This article examines how during the 1970s, state, media, and research institutions transformed b & omacr;s & omacr;zoku - the contemporaneous label for cohorts of motorcycle-riding youth - into an object of governance. Between 1972 and 1979, national news media, police bureaucracies, and legislative authority aligned to transform scattered riding practices into a unified phenomenon. Drawing on police white papers, newspaper databases, and research archives, the article reconstructs the recognition infrastructure through which b & omacr;s & omacr;zoku moved from journalistic trope to legally actionable population. Preemptive authority did not arrive as a leap but formed the endpoint of a system that had already taught officials what to see, how to count, and when to intervene. Checklists, roadside predicates, and standardized forms aligned across organizations and persisted even as youth practices shifted. The anxiety surrounding b & omacr;s & omacr;zoku reflected not merely concerns about traffic safety but alarm at working-class youth visibly rejecting corporate-loyalty paradigms of Japan's "enterprise society."

Reviewed by: Coed Revolution: The Female Student in the Japanese New Left by Chelsea Szendi Schieder Christopher Gerteis (bio) Coed Revolution: The Female Student in the Japanese New Left. By Chelsea Szendi Schieder. Duke University Press, 2021. xii, 212 pages. $99.95, cloth; $25.95, paper; $25.95, E-book. Chelsea Szendi Schieder's Coed Revolution is a fascinating deep dive into the gendered structures of student activism in 1960s Japan. Hers is not a history of the Japanese women's movement but is instead a close study of female students as a "site of tension" within the male-dominated radical political movements that shaped postwar Japan. What interests Schieder is the extent to which women could rise to positions of leadership within the New Left movement. She builds her study from the observation that normative social roles did not only define the limits of women's political participation; normative practices mediated how women could express their desire for radical political change. Schieder reconstructs the history of women who instead of subordinating themselves to concentric patriarchal structures chose to battle the overarching hierarchies of socioeconomy that bolstered the whole global geopolitical landscape. To them, the problem of patriarchy was a symptom of systemic inequality all the way up, and all the way down. Oguma Eiji's two-volume epic, 1968, is the most commonly referenced history of late 1960s student activism. 1 While offering mention of significant female actors, Oguma focuses on how mass youth activism was an arena in which a generation of young people imagined themselves the vanguard of a global revolutionary moment. Oguma argued that they were instead representative of an ennui born of a generational identity crisis far more about self-discovery than political revolution. The strength of this well-crafted book is Schieder's tenacious interrogation of how gender and sexuality overdetermined young middle-class students' engagement with radical politics. Schieder enables a rethink of Oguma's observation that sites of political protest became an involuted space for generational encounter and political irrelevance. She builds on this by arguing that the movement's objectification of women as sites of desire overdetermined the political choices available to even the most radical women activists. Coed Revolution shows the reader how a gendered hierarchy defined what women could achieve in the arena of radical politics. Indeed, Schieder argues that within Japan's New Left movement "desire for the young woman [End Page 205] often eclipses discussions about what young women desire." Schieder examines the "processes by which young women are given voice and are silenced, as icons of vulnerability and violence, in postwar Japan." The problem manifested itself in Japan as a pernicious assumption that women were "representatives of a nonideological naive politics" and that radical women specifically were unnatural and dangerous (p. 167). In this Schieder most closely resonates with Setsu Shigematsu's Scream from the Shadows, which is a brilliant study of radical feminism in Japan since the 1970s. 2 Scream from the Shadows is a chastisement of the field for failure to sufficiently build on feminist works about and from the era. Schieder's Coed Revolution is the logical successor to Shigematsu's pathbreaking work. When read together, Shigematsu and Schieder show how the male-dominated youth politics of the era embraced notions of gender that alienated and defined many of the young radical women who founded radical feminist organizations of the 1970s. Schieder identifies key archetypes of women, paper doll cutouts deployed by media and movement to describe leftist politics across the decade of the 1960s: from the maiden martyr Kanba Michiko (chapter 1) to the sexualized "Gewalt Rosa" Kashiwazaki Chieko (chapter 5). After her death during the 1960 protests against the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, Kanba was portrayed by national media and social movements as a sacrificial indictment of the postwar state and symbol of the vulnerability of democracy. By the late 1960s, militant women were described as "Gewalt Rosas" exemplified by Kashiwazaki whose jailhouse memoir embraced the legacy of Rosa Luxemburg and celebrated the emotional rush of making violent revolution. Schieder further unpacks the process by which young women's political voice was dismissed as "nonideological naive politics," which included the...

By focusing on how far-right and far-left organizations attempted to reach-out to young radicals, especially those of working-class origins, this book offers a new understanding of successive waves of youth radicalism since 1960.

