Articles
VISUALIZING CULTURES
2013 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
POLITICAL PROTEST IN INTERWAR JAPAN
This digital history module introduces Japanese political graphics from the 1920s and 1930s selected from the remarkable collection of several thousand posters and handbills maintained by the Ohara Institute for Social Science Research at Hosei University in Tokyo. Focusing on leftwing political parties, labor-union and tenant-farmer organizations and protests, and proletarian social and cultural movements in general, the Ohara collection opens a window on the domestic conflict and turbulence that lay beneath the ultimate triumph of militarism and authoritarianism in Imperial Japan.
『大原社会問題研究所雑誌』
591号2008年2月号、10-14.
「大原社研アーカイブと社会史研究」
私のこの発表が大原社研の豊富な所蔵資料を宣伝することになり，ここにいる聴衆のどなたかが 実際に研究所を訪問する機会になればと思います。今日ここにいる他のパネリストの方々は，研究 所の資料に関する詳細な知識にもとづき，一生をかけて追求する意義がある研究テーマを示される でしょう。私にそれほど意義のあるテーマを示せるかは自信がありませんが，文化史の立場から可 能な大原社研所蔵資料へのいくつかのアプローチについて話したいと思います。
CRITICAL ASIAN STUDIES
March 2007, (39:1), 3-34.
THE EROTIC AND THE VULGAR: VISUAL CULTURE AND ORGANIZED LABOR’S CRITIQUE OF US HEGEMONY IN OCCUPIED JAPAN
This essay engages the colonial legacy of postwar Japan by arguing that the political cartoons produced as part of the postwar Japanese labor movement's critique of U.S. cultural hegemony illustrate how gendered discourses underpinned, and sometimes undermined, the ideologies formally represented by visual artists and the organizations that funded them. A significant component of organized labor's propaganda rested on a corpus of visual media that depicted women as icons of Japanese national culture. Japan's most militant labor unions were propagating anti-imperialist discourses that invoked an engendered/endangered nation that accentuated the importance of union roles for men by subordinating, then eliminating, union roles for women.
THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN-EAST ASIAN RELATIONS
Fall-Winter 2003 (12:3-4), 207-224.
LABOR’S COLD WARRIORS: THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR AND ‘FREE TRADE UNIONISM’ IN COLDWAR JAPAN
During the 1950s, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) led a global covert attempt to suppress left-led labor movements in Western Europe, the Mediterranean, West Africa, Central and South America, and East Asia. American union leaders argued that to survive the Cold War, they had to demonstrate to the United States government that organized labor was not part-and-parcel with Soviet communism. The AFL’s global mission was placed in care of Jay Lovestone, a founding member of the American Communist Party in 1921 and survivor of decades of splits and internecine battles over allegiance to one faction or another in Soviet politics before turning anti-Communist and developing a secret relation with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) after World War II. Lovestone’s idea was that the AFL could prove its loyalty by helping to root out Communists from what he perceived to be a global labor movement dominated by the Soviet Union. He was the CIA’s favorite Communist turned anti-Communist.
Book Chapters
“Writing for Publication: Eight Helpful Hints.” In Kottmann, Nora and Cornelia Reiher, (eds). Studying Japan: Handbook of Research Designs, Fieldwork and Method. Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft. 2021.
“The Emergence of Trade Unions in Modern Japan.” In: Saaler, Sven and Szpilman, Christopher, (eds). Routledge Handbook of Modern Japanese History. London and New York: Routledge. 2017.
“Manufacturing History as Social Responsibility.” In: Gerteis and George (eds.). Japan since 1945: from Postwar to Post-Bubble. London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney: Bloomsbury, 223-241. 2013.
Co-author (with Timothy S. George). “Revisiting the History of Postwar Japan.” In: Gerteis and George (eds.). Japan since 1945: from Postwar to Post-Bubble. London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney: Bloomsbury, 1-9, 67-68, 141-143, 205-207. 2013.
「衰退してゆく労働組合員一戦後労働運動における階級とジェンダー」In: 長野ひろ子(中央大学教授)監訳、『日本人の「男らしさ」ーサムライからオタクまで、「男性性」の変遷を追う』、東京: 明石書店、2013, 130-149. 2013.
“The Nexus of Economic and Social Change in Modern Japan.” In: Gerteis (ed.). Critical Readings on the History of Industrialization in Modern Japan. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 1-15. 2013.
“Losing the Union Man: Class and Gender in the Postwar Japanese Labor Movement.” In: Sabine Frühstück and Anne Walthall. (eds.). Recreating Japanese Men, University of California Press, 135-153. 2011.
“Subjectivity Lost: Labor and the Cold War in Occupied Japan.” In: Shelton Stromquist. (ed.). Labor’s Cold War: Local Politics in a Global Context. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 258-290. 2008.
Review Essays
“Review Essay and Selected Bibliography on Labor in Japan.” In: a special issue on ‘Labor in Japan’ in Labor History, May 2008, (49:2), 253-55.
“Religious Terrorism and Popular Culture: The Uses and Abuses of Aum Shinrikyō,” Journal of Religion and Society, 10 (2008).
Encyclopedia Entries
“Labor Unions: Japan.” In: Peter N. Stearns, et al, eds. Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World, (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 406-407.
“Labor and the Labor Movement: Labor Relations in Japan.” In: Peter N. Stearns, et al, eds. Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World, (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 383-385.
Book Reviews
Coed Revolution: The Female Student in the Japanese New Left. By Chelsea Szendi Schieder. Duke University Press, 2021. Journal of Japanese History, Winter 2023 (49:1): 205-210.
The Limits of Okinawa: Japanese Capitalism, Living Labor, and Theorizations of Community. (Asia-Pacific: Culture, Politics, and Society.) By Wendy Matsumura. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2015. American Historical Review, April 2017 (122:2): 507-508.
The People’s Post Office: The History and Politics of the Japanese Postal System, 1871-2010. By Patricia L MacLachlan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2012, in the American Historical Review, December 2012 (117:4): 1569-1570.
The Proletarian Gamble: Korean Workers in Interwar Japan. By Ken C. Kawashima. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009, in the American Historical Review, December 2010, (115: 4): 1462-1463.
Women’s History and Local Community in Postwar Japan. By Curtis Anderson Gayle. New York and London: Routledge, 2009, in the Social Science Japan Journal, Autumn 2010, (13:2): 80-82.
Soft Power and Its Perils: U.S. Cultural Policy in Early Postwar Japan and Permanent Dependency. By Takeshi Matsuda. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007, in the Journal of Asian Studies, August 2010, (69:3): 909-912.
War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945-2005. By Franziska Seraphim. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, distributed by the Harvard University Press, 2006, in the Journal of Asian Studies, August 2008, (67:3): 1098-1100.
A Sociology of Work in Japan. By Ross E. Mouer and Hirosuke Kawanishi. Cambridge University Press, 2005, Labor History, May 2008, (49:2): 258-259.
Gendering Modern Japanese History. Edited by Barbara Molony and Kathleen Uno. Harvard University Asia Center, Harvard University Press, 2005, in the Journal of Asian Studies, February 2008, (67:1): 326-328.
Cooperation Over Conflict: The Women's Movement and the State in Postwar Japan. By Miriam Murase. New York and London: Routledge, 2006, in the Journal of Asian Studies, August 2007, (66:3): 848-849.
Divisions of Labor: Globality, Ideology, and War in the Shaping of the Japanese Labor Movement. By Lonny E. Carlile. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005, in the Journal of Asian Studies, November 2005, (64:4): 1024-1025.