Browsing by Subject "Japan"
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Item Ancient ships of Japan(Texas A&M University, 2006-10-30) Miyashita, HiroakiAncient ships of Japan, which are little known outside of Japan, are presented based on the studies of past researchers, as well as a comprehensive analysis of archaeological remains. The process of development from logboats to extended logboats or semibuilt-up ships, and finally to built-up ships is traced. This study covers evidence from the Early Jomon period (4000 - 3000 B.C.E.) through the Kofun period (300 - 700 C.E.). A large number of logboat remains date to the Jomon period, and it is these logboats which become the foundation of later Japanese ships. The number of ship remains from the Yayoi period diminishes. Therefore, iconographic evidence, mainly clay ship figures and drawings, are used in order to reconstruct the ships from that time. This thesis is an account of what is presently known about the ancient watercraft of Japan, based on the existing ethnographic literature, the archaeological record, and iconographic sources.Item Atomic memory : theorizing post-racial memory and trauma in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum(2012-12) Shaw, Vivian Giboung; Carrington, Ben, 1972-; Bos, PascaleHiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, established in 1955, remains the primary site for recuperating and transforming memories of the atomic bombing into a message for global peace. Within the museum’s transcendental politics, American and European visitors are a key presence, evident in the site’s 1994 renovation adding historical context for the bombings, its design as a bilingual space using both Japanese and English, and in its refusal to criticize the United States for their use of the bomb. However, what remains excluded from this global view is a discussion of race, a critical dimension of U.S.-Japanese relations and Pacific Rim colonialism during and after World War II. This thesis utilizes scholarship on cultural memory and cultural trauma to interrogate how the museum has been constructed as a site of post-racial politics. In examining the mechanics of this space, this thesis focuses on the “objects” that the museum describes as “material witnesses,” to interrogate the historical links between Orientalism and cultural trauma. Through a theoretical development of my fieldwork in Hiroshima in 2011, analysis of the space, and relevant literature, I argue that the gaze of Western tourism is fundamental in the construction of Hiroshima as a global, peaceful, and post-racial experience for museum visitors.Item Beauty and consensus : practices for agreeing on the quality of the service in client-professional interactions(2009-12) Oshima, Sae; Streeck, JürgenThis dissertation is a microanalytic investigation of professional communication in beauty salons in the United States and Japan. In particular, it centers on the analysis of a common, yet very important occurrence found in cosmetology sessions: what I call the "service-assessment sequence", in which service-provider and client determine whether or not the completed work in a given session is adequate. This is a crucial moment in the haircutting activity (and in other fields of the service industry) in order to bring a satisfactory closure to the session, as well as maintain a healthy relationship for future sessions, retain clients in general, and ensure client satisfaction overall. Using the methodological frameworks of microethnography and conversation analysis, I examine the moment-by-moment unfolding of interaction, focusing on how participants smoothly conduct the service-assessment sequence and how they achieve the successful completion of a service encounter through a number of tactics. The findings include: the participants' systematic coordination of talk and physical inspection through multiple second pair parts; the participants' coordination of talk and action to negotiate sequence closure; the participants' professional use of head nods in the middle of physical inspection and at sequence completion during service encounters in Japan; and the participants' employment of a unique combination of verbal and embodied actions to transform the event of revision into a mutual decision. These findings suggest several important aspects of professionalization in beauty salons. Notably, the professionals' ability to harmonize talk and action is a special trait. Also, despite the fundamental regularities, the service-assessment sequence is frequently adapted to specific circumstances of each beauty salon that may vary across different services and cultures. Finally, the production of professional assessments and agreements are achieved by the participants' constant work on dramatization through the use of various communicative resources. The study is applicable not only to the field of cosmetology, but to a range of professional-client interactions where people evaluate the quality of service with their subjective perspectives, enhancing our understanding of negotiation-in-interaction in the workplace and what it means to professionalize communication in such situations.Item Comparative population policy(2011-05) Hardy, David