Dear Colleagues:

We will have an Asia-Pacific Studies Seminar at Osaka University on 23 September (Friday).
Here is our seminar format.
１．Presenters submit their seminar papers prior to the seminar.
２．All the participants are requested to read all the seminar papers.
３．Presentation: about 15 minutes
４．All the participants are expected to be commentators.
５．Discussion: 40-45 minutes.

Seminar papers are available for particpants only.
If you wish to attend the seminar, please let me know.
You will have access to our members-only dropbox from which you can download the seminar papers.
Contact: Yone Sugita: sugita@lang.osaka-u.ac.jp
This seminar is conducted in English only.

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Asia-Pacific Studies Seminar at Osaka University
Date: 23 September 2016 (Friday)
Venue: Office for University-Industry Collaboration (Building A), Suita Campus, Osaka University
http://www.osaka-u.ac.jp/en/access/index.html#suita (Access map)
http://www.osaka-u.ac.jp/en/access/suita (Suita Campus Map: #47)

Session 1:10:00 - 11:00
Nathan Hopson (Nagoya University)
https://www.lit.nagoya-u.ac.jp/english/g30/faculty/nathan-hopson/
Title: Peace for Our Time The 1937 Nagoya Pan-Pacific Peace Exhibition
Abstract: Historians have begun to extricate interwar Japan from the teleology of militarist
totalitarianism and war. Instead of weak democracy and escapism, we now see in the 1920s substantive
internationalism, democracy, and a culture of peace. But the 1930s remain largely in the shadow of
what followed. The spring 1937 Nagoya Pan-Pacific Peace Exhibition (NPPPE) provides an ideal
opportunity to see the mid-1930s as a moment of contestation and contingency rather than as the cusp
of the “Dark Valley.” Japan’s last international expo before the second Sino-Japanese War pitted
a fading Wilsonian vision of peace against increasingly rabid militarism, testifying both to the
former’s durability and the latter’s ascendancy. The NPPPE was originally planned as a regional
promotion event, but was ultimately the product of necessary compromise with the Japanese Imperial
Army. Local commercial and political leaders, whose identity and self-interest was tied to
international trade and who remained enamored of the 1920s’ Wilsonian capitalist peace, organized
the Peace Exhibition. These elites did not oppose empire, which offered prestige and economic
advantage, but the contradictions of the NPPPE force us to question the support of Japanese elites
for militarism in the 1930s.
Chair: Naoko Koda (Kindai University)
Discussants: Mark Caprio (Rikkyo University) & All

Session 2: 11:15 - 12:15
Miyuki Daimaruya (Ochanomizu University)
http://researchers2.ao.ocha.ac.jp/html/200000190_en.html
Title: Rethinking of Japanese American Resettlement and Military Service in 1950s: The Citizenship
of a Californian Nisei Soldier in the Korean War in From Internment, to Korea, to Solitude: Memoir
of Robert M. Wada
Abstract: This paper discusses the military service of Japanese American Nisei (the second
generation of Japanese) in the Korean War (1950?1953). During WWII, about 120,000 Japanese Americans,
most of the population of the Japanese Americans on the west coast of the US, were imprisoned in
Japanese American internment camps. The Korean War period is the so-called resettlement era for
Japanese Americans?when they returned to their homes to find some way to rebuild their lives in US
society after internment. This paper analyses a case of a Nisei male to consider the military
service of Nisei men in the Korean War and their social status during this period. It mainly
investigates the memoir of Robert M. Wada (1929?), a Nisei Californian and the author of From
Internment, to Korea, to Solitude. The paper also uses my interviews with Wada. The paper highlights
how military service in the Korean War operated and how it changed a Nisei man’s conditions of
citizenship under the early Cold War racial policy of the U.S. The paper then discusses whether his
performance, showing his definitive loyalty, helped him get full citizenship.
Wada’s memoir mainly focuses on his experiences from his teenage years to his twenties. Wada
experienced the internment camp in Poston, Arizona with his parents and siblings when he was twelve
years old. He spent three whole years of his junior school days in the camp. After he left the camp
and graduated from high school in his hometown, he volunteered for the U.S. Marine Corps at eighteen
years old. He was sent as a combat soldier on the Korean battlefront when he was twenty-one years
old. His experiences as a marine combat soldier in the Korean War certainly were proof of his
loyalty as a Nisei male citizen; he benefitted, as being a military veteran promoted his social
status. The conditions of his citizenship changed for the better after military service; however, at
the same time, he several typical issues of a returning-soldier from the battlefront?suffering from
PTSD, and several physical illnesses?but had to return to ordinary citizen life. It cannot be
concluded that he attained full-citizenship thanks to his military dedication.
Chair: Mark Caprio (Rikkyo University)
Discussants: Lyle De Souza(University of London and Kyoto University) & All

