Racist Attachments: Dakko-chan, Black Kitsch, and Kawaii Culture

2022 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 159-187
Author(s):  
Erica Kanesaka

Abstract This article explores the ties between anti-Black racist kitsch and kawaii culture through the history of the Dakko-chan doll. In what came to be called the “Dakko-chan boom” of 1960, tens of thousands of Japanese people lined up to purchase an inflatable blackface doll with a circular red mouth, grass skirt, and winking hologram eyes. Dakko means “to hug,” and Dakko-chan's astronomical popularity resulted in part from the way the doll could be worn as an accessory, attached to the body by its hugging arms. This article asks what it meant for Japan, a nation still recovering from World War II and the American occupation, to quite literally embrace American blackface in the form of an embraceable doll. Rejecting the claim that blackface loses its significance in a Japanese context, this article argues that Dakko-chan cannot be considered devoid of racist meanings. Emerging amid the political turmoil surrounding the revision of the US-Japan Security Treaty, Dakko-chan came to express a wide range of contradictory feelings about race, sex, and nation, illustrating how affective attachments to racist forms have accrued rather than dissipated through their movement into new cultural contexts.

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 82-90
Author(s):  
Boris Valentinovich Petelin ◽  
Vladilena Vadimovna Vorobeva

In the political circles of European countries attempts to reformat the history of World War II has been continuing. Poland is particularly active; there at the official level, as well as in the articles and in the speeches of politicians, political scientists and historians crude attacks against Russia for its commitment to objective assessments of the military past are allowed. Though, as the authors of this article mention, Russian politicians have not always been consistent in evaluation of Soviet-Polish relationships, hoping to reach a certain compromise. If there were any objections, they were mostly unconvincing. Obviously, as the article points, some statements and speeches are not without emotional colouring that is characteristic, when expressing mutual claims. However, the deliberate falsification of historical facts and evidence, from whatever side it occurs, does not meet the interests of the Polish and Russian peoples, in whose memory the heroes of the Red Army and the Polish Resistance have lived and will live. The authors point in the conclusions that it is hard to achieve mutual respect to key problems of World War II because of the overlay of the 18th – 19th centuries, connected with the “partitions of Poland”, the existence of the “Kingdom of Poland” as part of the Russian Empire, Soviet-Polish War of 1920. There can be only one way out, as many Russian and Polish scientists believe – to understand the complex twists and turns of Russo-Polish history, relying on the documents. Otherwise, the number of pseudoscientific, dishonest interpretations will grow.


Japanese Law ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 11-23
Author(s):  
Hiroshi Oda

Japan built its modern legal system on the basis of the codes imported from Europe, namely Germany and France. After the Second World War, there was some influence of US law, e.g. the Constitution and the Code of Criminal Procedure. The new Constitution, which remained unchanged until today, has introduced significant changes in the political and social system of Japan. It was proclaimed that sovereignty rested with the people and not the emperor. The Diet elected by universal election became the supreme body of the state. Another major reform was triggered by the US-Japan Structural Impediments Talks in 1989–1990.


2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 494-499
Author(s):  
Destin Jenkins

This essay revisits Making the Second Ghetto to consider what Arnold Hirsch argued about the relationship between race, money, and the ghetto. It explores how Hirsch’s analysis of this relationship was at once consistent with those penned by other urban historians and distinct from those interested in the political economy of the ghetto. Although moneymaking was hardly the main focus, Hirsch’s engagement with “Vampire” rental agencies and panic peddlers laid the groundwork for an analysis that treats the post–World War II metropolis as a crucial node in the history of racial capitalism. Finally, this essay offers a way to connect local forms of violence to the kinds of constraints imposed by financiers far removed from the city itself.


