This article examines how Japanese schoolgirl-uniform fashion, commonly termed JK dress, moves from digital visual symbolism into embodied practice in Chinese vaporwave party culture. Drawing on an exploratory qualitative reading of online visual materials and publicity from related music parties, it investigates the relationship between vaporwave’s audiovisual aesthetics and their embodiment through clothing. The analysis suggests that vaporwave constructs nostalgic simulacra by decontextualizing and recombining fragments of late twentieth-century sound and imagery. In the examples discussed, Japanese anime girls function as visual anchors by combining historical recognizability with opportunities for emotional projection. JK dress then translates these two-dimensional signs into bodily experience, producing a recursive sequence of cultural simulacra, visual signs, and embodied practices. In offline parties, this process gives rise to “delayed youth”: a temporarily inhabitable, imagined youthfulness mediated by music, dress, and collective movement. Read through heterotopia and Bakhtinian carnival, these practices suggest how media nostalgia can become a shared means of emotional adjustment. The article extends the analysis of vaporwave nostalgia from sound and images to clothing and bodies, while recognizing the limited scope of its visual materials and the absence of systematic participant interviews.
Integrating local folk songs into school curricula aims to safeguard cultural heritage and build student identity, yet curricular inclusion alone often fails to secure deep engagement. This qualitative practitioner inquiry examined how pedagogical adjustment could address this gap. Conducted in a Chinese high school, the study examined the obstacles students faced when learning Shanxi folk songs, the design of targeted teaching strategies, and how these strategies relate to student participation and understanding. Data from interviews, observations, and student work identified three dimensions of cultural distance: linguistic distance, experiential distance, and performance distance, which initially contributed to students remaining passive observers. In response, the teacher introduced dialect interpretation, guided experiential connection, and melodic adjustment. Following these strategies, participation increased, students showed initiative in creative adaptation, and a smaller number reported intentions to continue engaging with the songs after class. These findings inform the Cultural Recontextualization Framework, which integrates Bernstein’s concept of recontextualization, Elliott’s praxial philosophy, and constructivist learning theory into an analytical structure for understanding how teaching can address cultural distance in the classroom. The study offers a diagnostic approach and illustrates practical strategies for teachers seeking to integrate local traditional music in ways that support student engagement.
This study examines gendered patterns in suicide rates in Japan in relation to economic hardship, defined by a recessionary economy for six months or more, and sociological stressors, or disruptions in family and social ties. Using macro-level data from 1960 to 2020, the analysis explores how economic conditions and social factors—particularly divorce, marriage, and employment—are associated with female and male suicide rates. The findings indicate that economic hardship is associated with increases in female suicide rates, while male suicide rates fall during periods of economic hardship. These results underscore the importance of gender-specific vulnerabilities in shaping mental health outcomes in Japan. The study contributes to the literature by highlighting the role of sociocultural and economic contexts in gendered mental health risks and offers implications for policy and intervention. This study does not; however, seek to establish causal relationships but instead identifies macro-level patterns between economic hardship, sociological factors, and suicide outcomes. Given the use of aggregate data, the findings are interpreted as indicative associations that contribute to a broader understanding of gendered vulnerabilities in Japan. By focusing on patterns rather than causal inference, the study complements existing literature and offers insights relevant to social policy and mental health interventions.
Based on social identity theory, this study explores whether employees’ perceived corporate social responsibility (CSR) affects their knowledge hiding behavior and examines the mediating effect of organizational identification and the moderating influence of moral identity. A cross-industry survey was conducted on 245 workers in China. Data analysis was performed using SPSS for descriptive and inferential statistics, including hypothesis testing via the PROCESS macro, while AMOS was employed for confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The results indicate the following: (1) Perceived CSR is strongly and negatively associated with knowledge hiding behavior; (2) Organizational identification partially mediates this relationship; that is, higher perceived CSR is related to a stronger sense of organizational identification and a lower tendency to withhold information. (3) Moral identity significantly moderates the relationship between perceived CSR and organizational identification: people with higher Moral Identity show a stronger positive association with perceived CSR. In summary, from this set of research results, we find that there are multiple means by which CSR can promote the dissemination of scientific knowledge. At the same time, these findings offer some new theories and resources for companies’ efforts to build an open knowledge ecosystem based on CSR activities.
Fan Chengda’s Four Seasons of Rural Life stands as the culmination of classical Chinese pastoral poetry, embodying profound traditional Chinese ecological wisdom that remains highly relevant today. However, this wisdom has not been fully explored. Based on the theoretical framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics, this paper adopts an ecological discourse analysis approach combining quantitative and qualitative methods to conduct a multi-dimensional interpretation of Summer of Rural Life, the third part of Four Seasons of Rural Life. Focusing on the three metafunctions of language, this study explores how the poetic language realizes the ideational function of “the beauty of rural ecology”, the interpersonal function of “ecological concern and concern for farmers’ well-being”, and the textual function of “harmonious coexistence between humans and nature”. This research seeks to enrich the ecological discourse study of classical Chinese pastoral poetry, thereby illuminating its profound ecological wisdom, elevating public ecological awareness, and ultimately fostering a positive and sustainable ecosophy.