McGrath; Wilson, Robert Hines; Stolp, ChandlerIn the last thirty years an increasing number of governments are taking an interest in the growth rate and age structure of their populations. The chief concern among advanced economies is that pay-as-you-go pension and health care systems for the elderly will be unsustainable as the ratio of younger workers to older beneficiaries shrinks from aging populations. Resistance to reforms such as reduced or delayed benefits, or higher taxes has focused attention on a third option, growing the working-age population. There is a growing consensus on the economic benefits of population growth, a reversal from the 1960s through 80s. Governments try to grow the population through incentives for more children and/or accepting more immigrants. This report compares the population policies of Singapore, the United States, France, and Japan to analyze governments' motives and policy outcomes. Middle-income nations like China and Brazil can learn from the experiences of developed nations to avoid the same predicament in the future. Each government's mix of fertility incentives, immigrants, and guest workers is a product of their economic and political circumstances. The surest way to grow the population, accepting immigrants, is usually the least popular. The most popular is the most unproven, providing benefits for larger families. There is no consensus what the most effective fertility incentives are. Population policy has never been just about the economy, it is steeped in political and cultural visions. Shedding that political baggage is a prerequisite to a more rational, sustainable policy approach to demography.Item Contingency on the Korean peninsula : collapse to unification(2010-05) O, Tara C.; Galbraith, James K.A collapsed North Korea would pose a momentous test to the future of the region. The five regional powers—South Korea, China, Japan, Russia, and the United States—are ill-prepared for such an event, partly because of the act of planning for it would upset North Korea. However, the potential challenges of a collapse are too great to ignore. This study presents an historical and political analysis of the increasing risk that North Korea may collapse. A comparison with earlier cases suggests that triggers and indicators of collapse can be identified, including increasing cross-border information flows, defections, and the possible death or incapacitation of North Korea’s leader. Further, the large and growing economic disparity between North Korea and its neighbors, South Korea and China, points to likely consequences of collapse, including possible mass migration. The study then examines the roles of South Korea, China, the U.S., Japan, and Russia in the future of the Korean peninsula; it concludes with a further consideration of the paradox of collapse planning, but argues that it would be better to run the risks entailed in the exercise than to be caught flatfooted when a collapse occurs. The analysis is based on interviews, surveys, and documents in English and Korean.Item A cross-national comparison of health expectancy : Japan, the United States and Taiwan(2013-08) Chiu, Chi-Tsun; Hayward, Mark D.Japan is the longest lived population in the world and has led the world in low mortality for over two decades. The United States, although its GDP exceeds all other countries, has a life expectancy that falls substantially below most other western countries. Taiwan, although it has an emerging economy with rapid aging population, has a life expectancy approaching that of the United States. Previous studies have investigated multiple domains of physical health for elderly Japanese, American, and Taiwanese, but very few studies have compared mortality across these countries and even fewer have examined how mortality and morbidity intersect differently across the countries to influence differences in healthy life expectancy. This dissertation is aimed at filling this gap. Based on studies in the United States and other Western countries, education is increasingly characterized as a "fundamental cause" of health -- with more years of educational attainment associated with better health. Although the association is robust for a variety of health measures and mortality in the United States and other Western countries, studies in East Asia report more modest associations or no associations. Thus, whether the association extends beyond the Western context is less clear. In my dissertation, I investigate these issues in detail. In the United States, the more-educated enjoy longer life expectancy and a compression of mortality comparing with their less-educated counterpart. Here, data from Taiwan and Japan are used to assess whether education has similar consequences in two important non-Western settings. In sum, the findings reveal that: (1) older Japanese people not only have the highest total life expectancy but also have the highest absolute healthy life expectancy in each gender group, (2) older American and Taiwanese people have similar total life expectancy in each gender group, but they have very different health profiles, (3) educational gradients on mortality/health differ across gender and country groups, and (4) within a population, having