Author(s):  
Barry Riley

This book discusses the 220-year history of the political and humanitarian uses of American food as a tool of both foreign and domestic policy. During these years, food aid has been used as a weapon against the expansion of bolshevism after World War I and communism after World War II, a cudgel to force policy changes by recalcitrant recipient governments, a method for balancing disputes between Israel and Egypt, a backdoor means of increasing military aid to Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, a signal of support to friendly governments, and a resource to help achieve economic development in food-insecure countries. At home, international food aid has, at times, been used to dump troublesome food surpluses abroad and has served politicians as a tool to secure the votes of farming constituents and the political support of agriculture-sector lobbyists, commodity traders, transporters, and shippers. Most important in the minds of many, it has been the most visible—and most popular—means of providing humanitarian aid to tens of millions of hungry men, women, and children confronted, on distant shores, by war, terrorism, and natural cataclysms and the resulting threat—if not the reality—of famine and death. The book investigates the little-known, not well-understood, and often highly contentious political processes that have converted fields of grains, crops of pulses, and herds of livestock into the tools of U.S. government policy.


2018 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 171-196
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Nowak

From 1999 Polish and Romanian humanists face each other on conferences in Suceava (Romanian Bucovina) which are part of “Polish Days” in Romania organized by the Association of Poles in Romania. Polish and Romanian historians, ethnographers, sociologists, politologists and linguists deliver lectures and discuss Polish-Romanian contacts and relations in the past and present. from the Polish part many historical lectures concern the interwar period and the problem of Polish refugees in Romania during the World War II. In the period between1918–1945 the relations between Poles and Romanians were rather friendly and now these topics are discussed most frequently. Among the Romanian historians there are more specialists on the relations between Moldova and the Polish Kingdom till the end of 18th century. Many historians focus on the Polish-Romanian relations in the years 1945–1989. Most of the lectures concerning the political present were delivered by the Poles. Cultural sections of the conference concentrate on mutual language influences, Polish–Romanian literature contacts, translations of Polish literature into Romania and Romanian literature into Poland, the analyses of literary works, Polish studies in Romania and Romanian studies in Poland, the perception of Romanian culture among the Poles and vice versa, the problems of religions, education, libraries, music and tourism. Polish etnographers concentrate on the problems of Polish Bucovinians but the most discussed subject is not the history of Polish Bucovinians but their local dialect. Most of the conference lectures were printed. “Polish Days” in Suceava are the most important event organized by the very active Association of Poles in Romania and they help breaking the stereotypes and enhance the integration between the Poles and Romanians.. In general the conferences in Suceava do not have their equivalent in the contacts between humanists of other countries.


Author(s):  
Juha Vuori

The resilience of urban populations has been a state concern at least since the US strategic bombing surveys of World War II, but resilience really entered national security strategies and “all hazards” approaches to security and disaster management in the mid-2000s, when it was adopted as a concept for resolving the insecurities of the “war on terror” and climate change. The entry of resilience-thought into politics has several intellectual roots. Psychologically, the notion refers to individuals’ and societal groups’ capacity to recover from, or resist, misfortune speedily and easily. In the political uses of resilience, it has come to denote not only recovery from stresses and disturbances, or “bouncing back” to a previous normalcy, but also a “bouncing forward” effect through adaptation that can be considered desirable despite the general negativity attached to being vulnerable to continuous external shocks. While resilience has been a political concern since the 2000s, much of resilience research does not take politics into account when discussing, analyzing, and promoting resilient systems and practices for societies. This can lead to a normative contestation of resilience that stems from the normalization and essentialization of resilience as a universal and neutral public good for all, when it in actuality is saddled with conflicting values and involves both power and politics. Furthermore, resilience can also take on “perverse” forms where the resilience of internal elements of a system can work against the sustainability or viability of its whole, or where resilience maintains socially unjust or ecologically unhealthy practices. Even authoritarian political orders can display resilience. Accordingly, studies that focus on the politics of resilience tend to take a critical view of it, and of the politics it produces or maintains. When examining resilience with such critical awareness, questions such as resilience of what, to what, and for whom become relevant. Furthermore, when researching resilience, it is prudent to ask what it does politically and socially, what kinds of subjectivities and objectivities it produces, what kinds of values are inscribed and prescribed in its use, and who or what puts forth resilience speech and practices. One of the main critical viewpoints on the politics of resilience has been that it is a form of neoliberal governmentality that shifts responsibility to individuals and vulnerable groups for their own survival while simultaneously removing their political agency to affect change in regard to the continuous perturbations they face. Still, some suggest that resilience as such should not be conflated with the resilience politics of particular states and societies, but instead be examined more broadly, maintaining the possibility that it can also serve progressive agendas. To get a grasp on such angles of approach to resilience, the present bibliographical article presents an overview of what the politics of resilience is thought to be in its literature, what the origins and genealogy of resilience are, and what kind of debates and topics the literature has produced on the politics of resilience.


