Deutsches Institut für Japanstudien nav lang search
日本語EnglishDeutsch
Deutsches Institut für Japanstudien

German Institute for Japanese Studies

Research focused on modern Japan, in global and regional perspectives. Located in one of the important economic and political hubs of East Asia, Tokyo.

Learn More

Events and Activities

Publications
February 29, 2024

New DIJ Monograph studies political participation and well-being in rural Japan

© Iudicium

What motivates people to get involved in politics in their free time? How can they derive pleasure from it? In this new book publication (in German), DIJ political scientist Sebastian Polak-Rottmann analyses how people in rural Japan try to change local society through a variety of activities, such as agricultural, political, and social work. Based on extensive fieldwork in Southern Japan’s city of Aso (Kumamoto prefecture), he concludes that mutual enjoyment is a core element of the well-being of politically active people in rural Japan. Giving pleasure to others through activities therefore leads to a positive experience for both sides involved. With this reciprocal understanding of well-being, this book builds on relational concepts of happiness and embeds them in a new model that focuses on the connections between spatial, social, every day, individual, procedural, and temporal contexts. Wie politische Partizipation Freude bereiten kann (How political participation can be enjoyable) is published by Iudicium as volume 67 in the DIJ Monograph series.

Publications
March 8, 2024

New journal article discusses Japan’s digital capitalism and its global relevance

A new journal article by DIJ researcher Harald Kümmerle and DIJ director Franz Waldenberger studies Japan’s consensus-driven approach to data regulation as an alternative to the market-driven US, the state-driven Chinese, and the rights-driven EU models. The authors argue that Japan’s approach is based on soft regulation and aims at striking a balance between privacy concerns and commercial and public interests in the usage of data. They also show that Japan’s COVID-19 countermeasures relied on data strategies fully compatible with its consensual regulatory model. By combining rights-driven and market-driven aspects, Japan can potentially mediate between the EU and the US regimes. Japan’s approach also offers an attractive alternative for countries that do not want to pick a side in the Sino-American competition. “Japan’s ‘consensual’ variety of digital capitalism and its global relevance” was published in Asia Pacific Business Review (online first).

Event Series
Events
March 19, 2024

Hybrid Study Group discusses Japanese career women’s identity conflict

© LMU Munich School of Management

This presentation explores how career-minded Japanese women experience and respond to identity conflict. Based on 125 in-depth interviews with Japanese women who face incompatible expectations for their roles in their professional and private lives, it shows how this dilemma leads to an identity conflict to which the women react with different identity work strategies: Individuals may either sacrifice their career ambitions or forego starting a family; alternatively, they might attempt to reconcile professional and personal role expectations by relinquishing perfectionism in both spheres, or seek partners whose personal expectations align more closely with their career objectives. While these strategies may resolve incompatible external role expectations, this study reveals that they do not effectively diminish internalized dilemmas. Possible solutions to resolve the dilemma will be discussed. Details and registration here

Speaker:
Helene Tenzer, LMU Munich School of Management
Events
March 21, 2024

DIJ co-organizes Annual Conference of the Japan Economy Network

Together with Hitotsubashi University, the DIJ co-organizes this year’s Sixth Annual Conference of the Japan Economy Network (JEN) on March 21-22. The conference features thirty-six speakers in ten sessions, including a dinner keynote speech by Nobuko Nagase (Ochanomizu University), chaired by DIJ economist Markus Heckel. DIJ advisory board member David Chiavacci (University of Zurich) will give a presentation on “Transnationalism and foreign workers in Japan: Between state policies and market forces”. The full programme is available here (PDF).

Event Series
Events
March 27, 2024

Hybrid Study Group on education at Japan’s National Defense Academy

© Ben Moeller

After the physical and moral devastation brought by the defeat in the Asia-Pacific War, Japanese administrations in the Cold War era charted a course of gradual rearmament against the backdrop of substantial anti-militarist sentiments among the wider society. This tension placed members of the newly rebranded Self-Defense Forces (SDF) in an uneasy position. This research project examines the institutional socialisation of the SDF’s leadership through a one-year ethnography of Japan’s National Defense Academy (NDA), where the bulk of the future senior officers of the SDF’s three branches are educated. Through this anthropological inquiry, this presentation seeks to answer how history, tradition, and identity of the Japanese SDF are negotiated at the NDA. Details and registration here

Speaker:
Ben Moeller, University of Oxford/DIJ Tokyo
Event Series
Events
April 9, 2024

