 The ‘differential logic of the sign value’ stratifies consumers in accordance to 

the different ideological values which their choice of consumer objects communicates 

about them. 60 The consumption of signifiers of Asianness can be used to 

communicate an acceptance and tolerance of Asia on behalf of the consumer. The 

overcoming of racial prejudice and fear can be displayed through one’s accumulation 

and ease with ‘different’ objects (and object-people). The ability to eat so-called, 

exotic food, attend Asian festivals and tolerate the ‘strange’ smells and ‘weird’ 

customs, communicates a worldliness, a maturity, an adventurousness and a wealth 

of experience and knowledge that differentiates and elevates oneself above the 

‘ignorant masses’ which view Otherness with fear. In mainstream Australian culture 

where the desire to be seen as a non-racist and where ‘multicultural’ often sits in 

conflict with the fear of the Other, namely an ‘Asian invasion’, 61 the consumption of 

commodified Asianness can play a role in the sublimation of such anxieties. Indeed, 

the consumption of Asianness can become a sign of one’s cosmopolitan credentials. 

The desire for Otherness is also often used as proof of anti-racism. For bell 

hooks, this desire manifests itself not only in the desire for signifiers and objects of 

Otherness but also in the desire of white men for the physical consumption of a 

woman of colour. 62 In Eating the Other hooks argues that this declaration of desire for 

the ‘Other’, not just a willingness to tolerate the Other but a need or craving for 

cultural difference, is often a way of ‘publicly announc[ing] their break with a white 

supremacist past’. 63 It is used as evidence of the rejection of racist ideology which 

treats the Other with fear, loathing, hatred or disgust. Rather than a repulsion of 

Asians and telling Asians to ‘go home’, there is a craving for intimacy with the Other 

that goes beyond simply ‘sharing Australian soil’. There is a longing to taste Asian, 

touch Asian, view Asian, and to consume the spectacular theatricalness and 

exoticism that is Asianness to them. Whilst the desire for Asianness may, on the 

surface, appear to be the opposite of hatred, hooks argues that rather than being 

‘proof’ of the end of white supremacy, the desire for consuming the Other can be a 

form of ‘imperialist nostalgia’, 64 colonization and domination. This desire to ‘eat the 

52 


Other’ climaxes at the point where the white Australian man purchases the body of 

the Asian girl to fulfil his sexual desires. Whether on ‘sex-tours’ to Asia or in 

brothels in Australia, the intersection of patriarchal, racist, heterosexist and classist 

discourses ensures that the taste, touch and view of her Asianness is now his, to be 

offered up for his consumption, pleasure and satisfaction; ‘it is by eating the Other 

that one asserts power and privilege’. 65 

The extent of cultural awareness or progressive racial politics, therefore, cannot 

be measured through the willingness to consume commodified Asianness. From 

chopsticks that promise Orientalist ‘balance and well-being’ through to the bodies of 

Asian women, the notion that they are consumer objects within the capitalist market 

means that they exist as all other consumer objects exist – to be bought and sold, to 

be used until their novelty or ability to satisfy runs out. Then they are discarded, 

forgotten. 

‘I act, therefore I am’ 

The consumption of commodified Asianness can detract from, or even entirely 

negate, a real engagement with racial politics or cultural awareness. Whether the 

consumption of Asianness is driven by the desire for exoticism, an enactment of 

multiculturalism, a sublimation of fear or a domination of the Other, the very nature 

of consumption with its focus on an individualistic pursuit for pleasure and 

possessions, limits the transformative potential of this form of 'cultural interaction'. 

Bill Yousman, in his article on the love/hate mentality with which white American 

youth consume black rap music, concludes that such consumption does not produce 

progressive racial relations. The basis for his conclusion is his belief in the difference 

between consumerism and citizenship 66 . Whilst the issue of whether consumerism 

and citizenship are antithetical or whether they can co-exist or support one another is 

beyond this paper, Yousman argues that they are separate notions as citizenship 

concerns the ‘active participation in the governing of society…and working for the 

greater good’ 67 whereas consumerism concerns ‘individual gratification and the 

attempt to solve all perceived problems through the purchasing of goods’. 68 

Consumerism can subsume a critical engagement with racial politics rather 

than catalyse social activism. 69 Therefore, for a real engagement with racial politics, a 

move beyond consumerism is required. The 'cultural interaction' possible within the 

framework of consumerism is inadequate because it is based on a limited acceptance 

and understanding of Asianness. Whilst consumerism does taint all areas of human 

activity, consumption need not be, and has yet to become, the basis for all human 

interactions. For progressive racial relations to occur, more than just a relationship 

mediated through commodities/signs is needed. Rather, an understanding of racial 

politics and how dominant racial discourses construct, legitimize and maintain 

structural and ideological racism needs to be developed. This involves not only the 

questioning of ‘Otherness’, a demand that the Other speak and ‘tell their stories’ so 

that their difference can be scrutinized, explained and understood, but moreover it 

demands the questioning of ‘non-Otherness’, of Whiteness. In this way, Whiteness 

will then no longer define normality from a traditional position of privileged 

invisibility. The operation of Whiteness through the consumption and 

commodification of Asianness needs to be exposed as a site where Orientalist 


discourses can be reproduced and where racial politics are disguised by the 

seemingly ‘apolitical’ nature of consumption. 

Baudrillard’s work recognises that although consumption may be a collective 

behaviour, it also stratifies consumers and assigns them a place along the 'code' 

which prevents collective solidarity from arising. 70 Whilst solidarity may not be 

possible within the realm of consumption as it focuses on individual gratification, 

there remains realms of human existence outside consumption, albeit not untouched 

by consumption, in which solidarity remains a possibility. Such a unification 

between people of different cultures can be forged when cultural difference is not 

consumed and discarded, but when it ‘invites engagement in a revolutionary ethos 

that dares to challenge and disrupt the status quo’. 71 As bell hooks argues, it is when 

the encountering of racial difference is coupled with political realisations and a 

willingness to transgress cultural boundaries that new and alternative relations 

between people can be produced. 72 Instead of commodification and consumption, a 

confrontation and commitment to changing patterns of racial domination needs to be 

developed so that real, substantial and progressive relationships between different 

cultures may be achieved. 

In our everyday negotiations it is often hard to remember that every interaction 

we have is infused with power and politics. Even the seemingly mundane and 

‘apolitical’ areas of our lives – our shopping centres, our living rooms, our 

classrooms and our bedrooms – contain overlapping and contesting discourses 

around race, gender, sexuality and class which support or challenge the status quo 

and the domination of privileged groups. Struggles over power and politics occur 

within the commodification of Asianness, in which the intersection of capitalism and 

Orientalism produce signifiers of Asianness that reproduce oppressive perceptions of 

Asia. Whilst the consumption and desire for signifiers of Asianness have often been 

couched in notions of multiculturalism and the transcendence of white supremacy, 

the desire for the Other can constitute a form of ‘nostalgic imperialism’ and the 

acceptance extended to Asians within the paradigm of consumerism is limited. The 

commodification and consumption of Asianness, however, forms only a small part of 

the intersection of racial politics and capitalism, which themselves intersect with 

broader discourses around gender, class and sexuality in a global context. From the 

‘sale’ of Third World children and the surrounding discourses on good (white) 

motherhood and bad (third-world) motherhood, to the tourism industry and 

surrounding discourses on ‘backward’ versus ‘civilised’ cultures, to the trafficking of 

women from Asia and notions of Oriental sexuality, the intersection of race, 

capitalism and gender continues to perpetuate a global system of suffering and 

oppression of poor (mainly non-white) women and men for the profit and pleasure 

of the affluent world. Although nobody can stand above or beyond consumerism in 

a society driven by capitalism, this does not mean that we are unable to critically 

reflect on how the commodification and consumption of Otherness intersects and 

reproduces racial oppression. Whilst spaces can be forged within the field of 

consumption to contest dominant racial discourses, it is ultimately beyond 

consumption where a real engagement with racial politics, with fellow human beings 

and life, exists. 

54 


NOTES 

1 

Tim Edwards, Contradictions of Consumption: Concepts, Practices and Politics in Consumer Society, 

Open University Press, Buckingham, 2000, pp.3-4. 

2 

See Edward Said, Orientalism, Penguin Books, London, 1978/2003. 

3 

There have been many debates over whether ‘late modernity’ or ‘postmodernity’ is the best 

terminology to describe late capitalist society. Douglas Kellner argues that both positions are equally 

arbitrary and suggests that features of both are in existence at the same time. See Douglas Kellner, 

Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity and Politics between the Modern and Postmodern, Routledge, 

London and New York, 1995. 

4 

Edwards, p.141. 

5 

ibid. 

6 

Richard Dyer, White, Routledge, London and New York, 1997, p.1. 

7 

ibid., pp.1-2. 

8 Bonnie Honig, “My culture made me do it”, in S. M. Okin, ed., Is multiculturalism bad for women, 

Princeton University Press, Princeton, p.39. 

9 Martin M. Lewis and Karen E. Wigen, The Myth of Continents: A critique of metageography, University of 

California Press, Berkley, Los Angeles and California. Lewis and Wigen examine the ways in which the 

geographical boundary between the East and the West has shifted throughout history since the time of the 

publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism, and how such a geographical divide reinforces the myth that ‘suggests 

that the global is divided into two fundamental and ultimately comparable groupings of humanity’ (p.48). 

10 

Douglas Kellner, Jean Baudrillard: From Marxism to Postmodernism and Beyond, Polity Press, 

Cambridge, 1989, p.8. 

11 Mark Gottdiener, Postmodern Semiotics: Material Culture and the Forms of Postmodern Life, Blackwell 

Publishers, Oxford and Cambridge, 1995, pp.4-5. 

12 ibid., p.8. 

13 Ibid. 

14 

Jean Baudrillard, For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, Telos Press, St. Louis, 1981, p.143. 

15 

Baudrillard disagrees with Marx, however, that use value is in any way more ‘concrete’, ‘real’ or 

‘final’ than exchange value. Instead, he argues that use value is as much an abstraction as exchange 

value, and that both constitute commodity fetishism. See ibid., pp.130-42. 

16 

ibid., p.123. 

17 

Jean Baudrillard, The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures, Sage Publications, London, 

Thousand Oaks and New Delhi, 1970/1998, pp.81-83. 

18 

Jean Baudrillard, “The System of Objects”, in M. Poster, ed., Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, 

Polity Press, Cambridge, 1988, p.19. 

19 

Baudrillard, Consumer Society, p.78. 

20 

Baudrillard, Political Economy, pp.159-63. Baudrillard loses his hope for the ‘total revolution’ 

(p.163) in his later work, however, as he extends his analysis of the symbolic to construct a totalizing 

and fatalistic regime See for example Jean Baudrillard, “Symbolic Exchange and Death”, in M. Poster, 

ed., Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1988, pp. 119-48; Jean Baudrillard, 

“Simulacra and Simulations”, in M. Poster, ed., Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, Polity Press, 

Cambridge, 1988, pp.166-84. 

21 

Gottdiener, Postmodern Semiotics, p.40. 

22 

ibid., p.49. 

23 

ibid., p.27. 

24 

Steven Best, “The Commodification of Reality and the Reality of Commodification: Baudrillard, 

Debord and Postmodern Theory”, in D. Kellner, ed., Baudrillard: A Critical Reader, Blackwell Publishers, 

Oxford and Cambridge, 1994, pp. 41-66. Steven Best makes a similar attempt, arguing also that the 

extremes of Baudrillard’s later work are self-defeating and that a critical and dialectic hermeneutics 

should be maintained (like that found in Debord’s (earlier) work). 

25 

Gottdiener, pp.25-27. 

26 

ibid., p.25. 

27 

For example, in his chapter “Group Differentiation in a Metropolitan High School: The Influence 

of Race, Class, Gender and Culture” (pp.192-208), he performs a socio-semiotic analysis of dress and 

identity in a Californian high school. However, he fails to mention how the signs and materiality of 


signs is related to structures of power around race, class, gender and sexuality, such as patriarchy and 

hetero-normativity. 

28 

Said, p.2. 

29 

V.G. Kiernan cit. Said, p.52. 

30 

Said, p.43. 

31 

Said, similarly to Foucault, argued that there was a relationship between knowledge, power and 

control. He writes that Orientalism is a form of “supremacy…associated with ‘our’ knowledge of [the 

Orient] and not principally with military or economic power…To have such knowledge of a thing is to 

dominate it, to have authority over it”. ibid., p.32. 

32 

ibid. 

33 

See Said, pp.284-328. 

34 


35 

See for example Marilyn Halter, Shopping for Identity: The Market of Ethnicity, Schocker Books, New 

York, 2000. 

36 

Gottdiener, pp.5-6. 

37 

Baudrillard, Political Economy, p.155. 

38 

ibid. Baudrillard argues that the distinction between use value as ‘concrete’, ‘real’ or ‘final’ and 

exchange value as ‘abstracted’ and the seemingly irreconcilable distance between the two is also false. 

Furthermore the exploitation of the political economy occurs through the ideology that use value is 

‘final’ and related the needs, which operates in a similar way to the signifier in the political economy of 

the sign with is claim to ‘reality’ and its justification through the ideology of psychological motivation. 

ibid., pp.143-63. 

39 

Kellner, Baudrillard, pp.9-10. 

40 

For example on the packaging of Ong’s range of Asian sauces, Wokka Indonesian Tomato Curry 

noodles etc. 

41 

For example on the packaging of Campbell’s Asian soup range, Blue Dragon Asian sauces etc. 

42 

For example on the packaging of Asian Home Gourmet sauces, Maggie Flavour Infusion paste etc. 

43 

Jameson draws on Lacan’s theory of schizophrenia as essentially a language disorder in which the 

breakdown of language also causes a breakdown of historical continuity and personal identity and in 

which the present moment, as disconnected and discontinuous, becomes vividly amplified. See Fredric 

Jameson, “Postmodernism and Consumer Society”, in H. Foster, ed., The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on 

Postmodern Culture, Bay Press, Seattle, 1983, pp.118-19. 

44 

ibid., pp.119-120. 

45 

For example on the packaging of Campbell’s ‘Asian’ soup range, Continental ‘Asian Rices’ range 

etc. 

46 

Sara Ahmed, “Constructions of Women and/in the Orient”, in T. Cosslet et. al., eds, Women, Power 

and Resistance, Open University, Buckinghamshire, 1996, pp.136-49. However, Ahmed does not use the 

framework set out by Baudrillard in her analysis. 

47 

ibid., p.139. 

48 

ibid., p.142. 

49 

ibid. 

50 

ibid., pp.143-4. Ahmed argues that white women in Western culture are often seen as the ‘Other’ 

against which (white) man defines himself, however in this editorial the white woman is placed in the 

position of positive definition against the ‘Otherness’ of the Orient. While the white woman is still 

objectified and commodified, in this case ‘ “she” gains…value via her distinction from racial Others’ 

(p.146). 

51 

Baudrillard, Consumer Society, pp.26-27. 

52 

ibid., p.25. 

53 

Baudrillard disagrees with humanists and ‘alienist’ theories of consumption and with the belief 

that people are driven to consume through the production of false needs for a particular object. In 

standard postmodern form he argues that it is not that capitalism, consumption, advertising etc. has 

‘alienated’ people from their ‘real’ needs or ‘true nature’ but rather that such ‘real needs’ and ‘true 

nature’ do not exist. ibid., pp.67-76. 

54 

ibid., pp.76-77. 

55 

ibid., p.77. 

56 

ibid., pp.76-77. 

56 


57 

Said, p.1. 

58 

bell hooks, “Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance”, in b. hooks, Black Looks: Race and 

Representation, South End Press, Boston, 1992, p.21. 

59 


60 

ibid. 

61 

A number of writers have explored white Australia’s stressed and strained relationship with its 

Asian neighbours and the ‘identity crisis’ that such pressures can bring. See for example Jon Stratton, 

Race Daze: Australia in Identity Crisis, Pluto Press, Annadale, 1998; and Ghassan Hage, White Nation: 

Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society, Pluto Press, Annadale, 1998. 

