Japanese history

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/5/2023
  

  Can Japan-Korea Relations Resolve Historical Disputes?

  The government of South Korea has dropped its demand for Japanese companies to pay victims of forced labor during World War II. Many Koreans have called the concession a national humiliation, and some surviving victims say they won't accept compensation from Korean sources. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  2/8/2023
  

  Forget Pickleball—Retired Japanese Gangsters Embrace Softball

  Like the rest of Japanese society, the Yakuza are aging, making a transition out of criminal careers a challenge. Forming a softball team—and changing the uniform colors from black to pink and gray—helped some. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  5/22/2022
  

  Can We Condemn One Empire Without Affirming Another?

  by Moon-Ho Jung

  The experience of left-wing Japanese Americans, who rejected Japanese imperialism while being oppressed by American nationalism, shows that war forces an artificial binary of national allegiance. 

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• SOURCE: CNN
  4/29/2022
  

  "Pachinko" Tells History of Korean Women in Mid-20th Century Japan

  The Apple+ series, based in a fictionalized narrative of Korean immigration to Japan, concludes with interview footage of eight women, now all more than 90 years old, who lived this history. 

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• SOURCE: Harvard Crimson
  2/16/2022
  

  Harvard Law Prof Responds to Critics of His "Comfort Women" Claims, Fails to Squelch Controversy

  Two Harvard historians (and several colleagues at other instituitons) say that Mark Ramseyer's defense of his article claiming Korean "comfort women" freely contracted their labor as sex workers serving Japanese soldiers during World War II ignores the substance of their criticism. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  11/9/2021
  

  A Met Exhibition on Women in Photography Shows All Achievements by Women Don't Need to be Celebrated

  by Kelly Midori McCormick

  Why did the Metropolitan Museum use a photo of the imperialist Japanese photographer Sasamoto Tsuneko as an exemplar of women's achievements in the medium? 

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• 9/26/2021
  

  The Japanese Surrender in 1945 is Still Poorly Understood

  by Jeremy Kuzmarov and Roger Peace

  American diplomats and military leadership in 1945 believed Japan was close to a negotiated surrender without the use of the atomic bomb, a history that has since been replaced by the myth that the bomb saved lives. 

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• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  9/15/2021
  

  The Significance of Yasuke, the Black Samurai

  by Warren A. Stanislaus

  "While media coverage of Afro-Japanese encounters overwhelmingly focuses on incidents of racism or misunderstandings, Yasuke’s interaction with Japan has helped illuminate a rich but overlooked history of Afro-Japanese connectivity." 

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• SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
  8/21/2021
  

  Professor’s ‘Comfort-Women’ Lecture Gets Him Indicted—And Sparks Debate on Academic Freedom

  "In an interview, Mr. Lew said he had given that same lecture for more than a decade. Students always pushed back and they debated. But the discourse had never before become public."

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• SOURCE: Perspectives on History
  7/21/2021
  

  Why Japan Forfeited Hosting the 1940 Games

  by Paul Droubie

  Japan's forfeiture of the games amid rising international and internal tensions shows that the Olympics have always been a vehicle for the promotion of national elites' agendas, often at the expense of popular domestic concerns. 

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• SOURCE: BBC
  6/14/2021
  

  Hideki Tojo's Ashes Scattered By US, Documents Reveal

  "Japanese lecturer Hiroaki Takazawa at Tokyo's Nijon University found the declassified documents at the US National Archives in Washington DC."

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• SOURCE: The Nation
  5/26/2021
  

  The History the Japanese Government Is Trying to Erase

  by Chelsea Szendi Schieder

    An academic involved in the recent "comfort women" controversy while teaching in Japan warns "In failing to teach what the wartime state did, the Japanese government only emboldens the forces of misogyny and racism and cultivates new generations of violence."

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• SOURCE: The Metropole
  2/25/2021
  

  The Tokyo Moment: What Developing Cities Can Learn From The Postwar Japanese Capital

  by Ben Bensal

  "Studying postwar Tokyo helps historicize the discourse on megacities, which is still in its infancy. While there are important similarities between today’s megacities in terms of their size, organizational complexity, and socio-economic challenges, there are important contextual differences that are best assessed using a historical approach."

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• SOURCE: The Asia-Pacific Journal
  2/23/2021
  

  Supplement to Special Issue: Academic Integrity at Stake: The Ramseyer Article

  by Alexis Dudden

  The Asia-Pacific Journal is publishing a collection of letters in opposition to the controversial article by Harvard Law professor J. Mark Rameseyer which characterized the sexual abuse of Korean women during World War II as freely contracted sex work. 

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• SOURCE: Harvard Crimson
  2/15/2021
  

  Journal Delays Print Publication of Harvard Law Professor’s Controversial ‘Comfort Women’ Article Amid Outcry

  "Against the historical consensus, Ramseyer claims in his paper, entitled “Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War," that comfort women were not coerced and instead voluntarily entered into contracts with Japanese brothels."

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  10/10/2020
  

  A Famed Horror Director Mines Japan’s Real-Life Atrocities

  In a recent interview, Mr. Kurosawa, 65, said he found it hard to understand why Japan’s war crimes remained almost taboo among the country’s filmmakers 75 years after the conflict’s end.

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• SOURCE: Nursing Clio
  3/26/2020
  

  The Lone Woman of Kokura

  by Nyri A. Bakkalian

  Who was the Lone Woman in the Kokura Castle town ruins that day in 1866? We don’t know her name, though we know where she died in Kokura.

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• SOURCE: Time
  4/28/19
  

  Centuries ago, women ruled Japan. What changed?

  Conservative and patriarchal Japan excludes women -- who make up 13 of the 18 members of the royal family -- from taking the throne. But this wasn't always the case.

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• SOURCE: NBC News
  1/15/19
  

  New Teacher's Guide on "Comfort Women" To Be Distributed Across California Schools

  The debate around teaching this history has been controversial.