more education helps maximize lifespan, changes and delays the biological aging process in the different contexts. Overall, the results underscore the importance of international perspective in explicating health disparities, especially educational differentials in health.Item Drawn in bloodlines : blood, pollution, identity, and vampires in Japanese society(2012-05) Miller, Benjamin Paul; Cather, Kirsten; Maclachlan, PatriciaThis thesis is an examination of the evolution of blood ideology, which is to say the use of blood as an organizing metaphor, in Japanese society. I begin with the development of blood as a substance of significant in the eighth century and trace its development into a metaphor for lineage in the Tokugawa period. I discuss in detail blood's conceptual and rhetorical utility throughout the post-Restoration period, first examining its role in establishing a national subjectivity in reference to both the native intellectual tradition of the National Learning and the foreign hegemony of race. I then discuss the rationalization of popular and national bloodlines under the auspices of the popular eugenics movement, and the National Eugenics Bill. Then, I discuss the racialization this conception of blood inflicted on the Tokugawa era Outcastes, and its persistent consequences. Through the incongruity of the Outcastes ability to "pass" despite popular expectations that their blood pollution was visibly demonstrative, I introduce the notion of blood anxiety. Next, I address the conceptual and rhetorical role blood played in articulating Japan's empire and imperial ambitions, focusing on the Theory of Common Descent and the Investigation of Global Policy with the Yamato Race as Nucleus report. I follow this discussion with a detailed examination of the postwar reconceptualization of national subjectivity, which demands native bloodlines and orthodox cultural expressions, and which effectively de-legitimized minority populations. As illustration of this point, I describe the impact of this new subjectivity on both the Zainichi and the Nikkeijin in lengthy case studies. Finally, I conclude this examination with a consideration of blood ideology's representation in popular culture. I argue that the subgenre of vampire media allegorizes many of the assumptions and anxieties surrounding blood that have developed since the Restoration, and demonstrates the imprint of blood ideology on contemporary society.Item Enchanting modernity : religion and the supernatural in contemporary Japanese popular culture(2011-08) Feldman, Ross Christopher; Cather, Kirsten; Traphagan, John W.This thesis examines the ways in which popular culture reveals, and shapes, religious thinking in contemporary Japan. Through an investigation of popular culture including animated films (anime) and graphic novels (manga), and the cultural processes related to their production and consumption, it explores how and why popular culture in Japan is acting as a repository for ideas and images relating to religion, the supernatural, and the human and non-human agents who mediate them. Popular culture is important not only for the ways it discloses contemporaneous cultural trends, but because it acts in dialogic tension with them. In Japan, where society has grown increasingly secularized since at least the middle of the twentieth century, an overwhelming majority of citizens consider themselves non-religious. Surveys have consistently indicated that only a small percentage of respondents identify as actively Shintō, Buddhist, Christian or some other religious affiliation. At the same time, depictions of religious images and themes have grown exponentially in popular culture such that a recent internet search on “anime” plus “kami” (a Shintō deity) produced an astounding 20,100,000 hits. Clearly, religion continues to play a crucial role in the popular imagination. This juncture of popular culture and personal religious identity in contemporary Japan raises a number of questions discussed in the following chapters. What benefits do consumers derive from the treatment of religious themes in anime and manga? What do depictions of religion in popular media indicate about the construction of religious identity in Japan? Why the disparity between religious identification survey results and cultural consumption of religious themes and images? In short, what are the ways in which popular culture in Japan reveals ideas about religion and the supernatural, and in what ways does popular culture actively shape those conceptions?Item Extending the Writing Paradigm: Is Writing Haiku Poetry Healing?