62 

hooks, p.24. 

63 

ibid. 

64 

ibid., p.25. 

65 

ibid., p.36. 

66 

Bill Yousman, ‘Blackophilia and Blackophobia: White Youth, the Consumption of Rap Music, and 

White Supremacy’, Communication Theory, 13, 4 (November, 2003), p.370. 

67 

ibid. 

68 

ibid. 

69 

ibid. 

70 

Baudrillard, Consumer Society, pp.85-86. 

71 

hooks, p.37. 

72 

hooks, pp.36-37. 



3:2 (2005), 58-74 

Japan and the ‘Human Security’ Debate: History, 

Norms and Pro-active Foreign Policy 

Elena ATANASSOVA-CORNELIS 

Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium 

Introduction 

THE CONCEPT OF “human security” emerged as a response to a series of ‘new’ 

security challenges and threats associated with the post-Cold War period – including 

increased intra-state conflicts, refugee problems, increasing global poverty and 

resource shortages. Human security challenged the state-centredness of traditional 

concepts of security by suggesting that individual people, not nations, should be the 

focus of future security approaches. However, as the concept of security per 

se became a contested notion during the post-Cold War years, so too did the concept 

of ‘human’ security. Are basic human needs the most important element of human 

security Should we rather focus on human development Is not protecting people in 

conflict situations the core of this notion Different approaches to the concept have 

resulted in a number of unclear definitions, making human security a point of 

discussion among scholars and analysts. Despite a lack of agreement as to what it 

precisely means, a number of governments have integrated the concept into their 

foreign policies and have undertaken actions to implement it. The main proponents 

of this new approach to security have been Canada, Norway and Japan. Yet, even 

these three nations have themselves advocated quite different conceptualizations. 

Taking Japan as a case-study, this article explores the concept of human 

security and argues that both Japan’s definition and practical implementation reflect 

the country’s historical and normative background as well as its post-World War 

Two preference for non-military and human-centred foreign policy. It is likewise 

argued that scholars should avoid conceiving human security as a coherent concept. 

Instead, human security should be considered within the context of its multifaceted 

nature and with a focus on the perspectives of different actors, whose approaches are 

likely to be an expression of their specific backgrounds and policy preferences. 1 In 

this way, the problem of finding a universal conceptualization could be avoided, 

while the focus of scholars would instead shift to particular issues and questions 

related to putting human security into practice. 

This article is divided into two parts: the first provides an overview of the ongoing 

debate on the nature of security, locates human security within it and 

discusses different approaches to this concept. Taking Japan as a case-study, the 

second part analyzes Japan’s path to human security, the introduction and definition 

of the concept in the Japanese context and Japan’s concrete initiatives for its 

implementation. In this way, this article seeks both to deepen the understanding of 

human security and illustrate its growing relevance to the current international 

58 


security agenda from the perspective of one Asian state that has made human 

security a key aspect of its foreign policy. 

Redefining Security: ‘Widening’ and ‘Deepening’ the Concept 

In the security studies field, the end of the Cold War heralded the beginning of a 

debate concerned with the very meaning of the concept of ‘security’ - what security is 

and for whom it is provided. In other words, who the referent object of security 

should be. 2 Against this background, academics and scholars have focused on 

redefining the military and state-centric notion of security, which has resulted in a 

‘widening’ and ‘deepening’ of the subject matter of security studies. This emergent 

debate reflects the cleavage between the so-called traditional and non-traditional 

views of security, and illustrates the sub-divisions of the latter. 3 

On the one hand, traditionalists have continued to regard security primarily 

from the perspective of external military threats to states’ territorial integrity, 

emphasizing the crucial role of the military in ensuring the national security of 

sovereign states. 4 Non-traditionalists, however, by way of considering political, 

economic, environmental and societal threats have challenged traditionalists’ 

preoccupation with military concerns. In addition, they have focused on the survival 

of individuals rather than on state survival. This has led to the emergence of different 

perspectives within the non-traditionalist group: with some scholars widening their 

emphasis on threats to include non-military ones, while others have deepened their 

perspective through a focus on ‘new’ referent objects – the security of individuals, 

groups and societies. 5 

The state has remained the main referent object for some of the so-called 

“wideners” who have focused on non-military threats (instead of, or in addition to, 

military ones) to the state’s national security. .6 Some so-called “deepeners”, on the 

other hand, in spite of focusing on actors other than states, have analyzed only 

military threats to them. 7 Still, other non-traditionalists, by way of taking societies, 

groups and individuals as referent objects and analyzing primarily non-military 

threats to them (or both military and non-military ones) have come to represent a 

group of scholars concerned primarily with human security issues. 8 

The major debates in security studies since the end of the Cold War have 

shifted the focus of security from its traditional preoccupation with the state to a new 

referent object, the individual. This shift has also served to expand the portrayal of 

threats from a model that conceived them solely in military terms to a wider 

approach that encompasses non-traditional, or non-military, types of threats. It is 

from this new focus in security studies that the concept of human security was 

developed. In this sense, human security, with its primary focus on humans and nonmilitary 

threats, has come to reflect the contested nature of security more generally. 

The Rise of Human Security 

Human security has emerged largely as a response to ethnic conflicts and civil wars, 

the deepening of globalization, the widening gap between rich and poor and the 

spreading of human rights after the end of the Cold War. Dr. Mahbub Ul Haq first 

drew the attention of international society to this concept by way of launching the 

United Nations Development Program (UNDP) annual publication called Human 

Development Report. In its inaugural 1990 report, the UNDP stated that development 

Atanassova-Cornelis/Japan and the ‘Human Security’ Debate 59

must be focused on people rather than on the security of national boundaries. The 

aim was for security to be ‘a process of enlarging people’s choices’. 9 The 1993 UNDP 

report clearly expressed the need for a new security concept that would focus not 

only on states’ security, but would also stress ‘people’s security’. 10 Building on 

previous reports, the 1994 Human Development Report reiterated the importance of 

shifting the focus of security from states to humans and was explicitly centred on 

human security: 

The concept of security has for too long been interpreted narrowly: as security of 

territory from external aggression, or as protection of national interests in foreign 

policy or as global security from the threat of nuclear holocaust. It has been related more 

to nation-states than to people….Forgotten were the legitimate concerns of ordinary people 

who sought security in their daily lives. 11 

Hence, the concept of human security, through the 1994 UNDP report, found 

its place in the broader debate on security. It was described as ‘nothing less than an 

alternative way of looking upon security’ 12 and a ‘fundamental departure’ from a 

security analysis ‘that has the state as the exclusive primary referent object’. 13 

Nevertheless, like the broader notion of security, the concept of human security has 

remained highly contested. 

Most of the strongest proponents of the concept have emphasized the safety 

and dignity of the human being and the welfare of ordinary people, as opposed to 

‘the power and authority of the state or the regime’. 14 The concept’s popularity can, 

therefore, be attributed to the centrality of the human being, in contrast to the 

traditional preoccupation with the state. However, the inclusion of a large number of 

well-being components into human security has resulted in a number of vague and 

inconsistent definitions of the term. The formulations have also varied in terms of the 

breadth of the concept, i.e. whether it should encompass both the ‘freedom from 

want’ and ‘freedom from fear’ aspects. The former includes policy agendas, such as 

poverty, education, health, debt relief and youth employment, while the latter 

focuses on international law aimed at conflict prevention, peace operations, sanctions 

and non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. 15 

Defining Human Security 

Although there is often little agreement about what issues should be included in the 

concept of human security, three distinctive approaches to its definition can be 

identified. The three models are: basic human needs, social welfare/developmentalist and 

assertive/interventionist. 16 While there are definite tensions between these approaches, 

they should not be conceived as mutually exclusive, but somewhat overlapping. 17 

While the first two models tend to emphasize the freedom from want aspect of 

human security, the third one highlights the freedom from fear interpretation of the 

concept. 

The basic human needs model is represented in the 1994 UNDP formulation 

which focuses primarily on the safety and freedom of the individual, especially in 

critical situations. 18 According to the 1994 UNDP report, human security means, 

firstly, ‘safety from such chronic threats as hunger, disease and repression’ and, 

secondly, ‘protection from sudden and hurtful disruptions in the patterns of daily 

60 


life – whether in homes, in jobs or in communities’. 19 The report emphasizes the ‘allencompassing’ 

nature of the concept of human security, by way of indicating 

economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community and political security as 

categories of threats to human security. 20 

The social welfare/developmentalist model is close to the basic human needs 

interpretation of human security. It goes beyond the basic needs for human survival 

or safety to encompass the development of the individual, aiming to widen the range 

of people’s choices. It depicts human security as ‘a condition of existence in which 

basic material needs are met’ and ‘human dignity’ realized. 21 Accordingly, while 

provision of ‘material sufficiency’ is crucial for achieving human security, ‘nonmaterial 

dimensions’, such as ‘personal autonomy… and unhindered participation in 

the life of the community’, are also considered important conditions. 22 

Despite being criticized by academics and scholars for being too broad, 

including all possible dimensions of human dignity, the concept of human security 

has become widely accepted by international society. 23 Throughout the 1990s, human 

security became so popular as a concept that Canada and Norway established a 

‘human security network’ 24 consisting of states and non-governmental organizations 

(NGOs) engaged in the promotion of this ‘new’ security concept. The most active 

advocates of human security have become the governments of Canada, Norway and 

Japan. That said however, Japan and Canada promote quite different approaches to 

the concept. 

The Japanese formulation is associated with the basic human needs model and 

emphasizes the freedom from want aspect of human security. The Canadian 

definition, on the other hand, is closer to the third model, that is, the 

assertive/interventionist approach. Canada describes human security as ‘freedom 

from pervasive threats to people’s rights, safety or lives’. Its human security policy, 

therefore, stresses the freedom from fear interpretation of the concept, which ‘focuses 

on increasing people's safety from the threat of violence’. 25 This is the reason why, 

from a Canadian perspective, the notion ‘encompasses a spectrum of approaches to 

prevent and resolve violent conflicts, to protect civilians where conflicts do exist, and 

to increase the capacity of states to ensure security for their populations’. 26 In this 

context, Canada considers coercive means, such as humanitarian intervention, to 

ensure human security, even though intervention is regarded as being a last resort 

for resolving conflicts. 

Actors’ Perspectives and Human Security 

As the existing definitions and models have illustrated, human security per se is a 

concept which fails to provide both policy-makers with practical tools for devising 

particular policies in specific situations and academics with analytical tools for 

scholarly research. 27 Conceptualizations tend to be too broad and vague, highlighting 

different human security issues and not being able to reach a consensus. The notion 

of human security has, therefore, remained contested and ambiguous, meaning 

different things to different people. 

At the same time, instead of trying to make it a coherent concept, it may be 

more useful to follow the suggestions of Roland Paris that human security be viewed 

as ‘a descriptive label for a class of research’ as a means of eliminating the problem of 

defining it in a precise way. 28 Thus, human security could be regarded as a broad 


category of research in the field of security studies that mainly explores non-military 

threats to individuals, groups and societies. 29 In this way, it could accommodate the 

work of those wideners and deepeners that look beyond the state and military 

threats. Furthermore, such an approach would provide a space for explanations of 

the concept from the perspective of various actors whose ways of dealing with 

human security issues may reflect specific historical backgrounds and social norms, 

differences in strategic thinking and preferences for policy choices. 30 

Against this background, taking Japan as a case-study, the remainder of this 

article will discuss why and how Japan has become one of the world’s leading states 

in the promotion of human security, and will illustrate that the country’s approach to 

the concept is linked to Japan’s non-military foreign policy posture, based on its 

historical background and adherence to anti-militarist norms and pacifism. In this 

way, the case of Japan will serve to confirm the proposition that approaches to 

human security may reflect actors’ particular backgrounds and preferences, which 

could explain the concept’s multifaceted nature. 

Japan’s Path to Human Security 

World War II left Japan completely devastated and facing an urgent need for 

economic and societal rehabilitation. In order to achieve this, Japan had no other 

choice but to align itself with the West, which was established with the simultaneous 

signature in 1951 of the San Francisco Peace Treaty and the US-Japan Security Treaty. 

The military alliance with the United States and the significant contribution made by 

the US to the country’s post-war reconstruction ensured Tokyo’s bilateral 

relationship with Washington would become the main characteristic of Japanese 

foreign and security policy in the following decades. At the same time, the 

devastating experience of defeat and fears of a militarist revival led Japanese policymakers 

to pursue a security policy, which reflected, what Thomas Berger calls 

Japan’s ‘culture of anti-militarism’. 31 

The military alliance with the US under the revised 1960 security treaty 32 , 

which stipulated the US commitment to Japan’s defence, helped Japan maintain 

peace and democracy. Under the protective security ‘umbrella’ of its US ally, Tokyo 

decision-makers could thus focus exclusively on Japan’s rapid economic recovery 

and development without the need for any large-scale military rearmament. Through 

the pursuit of economic security Japanese policy-makers also sought to avoid 

engaging the country in the military dimension of security, which remained highly 

contested due to the legacy of Japan’s militarist past. Furthermore, the focus on 

economic growth reflected what from the 1980s became known in Japan as the 

concept of ‘comprehensive security’ (sōgō anzen hoshō). It was an interpretation of 

Japanese security from a broader perspective than the traditional military dimension 

and included social, economic and political aspects for achieving national security 

objectives. 33 

The low priority given to military security in favour of a comprehensive 

security policy was underpinned by the non-acceptance of the use of military force as 

a legitimate instrument of statecraft and a commitment to non-possession of war 

potential, which was incorporated in the post-war ‘pacifist’ Constitution of 1947 

through Article 9. 34 Subsequently, successive Japanese governments have interpreted 

62 


Article 9 as permitting Japan to maintain a force structure exclusively for self-defence 

and not a military as such. Likewise, at the end of 1960s, Japan embraced the three 

non-nuclear principles of not producing, possessing or bringing nuclear weapons 

into Japan. These anti-militarist norms and principles have become the strongest 

characteristics of the Japanese state since 1945, having their roots in collective 

memories of the militarist expansion and the following war with America and its 

allies. 35 They have further come to define Japan’s priority in terms of pursuing 

foreign policy by peaceful means, such as foreign aid and investment, and cooperation 

in the civilian and non-military sphere of action. 

Tokyo’s close ties with, and dependence on, Washington in the security area 

prevented Japan from pursuing an active and independent foreign policy. This is the 

reason why Japan has long been described as a ‘reactive’ state, one that reacts to 

international situations and demands of other countries rather than acting of its own 

initiative. 36 The reactive approach in foreign and security policy during the Cold 

War, applied to Japan’s international political role, sharply contrasted with the 

country’s rapid economic expansion throughout the 1970s and 1980s. However, the 

need for Japan’s active behaviour on the international stage sharply arose following 

the Persian Gulf Crisis of 1990, during which Japan made a US$13 billion financial 

contribution, but refused, due to constitutional restrictions, to contribute to the 

multinational military forces deployed to the Gulf. Tokyo’s reliance on chequebook 

diplomacy and the inability of Japanese policy-makers to deal with such an 

international crisis resulted in international humiliation and severe criticism. The 

main reason for this was that with the outbreak of the Gulf War, multilateral peacekeeping 

operations (PKO) for ensuring peace, in particular through the UN, became 

established as an international norm. Contemporaneously, coercive means, such as 

the use of force as part of PKO, came to be more and more accepted as a form of 

providing security. In this context, the strong anti-militarist norms and adherence to 

pacifism permeating Japanese society clashed with the new norms of UN 

internationalism, which explicitly called for Japan’s ‘human’ contribution to 

international peace and questioned its nature as a ‘peaceful’ state. 37 Consequently, 

this served as a push for a serious redefinition of Japanese post-1989 foreign policy 

behaviour, primarily in terms of adjusting traditional Japanese anti-militarism to the 

post-Cold War international norm of peace-keeping. 

