New Voices Volume 2: a Journal for Emerging Scholars of Japanese Studies in Australia
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New Voices Volume 2: A Journal for Emerging Scholars of Japanese Studies in Australia The Japan Foundation, Sydney New Voices Volume 2: A Journal for Emerging Scholars of Japanese Studies in Australia New Voices Volume 2 is available for download from the New Voices website: http://www.jpf.org.au/newvoices December 2008 © Copyright The Japan Foundation, Sydney, 2008 All material in New Voices is copyright. Copyright of each piece belongs to the author. Copyright of the collection belongs to the editors. Apart from any fair use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced without the prior permission of the author or editors. The Japan Foundation, Sydney Shop 23, Level 1 Chifley Plaza 2 Chifley Square SYDNEY NSW 2000 Tel. (02) 8239 0055 Fax. (02) 9222 2168 www.jpf.org.au Editorial Advisory Board: Professor Kent Anderson, Australian National University Dr Tomoko Aoyama, University of Queensland Professor William Coaldrake, University of Melbourne Dr Misuzu Hanihara-Chow, Macquarie University Professor Purnendra Jain, University of Adelaide Ms Tomoko Koyama, Macquarie University Professor Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Australian National University Associate Professor Alison Tokita, Monash University Editor, Volume 2 Dr Matthew Stavros, University of Sydney Series Editors Wakao Koike, Acting Director, The Japan Foundation, Sydney Susan Wake, Program Coordinator, The Japan Foundation, Sydney The views expressed in this journal are those of the authors, and do not necessarily coincide with those of the editors or members of the Editorial Advisory Board. Japanese names are written surname first, except where the person concerned has adopted Anglo-European conventions. The long vowel sound in Japanese is indicated by a macron (e.g. kōtsū), unless in common use without (e.g. Tokyo). ISSN: 1833-5233 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.21159/nv.02 Printed in Australia by Gotham. Cover Design by Warren Liang. © Copyright The Japan Foundation, Sydney, 2008 Foreword This is the second issue ofNew Voices, showcasing the work of recent honours graduates who completed their research at Australian Universities from 2005 –2007. New Voices was launched in December 2006 with the aim of supporting early career researchers and postgraduate students in Japanese studies to share their research interests with as wide an audience as possible. We are delighted with the support and enthusiasm that New Voices has received, and for this second issue we are pleased to present 11 articles of outstanding quality and diverse areas of research. I hope that New Voices will contribute to encouraging emerging Japanese studies scholars to continue their research and interest in Japan, while also giving general readers access to the wide breadth and high quality of Japanese studies in Australian universities. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the following people for their assistance on this issue of New Voices: our Guest Editor, Dr Matthew Stavros for his invaluable support and advice throughout the entire publication process; members of the editorial advisory board, for kindly offering their time and expertise to review the articles; Susan Wake for editorial assistance; and finally the 11 contributors and their supervisors without whose interest and enthusiasm this project would not have been possible. Wakao Koike Acting Director, The Japan Foundation, Sydney iii Contents Foreword iii Wakao Koike Introduction vi Matthew Stavros Gendered Language in Recent Short Stories by Japanese Women, and English 1 Translation Lucy Fraser Transcultural Flow of Demure Aesthetics: Examining Cultural Globalisation 21 through Gothic & Lolita Fashion Masafumi Monden Representations of the Japanese in Contemporary Australian Literature 41 and Film Erika K. Smith Symbols of State Ideology: The Samurai in Modern Japan 63 Lisa Narroway Understanding Samurai Disloyalty 80 Joshua Archer Beyond Silence: Giving Voice to Kure Mothers of Japanese-Australian Children 103 Kathleen Cusack Who Are the Ianfu (Comfort Women)? 