Volume 79, Issue 2 - Special Issue: Japanese Theoretical Approaches in the Humanities and Social Sciences

This paper integrates intercultural learning theory with Japanese historical methods to examine kibyōshi , comic picture books, as cultural texts that illuminate representations of women in Edo print culture during the transitional period from the late eighteenth to early nineteenth century. Rather than reconstructing daily life, it introduces the Intercultural Historical Competence (IHC) model, adapted for Japanese studies, to analyze how gender roles were imagined, negotiated, and circulated through mass publishing. IHC positions kibyōshi as interpretive lenses that open perspectives on Edo-period values while encouraging present-day global reflection on cultural and temporal difference. Through this approach, the study reassesses women’s visibility in Edo society and demonstrates how a short-lived popular genre can function as historical evidence and as a resource for teaching.

The aim of this paper is to compare the theories of Yamazaki Masakazu und Jürgen Habermas. Yamazaki believed that the hard, ascetic individualism with a focus on production would alienate us from our humanity. He saw in a slowed down consumption a way out of this regressive development. Habermas on the other hand believed that system-oriented rationalization process would colonize the communication-oriented lifeworld. This negative trend could be overcome by developing a discourse free of power interference that enables consensus-building. This gentle individualism of Yamazaki and Habermas corresponds to a compromise between the extremes of a hard individualism (capitalism) and collectivism (communism or nationalism). The surprising result of the analysis is that Yamazaki’s theory is not only easier to realize than Habermas’s, but also more universally applicable.

This paper explores the relationship between Aristotle’s Metaphysics and the Kyoto School of Japanese philosophy. Specifically, it focuses on the central role of the concept of nothingness in the work of Kitaro Nishida, the founding figure of the Kyoto School and its link to the notion of ousia prôtè . As I will demonstrate, the notion of nothingness in contrast to its more traditional nihilistic formulations plays an active and productive role, particularly regarding the nature of existence. Nishida’s dynamic nothingness in fact bears a remarkable affinity with the notion of ousia prôtè as developed in Aristotle’s Metaphysics as a perpetual act of determination. Through an extension of Annick Stevens and Annick Jaulin’s work and moving in concert with scholars such as Jacynthe Tremblay and Robert J.J Wargo, I will pursue a close reading of the decomposition of the negative spatiality of nothingness throughout the “determination without a determinant”, that is, the act of the ousia prôtè . I argue that it is only through a reconsideration of both being and nothingness that the central tenants of both thinkers can be fully understood and appreciated. Placing these two major thinkers of existence side by side thus offers a unique perspective from which to address their individual contributions to the idea of being and nothingness.

A global system of knowledge is marked by structural inequality. While ‘the West’ continues to be a privileged location of theory-building practices, ‘Japan’ does not. In this context, the question of ‘Japanese’ theoretical models and concepts invokes two intertwined questions: how to transcend specifically ‘Japanese’ experiences into general theoretical imperatives and how to retain a sense of ‘Japanese-ness’ in theory-building practices vis-à-vis ‘the West’. Researchers of kokusai nihongaku (international/global Japanese studies) have proposed what they call ‘metascience’ to address these questions, which in practice encompasses the reconsideration of categories such as ‘Japan’ and ‘Japanese’ and the reconstruction of the relationship between Japan’s self-knowledge and knowledge of Japan produced elsewhere, particularly in ‘the West’. By locating metascience within the history of nihongaku , a mode of self-knowledge production in Japan, this article highlights the efforts of kokusai nihongaku researchers to develop a ‘Japanese’ theory and simultaneously to challenge the structural inequality in a global system of knowledge. However, the article argues that kokusai nihongaku remains trapped in the pitfall of methodological nationalism, rehearsing the familiar conceptual matrix of the self, ‘Japan’, and the nation-state. Instances of epistemic disobedience that kokusai nihongaku seeks to forge through its metascience become instances of epistemic obedience. Following Morris-Suzuki’s notion of ‘liquid area’, the article suggests the need to liquify the locus of the researcher by dismantling this conceptual matrix.