Pursuing a Pro-active International Role 

Responding to the need for greater engagement in the area of international security 

following the Gulf War, Japan significantly increased its multilateral personnel 

involvement in international peace and stability efforts. The country enacted in June 

1992 the International Peace Co-operation Law (IPCL), which enabled Japanese 

personnel to fully participate in both international, non-combat humanitarian relief 

missions and the United Nations peace-keeping operations (UNPKO). As a result, 

the first post-Cold War decade saw the SDF’s active involvement in UNPKO and 

other non-military initiatives, which in turn increasingly came to define Japan’s 

evolving pro-active international role. The IPCL was subsequently amended in 

December 2001 to enable Japan’s full-scale participation in the primary duties of 

Peace-Keeping Forces (PKF). 38 


Throughout the 1990s Japan developed policies in the fields of development 

and humanitarian aid, and increased its participation in global crisis management, 

comprehensive conflict prevention and environmental protection. The period also 

saw a deepening of Japan’s relationship with the European Community/Union 

(EU) 39 , which came to encompass strictly humanitarian and civil agendas. The 

partnership between the two was further strengthened in 2001 by the adoption of the 

Joint Japan-EU Action Plan, which gave clear priority to non-military security issues 

and humans rather than states. 

The changing international environment following the end of the Cold War 

also caused a change in the US-Japan alliance. The alliance was reassessed and 

strengthened in the course of the 1990s as a response to new political agendas and 

security challenges. 40 In the aftermath of the 11 September terrorist attacks on the US, 

Japan enacted the Anti-Terrorism Special Measures Law, which permitted it to 

provide rear-area logistical support for the US and coalition forces fighting in 

Afghanistan. Furthermore, as one of the first supporters of the US policy towards 

Iraq, the Koizumi government introduced a law for the reconstruction of Iraq in July 

2003. 41 Subsequently, Japan became pro-actively engaged in the rebuilding of the 

country both in terms of financial and human contribution. The latter was achieved 

with the dispatch at the beginning of 2004 of Japan’s SDF on a humanitarian mission 

to Iraq, which was extended for one more year in December 2004. While the dispatch 

was for non-combat purposes, it was done without the sanction of the international 

community and caused, significant controversy both in and outside Japan. 42 

As the discussion above illustrates, Japan’s post-war pacifism and adherence to 

anti-militarist norms have continued to frame Japanese foreign and security policy in 

the post-Cold War period. However, at the same time and as result of the Gulf War 

experience, these norms have been adjusted to meet a newly emerging UN 

internationalism, permitting Japan to utilize different avenues for exercising its 

emerging pro-active international role. These avenues, for their part, have served the 

country’s efforts to promote its non-military stance on political co-operation and 

security diplomacy, and to respond to non-traditional security challenges. In this 

context, the rise of human security in Japan’s foreign policy at the end of the 1990s 

can be regarded as having emerged naturally from the country’s pursuit of nonmilitary 

international behaviour throughout the decade. In a historical perspective, 

on the other hand, human security became an addition to Japan’s comprehensive 

approach to security pursued from the early 1980s on, and, as will be illustrated 

below, came to define Japan’s active role in both international and East Asian 

security since the end of the Cold War. 

The Role of Prime Minister Obuchi in Introducing Human Security 

The recognition of the concept of human security in Japan was also directly related to 

the Asian currency and financial crises that hit East and South-East Asia in July 1997. 

While the crises certainly had a devastating impact on the economies of Asian 

countries, increased poverty and spread political instability, they also served as the 

stimulus for a new understanding of security that would focus primarily on humans 

and not solely on states. 43 

At the end of 1998, the then Prime Minister of Japan Obuchi Keizō 44 delivered 

two speeches which introduced the concept of human security. These two speeches 

64 


served as the basis for the subsequent integration of human security into Japanese 

diplomacy. Indeed, this point is exemplified by the description of human security in 

the 2000 Diplomatic Bluebook, as ‘a key perspective in developing Japan’s foreign 

policy’. 45 

On 2 December 1998 in Tokyo, Obuchi defined the concept as ‘the key, which 

comprehensively covers all the menaces that threaten the survival, daily life, and 

dignity of human beings and strengthens the efforts to confront those threats’. 46 He 

further stressed that Japan ‘pledged and steadily implemented contributions on the 

largest scale in the world’ in order to help Asian countries deal with the economic 

crises, and has assisted, at first place, the ‘socially vulnerable segments of population 

on whom economic difficulties have the heaviest impacts’. 47 Finally, Obuchi 

proposed to make ‘the 21st century a human-centred century’, a perspective that is 

clearly tied to a conception of security in terms of people instead of the state. Later in 

the same month, in a speech delivered to the ASEAN+3 Summit in Hanoi, Obuchi 

declared that for Asia the 21st century should be ‘a century of peace and prosperity 

built on human dignity’. 48 Furthermore, as an expression of Japan’s commitment to 

the promotion of human security, Obuchi announced that Japan had decided to 

make a financial contribution that would establish a Human Security Fund under the 

UN. The fund was established three months later, in March 1999, on the basis of this 

financial contribution. 

The two speeches by Obuchi Keizō in 1998 can be considered as the foundation 

on which Japan’s approach to human security was later developed. 49 He clearly used 

the concept of human security as a reference to developmental policies based on a 

human-centred perspective rather than a traditional, state-centric security policy 

with its military emphasis. 50 Human security, therefore, was a rather natural 

extension of Japan’s non-military and human-oriented international behaviour 

throughout the 1990s, which explains why it was easily integrated into Japanese 

foreign policy after Obuchi’s speeches. The 2000 Diplomatic Bluebook states that: 

‘Prime Minister Obuchi clearly located “human security” in Japan’s foreign policy’, 

while the 2001 Diplomatic Bluebook refers to human security as ‘the cornerstone of 

international cooperation in the 21 st century’ with Japan ‘working to make the new 

century a human-centred century’. 51 

Further Initiatives 

Following Obuchi’s sudden death in May 2000 human security has remained an 

important pillar in the policies of successive Japanese administrations. Prime 

Minister Mori Yoshirō, the immediate successor of Obuchi, maintained strong 

support for human security. In his speech at the Millennium Summit of the United 

Nations in September 2000, Mori emphasized that human security had become ‘one 

of the pillars of its [Japanese] diplomacy’ and Japan, therefore, would ‘spare no effort 

to make the 21 st century a human-centred century’, while also being committed to the 

further development of the concept. 52 In this context, Mori announced the Japanese 

government's plan to make an additional contribution to the Trust Fund for Human 

Security (initially called the Human Security Fund), and Japan’s intention to create 

an international committee on human security. Following Mori’s announcement, the 

Commission on Human Security was formally declared in January 2001. 


The successor of Mori in April 2001, Koizumi Junichirō, referred to human 

security when he addressed the International Symposium on Human Security in 

December 2001. Although he focused primarily on Japan’s response to the 11 

September terrorist attacks on the US and Japan’s role in the reconstruction of 

Afghanistan, Koizumi linked the eradication of terrorism with the necessity to deal 

with ‘other diverse threats to individuals’ because ‘armed conflicts, poverty and 

other socio-economic factors create "hotbeds" for terrorism’. 53 He emphasised the 

point that human security was important because it served ‘to protect survival, 

livelihood and dignity of individual human beings from diverse threats… so as to 

realize the full potential of each person’. 54 In his speech to the Diet in January 2003, 

Koizumi said that human security should be a priority focus of Japanese Official 

Development Assistance (ODA). 55 

Since its introduction by Obuchi in 1998, human security has been actively 

promoted by Japanese decision-makers. While Koizumi has articulated human 

security less explicitly in his speeches than his predecessors, the concept has 

continued to be seen as an operational tool for achieving practical goals in 

accordance with Japan’s human-centred diplomacy. Furthermore, as will be 

discussed below, under Koizumi the concept has come to occupy a priority place in 

Japan’s ODA policy, thereby expanding Japan’s ‘comprehensive’ role in both global 

and regional security. 

Interpreting Human Security 

Japan has advocated an approach to human security closely related to the basic 

human needs formulation of the UNDP, embracing a broad interpretation that 

includes freedom from want and fear. In line with Obuchi’s 1998 Tokyo speech, the 

1999 Diplomatic Bluebook described human security as a notion that ‘comprehensively 

covers all the menaces that threaten human survival, daily life and dignity… and 

strengthens efforts to confront these threats’. 56 Possible security threats included 

issues as various as environmental degradation, violations of human rights, 

transnational organized crime, refugees, poverty and infectious diseases such as 

AIDS. This official Japanese interpretation of human security was subtly altered and 

enhanced in the 2002 Diplomatic Bluebook. While emphasizing the need for protection 

of ‘the lives, livelihoods, and dignity of individual human beings’, the document 

stressed the realization of ‘the abundant potential inherent in each individual’. 57 The 

formulation thus focused not only on the protection of the individual from threats, 

but also on its broad development as a human being. The general emphasis, 

however, was placed on the freedom from want aspect of human security. 

The focus on freedom from fear is also present in the Japanese interpretation, 

although the human costs of violent conflicts do not represent the main focus for 

Japan as they do, for example, for Canada. The Japanese government has clearly 

stated that, for Japan, human security is a broader concept, with freedom from want 

being ‘no less critical’ than freedom from fear, and, therefore, it was ‘necessary to go 

beyond thinking of human security solely in terms of protecting human life in 

conflict situations. 58 Furthermore, Japan has distanced itself from the interventionist 

element of the Canadian interpretation of human security in terms of humanitarian 

intervention. The Japanese government has argued that the freedom from fear 

approach has been used as justification for the use of force in situations with massive 

66 


human rights violations, which, in the Japanese view, were an extremely 

‘controversial issue’ that required careful examination ‘not only on moral and 

political but also on legal grounds’. 59 Indeed, the use of force for Japan cannot be a 

means for ensuring human security. The legal constraints based on Article 9 of the 

Japanese constitution prohibit the country from intervening militarily in armed 

conflicts. Furthermore, the strong anti-militarism characterizing Japanese society, 

reflected in Japan’s pursuit of a non-military and peaceful foreign policy, makes 

humanitarian intervention a very undesirable option for Japan. 

The Japanese interpretation of human security has remained to a large extent 

unchanged since the introduction of the concept in 1998. The emphasis has continued 

to be placed on human needs rather than on protection of people from violent 

conflicts. At the same time, a stress on human fulfilment and development was 

added, which was expanded in the 2003 final report of the Commission on Human 

Security (to be discussed in the following section). In particular, the focus on the 

‘development’ aspect of human security has been reflected in, and implemented 

through, the Japanese ODA policy, which engaged Japan even stronger in East Asian 

security. 

Implementing Human Security 

Japan has been implementing human security through, on the one hand, the Trust 

Fund For Human Security (hereafter the Trust Fund) and Official Development 

Assistance, and on the other, the Commission on Human Security (CHS). 60 While the 

Trust Fund and ODA have been used to put the concept into practice, thereby 

realizing concrete goals, the task of the CHS was to formulate a definition of human 

security and make recommendations to the international community that would 

serve as guidelines for future policies and actions. 

The Trust Fund for Human Security 

Initially called the Human Security Fund, the Trust Fund was established in March 

1999 in the UN with an initial contribution from the Japanese government of 

approximately US$ 4.63 million (¥500 million). Since then, the fund has received 

additional financial assistance from Japan that by fiscal 2004 (March 2005) had 

amounted to approximately US$ 256 million (¥29 billion), making the Trust Fund one 

of the largest of its kind in the UN. 61 The Trust Fund donations have been used to 

support projects, implemented by UN-related organizations, which address threats 

from the perspective of human security, such as poverty, conflicts, landmines, 

refugee problems, illicit drugs and infectious diseases. The main focus of the projects 

financed by the fund has been in the area of community development and postconflict 

peace-building 62 . This reflects the priority that the Trust Fund gives to the 

least developed countries and those affected by conflicts. 63 Examples of projects are 

assistance for the improvement of public healthcare services in Tajikistan, assistance 

to ex-combatants in Sierra Leone to re-settle and re-integrate into society, agricultural 

production assistance for people affected by crises in the Democratic Republic of 

Congo and assistance aimed at supporting Chernobyl-affected individuals in 

Ukraine. 


Japanese ODA Program 

The introduction of human security into ODA followed Obuchi’s speeches at the end 

of 1998. 64 In the 1999 annual Japanese ODA report (renamed from the 2001 White 

Paper on ODA) a section on ‘Human security and ODA’ was included. The section 

quoted Obuchi’s promotion of the concept and referred to ODA projects that were 

aimed at realizing human security in practice, such as Japan’s assistance for the 

rehabilitation of Kosovo and the return of refugees, and programs for the removal of 

anti-personnel landmines. 65 Although human security was mentioned in the 

subsequent White Papers, it was only from 2003 that it came to occupy a substantial 

place in Japan’s ODA program. This was a result of a revision of the ODA charter, 

the basic document of Japan’s ODA policy. 

The revised charter identified human security as one of the ‘basic policies’ of 

ODA, describing it as an important perspective through which ‘direct threats to 

individuals such as conflicts, disasters, infectious diseases’ could be addressed. 66 

‘Japan will implement ODA’, continued the text, ‘to strengthen the capacity of local 

communities through human resource development’, and ‘will extend assistance for 

the protection and empowerment of individuals’ to ‘ensure that human dignity is 

maintained at all stages, from the conflict stage to the reconstruction and 

development stages’. 67 The stress on both protection from threats and development 

of individuals was thus in line with the Japanese interpretation of human security. In 

order to materialize the concept in reality, Japan has used the Trust Fund as a main 

vehicle for realization of human security objectives. 

Asia has remained a priority region in the new ODA charter, as had been the 

case under the former charter. In this framework, Japan has extended ODA 

particularly to Southeast Asian countries to support their economic and social 

development, and with a view to alleviating regional disparities. Africa has also 

continued to be an important recipient of Japan’s ODA, with Japan providing aid 

through the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) 

process, and by way of extending grant aid in the areas of health and medical care, 

education, water and food. Other initiatives include Japan’s participation for peace 

consolidation in, and reconstruction of, Sri Lanka, and assistance provided for 

political, economic and social institution building in Cambodia, Kosovo, East Timor 

and Afghanistan. 

The Commission on Human Security (CHS) 

The CHS was established in January 2001 as an initiative of the Japanese government 

in response to the UN Secretary-General’s call at the 2000 Millennium Summit of the 

United Nations for a world ‘free of want’ and ‘free of fear’. Although the CHS was an 

independent body of the UN, its work was carried in close collaboration with the 

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the UNDP, and 

strongly supported by the government of Japan. The commission was mandated to 

develop the concept of human security as an operational tool for policy formulation 

and implementation and to propose a concrete program of action to address threats 

from the perspective of human security. As such, the CHS was supposed to promote 

the understanding of the concept and encourage greater engagement on the part of 

the international community in its practical realization. In 2003, the CHS compiled a 

68 


final report titled Human Security Now, which was submitted to both Prime Minister 

Koizumi and the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. It was subsequently published 

in May 2003. 

According to the CHS report, human security seeks ‘to protect the vital core of 

all human lives in ways that enhance human freedoms and human fulfilment’. 68 It stated 

that ‘fundamental freedoms’ are those that ‘are the essence of life’. Human security, 

therefore, meant protecting those freedoms from ‘critical (severe) and pervasive 

(widespread) threats and situations’. 69 The report further emphasized that the 

maintenance of human security should reinforce human dignity and must aim ‘at 

developing the capabilities of individuals and communities’ to act on their own 

behalf. 70 In this way, the CHS report added to the ‘protection’ aspect of human 

security an ‘empowerment’ interpretation, which stressed the abilities of individuals 

to protect themselves from threats and conflicts, and to respond to problems. Human 

security was thus described as encompassing several kinds of freedom – ‘freedom 

from want and freedom from fear, as well as freedom to take action on one’s own 

behalf’. 71 

The CHS report further explored two particular aspects of human security – 

first, conflict-related concerns, such as people under threat of violent conflict, people 

on the move and post-conflict situations. Secondly, it addressed development-related 

issues, such as poverty, economic insecurity, lack of basic health care and access to 

education. The report underlined that the topics selected were ‘suggestive rather 

than exhaustive’ 72 . The objective was therefore to encourage further exploration of 

human security issues by the international community. 

