Eye Magazine
The Magazine of The International Academic Forum | Issue 5 | Fall 2014

On the Fringes
Vincent van Gogh’s Symbolist
Interpretation of Rembrandt’s
Slaughtered Ox
Reclusive Shut-ins: Are
Hikikomori Predominantly aJapanese Problem?
Critical Events in theLives of Male Dancers

Plus
J.A.A. Stockwin
on New Directionsin Japan’sConstitution,
Defence andNationalism

EYE MAGAZINE ISSUE 5

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24
16

12

21

32

CONTENTS
4.
From the Editor
An introduction to the latest
edition of Eye Magazine
6.
Having a Whale of a Time
Should a small Japaneseindustry hold the country’s
favourable international
reputation at ransom?
by Michael Liam Kedzlie
12.
Rembrandt’s Slaughtered
Ox
Vincent van Gogh’s
Symbolist Interpretation
by Jared Baxter
16.
Reclusive
Shut-ins
Are Hikikomori
Predominantly
2 | Eye Magazine Fifth Editiona Japanese Problem?
by Alexander Krieg
21.
The Territorial Disputes
between Japan and China
An Opportunity for Change
by Dilton Ribeiro
24.
New Directions in Japan’sConstitution, Defence andNationalism
From the British Perspective
by J.A.A. Stockwin
32.
“There’s A Man in Tights
Dancing on Stage!”
Critical events in the livesof male dancers andchoreographers
by Brian De Silva

EYE MAGAZINE ISSUE 5

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46

40.
Walk like a Pilgrim
Hiking Japan’s Kumano
Kodo
by Lindsay Lafreniere
46.
Japanese Collective SelfDefenceby Craig Mark48.
Latin American Filmic
Narratives, Identities andStruggles
An Interview with Alfonso

58

48

40
38.
Possibilities AcrossOceans, Continents andCultures
HOPE International sharesthe gift of clean waterby Elena Omura & Lowell
Sheppard

56

Garcia Osuna
56.
How VoiceThread impacts
classroom engagement
and learning
by Alexandra Salas
58.
Manila’s ‘Big Little SpendUp’
The Philippines Defence
Force Goes Shoppingby Michael Liam Kedzlie
Cover: “Self-Portrait,”
Vincent van Gogh, Van Gogh
Museum, Amsterdam

Eye Magazine
Issue 5 | Fall 2014

EditorMichael Liam Kedzlie
Assistant Editor - Copy
Editing & Layout
Lindsay Lafreniere
Original Design
Thaddeus Pope
Subscriptions
magazine@iafor.org

Copyright © 2014, Eye Magazine

If you would like to subscribe to Eye Magazine,
or would like to contribute to the magazine,
please contact us via magazine@iafor.org
Eye Magazine Fifth Edition | 3

“A word from the editor

This edition of Eye publishes a fascinatinginterview with Professor Alfonso Garcia Osuna
about his research work into Latin American
filmic narrative and how it creates national
identity. We also have an article based on
the recent European Conference on Politics,
Economics and Law keynote address by Oxford
University’s Professor Arthur Stockwin. Professor
Stockwin offers his British perspective regarding
Japan’s new directions in defence, nationalism andconstitutional revisionism.
IAFOR has a strong relationship with the Japanbased Hope International Development Agency

4 | Eye Magazine Fifth Edition

who work in rebuilding lives after disasters and inpoverty relief. In this edition, Hope International’s
Lowell Shephard and Elena Omura explain how
Hope goes about its work and some of the successes
they have had in their years of work. Assistant
Editor of Eye Magazine Lindsay Lafreniere writes
about hiking Japan’s Kumano Kodo pilgrimage
trail. The editorial in this Fall edition of Eye casts a
critical eye on the legal and political machinations
surrounding the recent International Court of
Criminal Justice ruling against Japanese whaling
in the Southern Ocean.
As Editor, I must give special thanks again to myassistant editor Lindsay Lafreniere and IAFOR’SMedia Manager Thad Pope for their assistancein getting this magazine together and looking sogood. I must also thank the voluntary contributionsof our writers. They are the people who really make
Eye the insightful, intelligent and interdisciplinary
magazine that it is. We hope you enjoy reading it
and feel inspired to contribute yourself.
Michael Liam Kedzlie
Editormkedzlie@iafor.org“

W

elcome to the Fall 2014 edition of Eye
Magazine, the International Academic
Forum’s own in-house e-magazine
publication. In this month’s Eye we once again
have a great line-up of articles and opinion pieces.
From Dilton Riberio, we have a fascinating article
on using international dispute resolution to solve
outstanding territorial issues in the East Asian
region. Craig Mark looks at the collective defense
arrangements that the Abe government in Japan is
now focusing on. Alex Kreig looks into the social
dilemma of hikikomori, or societal shut-ins, andJared Baxter reveals insights into Vincent Van
Gogh and Rembrandt’s painting Slaughtered
Ox. Through Alexandra Salas we also have alook at how VoiceThread can impact classroom
engagement and learning and from Brian De
Silva we learn about his research into the societal
challenges faced by male dancers.

Eye Magazine Fifth Edition | 5

EDITORIAL

Having a Whale of a Time

Should a small Japanese industry hold the country’s
favourable international reputation at ransom?
BY MICHAEL LIAM KEDZLIE

K

illing whales for scientificresearch purposes is exempt
under Article VIII of the 1986
International Whaling Commission(IWC) moratorium that banscommercial whaling. Capitalizing on
the Article VIII scientific research
exemption, Japan was able to continuelethal whaling by granting parties
within its fishing industry special

6 | Eye Magazine Fifth Edition

permits for scientific purposes under aprogram called JARPA II. The permits
are issued to the Institute of Cetacean
Research (ICR), which then contracts
Kyodo Senpaku, a whaling company, tocarry out the whaling. Once “scientificresearch” has been conducted, ICR
then releases the whales to Kyodo
Senpaku for a sale at a fixed price set
by the Japanese Ministry of Fisheries

to fish wholesalers. Nevertheless, thescientific research output stemmingfrom JARPA II has been rather
underwhelming. Just two peerreviewed scientific papers have been
produced over the last decade. In thesame period over six million kilogramsof whale meat ended up on the dining
tables of upmarket Tokyo restaurants
and elementary school lunchrooms.

This attitude and practice from Japan
has caused great controversy. By
2010, then Australian Prime Minister
Kevin Rudd began the process oftaking the scientific whaling issue
to the International Court of Justice(ICJ), the UN’s highest judicial bodyto have the matter settled. The Rudd
government had lost patience withthe tactics from the Japanese whaling
industry and fisheries ministry andwas under strong political pressure
from an angry Australian public
who felt that a country some 10,000
kilometers away coming into their“backyard” and killing whales in a
Whale Sanctuary was not acceptable.
The New Zealand government soon
joined in the action as an intervener
in the case, describing JARPA II as“pointless and offensive.” The publicof New Zealand was also angered by
the actions of the Japanese, taking thesame view as the Australian publicthat it was also “our part of the world”.
The “our part of the world” sentimentis uniquely strong within boththe New Zealand and Australianpublic. This is particularly so aroundthe maritime environments of theSouthern Ocean and South Pacific.
New Zealand famously snubbed
both France and the United States
during the later part of the Cold War
over the nuclear power and weaponsissues. The Australian public strongly
supported their government’s caseto the International Tribunal for the
Law of the Sea in 1999, which sought
to stop Japan’s “experimental fishing

Photograph by Mark Stevens / Flickr and calltheambulance / Flickr

In a move to protect whale species anddwindling whale stocks, the IWC, in
1994, established the Southern Ocean
Whale Sanctuary. This sanctuary,
though non-binding, had the purposeof prohibiting all forms of lethal
whaling and extended the prohibition
to the use of factory ships. Japan
however, has continually objected toboth the commercial moratorium on
killing whales and to the establishmentof the Southern Ocean Sanctuary.

program” for Southern Bluefin Tuna,
which faced rapid depletion.
Publicly, however, the Obamaadministration cautioned the legal
action in the International Courtof Justice (ICJ) as both Japan andAustralia were close trade and defence
allies with each other and with theUnited States as well. Nevertheless,
Australia felt that a principle was atstake and went ahead anyway. It was
the Australian government’s view thatas long as the IWC loophole exists
to allow for lethal scientific whaling,
there is no incentive for Japan tocomply, nor is there a mechanism toenforce it. Nevertheless, Australia
demands compliance and enforcementof transgressions.
In June of 2013, both sides gatheredin The Hague for the landmark case.
Submissions from were presented
to the court and oral advocacy frominterested parties was robustly
conducted to the full International
Court of Justice bench of 16
international judges. In September of2013, the judges retired to deliberate
and produce their verdict. On
March 30, 2014, the international
environmental community celebrated

the landmark decision of theInternational Court of Justice, whichcalled on Japan to end the JARPA II
scientific whaling program that killed
6,700 Antarctic minke whales overthe course of JARPA’s 18-year history.
The ICJ ruled that Japan had abused
an exemption to a commercial whaling
ban for scientific research purposes.
The court also ruled that any stateseeking to kill whales for scientificresearch must demonstrate to theInternational Whaling Commission
why non-lethal methods were not an
option.
Reacting to the judgment, the Japanese
government stated to the media that
it would act “positively” and abide by
the ruling of the ICJ. After killing
just 250 minke whales in Antarctic
waters during the previous season,some 750 whales fewer than its prehunt target, the Japanese government
called for the cancellation of its 201415 Antarctic hunt. Greenpeace andthe Sea Shepard anti-whaling activists
launched a global social media
campaign to bask in the limelight of
the Australian victory in the ICJ.
However, one of the first people to
Eye Magazine Fifth Edition | 7

whaling group and the pro-whaling
group at the IWC level, any change,
which may resolve cultural factors, will
be a long time coming. Nevertheless,in the individual summations of some
ICJ Judges such as Justice Sir Kenneth
Keith, Professor Hilary Charlesworth
and Justice Hisashi Owada, theirviews were made crystal clear on what
is either acceptable or not acceptable
about scientific whaling.

On September 18, 2014, Jun
Morshita, Japan’s Commissioner
to the International Whaling
Commission, stated to international
media that Japan would abide byits decision to stop the scientificwhaling under JARPA II. But theoften outspoken Morshita shocked
the conservation movement when
he confirmed that nevertheless Japan
would, from the 2015-2016 Southern
Ocean whaling season, continue thepractice of scientific research whaling.
Thus JARPA II is gone and is to be
8 | Eye Magazine Fifth Edition

replaced by JARPA III. Anti-whalingorganizations such as Greenpeace
commented that it was obviously aclear breach of good faith and a snub
to both the international community
and international law. Greenpeaceargues that postponement of whaling
by Japan over the 2014 to 2015 season
is only happening so they can buy
the extra time to find a new loophole
to cynically exploit the rules andwrap the issue in a blanket of selflegitimacy. In the meantime to abideby the new regulations, Japan would
have to submit a plan to the scientificcommittee of the IWC by the end of
the year.
What needs to be remembered is that
the ICJ ruling back in March put an
end to the fraud of JARPA II. It did
not put an end to lethal whaling forscientific purposes. The case presented
to the court could not be framed asa total ban on whaling and the court
was in no position to go ultra vires
and make a judgment otherwise. The
March ICJ decision against Japanwas in no way able to resolve thefundamental cultural conflict between
those who believe whales should
not be hunted and those who arewilling to restrict hunting as part of a
wildlife management program. Thosechanges will have to be enacted at theInternational Whaling Commission.
With the issue split between the anti-

At the most recent September IWC
meeting, the Japanese complainedthat they were “ambushed” by avariation to the regime proposed by
New Zealand, which would disallow
any future permits being issued for
any whaling research without proofof tangible scientific necessity andlimit on the ability of any country
to unilaterally set its own quotas forlethal research whaling in the future.
The proposed change by New Zealand
was passed by the IWC membership
35 votes for the motion and 20 votes
against.
This now makes it very difficult forJapan to come up with a scientificPhotograph by Antti T. Nissinen / Flickr and John / Flickr

pour cold water on the celebrationsof the international environmentalists
was UN Rapporteur for the World
Heritage Convention Professor Al
Gillespie, from the University ofWaikato School of Law in New
Zealand. In interviews with BBC
Radio and CNN following the ICJ
judgment, Gillespie stated thatJapanese “scientific” whaling would
continue in another form and thatthe actual intent of the Japanese
Government would be business as
usual. Within months, Gillespie wasproven right as a Japanese Ministryof Fisheries spokesperson revealed
Tokyo’s plan to resume researchwhaling in the Antarctic for the
2015-16 season. Japan then formallyconfirmed this new scientific whaling
program at the recent September
IWC meeting.

The general consensus amongst
maritime
conservationists
andinternational lawyers is that Japan
will continue to pay only a cursory
compliance to the International
Whaling Commission resolution as
it stands. Any intention to go ahead
with a revised scientific whaling
program next year basically signalsthat the country won’t in practiceabide by the IWC rules that establish
the framework for scientific research
into whales. Most of its current energy
is primarily geared to the mechanicaland logistical requirements ofconducting further Southern Ocean
whaling and not attempting to begin
the hard yards on making complianceto the scientific research regime evenplausible. It will continue to kill first,
ship to restaurants and schools all overthe country and then deal with theniceties of the paper work later.

It will continue to kill first, ship to restaurants
and schools all over the country, and thendeal with the niceties of the paperwork later.
research program that would allow
any lethal whaling, which would
be acceptable to the IWC. In reply,
Japanese representative to the IWC
Hideki Moronuki attacked not justthe variation but also lashed out
against the prior ICJ judgment statingthat “New Zealand’s understanding of
the ICJ judgment differs from Japan’s.
Japan cannot accept the resolution
as it now stands.” Moronuki added
that, “The court judgment only saysthat Japan should revoke existing
authorization or a permit and not theother special permit activities.”
However,Moronuki

missesthepoint. It is no longer solely about
the judgment. It is about taking
steps within the IWC to give legal
efficacy and clarity to the judgment.
Moronuki, obviously dejected by
the events within the September
meeting, fails to understand that thevariation introduced by New Zealand
was to clarify the vagueness in thepresent IWC regime and bridge anamendment to the IWC legal
framework. The ICJ was explicit about
the requirements of science research todemonstrate why non-lethal methods
were not an option. It was simply
a subsequent legal move by New
Zealand that flowed on and addressed

an outstanding issue and not one inwhich the Japanese are now trying toinfer is a wrong interpretation of theoriginating ruling. Japan was not able
to make a convincing argument to the
September IWC meeting and lost.
They were out maneuvered, legally
harpooned by the New Zealandlawyers and part of their current
misery is that they know that thenext time anyone takes Japan to the
ICJ, which is a foregone conclusion if
Japan heads once again down to theSouth Ocean Sanctuary and starts
killing whales as part of a JARPA III,
then with the clarity now present in
the IWC rulebook any future ICJ

Eye Magazine Fifth Edition | 9

to full scale commercial whaling. The
birth of the modern whaling industry
was established in 1987 following
the start of the IWC moratorium.
Kyodo Senpaku, the company which
conducts the whaling operations wasestablished later that year after the
dissolution of the previous JARPA I era
All of this begs the question to even the whaling company Kyodo Hogei. That
most causal observer. Why on earth same year the Institute of Cetacean
does the Japanese government want Research (ICR) was established as a
to invite the growing international non-profit organisation substantially
opprobrium against it over whaling? funded by the Kyodo Senpaku
To answer that question one has to whaling company. Its primary function
look into local Japanese politics. The remains to conduct research into theJapanese whaling industry to survive southern hemisphere minke whale
as a commercial activity has needed to species, to thus create a veil of validity
cultivate a pro-whaling lobby within for the return to commercial whaling.
both the Ministry of Agriculture’s All this is a very circular arrangement.
Fisheries Agency and with mostly Kyodo Senpaku sets up the Instituteright-wing lawmakers of its Diet. of Cetacean Research who are funded
The industry itself is not viable and by an annual allocation from therequires substantial subsidies from Fisheries Agency. The ICR in turnthe government to survive, even to solely contracts Kyodo Senpaku
the point that $29 million dollars was to conduct “scientific whaling” ondiverted from the post-earthquake behalf of the Fisheries Agency, whilst
and tsunami reconstruction budget handing back the catch to Kyodo
allocation and siphoned into the Senpaku, which had never left theirwhaling industry coffers.
possession in the first place, so they
can then sell the “excess” whale meat
The advocacy group International to commercial fishery wholesalers.
Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) The bias in allocation of funds towards
estimates that whaling has cost Antarctic minkes is due to the fact
Japanese taxpayers $378 million since that the Fisheries Agency sees thethe Southern Ocean moratorium species as a stock ripe for commercial
began. Part of that money heads exploitation. ICR leadership roles
overseas as part of a “vote buying” have traditionally been seen as a wellscheme to gain control of the IWC. In paid “golden parachute” or Amakudari
order to get its way within the IWC, position for retired Fisheries Agency
Japan has been actively recruiting a officials, which all helps for this tightnumber of developing countries to join little club to continue.
the IWC and vote in its favour, against
the ban on commercial whaling. It has In the scheme of things, the Japanese
been known to make ODA (overseas whaling industry is just a tiny niche
development assistance) conditional within its much larger fishing industry.
to this. Around 28 countries including However, to survive it has courted
the landlocked African nation of Mali political patrons with nationalist
have been recruited by Japan to the tendencies and wrapped the whole
whaling commission as a result of issue up in ethnocentric principals.
Japanese ODA.
The Japanese whaling industry andofficials in the Ministry of Fisheries
Within Japan there are vested consider whaling a fundamental partinterests somewhat similar to an old of Japanese culture. They also stateboys network, which wish to return that continual moves by Australia,
10 | Eye Magazine Fifth Edition

