What can literary and artistic works reveal about their time – and how do they shape it? In her new book Terayama Shūji – Literat, Theatermacher, Filmregisseur. Zur Konstruktion seines Nachkriegsjapan im Zeichen globaler, nationaler und lokaler Verflechtungen, DIJ researcher Carolin Fleischer-Heininger explores the construction of postwar Japan through literary, dramatic, and cinematic works of Terayama Shūji (1935–1983). Her study considers the different spatial frames of reference – Aomori, Japan and the world – that guided Terayama’s views and analyses his works with regard to formal and stylistic characteristics. As she shows, Terayama shaped Japan’s cultural landscape by mirroring Japanese society and its narratives. Consequently, Terayama became one of Japan’s most influential and controversial cultural figures. Drawing on theories of globalization and cultural history, Fleischer-Heininger also examines how Terayama’s works negotiate narratives of national identity and historiography in postwar Japan.

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The new issue of Contemporary Japan includes research articles on new forms of labor market dualization in the platform economy (Deborah Giustini), an analysis of Murakami Ryu’s Popular Hits of the Showa Era from the perspective of precarity (Barbara Greene), a discussion of media discourses of the peaceful use of nuclear power in the early postwar period (Jincao Wang), an analysis of Japanese identity construction through railway technology (Taku Tamaki), narratives of multiculturalism and community-building among Nikkei in the city of Toyota (Scott Ma and Mariana Alonso Ishihara), and an assessment of political rhetoric, public contest outcomes, and populism in 21st century Japanese politics (Petter Lindgren). The book review section covers publications on Jesuit enterprise in Japan in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, on the impact of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on psychological science, on East-West encounters in Japanese art, and on the history of the Japanese business community in Düsseldorf.

DIJ researcher Carolin Fleischer-Heininger’s latest publication “Perspektiven auf Blindheit in Beruna no shippo (1996) von Gunji Nanae“ studies the discussion of blindness as a disability in Gunji’s autobiographical novel Beruna no shippo. A close reading, taking into account theories from Disability Studies, shows that the novel is aimed at a general public that promotes guide dogs. At the same time, the novel portrays blindness – in particular with regard to mobility and motherhood – as a difference and as a deficit. Carolin’s analysis is preceded by an introductory section on the author, the novel, and the context in which it was written and received. It also includes comments on blindness as a disability in Japan and in Japanese literature as well as a review of related research. Her chapter was published in Formationsprozesse japanischer Literatur: Selbstreflexionen, Metafiktion und die Relevanz des Mediums (EB-Verlag 2025), edited by Lisette Gebhardt and Christian Chappelow. 

A new open access paper, co-authored by DIJ’s Sébastien Lechevalier and Malo Mofakhami analyses the diverse effects of the first wave of digitalization on job satisfaction through a comparison between Japan and France. The study neither finds substantial differences between the two countries regarding the impact of digital use on work organization practices nor a direct effect of digital use on job satisfaction. However, digital use is correlated to some work organization practices, such as autonomy, flexibility, and learning, through which it has positive mediated effects. The major source of the digital divide, in terms of satisfaction, is, in both countries, related to the perceived absence of digital skills by some workers. „Assessing job satisfaction in the era of digital transformation: a comparative study of the first wave of tasks digitalization in Japan and France“ is published online first in the European Business Review (Springer).