The CHS report has been criticized for not being able to propose a clear 

definition of the concept of human security – whether it is best interpreted as 

freedom from fear or freedom from want. 73 As it is emphasized at the beginning of 

the CHS report, however, ‘any concept of human security must be dynamic’, because 

‘what people consider to be “vital” – what they consider to be “of the essence of life” 

and “crucially important” – varies across individuals and societies’. 74 Thus, the 

report’s main contribution was that it explicitly addressed the topic of human 

security and made suggestions for concrete action, thereby clearly locating the 

security of people within the current discussions on security. The report has, 

furthermore, set the scene for a continuation of the debate on human security both in 

and outside Japan, encouraging further actions by presenting practical 

recommendations rather than just definitions. This is the reason why it was clearly 

stated in the CHS report that it refrained from ‘proposing an itemized list of what 

makes up human security’. 75 

Conclusion 

The Japanese approach to human security has been more of a policy tool for activities 

in the area of non-traditional security than of a particular conceptualization which 

requires precise definition prior to being implemented. Therefore, criticism of the allencompassing 

and vague nature of the concept of human security has not prevented 

Japan from integrating human security into its diplomacy. Not only has human 

security become ‘one of the key perspectives’ of the country’s foreign policy, but it 

has also been implemented in practice through Japan’s development policies and 


activities in the area of post-conflict peace-building and, more recently, in efforts at 

peace-consolidation. 

Human security, with its focus on threats other than traditional military ones, 

reflects Japan’s ‘comprehensive’ view of security, advocated vis-à-vis its post-war 

approach to national security and applied to the international context after the end of 

the Cold War. As an expression of the changing nature of security, the Japanese 

approach places particular emphasis on human needs and human development, 

implemented through its ODA policy. Human security, furthermore, expresses the 

values of a society dedicated to peace, permeated by domestic anti-militarist norms, 

and strongly opposed to coercive means such as the use of force. Yet, the Japanese 

approach also stresses the need to prevent and resolve conflicts, and to deal with 

their consequences for humans in line with internationally embedded norms of peace 

and co-operation. Finally, human security represents the emergence of a new proactive 

Japanese foreign policy after the Cold War, which prioritizes non-military 

security issues and humanitarian agendas. This ‘new’ security concept therefore 

reflects Japan’s historical background and anti-militarist norms, its evolution from a 

reactive to a pro-active state and its particular preference for peaceful foreign policy. 

In the context of the debate on human security, the case of Japan illustrates that 

despite being described by a number of scholars as a ‘meaningless’ notion, human 

security has become an instrument for foreign policy actions in line with Japan’s 

international behaviour. While the concept of human security remains far too broad 

to be defined in any singular coherent way, it can be partially understood through 

the practical approaches of various actors, including the Japanese state, whose 

interpretation and implementation of human security reflects historical backgrounds, 

social norms and policy preferences. Scholars should not, therefore, be discouraged 

from accepting the concept’s multifaceted nature in order to deepen their 

understanding about its various aspects. While formulations vary, they can be used, 

as has been demonstrated by Japan, as recommendations and policy tools for the 

practical realization of the security of the individual, which, first and foremost, 

represents the entire basis of human security. 

70 


NOTES 

1 

This article was inspired by the works of Edward Newman, ‘Human security and constructivism’, 

International Studies Perspectives (ISP), 2 (2001), pp.239-51; and Roland Paris, ‘Human security: paradigm 

shift or hot air’, International Security (IS), 26, 2 (2001), pp.87-102; and applies some of their theoretical 

findings on human security to the case of Japan. 

2 

See Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold 

War Era, 2nd ed., Lynne Rienner, Boulder (CO), 1991; Neta C. Crawford, ‘Once and future security 

studies’, Security Studies, 1, 2 (1991), pp.283-316; Keith Krauss and Michael C. Williams, ‘Broadening the 

agenda of security studies: politics and methods’, Mershon International Studies Review, 40 (1996), pp.229- 

54; Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver and Jaap de Wilde, Security: a New Framework for Analysis, Lynne Rienner, 

Boulder (CO), 1998. 

3 

Sarah Tarry, ‘ “Deepening” and “Widening”: An Analysis of Security Definitions in the 1990s’, 

Journal of Military and Strategic Studies, online, 2, 1 (Fall 1999), available at: 

http://www.jmss.org/1999/article3.html (20 November 2005). 

4 

For example, Stephen M. Walt, ‘The Renaissance of Security Studies’, International Studies Quarterly, 

35, 2 (1991), pp.211-39. 

5 

Paris, p.97. He uses the term ‘broadening’ instead of ‘widening’. 

6 

For example, Richard H. Ullman, ‘Redefining Security’, International Security, 8, 1 (1983), pp.129-53; 

Jessica Tuchman Mathews, ‘Redefining Security’, Foreign Affairs, 68, 2 (1989), pp.162-77; Ole Wæver, 

‘Securitization and Desecuritization’, in Ronnie D. Lipschutz, ed., On Security, Columbia University 

Press, New York, 1995, pp.46-86. 

7 

This is the case with works on intra-state conflicts, such as those by John Mueller, ‘The Banality of 

“Ethnic War”’, International Security, 25, 1 (2000), pp.42-70; and Benjamin Valentino, ‘Final Solutions: 

The Causes of Mass Killing and Genocide’, Security Studies, 9, 3 (2000), pp.1-59. For more on wideners 

and deepeners, see Paris. 

8 

Paris, p.100. 

9 

United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Human Development Report, online, 1990, available 

at: http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/1990/en (22 November 2005), p.10. 

10 

UNDP, Human Development Report, online, 1993, available at: 

http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/1993/en (22 November 2005), p.2. 

11 

UNDP, 1994 Human Development Report (HDR), Oxford University Press for the UNDP, New York 

and Oxford, 1994, p.22. 

12 

Bert Edström, ‘Japan’s foreign policy and human security’, Japan Forum (JF), 15, 2 (2003), p.210. 

13 

Caroline Thomas, Global Governance, Development and Human Security: The Challenge of Poverty and 

Inequality, Pluto Press, London, 2000, p.5. 

14 

Amitav Acharya and Arabinda Acharya, ‘Human security in Asia Pacific: puzzle, panacea or peril’, 

Canadian Consortium on Asia Pacific Security Bulletin (CCAPSB), No. 27, online, November 2000, available 

at: http://www.iir.ubc.ca/cancaps/cbul27.html#husec (20 November 2005), p. 1. 

15 

Akiko Fukushima, ‘Human security: comparing Japanese and Canadian governmental thinking 

and practice’, Canadian Consortium on Human Security (CCHS), online, August 2004, available at: 

http://www.humansecurity.info/CCHS_web/Research/en/index.php (21 November 2005), p.6. 

16 

Newman, pp.243-6. He describes also a fourth model, ‘new security’, which encompasses 

conceptualizations of human security with the state being the referent object, as well as the individual, 

and focuses on non-state and non-military security challenges. Since the model stresses more the 

security and sovereignty of the state, rather than the security of the individual as such, this article will 

consider it as representing the ‘widening’ strand of non-traditionalists. 

17 

ibid., p.243. 

18 

ibid. 

19 

UNDP, 1994 HDR, p.23. 

20 

ibid., pp.24-5. 

21 

Thomas, p.6. 

22 

ibid. 

23 

For criticisms see, for example, Paris; Barry Buzan, ‘Human Security in International Perspective’, 

paper presented at the 14th Asia-Pacific Roundtable, Kuala Lumpur, 2002; and Gary King and 


Christopher J.L. Murray, ‘Rethinking human security’, Political Science Quarterly, 116, 4 (2001), pp.585- 

610. 

24 

For information on the network, see its official website: 

http://www.humansecuritynetwork.org/menu-e.php (21 November 2005). 

25 

Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Canada, Freedom from Fear: Canada’s 

Foreign Policy for Human Security, online, 2003, available at: 

http://www.humansecurity.gc.ca/freedom_from_fear-en.asp (21 November 2005), p.3. 

26 

ibid., p.2. 

27 

Newman; Paris. 

28 

Paris. 

29 

ibid. 

30 

This argument is partly developed from Newman. 

31 

Thomas U. Berger, ‘From Sword to Chrysanthemum: Japan’s Culture of Anti-Militarism’, 

International Security (IS), 17, 4 (1993), pp.119-50; Thomas U. Berger, ‘Norms, Identity and National 

Security in Germany and Japan’, in Peter J. Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Security: Norms and 

Identity in World Politics, Columbia University Press, New York, 1996, pp.317-56. 

32 

The initial 1951 version of the security treaty gave the US virtually unlimited access to Japan’s 

territory for military purposes but did not specify any obligation on the part of the American ally to 

protect Japan. In order to make it more equal in nature, the treaty was revised in 1960, committing the 

US to Japan’s defense through Article 5, while obliging Japan to provide bases for the US military forces 

in the Far East under Article 6. 

33 

See Peter J. Katzenstein and Nobuo Okawara, Japan’s National Security: Structures, Norms and Policy 

Responses in a Changing World, Cornell University Press, New York, Ithaca, 1993, pp.105-8; and Peter J. 

Katzenstein, Cultural Norms and National Security: Police and Military in Postwar Japan, Cornell University 

Press, New York, 1996, p.3. 

34 

See, The Constitution of Japan, Article 9, online, available at: 

http://www.solon.org/Constitutions/Japan/English/english-Constitution.html (20 November 2005). 

35 

Berger. 

36 

See, Kent E. Calder, ‘Japanese foreign economic policy formation: explaining the reactive state’, 

World Politics, 40, 4 (1988), pp.517-41; Edward J. Lincoln, Japan’s New Global Role, The Brookings 

Institution, Washington D.C., 1993; and Glenn D. Hook, Julie Gilson, Christopher W. Hughes and Hugo 

Dobson, Japan’s International Relations: Politics, Economics and Security, 2nd ed., Routledge, London, 2005. 

37 

See, Hugo Dobson, Japan and United Nations Peacekeeping: New Pressures, New Responses, Routledge, 

London and New York, 2003. 

38 

PKF primary duties refer to such activities as monitoring of disarmament of armed forces, 

stationing and patrolling in buffer zones and traffic check or disposal of abandoned weapons among the 

international peace co-operation works. 

39 

For an analysis of Japan-EC/EU relations, see Julie Gilson, Japan and the European Union: a 

Partnership for the Twenty-First Century, Macmillan, London, 2000. 

40 

This was done through the signing of the 1996 Japan-US Joint Declaration on Security: Alliance for the 

21st Century and the 1997 revision of the original 1978 Guidelines for US-Japan Defense Co-operation. 

41 

The Law Concerning the Special Measures on Humanitarian and Reconstruction Assistance in Iraq. 

42 

Since 9/11, many observers have interpreted Japan’s closer strategic alignment with the US and a 

more active involvement in defense and international security issues as a move towards becoming a 

‘normal’ and assertive military actor. See, for example, Christopher W. Hughes, Japan’s Re-emergence as a 

‘Normal’ Military Power, reprinted, Routledge, London and New York, 2005. For a criticism of this 

argument, see the comparative analysis of the US-Japan military alliance and Japan-Europe non-military 

partnership by Elena Atanassova-Cornelis, ‘Pursuing a Major Power Role: Realism with the US and 

Idealism with Europe in Japan’s Post-Cold War Foreign Policy’, Electronic Journal of Contemporary 

Japanese Studies, online, 6 October 2005, available at: 

http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/articles/2005/Atanassova.html. 

43 

Acharya and Acharya, CCAPSB. 

44 

The Japanese personal names are given according to Japanese convention, with the surname first, 

followed by the given name. 

45 

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Diplomatic Bluebook 2000, online, available at: 

http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/other/bluebook/2000/index.html (20 November 2005). 

72 


46 

Obuchi, Keizō, Opening Remarks by Prime Minister Obuchi 

at An Intellectual Dialogue on Building Asia's Tomorrow, Tokyo, 2 December 1998, online, available at: 

http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/culture/intellectual/asia9812.html (20 November 2005). 

47 

ibid. 

48 

Obuchi, Keizō, Toward the Creation of a Bright Future for Asia, policy speech by Prime Minister Keizō 

Obuchi to the Institute for International Relations, Hanoi, 16 December 1998, online, available at: 

http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/asean/pmv9812/policyspeech.html (22 November 2005). 

49 

Fukushima, p.16. 

50 

Edström, p.214. 

51 

See the official website of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) for issues of the 

Diplomatic Bluebook, online, available at: http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/other/bluebook (21 November 

2005). 

52 

Mori, Yoshirō , Statement by H.E. Mr. Yoshirō Mori Prime Minister of Japan at the Millennium Summit 

of the United Nations, 7 September 2000, online, available at: 

http://www.un.org/millennium/webcast/statements/japan.htm (20 November 2005). 

53 

Koizumi, Junichirō, Remark by Mr. Junichirō Koizumi 

Prime Minister of Japan at the International Symposium on Human Security, Tokyo, 15 December 2001, online, 

available at: http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/human_secu/sympo0112_pm.html (20 November 2005). 

54 

ibid. 

55 

Cited in Fukushima, p.16. 

56 

MOFA, Diplomatic Bluebook 1999, online, available at: 


57 

MOFA, Diplomatic Bluebook 2002, online, available at: 


58 

Takasu, Yukio, Statement by Director-General Yukio Takasu at the International Conference on Human 

Security in a Globalized World, Ulan-Bator, 8 May 2000, online, available at: 

http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/human_secu/speech0005.html (20 November 2005). 

59 

Takasu, Yukio, Statement by Mr. Yukio Takasu, Director-General of multilateral co-operation department, 

at the Third Intellectual Dialogue on Building Asia’s tomorrow, Bangkok, 19 June 2000, online, available at: 

http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/human_secu/speech0006.html (20 November 2005). 

60 


61 

MOFA, The Trust Fund for Human Security – For the “Human-centered” 21 st Century, online, March 

2005, available at: http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/human_secu/t_fund21/t_fund21.pdf (23 November 

2005), p.9. 

62 


63 

The above-mentioned 2005 Trust Fund pamphlet gives the following statistics as of March 2005: 

the largest number of projects, out of total 118 approved by the fund, are in the area of health and 

medical care (30%) and poverty (27%), followed by refugee problems (12%) and conflict (11%). The 

budget allocated to the projects (out of total app. US$ 149 million) shows that those related to conflict 

situations occupy the first place (app. US$ 55 million, or 37%), followed by poverty (app. US$ 32 million, 

or 21%) and health (app. US$ 28 million, or 18%), p.13. 

64 

For details about Japan’s ODA, see the official website of MOFA: 

http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/oda/index.html. 

65 


66 

Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), Revision of Japan’s Official Development Assistance 

Charter, online, August 2003, available at: http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/oda/reform/revision0308.pdf 

(20 November 2005), p.3. 

67 

ibid. 

68 

Commission on Human Security (CHS), Human Security Now, online, 1 May 2003, available at: 

http://www.humansecurity-chs.org/finalreport/index.html (21 November 2005), p.4. Emphasis added. 

69 

ibid. 

70 

ibid. 

71 

ibid., p.10. 

72 

ibid., p.12. 

73 


74 

CHS, Human Security, p.4. Emphasis added. 


75 

ibid. 

