““Beyond This World of Transiency and Impermanence””: Japanese Americans, Dharma Bums, and the Making of American Buddhism during the Early Cold War Years

2008 ◽  
Vol 77 (3) ◽  
pp. 423-451 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael K. Masatsugu
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Pluralism ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
European American ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
Study Group ◽  
Buddhist Study ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Cold War

This article examines the growing interest in Buddhism in the United States during the Cold War, analyzing discussions and debates around the authenticity of various Buddhist teachings and practices that emerged in an interracial Buddhist study group and its related publications. Japanese American Buddhists had developed a modified form of Jōōdo Shinshūū devotional practice as a strategy for building ethnic community and countering racialization as religious and racial Others. The authenticity of these practices was challenged by European and European American scholars and artists, especially the Beats, who drew upon Orientalist representations of Buddhism as ancient, exotic, and mysterious. In response, Japanese American Buddhists crafted their own definition of ““tradition”” by drawing from institutional and devotional developments dating back to fourteenth-century Japan as well as more recent Japanese American history. The article contextualizes these debates within the broader discussion of cultural pluralism and race relations during the Cold War.

‘Bonded by reverence toward the Buddha’: Asian decolonization, Japanese Americans, and the making of the Buddhist world, 1947–1965

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 142-164
Author(s):  
Michael K. Masatsugu
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
Religious Discrimination ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Global Movement ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Buddha

AbstractThis article examines Asian and Japanese American participation in a post-Second World War global movement for Buddhist revival. It looks at the role that Buddhism and the World Fellowship of Buddhists organization played in shaping transnational networks and the development of a global Buddhist perspective. It contextualizes the growth of a ‘Buddhist world’ within the history of decolonization and Japanese American struggles to reconstruct individual and community identities thoroughly disrupted by the war. The article considers Asian Buddhist approaches toward recognition as national and world citizens rather than colonial subjects and their influence on Japanese American Buddhists’ strategies for combating racial and religious discrimination in the United States. Finally, the article examines how Japanese Americans joined Asian efforts to formulate a distinctly Buddhist response to the Cold War. Buddhists hoped that Buddhism might serve as a ‘third power’ that would provide a critical check on a world increasingly polarized by Cold War politics and threatened by the prospects of nuclear war.

4. Crucibles of war

2016 ◽  
pp. 83-115
Author(s):  
Madeline Y. Hsu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Educational Attainment ◽  
The United States ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Economic Success ◽  
Racial Ideologies ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Postcolonial States

Hostilities lingered in the immediate aftermath of the war, but the onset of the Cold War dramatically improved the standing of Japanese Americans. “Crucibles of war” explains how the worldwide struggle against communism compelled the United States to cultivate friendships with Asian nations and peoples, including emergent postcolonial states such as India, Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Burma. The walls of Asian exclusion crumbled with the piecemeal abolishing of laws restricting immigration, citizenship, employment, residence, and miscegenation, underwritten by a reworking of racial ideologies and immigration controls that remade Asians into model immigrants and citizens, even as it positioned them as innately suited for educational attainment and economic success.

The differences between American and European approaches to security policy after the Cold War

2014 ◽  
pp. 70-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marek Garlicki
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Transatlantic Relationship ◽  
Security Relations ◽  
The One ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Impact

The objective of this paper is to examine whether in the post-Cold War period the European approach to security policy is in fact different than the one of the United States of America, and why it is so. The author tries also to analyse what might be the impact of these differences on the transatlantic relationship and what consequences it might bring in the nearest future. After the description and definition of the term “security”, the author analyses the differences between the two approaches and refers to the arguments and viewpoints of different scholars. In conclusion an attempt to foresee the future of the EU – US security relations is undertaken.

Cold War Aesthetics in East Asia

2019 ◽  
pp. 52-76
Author(s):  
Petrus Liu
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Current Effort ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The One ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter argues that the conventional understanding that we live in a post-Cold War world order is part of an imperialist aesthetic logic for two important reasons. On the one hand, traditional history creates a teleological narrative that conflates the intellectual history of Marxism—which continues to thrive in China and other locations today—with the political structure of the USSR that collapsed in 1991. According to this narrative, Marxism is merely an "ideology" that is inimical to free thinking and free speech, and, since humanity has entered a distinctly new phase called the "end of history" or the "end of ideologies" in 1991, any current effort to rebuild Marxist or socialist programs must be anachronistic, utopian, or naive. On the other hand, the conventional definition of the Cold War as the period from the Truman Doctrine of 1941 to the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 naturalizes a Western-centered explanatory framework that completely overlooks the experience and agency of East Asia. The presumption that Cold War studies must begin (and end) with the United States and its Western rival(s) is therefore part of the imperialist aesthetics that organizes our temporal-spatial life worlds into the rise and fall of Western empires.