128 Kirsten Orreill iv The Replication and Excess of Disciplinary Power in Sekigun and 153 Aum Shinrikyo - A Foucaultian Approach Philip N. Eate The Rise and Decline of Japanese Pacifism 179 Yuan Cai After theAinu Shinpō: The United Nations and the Indigenous People of Japan 201 Crystal Porter An Investigation of L1 Influence on Japanese and Chinese Native Speakers' 220 Use of English Tense Forms Rose-Ellen Kesselly Notes on Contributors 249 v Preface to the second volume of New Voices This issue ofNew Voices is a monument to the strength, diversity, and maturity of undergraduate Japanese Studies in Australia. The complexity and profundity of the topics tackled by the authors of the essays published here testify to a degree of sophistication that is commendable for any scholar but especially so for undergraduates. The quality of the research and methods used are outstanding, and the level of stylistic refinement and execution is inspiring. Nothing should detract from the individual achievements of the authors featured here. Nevertheless, it should be mentioned that their work is the product of a nation-wide curriculum on Japan that, in terms of its enrollment and teaching numbers, range of instruction, and strength in language training is unparalleled in the English-speaking world. In fact, Australia has the world’s largest per- capita population of Japanese language learners and in terms of sheer numbers, it is only third behind China and Korea. In a country with a population smaller than California, there are over 1,500 primary and secondary schools teaching Japanese language and 56 universities or colleges that maintain comprehensive Japanese Studies programs. Together, these institutions employ almost 3,000 instructors and scholars who teach and conduct research on Japanese language, literature, linguistics, history, culture, society, and politics. Therefore, while the authors of the essays published here are deserving of commendation in their own right, certain praise is also due the army of teachers, the steady stream of generous funding, and the wealth of library resources that has made their studies possible and Japanese Studies in Australia so strong. The ‘new voices’ heard in this issue belong to recent honours graduates who met certain core criteria. First, they all successfully completed an honours program at an Australian university in the past four years and earned top marks on their research theses. Their academic supervisors nominated their work for publication and each engaged in the sometimes heart-rending task of drastically shortening their manuscripts to fit the new format. Finally, each of the essays was blindly reviewed by at least two academics who generously offered input and approved them for publication. This process ensured the highest standards but, inadvertently, excluded the work of some potential candidates. To be sure, there are more than a few recent outstanding Australian honours graduates whose theses became the core of doctoral projects, a challenging endeavor that, no doubt, prevented them from contributing to this collection. Others had their original theses published in academic journals, a great achievement that excluded them from this issue. More still secured jobs upon graduation that made them either too busy or too distant from the field to revisit their honours theses at this time. I mention this here merely to make the point that these eleven essays by no means account for the total body of outstanding honours theses completed over the past several years. Nevertheless, vi I do believe that they are a strong and loyal representation of the remarkable level of quality, diversity, and intellectual achievement typical of recent honours-level research in Australia. There seems to be discrete and identifiable zeitgeist that motivates the interests of each generation of students who choose to study Japan. During the 1950s and 60s, across North America, Europe, and here in Australia, many were enamored by an exoticised and idealised vision of that country as the home of Zen, haiku poetry, Cold War pacifism, and other obsessions of the youth progressive movement of that volatile period. My own generation, those of us who ‘discovered’ Japan in the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s, were largely attracted to the country’s extraordinary economic rise. Today, almost without exception, students take to Japan by way of their ubiquitous, voluminous, and all-engrossing consumption of manga, anime, and other forms of Japanese popular culture. And the result is astounding: Academic interest in Japan, at least in Australia, has never been higher. Moreover, perhaps because students grow up immersed in Japanese popular culture, there seems to be a sense of urgency and obsessiveness in their desire to know the country. Despite these initial impulses, it is striking that recent advanced undergraduate research remains largely conservative. Only one essay in this collection, for example, deals with popular culture. The rest treat more conventional themes and deploy orthodox disciplinary methods. And I find the same general trend among my own advanced undergraduates. But this rift between personal fascination and academic curiosity is hardly new. My own mentors, students of the sixties, went to Japan to meditate. They came home as historians. The would-be bankers of the 1980s moved to Tokyo to get rich. Many came home to take up jobs, usually with significantly less pay, teaching on the Japanese economic miracle (and eventually, its discontents).