74 



3:2 (2005), 75-85 

Habitat 

Brydee ROOD 


8. Habit.at 80 

9. Penguin Dishes 80 

10. Soap Penguins 81 

11. Lime Lights 82 

12. Kaki-vanilla-milk, Kaki-apricot-milk, Kaki-Kowhai-milk 82 

13. 24/7 Takapu 83 

14. Tui Kowhai Wheelie 84 

15. Dark Rainbow 85 

AN INTERVIEW WITH BRYDEE ROOD 

BRYDEE ROOD is a contemporary artist who is in the first year of her Masters degree 

at University of Auckland’s Elam School of Fine Arts. Brydee has had exhibitions in 

both Japan and Mexico where she spent time as a teacher and artist after completing 

her Bachelors, also from Elam School of Fine Arts. As well as being a finalist in 

several recent art awards in New Zealand, Brydee’s sculptures have recently been 

selected from entrants around the Commonwealth to participate in the Next Wave 

Festival held in Melbourne in 2006. Next Wave is an Art Festival running as part of 

the 2006 Commonwealth Games Cultural program. Within her current practice, 

Brydee explores her local environment, injecting enchantment into objects that we 

see everyday. Her experience of living in different countries has resulted in an 

eclectic range of influences on her work, which are particularly relevant to the 

concerns of GJAPS, being specific to the Asia Pacific region. Her works often 

investigate environmental issues, touching on the consumptive nature of humankind. 

I interviewed Brydee earlier in November to get her thoughts. 

Winsome: The photographs we are featuring in this issue of GJAPS are of works you have 

made this year – some of which you presented in an installation at Elam as part of your final 

assessment. The title of the brochure for your Elam work was ‘Habitat’. What does ‘habitat’ 

mean to you and how is it related to your work 

Brydee: In terms of just the idea of the word, habit and habitat and the location of 

behaviour, represent trying to match the things that we do (our everyday habits and 

behaviours) with a location and space. 

W: When you are talking about space, are you referring to the local environment 

Rood with Wild/Habitat 75

B: I am talking about two things: I am talking about the space which I am creating, 

but I am also talking about the space that I am looking at in order to create. The 

space that I get my ideas from is usually local. This can be in an international context 

but my work is also about this place and our relationship to the places we inhabit. 

W: There seems to be a mix of cultural influences in your work, particularly a Japanese 

influence in terms of using origami paper and referencing karaoke for example. You were 

saying you have traveled to Japan and Mexico recently – have these different environments 

influenced your work 

B: I spent two years in Japan exhibiting my artwork and teaching English, and both 

things informed the work that I made. The experience of teaching ‘American’ English 

everyday to Japanese children with sing-along books of puppet characters actually 

informed the kind of works that I was making out of my tiny shoebox apartment 

when I was living in Japan, as much as coming home to New Zealand influenced the 

things that I am doing here. I guess as I go, I collect. My ideas accumulate and 

connect. One of the key things for me is that my work constantly informs new work. 

So I am always reproducing a number of things or a number of projects, at the 

same time working across different ideas. As they ideas go spiralling off to 

inform new works they too set off further different ideas and pathways. 

W: What about the Japanese influence on your works You were saying you were interested 

in the idea of the ‘cutesy’ 

B: Very much so. Before I even went to Japan my work was pretty ‘cutified’ in the 

material sense. And then when I went to Japan...I mean, that’s one of the reasons I 

wanted to go to Japan, was to experience Japanese culture. There is an interesting 

mix between the American influence and the traditional Japanese which I find very 

informative. You can relate a lot of what is happening in New Zealand to an 

American influence as well and I think that goes back to the 50s in terms of how 

cities have developed and how roads and malls have developed – all that sort of 

commercial stuff. It is completely over-exploded in Japan. You see teens wearing 

Stars and Stripes T-shirts and super-crazy hair and all sorts of bizarre dress codes, 

and you ask them (during English class) what they did for the weekend and they 

have been to visit their obaa-chan (grandmother) to go a Shinto shrine. That’s totally 

mixed, the appearance of things, their aesthetic and what’s beneath seem to be at 

odds and yet it creates something new that balances between. In a reflexive way my 

work is informed by the process of mixing. My practice touches on that. The 

Japanese have a way of making anything look cute, bankcards, ATMs 

everything….and I definitely am curious about ‘cutisms’. We see so much visually – 

we are constantly visually stimulated by commercials and billboards and advertising. 

So many things are pushing for our attention all the time and a lot of it is either 

‘humourised’ or ‘cutified’ in some way to make it appealing to the senses, whether it 

be to your eyes or nose or to anything that plays on that. My work is a parody of 

that: it’s a similar deal. You are getting slightly touchy or environmental issues but 

you are seeing them in a really cute, positive, happy way – like the Kaki birds on the 

milk cartons. I think there are only about twenty nesting pairs or something of the 

76 


irds – black stilts, in New Zealand down in Otago. There might be sixty pairs, I 

don’t know, but there’s not many and to me they were like the lost birds, an 

equivalent to people advertising lost children on milk cartons – probably more 

common in the States. So the birds on the cartons were sort of a play on that, on top 

of the fact I also felt like milk is such an everyday commodity. Most people consume 

it in some form or another and have an experience of a milk carton on a daily basis, 

so it’s about bringing those birds back into something that’s prolific, and is 

everywhere. Maybe I would quite like those birds to be prolific and to be 

everywhere. 

W: And they’re made out of that beautiful paper. 

B: Yeah that’s something more special. That’s when you touch on the fragility or the 

specialty of things. It is a milk carton and yet it has this endangered bird, but the 

bird is made with a cut out of quite beautiful stenciled designs Japanese origami 

paper. So then the viewer is drawn to the fact it’s quite precious in that way. It also 

links to ideas of location and world environments all of us being connected and 

responsible in a way for global habitat. Just little pointers I am trying to hint at. 

W: Do you think the work in Japan you were making was quite different than the work you 

were making here 

B: Yes. It has definitely changed. Looking back on the works I made in Japan, they 

are different again to those I made in Mexico. This was mostly influenced by my 

surroundings. For example, in Japan I was working on a tiny scale, whereas in 

Mexico, I had a huge open balcony studio to work with and my work expanded, 

became much larger and vaster and Mexico too is variable and vast. But everything 

was so different in both countries. In Japan pet like animals were treated as 

commodities, but in Mexico they were mostly considered pests (of course there were 

exceptions). So the different ways humans connect with animals and the 

environment tends to inform my practice. In Mexico there were flags strung across 

the streets looking festive and celebratory, even in the most poverty stricken areas, 

and I am often interested in this contrast between celebration and optimism next to 

things that are not so celebratory, it’s those things at odds again. I like pairing up 

and juxtaposing those things. They occur side by side quite naturally, without me 

trying to force some kind of didactic reading onto them. 

W: Yes, I noticed that about your works exhibited at Elam – that they had an environmental 

kind of meaning, often problems that are occurring in our world, such as global warming that 

have negative connotations for many of us, but they were quite pretty – you had made them 

quite pretty. And some of the names of your works, such as Peach Possum Parlor or Baked 

Alaska stripped some of that negativity from them. 

B: I am really interested in that area in-between, like structure and surface, detail and 

fragility and strong visual icons. I am interested in mixing them up, because I see 

them that way. I don’t just see one thing when I am looking: I see these things as 

being mixed up. I am not interested in presenting them just in isolation as a negative 


thing. There are so many sides to everything, and just to locate some ideas together, 

which aren’t really all that different. They seem to connect and to stem from the 

same thing. 

W: It sounds as if you are not trying to preach a moral message. 

B: I think people don’t necessarily need to hear the strong didactic moralistic 

approach, by presenting things just in association that’s enough for me. I like to play 

with those ideas rather than to preach them. For example, the penguins on the 

plastic containers filled with different coloured soaps and shampoos came out of the 

Baked Alaska work, when I got interested in penguins, I was reading a book on the 

history of Antarctica. It talked about Macquarie Island which was colonised in the 

late 1800’s and early 1900’s by Tasmanian penguin farmers. The ‘farmers’ used to 

herd the penguins up the beach and club them before breakfast. To me this was like 

some kind of horror film. They were then boiled down and digested and processed 

to extract the fat of the birds. This was shipped back to New Zealand and around the 

Commonwealth, and made into soap substances. Instead of having it that way 

round (obviously that’s quite a ghastly story) I wanted to present a kind of flip 

experiment where I turn things back to front and have these penguins germinating 

out of soap. So those little works glow with life – they look like they are incubating 

due to the perspiration of the multi-coloured liquid soaps and shampoos of the 

plastic containers. 

W: Certainly in the installation, a lot of the effects were created by the use of lights in the 

darkened room. 

B: I had a lot of different works so I wanted to somehow create a mini-habitat of 

other little habitats somehow linking them together through different uses of light 

and create a mini-worldly wonderland of these different habitats and projects. I tried 

to make the work function as a larger installation but also to present pockets, which 

are reminiscent of ecosystems or things that exist in little clusters or formulations; 

growing, breeding and glowing in their own ways side by side. 

W: It did make the whole thing very magical. 

B: Yes, I am definitely interested in re-enchantment of society, of our everyday 

processes and our habits. Somehow finding those enchanting things that give life an 

extra sparkle, or that little bit more curiosity. 

W: Yes, because you do work with a lot of everyday objects. Are most of them found objects 

B: Most things are found or hunted out in one way or another. Either they are 

collected, recycled, re-used or recyclable. That’s usually the way I go about things is 

trying to collect stuff that I need and that I can re-use in another project. But I don’t 

want to present it in a ‘junk’ way, in an old rusty looking way. Instead I want to give 

it new life and make it more alive, re-detailing or re-decorating it. A lot of artists 

obviously reuse stuff and treat found objects very differently. For me it’s quite 

78 


important that the work comes across completely fresh, even though the viewer is 

aware that it has come from these objects. 

W: Well, things like the milk cartons have the pearl pins in them, are painted and have the 

bird designs on them. There were quite a few bird works in the installation, are they 

something of particular interest to you 

B: Yes, I get inspired by the New Zealand natural environment. From traveling, even 

everyday to University and back, just from Takapuna, I go through a huge 

construction site of the ‘Great Northern Busway Project’, which I think is probably 

the most ironic thing. So much money goes into a project like that, when it’s not 

even going to be finished until 2007 and yet that money could have gone into more 

buses on the road or something or more regular timetables. I just see the birds by the 

roadsides, Herons Pukeko birds huddling on the side of the motorway right next to 

diggers trying to dig up more ground. That’s enough for me to want to make some 

work about that. I find it really ironic that the Auckland Bus Information Company – 

MAXX has chosen a pukeko to represent them, as a mascot. But then the only thing 

the public complained about was the fact that the mascot (cartoon) made a sexist 

comment. And I thought they really missed the point there. The fact that they have 

chosen to use the bird and they are out there pushing it out of its habitat is more 

interesting to me than if their mascot makes a chauvinistic remark. I thought, how 

could we (the public) miss that It’s so obvious to me. 

W: Although we don’t have an image of it, one of the other things I wanted to talk to you 

about was the slideshow presentation of people singing karaoke that you had on the computer, 

with the sounds of bird song instead of the voices of people singing. 

B: I guess that was one of my final jokes. I mean New Zealand Idol is a bit of a laugh in 

itself I think. I wanted to create my own, Riro Riro Songsters I called them. I 

photographed willing participants singing karaoke slightly drunk, just to look at the 

humour in the different facial expressions of Kiwi’s getting drunk and having a sing, 

then mixing it with the sound of native New Zealand bird song. So instead of the 

terrible sound we on the microphone are probably making, there was a whole 

mixture of birdsong – like seagulls squawking, and then some beautiful, dawn 

chorus noises with Tuis and Kokakos and so on; trying to achieve a bit of humour, 

and trying to achieve a balance between serious topics and having fun with work 

and ideas. The karaoke definitely goes back to Japan, but New Zealand is such a 

multi-cultural society now. Quite deliberately I often search for materials here in the 

Two Dollar shop because I know it’s all been made in China, Korea or somewhere in 

the middle of Asia. Clearly those things are quite political in themselves – where 

they’ve been made and how they’ve been made and who has made them, so I 

understand the background of things like that. The point is that we are a multicultural 

society and citizens of the world; all of this stuff is our visual stimulus now 

and part of our consumptive environment of what we are experiencing. 

Winsome WILD 



© Brydee ROOD Habit.at 

© Brydee ROOD Penguin Dishes 

80 


© Brydee ROOD Soap Penguins 


© Brydee ROOD Lime Lights 

© Brydee ROOD Kaki-vanilla-milk, Kaki-apricot-milk, Kaki-Kowhai-milk 

from the Kowhai Suite, exhibited at Starkwhite Gallery 

510 Karangahape Road, Auckland, New Zealand 

82 


© Brydee ROOD 24/7 Takapu 


© Brydee ROOD Tui Kowhai Wheelie 

from the Kowhai Suite, exhibited at Starkwhite Gallery 

510 Karangahape Road, Auckland, New Zealand 

84 


© Brydee ROOD Dark Rainbow 



3:2 (2005), 86-89 

REVIEW 

Sharon A. Carstens, Histories, Cultures, Identities: studies in Malaysian 

Chinese worlds, Singapore University Press, Singapore, 2005, 314 pp. 

ISBN 9971-69-312-7. 

IN THE WAKE of recent studies on overseas Chinese communities, questions to do 

with what it means to be Chinese in a context outside of China, and what exactly 

constitutes ‘Chineseness’ in these circumstances, continues to be an ongoing debate, 

spearheaded by the likes of Ien Ang, Wang Gungwu and Rey Chow. 1 Sharon A. 

Carstens’ input to this discussion, in the form of Histories, Cultures, Identities: Studies 

in Malaysian Chinese Worlds, suggests that Malaysian Chineseness is experienced in 

multiple and dynamic ways. A Singapore University Press publication, Histories is an 

important contribution to the growing number of works on overseas Chinese, 

primarily for its methodology which presents Malaysian Chinese as a heterogenous 

group that is continuously changing over time. 

Histories is made up of a collection of nine essays which examine Chinese 

communities in Malaysia using ethnographic and historical research. Carstens’ main 

focus of study is on the Hakka dialect-speaking group, and subsequent chapters 

examine issues such as the retention of Hakka identification amidst intermarriages 

with other communities, how this compares with the degree of assimilation other 

dialect groups have achieved, and the gendered roles and rituals adopted by the 

rural Hakka community in Pulai during religious worship. Histories also explores 

topics at a national and transnational level, such as the varying ways in which 

Malaysian Chinese audiences negotiate with and consume television serials 

produced in Hong Kong and Taiwan, why the call to officially recognize the Chinese 

lion dance as part of Malaysian national culture in the 1970s reached such high levels 

of public debate, and the controversy surrounding the rewriting of school textbooks 

in which the recognition of the official founder of Malaysia’s capital was transferred 

from a Chinese leader to a Malay. Although the subjects explored in Histories are 

wide-ranging, and each chapter can be read discretely, the book hangs well together 

as a single piece of work. Themes and lines of argument employed in previous 

chapters are continually revisited in subsequent ones without laborious repetition of 

contextual information. 

