Japan Viewed from Interdisciplinary Perspectives

The growth rate of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the Asia-Pacific region greatly surpasses the world average. When the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is better realized, then the world's largest free trade zone will be firmly established. It seems that this region has a very rosy outlook indeed; however, this region also faces a large number of serious problems such as: atomic energy in Japan, conflicts about East Asian regional integration, the decline of the Japanese Official Development Assistance (ODA), and the TPP's possible impact on the Japanese universal health insurance system. We now face a possible Sino-Japanese military conflict concerning the Senkaku Islands (or Diaoyutai Islands). In short, the Asia-Pacific region has both a rosy future and the potential influence from unstable and dangerous elements at work within the region at present. The main purpose of this book is to analyze historical development, whilst looking at the contemporary situation of Japan from interdisciplinary perspectives. This book asks three major questions: (1) Is this really globalization? (2) What are Japan's relations with other Asian countries? (3) Do U.S.-Japan relations still matter?
Fourteen leading scholars in their fields answer these questions from interdisciplinary perspectives.

Yoneyuki Sugita is professor of history at Osaka University.

Part I: Is This Really Globalization?
Chapter 1: Borders of 'American Citizens' Created in a More Globalized World: The Significance of the Transpacific Steamship Route for Asian Immigration to the Unites States in the Late 19th Century, Yuki Ooi
Chapter 2: Symbiotic Relationship between Japan's Status in the World and Changes in the Nature of Medical Insurances from the 1920s to the Early 1940s, Yoneyuki Sugita
Chapter 3: Japanese Identity in a Globalized World: "Anti-Japanism" and Discursive Struggle, Karl Gustafsson
Chapter 4: From "Funeral" to "Engaged" Buddhism: Death Rites and Postwar Japanese Social Identity, Steven Heine
Chapter 5: The Obama 'Pivot' to Asia in the Context of American Hegemony, Bruce Cumings
Part II: Whither Japan's Relations with Asia?
Chapter 6: The Young East: Negotiating Japan's place in the world through East Asian Buddhism, Judith Snodgrass
Chapter 7: Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and Japan: Dispute Settlement and Trade Security, John Paden
Chapter 8: Popular Culture Regionalization in East Asia and What this Means to Japan, Nissim Otmazgin
Chapter 9: Myanmar: the Last Frontier for Japanese Official Development Assistance (ODA) to Southeast Asia, Marie Söderberg
Chapter 10: Recalibrating Sino-Japanese Relations for a Better Future:
Implications of Japan's Joint Anti-Piracy Operations in the Gulf of Aden with China, Victor Teo
Part III: Do U.S.-Japan Relations Still Matter?
Chapter 11: The Unforeseen Effects of the American Intervention: The Political Purge Program and the Making of Japan's Postwar Leadership, Juha Saunavaara
Chapter 12: A Comparative Analysis of the Relationship between Learning Environments and Educational Performance in Japan and the United States, Christopher Weiss, Emma García, and Gerard Torrats-Espinosa
Chapter 13: Privatizing Foreign Policy: The Role of Business Executives in U.S.-Japan Economic Relations, Toru Oga
Chapter 14: Abolition of Japan's Nuclear Power Plants? Analysis from a Historical Perspective on Early Cold War, 1945-1955, Mayako Shimahoto