Music after the Fall

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Rutherford-Johnson
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
The United States ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Sound Art ◽  
Musical Composition ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Cold War

By the start of the 21st century many of the foundations of postwar culture had disappeared: Europe had been rebuilt and, as the EU, had become one of the world’s largest economies; the United States’ claim to global dominance was threatened; and the postwar social democratic consensus was being replaced by market-led neoliberalism. Most importantly of all, the Cold War was over, and the World Wide Web had been born. Music After The Fall considers contemporary musical composition against this changed backdrop, placing it in the context of globalization, digitization, and new media. Drawing on theories from the other arts, in particular art and architecture, it expands the definition of Western art music to include forms of composition, experimental music, sound art, and crossover work from across the spectrum, inside and beyond the concert hall. Each chapter considers a wide range of composers, performers, works, and institutions are considered critically to build up a broad and rich picture of the new music ecosystem, from North American string quartets to Lebanese improvisers, from South American electroacoustic studios to pianos in the Australian outback. A new approach to the study of contemporary music is developed that relies less on taxonomies of style and technique, and more on the comparison of different responses to common themes, among them permission, fluidity, excess, and loss.

Worse Than a Monolith

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Christensen
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Burden Sharing ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Coercive Diplomacy ◽  
Regional Conflicts ◽  
Security Relations ◽  
Opposing Camp ◽  
The Cold War

In brute-force struggles for survival, such as the two world wars, disorganization and divisions within an enemy alliance are to one's own advantage. However, most international security politics involve coercive diplomacy and negotiations short of all-out war. This book demonstrates that when states are engaged in coercive diplomacy—combining threats and assurances to influence the behavior of real or potential adversaries—divisions, rivalries, and lack of coordination within the opposing camp often make it more difficult to prevent the onset of regional conflicts, to prevent existing conflicts from escalating, and to negotiate the end to those conflicts promptly. Focusing on relations between the Communist and anti-Communist alliances in Asia during the Cold War, the book explores how internal divisions and lack of cohesion in the two alliances complicated and undercut coercive diplomacy by sending confusing signals about strength, resolve, and intent. In the case of the Communist camp, internal mistrust and rivalries catalyzed the movement's aggressiveness in ways that we would not have expected from a more cohesive movement under Moscow's clear control. Reviewing newly available archival material, the book examines the instability in relations across the Asian Cold War divide, and sheds new light on the Korean and Vietnam wars. While recognizing clear differences between the Cold War and post-Cold War environments, the book investigates how efforts to adjust burden-sharing roles among the United States and its Asian security partners have complicated U.S. security relations with the People's Republic of China since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

State Failure and the Political Violence Phenomenon: A Comparative Analysis of Iraq and Syria Cases

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 170 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Eylem Özkaya Lassalle
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
State Failure ◽  
The Political ◽  
Collective Violence ◽  
Short Run ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Cold War

The concept of failed state came to the fore with the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the USSR and the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Political violence is central in these discussions on the definition of the concept or the determination of its dimensions (indicators). Specifically, the level of political violence, the type of political violence and intensity of political violence has been broached in the literature. An effective classification of political violence can lead us to a better understanding of state failure phenomenon. By using Tilly’s classification of collective violence which is based on extent of coordination among violent actors and salience of short-run damage, the role played by political violence in state failure can be understood clearly. In order to do this, two recent cases, Iraq and Syria will be examined.

Louis Menand: The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America. 2001. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 546 pp.

2003 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 201-204
Author(s):  
Lance Kenney
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Cold War ◽  
William James ◽  
The United States ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Cultural Impact ◽  
Oliver Wendell Holmes ◽  
History Of ◽  
Charles Peirce ◽  
The Cold War

Louis Menand’s The Metaphysical Club, daunting in its choice of subject matter, closely aligns itself with the ancient sense of the word ‘history’ as a fluid, almost epic narrative. The Metaphysical Club of the title was a conversation group that met in Cambridge for a few months in 1872. Its membership roster listed some of the greatest intellectuals of the day: Charles Peirce, William James, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Chauncey Wright, amongst others. There is no record of the Club’s discussions or debates—in fact, the only direct reference to the Club is made by Peirce in a letter written thirty-five years later. Menand utilizes the Club as a jumping-off point for a sweeping analysis of the beliefs of the day. The subtitle of the book belies its true mission: ‘a story of ideas in America.’ Menand discusses the intellectual and social conditions that helped shape these men by the time they were members of the Club. He then shows the philosophical, political, and cultural impact that these men went on to have. In doing so, Menand traces a history of ideas in the United States from immediately prior to the Civil War to the beginning of the Cold War.

Trust, but Verify

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Arms Control ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
East West

This book uses trust—with its emotional and predictive aspects—to explore international relations in the second half of the Cold War, beginning with the late 1960s. The détente of the 1970s led to the development of some limited trust between the United States and the Soviet Union, which lessened international tensions and enabled advances in areas such as arms control. However, it also created uncertainty in other areas, especially on the part of smaller states that depended on their alliance leaders for protection. The chapters in this volume look at how the “emotional” side of the conflict affected the dynamics of various Cold War relations: between the superpowers, within the two ideological blocs, and inside individual countries on the margins of the East–West confrontation.

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