Project MUSE®: Review of Japanese Culture and Society - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/604
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Review of Japanese Culture and Society.daily12026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 24 (Dec. 2012) through current issueLatest Articles: Review of Japanese Culture and SocietyTWOProject MUSE®Review of Japanese Culture and Society2329-97700913-4700Latest articles in Review of Japanese Culture and Society. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Empires in Motion, Cultures of Crossing: Creative Production in Japan's Colonial, Postcolonial, and Diasporic Space
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978196
<p></p>
Across the twentieth century, empires and their creation, disintegration and reorganization functioned as engines of change and movement, driving global forces of expansion and migration, stimulating the generation of new identities and narratives, and inspiring new forms of cultural expression. Japan represents one key node of movements and crossings in the Asia-Pacific: a point of departure for outbound Japanese/Okinawan diasporas, and a destination, provisional or permanent, for Zainichi Korean and other minority communities. In addition to its geographical locality, Japan is also a symbolic site of cultural affiliation and aspiration, shaping experiences and molding identities in diasporic communities around
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978208">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/604/image/coversmallEmpires in Motion, Cultures of Crossing: Creative Production in Japan's Colonial, Postcolonial, and Diasporic Space2025-12-18text/htmlen-USEmpires in Motion, Cultures of Crossing: Creative Production in Japan's Colonial, Postcolonial, and Diasporic Space2025-12-182025TWOProject MUSE®167022026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-18Empire, Design, and the Modern Lifestyle: Japanese Department Stores and the Colonial Identity
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978197
<p></p>
In the early twentieth century, Japanese department stores grappled with basic issues surrounding emerging modernity. What did modern life look like, and how could the idea of a modern lifestyle be conveyed? Department stores utilized branding and design in tandem with the developing mediascape and reprographic technologies of the time to visualize and concretely embed what a modern lifestyle–and thus the modern subject–looked like in the minds of the Japanese public, bolstering the public's imagination and fascination.1 Visualizing this new lifestyle was enabled by the social spaces that the department store provided, a place where consumers could acquire a new social identity. At times this new "identity" was
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978208">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/604/image/coversmallEmpire, Design, and the Modern Lifestyle: Japanese Department Stores and the Colonial Identity2025-12-18text/htmlen-USEmpire, Design, and the Modern Lifestyle: Japanese Department Stores and the Colonial Identity2025-12-182025TWOProject MUSE®1146802026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-18Painting World Powers Across the Transwar Period: Okada Kenzō and Kawabata Minoru Under the Japanese Empire and Pax Americana
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978198
<p></p>
The painters Okada Kenzō (1902–82) and Kawabata Minoru (1911–2001) spent their lives under two entirely different modes of world power: the Japanese Empire prior to and during World War Two, and afterwards, the United States hegemony that expanded its economic, political, and military power into Asia under Pax Americana during the Cold War.1 Despite the rise and fall of world powers in the Asian-Pacific-American region throughout the twentieth century, Okada and Kawabata established themselves as painters by repeatedly changing their locations, identities, and painting styles. By situating Okada's and Kawabata's practices in a transwar historical and socio-political context, this essay argues that their art and
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978208">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/604/image/coversmallPainting World Powers Across the Transwar Period: Okada Kenzō and Kawabata Minoru Under the Japanese Empire and Pax Americana2025-12-18text/htmlen-USPainting World Powers Across the Transwar Period: Okada Kenzō and Kawabata Minoru Under the Japanese Empire and Pax Americana2025-12-182025TWOProject MUSE®1673462026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-18War Picture Postcards: Depicting Children as Vehicles of Pan-Asian Ideology
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978199
<p></p>
While the semiotics of the Japanese Empire and related nationalism has been widely studied, the visual vernacular of colonial-era Japan's ideology of Pan-Asianism (Ajiashugi), significant to the nation's imperial ambitions in the first half of the twentieth century, has been less rigorously examined across the disciplines. The significant work of scholars such as Asato Ikeda, Kawamura Kunimitsu, and Maki Kaneko have formed a critical framework for research in Japanese wartime visual culture and nationalist propaganda, including the glorification of wartime sacrifice and demonization of Western powers, yet, paradoxically, Japan's imperialist Pan-Asianism can also be observed in more subdued, peaceful, and
