Haunting Modernity: Tanuki, Trains, and Transformation in Japan

Abstract:

This article explores a cycle of legends popular in Japan from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. Featuring a deadly confrontation
between a tanuki (“raccoon dog”) and a steam train, these narratives enact a conflict between a traditional animal of Japanese folk belief and a new technology that was rapidly transforming the countryside; they articulate anxiety about, and resistance to, the burgeoning infrastructure of modernity and the changes it would bring to the natural and cultural environments.

Furthermore, as narratives of haunting, in which restless memories of the past disturb the easy flow of the present, these tales allow us to productively consider the relationship between time and place while also gesturing to the way tales of haunting can assume not only an affective quality, but political and ideological shades as well.

Haunting Modernity: Tanuki, Trains, and Transformation in Japan

Foster, ,Michael Dylan  Haunting Modernity Tanuki, Trains, and Transformation in Japan 
Asian Ethnology Volume 71, Number1 • 2012, 3–29
Full access”: http://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/nfile/4088

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Quakes in Slo-Mo

Overview: Barely detectable tremors may portend major destruction..Cascadia is either due or overdue for its next great megathrust quake.. A 2009 paper in Geophysical Research Letters reported that slow slip is happening so deep within Cascadia that when a really big earthquake does happen, its shaking could extend farther inland than once thought. That means it could hit people in much of western Washington and some of Canada, not just along the coast

A Sense of Place Shortlink: http://wp.me/pISTJ-gx

Full Text: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/348786/description/Quakes_in_Slo-Mo

Witze, A,  Quakes in Slo-Mo. March 7^th 4013  Science News

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Shedding Light on the Global Distribution of Economic Activity

Collection of data on economic variables, especially sub-national income levels, is problematic, due to various shortcomings in the data collection process. Additionally, the informal economy is often excluded from official statistics. Nighttime lights satellite imagery and the LandScan population grid provide an alternative means for measuring economic activity.

We have developed a model for creating a disaggregated map of estimated total (formal plus informal) economic activity for countries and states of the world. Regression models were developed to calibrate the sum of lights to official measures of economic activity at the sub-national level for China, India, Mexico, and the United States and at the national level for other countries of the world, and subsequently unique coefficients were derived. Multiplying the unique coefficients with the sum of lights provided estimates of total economic activity, which were spatially distributed to generate a spatially disaggregated 1 km² map of total economic activity.

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Full Text: http://www.benthamscience.com/open/togeogj/articles/V003/147TOGEOGJ.pdf

Shedding Light on the Global Distribution of Economic Activity

Tilottama Ghosh, Rebecca L. Powell, Christopher D. Elvidge, Kimberly E. Baugh ,Paul C. Sutton, Sharolyn Anderson

The Open Geography Journal, 2010, 3, 147-16

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The Meaning of Character and Religion in Japan

Precis:  “The  meaning of  the  term ‘ national  character’  (kokurninsei) has  not  been  well  defined.  Perhaps  this  is  because  the  substance  of  its  meaning  has  changed  in  the  course  of  history. For  instance,  we  speak  of  the ‘soul  of Japan’  (yamato-damashii)b  or  the  ‘Japanese Spirit’  (yamato-gokoro), but  although these  concepts  are  closely  related  to  the  character of  the  people, they  do  not  clearly  express  the  national  character.”

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Full Text: http://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/publications/jjrs/pdf/CRJ-14.pdf

Dr.  Tetsuzo  Tanigaw

National  Character  And  Religion

Contemporary Religions In Japan  June 1960, 1/2

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Personification in the Punishment of Primates

Abstract: Nonhuman primates (referred to as primates in this study) are sometimes revered as gods, abhorred as evil spirits, killed for food because they damage crops, or butchered for sport. Primates’ perceived similarity to humans places them in an anomalous position. While some human groups accept the idea that primates “straddle” the human–nonhuman boundary, for others this resemblance is a violation of the human–animal divide.

In this study we use two case studies to explore how people’s perceptions of primates are often influenced by these animals’ apparent similarity to humans, creating expectations, founded within a “human morality” about how primates should interact with people. When animals transgress these social rules, they are measured against the same moral framework as humans. This has implications for how people view and respond to certain kinds of primate behaviors, their willingness to tolerate co-existence with primates and their likely support for primate conservation initiatives.

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Full Text: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajp.20845/full

Perceptions of nonhuman primates in human–wildlife conflict scenarios

Catherine M. Hill,  Amanda D. Webber

Ecological and Environmental Anthropology

1 JUN 2010 Volume 72, Issue 10

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Foreign Migrants in Taiwan and Japan: A Comparative Analysis

Abstract:

Taiwan and Japan share the related problems of an aging population and low fertility rate, both of which have contributed to labor shortages in their nations. Although the two countries have been importing workers from abroad to compensate for labor shortfalls, Japanese descendants from South American countries and mainland Chinese have become the dominant alternative labor force in Japan, while in Taiwan migrant laborers largely come from Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines. Do migration trends into Taiwan and Japan have anything in common given the two countries’ differing cultures and sources of migrants? What role do Chinese migrants play in both cases? To answer these questions, this paper examines labor importation in Taiwan and Japan by discussing the immigration policies of the two governments and comparatively analyzing the impact foreign migrants have had on Taiwanese and Japanese society.

http://wp.me/pISTJ-3m

Author:  Kenji Kaneko

Asia Journal of Global Studies, Vol 3, No 1 (2009)

For Full Text:  http://ajgs.org/index.php/AJGS/article/view/49

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