One of the most encouraging trends in contemporary scholarship is the considerable raprochment between fields of study conventionally classed as the “humanities” and those called the “social sciences,” or now fashionably, “behavioral sciences.” A strong contributing factor here has been the growth, especially during and since World War II, of so-called “area” studies which focus various disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches upon a region. Furthermore, the region which has constituted perhaps the most active front for such experiments in coordination is the Far East.

The purpose of this JAS roundtable is to reflect on the Cold War in Asia. Even to frame the issue in such terms is to confront the “formidable semantic contradiction that is inherent in the idea” of the Cold War (Kwon 2010, 7). For the very notion of the Cold War—as a “long peace” in which bipolar tensions did not lead to hot war—sits uneasily with the reality that in Asia bipolar tensions were imbricated in horrific conflicts that left millions of human casualties. On the other hand, to use the term “Cold War” simply as a label for a historical period, or “epoch” in Alfred McCoy's terms, is to invite imprecision. Moreover, even as a label for a historical period, the term still effaces the experience of much of the world, since the end date of the period is defined by the experience of Europe and the superpowers.

Recent colonial compensation lawsuits reflect the metamorphosis of historical grievances in collective public memory into tort claims in private law. This article provides a synthetic view of the nexus of colonial law and history in South Korea–Japan relations, focusing on cross-border litigation brought by former forced laborers and victims of sexual servitude known as “comfort women” during World War II. The concept of public policy (ordre public) in Korea, which has colonial origins, has long served law courts as the standard for deciding the validity of a juristic act. But of late heavy reliance on the general clauses of law in legal proceedings has risked turning history and law into handmaids of national spirit, muddling historical accountability and legal liability. Improvement of South Korea–Japan ties should start from a more accurate understanding of colonial laws and a rounded appreciation of their shared legal history.

The kimono is often overlooked in the study of modern Japanese literature. Yet it plays a vital role in representing character, symbolizing critical aspects of the narrative, and illuminating historical and social contexts. Here I focus on Kimono (1965–68), an unfinished novel by Kōda Aya (1904–90) that depicts a girl's growing-up process through her experiences with kimono during the early twentieth century. While highlighting the protagonist's development, kimonos in this work also serve various other functions, particularly cogent during a time in which everyday knowledge of kimono was declining. I examine the novel from different perspectives, including the kimono culture of the 1950s–60s and the novel's revitalization during the 1990s–2000s, facilitated by Kōda's literary inheritor, daughter Aoki Tama (1929–). This essay presents a new view of Kōda and her novel while engaging with broader questions of material and cultural representation, and the role of objects in the interpretation of literary texts.

In japan in the late 1980s, a society that is arguably one of the most modern, pragmatic, and materialist in the world, the problem of the emperor system initially seems almost irrelevant. And yet the imperial house continues to excite controversy and concern, as is clear in the full-scale media coverage given to an imperial visit or an imperial illness, and this controversy is on a far deeper and more divisive level than would be the case for such ostensible equivalents as the British royal family. The reasons behind this excitement are both obvious and problematic: the emperor is of course tied to the war and the whole complex of emotions that middle-aged Japanese feel toward it, but on a broader level the imperial house is also tied to modern Japanese history as a whole and thus to the conception that Japanese have of themselves in the postwar period.