Histories opens with the examination of the life story of Yap Ah Loy, the Hakka 

leader who, until 1980, was recognized as the official founder of Kuala Lumpur, the 

capital of Malaysia. 2 On first reading, I felt that to launch Histories with the case study 

of an individual, while chronologically appropriate, was a bold choice. Even though 

Yap’s life and influence is undeniably important and the chapter carefully illustrates 

how Yap’s situation exemplifies the competing tensions many Chinese face in 

Malaysia as an ethnic minority, I wondered if the specificity of the subject contained 

a broad enough appeal to hook readers to persevere with the rest of the book. For me, 

it was not until the second chapter, which examines the ways in which biographies of 

86 


Yap Ah Loy change over time, that Histories became fully engaging. In 

demonstrating how each biography emphasises different aspects of Yap’s life to 

reflect the concerns of the period in which it was produced, the second chapter raises 

pertinent questions about one’s role as a reader. It provides a nice shift from the 

study of the individual subject to an investigation of how that subject is read over 

time and invested with different meanings accordingly. Subsequent chapters of 

Histories take on broader subjects of study, so that the general organizing principle of 

the book is triangular, beginning with the individual and ending with the 

transnational. Two key questions are continually raised and addressed in each 

chapter: How has being Chinese shaped the responses of this community to political, 

economic and social developments in the country And how have their experiences 

in Malaysia affected the way in which immigrants from China and their descendants 

identify themselves as Chinese 

Carstens’ unswerving answer to these questions time and time again can be 

summed up neatly: in different and multiple ways. On the surface, this may appear 

to be a safe, predictable and politically correct answer, yet the way in which Histories 

sets out to argue and substantiate this conclusion is hardly glib. By acknowledging 

that Malaysian Chinese identities and modes of identification may manifest in 

various forms and to varying degrees, Carstens’ pluralistic approach is refreshing in 

this field. Some other studies such as Rita Chi-Ying Chung and Frank H. Walkey’s 

“From Undesirable Immigrant to Model Minority: The Success Story of Chinese in 

New Zealand” 3 and Iris Chang’s The Chinese in America: A Narrative History 4 that have 

examined Chinese communities outside of China tend to be anxious to present a 

clear-cut, consumable image of the Chinese community, and more often than not, 

employ the basic template of explaining how the Chinese survived in the face of 

challenging conditions and thrived against all odds. Habitually invoking notions of 

‘inherent Confucianist traits’, 5 these studies thus focus on characterizing the 

differences between Chinese and other ethnic communities, which inadvertently 

homogenizes the very community that they have sought to investigate and provide 

an insight to. Comparatively, Histories, through its various case studies of individuals, 

communities and dialect groups, takes for granted the different positionings and 

voices within the Malaysian Chinese community and, in doing so, the heterogeneity 

and dynamism of what it means to be Malaysian Chinese is demonstrated rather 

than simply articulated as a token expression. By avoiding the compulsion to present 

a totalizing, uniform image of Chineseness, Histories validates Malaysian Chinese to 

be as disparate and varied a people as any other in the world. 

However, though Histories’ paramount message argues for the recognition of 

multiple forms of Chineseness, it stops short of the stance adopted by critics like Ien 

Ang who question the usefulness and tenability of the category ‘Chinese.’ While Ang 

considers the possibility of doing away with ‘Chinese’ as a term altogether, 6 Carstens 

appears content with utilizing the category, but loosening its parameters to be 

malleable to variant forms. However, there were moments in the book when 

Carstens appeared to encounter what she felt to be the limits of legitimate 

Chineseness. She describes how English-educated Chinese may ‘attempt to return to 

their roots’ through the engagement with Chinese opera and literature via English 

translations, but cautions that ‘the cultural legitimacy of such translations can be 

called into question.’ 7 Consequently, although Histories generally affirms various 

Ooi/Review of Histories, Cultures, Identities 87

forms of Malaysian Chineseness, there are implicit confines to the extent of the 

hybridity such forms can mutate towards; confines that are not explicitly spelled out 

and are applied without a self-reflexive consideration of what this may indicate 

about Carstens’ own assumptions regarding legitimate forms of Chineseness. Having 

said that, Histories’ pluralistic approach is nevertheless distinguishable from the 

majority of studies on overseas Chinese communities. It is therefore not surprising 

that the title of the book Histories, Cultures, Identities: Studies in Malaysian Chinese 

Worlds consciously employs plural nouns, compared with other works like Lynn 

Pan’s Sons of the Yellow Emperor: the story of the overseas Chinese 8 and James Ng’s 

Windows on a Chinese Past, which suggest a solitary, uniform framework in which 

every overseas Chinese fits. 

A particular strength of Histories is the consistent way in which the subjects of 

Carstens’ ethnographic research are linked to their respective political and 

socioeconomic positionings. For once, the actions, attitudes and mindsets of Chinese 

are not simplistically explained in terms of ‘traditional Chinese culture’, but are 

traced back to the likely motivations derived from factors such as class, gender and 

age. What this achieves is the affording of agency to Carstens’ subjects; their 

responses to issues and experiences arise out of their negotiations with the particular 

conditions they exist within. Consequently, Carstens’ subjects escape being fossilized 

as timeless specimens of intrinsically ‘Chinese’ behaviour. Chapters such as how the 

religious rituals of the Hakka community in Pulai have changed over time and how 

different strata of Malaysian Chinese audiences respond to television serials 

produced in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Malaysia demonstrate this particularly well. 

Histories often records observations at an anecdotal level and in doing so, the 

individual voices of Carstens’ subjects can be heard without Carstens attempting to 

qualify or subsume these views under an overarching explanation. 

Overall, Histories is a highly readable piece of work that offers compelling 

arguments and findings on Malaysian Chinese subjects and experiences. Its 

avoidance of specialist terms and engaging style of writing makes it accessible to 

readers who are unfamiliar with the subject of Malaysian Chinese, Malaysian history 

or Chinese diaspora. Well paced, effectively organized and convincingly argued, 

Histories, Cultures, Identities: Studies in Malaysian Chinese Worlds is worthy of serious 

attention, if not for the subject matter itself, then for its refreshing approach in 

recognizing the myriad forms and dynamic positionings Malaysian Chineseness can 

take. 

Kathy OOI 


Histories, Cultures, Identities is available in Australia and New Zealand through 

UNIREPS, the distribution arm of University of New South Wales Press. 

orders.press@unsw.edu.au 

www.unireps.com.au 

1 

See Ien Ang, On Not Speaking Chinese: living between Asia and the West, Routledge, London, New 

York, 2001; Wang Gungwu, China and the Chinese Overseas, Times Academic Press, Singapore, 1991; and 

88 


Rey Chow, Women and Chinese Modernity: the politics of reading between West and East, University of 

Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1991and Writing Diaspora: tactics of intervention in contemporary cultural 

studies, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1993. 

2 

Chapter 2, ‘Yap Ah Loy: From Myth to History’ covers the background which led to the change in 

recognition from Yap Ah Loy to Raja Abdu’llah as the official founder of Kuala Lumpur. 

3 

Rita Chi-Ying Chung & Frank H. Walkey, ‘From Undesirable Immigrant to Model Minority: The 

Success Story of Chinese in New Zealand’, Immigrants and Minorities (IM), 7, 3 (1988), pp.308-13. 

4 

; Iris Chang, The Chinese in America: A Narrative History, Viking, New York, 2003. 

5 

Again, see Chung & Walkey, Chang and James Ng, Windows On A Chinese Past, Otago Heritage 

Books, Dunedin, 1993 for examples. 

6 

Ang, p.50. 

7 

Sharon A. Carstens, Histories, Cultures, Identities: Studies in Malaysian Chinese Worlds, Singapore 

University Press, Singapore, 2005, p.229. 

8 

Lyn Pann, Sons of the Yellow Emperor: the story of the overseas Chinese, London, Mandarin, 1991. 

Ooi/Review of Histories, Cultures, Identities 89


3:2 (2005), 90-92 

REVIEW 

Christoph Giebel, Imagined Ancestries of Vietnamese Communism: Ton 

Duc Thang and the Politics of History and Memory, Singapore and 

Seattly, Singapore University Press, with University of Washington 

Press, 256pp. ISBN 0-295-98429-5. 

IN CONVENTIONAL VIETNAMESE historiography, the “telling” of Ton Duc Thang’s 

life is defined by three significant achievements: (1). Ton’s (alleged) role in the 1919 

Black Sea Mutiny of the French navy that helped end the Allied anti-Bolshevik 

intervention in the Russian civil war following the October Revolution of 1917; (2). 

His organization of a “secret labor union” in Saigon in the early 1920s, widely 

considered Vietnam’s first labor union; and (3). This union’s leadership of a strike at 

the Saigon naval shipyard in 1925, frequently viewed as the first political strike in 

Vietnam (p.xix). In this book, historian Christoph Giebel examines these key 

moments, as well as the discursive practices in which they became telling episodes in 

Ton’s biography and essential aspects to the creation of the Vietnamese Communist 

party’s identity or self-image. In achieving this task, Giebel organizes the book in 

three sections, each of which focuses on one of these main events and the way they 

have been recounted by traditional historians and Ton Duc Thang himself. This 

approach lends itself well to Giebel’s central aim to provide not only a study of a 

“Communist celebrity,” but also a historical analysis and historiography of the 

narratives and discursive practices of the Vietnamese Revolution and the associated 

historical vision still pursued today (p.xviii). 

In Part 1: “Constructions,” Giebel examines Ton Duc Thang’s most renowned 

biographical episode – his role in the 1919 Black Sea Mutiny, and how this story was 

used by the communist party as well as other counter-interests over time. Around 

the period of the 1945 August Revolution, what Giebel terms the “late colonial 

moment,” the incident became an essential part of Ton’s self-image as a 

revolutionary. Yet later, as chapters 2 and 3 illustrate, the story of Ton’s role in the 

Black Sea during the revolutionary years (1945-75) and the post-independence period 

(1975-) was appropriated by the newly formed Democratic Republic of Vietnam’s 

communist government, and came to symbolize the revolutionary character of the 

state. Giebel shows that although the story of Ton’s role in the Black Sea Mutiny has 

become part of his credentials as a radical and organizer, careful examination of the 

ships’ rosters and naval records reveal he was not on any of the ships on which the 

most decisive revolts broke out (p.13), and also did not participate in any of the core 

revolts on the Black Sea in 1919 (p.14). In light of this evidence, Giebel shows that 

Ton’s actual involvement in the Mutiny is largely fictional. Interestingly, whilst other 

evidence suggests Ton was involved in the mass protests in Toulon, France in the 

aftermath of the Black Sea incidents (p.25), this participation has been transmuted in 

official histories into participation in the actual Black Sea Mutiny. 

90 


In the 1920s, Ton began to establish his credentials with youth and workers 

by becoming a radical anti-colonialist organizer in France and Saigon (p.29-30). 

However, in the 1930s, Ton was imprisoned by French authorities in Saigon. In both 

of these periods, Ton’s story of participation in the Black Sea Mutiny ( and in 

particular, the iconic image of Ton raising the Red Flag) became part of a larger 

strategy to emphasize his credentials (p.31). His story evolved significantly from a 

personal recounting to one used by the Vietnamese Communist party. As Giebel 

shows,, this is the first instance of Vietnamese Communism imagining its ancestry 

through the life of Ton Duc Thang. In chapter 3, the final part of this first section on 

constructions, the author closely examines Ton’s personal recollections of the Black 

Sea events, published in a 1957 article in which he reluctantly described his role in 

the mutiny. This includes the recounting of the episode in which Ton raised the Red 

Flag and, in so doing, createda “truly national symbol” (p.191). As Giebel argues, this 

event established a link between Vietnamese communism and the Russian October 

Revolution that earmarked proletarian internationalism as a staple of Vietnamese 

communism (p. 191). 

Part 2, “Contestations” considers how the 1925 strike at the Ba Son naval 

shipyard in Saigon, another key event in Ton’s life, was claimed by the party and 

later challenged by factions within the Revolution. Chapter 4 particularly examines 

the site at Ba Son, a shipyard used during the late 1950s after the division of Vietnam 

at the 1954 Geneva accords, when the southern regime in Saigon was set up and the 

southern revolutionaries were forced into exile (p.xix). As Giebel illustrates,, Ton 

found in the story of Ba Son “a new venue for his preferred intimate association with 

the masses” and the strike itself provided exiled and disempowered southern 

revolutionaries with their credentials and origins in the south (p.192). Chapter 5 

examines the historiographical debates on the “secret labor union” that took place in 

the 1970s and 1980s and post-unification period (1975), a period when the 

Vietnamese revolution extended its control over the south and asserted a southern 

revolutionary identity. 

Finally, Part 3, “Commemorations” explores two distinctly different 

approaches to the commemoration of Ton Duc Thang. Immediately after Ton’s death 

in 1980, the party commissioned a biography of his life in order to establish an 

official, national image of Ton and his revolutionary heroism. In contrast to this 

official biography, southern commemorative efforts at Ton’s museum and shrine 

became “vehicles for a nostalgic critique of the country’s political course” in the late 

1980s - the “post-socialist moment” with the changing social(), economic and 

political environment in Vietnam (p.xx). Ultimately, the symbolic meaning of Ton 

Duc Thang’s life has been lost over time, just as Ton himself seems to have been 

largely forgotten in contemporary Vietnam (p.xx). 

In addition to archival research in Vietnam and France, Giebel’s study draws 

upon firsthand interviews with persons directly related to Ton Duc Thang (including 

his son-in-law, daughter and friends) as well as evidence from archivists and 

historians in Vietnam and France. The book is carefully researched and meticulously 

crafted and thus provides a narrative of readable and engaging prose. Along with 

other recent works, such as Pelley’s Postcolonial Vietnam (2002) and Zinoman’s The 

Colonial Bastille (2004), Giebel’s Imagined Ancestries fills a gap in existing literature on 

postcolonial Vietnam. Ultimately, the book’s appeal lies in its imaginative 

Barnhill Bodemer /Review of Imagined Ancestries 91

examination of two previously unrecognized issues in the history of the Vietnamese 

Revolution: regionalism has been an influential factor in modern Vietnamese 

historiography and hegemonic narratives can be reshaped to suit current needs. 

Margaret BARNHILL BODEMER 

University of Hawaii 

Imagined Ancestries of Vietnamese Communism is available in Australia and New 

Zealand through UNIREPS, the distribution arm of University of New South 

Wales Press. 

orders.press@unsw.edu.au 

www.unireps.com.au 

92 



3:2 (2005), 93-96 

REVIEW 

Haruki Murakami, translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel, Kafka 

on the Shore, Alfred A. Knopf, distributed by Random House, New York, 

2005, 436pp. ISBN 1-4000-4366-2. 

IN THE UNUSUAL or extraordinary, if it is to be at all human, there must also be the 

mundane. Even in the most extraordinary times, I will still find time to do the 

everyday – not because I’m a pervasively plain person, but just because we are all 

live in repetition. Today I drink a cup of coffee, I look at the front page of the New 

Zealand Herald (also checking the daily misnomers and mistakes column), and 

tomorrow, in all likelihood, I will do the same, and, if I don’t, there are always other 

daily duties to perform. It is the bones of our life and it is the bones of Japanese 

writer Haruki Murakami’s narrative cannon. 

With Murakami waiting down the page, however, let me chose a more 

particular activity; something empty, casual and common. My recurrently mundane 

activity is drinking a beer at my kitchen table, or not even my kitchen table, a kitchen 

table. You do not have to have consumed a beer at a kitchen table to follow me and, 

if you have ever read a book by Haruki Murakami you will recognize this moment; it 

is highly likely you’re an expert at it. Drinking this beer can be done alone or with 

company. Your thoughts clarify, cold, transparent and sharp; just like your beverage. 

Nothing I do, as I drink my beer, will change the quality of what I am doing, 

because always in some way, sip to sip, I am repeating myself. I could be drinking 

any beer in any country, any time, in any way. But, if I drink it at a kitchen table, I 

can be confident that I will know what I am doing. I will have done it before, I will 

think to myself, and I may do it again. 

This is the calm of repetition and those who are familiar with Murakami will 

also know that this is his moment: being simultaneously in the presence of difference 

and familiarity. Every beer I have consumed, or will consume, is individual and, 

bound within that, different from other beers at this and other kitchen tables. If the 

situation is the same, the day is different, or the brand, or the molecular composition; 

and, with that we have encountered the Derridian iteration within the six-pack. My 

beer is not entirely strange and yet it is of the moment: me and this beer have not 

been together before. Yet, it cannot escape being the same, not just because it is a 

mass-produced product consumed in a mass-produced circumstance (for who does 

not have a kitchen table) but because it is; it is, was and can be again, so it is 

constructed towards nostalgia while also standing solid in the present. My beer 

cannot escape repetition. I rely on that much. 

Can literature be spoken of in the same way It seems immediately precarious 

because while one makes choices about reading based on prior experience – so 

searching out a reiteration or rephrasing – I do not want to hear the “same thing” 

over and over. This is, in fact, a primary protocol of casual or critical reading. 

Repetition, intended as synonymical with predictability, is enjoyable in chick lit (a 

Neale/Review of Kafka on the Shore 93

colloquialism paired with an abbreviation), but it is not a quality of literature (almost 

deserving of a capital). 

