Reflections on the Remaking of the Imperial Image in the Reiwa Era and Japanese Democracy

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 Reflections on the Remaking of the Imperial Image in the Reiwa Era and Japanese Democracy

Medoruma Shun, Watanabe Osamu, Kihara Satoru and Satoko Oka Norimatsu



We introduce Medoruma Shun, an Akutagawa-Award winning Okinawan author, Watanabe Osamu, a constitutional scholar in Tokyo, Kihara Satoru, a freelance journalist in Fukuyama, Hiroshima, and Satoko Oka Norimatsu, an Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus editor as rare voices of dissent over the media hype concerning the changeover of the Japanese emperor and adoption of the new era name Reiwa.



Read the translated articles → https://apjjf.org/2019/17/Medoruma_Watanabe_Kihara_Norimatsu.html



Reflections on the Remaking of the Imperial Image in the Reiwa Era and Japanese Democracy | The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus



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Reflections on the Remaking of the Imperial Image in the Reiwa Era and Japanese Democracy | The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus

With tensions between the US and China at fever pitch in the era of Donald Trump, with mounting conflict between the US and Korea, between China and the nations of the South China Sea, and between Okinawa and the US-Japan, APJ is a vital resource. The media has treated the primary conflicts as econo...



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Author

The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus

Kihara Satoru, born in Hiroshima in 1953, is a freelance writer. He was a staff writer for the Japan Communist Party's newspaper Shimbun Akahata, an evening paper, and a local newspaper. He lives in Fukuyama City, Hiroshima.

Medoruma Shun is a novelist and critic living in Nago City, Okinawa. Born in Okinawa, he graduated from the University of the Ryukyus. Medoruma is a novelist and a vocal and piercing critic of Japanese neo-nationalism, local pork-barrel politics, and the US military presence in Okinawa, particularly the plan to build a new marine airbase off the coast of Henoko in Nago City, where he resides. His story “Droplets” (Suiteki), for which he received Japan's Akutagawa Prize, is available in Michael Molasky's translation in Michael Molasky and Steve Rabson, eds., Southern Exposure: Modern Japanese Literature From Okinawa. In recent years, Okinawan peace activists have fought the attempted relocation of Futenma Marine Air Station to the relatively pristine coral reef off Henoko, demanding instead a reduction in bases on Okinawa

Satoko Oka Norimatsu is Director of the Peace Philosophy Centre, a peace-education organization in Vancouver, Canada, with a widely-read Japanese-English blog on topics such as peace and justice, war memory and education in East Asia, US-Japan relations, US military bases in Okinawa, nuclear issues, and media criticism. (View English-language posts only here.) She is co-author with Gavan McCormack of Resistant Islands: Okinawa Confronts Japan and the United States (Rowman & Littlefield, 2012; an updated paperback version will be published in the spring of 2018). The Japanese translation is 『沖縄の〈怒 〉－日米への抵抗』（法律文化社, 2013, the Korean translation is 저항하는 섬, 오끼나와: 미국과 일본에 맞선 70년간의 기록（창비, 2014）and the Chinese translation is 沖縄之怒　美国同盟下的抗争　（社会科学文献出版社, 2015）. She is also co-author with Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick of 『よし、戦争につい て話そう。戦争の本質について話をしようじゃないか！(Let's Talk About War. Let's Talk about What War Really Is!)』（金曜日, 2014）. She is editor, author, and translator of 『正義への責任　世界から沖縄へ(Responsibility for Justice – From the World to Okinawa) Vol 1,2,3』 (Ryukyu Shimpo, 2015, 2016, 2017). She is an Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus editor.

Watanabe Osamu is Professor Emeritus at Hitotsubashi University. His areas of expertise include political science and the Constitution.

Steve Rabson is Professor Emeritus of East Asian Studies, Brown University, and a contributing editor to the Asia-Pacific Journal. He is the author of Righteous Cause or Tragic Folly: Changing View of War in Modern Japanese Poetry (Center For Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 1998) and The Okinawan Diaspora in Japan: Crossing the Borders Within (University of Hawaii Press, 2012). He was stationed as a U.S. Army draftee at a nuclear weapons storage base in Henoko, Okinawa, 1967-68.

Lawrence Repeta is a former professor of law at Meiji University in Japan, an Asia-Pacific Journal contributing editor, and a director of Information Access Japan Clearinghouse. He is author of “Limiting Fundamental Rights Protection in Japan – the Role of the Supreme Court,” in Critical Issues in Contemporary Japan, edited by Jeff Kingston (Routledge, 2014), “Reserved Seats on Japan’s Supreme Court,” (Washington University Law Review, 2011) and other writings on Japan’s constitution and legal system.