Research writing is central to the career of all scholars.While there are an increasingly diverse formats in which to present your research, all rely on your ability to present your thoughts in writing.Indeed, good writing is central to the practice of research, and while styles of presentation differ good research writing practices will be central

Wendy Matsumura has crafted a well-documented, theory-heavy account of labor and identity along the colonial periphery of imperial Japan. The Limits of Okinawa: Japanese Capitalism, Living Labor, and Theorizations of Community examines the simultaneous processes of co-option, exploitation, and subversion experienced by Okinawans living and working within the sugar production system that emerged alongside Japanese modernity. Matsumura refocuses the history of industrialization, modernization, and colonialism through the lens of Okinawa’s “inclusion in the Japanese nation-state qua empire . . . in a manner that established it as a periphery—simultaneously inside and outside the Japanese nation-state—in political, economic, and cultural terms” (24). Matsumura interrogates the Marxist transformation problem (the process by which the value of a commodity as determined by its social necessity is transformed by marketplace competition) through the very intriguing argument that “the emergence of a singular Okinawan difference from mainland Japan by the early 1930s was inextricably linked to multiple confrontations between dead labor and living labor after the prefecture was violently incorporated into the empire by the Meiji state” (186).

Between 2002 and 2013, the Visualizing Cultures (VC) project at M.I.T. produced a number of “image-driven” online units addressing Japan and China in the modern world. Co-directed by John Dower and Shigeru Miyagawa, VC tapped a wide range of hitherto largely inaccessible visual resources of an historical nature. Each topical treatment—which can run from one to as many as four separate units—formats and analyzes these graphics in ways that, ideally, open new windows of understanding for scholars, teachers, and students. VC endorses the “creative commons” ideal, meaning that everything on the site, including all images, can be downloaded and reproduced for educational (but not commercial) uses. Funding and staffing for VC formally ended in 2013, with around eight topical treatments still in the pipes. These will go online over the next several months. Overall, including the treatments to come, the project includes a total of fifty-five individual units covering twenty-six different subjects. The China-Japan division will be roughly equitable when everything is in place. (There will also be a two-part treatment of the U.S. and the Philippines between 1898 and 1912.) The full VC menu can be accessed at visualizingcultures.mit.edu. Needless to say, the number of Asian countries and potential topics not covered by VC is very large. (Needless to say, as well, there are many other valuable image-rich web sites on Asia in the modern world—although tracking them down can be a challenge.) In any case, it remains for present and future researchers, students, and activists to take the production of critical image-driven scholarship and education to the next level conceptually, topically, and technologically. VC is closing shop for the production of new units at a moment when it was just reaching a “critical mass” of subjects that invite crisscrossing among separate topical treatments. Western imperialist expansion beginning with the Canton trade system, first Opium War, and Commodore Matthew Perry’s “opening” of Japan is potentially one such subject; comparing and contrasting Japanese and Chinese engagements with “the West” is another. The VC units draw vivid attention to political, cultural, and technological transformation in East Asia between the mid-19th and mid-20th century. Many of them highlight graphic expressions of militarism, nationalism, racism, and anti-foreignism. Because the visual resources tapped for these units range from high art to popular culture, and are especially strong in the latter, it is now possible to tap the site to explore the emergence of consumer cultures and mass audiences in Japan and China. This, in turn, calls attention to popular cultures and grassroots activities in general. One example of the insights to be gained by approaching the VC menu with this comparative perspective in mind is the subject of popular protest in Japan. That is the common thrust of the four separate VC units introduced here. This is, of course, a pertinent subject today, when the mass media in the Anglophone world tends to portray Japan as a fundamentally homogeneous, consensual, harmonious, conflict-averse and risk-averse “culture” (a familiar rendering, for example, in the venerable New York Times). No serious historian of modern Japan would endorse these canards, which carry echoes of the “beautiful customs” nostrums of Japan’s own nationalistic ideologues. At the same time, however, it cannot be denied that the past four decades or so have seen nothing comparable in intensity or scale to the popular protests in prewar Japan, or the demonstrations and “citizens’ movements” (shimin undō) that took place in postwar Japan up to the early 1970s. How can we place all this in perspective? The image-driven VC explorations of protest in Japan begin in 1905 and end with the massive “Ampō” demonstrations against revision of the U.S.-Japan mutual security treaty in 1960. The four treatments that will be reproduced in The Asia-Pacific Journal beginning in this issue are as follows: 1. Social Protest in Imperial Japan: The Hibiya Riot of 1905, by Andrew Gordon. 2. Political Protest in Interwar Japan: Posters & Handbills from the Ohara Collection (1920s~1930s), by Christopher Gerteis (in two units). 3. Protest Art in 1950s Japan: The Forgotten Reportage Painters, by Linda Hoaglund. 4. Tokyo 1960: Days of Rage & Grief: Hamaya Hiroshi’s Photos of the Anti-Security-Treaty Protests, by Justin Jesty. VC and the Asia-Pacific Journal are committed to bringing the highest quality visual images to the classroom. In establishing this partnership, we anticipate publishing the subsequent units on protest every two weeks. We hope to follow this up with new units in preparation and projected.