Or maybe I am conflating a quirk of communal language. I like an author not 

because he or she says the same thing over and over, but because they express a wide 

variety of situations in a common way, with a common humour or language. They 

draw me to new ideas and topics, and each time they do it they make the hook 

interesting, and thus, I go back. I say again: any beer, any table. There is always a 

thread of iteration. Perhaps here Murakami will coincide with both his critics and my 

beer: clear, cold, a sharp and delightful repetition. 

In a story recently published in the New Yorker called ‘The Kidney-Shaped 

Stone That Moves Every Day’ (26/09/05) Murakami writes about an author, Junpei, 

who counts down the important woman in his life – one to three – because of a small 

piece of fatherly advice (see ‘prophecy’ as trope, below). Certain that number one is 

behind him, he becomes circumspect: 

‘Whenever Junpei met a new woman, he would ask himself, ‘Is this a woman 

who has real meaning for me’ And the question would create a dilemma. For even 

as he continued to hope (as who does not) that he would meet someone who had 

real meaning for him, he was afraid of playing his few remaining cards too early.’ 

At a friend’s party Junpei, who by this time is down to his last chance, meets a 

woman named Kirie. Junpei is wearing ‘a Perry Ellis shirt of deep-blue silk’, she 

drinks ‘a purple cocktail’, and his ‘first thought on seeing her was: Here is a woman 

with excellent posture.’ They start a relationship but Kirie remains mysterious, 

forestalling Junpei from knowing too much about her and so, Junpei believes, 

ensuring that she does not acquire ‘real meaning’. 

Within this story, Junpei is writing a story; the story about the kidney-shaped 

stone. It is a story he cannot finish. When the ending does come to him it is an ending 

not in keeping with his previous work; it is, in fact, however, definitively Murakami. 

It is the same ending the umbrella story has. It is as though Junpei’s story was 

compelled; it could not turn away, could not create a diversion, could not wander 

down a pointless path. It had to be a reiteration, and like the beer, it had to be linked 

in some structural manner, to Murakami’s work. 

They are not the same story in any sense, but they are similar; both to each 

other and to Murakami’s fiction; part of a spectrum bound by certain commonalities 

of language, content and/or narrative assumptions. Reading this story, one always 

has a sense of where one is going; away from, and thus towards, Murakami. 

At that point I approach Kafka on the Shore, Murakmai’s most recent nostalgic 

construction. 

The cool reception of this latest novel coincides with Murakami’s literary 

reputation generally, as well as the aforementioned uncertainty iteration in art 

provokes. Initially Murakami – owner of a Jazz bar, a man who preferred J.D 

Salinger’s Glass family to Mishima’s Honda (Japanese authors leave him ‘cold’) – 

was designated as trivial to the literary canon. His prose style was open, simple, 

politically and ethically neutral. His novels, popular as they were, were just batakusai 1 , 

a symptom of banal and buttery imported culture. In this way his novels, debated as 

they were, were conceptualised as a historical fancy, the debate over his value 

maintaining its importance as an indicator of the frictions between Japan’s success 

94 


and its imagination; between economic exchange and cultural isolation; between 

dairy dollars and a pure palate. 

Now that criticism has found him a home – perhaps the Asian man following 

Fitzgerald – a shadow of the batakusai categorisation remains, though through 

perseverance and a recent concern with Japan, his reputation has become more 

certain. Even in the West Murakami’s work has become a ‘taste’, artistically good but 

only ‘if you like that type of thing’. Which is perhaps why Kafka on the Shore, though 

divergent from previous novels, wears the ambivalent diagnosis of being ‘businessas-usual.’ 

It seems entirely in keeping that the main character would be called Kafka 

Tamura, unblinkingly, because this type of thing has been done before. The way 

Rossini’s “The Thieving Magpie” was employed in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle as a 

whistle half-remembered; in Murakami’s oeuvre a silent pucker of the lips in a 

secluded hallway, at the beginning of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, 

is understandably translated as the word ‘Proust’. These references are the phantoms 

of meaning, the reminders of Japan as-it-is rather than Japan as-it-is-broadcast. 

These ‘buttery’ goods have been progressively phased out by Murakami, 

however in Kafka on the Shore he becomes bolder with the usage of Western icons, 

enlisting the help of Johnny Walker, Colonel Sanders, Aristophanes and Beethoven 

(to name but a few). These figures are not just walk-on references, spied on a passing 

t-shirt or floating into a casual conversation, but, in the case of velvet-jacketed 

Walker and rotund Sanders, are given roles as important characters. 

There is an interesting doubling here, a laying of frames and content featured 

throughout the book. Johnny Walker is Johnny Walker – Western whisky icon, the 

dapper man on his way to somewhere more refreshing – but he is also a man who 

eats the hearts of stolen cats. The commercial figure, hollow in itself, has been made 

monstrous but no more defined; his hat casts a shadow over his face; he does not 

have a face. A man playing dress-up, a man building a flute that will allow him to eat 

souls. Murakami uses names, famous or not, as ciphers around which he can amass 

sentiment without definition. Johnny Walker does not exist, but he is also Kafka’s 

father; he simultaneously is and is not both the banal marketing icon and the cruel 

man Murakami makes him seem. When he is murdered the fact that Kafka’s father 

dies in the same house in the same way becomes rather a coincidence than a unified 

event. Kafka wakes up with blood on his hands. This is the constant ambivalence of 

Murakami’s fiction. It is and is not; Johnny Walker is a dark ambiguous hollow. 

This doubling also features in the narrative assumptions of the novel. The 

extraordinary is not presented as requiring of explanation – the kind of questionbegging 

usually associated with ‘portal stones’ and fish falling from the sky – but 

rather as simply extant, there, a natural event in the same realm as beers and kitchen 

tables. These are the kind of dual movements that sustain Murakami’s fiction, 

between the surreal-as-assumed and the reader’s search for consistency or certainty. 

Kafka on the Shore however, unlike other Murakami novels, does not maintain 

this kind of unity. It is not a two-ended arrow like The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle 

switching between a dream world and the waking mundane, but rather a composite, 

a larger structure with sharp angles. Reading the book, re-reading the book, I was 

constantly in mind not of an empty house – the house of Kobo Abe or Mishima, cold 

and ghostly – but the frame of a house; timber beams on which a structure might be 

built but, purposefully, has not been. It is not unfinished. It is a finished frame. 

Neale/Review of Kafka on the Shore 95

This novel does not maintain the normal Murakami unity because it is a collage, 

a welding of separate ideas that all seem compelled towards reiteration. A library, a 

beautiful sad woman, music, dreams, a portal, large amounts of food, undisclosed 

secrets and a cold beer in a kitchen, these are all the tropes and touchstones a reader 

comes to expect but not all in one book, not all of them oblivious to each other. This 

is not just a feature of Murakami using multiple narratives but instead his 

presentation of different unrelated un-real structures. Kafka on the Shore is a collage of 

as-yet-unwritten Murakami ideas. 

Perhaps, as a reader, I am witnessing my first authorial stutter. But this novel 

carried the positive aspects of rephrasing. A recombination as an elucidation, not a 

form of mechanical reproduction or Sisyphus on repeat. This is, I think, the crux of a 

reader’s enjoyment of Murakami, whether or not you see his narratives as ongoing 

projects, as evolving explanations. 

I cannot seem to approach this novel traditionally. It is a bare structure; its 

content and meanings exist ‘somewhere else’, perhaps in the reader, but not in the 

book. It is a Murakami novel and, as I might stretch that statement, business-as-usual. 

However it was also unexpected and while I thought I had maybe read enough 

Murakami, I found, much like me at my kitchen table, over time, experience requires 

rejuvenation. I function as writing does: not through doing once, but through 

reiteration. 

Timothy NEALE 


1 Meaning ‘stinking of butter’ and used to describe Western culture; everything from Elvis to 

Aristophanes has a whiff of pasturised milk products. This is because, as Ian Buruma points out, ‘the 

Japanese, like the Chinese, didn’t eat milk products, so to them all Westerners smelled milky, or 

buttery, or cheesy’. 

96 



3:2 (2005), 97-102 

REVIEW 

Tom Mes and Jasper Sharp, The Midnight Eye Guide to New Japanese 

Film, Berkeley, Stone Bridge Press, 2005, 365pp. ISBN 1-880656-89-2. 

Donald Richie, with Leza Lowitz, ed., The Japan Journals 1947-2004, 

Berkeley, Stone Bridge Press, 2004, 483pp. ISBN 1-880656-91-4. 

WHETHER IT IS the latest Hollywood remake of a distinctly Japanese horror film like 

The Ring or The Grudge, or an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for 

Twilight Samurai in 2004, one thing is fairly certain: ‘things Japanese’ and 

contemporary Japanese cinema continue to prove popular and financially attractive 

worldwide. The Midnight Eye Guide to New Japanese Film by Tom Mes and Jasper 

Sharp capitalises on and caters to the growing global audience of Japanophiles, 

cinephiles and academics who follow the authors’ popular MidnightEye.com, 

arguably the world’s most comprehensive English language website devoted to 

Japanese film. And, as Mes and Sharp are quick to point out early on, the book is not 

a facsimile of the website but rather an extension of it – ‘[t]he vast majority of the 

material in this book is entirely new.’ 1 

Structurally, New Japanese Film is comprised of 20 chapters; the first 19 chapters 

occupy 274 pages, with each chapter profiling a key contemporary Japanese director 

(or, in the case of Studio Ghibli, a production company). They range from Naomi 

Kawase, primarily a documentary filmmaker most famous for her intimate, personal 

documentaries about herself and her family, to Takeshi Kitano, possibly the most 

famous Japanese filmmaker outside Japan, whose back catalogue of yakuza films and 

distinctive editing and directing styles continue to earn him legions of fans globally. 

Each of these sections is further split in two: The first sub-section includes a 

biography of each director, plus a comprehensive filmography, an analysis of core 

themes, stylistic (camera/lighting/sound) techniques, genres and subject matter and 

illuminating quotes from the directors themselves. The second part of each chapter 

features more complex and detailed analyses of a small selection of each director’s 

films. 

Chapter 20 is dedicated to ‘The Other Players’ and includes brief profiles of 

additional directors and some of their films, though without filmographies. Films are 

arranged in subheadings chronologically by release year, and the analysis is 

structured less in terms of the specific film that forms the subheading, than in terms 

of a more general profile of the filmmaker and the thematic, social, historical and 

political contexts and concerns that characterise either the film in question or the 

filmmaker’s work. Films covered in all 20 chapters include the original Japanese (in 

both Japanese kana and Romanised versions) and English titles, as well as the release 

year, core cast, running times and release formats by company, country and subtitle 

options available. The work is peppered with a number of black and white 

promotional stills from featured films, as well as on-set production photos. The book 

Payne/ Review of The Midnight Eye Guide and The Japan Journals 97

is rounded off by a bibliography of writings about specific directors and a 

comprehensive index. Film titles that are discussed in detail in other sections of the 

book are also typeset in bold, signalling access to further information. 

New Japanese Film is a welcome contribution to a range of fields, including, and 

not limited to, film studies, critical theory, popular culture, and history. Mes and 

Sharp have created a work that is accessible, informative and entertaining. The 

authors employ clear, simple language and a clean layout design to reveal a 

representative selection of modern Japanese filmmakers and their respective oeuvres. 

New Japanese Film is aimed at an audience outside Japan, and so the authors 

frequently use films from the United States and the United Kingdom as points of 

narrative, stylistic or thematic comparison. For example, they invoke The Haunting 

(Robert Wise, 1963) and Poltergeist (Tobe Hooper, 1982) as similar to Kiyoshi 

Kurosawa’s Sweet Home (1989) 2 , and set Akihiko Shiota’s treatment of puberty in 

Harmful Insect (2001) in counterpoint to ‘…the average John Hughes comedy.’ 3 

Conversely, Mes and Sharp also acknowledge filmic influences from outside Japan 

on Japanese filmmakers, such as the impact of Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) and 

Videodrome (David Cronenberg, 1983) on the young Shinya Tsukamoto. 4 Thus, while 

providing a window on to a distinct national cinema, the authors also locate Japanese 

films within a broader framework of global cinema. 

Moreover, a key strength of New Japanese Film is that a wide array of genres 

and filmmakers is documented. Genres range from animation (Isao Takahata and 

Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli, and Satoshi Kon), documentary (Naomi Kawase 

and Yutaka Tsuchiya) and gay-themed (Ryosuke Hashiguchi) to avant-garde (Seijun 

Suzuki, Sogo Ishii and Kaizo Hayashi), horror (Hideo Nakata and Kiyoshi 

Kurosawa) as well as yakuza-themed (Kinji Fukasaku, Takeshi Kitano and Takashi 

Miike). Further inclusions of note that reflect increasing transnational flows and the 

contested concept of a ‘national cinema’ include Firefly Dreams (a Japanese film 

written and directed by a resident Englishman), Avalon (a Japanese film helmed by a 

Japanese director, shot entirely in Poland by a Polish director of photography and 

featuring a Polish cast) and Final Fantasy (a big budget Hollywood film version of a 

Japanese computer game, featuring Western voice actors and a Japanese director). 

Mes and Sharp also create a sense of the broader cultural, historical and 

political frameworks for each film. For instance, the authors outline the real world 

situation of zainichi (ethnically Korean Japanese residents) in Japan while covering 

GO (Isao Yukisada, 2001), which centres around young zainichi student Sugihara’s 

battles with contemporary Japanese society. Further examples of this include 

background information about Emperor Hirohito’s death, the writer/cultural figure 

Yukio Mishima, the marginalised status of Japan’s burakumin population, and the 

Red Army and Minamata poisoning incidents. Mes and Sharp also document the 

particular production systems in place during different periods, ranging from the 

studio system as a training ground for older filmmakers such as Seijun Suzuki and 

Kinji Fukasaku, through to the pinku eiga (softcore porn films) launch pad for 

directors like Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Hideo Nakata and the straight-to-video roots of 

the continually prolific Takashi Miike. 

Similarly, the authors’ decision to resist a simplistic auteur analysis by 

including information regarding key creatives and ‘above the line’ technical crew 

whose work informs and influences specific directors’ bodies of work provides a 

98 


more holistic sense of the interconnectedness inherent in the often large scale 

collaborative endeavour that is filmmaking. Cinematographers like Yuichi Nagata, 

production designers such as Takeo Kimura, composers like Joe Hisaishi and the 

major marquee stars during specific periods and across particular genres are all 

given their due. Moreover, this interconnectedness is reflected in frequent reference 

to particular producers associated with the growing independent scene, for instance, 

Takenori Sento, whose Suncent Cinema Works proved instrumental in shaping the 

emerging Japanese independent filmmaking scene prior to the company’s collapse in 

2001. 

New Japanese Film is thus an invaluable primer for those with an interest in 

contemporary Japanese cinema. However, while recognising that the work is only 

meant to be representative in a broad way due to the limitations of space, I did find 

that there were occasions of marked incompleteness in relation to coverage of 

specific films within key filmmakers’ oeuvres. At times the rationale for selecting 

particular films over others is unclear. For instance, the only film given its own indepth 

treatment in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s section is his 1998 film After Life, despite his 

filmography referencing a good many more, including equally important titles like 

Maborosi (1995), Distance (2001) and Nobody Knows (2004), the latter having won a 

number of awards at major international film festivals, including the Best Actor 

award at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival for young lead Yuya Yagira. One reason for 

this could be that the authors only included films that they had previously reviewed 

in depth for MidnightEye.com and believed that briefly mentioning other key films 

in the general overview section and filmography for each director would suffice. 

Furthermore, New Japanese Film includes repetitive material. This repetitiveness 

occurs both within chapters and across chapters. For instance, the Shinji Aoyama, 

Sogo Ishii, Naomi Kawase and Hirokazu Kore-eda chapters all include the same 

information relating to the 2001 collapse of Takenori Sento’s Suncent Cinema Works. 