New Zealand, the European Unionand other anti-whaling nations,
including the United States, arepart of what it calls an “alarmist
crusade” and “cultural imperialism”
against Japan. This ethnocentric view
is however incredulous. The antiwhaling countries also strenuously
protest Norway and Iceland andtheir commercial whaling activities.
They are not singling out just Japan.
The cultural imperialism argument
markedly fails on the basis that if
Japan were so cultural driven bywhaling as a practice - why not only
whale in one’s own waters and not
be commercial imperialists travelling
across hemispheres and whale in aninternationally recognized whale
sanctuary? At any stage prior to the20th century did the small fleet of
traditional whaling boats travel the
15,000 kilometers to the Southern
Ocean to whale, kill it and lug it the
15,000 kilometers home? Clearly not!
The fact that whaling is part ofJapanese culture can indeed be
accepted. There is evidence thatwhaling was conducted in and around
the Japanese coastline thousandsof years ago. The village of Taiji has
long been well known as a whaling
centre in Japan and the birthplace of
the amitori method of killing whales
that spread to a small number of otherwhaling villages, such as Ayukawa
and Wada, in the 17th century.
Furthermore, there is a provision
for such cultural whaling within
the IWC. Since its inception, theIWC has recognised that indigenousor ‘aboriginal subsistence’ whaling
within prescribed limits is perfectly
acceptable and not subject to the 1986
moratorium on commercial whaling.
‘Traditional aboriginal subsistence’whaling continues in a number of
local communities in Alaska, Russia,
amongst Inuit tribes in Canada,
the Caribbean, and on the islandof Lembata in Indonesia. Just thislast month the IWC gave aboriginalcommunities in Greenland the right

Photograph by adrian kenyon / Flickr

hearing on the matter can adjudicate
with greater precision. Moreover,Moronuki was also conveniently silent
on the ICJ’s criticism that the Japanesescientific research publications were
not anywhere proportionate to thenumber of animals killed.

to take whales under this clause of
the IWC rules. All that Japan would
need to do is prove that the aboriginalsubsistence’ whaling can meet thelegal test of being for “the culturaland subsistence needs of their people.”That is the way forward for Japan,
the cultural solution in which the
majority of those who have recently
opposed the way Japan has gone about
whaling over recent decades are likely
to support.
Japan could also learn from its Asianneighbor and trading rival South
Korea who dropped its plans to resume
whaling in its coastal waters amid
a storm of international criticism,and will now instead use non-lethal
methods to conduct research on the
mammals. The Korean government
is now in the process of finalizing its
plan to study whales through nonlethal techniques, like Australia and
New Zealand do. Environmental
agencies predict that the provocationof anger that will be generated by
the international community will be
more intense if a JARPA III program
goes ahead compared to the past.
Korea realized that it was bad forbusiness and bad for its international

reputation. China, who formerly was
pro-whaling, has joined the promoratorium group, will no doubt seize
the opportunity to create a wedge
issue it can use in its propaganda war
with Japan.
What the anti-whaling majority will
not support is Japan continuing under
any future JARPA III program in theSouthern Ocean. They will not support
any lethal whaling activity, which
is demonstrably not a traditional
cultural activity but a commercial
activity. Their view is that Japan will
have to decide whether it believes its
own rhetoric about whaling being
a cultural activity. It is clear thatJapan needs to move away from its
basic position of seeking to resume
sustainable commercial whaling tosomething, which can retain cultural
traditions with integrity. The lethal
killing of 1000 whales a year in thename of junk science is a ruse thatbuilds distrust and disrespect within
the international community when
the Japanese whaling industry is at
the same time elevating its cultural
whaling dimension as a justification
to continue.

Any resumption in scientific whalinglate next year is going to have significant
diplomatic and international blowback
on Japan. It is a miscalculation by the
Abe Government in that it will undo
so much of the goodwill that othernations have recently had towards
the nation, especially since theGreat Tohoku Earthquake in 2011.
According to a Pew Research Center
poll, Japan is considered to be the mostrespected country within the Asian
region by the rest of the international
community. China is now second.
Loss of that goodwill will be acircumstance that directly undermines
Japan’s “Smart Power” meme that it
has so carefully cultivated within theinternational community since Chinabegan her rise twenty years ago. The
way that the geo-politics are unfoldingin the 21st century, it is very clear thatJapan needs its global friends morethan it needs to support a discredited
tiny whaling industry.
Michael Liam Kedzlie is the
Research and Policy Manager for
IAFOR and is the Editor of Eye
Magazine.

Eye Magazine Fifth Edition | 11

Rembrandt’s Slaughtered Ox
Vincent van Gogh’s Symbolist Interpretation
by Jared Baxter

12 | Eye Magazine Fifth Edition

“The patron of painters — St Luke — physician, painter,evangelist — having for his symbol— alas — nothing
but the ox — is there to give us hope.”

Rembrandt – sad hospital filled fullwith murmurings
Decorated only with a great crucifix
Where the tearful prayer exhales fromthe filth,
And brusquely traversed by a ray of
winter.

that he knew more or less nothing about
Rembrandt [...] But see, have you everlooked closely at ‘the ox’ or the interior ofa butcher’s shop in the Louvre?
You haven’t looked closely, and Baudelaire, infinitely less so.
Art historian Kenneth Craig publishedthe most compelling interpretation of
The Slaughtered Ox, explicating it is areligious painting by demonstrating
Rembrandt distilled the essence of astoried Flemish vanitas tradition that
depicted the Prodigal Son parable byprominently featuring a flayed carcass
as allegorical of Christ’s crucifixion.
He concluded:
The killing of the fatted calf at the joyous
return of the Son is the symbolic equivalent of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross.
Sermon after sermon as well as innumerable commentaries on Luke 15 makethis point: the ox stands for Christ.

This quatrain by nineteenth century
Symbolist pioneer Charles Baude- Craig uses the “fatted calf ” andlaire began a heated discussion be- “slaughtered ox” interchangeably here
tween Vincent and his pen pal, the and several other times. And so it begs
artist Émile Bernard. The discourse the question: does the calf stand forwould ultimately disintegrate their Christ or is it the ox, or is it maybe
friendship. Bernard, who was less both?
talented with brush and palette thanthose comrades of the Petit Boulevard Digging into the various lexical his(Vincent, Gauguin, Toulouse Lautrec tories doesn’t really solve the problem.
and others), was arguably the greatest The original Greek word from the partheorist and innovator, laying claim to able is “moschos,” in the Latin Vulgate
originating two artistic movements: it’s “vitulum” and in the 1637 Dutch
Cloisonnism and Symbolism. Vin- Bible, it’s “kalf ” and all clearly denotecent’s interpretation of Rembrandt’s a young bovine, not an ox. While
Slaughtered Ox, with its multiplicity of there appears to be a conflation, datmetaphors, reveals his syncretic ide- ing back thousands of years, perhaps
ation of Symbolist art – a definition the argument should be made that thethat won’t please pedantic art critics calf stands for the infant Christ and– but should illuminate how he per- the ox, His passion.
ceived and worked within the movement.
Vincent, in all likelihood, embraced
this crucifixion representation. HowVincent’s reaction to the quatrain was ever, he also perceived a lost interpreseething and contemptuous:
tation heretofore unpublished by art
historians. He explained to Bernard:
Ah... Rembrandt... all admiration for
Baudelaire aside — I venture to assume, The symbol of Saint Luke, the patron
especially on the basis of those verses....
of painters, is, as you know, an ox; wemust therefore be as patient as an ox if
we wish to labor in the artistic field.
The ox also stands for Luke, an important nuance, especially when we
consider Luke is also the patron saintof butchers, compounding the correspondence within Rembrandt’s
depiction all the more richly. Correspondences, or, multiplicities of metaphors are a cornerstone of Symbolist
art. Interestingly, a similar tradition
was practiced by Vincent’s Dutchmen.
Bijschriftenpoëzie, or “imagepoetry” isthe marriage of poem and picture, inwhich a theologian would take a reverent image and ascribe to it, poetic
thoughts, typically from the scriptures,or hymn books of his day. The idea isthat a poem is a picture, and a picture,a poem. Artistic lines between genresare blurred, ideally, synesthetically.
This was also an important tenet ofSymbolist art: to evoke a state of mind
within the viewer in which the senses
are completely bedazzled.
Vincent’s beliefs about St. Luke illustrate his feeling that the artist’s
plight begins with labor. About his
own laborious, artistic endeavors, helamented, quoting Delacroix, “Art isjealous and demands all our time, all
our strength,” echoing this sentimentfrom Flaubert in a later letter, “‘talent
is long on patience’ – and originality aneffort of will and intense observation.”
Art takes strength. Art takes patience.
In short, art takes work. It takes all
the exertion of an ox to become agreat artist, the greatest of whom, inVincent’s opinion was not Rembrandt,
Michelangelo or St. Luke, but Christ;
as he explained to Bernard, “he madeneither statues nor paintings nor evenbooks..... he states it loud and clear..
he made.. living men, immortals.”
As the ox struggles ever through thefield, labor leads to suffering. This
doubleedged sword for Vincent wasreflected in his mantra to be “sorrowful yet always rejoicing” and illustrated
Eye Magazine Fifth Edition | 13

Painting “The Slaughtered Ox”, Rembrandt van Rijn, Louvre Museum

Although he died 125 years ago, Vincent (as he preferred to be called) remains the poster child for tortured
artists everywhere. The icon of tormented genius, he sacrificed everything for his art – his health, his sanity and even his life – earning next tonothing while alive. A labyrinthinecreative, he held specific ideas aboutsacrifice, torment and suffering, values
that were grounded in his deeply religious youth. His visage of the archetypal tortured artist was not that man
in his mirror but rather, Jesus Christ;
whom he tried lifelong to imitate.

Self-Portrait with Portrait of Gauguin
Émile Bernard
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
in his view that artists were beasts of burden, including his
several references to “the poor Impressionists” as “Parisiancabhorses.” His friend and rival, Paul Gauguin wrote him
during this nascent creative period:

also unable to procreate. The abandonment of the physicality for the creative, was now Vincent’s destiny. But he wasin good company. Those beasts of burden, St. Luke andChrist had been celibate, rejecting their physical selves infavor of discovering their spiritual perfections.

From the asylum at St. Remy, a year after lambasting the
Baudelaire quatrain, his relationship with Bernard andGauguin all but dissolved; Vincent derided their attempts
at Symbolist art as rife with crude Catholic iconography,
The artist’s life is one long Calvary to go through! And that’s exhorting, “in order to give an impression of anxiety, you
perhaps what makes us live. Passion enlivens us, and we die can try to do it without heading straight for the historicalwhen it has nothing more to feed on. Let’s leave these paths full garden of Gethsemane.” His point was to be more subof thorny bushes, but they have their wild poetry all the same. tle, was to be more sublime. The greatest artists challenge
I’m studying young Bernard, whom I don’t know as well as you their viewers to discover elusive, symbolic meanings, as
do; I believe you’ll do him good, and he needs it. He has suffered, evidenced in the myriad of epiphanies experienced whileof course, and he’s starting out in life full of bile...
closely examining The Slaughtered Ox. Thus, Vincent interpreted the Rembrandt as an allegorical self-portrait andThese artists embraced as a prerequisite that one must suf- mirroring of the artist’s plight and destiny: labor, suffering,fer to create art. It follows that the greater the suffering, the castration, and crucifixion, but ultimately, salvation.
greater the artistic output. Which artist had suffered themost? He whom had earned the symbol of the ox through Jared Baxter is an independent researcher living on theHis passion, Christ. The result of which – according to outskirts of the Portland, Oregon sprawl in rural WashVincent – was the creation of humanity and immortality ougal, Washington. Originally from Salt Lake City, Utah
for all those who believe in Him.
he was educated in Manchester, England and Davidson
College, North Carolina. Over the last three years, his
When Vincent fled to the south of France, he had given up research has focused on Vincent van Gogh, in particular,
hopes of a wife or children, empathizing with his brother, how Vincent’s enduring“we try to create thoughts instead of children; in that way, embrace of ChristianPietà (after Delacroix)
we’re part of humanity all the same.” Humbled in the Ar- ity manifested itself in his
Vincent van Goghlesian brothels, Vincent felt impotent in the physical world, later life and artwork.
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam“creating thoughts instead of children.” Oxen, castrated, are
14 | Eye Magazine Fifth Edition

Eye Magazine Fifth Edition | 15

Reclusive
Shut-ins

Are Hikikomori Predominantly
a Japanese Problem?

by Alexander Krieg

16 | Eye Magazine Fifth Edition

Eye Magazine Fifth Edition | 17
Photograph by Rami L./ Flickr

Photography by Davi Ozolin / Flickr and Matthew T Rader / Flickr“Hikikomori” is a term that describes both the state
and the sufferer of acute social withdrawal. First coinedby psychiatrist, Tamaki Saito in 1998, the term and thecondition gained immense popularity in Japan following
several newspaper articles and television interviews with
Saito. While technically a transliteration of the English
term ‘social withdrawal’, shakaiteki hikikomori was soon
reintroduced to the English-speaking community asa uniquely Japanese term (and phenomenon) throughCanadian journalist Michael Zielenziger’s 2007 book
Shutting Out the Sun and the New York Times’ article“Shutting Themselves In.” Since then, the numberof scientific investigations and popular editorials has
exponentially increased around the world. The topic
continues to intrigue individuals from various social
science and humanities backgrounds today.
When one mentions “hikikomori”, the immediate image
that comes to mind is a young Japanese man, who has
isolated himself within a bedroom in his parents’ house foryears on end, refusing to speak, interact, or even be seen byanyone—sometimes including his own family. Meals arebrought to the door a few times a day, and garbage andother refuse are left out in return. He might have started
off spending his time playing video games or chatting
online, but those activities lost their charm long ago. He
now simply stares off into space. Hikikomori. The world ofperfect isolation.
While the previous description of hikikomori is notnecessarily incorrect, it describes only a subsample
of individuals. Because of the diversity of traits andcharacteristics accompanying hikikomori, much effort has
been put into defining the term in a way that consolidates
the condition that we are examining. Saito originally
18 | Eye Magazine Fifth Edition

describes social withdrawal as the disorder and any
accompanying psychiatric symptoms as the expression ofthis disorder. As a part of the psychoanalytic tradition,
he considers hikikomori a “problem of adolescence”,
particularly related to how adulthood has now been
postponed to one’s thirties. According to his belief, theonly cure is the “development of social character into
maturity.”[3] Despite the psychoanalytic roots, there
have also been many attempts to behaviorally define thecondition, creating an apparent discrepancy between the
proposed etiology and the definition. The best behavioral
definition to date was proposed by Teo and Gaw (2010).
This definition of hikikomori captures the core constructs
associated with the condition in six criteria: (1.) most of
the day nearly every day is spent at home, (2.) persistentavoidance of social situations, (3.) persistent avoidance ofsocial relationships, (4.) experienced distress or impairment
in an individual’s normal routine, (5.) duration at least six
months, and (6.) not better explained by another psychiatricdisorder such as social phobia, major depressive disorder,
schizophrenia, or avoidant personality disorder.
Similar to how there have been some disagreements
and inconsistency with the definition, there are many
more misconceptions and misinformation surrounding
hikikomori. These include, but are not limited to, (1.)
the number of hikikomori in Japan, (2.) the existenceof hikikomori outside of Japan, and (3.) whether thephenomenon is caused by modern Japanese culture or
society. These will be discussed one by one in the following
sections.
“One Million Hikikomori”
Saito’s initial estimate numbered the individuals in astate of hikikomori to be about one million. Since then,other media sources, such as Phil Rees’ BBC special“Hikikomori: The Missing Million”, have echoed this figure
primarily to highlight the significance of this “emerging
epidemic.” However, the estimate of one million has noempirical basis. There have been three studies to date thathave attempted to calculate the number of hikikomori
in Japan based on sampling statistics. In 2002, Miyake’s
team[5] found 14 cases amongst a sample of 1,646 people
in Okinawa, extrapolating to about 410,000 cases in theentire country. In 2008, Inui[6] used statistics on labormarket participation to estimate that the number ofhikikomori is actually less, about 200,000 cases nationally.
The best attempt at ascertaining this number, however,can be found in an epidemiological study by Koyama’s
team[7] that used state-of-the-art sampling and statisticaltechniques to estimate that there are 232,000 hikikomori
in Japan. This works itself out to be a lifetime prevalence
rate of 1.2% for Japanese individuals between the age of 20
and 49. The scientific community considers this to be themost accurate estimate as of 2010.