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978208">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/604/image/coversmallWar Picture Postcards: Depicting Children as Vehicles of Pan-Asian Ideology2025-12-18text/htmlen-USWar Picture Postcards: Depicting Children as Vehicles of Pan-Asian Ideology2025-12-182025TWOProject MUSE®596612026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-18Fool's Play: Post-Colonial Performance Art of The Fourth Group
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978200
<p></p>
What can I say in a situation where there is no freedom of expression? Let's just do it.1In the 1960s and 1970s, South Korean performance art collectives emerged independent of the established Korean art scene as news of foreign groups such as Situationist International, Gutai, and Fluxus entered the country through imported American and Japanese art magazines. Within the past decade, Korean performance art of this period has rapidly gained attention outside of Korea through major exhibitions and the proliferation of English publications.2 Today, although Korean performance artists are widely celebrated, it is striking to remember that many once risked incarceration for their art.3 The Fourth Group (Che-sa chiptan;
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978208">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/604/image/coversmallFool's Play: Post-Colonial Performance Art of The Fourth Group2025-12-18text/htmlen-USFool's Play: Post-Colonial Performance Art of The Fourth Group2025-12-182025TWOProject MUSE®1397302026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-18Vipers and Workers Cross the Korea Strait: Mobile Theater at the Chikuhō Botayama
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978201
<p></p>
Coal was the fuel by which Japan pushed its campaign of colonial aggression outward and launched the nation into a state of total war between 1930 and 1945. Coal also catalyzed reconstruction and economic growth after 1945 but was quickly displaced by oil starting in the late 1950s, as part of a national "rationalization plan." Chikuhō, a former coal mining region in Kyūshū, Japan, is a historical site related to both of these stages of coal-driven expansion and a point of immigration for forced labor from Korea during Japan's colonial rule (1910-45). In this essay, I analyze documents and witness accounts related to two mobile theater interventions that took place in the politicized landscape of Chikuhō ten years
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978208">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/604/image/coversmallVipers and Workers Cross the Korea Strait: Mobile Theater at the Chikuhō Botayama2025-12-18text/htmlen-USVipers and Workers Cross the Korea Strait: Mobile Theater at the Chikuhō Botayama2025-12-182025TWOProject MUSE®956712026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-18Miguel Chikaoka: A Japanese Brazilian Artist in the Light's Path
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978202
<p></p>
On a Saturday morning, under a jabuticaba tree in the backyard of a colonial-style house in an old neighborhood at the center of Belém, 72-year-old Nikkei photographer and art educator Miguel Chikaoka talked to me about stars. Not metaphorically or sentimentally, but in an objective, physical sense. Nonetheless, his words were filled with lyricism. The main materiality of stars is light. Through light, stars reach us humans located thousands of miles away. It is also through light that we can imagine traveling across the cosmos, to places far away not only in space but in time. Light can lead us to the past and propel us into the future. Light lies at the center of Chikaoka's life journey.The central inquiry in the
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978208">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/604/image/coversmallMiguel Chikaoka: A Japanese Brazilian Artist in the Light's Path2025-12-18text/htmlen-USMiguel Chikaoka: A Japanese Brazilian Artist in the Light's Path2025-12-182025TWOProject MUSE®424302026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-18Translation as "Suppuration"—Tsuchida Bakusen, Kim Soun, and Kajiyama Toshiyuki
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978203
<p></p>
This essay is in many ways emblematic of the many scholarly interests and approaches of its author. It examines questions central to translation studies, including fidelity, cultural mediation, and value-system conflict; colonial and postcolonial studies, especially Japanese–Korean cultural relations; modern Japanese and Korean literary and cinematic history; comparative poetics; French orientalist aesthetics and reverse orientalism; modernity and empire in East Asia; and broader issues of cultural representation, hybridity, and ideological critique within transnational contexts. It is, in short, quintessential Inaga Shigemi, and it was both a difficult challenge and a happy privilege to attempt its
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978208">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/604/image/coversmallTranslation as "Suppuration"—Tsuchida Bakusen, Kim Soun, and Kajiyama Toshiyuki2025-12-18text/htmlen-USTranslation as "Suppuration"—Tsuchida Bakusen, Kim Soun, and Kajiyama Toshiyuki2025-12-182025TWOProject MUSE®1352652026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-18A Sketch of Paradise (Tengoku no ryakuzu, 1936)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978204
<p></p>