(2009-10-28) Stephenson, KittredgeHaiku poetry was investigated in the context of the narrative writing paradigm to evaluate its healing potential. Participants, 98 introductory psychology students at a large southwestern university, wrote for 20 minutes a day on three consecutive days and completed self-report measures of happiness, satisfaction with life, spiritual meaning, creativity, physiological symptomatology, depression, anxiety, and health/illness orientation at baseline and 3-week follow-up. A series of ANCOVA linear contrasts were used to examine differences between groups writing narrative about a neutral topic, haiku about a neutral topic, haiku about nature, or haiku about a negative life event. It was found that writing haiku demonstrated increased levels of creativity overall. In addition, the nature haiku group reported significantly lower levels of physiological symptomatology than the negative life event haiku group and had significantly lower illness orientation than the haiku control group. These results provide a partial replication of a previous study. They also suggest that writing haiku poetry is a creative activity that leads one to be more sensitive to the writing topic, whatever it may be. Narrative writing, by contrast, appears to help integrate one?s experience. The difference between the heightened sensitivity of writing haiku and the integrative capacity of narrative are compared and recommendations made for future research.Item Fragile families : kinship and contention in a community temple(2013-05) Delgaty, Aaron Christopher; Traphagan, John W.Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Ishimura, a small town in Japan’s rural northeastern Iwate Prefecture during the summer of 2012, this thesis pursues two objectives. (1) Building on observations found in recent Western scholarship on the nature of Japanese religious institutions (Covell 2005, Rowe 2011), this thesis contends that Japanese Buddhist temples operating in close-knit rural communities are, in addition to religious and social spaces, inherently domestic spaces characterized by familial networks that link the temple to the parish through real and imagined kinship relations. Family networks also define the internal structuring of temple leadership, consisting of actual nuclear or multigenerational families that live and work at the heart of a community temple. Importantly, these temple families directly influence the community perception of the temple as a religious and social institution. In short, this thesis contends that family defines and families represent community temples. This thesis demonstrates the domestic and familial characteristics of community temples by examining the families at the center of Ishimura’s three Buddhist institutions, Kamidera, Shimodera, and Nakadera. (2) This thesis then turns to explore the contentious nature of community temples as domestic spaces. Specifically, this thesis contends that the familial dynamics that define temple leadership carry potentially “disruptive, disintegrative, and psychologically disturbing” ramifications for temple leadership and parish families. Drawing on the case of Tatsu, the troubled and troublesome vice priest of Nakadera, this thesis seeks to understand how the failed succession of a head priest can generate dysfunction across the broader familial networks that constitute a community temple. The case of Tatsu and Nakadera ultimately illuminates the vulnerabilities inherent to community temples as family-mediated, domestic institutions.Item From the page to the screen : representations of zainichi identity(2016-05) Cramer, Hilary M.; Fischer, Kirsten Cather; Oh, YoujeongThis report looks at how zainichi identity has been constructed and negotiated by prominent zainichi figures in Japan over the past three decades. Zainichi are ethnically Korean and are Korean citizens, but reside in Japan. They straddle both cultures, but belong to neither. My case studies include three prominent zainichi figures: Yi Yangji (1955-1992), a literary author whose semi-fictional works demonstrate the difficulties zainichi experience when trying to adapt to Korean culture; Yū Miri (b. 1968), a politically-engaged author and essayist whose works show the difficulties faced by zainichi who try to maintain a hybrid identity while living in Japan; and Akiyama Yoshihiro (b. 1975), a Mixed Martial Artist and popular culture icon, who successfully straddles the two cultures, capitalizing on his fluid, hybrid identity in order to achieve transnational stardom. For each of these figures, on a personal level, such representations offer a means for them to renegotiate their ties to South Korea and their place in Japan. On a more political and universal level, these artists and their lives are calls for acceptance, both self-acceptance by zainichi as well as by citizens of both nations to embrace the in-betweenness.Item Government policy and innovation activity : a patent study of solar photovoltaic balance of system in Japan(2014-08) Takeda, Chihiro; Rai, VarunThis report studied innovation activity in four areas of the solar photovoltaic balance-of-system (BOS) technologies (inverters, mounting equipment, monitoring systems, and site assessment) in the Japanese market. Through patent searches with specific keywords, this study found that innovation activity in these four technology areas increased and decreased responding to both supply-side and demand-side policies. This report also empirically studied effects of demand-pull policies on innovation activity in the BOS technology areas. The regression analysis of the patent data found that the demand-side policies such as residential subsidy programs employed by the Japanese government were a major factor which influenced innovation activities in these technology areas in the Japanese market. Finally, the regression analysis also