“Hikikomori Represents a Culture in Crises”
This claim is more difficult to refute because it is
so inherently subjective. Some investigators such as
Zielenziger (2007 and Sugai (2013), rely on the fictional
assertion that hikikomori does not exist outside of Japan,
have compared and contrasted cultural characteristics ofJapan and other countries to demonstrate the cultural
etiology of hikikomori. None too abashed is the subtitleof Zielenziger’s book, which reads “How Japan CreatedIts Own Lost Generation.” Various cultural and societal
factors including (1.) individualism/collectivism, (2.)
Japanese education system, and (3.) Japanese familysystem/functioning have been attributed to the “riseof hikikomori.” For the following discussion it is firstimportant to recognize two things: Japan, as a society
and culture, produces far more non-hikikomori than
hikikomori; and that factors that may predict someone
becoming hikikomori within Japan, may not be the best
explanation on why someone would become hikikomori“Hikikomori is Uniquely Japanese”
When first investigating this phenomenon, Saito (2008)
emailed mental health professionals from around the world
asking if they have ever seen a case as he described. While
the statistics from this survey were not made available, Saito(2013) highlighted the respondents that replied that they
had never heard of it[1, 3]. In a more recent systemized
replication of this study in 2012, Kato (2012) and his
team found that among 124 mental health professionals
from eight countries around the world, nearly all of themstated that they have seen or heard of someone in theirown country who matches this description. Similarly, there
have been hikikomori case studies from several countries
outside Japan including, Spain, Oman, the United States,
Canada, Italy, the United Kingdom, France, Taiwan, andSouth Korea. There has even been exploratory researchcomparing hikikomori cross-nationally on traits such as
loneliness and treatment preferences. In my own placeof employment, a child assessment and treatment centerin Hawaii, we have seen no less than six individuals in
the last two years that meet criteria for hikikomori by
Teo and Gaw’s definition (excluding criterion 6). Also
pertinent to this question, the epidemiological estimatesof hikikomori in South Korea are approximately the same
population percentage as in Japan (2% or about 100,000
people). Despite this strong emerging evidence that thehikikomori phenomena is worldwide, certain investigatorsand reporters have tried to construe the issue as uniquely
Japanese (see next section), and in that way pathologized
the country and culture. Even after Teo and Gaw’s
proposal to formally add hikikomori as a “culture-bound”
psychiatric disorder, they specifically stated in a later
publication that the term “culture-bound”, which denotes
only occurring in a certain cultural context, should actually
be “culture-influenced.” However, by that definition, every
psychiatric disorder from oppositional defiant disorder,
to major depressive disorder, to schizophrenia is “culturebound.” Needless to say, all of this evidence culminates tounderscore that while the term “hikikomori” is Japanese,the phenomenon is global.
Eye Magazine Fifth Edition | 19

in Japan as oppose to another country (i.e., within-groupvs. between-group predictions). The impact of collectivism
and educational systems are outside the scope of this article,
and instead of commenting on them directly, I would
simply advise investigators to recognize that this type of
causal evidence is very difficult to obtain, and that this typeof conclusion should be tentative at best when other moreparsimonious explanations have been ruled out. In regards
to Japanese families, there have been many assertions that
fundamental flaws in family functioning represent a key
reason for hikikomori, whether this be parenting style,mother-child attachment or family functioning in general.
The evidence for this is that hikikomori and their families

Despite this strong emerging evidence
that the hikikomori phenomena isworldwide, certain investigators andreporters have tried to construe theissue as uniquely Japanese, and in thatway pathologized the country andculture.
frequently report these concerns, but while these two issues
may certainly be related, there has been no evidence to dateto infer that one causes the other. Furthermore, while someinvestigators purport that contemporary Japanese families
do not meaningfully communicate with each other[21],it is unclear how “meaningfully” is conceptualized andwhether this is unique to Japanese families with orwithout hikikomori—let alone compared to contemporary
families in other countries. In an investigation of family
functioning among families of autistic, hikikomori, andhealthy children, Koshiba (2007) and her team found thatfamily functioning was lower amongst the hikikomori
and autism families than the control group. However, just
as family functioning did not “cause” the predominately
biological disorder of autism, it is unclear how it influences
hikikomori. In another large scale investigation led by
Umeda and the World Mental Health Survey Group(Umeda & Kawakami, 2012), parenting style was not
related to hikikomori, but psychiatric illness amongst oneof the parents was. It is not clear, however, whether thelatter relationship is because of a biological predisposition
or environmental factors (or both). Furthermore, therelationship between parents’ and children’s psychiatricconcerns is a fairly robust finding globally (Goodman,2011), and does not necessarily denote that “Japan is incrises.”Diagnostic Labels as Descriptive and Predictive
Now that we have discussed what hikikomori is not,what is it? Just a buzzword? A media hype? While wehave certainly challenged some of the common notions
and misinformation that has been disseminated about
hikikomori, the question still stands: how can we bestaccount for and describe the various characteristics,
behaviors, and symptomology experienced by these people
who are suffering so deeply? In the end, it isn’t about the
20 | Eye Magazine Fifth Edition

label “hikikomori” or otherwise, but it is finding the best
way to conceptualize this condition that would have themost clinical utility and lead to the most treatment success.
Issues of comorbidity, psychiatric disorders that co-occur
with hikikomori, further complicate this. While theworking definition of hikikomori specifies that no otherpsychiatric condition can be present (criterion 6), thisdescribes only a small subset of individuals who presented
as hikikomori. Even Saito admits that the majority of
his cases meet criteria for another disorder such as social
phobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenia,
and pervasive developmental disorder. Early estimatesindicated that the comorbidity rates between hikikomori
and other psychiatric disorders ranged between 54% and73%. These studies, however, had key methodologicalflaws and did not assess for developmental disorders or
psychotic disorders, both of which have been demonstrated
to be highly comorbid (between 20 and 33%) withhikikomori in other studies. The most thorough study
to date reliably demonstrated 99.7% comorbidity (allbut one case) with other psychiatric disorders amongst
their sample of 337 hikikomori from multiple treatment
centers assessed by multiple, highly-trained psychiatrists/
psychologists. Because social withdrawal is a symptom formany psychiatric concerns including anxiety disorders,
depressive disorders, psychotic disorders, personality
disorders, and pervasive developmental disorders, thismeans that the entire syndrome of hikikomori (andits heterogeneous presentation) could potentially be
explained by already well-established and well-researched
psychiatric conditions. Furthermore, comorbidity violates
criterion 6 of Teo and Gaw’s definition, meaning thatin the majority of cases, hikikomori are not technically
hikikomori. At this point, it is important to rememberthat all diagnostic labels are, in a sense, “made up.” They areideas that professionals have about how different disorders
work and what symptoms are associated with them. The
purpose of these labels is to (1.) describe the conditionand (2.) prescribe the appropriate treatment that would
lead to the greatest success. In this way, it is important toanchor these ideas in empirical observation in order toprovide validity, explanatory power, and clinical utility forthese diagnostic labels. It is apparent that the next step inthe hikikomori research includes providing discriminate
validity (the ability to empirically differentiate between
diagnostic labels) and explanatory power, by answering thefollowing question: “Can hikikomori explain the conditionof acute social withdrawal and accompanying symptoms
over and above existing psychiatric disorders?” Until then,it is possible to make the argument that the diagnostic
term, “hikikomori”, may represent fiction altogether.
Alexander Krieg is a Ph.D. candidate in clinicalpsychology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. In
addition to hikikomori, his program of research focuseson cross-cultural psychopathology, with a particularemphasis on how the intersection of culture andcognition influences the expression of social anxiety,shyness, and social anhedonia in East Asian and Westerncontexts.
A fully referenced version of this article is available on
request. Contact: publications@iafor.org

PERSPECTIVESThe Territorial Disputes between Japan and China

An Opportunity for Change
by Dilton Ribeiro

In his book On China, Henry Kissinger mentions the
Sino-Indian War of 1962. Indian and Chinese troops
were locked in a stalemate over a territorial dispute in
the Himalayas based on two different historical versionsof their territorial boundaries. Mao Zedong searched into
Chinese tradition and, based on a reasoning grounded inancient principles, led a strong attack on Indian positions
but later retreated to the previous line of control.
Japan’s concern over territorial disputes with China is thus
not unreasonable. This example with India demonstrates
that history and ancient principles are very importantelements in the conduction of foreign affairs with China
and could lead to deep conflicts, even if for a short time,and amidst a general understanding that both nations
are, in most periods of time, friends. In the light of Japanand China’s long, complex and sometimes contentious
history, one cannot disregard a myriad of reasons, which
could amount to major undertakings to assure a territorial
supremacy.
The current worrisome Sino-Japanese territorial dispute isover a set of islands called the Senkaku by Japan, or Diaoyu
by China. The Senkaku/Diaoyu is a group of inhabitedislands located in the East China Sea between Japan,
China and Taiwan. The islands were officially incorporated
by Japan in 1895 on the basis that they were terra nullius
and not under control of the Qing Empire. Control ofthis set of islands passed to the United States after theSecond World War and since 1972 they have arguably
been administered by Japan. In the 1970s, China firstcontested Japanese sovereignty over the Senkaku/Diaoyu
islands (affirming that the land belonged to them before
the Japanese incorporation). Each country now argues
they have historical reasons to control this territory andeach claims that the other had previously acknowledged
their historical sovereignty over the islands.
The international community closely follows this dispute,especially because of the political and economic importanceof both Japan and China. But the dispute also reaches
beyond East Asia and may involve the United States,
which has potential obligations to Japan under the Treatyof Mutual Cooperation and Security in the event there is amilitary conflict over the islands.
Debate over this issue ranges from legal questions of theright of possession and ownership over the islands to
Eye Magazine Fifth Edition | 21

Photography by and AK Rockefeller/ Flickr and United Nations Photo/ Flickr

concerns about the need for moreinvestment in military defence as wellas broader and divergent political andhistorical interpretations. This lastpoint resonates strongly with Japan,
which knows that historical principles
and tradition can be a decisive reason
for military and political action by
China. For their part, the Japanese may
seek the potentially Herculean task ofamending their pacifist constitution
to allow for a stronger military system,
which requires massive support ofboth the Diet and the population.
A war would be generally regarded
as ill-advised, possibly illegal andprobably unwanted by both countries.
China and Japan’s economies are
increasingly interdependant. The
East Asian future and the need forcontinuous growth depend on an
economic and political partnership
between both countries. However, this
could be seen not through the lenses
22 | Eye Magazine Fifth Editionof possible wars or the furthering ofpolitical grievances. What we face here
is an opportunity: a chance to deepen
the rule of law in the East Asian
context and consequently strengthen
the arm of international law.
I believe this territorial disputeis an opportunity to reshape theinternational relations in East Asia
based on what is common andcomplementary between China andJapan. Rather than examine theirpoints of contention, this territorial
dispute could be a door to examine
the points of congruence between
Japan and China, which could further
strengthen the relations between these
two important nations. This disputedemonstrates the need for a rule of law
mechanisms that take into accounttheir cultural and historical context
and also presents the possibility offurther extending it.

International law is not really aEuropean creation or a solely Westernenterprise. Stephen Neff, in his bookJustice among Nations, argues that if
we understand international law ascomprising of general principles basedon philosophical framework insteadof a mere myriad of state practices,then we can confidently point toAncient China as its birthplace.
This historical understanding ofinternational law was deeply rooted in
Confucian tradition and has four key
elements. First, there is an emphasis
on deference and hierarchy (e.g.: ofchildren to parents, of younger toolder siblings and of society as a wholeto the ruler). Secondly, the Confucianinternational law is rooted in thenotion of reciprocal duties coupledwith a sense of nobleness. Thirdly,
this system of duties contributes to aharmonious and well-ordered society
in which individuals have specificroles to play. Finally, this system

focuses on benevolence (including of
the ruler) and virtue as key aspects toinspire and educate society, including
the subjects of the sovereign. This is atheory grounded in pacifism.
These key elements of the Confucianinternational law could easily describe
both China and Japan. These nations
are deeply connected and haveinfluenced each other throughout
history. Their common Confucianroots can work as a pathway tocreate a legal bridge focusing on
the common elements instead ofon things which could set themapart in order to establish systems
of communication grounded in therule of law. Furthermore, this could
be crystalized in an internationalorganization, which would stresstheir core cultural and legal values
and peacefully implement a system ofconflict resolution. An ‘internationalorganization’ is also not a Westerninvention. For example, during theSpring and Autumn Era (722-481
B.C.) and especially the Warring
States period of Chinese history (481221 B.C.), a number of State leagues
were formed by multilateral treaties
to coordinate agreements, trades,
extradition and dispute resolutions
under a tributary system.

strongly grounded in the respect of
the rule of law, pacifism and humanrights. In modern times, Japan has
successfully merged individual andcommunitarian
perspectives
toprovide the foundation for a stableand prosperous nation. Japan’s deep
Confucian values, maintained withina modern and stable system of law,
can contribute to a strong regional
international organization in East
Asia which would have the power tosettle international disputes and take
into account the region’s cultural andhistorical values and nuances.
Unilateral arguments, even those
based on international law, aredestined to fail. Whether one asserts
sovereignty over the Senkaku/Diaoyu
Islands based on the distance from ashoreline (based on the requirementsof the Exclusive Economic Zone,
for example) or on who exercised
effective control over a longer periodof time, neither argument will settle
the conflict. Only a forum based on acongruent view merging the historicaland cultural aspects of both Japan and
China, coupled with a strong emphasison the rule of law, can put an end to
this and other territorial disputes.

The
Senkaku/Diaoyu
disputes
represent a good opportunity forboth Japan and China to focus on
their commonalities that could
serve as the starting point for acomprehensive treaty establishing a
regional international organization
and an international adjudication
system merging contemporary legal
developments with cultural andhistorical values deeply important toboth countries. Such values include
harmony, pacifism, benevolence andkindness, which can and should
walk hand in hand with a system oflaw. This approach could help bothcountries develop and show that East
Asia is again the centre stage of theworld, but this time organized withina cooperative system that embraces itscore values and cultural aspects.
Dilton Ribeiro is a PhD Candidate
at Queen’s University, Canada. He
previously earned his LLM at the
University of Manitoba, Canada,
and his LLB from Southwest Bahia
State University, Brazil.
A fully referenced version of thisarticle is available on request.
Contact: publications@iafor.org

It is clear that Japan and China
share core values and aspects of legal
culture that can be traced back to
the Ancient times. Nowadays, Japan
can play a key role in developing
an East Asian and world-oriented
system whereby this region’s culture
and history are understood throughthe lenses of modernity and humanrights. Perhaps no other state has
so impressively managed to merge
ancient East Asian and deeply held
Japanese cultural values with modern
western traditions. Both China andJapan would have equally important
contributions to this East Asiansystem: China in rescuing its Ancient
tradition of Confucian law of nations;and Japan in providing its strong andeffective tradition of rule of law as
a framework to guide international
relations in East Asia. Such a model
would be based on pacifism, rule oflaw and human rights.
Especially after the Constitution of1946, Japan’s legal system has been
Eye Magazine Fifth Edition | 23

PERSPECTIVESNew Directions in Japan’s Constitution,
Defence and Nationalism
From the British Perspective
By J.A.A. Stockwin

J.A.A. Stockwin presented this keynote address at The European Conference on Politics, Economics
and Law (ECPEL) 2014, in association with the IAFOR Japan Research Institute, in Brighton, United
Kingdom on July 4, 2014.

Yes, Japan was the future, once. The
Japanese economy in the 1980s seemed
unstoppable, Japanese companies
24 | Eye Magazine Fifth Edition

were buying choice pieces of realestate and famous companies in the
US and elsewhere, economic growth
rates were the envy of the world andthe value of all land and buildingsin Tokyo’s central business andgovernment district was said to be theequivalent of all the land and buildingsin Canada. All this came crashingdown at the beginning of the 1990s
with the collapse of a monstrous asset
bubble, the banking system struggled
under a mountain of toxic debt, andthe ‘lost decade’ (so described by the
Tokyo University economist Professor
Yoshikawa Hiroshi), began. Only thelost decade moved into a second lost

decade, serious deflation set in, andthe process may not have stopped
even now, although the business world
has become more bullish.
What a difference 25 years can make!
Japan is now portrayed by someas an aging society, economicallystagnant, with a declining population,internationally famous firms are said
to have lost their entrepreneurial spirit,
complacency and inward looking
attitudes seem to prevail, and Japanis threatened by a resurgent China
having designs on territory Japan
regards as its own. In 1990 Chinese
GDP was around 25 % of that of

Photograph by Anthony Abbott / Flickr

David Cameron, as leader of the
opposition, once famously told Tony
Blair at Prime Minister’s Question
Time: “You were the future, once”. In
1979 the Harvard scholar Ezra Vogelpublished a book entitled Japan as
Number One, arguing that the political
economy of Japan, and indeed Japan asa country, was the wave of the future,and that the United States should sit
up, take notice and reform its own
systems to match this up-and-comingsuperpower, if it wanted to stay ahead.

Japan. Today China has pushed theeconomy of Japan from second into
third place in world rankings and iscontinuing to widen the gap. Veryrecently, the Japanese Government
announced a policy to ensure that in
50 years the population, now under
127 million and falling, will nothave dipped below 100 million. But
Japanese women have gone on a ‘birth
strike’ and what can the government
do about that? The population ofChina is more than ten times thatof the present population of Japan,
though China is also beginning to face
population growth slowdown, partly
as a result of the one child policy, now
being relaxed.
But in Japan something of greatsignificance occurred as the result ofgeneral elections held in December
2012, now 18 months ago. This was
the election by an impressive majorityof a government based largely on thevenerable Liberal Democratic Party(which was out of power for just overthree years but had been dominant foralmost all the years since the 1950s),
now led by an ambitious right wingradical, Mr Abe Shinzō.
I think that I should lay my cards on
the table and say where I am comingfrom in terms of my perceptions ofJapan. Having been studying thecountry and its politics now for a half
century and more, I consider myself afriend of Japan, an admirer of a people
that succeeded in overcoming thecatastrophe of war in China and thePacific between 1937 (the Marco Polo
Incident and start of Japan’s China
war) and defeat in 1945, then building
a democratic, peaceful and prosperous
society based on a rich culture, adynamic economy and functioning
institutions. Problems during thelost decades have been serious, but
Japan still works well in many areas,so that an intelligent, far-sighted,
radically reformist approach to adifficult situation should be welcome.
But certain aspects of the present

government’s reform agenda cause me
deep disquiet, and I know that this isshared by many of my friends in Japan.
In so far as Mr Abe’s reforms concern
economics I welcome his attempts
to grapple with deep-seated issues
through what has come to be called‘Abenomics’, though I have somedoubts about whether these policies
can succeed in their entirety.
Therefore we need to focus on threemain areas of concern. The first is
the political system and successive
attempts to reform it, culminating in
the current situation under the Abe
Government. The second is the ‘Peace
Constitution’, defence and foreign
policy, and the present government’s
strategy of constitutional revision,
whether by textual revision or byreinterpretation (which is highly
topical), as well as the relations with
China and with Korea. And thirdly,
human rights and freedoms, including
freedom of expression.
Political system reform
The political system that emerged
from the Allied (largely American)
Occupation between 1945 and1952, was based on widely accepted
democratic principles and marked
a radical departure from the‘authoritarianism with democraticelements’, characteristic of the pre-war
period, culminating in the 1930s when
the system was becoming more andmore militarised. By the 1950s Japan
had a bicameral elected parliament towhich the prime minister and cabinet
were directly responsible (and throughit to the electorate), the Emperor was
retained as ‘symbol of the State’, but
stripped of all political power, the civil
service was supposed to implement
policies devised by prime minister andcabinet, while both chief executives
and assemblies were chosen byelection at local level.
Even though on paper this lookedmuch like the British system, it
developed its own characteristics.

