巻頭言：新型コロナウイルス感染症と心理学

The Japanese Journal of Psychology published its first special issue on the occasion of the unprecedented crisis caused by COVID-19, and called for submissions. While the result has been a very large number of papers with a great variety accepted for publication, a number of challenges have also emerged. Hopefully, this special issue will be a valuable stepping stone for the next phase of psychology in Japan.

Forty-Seven Years of Discourse: An Analysis of Japanese Journal Articles about Shimao Toshio’s Concept of Yaponeshia

This article analyses the discourse around Shimao Toshio’s concept of Yaponeshia, which addresses Okinawa’s relationship to mainland Japan. This concept, first outlined in Shimao’s essay “Yaponeshia no nekko” (The Roots of Yaponeshia) (1961), provides a whole new perspective from which this relationship can be viewed. To gain an understanding of the discourse which subsequently has evolved among Japanese scholars and critics, journal articles published between 1970 and 2017 will be analysed using Siegfried Jäger’s method of critical discourse analysis. The analysis will show that Shimao’s Yaponeshia idea has been (re-)interpreted by many academics and critics who expanded it with their own theories. The discourse about the “southern islands” (nantō) and the “reversion” of Okinawa to Japan play a major role in how Okinawa, as shown in the Yaponeshia concept, is portrayed: on the one hand, the culture of Okinawa is seen as a previous stage of the culture of mainland Japan; on the other hand, however, the culture of Okinawa is described as being different from that of Japan and as something that has to be protected from being assimilated by the main islands. By addressing different perspectives on Okinawan culture, over the past decades the Yaponeshia concept has slowly developed into a kind of cultural theory that also finds its way into other academic fields.