found that the termination of the residential subsidy program by the government in 2006 had a negative effect on the innovation activity of the four BOS technologies.Item Haiku, Nature, and Narrative: An Empirical Study of the Writing Paradigm and Its Theories(2014-04-04) Stephenson, Kittredge TThe present study continued an examination of haiku poetry within the context of the writing paradigm. Groups were compared with respect to three factors?writing type (narrative, haiku, or haibun), image content (nature or non-nature), and affective valence (positive or negative)?on short-term effects (arousal, affective valence, and flow), as well as longer-term negative (anxiety, depression, physiological symptomatology) and positive attributes (spiritual meaning, creativity, mindfulness). The study included a representative sample of 235 participants from a large southwestern university. Longer-term measures were compared using a priori contrasts and Analysis of Covariance, while short-term measures were analyzed via a priori contrasts and Repeated Measures Analysis of Variance. In comparing groups whose writing involved narrative versus those that wrote only haiku, there was some evidence that participants experienced greater salubrious change when their writing included narrative: mindfulness, change in affective valence, and flow all increased. There were no significant differences between participants who wrote haiku about nature versus a non-nature topic. Relative to those writing haiku in response to negative nature images, those writing haiku in response to positive nature images evinced decreased depressive symptomatology, increased physiological symptomatology, and greater positive change in affective valence. Finally, flow served as a significant main effect for post-writing affective valence across groups, in addition to pre-writing affective valence: the effect was consistent for the narrative group, developed over time for the haiku group, and decreased over time for the haibun group. None of the groups demonstrated significant change on the longer-term measures from baseline to follow-up, however, raising questions about the effectiveness of writing in response to images. The implications of the present study and possibilities for future research are discussed.Item Historical biogeography of rhacophorid frogs of Japan and the Ryukyu Archipelago inferred from a phylogenetic perspective(Texas Tech University, 1997-08) Wilkinson, Jeffery A.Samples of rhacophorid fauna were examined from five hypothesized areas of endemism which compose Japan, the Ryukyu Archipelago, and Taiwan, and phylogenetically related or geographically proximate taxa from the Asian continent. From these specimens, phylogenetic hypotheses have been constructed using 355 characters derived from an approximately 1100 bp 12S and 16S ribosomal mtDNA sequence for two distinct lineages (Bueraeria and Rhacophorus) which have representatives inhabiting these areas of endemism. The two resulting phylogenies have been used: (1) to test whether the present distributional patterns of these frogs are the result of past vicariance events, and (2) to present an hypothesis of their historical biogeography. For example, both phylogenies indicate that some species from Taiwan are more closely related to species from Japan proper than to other species in the Ryukyu Archipelago, indicating a relationship that possibly preceded the formation and colonization of the Ryukyu Archipelago. This hypothesis has been analyzed along with the known geology of Japan, Taiwan, and the Ryukyu Archipelago to yield a general biogeographic hypothesis for this region which can be used to evaluate distributional patterns of other fauna and flora in Japan and Asia.Item Identity on the Move: The Creation of a German National Identity through Nineteenth Century German Tourism to Japan(2013-05) Harwood, Alexandria; Fallwell, Lynne A.; Adams, Gretchen A.; Pelley, PatriciaThis thesis examines the process of creating a German identity through nineteenth century tourism to Japan. The production and the subsequent maintenance of a national identity within the context of a nation state is something that can be relatively uniformed. A nation’s population is exposed to the same national symbols and national rhetoric and therefore a degree of similarity is present in the ways in which people identify themselves on a national level. Traveling changes this process. The subjects of this paper Germans who traveled to Japan at the end of the nineteenth century. They did not travel together, and presumably did not know each other, but they all wrote and published travel narratives of their trip. Through the examination of these books it is evident that the process of creating an identity, be it national or individual, becomes more complex once a person steps outside of the borders of the nation state. I argue that travel narratives illuminate the complexities and clarify the ways in which Germans understood what it meant to be German during a time of uncertainty for their newly unified country.Item The influence of nationalism on Sino-Japanese relations(2010-12) Wilson, Lindsey Amber; Maclachlan, Patricia L.; Hurst, William J.This thesis examines the influence of