Ishikawa Tatsuzō (1905-85) was one of Japan's most critically acclaimed twentieth-century writers. His literary career took off when his novella The Emigrants (Sōbō, 1934) won the inaugural Akutagawa Prize for Literature in 1935. Based in part on the experiences he previously recounted in his travelogue, Recent Travels in South America (Saikin Nanbei ōraiki, 1931), The Emigrants depicts the nationwide in-gathering of Japanese immigrants at the National Emigration Center in Kobe as they prepare for a new life in Brazil working as agricultural laborers, particularly on coffee plantations. In 1939, Ishikawa expanded the work into a three-chapter novel that also depicted transoceanic passage and the dispersal of the
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978208">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/604/image/coversmallA Sketch of Paradise (Tengoku no ryakuzu, 1936)2025-12-18text/htmlen-USA Sketch of Paradise (Tengoku no ryakuzu, 1936)2025-12-182025TWOProject MUSE®567342026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-18Homecoming (Kikyō, 1974)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978205
<p></p>
Arai Chisato was born in Japan on January 17, 1938 and grew up in the city of Iida in Nagano Prefecture. She married her husband Arai Hitoshi at age 23 and the two of them immigrated to Brazil together in 1961. During their first two years, they lived in the city of Maringá in the state of Paraná, before moving to the city of Sāo Paulo in 1963. Although Arai only had a high school education, she was a passionate writer who composed tanka, haiku, essays, and short stories throughout her life. She participated in poetry readings and also entered her work into literary competitions within the Japanese Brazilian community. Moreover, the chief editor of the Paurisuta shimbun (Paulista Newspaper) Tanaka Mitsuyoshi liked
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978208">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/604/image/coversmallHomecoming (Kikyō, 1974)2025-12-18text/htmlen-USHomecoming (Kikyō, 1974)2025-12-182025TWOProject MUSE®408162026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-18Cultivating Originality: An Interview with Calligrapher and Hip-Hop Dancer Kuniharu Yoshida
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978206
<p></p>
Calligraphy Performance at Japanese American National Museum, May 2025 (Earth Day and Delicious Little Tokyo) (photographer: Nhan Nguyen).Born into a family of calligraphers and trained under Master Kawakita Yoshiko in Japan, Kuniharu "Kuni" Yoshida (1984 –) is a Japanese calligrapher and hip-hop dancer based in Los Angeles, California.1After moving to the United States to further explore the realm of hip-hop dance, Yoshida decided to expand his studies and the teaching of calligraphy as a means of self-expression and discovery. Captivated by the community of Little Tokyo, calligraphy became a unifier of not only the Japanese American residents who were his students but also of his identity as an artist and dancer.
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978208">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/604/image/coversmallCultivating Originality: An Interview with Calligrapher and Hip-Hop Dancer Kuniharu Yoshida2025-12-18text/htmlen-USCultivating Originality: An Interview with Calligrapher and Hip-Hop Dancer Kuniharu Yoshida2025-12-182025TWOProject MUSE®202252026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-18Objects in Bloom: Reimagining the Still Life Artist Interview with Stephanie Shih
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978207
<p></p>
Emerging from the isolation of a global pandemic, Stephanie Shih's still life works—featuring culturally significant food items such as pineapple buns and kimchi rendered as floral compositions—offered a visually and emotionally resonant entry into the post-pandemic cultural landscape. These works, part of her exhibition Open Flowers Bear Fruit 開花結果 (University of Southern California Pacific Asia Museum, November 2022–March 2023), reflect both a nostalgic sensibility and a critical engagement with the material culture of the Asian diaspora in California, particularly within the context of Los Angeles.Working in photography and video, Shih reimagines the still life genre through an Asian American lens, situating
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978208">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/604/image/coversmallObjects in Bloom: Reimagining the Still Life Artist Interview with Stephanie Shih2025-12-18text/htmlen-USObjects in Bloom: Reimagining the Still Life Artist Interview with Stephanie Shih2025-12-182025TWOProject MUSE®342452026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-18On the Contributors
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978208
<p></p>
Guest EditorJohn D. Szostak is Associate Professor of Japanese art history and Acting Director of the John Young Museum of Art and University Galleries at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa. His primary research investigates the intersection of artistic identity, national heritage, and received cultural tradition in modern Japan, with special attention paid to the creative, technical, and ideological aspects of Nihonga painting of the Meiji, Taishō, and early Shōwa periods. He has also written essays and curated exhibitions on contemporary Japanese art and is a published translator. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington. (szostak@hawaii.edu)ContributorsStephanie M. Hohlios is Assistant Professor
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978208">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/604/image/coversmallOn the Contributors2025-12-18text/htmlen-USOn the Contributors2025-12-182025TWOProject MUSE®195642026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002025-12-18