Asian Studies research
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‘The Truth of Battleship Island’: Memory Activism over Wartime Forced Labour in Japan
Author: Rumi Sakamoto
Published: 2025, Asian Studies Review: 1-19, Taylor & Francis
Details: East Asian conflict over historical memories is often viewed as a product of clashing nationalisms, not only at the formal state level but also through the involvement of non-state actors and narratives. This article examines the memory activism of the National Congress of Industrial Heritage regarding Japan’s use of Korean forced labourers during World War II.
“I’m not angry!”: Language ideologies, misunderstanding, and marginalization among North Korean refugees in rural South Korea
Author: Mi Yung Park
Published: 2023, Applied Linguistics Review 15(6):2591-2611, De Gruyter.
Details: This qualitative study examines the language attitudes and language use of two North Korean refugees living in the Gyeongsang provincial region of South Korea and actively trying to assimilate into mainstream Korean society. In interviews, the participants expressed a hierarchical view of three varieties of Korean (their North Korean Hamgyong dialect, the South Korean Gyeongsang dialect, and standard South Korean).
‘The PRC words have infiltrated our language!’: Taiwanese national identity and linguistic purism
Author: Karen Huang
Published: 2023. In Frangville, V., Kellner, T., & Ponjaert, F. (Eds.), National Identity and Millennials in Northeast Asia: Power and Contestations in the Digital Age (pp. 185-185). Routledge.
Details: This study investigates an online debate between 2020-2021 on whether PRC loanwords should be used in Taiwan Mandarin. The discourse regarding linguistic purism was examined to see how Taiwanese millennials’ language ideologies related to their national identity.
“Can Respectable People Also Be Infected with Gonorrhea?”: Questions to a Japanese Women’s Magazine in the Interwar Period
Author: Haiying Hou and Ellen Nakamura
Published: 2022.
Details: This article explores female readers’ letters to a health advice column in the popular women’s magazine Shufu no tomo 主婦の友 (Housewife’s Companion) in the interwar period, with a focus on sexual health. While syphilis was regarded as the most dangerous sexually transmitted disease from a national standpoint, these letters suggest that gonorrhea, which was frequently transmitted by husbands to their wives, had a greater impact on women’s bodies, leading to gynaecological diseases and infertility.
Abe and the Revival of Shinto Nationalism
Author: Mark R. Mullins
Published: 2022
Details: Prof. Mark Mullins contributed a short piece to the Compendium on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Legacy, September 15, 2022 Volume 20 | Issue 16 | Number 11
Popular Culture and the Transformation of Japan–Korea Relations
Author: Rumi Sakamoto
Published: 2022
Details: This book presents essays exploring the ways in which popular culture reflects and engenders ongoing changes in Japan–Korea relations. Through a broad temporal coverage from the colonial period to the contemporary, the book’s chapters analyse the often contradictory roles that popular culture has played in either promoting or impeding nationalisms, regional conflict and reconciliations between Japan and Korea.
Exploring the Relationship between Global Studies and Ekistics
Author: Ian Fookes
Published: 2021. Ekistics and the New Habitat. Special Issue: The Global Pacific: Coastal and Human Habitats 81(3), 3-9.
Details: This article explains what is understood by the term 'Global Pacific' as it is used in this special issue's title, and thus articulate the position with which the contributors to this issue are associated. To do so, the author discusses the features of transformative global studies, identifying a resistance among global studies scholars to providing any essential definition of their 'boundaryless' discipline.