domestic nationalist movements on bilateral relations between China and Japan. I will use Two-level game theory as the primary analytical framework. Two-level theory provides a useful lens for examining policy formation at discrete stages, domestic, international, and domestic again in order to ratify international agreements. I will examine three primary cases through this framework to study the effects of domestic nationalism on bilateral diplomacy between Japan and China. The East China Sea Dispute is the only actual territorial dispute between Japan and China. The Yasukuni Shrine controversy and the textbook controversy are both discrete elements of a larger dispute over war memory and guilt, as well as construction of historical narratives for political purpose. I will seek to show that domestic nationalism has a strong limiting effect on the ways in which China and Japan are able to interact with each other on the global stage, as leaders must retain their legitimacy against a backdrop of unresolved historical issues and domestic contention.Item Internet piracy in Japan : Lessig’s modalities of constraint and Japanese file sharing(2010-05) Field, Shirley Gene, 1985-; Cather, Kirsten; Oppenheim, RobertThe rise of new digital technologies and the Internet has given more people than ever before the ability to copy and share music and video. Even as Japan has adopted stronger copyright protections, the number of Japanese peer-to-peer file sharing network users has multiplied. Though the distribution of copyrighted material online has long been illegal and, as of 2010, the download of copyrighted material is now a criminal act, illegal file sharing continues apace, with the majority of people active on Japan’s most popular file sharing programs remaining unaffected by the new legislation. Clearly the law alone does not work to constrain file sharing behavior in Japan and, in fact, it is not the only way Japan strives to enforce copyright law on the Internet. What strategies are industries and government taking to curb illegal file sharing and are these strategies effective? How is unauthorized peer-to-peer file sharing cast into an act both immoral and worthy of criminal prosecution? Of particular interest are the evolution and growth of architectural and social constraints on online behavior alongside these legal constraints.Item Intersections of social networks and state policy : Brazilian migration to Japan and the United States(2006-08) Zell, Sarah E., 1980-; Skop, EmilyThis research provides a portrait of two Brazilian migration flows, comparing the socio-demographic composition of migrants in a legally regulated guest worker program, in migration from Maringá, Brazil to Japan, and a largely unauthorized flow, from Criciúma, Brazil to the United States. Describing selectivity and social dynamics over time in the two migration flows, the study ultimately shows that though social networks operating in each flow, among other factors, allow for the diversification of migrant composition over time, destination country policies, as intervening obstacles, also play a part in influencing migrant composition. State policies influence the shape, intensity, and direction of migratory movements. Thus, the thesis critiques social network theory and the transnational approach to international migration by emphasizing the importance of the state as an actor in organizing and even inducing migration flows.Item Japan - the lasting effects of the Asian crisis(Texas Tech University, 2005-05) Fallin, Michael James; Rahnama, Masha; McComb, Robert P.In the 1980’s Japan was the second largest economy in the world that was experiencing growth and gains in assets that were greater than that of the U.S. However the recession that occurred in the late 1980s, along with the large impact felt by the Asian Crisis, Japan currently remains financially unstable. Monetary and fiscal policies that have been used to combat the problem remain unsuccessful as the economy continues to stagnate. Could this be due to inadequate policy, or is something else causing the economy to lag in the worlds longest recession? This thesis covers and explores the different factors that have effected this economy from a governmental, monetary, economic, and sociological standpoint in an effort to explain why Japan’s economy has still not recovered.Item Japan - the lasting effects of the Asian crisis(2005-08) Fallin, Michael James; Rahnama, Masha; McComb, Robert P.In the 1980’s Japan was the second largest economy in the world that was experiencing growth and gains in assets that were greater than that of the U.S. However the recession that occurred in the late 1980s, along with the large impact felt by the Asian Crisis, Japan currently remains financially unstable. Monetary and fiscal policies that have been used to combat the problem remain unsuccessful as the economy continues to stagnate. Could this be due to inadequate policy, or is something else causing the economy to lag in the worlds longest recession? This thesis covers and explores the different factors that have effected this economy from a governmental, monetary, economic, and sociological standpoint in an effort to explain why Japan’s economy has still not recovered.