However, it is apposite to note that New Japanese Cinema, as a reference book, is not 

likely to have been written to be read from cover to cover. The other confusing 

structural aspect to the work is the rationale for deeming one filmmaker “worthy” of 

warranting a chapter of their own, while another, like prominent independent 

filmmaker Shunji Iwai, is included within ‘The Other Players’ section, despite his 

strong body of work. It would also appear more suitable for the authors to have used 

directors’ names as subheadings in Chapter 20 instead of employing a chronological 

list of individual films based on release year. This is because Mes and Sharp move 

beyond a discussion of the specific film itself into a broader discussion of the director 

and their range of films. As the authors employ the same formula structure in each 

chapter, deviations from this format also come across as obvious. This is most 

apparent in the marked absence of any director quotes from the chapters covering 

Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli, Kaizo Hayashi and Takeshi 

Kitano while the other 16 chapters include them. 

Occasionally, New Japanese Film is also affected by instances of inconsistent tone 

where sections are overly “chatty” or weakly descriptive while attempting to be arch 

or casual. For example, actor Juro Kara is referred to as possessing ‘…a balding head 

and a puffy face that looks like it has lain forgotten at the bottom of a laundry 

basket.’ 5 Another film is referred to as having been ‘…shot with the production 

values of an Australian soap opera…’ 6 , while Blue Spring’s characters are referred to 

Payne/Review of The Midnight Eye Guide and The Japan Journals 99

as part ‘…of a generation of don’t-fuck-with-me-kids…’ 7 and Getting Any (Takeshi 

Kitano, 1994) is said to include ‘…lots of jokes involving shit.’ 8 More comprehensive 

captions for the various still photos would also have been useful, as the current ones 

fail to provide detail such as actor or character names, or description of content 

beyond the title of the movie from which they are drawn. 

While Mes and Sharp contribute to a plurality of voices currently offering 

insight into Japanese movies, for many years the gateway to Japanese cinema for film 

fans, scholars and practitioners alike was provided by one man, expatriate American 

critic and writer Donald Richie. With the recent release of Richie’s The Japan Journals 

1947-2004, audiences are now offered an invaluable insight into not only post-war 

Japanese society and its people but also the remarkable life of one of the nation’s 

keenest observers. Since arriving in Occupied Japan in 1947, Richie has led a 

passionately active life that has encompassed a broad and diverse cross-section of 

Japanese society, and his publications about Japanese cinema have long been 

regarded as seminal texts. The Japan Journals, edited by Leza Lowitz, is a remarkable 

collection of memories, observations and anecdotes spanning nearly 60 years in the 

life of the celebrated writer, critic, filmmaker and intellectual. As well as offering an 

enlightening and entertaining insight into the life of a leading light in Japanese 

cultural studies, the book is also an invaluable document of change and of lives lived 

and loves lost. Furthermore, it is an intensely personal reflection of one man’s 

prolonged and varied relationship with his adopted homeland, a land in which he 

claims to have always remained an outsider and one that amazingly – as recently as 

January 2004 – he claims never to have fallen in love with, but only ever liked. 9 

The Japan Journals follows a simple chronological order commencing with 

Richie’s first entry in Winter 1947 in which he describes an early morning in Tokyo, 

through to the final entry of this edited collection of 18 April 2004, where he muses 

on the state of Japan, as evidenced by the so-called “new Japan” exemplified by the 

slick new Tokyo neighbourhood Roppongi Hills, which Richie terms the Japan of the 

future. While Richie does not keep a consistent record during the documented 57 

years – indeed there are numerous gaps in which either nothing was written, or if it 

was, is no longer extant – the journals frequently present longer versions of accounts 

included in Richie’s many fictional and non-fictional published works. For those 

wishing to dig deeper, an appendix also notes a number of uncollected journals and 

memoir fragments currently housed at Boston University. As the years pass, Richie’s 

own motivations for keeping the journals change, as Lowitz notes: ‘From 1960 on, 

Richie began to keep a fuller record of his life. From now on, the journals have an 

existence in their own right. Consequently they take the shape of Richie’s life.’ 10 

Indeed, the older Richie becomes, the more aware he is of the value of his journals to 

eyes and lives other than his own; and he muses on their worth and significance to a 

posthumous audience. 11 

As editor, Lowitz provides frequent notes that are both functional and 

economical; they serve to explain ellipses and elisions, and to give further 

biographical insight. Lowitz makes her presence felt only sparingly, instead allowing 

Richie’s accounts the space and fullness of form that they deserve. Interspersed 

throughout the entries are a number of personal photographs depicting the locations, 

people and events that Richie eloquently evokes throughout. They also provide a 

visual record of change and of maturation. As Richie himself ages and his writing 

100 


evolves, he becomes more actively interested in the journal format, and reads and 

analyses the journalistic methodologies and approaches of a number of erudite 

published diarists. Thus, on another level, The Japan Journals themselves are also an 

intriguing document and literary artefact about the process of journal-keeping. Aside 

from the odd punctuation error, as well as repetitive editorial interpolations that 

prove a little irritating (e.g. noting last names when elsewhere only first names are 

given), editorial standards are generally well maintained throughout. Interestingly, 

Richie himself is inconsistent when translating romanized Japanese words in his 

entries, so readers without Japanese language knowledge may find such instances 

frustrating. 

The content of The Japan Journals is richly varied, ranging from Richie’s 

accounts of the land and people around him, through to personal anxieties, details of 

his elaborate and (at least in his view) potentially portentous dreams, and even his 

sexual life. These are all told in entries running from just a few lines to a number of 

pages. As the years progress, these pages become increasingly populated by accounts 

of lives ended and of funerals attended, leading to an increased sense of his own 

mortality and of the transience of life. As Richie observes society changing around 

him he sees generations of Walkman-lugging, manga-reading young people flow 

obliviously past him, causing him to ponder a perceived social dislocation and 

growing disconnect between people. Richie also despairs at the increasingly 

relentless consumerism seeping into all corners of modern Japanese – and by proxy 

global – society. Richie’s increased candour in relation to his own amorous desires, 

and the frankness with which he recounts nocturnal sexual adventures in Tokyo’s 

fleshpots and interrogates his own homosexuality, is in marked counterpoint to the 

allusively euphemistic language he employs in the earlier decades of his life. Relaxed 

social attitudes towards the public face of homosexuality no doubt contribute to this, 

but it is equally possible to read this as the result of a man coming to terms with the 

nature of his desires and of his particular place within a society that, as he states, will 

never truly accept him as the ‘same’; thus causing Richie to discover, in the words of 

a graduate student interviewing him, ‘…the benefits of stigma.’ 12 . 

Ultimately, The Japan Journals is a work of fascinating social, historical, sexual 

and political transition. It is an invaluable contribution to fields such as Cultural 

Studies, History and Sociology and is a document of a life lived to the full. The pages 

are packed with meetings with important Japanese literary and film figures (for 

instance, intimate discussions with Yukio Mishima, as well as test screenings and set 

visits with people like Akira Kurosawa, Nagisa Oshima and Itami Juzo) plus ongoing 

friendships with people like Karel van Wolferen, Edwin Seidensticker and Edwin 

Reischauer, all prominent and acclaimed scholars familiar to undergraduate and 

graduate Japanese history students worldwide. Richie’s personal responses to a 

number of major events that occurred over the past 50 years, such as the death of 

Emperor Hirohito, the Kansai Earthquake and Aum Shinrikyo sarin attack of 1995 

are also enlightening. A key strength of The Japan Journals, and ultimately why it is so 

readable, is that Richie provides a window into the lives of a number of people 

whom the reader comes to know as intimately as characters in a novel; returning to 

these people across the length of the work gives a sense of lives shared in all their 

fullness. 

Payne/Review of The Midnight Eye Guide and The Japan Journals 101

Having read a number of Richie’s published works, I was keen to read more 

about his own filmmaking, and this was perhaps the only area of The Japan Journals 

that I found lacking. Aside from a brief snippet detailing the challenge involved in 

shooting a scene on a beach with a group of young boys 13 , the work is remarkably 

silent about his own endeavours. However, this issue notwithstanding, the work is 

certainly an engrossing and informative read. 

The Midnight Eye Guide to New Japanese Film and The Japan Journals both provide 

important insights into Japanese film and society, and are weighty additions to their 

respective fields. As interest in Japan – its history, culture and its people – expands 

worldwide, and as the divisions and distances between countries disappear as a 

result of technology and population flows, works such as these will only increase in 

value and in readership, and deservedly so. 

Chris PAYNE 


1 

Tom Mes and Jasper Sharp, The Midnight Eye Guide to New Japanese Film, Berkeley, Stone Bridge 

Press, 2005, p.xi. 

2 

Ibid., p.94. 

3 

Ibid., p.274. 

4 

Ibid., p.144. 

5 

Ibid., p.137. 

6 

Ibid., p.252. 

7 

Ibid., p.344. 

8 

Ibid., p.171. 

9 

Donald Richie, with Leza Lowitz, ed., The Japan Journals 1947-2004, Berkeley, Stone Bridge Press, 

2004, p.474. Interestingly Richie claims that he ‘…liked the place from the first, but [he] fell in love with 

other places – Greece, for example; Morocco, for example.’ 

10 

Ibid., p.119. 

11 

Ibid., p.424. 

12 

Ibid., p.475. 

13 

Ibid., pp.478-9. 

102 



3:2 (2005), 103 

The Final Confession of Mistress Wang 

Tonglu Li 

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 

ABSTRACT 

IN THIS short story about Mistress Wang, a figure that appeared in both 

Water Margins and Plum in the Golden Vase, I intend to explore Wang’s 

motives in assisting Pan Jinlian (The Golden Lotus) and Ximen Qing. 

Besides her marvelous techniques of deploying the affair, what is in her 

mind Is it something more than money Is it revenge on men Is it for 

voyeuristic pleasure Or is it a desire to feel powerful by manipulating 

people of higher social status To explore these I need to reconstruct her 

life story, her bubble-like dreams and her struggles to squeeze into the 

society. Only by doing this can we fabricate a “logic” for her life story and 

the world she lived in from her perspective. 

Tonglu Li is a doctoral student in the Modern Chinese Literature Program at the 

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research interests focus on modern 

Chinese literature, especially early modern Chinese fiction. He is doing research on 

the formation of modern Chinese fiction and its interaction with its larger cultural 

context. He has been exploring how modern fiction was formed in the context of 

transnational cultural exchange, and how translation functions as a transformative 

power in the formation of modern Chinese fiction. Other issues central to his 

research include the role that locality plays in constructing a modern national 

literature, the role that ideology and politics play in shaping the discourses of fiction, 

and the role that modern fiction plays in the imagination of a modern society, a 

modern nation, and modern identity in early modern China. He aims to teach at the 

college level and conduct research on modern Chinese literature. 

Abstracts and biographical Notes 103


3:2 (2005), 104 

Struggle from the Margins: Hokkaido Popular 

Education Movement in the Towering Shadow of 

the Japanese Examination System (1950-1969) 

Elena Kolesova 


ABSTRACT 

THE PRESENT DEBATE on Japanese education is characterized by two 

polar points of view. The first emphasizes educational excellence based on 

the high performance of Japanese students in international tests, 

particularly those in mathematics and science. This view is commonly 

held by Japanese government officials, as well as by many foreign 

observers. However, in the view of Japanese scholars, teachers, parents 

and the Japanese public, as well as a small group of foreign or “outside” 

observers, an alarming achievement crisis exists within contemporary 

Japanese schooling. Analyses of the Japanese examination system, 

especially during the 1950s and 1960s, are particularly relevant to this 

debate as they help gauge the meaning of “good” education within the 

wider controversial debate on Japanese education. In this article, I will 

argue that the particular emphasis upon the importance of academic 

achievement for later success in life that developed in post-war Japan was 

not built upon actual scholastic achievement by students but rather upon 

the impression or ‘image’ of such achievement. In light of this, the critique 

of the examination system developed in Japan by a small group of 

Hokkaido teachers during the 1950-60s provides a valued contribution to 

this argument. 

Elena Kolesova recently obtained her PhD from the University of Auckland in 

Japanese history, and is lecturer in Japanese studies and Japanese language at Unitec 

New Zealand, Auckland. Her major research interests include history of Japanese 

education, East Asian popular culture and it’s impact on the West and Russia. 

Currently she is involved in research of Japanese students who don’t fit in the 

Japanese educational system and who find their refuge abroad in countries like New 

Zealand. 

104 



3:2 (2005), 105 

I’m Not Racist, I Eat Dim Sims!: 

The Commodification and Consumption of 

Asianness within White Australia 

Athena Nguyen 

Monash University 

ABSTRACT 

THIS ARTICLE investigates the commodification and consumption of 

Asianness within contemporary consumer culture by drawing upon the 

work of Jean Baudrillard and Edward Said. An examination of the 

circulation of signs of commodified Asianness will demonstrate the ways 

in which these signs have become depthless, ahistorical, amplified and 

self-referential. Moreover it will looks at the ways in which they 

reproduce notions of ‘Orientalism’. Baudrillard’s earlier work on 

consumer culture will inform an analysis of the consumption of signs 

under which the consumption of Asianness is driven by a desire for 

values of exoticism, novelty and danger, and forms a system of 

communication about the consumer’s cultural tolerance, knowledge and 

cosmopolitanism. Within mainstream Australian society, the 

commodification of Asianness also helps to ease anxieties over the fear of 

the Other by making engagements with Asianness more palatable. This 

article will argue that the cultural interactions that take place through 

commodification and consumption are limited as they are based upon a 

sanitised version of the Other and are too focused on individual 

gratification. Instead, a confrontation and commitment to change 

patterns of racial domination needs to be developed which involves an 

engagement with racial politics both inside and outside consumer culture. 

Athena Nguyen is a Bachelor of Arts (Hons)/Bachelor of Science graduate from 

Monash University. She has also been a Summer Research Scholar for the Centre for 

Cross-Cultural Research at the Australian National University and a guest lecturer 

for the School of Political and Social Inquiry at Monash University. Her research 

interests include post-modern feminist theory, queer theory and cross-cultural 

research. 

Abstracts and biographical Notes 105


3:2 (2005), 106 

Japan and the ‘Human Security’ Debate: History, 

Norms and Pro-active Foreign Policy 

Elena ATANASSOVA-CORNELIS 

Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium 

ABSTRACT 

THIS ARTICLE explores the concept of ‘human security’ and its relevance 

to the current international security agenda through an analysis of 

developments in Japanese foreign policy. The article is divided into two 

parts: the first provides an overview of the on-going debate on the nature 

of security, locates human security within it and discusses different 

approaches to this concept. Taking Japan as a case-study, the second part 

analyzes Japan’s path to human security, the introduction and definition 

of the concept in the Japanese context and Japan’s concrete initiatives for 

its implementation. The article demonstrates that while in academic terms 

human security has been strongly criticized for lacking a precise 

definition, for Japan, it has become an operational tool for pro-active 

foreign policy behavior in the area of non-traditional security. The case of 

Japan may suggest, therefore, that scholars should move beyond simply 

seeking coherency in the concept of human security. Instead, it may be 

more useful to consider the concept within the context of its multifaceted 

nature and with a focus on the perspectives of different actors, whose 

approaches are likely to be an expression of their specific backgrounds 

and policy preferences. 

Elena Atanassova-Cornelis received her Bachelor’s degrees in both Slavic Studies 

and Japanese Studies from Sofia State University in Bulgaria. She also obtained a 

Master’s Degree in Japanese Studies after having studied at Jochi (Sophia) University 

in Tokyo, Japan, and completed an MA in European Studies at Catholic University of 

Leuven (K.U.Leuven), Belgium. 

At present, she is a PhD researcher at the Japanese Studies Section of 

K.U.Leuven with a primary research focus on Japanese post-Cold War foreign and 

security policy from the perspective of the US-Japan alliance and the Japan-EC/EU 

relations. She is also working on Japan’s policies in the field of ‘non-traditional’ 

security challenges, such as human security, conflict prevention and international 

terrorism. 

106

Volume 3 Number 2 Hegemony and Resistance in the Asia-Pacific

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