The civil service exercised a great dealof semi-autonomous power and formany years effectively manipulated
cabinet. From the 1950s party politics
was competitive in form but hardly insubstance. The broadly right-of-centre
Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) won
elections with monotonous regularityand formed nearly all governments,
either on its own or in coalition
with minor parties. It has often
been compared with the Christian
Democrats in Italy, though theChristian Democrats imploded but
the LDP has survived. Opposition
parties contested elections but werepermanently out of power, until the
1990s. LDP political dominancecombined with bureaucratic power
facilitated an economic miracle
between the 1950s and the 1980s,
but the powers of the prime minister
were restricted in practice. This didn’t
matter much while the economy wasforging ahead, but when the economy
began to stall in the early 1990s,
problems of weak leadership andendemic corruption became salient.
The system was corrupt because it
depended on powerful factions within
the LDP, and on iron triangles linking
LDP politicians with bureaucratic andprivate sector interests. The 1990s saw
political turmoil and disillusion on thepart of an electorate suddenly facedwith an economy in serious disarray.
Important reforms were put in placein the late 1990s and early 2000s thatenabled the talented, if maverick, rightwing politician Koizumi Junichirō, toexercise leadership in the interests ofgreater economic efficiency. His neoliberal reforms (including his flagshipreforms to postal services, especiallythe enormous postal savings bank)came to be associated with longer
term problems of inequality andloss of job security, but the economy
began to grow again. But after hestepped down in 2006, much of his
political momentum was dissipatedby his successors, including thepresent Prime Minister Abe during
Eye Magazine Fifth Edition | 25

In the meantime, Mr Abe had
reinvented himself after the failureof his first administration five years
earlier, and became prime minister incircumstances where he could exercise
far more power than most of his
predecessors. And he was hungry to
exercise power in the interests of an
ambitious and coherent right wingnationalist agenda.
Rather than seeking to reform theway politics was conducted, he was
the beneficiary of reforms that had
already taken place, particularly thestrengthening of the prime ministerand cabinet that had already benefited
Koizumi in the early 2000s.
The ‘Peace Constitution’, defence
and foreign policy
In April 2014, article 9 of the JapaneseConstitution was nominated for theNobel Peace Prize on the initiative of agroup of Japanese women, in the nameof the Japanese people. Apparently,
the nomination has been accepted,
and we shall know the result on 10th
October. I am not quite sure how anarticle in a national constitution canreceive a prize like this – you can’t
exactly hang the prize round its neck– but the nomination indicates theseminal importance of the peaceclause in the history of post-war Japan.
Of course, the act of proposing it was
26 | Eye Magazine Fifth Edition

deliberately provocative to Mr Abe
and his government, but it shows justhow controversial this issue is, and has
been since 1947, when the present,
still totally unrevised, Constitution
came into force.
Article 9 reads as follows:“Aspiring sincerely to an international
peace based on justice and order, theJapanese people forever renounce war
as a sovereign right of the nation andthe threat or use of force as meansof settling international disputes. In
order to accomplish the aim of thepreceding paragraph, land, sea, and airforces will never be maintained. The
right of belligerency of the state will
not be recognised”.
It is the fierce ambition of Prime
Minister Abe to revise the post-war
Constitution so as to make Japana ‘normal country’ able to project
military power outside Japan. His
biggest obstacle is article 96 of theConstitution, which makes it difficult
to revise (though not as difficult
as revising the US Constitution).
You require a two thirds majorityof members of the House ofRepresentatives, a two thirds majorityof members of the House ofCouncillors and a simple majority ina referendum of the people. At one
stage, the idea was to revise article
96 to make its conditions easier, andthen go for a substantive amendment
proposal, but this now seems tohave been dropped. Parliamentaryarithmetic now suggests that a twothirds majority in Parliament might
be feasible, but public opinion polls
indicate that reaching a simple
majority in a referendum would be
problematic. Moreover, the Buddhistbased Kōmeitō, junior partner inthe Abe coalition government, isambiguous in its views on revision.
In his first administration, however,
Mr Abe steered through Parliamenta bill institutionalising procedures fora popular referendum, showing he isserious about wanting to revise theConstitution.

Through legal reasoning that would
take too long to explain, article 9
has been interpreted to allow theeuphemistically named land, sea
and air Self-Defence Forces, which
are no mean military force, closelyaligned with US forces under theJapan-US Mutual Security Treaty.
Successive governments, however,
have interpreted the ‘peace clause’as limiting the Self Defence Forces
to defence of Japanese territory, anddenying them the right to engage
in ‘collective defence’, even bycooperating with US military actionsin the region. Several kinds of militarycapacity deemed ‘offensive’ arebanned under current constitutional
interpretation. Such interpretation
has been in the hands of the Cabinet
Legislation Bureau, which until thesecond Abe Government has ruled
collective defence impermissible
under the terms of the ‘peace clause’.
Mr Abe has now appointed an official
sympathetic to his views to head thisBureau.
Mr Abe has established a National
Security Council and other institutions
dealing with defence issues. The
Constitution’s text being hard to revise,
he is pursuing a different strategy, torevise it by reinterpretation. On 15th
May this year, a committee set up by
the Prime Minister (the Advisory
Panel on Reconstruction of the Legal
Basis for Security) recommended
that collective security should bepermitted under certain conditions.
These included:1.
that a close partner to Japan(read ‘US’) should be under illegal
attack.
2.
that such use of force posed aclear threat to Japanese security.
3.
that a request from the partner
had been received, even if Japan were
not directly attacked.
4.
that taking action should
not undermine trust in the Japan-US
alliance
5.
that Japan had permission
from other states to transit their

Photograph by m-louis .®/ Flickr

his first term (2006-7). Such was thelevel of disillusion with government
after the start of the global recession
in 2008 that in the August 2009
elections the LDP was replaced bya new government based on themain opposition Democratic Party,
formed only 13 years earlier, in 1996.
The LDP languished in grumbling
opposition
between
September2009 and December 2012. The new
Government was inexperienced,
divided, and faced daunting problems,
especially the triple disasters innorthern Japan on 11th March 2011.
The Democratic Party was routed in
the 2012 elections.

territory if necessary.
6.
that the use of collective
defence was approved by Parliament.
7.
that the level of use of force
was judged by the National Security
Council as necessary and proportional,
given that collective self-defence wasa right, not an obligation.
The Prime Minister welcomed thereport, which he would study, andpromised to boost military capacity
to deal with ‘grey zone’ situations,
including a possible armed landing on
the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands(which he referred to as “Japan’s
remote islands”). He also pledged at
his press conference to “defend thepeace ideal (heiwashugi) proclaimed by
the Constitution”, and argued that “byincreasing deterrent power, conflictcan be avoided and the prospects ofJapan becoming involved in war willbe lessened”. (Asahi, 16 May 2014).

On 1st July, a bill to allow collective
defence was adopted by Cabinet, tothe dismay of its opponents.
Mr Abe was at pains to dissipate thefear that Japan might be dragged
into a war not of its own making
by engaging in collective security
with the United States. The contrast
between the six decades of peace andprosperity since 1945 and regular large
scale warfare from the 1860s to 1945,
ending in colossal destruction, the firebombing of major cities and nuclear
bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
is a theme etched deeply into theJapanese consciousness. A poll in the
Asahi newspaper in April this year
showed 63% of those polled opposing
collective defence. I recommend to
you an interview in the Guardianfor 1st July with Professor IshidaTakeshi, who fought in the last stagesof the Second World War, and was soappalled with the militarist attitudes
he encountered at that time that hehas devoted the rest of his long life to
defence of the ‘peace constitution’. In
the article he is quote as saying: “Notkilling anyone abroad is, in a sense,a precious part of our heritage. Why
should we have to throw it away on
the orders of one man rather than
through the will of the people?”.
In a recent article in The Diplomat( June 2014) the Australian scholar
Aurelia George Mulgan argues thatin analysing the argument aboutcollective defence two distinctions
need to be made.The first is that current
attempts by the Abe Government
to relax what she describes as “someof the tightest rules and regulations[imposed] on any military in theworld” should be distinguished from1930s militarism, where warfare was“built into the very ethos of the state”.
Eye Magazine Fifth Edition | 27

The second is that Prime Minister
Abe’s aspirations to enable Japan toescape from some of the constitutional
constraints on the use of the Self
Defence Forces in cooperation with
US forces ought not to be confusedwith the ultra-conservative policiesof Mr Abe in other areas. Collective
security, or freedom to cooperate fully
with the Americans in deterrence
against China, is much needed, in
her opinion, whereas other areas ofgovernment policy may be far lessadmirable.
But in an interesting qualificationof her argument she maintains
that if ‘collective defence’ means“participating in combat ‘outside theterritory’, [it] does not necessarily
enhance Japan’s ability to defend
itself… [It may indeed] damage
Japan’s security further by drawing it
into conflict that it might otherwise
have avoided”. She also concludes
that at present the Abe and Obamaadministrations,despitethe28 | Eye Magazine Fifth Edition

imperative for them to cooperate incontaining China, do not particularly
like each other.
This seems to me to reach the nubof the issue. While I think that
there might be a case to be madefor collective defence in Japan’scurrent circumstances, the ideologicalcharacter of the Abe Government
gives me cogent grounds for concern.
While collective defence and the
Abe ideology can be separated
theoretically, in practice they are
all too likely to fall over each otherand become intertwined. Putting it
another way, if this were a liberally
minded government with firm
democratic credentials, a proposal toamend constitutional interpretationin favour of collective defence would
be somewhat less worrying. But forreasons that I shall discuss, it is difficult
to characterise the Abe Government
in such terms.
At this point it is worth citing aninteresting point made by the Swedish
scholar Linus Hagström concerning
Japanese exceptionalism. It has long
been argued by various observers thatJapan has a ‘Galapagos complex’ thatfights against globalising tendencies
and is passionate about maintaining
a special kind of political culture andoutlook. In Hagström’s opinion, theradical pacifism of the left wing sincethe 1950s is an obvious manifestationof this exceptionalism. But he also
identifies a sharply contrasting formof exceptionalism, that associatedwith the far right, revisionist
about Japanese war responsibility,
uncomfortable about war apologies
made by earlier leaders, in denial
about the veracity of the Nanjing
massacre of 1937, and regarding large
scale forced prostitution conductedby the Imperial forces during the war
as natural and common to most wars
(East Asia Forum, 23rd June 2014).
A former Australian Ambassador to
Japan, John Menadue, who writes a

Photograph by Number 10/ Flickr

regular blog on matters Australian andJapanese, in a recent piece expresses his
grave disquiet about actions by Mr Abe,
including his appointments to senior
positions in the national broadcasterNHK of several individuals who inpublic statements have made extreme
statements insulting to the memories
of hundreds of thousands of Chinese
who died in the Nanjing massacre,to the ‘comfort women’, many ofthem Korean and some still alive,
who were forced to serve in Japanesearmy brothels during the war, and also
harmful to the principle of moderationin relations with neighbouring states.
Mr Abe’s visit to the Yasukuni Shrine
in December 2013, though notunprecedented, was the first timethat a prime minister had done sosince Koizumi who visited the shrine
several times during his term of office
between 2001 and 2006.
Why is the Yasukuni Shrine so
controversial? Is it not a functional
equivalent of the Cenotaph andperhaps the Imperial War Museumin London, the Arlington cemetery inWashington D.C., or the Australian
War Memorial in Canberra? There
are two reasons for concern about thenature and purpose of the Yasukuni
Shrine. The first is that the Shrinecomplex includes a war museum,
known as the Yūshūkan, whose
displays give a largely benign, evenenthusiastic, picture of the Japanese
war effort between 1937 and 1945,and play down the sufferings of Japan’s
wartime opponents. In parentheses
here, I should mention that the Atomic
Bomb Museum in Hiroshima, though
it has occasionally been criticised for
deploying a ‘Japan as victim’ message,
makes a genuine and for the most partconvincing effort to put the tragedy of
the atomic bombing into a balanced
historical context. It is also a place ofimmense emotional power, as I havemyself experienced, first in 1971, andmost recently in 2009.
To understand the second reason

requires a bit of history. The shrine
was first established in 1869 as amemorial to those who had fallen
in the Boshin war, fought between
embattled elements of the former
Tokugawa regime and armies of therebellion that had overthrown it andwere setting up a new modernisingorder at the Meiji Restoration of1868. Yasukuni’s status had been thatof a national institution to glorify thesouls of servicemen who had fallen
in successive wars up to 1945, but
the Allied Occupation after the war
insisted that it should be privatised,in line with the disestablishment of
the Shinto religion, which had beenintertwined with nationalism up
to the end of the war. And then in
1978 the head priest of the Yasukuni
Shrine, in secret, enshrined the soulsof 14 class-A war criminals as well
as over 1000 lesser war criminals –all so designated by the Tokyo war
crimes trials after the war. It was fromthis point that the Shrine became
politically controversial, with theright wing accusing the war crimes
trials of dispensing victors’ justice,and moderates in Japan, as well as
governments in China, Korea andelsewhere, objecting to the use of
the Shrine by Japanese politicians topromote revisionist nationalism. Since
the 1980s, official visits to the Shrineby leading politicians, especiallyprime ministers, have not ceased toenrage Japan’s neighbours, especiallyChina and South Korea. After the
1978 enshrinement of war criminals,
the Shōwa Emperor refused to visit
the Yasukuni Shrine, and his son, thepresent Emperor, has consistently
refused to do so.
A distinction that is quite frequently
made is the contrast between the
conciliatory handling by successive
German governments of war
memory and compensation issues,and the much more nationalistic andunsympathetic approaches to suchquestions in Japan. While this in noway excuses belligerent activities by

China over the disputed Senkaku/
Diaoyu islands and other territories
disputed with Vietnam and thePhilippines in the South China
Sea, prime ministerial visits to the
Yasukuni Shrine are inflammatory inthe context of unresolved war memory
issues. A statement from the WhiteHouse that Mr Abe’s December 2013
visit was “disappointing” registeredhigh in the internationally understoodscale of diplomatic protest language. It
is also worth noting that since the Abe
Government took office, not only haverelations with China been strained(though that goes back well before2012), but relations with South Korea
remain frosty, with the Governmentof President Park Geun-Hye tappinga rich vein of anti-Japanese sentiment
to boost her regime (which is currently
at a low level of popularity following
a terrible ferry disaster in April). She
recently had to accept the withdrawalof her latest candidate for prime
minister once the media discoveredthat he had given a church sermonsaying that the Japanese occupationof Korea between 1910 and 1945 was“God’s will”, and on another occasion
had said publicly that compensation
for wartime ‘comfort women’ wasruled out under the terms of the 1965
Korea-Japan normalisation treaty.
A final question in this section that
I need to address is that of Japanesepublic opinion. A book just out
entitled Governing Insecurity in Japan,
edited by Wilhelm Vosse, Reinhard
Drifte and Verena BlechingerTalcott (Routledge, 2014), examines
an apparent contradiction evident
in public opinion surveys, between
increased feelings of insecurity inJapan over the past decade, andnegative reaction to proposals
for boosting military capacity or
reducing restrictions on forward
defence. Vosse constructed what
he called a ‘militarism index’ basedon questions concerning when war
might be justified, whether war wasinevitable, how defence spending
Eye Magazine Fifth Edition | 29