Film screening and discussion of patterns of moving to rural Japan

Japan’s regions have been challenged by demographic decline and an aging population for some decades. Despite or even because of these challenges, a small number of people from urban centres of the country decide to move to rural areas. This DIJ Forum (onsite only) combines two different perspectives on migration patterns from urban to rural Japan. Filmmaker Sonja Blaschke introduces her film “Reisfeld statt Tokio” (in German, with English subtitles; 30min), highlighting the story of a young urban woman and her new lifestyle in a small village in the mountains of rural Japan. Tomoo Matsuda then introduces cases of urban professionals who decide to live temporarily or permanently in Japan’s countryside. Challenging the traditional pattern of migration to the nation’s capital, he illustrates the concept of “gyaku-sankin kōtai”, exploring the merits of moving to rural areas. Details and registration here

Speakers:
Sonja Blaschke, freelance journalist
Tomoo Matsuda, Mitsubishi Research Institute
Publications

Japan 2023: Articles by DIJ researchers and alumni on Japanese society, economics, history, and politics

© Iudicium

The latest issue of the Japan Jahrbuch, the yearbook published by the German Association for Social Science Research on Japan, includes four articles (in German) written by current and former DIJ researchers on Japanese society, economics, history, and politics. DIJ director Franz Waldenberger and Kostiantyn Ovsiannikov (Atsugi) provide a quantitative review of Japan’s municipalities in demographic transition, while DIJ economist Markus Heckel assesses the Bank of Japan’s monetary policy under Haruhiko Kuroda and Kazuo Ueda. DIJ historian Torsten Weber and Anke Scherer (Bochum) analyse recent developments in historical debates and historical consciousness in Japan. Former DIJ senior research fellow Christian G. Winkler (Fukuoka) examines domestic Japanese politics in 2022/2023. The volume is edited by DIJ advisory board member David Chiavacci and DIJ alumna Iris Wieczorek. For more details please see the table of content. The book is available as softcover and e-book from the publisher here.

Other
January 4, 2024

Franz Waldenberger im Gespräch über japanische Infrastrukturpolitik mit brand eins Magazin

Screenshot brandeins

Stuttgart 21, Flughafen Berlin, veraltete Infrastruktur, Verspätungen: Großbauprojekte laufen in Deutschland selten nach Plan. Was macht Japan anders und was kann Deutschland von Japan lernen? DIJ-Direktor Franz Waldenberger erklärt im Interview und Artikel “Im Flow” (brand eins, 1/2024), wie Investitionen in die Infrastruktur und in die Verkehrsplanung Japan einen Mobilitätsvorsprung gegenüber Deutschland verschafft hätten. So könne bei der Nettoreisezeit die Bahn in Japan bis 800 Kilometer mit dem Flugzeug mithalten, wogegen dies in Deutschland nur bis 400 Kilometer gelte. Insgesamt sei der öffentliche Transport in Japan deutlicher besser als in Deutschland, weil für ihn mehr Ressourcen genutzt würden und der Verkehr besser geplant sei. Waldenberger verweist auch auf die relativ zeit- und kosteneffiziente Umsetzung von Großbauprojekten in Japan, die im Alltag nur zu geringen Störungen führe. “Es ist Wahnsinn, welche Großbauprojekte mitten in Tokio stattfinden”, sagt er. Auch wenn neue Stadtviertel oder Verkehrsnetze gebaut würden, funktioniere “drum herum alles ganz normal weiter”.   

Upcoming Events

19/03/2024
  • DIJ Business & Economics Study Group
    18:00 ~ 19:30

    Japanese Career Women’s Persistent Identity Conflict

27/03/2024
  • DIJ Social Science Study Group
    18:30 ~ 20:00

    Socialising the Soldier: Negotiating History, Tradition, and Identity at Japan’s National Defense Academy

04/04/2024
  • Conference
    13:00 ~ 16:00

    How to deal with China - A Dialogue between European and Japanese experts on China

09/04/2024
  • DIJ Forum
    18:30 ~ 20:00

    Moving to rural Japan – Film Screening and Discussion

12/04/2024
  • DIJ Business & Economics Study Group
    18:30 ~ 20:00

    The Political Economy of Green Industrial Policies in East Asian Neo-Developmental States

DIJ Mailing List

Please subscribe below to stay informed about our research activities, events, and publications:

    Choose Subscription:

    = required field

    DIJ Brochure

    Please see the DIJ Brochure for more information about our institute (v. 2/2024)


    Load More...

     

    Call for Submissions

    Contemporary Japan
    current issue Vol. 35, No. 2
    Contemporary Japan is open year-round for rolling submissions, with accepted publications published immediately online. Please see the instructions for submission here.

    DIJ Monograph Series

    Our monograph series is Open Access Open Access after a one-year embargo period. Downloads are available on our
    → monographs pages
    .

    Access

    DIJ Tokyo
    Jochi Kioizaka Bldg. 2F
    7-1 Kioicho Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo
    102-0094 Japan
    Where to find us

    +81 (0)3 3222-5077
    +81 (0)3 3222-5420
    dijtokyo@dijtokyo.org

     


     

    DIJ-ARI Asian Infrastructures Research Partnership