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JAPAN STUDIES REVIEW Volume Nineteen 2015 Interdisciplinary Studies of Modern Japan Steven Heine Editor Editorial Board John A. Tucker, East Carolina University Yumiko Hulvey, University of Florida Matthew Marr, Florida International University Ann Wehmeyer, University of Florida Hitomi Yoshio, Florida International University Copy and Production María Sol Echarren Rebecca Richko Ian Verhine Kimberly Zwez JAPAN STUDIES REVIEW VOLUME NINETEEN 2015 A publication of Florida International University and the Southern Japan Seminar CONTENTS Editor’s Introduction i Re: Subscriptions, Submissions, and Comments ii ARTICLES Going Postal: Empire Building through Miniature Messages on German and Japanese Stamps Fabian Bauwens 3 Old, New, Borrowed, and Blue: Hiroshi Senju’s Waterfall Paintings as Intersections of Innovation Peter L. Doebler 37 Delightfully Sauced: Wine Manga and the Japanese Sommelier’s Rise to the Top of the French Wine World Jason Christopher Jones 55 “Fairness” and Japanese Government Subsidies for Sickness Insurances Yoneyuki Sugita 85 ESSAYS A “Brief Era of Experimentation”: How the Early Meiji Political Debates Shaped Japanese Political Terminology Bradly Hammond 117 The Night Crane: Nun Abutsu’s Yoru No Tsuru Introduced, Translated, and Annotated Eric Esteban 135 BOOK REVIEWS Scream from the Shadows: The Women’s Liberation Movement in Japan By Setsu Shigematsu Reviewed by Julia C. Bullock 169 Critical Buddhism: Engaging with Modern Japanese Buddhist Thought By James Mark Shields Reviewed by Steven Heine 172 Banzai Babe Ruth: Baseball, Espionage, & Assassination During the 1934 Tour of Japan By Robert K. Fitts Reviewed by Daniel A. Métraux 175 Supreme Commander: MacArther’s Triumph in Japan By Seymour Morris Reviewed by Daniel A. Métraux 177 CONTRIBUTORS/EDITORS i EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION Welcome to the nineteenth volume of the Japan Studies Review (JSR), an annual peer-reviewed journal sponsored by the Asian Studies Program at Florida International University Seminar. JSR remains an outlet for publications related to Southern Japan Seminar events that encourages submissions from a wide range of scholars in the field. In “Going Postal: Empire Building through Miniature Messages on German and Japanese Stamps,” Fabian Bauwens offers an comparison of Japanese and German depictions of political space displayed on postage stamps past World War II. Next, Peter L. Doebler provides a comparison of paintings by the modern Japanese artist Hiroshi Senju and the transitions from tradition to innovation in relation to art history in “Old, New, Borrowed, and Blue: Hiroshi Senju’s Waterfall Paintings as Intersections of Innovation.” Jason Jones’s “Delightfully Sauced: Wine Manga and the Japanese Sommelier’s Rise to the Top of the French Wine World” offers a cultural and socioeconomic study of Joh Araki’s works on wine manga and how the sommelier functions as a cultural steward that parallels the wine boom in Japan. Yoneyuki Sugita’s “‘Fairness’ and Japanese Government Subsidies for Sickness Insurances” examines the disputes subsidies regarding the Japanese sickness insurance from the first Health Insurance law enacted in 1922 to the Advisory Council Recommendation in 1950. There are two essays in this issue. Bradly Hammond carefully examines specific Japanese political terminology that emerged during the early Meiji period, highlighting how these terms became standardized amidst the political debates of the 1870s and 1880s. Eric Esteban provides a detailed explanation and annotated translation with a historical and literary outlook of Nun Abutsu’s epistolary work, Yoru no tsuru (The Night Crane), a poetic treatise (karon) in a genre largely dominated by men. For book reviews, Julia C. Bullock comments the radical feminist movement in Japan during the 1960s through the study of ūman ribu as explained in the book Scream from the Shadows: The Women’s Liberation Movement in Japan by Setsu Shigematsu. Steven Heine reviews the ideals as well as the global impact of an approach termed Critical Buddhism within a philosophical and sociopolitical standpoint, as described by James Mark Shields in Critical Buddhism: Engaging with Modern Japanese Buddhist Thought. Daniel A. Métraux reviews Robert K. Fitts’s Banzai Babe Ruth: Baseball, Espionage, & Assassination During the 1934 Tour of Japan to explore the perspective of baseball as “soft-power diplomacy” and the history of this American sport during the 1930s. The final review by Métraux examines the life of General Douglas MacArthur as one of the most controversial characters in American history as described in Seymour Morris’s book, Supreme Commander: MacArthur’s Triumph in Japan. ii This year’s Japan Studies Review is supported by the Japan Foundation