This paper reexamines the phenomenon of judicialization in Japan by integrating legal-philosophical perspectives with socio-legal analysis. Challenging the conventional view of judicialization as the mere expansion of judicial power, it foregrounds litigation as a strategic mechanism of policy transformation, legal reinterpretation, and institutional responsiveness. By drawing upon Bentham’s legal positivism and Dworkin’s principle-based adjudication, the paper highlights influential Japanese frameworks such as Watanabe Chihara’s responsive justice, Tanaka Shigeaki’s policy-formation litigation, and Awaji Takehisa’s institutional reform litigation. These frameworks illuminate how Japanese courts engage with evolving social norms, regulatory gaps, and constitutional principles in diverse contexts - including environmental pollution, labor rights, nuclear governance, and climate change. Through these case studies, the analysis demonstrates that Japanese courts can serve as arenas of normative contestation and democratic accountability, influencing institutional and policy agendas despite procedural and doctrinal constraints.

The Imperial Office of Poetry (Outadokoro 御歌所) was established in 1869 as a court ministry of the Imperial Household Office, and was part of a series of Meiji-era institutions designed to emulate the prestige of the Nara period Imperial Court in order to legitimise the political myth of the Meiji-era Imperial Restoration. Outadokoro’s longest lasting legacy was the reinvention and organisation of the New Year’s Imperial Poetry Reading, utakai hajime 歌会始. When it became a national event in 1874, Outadokoro members encouraged all Japanese people to compose poems on the imperial theme ( odai 御題), a careful selection of which were then published in the major newspapers of the time. This paper examines how nature imagery was instrumentalized to construct the mythical topography of the nation through culturally significant toponyms drawing on Shintō myths and beliefs, to reinforce the idea of national unity, and to glorify the Imperial reign. As an isolated event that continued the courtly tradition of waka poetry gatherings and largely ignored the Meiji period’s poetry reforms, utakai hajime provides a vivid framework for the quantitative and qualitative analysis of ideological tropes in poetic vocabulary, which in turn reveal an ongoing discourse of poetic celebration of Imperial rule itself. This study further examines other genres of poetry such as parodic haiku and kyōka poems from Marumaru Chinbun 團團珍聞, written in response to the prescribed imperial themes of utakai hajime , highlighting the broad and varied reception of this invented tradition.

On the basis of canonical depictions of the Buddha’s life, hagiographies that differed in significant respects from the traditional accounts emerged in Japan from the 12th century onwards. One of the most important hagiographies of the late medieval and early modern period, the Shaka no honji , focuses on the depiction of the grief of the young Prince Siddhârtha over the death of his mother. This article aims to show how the experience of time, emotions and religious practice are interrelated in the Shaka no honji and that unlike the literary aspects of the text which are very different from canonical sources on the life of the Buddha, the motif of a mother’s benevolence and its repayment dealt with therein are not an expression of specifically Japanese developments, but look back on a long tradition that understands the benevolent love between mother and son as a fundamental component of Buddhist practice.

Abstract ( Deutsch ) Dieser Beitrag beleuchtet die Berichterstattung zur „Friedensstatue“ in Berlin in drei japanischen Tageszeitungen ( Asahi Shinbun , Mainichi Shinbun und Sankei Shinbun ) sowie auf der News-Aggregator-Seite Yahoo! News . Damit soll untersucht werden, welche Informationen zur Statue in der japanischen Öffentlichkeit verbreitet und welche Interpretationen der Ereignisse nahegelegt werden. Mit Hilfe einer qualitativen Analyse kann so gezeigt werden, dass in der japanischen Öffentlichkeit die Friedensstatue überwiegend als ein binationales, diplomatisches Problem zwischen Japan und Südkorea dargestellt wird. Fragen der Frauen- und Menschenrechte sowie der deutschen Erinnerungskultur im postmigrantischen Kontext finden in den untersuchten Presseartikeln im Zusammenhang mit der Statue keine Beachtung.