2021 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-43
Author(s):  
Paula Petričević

Abstract The author explores the socialist emancipation of women in Montenegro during World War II and its aftermath, using the example of the 8 March celebrations. The social life of this ‘holiday of the struggle of all the women in the world’ speaks powerfully of the strength and fortitude involved in the mobilization of women during the war and during the postwar building of socialist Yugoslavia, as well as the sudden modernization and unprecedented political subjectivation of women. The emancipatory potential of these processes turned out to be limited in the later period of stabilization of Yugoslav state socialism and largely forgotten in the postsocialist period. The author argues that the political subjectivation of women needs to be thought anew, as a process that does not take place in a vacuum or outside of a certain ideological matrix, whether socialist or liberal.


2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-147
Author(s):  
Sabiene Strasser

Abstract The article focuses on the representation of wartime Japan as a home (and home country) by analysing contemporary popular songs. Within this frame I show examples of how the Japanese state managed to influence the Japanese people through propaganda songs in order to gain the people’s moral support for the war effort. My essay aims further at drawing a picture of Japan’s musical world from the latter half of the 1930s to the end of World War II, as a detailed consideration of popular music and its surroundings always allows us to interpret much more than expected at first view. In addition, I consider the mass media as a supporter of Japan’s ideological aims. The history of radio and record companies is firmly interwoven with the efforts of the Japanese state to manipulate people during the war years. The contribution from artists must also be considered an important part of this mosaic.


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 81-112
Author(s):  
Jerzy Grzybowski

The article discusses the history of the formation and activity of the Polish orthodox chaplaincy in the three western occupation zones of Germany after World War II. At that time, there were hundreds of thousands of refugees from Poland in the area. In terms of religion they constituted a mosaic. The followers of the Orthodox Church were the second largest group after the Catholics. The authorities of the Republic of Poland in exile felt obliged to provide these people with religious care. Led by Archbishop Sawa (Sowietov), priests carried out the ministry in Germany. The author has analyzed the political and social conditions in which the structures of the Polish Orthodox Church in refugee camps in West Germany were organized and functioned. The author has also presented the influence of the ethnic factor on the activity of the Polish Orthodox clergy.


2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Grant ◽  
Alice Fisher Fellow

Russian and Soviet nurse refugees faced myriad challenges attempting to become registered nurses in North America and elsewhere after the World War II. By drawing primarily on International Council of Nurses refugee files, a picture can be pieced together of the fate that befell many of those women who left Russia and later the Soviet Union because of revolution and war in the years after 1917. The history of first (after World War I) and second (after World War II) wave émigré nurses, integrated into the broader historical narrative, reveals that professional identity was just as important to these women as national identity. This became especially so after World War II, when Russian and Soviet refugee nurses resettled in the West. Individual accounts become interwoven on an international canvas that brings together a wide range of personal experiences from women based in Russia, the Soviet Union, China, Yugoslavia, Canada, the United States, and elsewhere. The commonality of experience among Russian nurses as they attempted to establish their professional identities highlights, through the prism of Russia, the importance of the history of the displaced nurse experience in the wider context of international migration history.


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