Between 2002 and 2013, the Visualizing Cultures (VC) project at M.I.T. produced a number of “image-driven” online units addressing Japan and China in the modern world. Co-directed by John Dower and Shigeru Miyagawa, VC tapped a wide range of hitherto largely inaccessible visual resources of an historical nature. Each topical treatment—which can run from one to as many as four separate units—formats and analyzes these graphics in ways that, ideally, open new windows of understanding for scholars, teachers, and students. VC endorses the “creative commons” ideal, meaning that everything on the site, including all images, can be downloaded and reproduced for educational (but not commercial) uses. Funding and staffing for VC formally ended in 2013, with around eight topical treatments still in the pipes. These will eventually go online. Overall, including the treatments to come, the project includes a total of fifty-five individual units covering twenty-six different subjects. The China-Japan division will be roughly equitable when everything is in place. (There will also be a two-part treatment of the U.S. and the Philippines between 1898 and 1912.) The full VC menu can be accessed at visualizingcultures.mit.edu. VC is closing shop for the production of new units at a moment when it was just reaching a “critical mass” of subjects that invite crisscrossing among separate topical treatments. Western imperialist expansion beginning with the Canton trade system, first Opium War, and Commodore Matthew Perry’s “opening” of Japan is potentially one such subject; comparing and contrasting Japanese and Chinese engagements with “the West” is another. The VC units draw vivid attention to political, cultural, and technological transformation in East Asia between the mid-19th and mid-20th century. Many of them highlight graphic expressions of militarism, nationalism, racism, and anti-foreignism. Because the visual resources tapped for these units range from high art to popular culture, and are especially strong in the latter, it is now possible to tap the site to explore the emergence of consumer cultures and mass audiences in Japan and China. This, in turn, calls attention to popular cultures and grassroots activities in general. One example of the insights to be gained by approaching the VC menu with this comparative perspective in mind is the subject of popular protest in Japan. That is the common thrust of the four separate VC units introduced here. This is, of course, a pertinent subject today, when the mass media in the Anglophone world tends to portray Japan as a fundamentally homogeneous, consensual, harmonious, conflict-averse and risk-averse “culture” (a familiar rendering, for example, in the venerable New York Times). No serious historian of modern Japan would endorse these canards, which carry echoes of the “beautiful customs” nostrums of Japan’s own nationalistic ideologues. At the same time, however, it cannot be denied that the past four decades or so have seen nothing comparable in intensity or scale to the popular protests in prewar Japan, or the demonstrations and “citizens’ movements” (shimin undō) that took place in postwar Japan up to the early 1970s. How can we place all this in perspective? The image-driven VC explorations of protest in Japan begin in 1905 and end with the massive “Ampō” demonstrations against revision of the U.S.-Japan mutual security treaty in 1960. The four treatments that will be reproduced in The Asia-Pacific Journal beginning in this issue are as follows: 1. Social Protest in Imperial Japan: The Hibiya Riot of 1905, by Andrew Gordon. We reprint this article with this introduction. Other articles will follow in the coming months. 2. Political Protest in Interwar Japan: Posters & Handbills from the Ohara Collection (1920s~1930s), by Christopher Gerteis (in two units). See Part I here. 3. Protest Art in 1950s Japan: The Forgotten Reportage Painters, by Linda Hoaglund. 4. Tokyo 1960: Days of Rage & Grief: Hamaya Hiroshi’s Photos of the Anti-Security-Treaty Protests, by Justin Jesty. VC and the Asia-Pacific Journal are committed to bringing the highest quality visual images to the classroom. In establishing this partnership, we anticipate publishing the subsequent units on protest every two weeks. We hope to follow this up with new units in preparation and projected. John W. Dower is emeritus professor of history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His books include Empire and Aftermath: Yoshida Shigeru and the Japanese Experience, 1878-1954 (1979); War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (1986); Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (1999); Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor / Hiroshima / 9-11 / Iraq (2010); and two collections of essays: Japan in War and Peace: Selected Essays (1994), and Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering: Japan in the Modern World (2012).

Christopher Gerteis and Timothy S. George make a case for revisiting Japan's postwar history in the second decade of the twenty-first century. They argue that Japan's problematic responses to the triple disasters of March 2011 warrant re-evaluating the persistent myths of failure and success associated with Japan's "postwar" and "post-bubble" eras.

This is not the book I expected, and it was nice to be surprised. Patricia Maclachlan's monograph is a well-written, argument-driven analysis of the interest group politics that drive Japan's modern state bureaucracy. Maclachlan has crafted an exquisite study of institutional politics as a means to further demonstrate the distinctive role played by commissioned postmasters in Japan's postwar electoral system; her book also underscores the ubiquity of the political systems driving modern postal networks. This is a timely analysis of the politics behind the building, and dismantling, of the state-run post office in Japan that also adds useful comparative context to the history of postal systems worldwide. The history of the Japanese post office, which is not well developed in English-language scholarship, is particularly important in that the post has played a central role in the modernization of Japan since the Meiji era (1868–1912). Sheldon Garon's comparative history of postal savings systems, Beyond Our Means: Why America Spends While the World Saves (2012), is the definitive work on the how the post garnered the funds needed to industrialize Japan. Maclachlan has crafted a fascinating study of the commissioned postmasters who framed the house that Maejima Hisoka built.