Mr Abe had reinvented himself after the failure of his
first administration five years earlier, and became prime
minister in circumstances where he could exercise far
more power than most of his predecessors.
should be viewed and whether
enhanced defence capabilities could
be expected to produce a peacefuloutcome. Administering the survey
in the United States and Japan, he
formed a three-category table: those
whose attitudes were essentially
militarist, those who had mixed views
and those whose views were broadly
anti-militarist. The contrast between
the American results and those fromJapan is striking. ‘Militarists’ were
51 per cent in the US, but a mere 8
per cent in Japan, those with ‘mixed’views 40 per cent in the US and 47
per cent in Japan, and ‘anti-militarists’
9 per cent in the US but 45 per centin Japan (Vosse et al., p. 22). A chapter
in the same book, by Paul Midford,
shows (p. 35) that during a period
when the successive governmentsof Koizumi and Abe were actively
promoting constitutional revision,
support for revision fell continuously
from a high of 65 per cent in 2004 to a
low of 42.5 per cent in 2008 (Yomiuri
Shinbun polls). An NHK poll on 14th
May 2013 showed that it had fallen
even further, to 31 per cent. Moreover,when asked what revision they wish
for, some respondents cite the need formore generous human rights clauses
and the like, rather than revising thepeace clause. An Asahi poll in April
showed 64% of those polled wereagainst revision of the ‘peace clause’.
We may conclude that constitutional
revision is far from being a done deal,
and that if a revision process is indeed
put in train, it may well end in failure.
Human rights and freedoms,
including freedom of expression
American critics have from time
30 | Eye Magazine Fifth Edition

to time criticised the Japanese
government for being too prone
to leak secrets, in the absence ofadequate legislation for the protectionof secrets. Mr Abe was determined
to remedy this, and in December
2013 the Japanese Parliament
passed the Designated Secrets Law,
designed to curb the leakage of Statesecrets. National security, diplomacy,‘dangerous activities’ and counterterrorism were the principal areas
concerned.
Critics argued that the new law
was a potential threat to basic
democratic values, including press
freedom. Structures for regularadministration of the law were also
criticised as too weak and have led
to subsequent controversy. Perhaps
the most controversial issue has been
the harsh sentences proposed forgovernment officials who leak (up to
10 years in gaol), and for journalists
who obtain such information “in an
inappropriate manner” (up to five
years). By contrast with freedom of
information legislation in the UK andelsewhere, government does not haveto reveal secret information until 60
years have elapsed, and there seems
to be no prohibition on destructionof documents. How the law will beadministered is also controversial.
The Foreign Correspondents
Club of Japan declared:“The current text of the bill [thiswas before it became law] seems tosuggest that freedom of the press
is no longer a constitutional right,
but merely something for whichgovernment officials ‘must show
sufficient consideration’”On the other hand, a minority ofJapanese constitutional law specialists,
while regarding the nationalisticside of the Abe government as
extremely dangerous, and opposing
constitutional revision, wish to
distinguish this from the actual textof the Secrets Law, which they regard
as having merit (e.g. Kimura Sōta,
private correspondence).
Revision of the 1947 Constitution is
the touchstone of reform in the eyes ofJapanese right wing conservatives, ofwhom Prime Minister Abe Shinzō isa typical but exceptionally motivatedexample. Within the constitutional
revision movement revision of the‘peace clause’ has always been the
Holy Grail, with some nationalists
arguing that the article was designed
deliberately to keep Japan weak andunder the thumb of the United States.
There is an interesting contradiction
here, because the LDP has been
consistently in favour of the Japan-US
Security Treaty as the best guaranteeofJapanese
security, whereas
criticism of the Japan-US alliancehas mainly been concentrated on theleft. Nevertheless, criticism of overdependence on the US does also exist
on the right, and has its counterpart inoccasional statements from American
officials (mainly military, and in thepast) that a secondary purpose of the
Security Treaty is to contain Japan.
A less widely recognised, but
extremely important, purpose of
constitutional revision on the part of
LDP right wingers is to modify thehuman rights clauses of the 1947
Constitution, seen as advanced at thetime they were written. Some wish

to revive parts of the human rights
section of the 1889 Constitution,
which was long on duties to the Stateand short on rights of the individual.
This touches on a cultural agenda,
asserting ‘traditional’ collective rather
than individualistic values, boosting
the family as a unit, emphasising ‘thepublic interest and public order’, aswell as responsibilities and obligations
in compensation for rights andfreedoms. Members of a household(the traditional ie) would be obligatedto help one another, there would be
an obligation to respect the national
flag and the (controversial) national
anthem, and to obey commands
from the State or subordinate
officials in a time of emergency, as
well as an obligation to uphold theConstitution as such. In other words
the revision ideas embedded in thethinking of the nationalist right are
in line with what Mr Abe has called(in the title of his 2006 book) “Japanas a beautiful country”. Some ofthis proposed language might seem
innocuous enough, but in my view,and given what one knows about theideological nostalgia for past times
among Mr Abe and his supporters,
the implications represent a serious
danger for the health of democracy inJapan.
Towards a conclusion
There remain two issues. The firstis how far, as some now argue, Mr
Abe learned important lessons fromhis first term in the office of prime
minister, and has modified his earlier
policies to conform with reality andpublic opinion. He is no doubt aware(in fact has remarked himself ) thatthe hefty majority his party obtainedin December 2012 was brought about
more as a result of disillusionment
with the failed Democratic Party
Government as with enthusiasm
for a second Abe administration. A
salient issue during his first period in
office was chaos in the bureaucracy
dealing with the pensions system.
But Abe at that time promoted his

beloved nationalistic agenda rather
than concentrating on sorting out thepensions fiasco.
In his second administration, Mr
Abe has plainly learned the lessonsof his earlier unhappy – some say
disastrous – first period in office,especially by presenting an ambitious
policy package designed to revive theeconomy, now dubbed ‘Abenomics’,
which Mr. Arima is going to talkabout. There is a good deal of public
opinion poll evidence suggestingthat what the electorate is principallyconcerned about is economic revival,
rather more than constitutional
revision or collective defence. It seems
likely that his government stands orfalls on the success or otherwise of
his economic policies, rather thanon foreign and defence policy. The
problem is that the pragmatism he haslearned through experience coexists
with a backward looking ideology thatcauses problems with neighbouring
countries and is hardly to the taste ofordinary Japanese people who aspire tolive in a free, modern and prosperous
society where they see their children
educated without them being subject
to nationalistic indoctrination, wherejobs are available, opportunities
for career advancement are widely
available, where social services work
well, and where economic inequalities
are kept within reasonable limits.
The second issue is how far inevaluating the policies of the Abe
Government, we should separate out
policy from ideology. In particular,
should relaxing the constraints on
forward defence maintained underthe ‘peace clause’ be welcomed in
the interests of greater national
security without considering theideological agenda of a governmentthat is promoting such a change? This
question is of particular relevance inthe context of the collective defence
issue. My own view is that despite
the pressures to relax constitutional
constraints on Self Defence Forces

activities outside Japan, this is an option
fraught with danger. Unfortunately,
Mr Abe’s overtly nationalist agenda
makes it difficult to separate concrete
policy objectives from an ideologicalmind set on the part of the Prime
Minister. This exacerbates tensions
with neighbouring countries and may
well make resolution of disputes muchharder to achieve. I find the situation
concerning.
Finally, I want to end on a rather
more upbeat note. Japan is far too
much ignored in this country, which
may have something to do with thefact that the UK for several reasonsis extraordinarily self-absorbed at thepresent time. But Japan has the thirdlargest economy in the world, morethan twice that of the UK, Japan is
one of our major trading partners
and to a remarkable degree admiresand seeks to learn lessons from
British institutions and practices.
Despite current problems, including
demographic and economic decline
relative to China and elsewhere, Japanremains a basically stable, prosperous
and sophisticated country, with deepseated cultural values from which weshould be able to learn much of value.
Japanese relations with the UK, andmore broadly with Europe of which
we are an essential part, can function
as an anchor for stability and common
sense in a turbulent world. Japan was
the future once, and could be again.
But there are, it has to be admitted,
dark clouds on the horizon.
Professor Arthur J.A.A. Stockwin
is Emeritus Fellow and Founding
Director of the Nissan Institute forJapanese Studies at the University of
Oxford. Professor Stockwin holds
numerous awards for his efforts topromote the understanding of Japanin the UK, including the Order of the
Rising Sun, the Japan Foundation
Award for Japanese Studies, andan OBE for services to academic
excellence and the promotion of
UK-Japanese understanding.
Eye Magazine Fifth Edition | 31

“There’s A Man in Tights
Dancing on Stage!”

Critical events in the lives of male dancers and choreographers
By Brian De Silva
What is wrong with a man in tights
dancing on stage? .... apparently
everything!
Dancing has always been perceived
as a feminine pursuit and career,and everything related to dance
has a strong feminine association.
As a result in Western societies inparticular, there is a strong taboo
against male ballet dancers, or malecontemporary dancers for that matter.
Male dancers are viewed with great
suspicion and for some can be a sourceof great unease. How many men do
you know of who will freely admit tobeing a male ballet dancer?
In the very popular film Billy Elliot,
Billy has a conversation with hisfather after being found out that hewas taking ballet lessons instead ofboxing lessons. This is what his father
had to say:

Photograph by Alex Briseño / Flickr“Ballet…it’s for girls…it’s not forlads…lads do football, or boxing, or
wrestling…”
Although the quote is taken fromthe film script, Billy is based on thetrue life of a male ballet dancer fromthe Royal Ballet. Boys admitting towanting to dance or enjoying dance
can be subject to a large degree of
suspicion from friends and family
alike. It does not stop there. They may,can, or will be bullied and be subject
to taunts. At its worst, they may evenbe subject to physical abuse.
32 | Eye Magazine Fifth Edition

Dancing is not deemed to be a manly
pursuit, especially in predominantly
Western societies. Geert Hofstede
in his study of national cultures
identified countries like Australia,
New Zealand, United States, Canada,
Great Britain and Ireland as culturally
masculine. In these cultures, boys (andhence men) are raised with the belief
that men and women are intrinsicallydifferent, not only from a biologicalor gendered point of view. It goesbeyond that. Boys (and later men) aresocially conditioned to believe thatthey should be tough and deal withfacts, not feelings. They should also
be assertive; they should never cry, andshould never shy away from a fightwhen being attacked.
In addition, such culturally masculine
countries tend to manifest a strong
taboo in addressing sexual issues
openly, and anyone expressing and/or
adopting a sexual identity other thanthat of a heterosexual will be seen as athreat to masculine norms. They will
be perceived as being different, andthe source of their differentness will
be viewed and judged as being against
religion, immoral, and unethical,
almost to a point of perversion. A factmust be highlighted: it was not until
1973 that the American Psychological
Association (APA) finally voted toremove homosexuality as a form of
deviance or mental illness. So formuch of the 20th Century, it has beenclassed as a mental illness.

One has to ask the question:
Why is difference so bad, and why
is being different such a source ofcontention even today?
We are genetically predisposed to bedifferent. When we are born, we areendowed with unique and distinct
features like the shape of our retina
and our fingerprints. These are uniqueto every person regardless their sex orgender. These make us different fromeverybody else, but we do not view
them as being a source of stigma and/or prejudice. As a child, we begin tolearn to distinguish between mother(female) and father (male). By about
the age of three researchers have shownthat we have already been geneticallyEye Magazine Fifth Edition | 33

Photograph by Ojo de vidrio / Flickr

imprinted with what society deems tobe behaviours appropriate for a boy
or a girl. Social Cognitive Theory
informs us that when parents tell theirchildren “this is for girls” or “that’s not
how a boy should behave” it is social
imprinting. What society values as
being important creates a very strong
impact on our cognitive development
to make us gender resonant.
What is significant here is that somedifferences are purely genetic like haircolour, eye colour, skin colour and/or
tone, height, weight and body shape.
We express very little concern for
34 | Eye Magazine Fifth Edition

these differences; in fact we accept
that as being a part of life. Some
differences are learned, through social
imprinting, like gender, sex, sexuality,
and sexual identity. Such differencesor learned perceptions are predisposed
to become stigma, especially if they
are not what society values or sees as
being normal and hence important.
People or groups who are stigmatised
tend to become marginalised, isolated,
and at times even abused.
This raised a very important question:
Why are we so predisposed to see
difference(s) rather than learn toaccept and value these differences? I
believe much of this is due to a lackof understanding and awareness ofthese people of difference, and theinherent fear associated with thislack of understanding. This led me
to conduct my research on a groupof men who not only chose to dance,
but who were also brave enough not
to be gender resonant, ie heterosexual.
The overriding purpose of my research
was to gain an insight, awareness, andunderstanding of the lives of thesemen. With understanding comes
acceptance.

I had lived in Wellington, New
Zealand, for close to a decade(1987-1996), and this capital city
had a small but growing and vibrantperforming arts scene of which I wasa part of, principally as a member of
the audience. My interest in the arts
saw me undertaking dance classes
in jazz and contemporary dance. I
also immersed myself within thissocial milieu of actors, dancers,
choreographers and performers, someof whom became close friends. WhenI moved to Australia in 1996, thisinterest persisted but in a different
capacity, which saw me undertaking
an M. Ed. (Arts Admin.) andsubsequently, a PhD in Education. I
undertook my PhD research on men
in Australia and New Zealand as I
had ready access to a group of men tointerview as respondents.
In total, I interviewed seven men,whose ages ranged from 28 to 72
years. All of these men self-identified
as being non-heterosexual (bisexual,homosexual, asexual and sexuallyambivalent). All of them weredancers and/or choreographers at
some point in their lives. This groupof men constituted a representative
sample coincidentally (not by design)
as they encompassed most of thepositions in dance companies: fromcorps de ballet to corypheé, soloist,and principal dancer. One of them
was the classical dance teacher at a
tertiary institution in Melbourne, andfinally one was the Artistic Directorof a National Dance School in New
Zealand. Of the group, one had anestablished reputation and career asa choreographer; another was in the
middle of a choreographing career,whilst another was just beginning his
career as a choreographer. This reallyenhanced the research study for the
PhD.
The PhD research was based on a very
simple proposition viz.:If men choosing to dance were subject

to many hardships and difficulties,
both physical and psychological, why
would some men deliberately choose
to be professional dancers?
This was the main thrust of myresearch - I was interested in the livesof these men who chose to dance. The

greatly influenced my thinking as heresearched men in dance in relation
to sexual identity. He conducted his
research specifically in the UK, andhe focussed on representations ofmasculinity in what he called British
theatre dance. I also looked at theworks of Risner (2001, 2009) who

Why are we so predisposed to see
difference(s) rather than learn to accept andvalue these differences?
findings I present herewith are basedon the primary research question of
my thesis, which was:What are the critical events that
impacted the lives of these maledancer/choreographers, and why werethese events perceived as being criticalby these individuals who directly
experienced them?
After formulating the researchquestions, I turned my attention
towards the research literature
available that would inform my study.
I looked at a number of key research
articles in the area of dance and sexual
identity. These works helped me todetermine, understand, and focus on
the critical and salient elements of myresearch.
Earl’s 1988 study addressed the issueof dance as obsession and also lookedat the life cycle stages dancers went
through in their journey to adulthoodand physical and psychologicalmaturity. I incorporated his typology
of life cycle stages in my interviews.
Bailey and Oberschneider (1997)
addressed the issue of sexual
orientation in professional dance inthe USA, and found that only one outof the forty two men he interviewed
believed that his experiences in dance
had a major influence on his sexual
orientation.
The works of Burt (1994, 1995)

undertook his research mainly in theUSA. He focussed his research on
the plight of gay male dancers and the
difficulties they faced in their training,
and in their subsequent moves towards
becoming professional dancers in theUSA.
Finally, I looked at the work
undertaken by Gard (2006) who
focussed his research on dancing men
in Australia, but his emphasis was on
the aesthetics as it applies to dance,
and attempt to capture what he calls
the physical experience of dance. In
this our research was distinguished.
I asked the respondents I interviewed
to reflect on their past, and to identify
the critical incidents in their lives. I
also asked them to define what theirconcept of critical was and to describe
qualitatively what made theseincidents critical for them.
For these men, critical meant a rangeof concepts from life altering, tothings changing their life or theirperspective on life, turning corners
in their life, and having an impact
on their life in some way and in thecourse of the development of theirlife and career. One respondent inparticular related it to moments ofpersonal emotional upheaval. One
other respondent related the conceptof critical to choices he had to makeabout a place to live. The shift in
Eye Magazine Fifth Edition | 35

interviewed. The extrinsic factors
I chose to analyse were their ballet
training and their experiences withjoining a professional dance company.
These factors rendered them genderresonant as their experiences would
be the same for all male dancers andhence have no significant impact on
their being different and/or located asother.

the socio-political and psycho-sexual
context, along with artistic challenges
contributed to his having to relocate
countries on three separate occasions.
Finally, for one respondent it afforded
him the opportunity to escape fromhis family to find physical, mental,
and emotional freedom.