Institutional Support Grant for a collaborative project called The South Florida Partnership in Japanese Studies (SFPJS) Housed at Florida International University. FIU Asian Studies Program greatly appreciates their contribution. Re: Submissions, Subscriptions, and Comments Submissions for publication, whether articles, essays, translations or book reviews, should be made in electronic formats, preferably Word for Windows via email attachment (please inquire about other formats). The editor and members of the editorial board will referee all submissions. Annual subscriptions are $35.00 (US). Please send a check or money order payable to Florida International University to: c/o Steven Heine, Professor of Religious Studies and History Director of the Asian Studies Program Florida International University Modesto A. Maidique Campus, SIPA 505 Miami, FL 33199 Professor Heine’s office number is 305-348-1914. Submissions for publication should be sent to [email protected]. Visit our website at http://asian.fiu.edu/jsr. PDF versions of past volumes are available online. All comments and feedback on the publications appearing in Japan Studies Review are welcome. ISSN: 1550-0713 Articles GOING POSTAL: EMPIRE BUILDING THROUGH MINIATURE MESSAGES ON GERMAN AND JAPANESE STAMPS Fabian Bauwens Johns Hopkins University Overview Starting in the late nineteenth century postage stamps increasingly served as a business card of the state internally and externally. The Japanese and German idea of their respective political space thus was expressed through the mundane medium of postal stamps. As with other territorial currencies, images on postal stamps help shape the image of the nation to its people and the public abroad. Despite a striking number of similarities between Germany and Japan in its nation-building and consolidation process, the story their respective state building elites propagate through postal stamps is very different. The comparison of German and Japanese postal depictions of political space serves as an argument that governing elites engineer the image of the nation internally and externally through the proliferation of miniature message on banal objects, such as stamps. Furthermore, this comparison serves to illustrate how Anderson’s “official nationalism” via said objects can distort historical fact in favor of nationalist fiction through the propagation of one image of the nation’s political space. This paper builds on Jack Child’s work on political significance of stamps, literature on the visual depiction of political space, and Eric Helleiner’s work on territorial currencies.1 Postage stamps are mundane micro-historical artifacts that rapidly went beyond their primary purpose of mailing. Through repetition and widespread use, they serve to frame perceptions of the nation, its symbols and policies domestically and abroad. For the purpose of this paper, postage stamps are approached as primary sources. For both countries the period examined will be extended past 1 Jack Child, Miniature Messages: The Semiotics and Politics of Latin American Postage Stamps (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009); Eric Helleiner, The Making of National Money: Territorial Currencies in Historical Perspective (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009). 4 FABIAN BAUWENS WWII to point out some interesting continuities and differences despite the end of imperial ambitions in 1945. Introduction This article is based on the following three assumptions: Stamps can be approached as primary source materials for research on state and elite sanctioned “official” nationalism; stamps are also considered as modern territorial currencies; and they are to be viewed as examples of what Michael Billig termed “banal nationalism.”2 Banal nationalism compared to nationalism proposes “…to cover the ideological habits which enable the established nations of the West to be reproduced. It is argued that these habits are not removed from everyday life, as some observers have supposed. Daily, the nation is indicated, or ‘flagged,’ in the lives of the citizenry. Nationalism, far from being an intermittent mood in established nations, is the endemic condition.”3 Jan Penrose connects the term to the emission of banknotes and stamps by national governments as examples of banal nationalism: When members of nation states use this money, [Penrose refers here to previous study on currency but adds stamps later] they help reify their imagined community by trusting the value of ‘their’ money and by identifying with the images of the nation-state that it promotes… Similarly, when people use ‘foreign’ currencies, differences and boundaries between nation-states are marked and reified at the same time as the legitimacy of specific states and the global system of nation-states is subtly reinforced.