Images by David Fairrington / Flickr and Greg Gamble / Flickr

The findings of my research on criticalincidents did prove to be interesting
on a number of different fronts. Of theincidents deemed critical, my analysis
showed that they could be categorised
as either personal or professional.
The incidents deemed to be of apersonal nature were intrinsic to theindividuals, who they are and related
to family, religion, personal choices inlife and their acquisition of an adultand sexual identity. Those criticalincidents that were of a professional
nature were extrinsic to them andwere focused on their acquisitionof skills, training, and dance career
related choices that assisted them tobecome dancer/choreographers.
In the discussion below I emphasize
only those issues that were raisedby the majority of the respondents
36 | Eye Magazine Fifth Edition

Most of the respondents started
dancing from an early age except
for three who started in their early
teens. Two respondents trained at
the Royal Ballet Upper School andone of them found the training there
strict and petty as he was older thanmost of those in his class. Anothertrained at the Victorian College of
the Arts Secondary School (VCASS)
and found the strict training regime
very challenging indeed. Of those
who started dancing later in life, one
felt despite his advanced age at thestart, his training was superior as hewas being offered what he called thefull Russian training. Another started
classical dance training (ballet) after
he was ‘bitten by the bug’ attending
performances by the Sydney Dance
Company when he was in his midteens. The final respondent started
dance classes after he dropped out of
university after his first year.
Joining a professional dance company
for one meant starting right fromthe ‘bottom of the heap,’ and suchcompanies, he found, could be veryhierarchical in their approach to
casting and promotions. One of the
respondents who was accepted into aballet company right after his training
found his experience there rewarding
as he was offered a scholarship to gooverseas to visit and train with other
European ballet companies. Two
respondents did not receive offersfrom the ballet company immediately
after completing their ballet training.
One joined a regional ballet company
before being accepted into theAustralia Ballet, but he was required

to start right at the bottom again in
the corps de ballet. Another joined aballet company in South Africa, but
returned to Australia after a car crashthat rendered him a quadriplegic.
He later formed his own company
choreographing and performing in
his wheelchair as a differently abled
dancer.
The oldest member of the group of
respondents was a founding memberof the Australian Ballet when it wasformed in the early ‘60s. His time at
the ballet provided many memories
for him, and was both motivating andexciting for him to be involved with thefirst full-time national ballet company
in Australia.
One respondent’s
memories of his time with dancecompanies was what he called themost awful experience of his life as
he started dancing with professional
companies with insufficient training
which was reflected in the way he
was treated by both the dancers andmanagement alike. His experienceof this was rather the exception,compared to the experience of theothers I interviewed.
In terms of the intrinsic factors deemed
critical, I focused on the personal
factors acknowledging their sexualityand ‘coming out’ and that of having
same sex partners and relationships.
These factors rendered them genderdissonant as their experiences would
be unique to them, and hence have avery significant impact on their being
different and/or located as other.
‘Coming out’ and acknowledging
your gay sexuality is difficult and one
respondent felt he did not have asuitable gay role model at the balletschool to emulate. Another came out
to his mother first, as she was goodfriends with many of his gay friends
at dance school. Many expressedvery little discomfort in coming out
to family and friends as they foundthem supportive. One respondent
even stated that being gay in thedance world was not so unusual. One
respondent pointed out that his
sexuality had no impact on his choiceof a career.
Having same sex partners andestablishing relationships was anotherissue some had to contend with. The
impact this had on their personal
lives was very different for each of
the respondents. One respondent
stated that it’s hard not to be attracted
to other male dancers, but chose apartner outside of dance as a form ofescapism. Another found relationships
so fundamental to his life that hegave up his position at the Australian
Ballet to be with another dancer inEurope. Others have had to pursue
long distance relationships within
Australia. One such respondent had
two relationships: one in Perth and theother in Sydney. On both occasions
he moved away to be with his partners

but both those relationships did notlast long.
The picture we are beginning to seefrom this research is that althoughthese dancer/choreographers selfidentify as being non-heterosexual;
their experiences in life are far fromdifferent to that of many heterosexualmen. They faced many challenges intheir training to become accomplishedin their chosen field of endeavour. On
a personal level they still seek and attimes struggle to have and maintainstable emotional relationships.
We have been given a glimpse andinsight (qualitatively) into the livesof these dancer/choreographers.
What we find is a group of people,
not unlike many other groups ofpeople. This is an opportunity toopen our eyes to see that sometimes
we must embrace our differences andlearn to value these differences. Menin dance will always be viewed withsuspicion unless we take active steps
to change that worldview. Now is thetime to make the change by seeking
understanding and removing the fearof things different.
Dr A W Brian De Silva is currently an
Honorary Research Associate withRMIT University, Australia. His
current research interests include
looking at gender issues impacting
maledancer/choreographers,
aspects of National Culture inAustralian Dance, and the processof creativity extending across genresof the arts namely painting, dancing
and choreographing.
A fully referenced version of thisarticle is available on request.
Contact: publications@iafor.org

Eye Magazine Fifth Edition | 37

Possibilities Across Oceans, Continents and Cultures
HOPE International shares the gift of clean water
By Elena Omura & Lowell Sheppard
It is a privilege to share the story andbe present at the moment when acommunity first gains access to cleanwater. Whether it’s a shallow wellin Cambodia supporting five or six
families, or a Village Water System
in Ethiopia or the Philippines thatinvolves capping a spring and creatinga pipeline into a village, the effect of
having clean water is quite profound.
The Mindanao village of Pigbalowan
is one such example. In a twist ofsinister irony, the village name actuallymeans, “The word of God descended
from heaven.” The spiritually inclined
B’laan should have felt blessed withsuch a name, but instead they felt
cursed. Life was miserable, dark andhard in this village before clean water
arrived. But now with water, pure and
38 | Eye Magazine Fifth Edition

readily available, the community’squality of life has been remarkably
enhanced.
The village worked with HOPE
International Development Agency’s
partners and staff on the groundto install the system, and when the
day the tap was due to be turned on
finally came, the community gatheredaround it with silent anticipation.
Just a few weeks before, an elderly
woman had strangled herself whilebearing a basket of water on her backfrom the former water source, fivekilometers away. The strap over her
forehead had slipped and instantly
broken her wind-pipe. Her death wasa strange one, but was by no means the
only water-related death in the valley.

The liquid poison, which took a day
for the women to fetch, killed manyof their children. But things would be
different from this point.
Clean water gushed out and spatterednearby feet and hands with shimmering
droplets. A shriek of excitement burst
forth from an old woman, steeped intribal culture and memories of thepast. She lunged towards the young
development worker who oversaw
the installation and, breaking a tribaltaboo that prohibits a woman to touch
any man besides her husband, piled
her arms around him. The dam hadburst, and one by one members of thecommunity joined in the celebration,
as they expressed teary joy.
HOPE International Development

Photographs by HOPE International

Agency’s mission is very simple. It is
to extend compassion to the neglected
poor and help them gain long-term
access to basic necessities for life,
such as clean water, in their quest to
be self-reliant. What is not simple
and requires a great deal of patience,
dedication and time, is realising thismission – realising this mission in
a way that respects the dignity andvalues of the people HOPE assists,and helping them become truly selfreliant.
There is a fine-line between
respectfully assisting people anddegrading them by being patronizing
and culturally imperialistic. Words
such as “pity” and “aid” have been
removed from HOPE’s lexicon as aresult, and it never showcases imagesof people in their moments of great
suffering. Instead, HOPE prefers tofocus on what is possible and stressthe importance of simply listening
and being open to learn in turn.
These are the methods through whichroot problems can be identified andviable solutions generated throughcompassion and collaboration withlocals.
What HOPE has ascertained in its
40 years of working in developing
countries is that extreme poverty is avicious cycle, spun by the consistentlack of basic needs. Without cleanwater, people do not have the capacity
to lead healthy lives and think beyond
what they will feed their children for
their next meal. Without the time-- some people spend more than 4hours per day fetching water -- andresources to think past surviving,income can never be increased.
Without education and a chance toinvest in futures, younger generations
will never have access to opportunities
that will enable them to break freeof the cycle. This is why HOPE
attempts to alleviate extreme poverty
through three main pillars: long-term
access to clean water, micro loans andeducation.

HOPE is often known as the “waterorganisation” because the supply
of clean water is the first element it
focuses on in the field. Without this
precious resource, other forms ofassistance extended are futile.
The provision of clean water varies
from country to country, but usually
it involves the instalment of wells
or pipelines to a filtered, clean water
source. What does not vary is therequirement for people to fully
participate in the construction of thesewater supply systems and training
programs on water management,
health and sanitation. HOPE haslearnt that this is the only way toensure sustainability and the selfreliance of people, for “if you give a
man a fish, you feed him for a day;teach a man to fish and you feed him
for a lifetime.” This proverb applies
to all HOPE projects, regardless ofwhether they centre on water, microloans or schools, and regardless ofwhether the project is in Afghanistan,Cambodia or Ethiopia.

in the field are always local, and they
are the key figures that liaise between
the families that HOPE assists, the
HOPE offices and the rest of theworld. In many ways HOPE’s work
is also about sharing stories andexperience; it is about communication,from people to people to people.
None of this would be possible
without the committed support ofpeople residing in more economicallydeveloped countries, who channel
their empathy for others into proactive
compassion. HOPE is grateful every
day for their support, and gratefulfor the compassion and smiles that
individuals can afford one other,across oceans, continents and cultures.
This makes nothing seem impossible.

Working in multiple countries, witha multitude of backgrounds, values
and circumstances can also makecommunication a challenge. To
address this, HOPE project directors

If you would like to learn more about
HOPE’s work, kindly visit www.
hope.or.jp or their international
website: www.hope-international.
com

Elena Omura is the Communications
Officer and Lowell Sheppard theAsia Pacific Director at HOPE
International. Sheppard is also amember of the Executive Council ofthe IAFOR International Advisory
Board.

Eye Magazine Fifth Edition | 39
Photograph by Matt Werner / Flickr

Photograph by Anthony Abbott / Flickr

40 | Eye Magazine Fifth Edition

Walk like a Pilgrim

Hiking Japan’s Kumano Kodo
By Lindsay Lafreniere

Eye Magazine Fifth Edition | 41

“The routes in the mountains were designed to be arduous
and the journey over them part of the religious experience,
rather than a means to an end.” – UNESCO
It’s difficult coming from a country
like Canada, only 147 years young, toreally understand how extensive thehistory of some cultures are. While
the aboriginal culture of Canada isstrong and fascinating, Japan’s lengthy
history of traditions and culture isvery much a part of everyday life here.
Now ranked as one of my favourite
places visited in Japan, last year I
hiked the ancient pilgrimage routeof the Kumano Kodo, in Wakayama
Prefecture, near Osaka. Along paths
trodden for over a thousand years,
through dense forest, my mother andI hiked.
The Kumano Kodo is one of two
pilgrimage trails designated as

42 | Eye Magazine Fifth Edition

UNESCO World Heritage sites,
together with Spain’s El Camino deSantiago. Many of the paths havebeen developed over but some still
exist as they did all those years ago.
Pilgrims took the Kumano to worshipat three main shrines — Kumano
Hongu Taisha, Kumano Hayatama
Taisha and Kumano Nachi Taisha.
These paths also lead to Kyoto, Nara,
Osaka and Koyasan.
Yunomine Onsen
There are many different ways toattack the Kumano Kodo; we decided
to stay centrally in Yunomine Onsen.
Getting there from Osaka is fairly
easy, starting with a limited express
train from Tennoji station to Kii-

Tanabe. From the station, it’s an hour
and a half bus ride along narrow roads
twisting through rice paddies up into
the mountains to Yunomine.
Yunomine is a quaint little spot,
not really big enough to qualify as
a town. Rather it’s a collection ofsquat traditional inns--minshuku
and ryokan-- with aging wooden
roofs, lining a creek that the onsen,
hot spring, pipes up from. Visitors
shuffle along the lanes in yukata, lightsummer kimono, and geta, wooden
sandles, from onsen to bath. This place
only has two small convenience stores,
selling, among other things, eggs,
chestnuts and sweet potatoes to boilin the hot spring, and that’s it in termsof places to spend your yen.

We stayed at Minshuku Teruteya, asmall guesthouse run by a cute lady
who spoke little English. In true
Japanese inn style, huge meals wereserved with incredible variety. Nabe,
tempura and even deer sashimi were
presented and a bento lunch packed
for our hike the next day.
The star of Yunomine is the Tsuboyu
onsen — the only World Heritage hotspring that can be bathed in. A little
wooden shack perched over the river,containing a tiny stone bath, steamingwith hot water; it fits just two peopleor three small Japanese. It’s also theoldest onsen in Japan and supposedly
has healing powers. Was I healed?
Well, the sake with the filling dinner
and the very hot water sure put me to

bed early! That’s a small miracle.

– one thousand person bath.

Kawayu Onsen

Kawayu is quite close to Yunomine andaccessible by bus, or by hitchhiking as
we did.

Other miraculous things exist aroundthe Kumano Kodo, such as the magicalriver that winds through the village of
Kawayu Onsen. Here it’s possible todrink a cold beer while taking in theforest around you, as you lay on theriverbed – in hot water.
This is another special hot spring, but
hidden from view and self made. Holes
are dug into the gravel of the riverbed
and then hot thermal water seeps infrom below, making little onsen tobath in. In the winter much of theriver is dug out to create Sennin-buroHiking the trail
The Kumano Kodo is an extensive
network of trails – it’s possible to do
anything from a short stroll throughthe forest to a week-long trek acrossmountains. The Tanabe City Kumano
Tourism Bureau website has numerous
itineraries with different difficultylevels and maps.
We ended up hiking two sections of
the Kumano Kodo. In the morning,
Eye Magazine Fifth Edition | 43

we set out from Yunomine on theDainichi-goe trail, which runs right
past Tsuboyu onsen. This was a fairly
steep 3.4 km trail over the mountain,
with lots of ups and downs. We went
on a Friday morning in September andpath is well marked including manysigns on paths leading into family
gardens labeled “Not Kumano Kodo.”
In the afternoon, we hiked a portionof the Nakahechi Route, which was an

were surprised by how few people we
encountered on the trails and there
were almost no vending machines andshops. It’s important to pack adequate
food and water and take note of when
the sun sets, as this can be earlier thanEmerging from the forest, the giant torii gate can be seen fromkilometers around. It’s the largest in the world, an imposing
gateway to the sacred area of the shrine.
saw no other hikers. The mountain ispristine and quiet at the top, with afew small forest shrines along the trail.
After about an hour and a half, the trail
descends the mountain. The rushingsound of the Kumano-gawa Riverand unfortunately, the traffic from theroad, is heard as the path begins towind between backyards of the housesof the town of Hongu, home of the
Kumano Hongu Taisha shrine. The

44 | Eye Magazine Fifth Edition

isolated trail with thick, dense forestand soaring ancient trees. It runs
behind Hongu Taisha and past theriver. The remains of an old teahouseand a traditional cemetery are foundalong the way. As the next landmark
on this trail was 21 km away, we hiked
north for a few hours, then back.
Much of the trails are, thankfully,
very undeveloped and remote. We

expected in Japan.
Kumano Hongu Taisha
Emerging from the forest, the giant
torii gate can be seen from kilometers
around. It’s the largest in the world,
an imposing gateway to the sacredarea of the shrine. Except now, this33.9 metre torii guards, well, nothing.
Wandering the grounds, we looked

for the famous Hongu Taisha shrine, not realizing we wereat the wrong spot.
In 1889, a flood destroyed the original site and it was moved
up a mountain into the forest. From the torii, walk northto the information centre and cross the road. From here,
many stone steps will take you to the shrine. Unfortunately,
most of the shrine is currently under renovation so there
wasn’t too much to see.

To plan your trip to the Kumano Kodo area, visit the
Tanabe City Kumano Tourism Bureau website. It hasa wealth of information on the region and what there isto do. The Kumano Tourism Bureau website has tons of
information, including bus schedules and maps, how toride a local bus and a map of Yunomine.
Lindsay Lafreniere is IAFOR’s Communication andPublications Coordinator and writes the travel blog
japaneasyblog.com.

The IAFOR International
Conferences on
Education and Language
Learning – Dubai 2015
Abstract submission
deadline extended to
January 1, 2015

Eye Magazine Fifth Edition | 45

Japanese Collective Self-Defence

Photograph by Chrisser / Flickr

By Craig Mark

Following the launch of the 2013
National Security Strategy, Japanese
Prime
MinisterShinzoAbeannounced that Japan intended
to pursue a policy of ‘proactive
pacifism’, maintaining Article 9 of
the constitution, but allowing Japanto make a greater contribution to
global peace and stability. Abe also
warned that Japan was not prepared toaccept any challenge to the territorial
status quo in the region by the use offorces, implicitly criticizing China’s‘aggressive’ activities in the East China
Sea.
To confirm this direction, in July
2014, Abe’s Cabinet announced
a historic reinterpretation of theconstitution, overturning a position
held by Japanese governments since its
introduction, that Japan does have theright to participate in collective self46 | Eye Magazine Fifth Edition

defence with other allies or friendly
states, as permitted by Article 51 of
the UN Charter. This declaration,
long claimed as part of the Liberal
Democratic Party’s (LDP) manifesto,
being necessary to secure Japan ina more unstable region, was finallyachieved after extensive negotiations
with the LDP’s governing coalition
partners, the New Komeito Party(NKP), who have traditionallystrongly upheld the pacifism assumed
to be inherent in Article 9 of theconstitution.
Following these negotiations, various
restrictions were imposed on thereinterpretation, at the insistenceof the NKP; the right of collective
self-defence will only be exercised if
the country’s existence is threatened,
and there are clear dangers that the‘people’s right to life, liberty, andthe pursuit of happiness’ would beoverturned, due to an armed attack
on Japan, or on countries with which
Japan has close ties. Also, collective
self-defence will only be exercised if
there is a ‘lack of other appropriate
means’, and the use of the SelfDefense Forces (SDF) will be limited
to ‘the minimum required’, in orderto guarantee Japan’s security. It will
also require the consent of the othercountry (or countries) involved in thecollective self-defense operations, plus
approval of the Cabinet and Diet foreach instance.
The range of scenarios proposed by the
Abe government that could potentiallybe covered by the right to collective
self-defense, as well as coming to
the assistance of other states, include
wider rules of engagement for the
SDF in UN peacekeeping operations,potentially allowing participation in
more robust Chapter 7 UN militaryinterventions; and so-called ‘greyzone’ scenarios, short of open armed
conflict. In particular, occupation ofislands by covert ‘non-military’ forces
has been referred to as an implicit
reference to the potential occupationof the Senkakus by Chineseparamilitary forces. Taking action
against hostile submarines infiltrating
Japanese waters, and minesweeping
operations, could be other scenarios.
To confirm this Cabinet decision into
law, up to 18 bills may be required
to be passed in the Diet in order tomeet all the legal and constitutional
requirements to allow the right ofcollective self-defence to be exercised.
Abe is expected to soon complete
his first Cabinet reshuffle, which islikely to include the creation of a
new ministerial position dedicated tosecuring the passage of this packageof security-related bills through theDiet, ideally by April 2015, in the next
spring session of the Diet. While the
LDP is likely to be easily able to secure
enough support for such bills in theDiet, with its comfortable majority inthe lower house, backed by support
from the NKP, the nationalistic Japan
Restoration Party and the Party for
Future Generations, public opinion
remains strongly divided.
Opinion polls have consistently shownthat a majority of the public (ranging
up to 58 to 67%) remain opposed tothe constitutional reinterpretation,and that the Abe cabinet has not
sufficiently explained or justified thechanges, despite suspicions over the
recent activities and potential future
hegemonic aims of China (Haggard& Stahler, 2014). In the wake of thereinterpretation, the Abe cabinet’s
approval ratings have fallen to 43.5%,
the lowest level since coming to officein 2012 (an economic slump following
an increase in the consumption tax
rate has also had an impact). However,
the most recent opinion poll support

rates for the LDP of 23.9%, and3.8% for its ruling partner the NKP,
continue to far outstrip those of
the opposition minor parties: 5.3%
for the DPJ, 1.5% for the JapaneseCommunist Party, 1.2% for the Japan
Restoration Party, 0.4% for the Social
Democratic Party, 0.4 for Your Party,
0.2% for the People’s Life Party, 0.2%
for the Party for Future Generations,
0.1% for the Unity Party, and 0.1% for
the New Renaissance Party; 61.6% ofJapanese do not express support forany political party.

will of the public, could potentiallybe applied to eroding the integrityof other areas of the constitution,
including broader protections for civil
and political rights, such as freedomsof speech and assembly. While thereinterpretation is expected to gain
Diet approval, the question remains ofwhether the subsequent laws will be
constitutionally valid and challenges
in the Supreme Court, although thetraditionallyconservative-leaning
Court would probably uphold the
new interpretation.

Reflecting this lack of public support,
critics claim the reinterpretation is
unnecessary, given that the wellequipped and highly trained SDF ishighly capable of defending Japan’s
territorial integrity, further backed
up by the US alliance, not least by
the powerful US forces permanently
based in Japan itself. The nationalistic
revisionism occasionally displayedby LDP and other politicians also
concerns critics of the changes, notleast Abe’s visit to the controversial
Yasukuni shrine in December
2013, and revisionist statements
by nationalistic politicians andcommentators seeming to undermine
the Kono and Murayama Statements.
Such rhetoric accompanying theconstitutional reinterpretation not
only has caused public doubt andsuspicion within Japan, but has
inflamed regional tensions, principallywith China and Korea, reinforcing
aggressive
nationalistic
rhetoricstemming from opportunistic politicalfigures in those countries.

With only limited diplomaticmechanisms in the region aimed at
reducing such tensions between theneighbouring states of Northeast
Asia, any shifts in defence policy need
to be carefully managed, in order toreassure against rising tensions. So far,this has not successfully eventuated,
although there are signs that lowlevel efforts to improve Sino-Japaneserelations are gradually making limited
progress. The upcoming October
APEC and East Asia Summit leaders’meetings (in China and Myanmar
respectively), and the G20 leader’ssummit in November in Australia
provide opportunities for the potential
diplomatic breakthrough of the firstleaders’ meeting between Abe andChinese President Xi Jinping.

Opponents of the reinterpretation
also fear it could be the intermediarystep towards eventually abolishing
the pacifist Article 9 clause of theconstitution altogether. Concerns
have also arisen among lawyers andacademics about the potential effectof re-interpreting the constitution on
weakening Japanese democracy. The
precedent of the Cabinet reinterpretingthe constitution, against the majority

The Abe LDP government thus claims
exercising the right of collective selfdefence will allow Japan to make agreater contribution to international
security; however, there are concerns
this will only threaten to worsen
geostrategic tensions in the region.
Dr Craig Mark is an Associate
Professor at the School ofInternational Studies, Kwansei
Gakuin University, Japan. He is also
the editor of the IAFOR Journal of
Politics Economics and Law.
A fully referenced version of thisarticle is available on request.
Contact: publications@iafor.org
Eye Magazine Fifth Edition | 47

Latin American Filmic
Narratives, Identities
and Struggles
An Interview with Alfonso
Garcia Osuna

48 | Eye Magazine Fifth Edition

IAFOR’s Research and Policy Manager
Michael Liam Kedzlie interviewed
Professor Alfonso J. García Osuna at
the 2014 Asian Conference on Artsand Humanities. Professor García
Osuna is the Chairperson of the
Department of Foreign Languages
at the City University of New York,
Kingsborough. Originally a specialist
in Medieval Spanish Literature his
research interests have now moved

into understanding how is how films
create the images of national identities.
MLK: Welcome Dr. Garcia
Osuna to Osaka and the Fourth
Asian Conference on Arts andHumanities. It is great to have you
here and travelling all this way fromNew York to be with us. I wondered
if you could start by telling us a little
bit about what you are presenting
today at the ACAH conference?
AGO: My presentation is about thecreation of national identities throughfilmic narratives, especially in the
United States and Latin America.
Basically, I cover the film traditions of
the United States, Cuba and Mexico
and a little bit of Brazil. What I havebeen doing is looking to understandhow films create a national identity or
create the image of national identities- what the person of the nation
should be. I am also working towards
publishing a book that will be on thecreation of national identities createdby film.
MLK: You had this childhood in the
Canary Islands. It is a place many ofus have heard about by name only,
but I guess we don’t know muchabout it – what was it like to grow up
there?
AGO: Yes. My family is from the

Eye Magazine Fifth Edition | 49

“What I have been doing is looking tounderstand how films create a national
identity or create the image of national
identities — what the person of the nation
should be.”Canary Islands, Spain. They migrated
to Havana, Cuba where I was born.
When I was six years old my parents
decided to go back to the Canaries,
so they took me of course with them.
However, Castro came in and imposeda very rigid system of government.
He started nationalizing a number ofthings, my parents had worked very
hard, and when nationalization camein they lost everything. My family
was almost literally in the street. The
Canaries are off the coast of Northern
Africa in the Atlantic Ocean andthey consist of seven islands, all partof Spain. I was brought up on Grand
Canary, in the city of Las Palmas. It
was a wonderful time growing up
there. Later, we went to live in Madrid
for a little bit, and then my family andI went to the United States when I wasa teenager, around 16 years old or so. I
attended college there, a Masters andthen a PhD, all at the City Universityof New York where I now teach. I havestayed in New York ever since.
MLK: You said you went across to the
US in your teenage years. That would
have been an interesting adjustment
going from the Canaries to what was
the biggest, fastest city in the world
at the time, if not the center of the
Universe?
AGO: It was beyond interesting. It
was also terrible. The problem was that
although in the Spanish education
system right from kindergarten you
had to learn a second language, andI spoke English fairly well, I did notunderstand the American mentalitythat went along with it. When I got
to New York I thought that everybody
50 | Eye Magazine Fifth Edition

was rude, everybody was nasty, and I
just did not understand it. So to behonest, I was an outcast for a while
because they did not understand meeither. Anyway, it motivated me to
get into college as fast as possible.
When I entered CUNY I must havebeen one of the youngest people incollege as I was only 17. I worked
very hard to get there and during mystudy as a young undergrad. WhenI first entered City University of
New York (CUNY) they gave me abattery of tests to see where to place
me. The educational system back in
Spain at the time was pretty good so I
tested well beyond where I was in theAmerican educational system. I hadgone to high school in the US for just
one year and graduated very early, andthen went straight to college. We hadjust come in from Spain and we had
left Cuba with nothing, so everybody
had to work. I had to work and also go
to school. Oh, and the cold weather in
New York! That cold rain coming in
especially in the winter! So there I wasin the Canaries - it was sunny, a nicebreeze coming off the Ocean, so thencoming to NY was a great adjustment.
I had my life planned in the Canaries
so it was a shock when my father
announced that we were going to theUS, oh my goodness. But I adjusted.

New York. I had learned to love theState of New York and we were living
out on Long Island. Long Island wasclose enough to the city anyway, andmy parents were there, my wife andher family were there. I wondered if
CUNY had a place for me and theydid. I started off as a Lecturer, actually
before I finished my PhD, andfortunately when I finished it I becamean Assistant Professor. Five years laterI became an Associate, and anotherfive years after that, a full Professor.
Now I chair one of the colleges at the
University, Kingsborough.
MLK: You have stayed with the
University all these years - you mustbe part of the furniture at CUNY!
AGO: Oh, absolutely. Not just a partof the furniture, I am one of the sofas!
It is a good place to be. It is not just theone campus of course. CUNY has 24
different colleges spread throughout
the state of New York. All of thesecolleges have different make-ups tothem. The one I am in is in Brooklyn.
Brooklyn is very well known formovies and it is next to the sea, whichis great and makes it a very nice place.

MLK: Of course you went through
CUNY and graduated as a young
man at 20 to 21 years old. What did
you do next?

MLK: This current research that you
are working on seems fascinating.
Would you be able to tell us a little
about it and also, if possible, some ofthe other research projects you havebeen working on or have worked onin the past?

AGO: Well I then got my Masters
very quickly and got married and we
had kids right away. Even before I
finished my PhD I wanted to stay in

AGO: Sure. I began my doctoral workon Medieval Spanish Literature into
the Renaissance and you find more
and more that there is little left toAlfonso Garcia Osuna

explore in the field. Matter of fact, I
was once at a conference and a groupof people who were researching 19th
century literature were in the samegrouping as me. I said somebody
must have made a mistake. They
said you were the only entry in the
medieval stream so I thought thatmaybe I should retool. About thattime I had started looking more into
film. The philosophy of film, reading
film critics and film researchers andso forth. It was leading me to a placethat I was getting very interested in.
So I started writing, researching andgetting published. So basically now
I am writing more and more on film
rather than my original expertise at
this stage in my career. Film for along time was not taken seriously as
a viable academic subject especially in
the United States. But in the last 25 to
30 years, it has become very important.
MLK: Is that because it is now

regarded as one of the more authentic
ways to capture upon the cultural
record of society or the cultures
within the society?
AGO: Yes, indeed. As a visual medium
it projects itself more as part of reality
than just words on paper. Film has
many more dimensions than, let’ssay, a novel. Film has sound, it hasperspective, and is able to go beyond
the printed letter.
When I started researching film, I
actually started with American filmwith those early American filmmakers
such as DW Griffiths for example.
What I noticed was that in those
aspects of early American filmic
narrative, they were trying to portray
what it is to be a real American. By
doing this, they were in effect creatinga national identity. Remember film
began not long after the Civil War
where the United States had just torn

itself apart. It did not know what it
was yet. Who are we? What are we?
So those early films began addressing
this in many different ways, but oneof the ways was in creating a national
identity. However, when you startcreating a national identity you starttalking about who is in and who is leftout. In these early films you can see
who is left out right way. Of course
those left out are the blacks, the aliens,
the Mexicans from the southwest.
Interestingly enough, that type offilm-making mentality was exported
to Latin America, so if you look at theearly films from Cuba you do not see
blacks anywhere. There was one mixed
race woman who had a very beautiful
voice whom they could not ignore, so
in order to include her in a film, they
whitewashed her face and had her sing.
However in Mexico, that program ofcreating your national identity is alittle different because most Mexicans
are of native America descent andEye Magazine Fifth Edition | 51

they could not portray a white world
as Mexican. So you see the heroes as
Mexican and in a positive light andthe bad guys of Spanish descent – theEuropeans. It is very different how
the next-door neighbor to the US,
Mexico, is doing the same thing but it
is very different in its objective. They
have a different objective in explaining
what national identity is.

Photograph by Alejandro Amador / Flickr and Brett Sayer / Flickr

The greatness of a country’s culture
used to be measured by its literature,
yet more and more now that is beenparlayed into film. Many of the Latin
American countries have had active
film industries for some time andwith Latin America now coming into
what they hope will be an economic
boom, I am sure it will enhance thefilmic productions in these countries.
The Ecuadorian immigrants to Spain
are now returning to Ecuador as theyrealized that they were going to havemore possibilities to better their lives
back in Ecuador. The Latin American
economic boom is not quite there yet

52 | Eye Magazine Fifth Edition

but it is coming down the line.
MLK: What are some examples of
Latin American films that show thecreation of national identity?
AGO: In Cuba, films like “ManuelGarcía, King of the Cuban
Countryside” gave an initial accountof the traits that characterize a Cuban(he was a real-life “Robin Hood” typethat roamed the countryside helping
the poor). After the Revolutionof 1959, the emphasis was put on
including Afro-Cubans in patterns ofnational identity with films like “TheOther Francisco,” which focus on thereal-life experiences of Afro-Cubans
while filtering out those romanticizedversions of slave life that had been thenorm. “Cuba Dances” also attempts todelegitimize previous narratives on thetrue value of Cuban cultural systems.
In Argentina, where in 1914 three outof four people in Buenos Aires had
been born in Europe, the emphasis
was on the inclusion of disparate

national backgrounds into theArgentine national identitary fabric,with films like “Heritage,” which tells
the story of an Italian immigrant that
opens a restaurant, “Broken Embrace,”
which is the story of a Jew who leaves
Argentina for Israel and then only
thinks of returning, and “Bolivia,”
which puts the spotlight on the racism
to which indigenous immigrants fromother South American countries
are exposed. A film like “The
Tango Lesson” follows the life of an
Argentine dance instructor that lives
in Paris; Argentine national identity is
personified in this one character, wholives and participates -literally andmetaphorically- in both European andSouth American identitary spaces. In
Mexican film, especially during thefirst half of the 20th century, there
was an evident emphasis on theconstruction of national identity andits articulation in film narratives; thiswas accomplished through a repertoryof symbolic geographies: the life ofindigenous people in the countryside,their popular rites and customs, theircommunal beliefs and values andthe exploits of indigenous heroes.
This is evident in films like “María
Candelaria,” “La perla,” “Janitzio,”“Allá en el Rancho Grande,” and“Vámonos con Pancho Villa.”in the nation’s Native American
credentials. The main hurdle wasto overcome deeply-rooted notionsof European cultural and racial
ascendancy, notions that relegated theindigenous to second-class status in
the minds of many moviegoers.

MLK: What are the differences infilmic narrative between countries in
Latin America?

MLK: The Cuban American
relationship has been fraught.
I wondered how do you see therelationship between the UnitedStates and Cuba now in 2014? Where
is it at because I know for a long time
Cuba was persona non-gratia to the
US and vice versa?
AGO: It is exactly at the same place it
has been for the last 50 years. I cannot
see any change. Both sides are in
their trenches and they are not going
to come out of them. Even Obama,
who many people thought was going
to change things, has kept things
remaining in place. The foreign policyof the United States with respect to
Cuba is where it has always been.
Politicians are looking down the line
thinking – “not only am I not going to
be re-elected if I do something that isright but it may impact the next person
in my political party who follows me.”Florida is also a swing state and the
Cuban American community thereis large and economically powerful

AGO: A country like Cuba began touse film as a medium for the creationof a national identitary paradigm
very early in the 20th century. This
paradigm, though, was in line with neocolonial attitudes and thus excluded
the African element in Cuban society.
After the 1959 revolution it became
the task of Cuban filmmakers toinclude the African in the identitaryfabric of the nation. To a certain
extent, Argentina grappled with the
problem in a different way: its films
show the mechanisms through which
new immigrants “became” Argentinesand the many problems and obstacles
they faced in the process. Mexico,
secure in the indigenous identity ofthe overwhelming majority of its
population, produced filmic narratives
that legitimized and gave prominence
to a national identity firmly rooted

and important. They could swing anelection and everybody knows thatso, when they talk about Cuba, it’s let
things remain in place, let sleeping
dogs lie. Also, in Florida, we have a
growing number of Venezuelans thathave come into Florida due to what
has happened in Venezuela – they areeven more entrenched in their antiCastro and anti-Charvis positions –because it is more recent. They are nota voting block yet, they are very recent
and mostly not American citizens yet,but will become American citizens,and will vote for whoever is antisocialistic.
MLK: So do these new Americans
such as the Venezuelans see America
as the place of capitalistic values,
freedom values, the land of milk
and honey that attracted the earlier
wave of immigrants, the ethic that
if you work hard enough you can gofrom being from a small island in the
Atlantic and with your own sweat
and hard work you can make it, makeit to being a full professor?
AGO: Not only that – if you did not
make it – it is because of a character
flaw. They do not take into accountthe dynamics of an economy or any of
the other factors that play into that –Eye Magazine Fifth Edition | 53

54 | Eye Magazine Fifth Edition

“The main hurdle was to overcome
deeply-rooted notions of European
cultural and racial ascendancy, notions thatrelegated the indigenous to second-classstatus in the minds of many moviegoers.”
but they believe if you are poor, thatpoverty is a character flaw and manyof them will tell you that. They look at
us – we came, we had nothing and lookat where we are. With the recession,
the rise from being an immigrant withnothing and making it for the family
in one generation, to come and be
successful is not as easy as it used to be.
Though it was never easy, or very quick
but today it is a lot more difficult. The
lack of jobs is a huge factor. However
if you are coming with a goodeducation, it is different. But if you arecoming without an education, selling
newspapers on the street, and moving
over time to become the CEO of agreat company, it is not impossible,
but it is not feasible. When youlive in a country that has low living
standards, you are always going to
get people who seek a life in a bettercountry, which has possibilities andopportunities. Mexico has one of themost corrupt systems of government
in the world. Even though it is arelatively rich country with petroleum
and other natural resources, many
people are abjectly poor. But I havealso been to the parts of Mexico City
where people live in almost palaces –the discrepancy is there. I think that
Mexico is a powder keg, something isgoing to happen there very soon.

a classic example – you get someof the richest people in the world,
billionaires …

now, but the priest said that the next
life is going to be so wonderful. And
it keeps the powder keg from blowing.

AGO: Carlos Slim is the richest
man in the world, and he is from
Mexico…

MLK: That is interesting because
this is the area of the world where
liberation theology was very muchpart of the socio-political narrative.

MLK: That is something that has
fascinated me about Mexico – you
get a small, wealthy, highly educatedelite in some of the countries in theAmericas, but you do not get theegalitarianism that exists elsewhere,with such a great disparity in the
distribution of wealth and cultural
capital in the society. Mexico is

MLK: Where does religion stand in
all of this?

MLK: Then again you have people
absolutely poor. You have an economy
that creates a lot of industry, createsa lot of wealth and agriculture, a risein energy in the last few decades
but somehow with all the educated,talented middle class, though a small
number comparatively, the society
has not been able to readjust. Why
do you think that is the case in Latin
America?
AGO: It is not just a Latin American
phenomenon it is also a global
phenomenon. But, in any case, in
Latin American they don’t havethat tradition of giving back to thecommunity such as in countries in
Scandinavia, where they have beenable to have a very socialistic system
run right next to a capitalistic system.
The Latin American difference goesback to what I said before – poverty
is regarded as a character flaw – if
you are poor you deserve to be poor –getting up the ranks is up to you.

AGO: The view of the church is thateven though you are poor now, think
about what is going to happen inyour next life. That in a way allows
the status quo to survive, with people
thinking - I do not have anything

AGO: Ah … But they were scoldedby the pope.
MLK: Thank you very muchfor taking the time to talk withus at Eye Magazine. We wish
you good luck with your future
research and teaching programme
at City University of New York,
Kingsborough. We have covered a
lot of material, from filmic narratives
and how they create national
identities, from Cuba through to
US immigration policy and to thecurrent problems and opportunities
in Latin America. It has been apleasure to talk to you today.
AGO: Indeed. Thank you for having
me here.
Professor Alfonso J. García
Osuna is the Chairperson of the
Department of Foreign Languages
at the City University of New
York, Kingsborough. Originallya specialist in Medieval Spanish
Literature, over the last decade his
research interest has moved into
understanding how films create
the images of national identities,
and what the person of that nation
should be.

Eye Magazine Fifth Edition | 55

How VoiceThread impacts classroom
engagement and learning
BY ALEXANDRA SALAS

Given the rise of online and hybrid
education, as well as the use of searchengines, smartphones, SIRI and otherautodidactic options at every turn, theart of teaching is about challenging
ways to create and sustain engaging
learning environments. VoiceThread(VT), a cloud-based presentation toolthat enables multimedia commenting,offers both students and faculty
options that they can use to reinforce
and inspire learning exchanges.
The VoiceThread technology provides
a valuable communication opportunitythat can support and complement
instructional interactions, although
it is clear, as should be the casewith any e-tool, that its application
should be purposeful in order for the
instructional-engagement payoff to be

worthwhile.
For online teachers and instructors
especially, simulating the spontaneityof classroom dialogue is a difficult goal
to attain, but VoiceThread provides
an asynchronous alternative. Insteadof a traditional threaded discussion,
VoiceThread brings new life to textbased conversations with the inclusionof multimedia commenting. Similarly,
once a VoiceThread is created, viewers
and users alike can choose how theywould like to reply using text, audio,
video or all three formats.
“Students are able to add their voices,and you can hear other students so you
don’t feel like you are interfacing witha computer program. It is one attempt
to bring a human aspect I think to anotherwise sterile environment, “ says
one professor who participated in a
focus group about the tool’s usefulness.
“With this tool you are having moreinteraction and more participation
than in a discussion board,” noted
another participant.
And if faculty are interested in having
students reciprocate and use thetool in discussions or presentations,
VoiceThreadisanaccessible
technology.
While cost may preclude academic
departments from purchasing some
instructional
technology
tools,
VoiceThread has a free basic accountthat allows users to create five
VoiceThreads containing up to 50
slides each, and unlimited voice andtext comments. Equally, students who
struggle to purchase textbooks, don’t
welcome that additional burden toinvest in apps to get their work done.
VT is an affordable option for both.
Furthermore, the idea that one
can create an interactive and richpresentation with a minimal learning
curve are characteristics that facultyfind appealing. Comments fromfaculty at a two-year college who
participated in a recent case study
about VoiceThread found the tool
to be useful, intuitive and engaging,which is critical to educators given thesentiment that the use of multimedia
is not optional any more.

Photograph by The Unquiet Library/ Flickr

56 | Eye Magazine Fifth Edition“We have to use it to connect withstudents’ worlds. All our students,
including the non-traditional ones,
interact with many kinds of media

on a regular basis.” Another faculty
shared that the VoiceThead “gives agreater understanding of text - thatnarrative can be delivered in sound andin pictures.” Other positives about thetool include: the use of VoiceThread
to explain or clarify. As a preemptive
measure, VoiceThread can be used to
expand on challenging content areas,or give additional input.
In addition, for educators, it facilitates
the development of instructional
activities that address diverse learning
styles. Brunvand and Byrd (2011) also
noted how VT can help faculty address
and adapt to student learning needs,
including students with disabilities.
The dual benefit is extraordinary:
the combination of text, audio, andvisual integration meets a variety ofstudent learning needs and complies
with provisions of the American with
Disabilities Act (ADA) that promote
accessibility and equal opportunities
for students with disabilities (ADA,
1990). Moreover, the commenting
feature in the form of text, audio
and video optimizes communicationdelivery for all learners.
VoiceThread facilitates classroom
personalization,
particularlyininstitutions where course sections
arestandardized
and
allow
little modification. For instance,
VoiceThread can be used as a student
or instructor presentation tool,for group project presentations, tosynthesize discussions, to invite andintegrate guest speakers, to developorientation modules, and to compose
faculty lectures,
discussions andcourse announcements.

that has catapulted VoiceThread in
education settings. Keengwe, Kidd,
and Kyei-Blankson (2009) foundthat faculty opinions concerning
perceived usefulness are significant
in determining curricular education
technology
decisions.
Cloudbased applications, such as VT, thatcombine voice, images, video andtext, are increasingly used in academic
environments due to their userfriendly and diverse instructional
applications that include discussions,demonstrations,surveys,andpresentations.
As an e-learning tool, Atkinson
and Burden (2008) discussed thepedagogical value of VT and how
it offers diverse elements that canserve instruction. The versatility ofthis multimedia tool is extensive
to facilitate the development ofengaging and customizable learning
experiences and interactions in many
disciplines such as English, math,science and language acquisition. In
an article about the use of various
web 2.0 tools in German language
classes, Lorensen (2010) explained
how VT was “useful for homeworkassignments, practicing listening
and reading skills and using virtual
realia” Consequently, applications likeVT create a wide range of learning
content and assessment development
opportunities.

An added bonus is convenience, as
no download is necessary for use
on a desktop or laptop, and there
is an app for mobile devices thatprovides an intuitive interface for an
uncomplicated user experience.

Another appeal is how VoiceThread
can help instructors reinforce learning
by leveraging auditory and visual
learning with written activity. Its text
component allows individuals to use
text to support the visual and recorded
elements. Similarly, faculty can use
the same comment tool to provide
students with meaningful feedback
that students can read, view and listen.
Heinrich, Milne, and Moore (2009)
noted how this type of feedback“enabl[es] student learning”.

As with most instructional technology,
ease of use is an important factor

In addition, VoiceThread can be used
to create enriched learning and sharing

communities. Nagakawa (2010)
focused on how VT can facilitate
engagement given distance and time
restrictions noting, “The ease of use
and intuitive nature of VoiceThread
makes it easy.”
Applications like VT can be used tomeet the demands of 21st century
teaching objectives that aim “to devise
deliberate techniques for assuring
interaction among course participants,
to promote purposeful peer dialogue,
and to establish a sense of belonging
where all participants [learners
and faculty] perceive themselves as
stakeholders” (LeBaron & McFadden,
2008). At a time when online
instructional formats continue totrend up, establishing and maintaining
a sense of community is instrumental
to the viability of this academic
alternative. While still asynchronous,
its innovative design is a hallmark
of communication. See VoiceThread
examples: https://voicethread.com/
about/library/
Despite the launch of new voiceauthoring tools, VoiceThread isholding its own by continuing tostreamline and update its user interface
that displays a welcoming site for new
and seasoned cloud-based users.
Alexandra Salas has a Ph.D. in
Education, with a specializationin education technology from
Walden University, a Masters in
Political Science, and a Bachelorof Arts in Journalism and FrenchStudies. In addition to her role as
instructional designer at Mercer
County Community College, she
is an education consultant and has
extensive post-secondary teachingexperience in traditional and online
platforms.
A fully referenced version of thisarticle can be made by contacting
publications@iafor.org

Eye Magazine Fifth Edition | 57

Manila’s ‘Big Little Spend Up’

The Philippines Defence Force Goes Shopping

Photograph by Korea Aerospace Industries/ Flickr

by Michael Liam Kedzlie
In the immediate aftermath of theCold War, the Philippines sought amore independent defence and foreign
policy posture. They wanted to end
the international perception of being
America’s lackey in Asia. Whether
or not that perception was a reality ismoot, nonetheless, the nation wanted
a clear demonstration of Filipino
sovereignty and national pride. They
did so by requesting that the UnitedStates, who had for decades operated
bases in the country, to leave. It was
their message to the international
community that the Filipino people
were now in charge of their own
58 | Eye Magazine Fifth Edition

destiny. The American withdrawal
was a symbolic ‘feel good’ gesture thatgalvanized the public and solidified
the political discourse. However, forthe cities around Subic Bay and Clark
Air Force Base, already hit by the 1991
Pinatubo eruption, the economic
cost of the US Forces withdrawal
hit
those
communities
hard.
Once the United States militaryleft, the Philippine Armed Forces
struggled for relevance and coherency.
They also struggled with the true
costs of defending the archipelago
with microscopically small defence

budgets over the following years whencompared to most of their East Asianneighbours. The country also began
to retreat somewhat from staking out
a meaningful international profile
within defence and security circles,
as their lack of inter-operability withother nations became pronounced.
They focused more on various
internal matters such as counter
insurgency
operations
againstdisparate groups. Most prominently
Abu Sayyaf in 2001 in which theAmerican special force ‘advisors’
returned in small numbers to assist.

The military in this new era of post
Marcos Philippine independence
was not high on the list of spending
priorities for the political elite in
Manila. Pundits felt that the militaries
compliance in the previous long reignof Ferdinand Marcos hindered theopportunity for an open progressive
society to evolve. The new elite did
not entirely trust them. The army
continued to get support for counter
insurgency, but the maritime andaviation elements of their militaryforce were markedly second fiddle. For
an archipelago like the Philippines,
possessing weak maritime and airborne
defence capability was seemingly
counterintuitive for most regional
defence analysts. A further setback forthe nation saw the economy struggling
for some years in the wake of the 19971998 Asian financial crises. This saw
defence spending cut and the combat
capability of the Philippine’s Defence
Force significantly atrophied. Major
capital items within the defence force
were decommissioned including its

main frontline combat capability, theaging Northrop F-5 fighter, which waswithdrawn in 2005 and never replaced.
That might be fine if the geo-politics
and tension levels of the South
China Sea region had stayed thesame as they were in 1992 when theAmericans left. They didn’t and withthe rise of China by the turn of the
century in terms of being an assertive
economic and military power, thebalance changed. The pressure wasput on, and with the Philippines
no longer with an American ear as
sympathetic to its woes as in the past,found itself in a quandary. Following
9/11, the Americans were only fully
honed in on the North Korea issue
with respect to Asia as they were
distracted elsewhere. All the realaction for them was in the Middle
East. Meanwhile China was slowly
muscling in on the vacuum createdand contesting the maritime spacearound the Philippines home patch.

Over the last 10 years the Philippine
economy has been improving;
however its security situation has
deteriorated. Though it had become
economically stronger as a sovereignstate and its democracy more mature,
its ability to protect and enforce
its own territorial sovereignty hascome under constant challenge.
China has claimed sovereignty overalmost 85 percent of waters in theSouth China Sea, much of which
affects the Philippine archipelago
on its eastern flank. The claim haschallenged
otherneighbouring
nations, such as Brunei, Malaysia,
Taiwan and Vietnam. The underlying
reasons for the Chinese claim iscomplex. However, a significant
reason is simply that China has avery small EEZ for its size and statuscompared to other regional and global
powers. Within this contested area
lie hundreds of islands, reefs andatolls that the Philippine government
have traditionally controlled andEye Magazine Fifth Edition | 59

60 | Eye Magazine Fifth Edition

Photograph by U.S. Pacific Command/ Flickr

administered. These territorial claims
have both security and economic
implications, because the country that
controls those areas can access marine
resources such as fisheries as well as
lucrative offshore oil and gas deposits.

EDCA agreement will not mean that
the USAF will return to Clark AFB
or the USN to Subic Bay, but it will
mean that US Pacific Forces will be
invited by the Philippine Government
to undertake more frequent visits andtraining exercises with the Philippine
Rather than accept the inevitable Defence Force. For the US there arecapitulation by a thousand cuts, advantages in this as it will help tothe Philippines has moved from its consolidate its pivot back into theuntenable position of “independence” Asia-Pacific region, thus being able
to a more normative and realistic to provide the protective footprint“interdependence” by seeking a for friendly nations and secure thecollective defence response from heavily used and internationalised
regional partners. The notion of trade routes of the South China Sea.
“independence” in defence and foreign
policy has always been a parochial With the Philippines not just wanting
and ham-fisted form of nationalism to spend more on defence, but also
mostly for domestic political needing to spend more, the global
consumption and usually expounded defence industry is beating a path toby centre-left progressives or populist Manila. This July a major defence expo
rightist conservatives. Experience was held in the city that attracted all theand pragmatism however leads to an major industry players. The shopping
eventual interdependence posture list is quite extensive with US$1.8
as like-minded countries, especially billion to be spent on new defense
those limited by economic size, have technology by 2017. Most of the new
to work together to meet security equipment is heading to the Air Forceand diplomatic goals, however great and Navy though the Army, Marine
the differences and disparities. The Corp and Coastguard are getting
Philippines, due to the run-down their slice of the fiscal pie as well.
condition of its military capability,
has had to rebuild its defence Nevertheless, they are pursuing some
capability with a certain haste, which fairly big-ticket defence items for thethey define as achieving credible a first time in many decades. The Navy,minimum of deterrence. The good are to receive two new frigates andfortune is that at last Manila has some amphibious ships from South Korea,
ability to find the money to do that. as well as two used Oliver Hazard
Perry class frigates from the United
Over the last 5 years the Philippines States. Recently, a US$420 million
had started to increase its defence contract was signed to acquire twelve
spending and its regional military FA-50 light fighter jets built by Korea
relationships, however in the last 2 Aerospace Industries (KAI). These
years this has grown more pronounced. will allow the Philippine government
Particularly in the last 12 months to recover an air combat capability
which has seen funding levels rise quickly and set the country up for a
to USD$2.6 B for its armed services later purchase of more capable multifor the 2015 fiscal period, a jump of role fighters. Moreover, American
nearly 30% compared to 2 years ago. based aircraft manufacturer Beechcraft
are to provide six Texan T-6 closeWhat is also of significance is Manila’s air-support aircraft for around USD
rebuilding of strong military ties with $114m. Also on the Philippine
the United States and other regional shopping list are twenty-one used expartners. Last April the United US Army Bell UH-1 helicopters andStates signed the Enhanced Defense a further eight Bell 412 helicopters
Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) from Canada. The air mobility ofafter 8 months of negotiation in what is troops and cargo is an important partthe most significant defense agreement of any modern military capability
that the Americans have concluded and thus two refurbished Herculeswith the Philippines in decades. The C-130T transport aircraft and an

operational support package fromthe United States have been ordered
for US$61m along with three new
Airbus C-295 medium-lift aircraftfrom EADS of Europe, the makersof the Airbus range of passenger jets.
The Philippine land forces do not missout on Manila’s spending spree withan order for the Israeli built Soltam
ATHOS towed artillery pieces.
Moreover, one hundred and fourteen
M113A2 armored personnel carriers
are on order from ex-US Army stocks,
with an additional 63,000 newbuilt M4 carbines, 44,000 new bodyarmor kits and around 400 rocket
propelled grenades to follow. There
are also numerous smaller projects
that are still to be announced andone or two larger projects to come.
One of these acquisition projects,
the future maritime patrol aircraft,
will be able to provide an improved
ISR (intelligence surveillance andreconnaissance) capability to detect
maritime territorial intrusions into
the Philippine Exclusive Economic
Zone by foreign vessels and aircraft.
There is a lot to do, but even though
the economy is much stronger, thePhilippine government does nothave the deep pockets to buy thelatest high-end military equipment.
That kind of chequebook militarism
is best left to the Singaporeans andthe Australians. The Philippines have
only a modest amount to do quite a
lot with. Around US$1.8 Billion may
seem a lot to the average person, butthat will only buy a single Hobart
Class destroyer or a squadron of multirole combat aircraft. Nevertheless bya mixture of buying fairly basic new
equipment, second hand cast offs fromthe Americans, and remanufacturing
their own older equipment, thePhilippine government hopes to beable to achieve their goal of building acredible minimum defensive capability
to protect their sovereign interests inthis ‘big little spend up’ on defence.
Michael Liam Kedzlie is the IAFOR
Research and Policy Manager

Eye Magazine Fifth Edition | 61Thank you for reading thefifth issue of

Eye Magazine
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Issue 5 - Fall 2014
Editor: Michael Liam Kedzlie
Assistant Editor: Lindsay Lafreniere
Produced by:
The International Academic Forum (IAFOR)
Published under Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International Licence
ISSN: 2187-8935