Lunch Seminar: 12:20 - 12:55

Session 3: 13:00 - 14:00
Naoko Koda (Kindai University)
http://researchmap.jp/nkoda/?lang=english
Title: Clashing Concepts of “National Security”: the Sunagawa Struggle and the Beginning of the
anti-US-Japan Security Treaty Movement
Abstract: In the early 1950s, the concept of “national security” was still in flux and highly
contested in Japan. For Washington, securing the US position in the defense system envisioned by the
Cold War strategists like Dean Acheson proved to be not only a military but also a political process
that required to demonstrate the solidarity of interests between the United States and Japan in the
process of consolidating the US military sphere in the Pacific. The Japanese concepts of security
had to be subsumed under the Cold War American discourse in order to fulfill American interest in
the region.
The paper focuses on the protests against the official plan to extend the runways of the US owned
Tachikawa airbase located by the small town of Sunagawa that started in 1955. The Tachikawa Air Base
was originally built in 1922 and hosted the elite units of the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force
until the American military forces seized it after the war, along with other military bases and
facilities in Japan. On May 6, 1955, the Tokyo Procurement Agency’s announcement of the runway
extension plan for the first time provoked fierce opposition from the local residents of Sunagawa.
It soon became a serious national controversy joined by the Japan Socialist Party (JSP), labor
unions and student activists. The Sunagawa struggle provides us a window through which to analyze
the contested concepts of national security in the 1950s.
Chair: Nathan Hopson (Nagoya University)
Discussants: Robert D. Eldridge (Institute for International Policy Studies) & All

Session 4: 14:15 - 15:15
Lindsay Black (Leiden University / Osaka University)
http://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/lindsay-black
Title: Japan’s strategic vision ? understanding security order in East Asia and the Asia-Pacific
Abstract: In a short article published in the East Asia Forum earlier this year, Professor Sahashi
Ryo argued that “Japanese diplomacy towards East Asia has experienced a fundamental transformation
”. His point was that the Abe Administration has reoriented Japan’s strategic vision to rely
solely on the US-Japan alliance. As a result, the opportunity to pursue a more inclusive regional
order based on multilateralism is being lost. Professor Sahashi’s argument raises important issues
in terms of Prime Minister Abe’s approach to the regional security order in East Asia and the Asia-
Pacific, but equally, Professor Sahashi may be overstating the centrality of alliance systems and
the balance of power. This paper maintains that regional security order in East Asia and the Asia-
Pacific can be understood in terms of overlapping orders rather than in teleological terms. Whilst
the balance of power remains central, a nascent security community also helps to secure order in the
region. This security community has adopted a functional approach by tackling specific security
issues to bolster trust and cooperation that may spillover into new issue areas. In addition,
international production networks mesh the region together creating an economic imperative to avoid
conflict. This paper will consider recent developments in the South China Sea to explore how we can
make sense of Japan’s strategic vision and the regional security order.
Ryo Sahashi, 2016. 'Japan’s vision for the East Asian security order', East Asia Forum, 23 February,
http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2016/02/23/japans-vision-for-the-east-asian-security-order/　
Chair: Miyuki Daimaruya (Ochanomizu University)
Discussants: Naoko Koda (Kindai University) & All

Session 5: 15:30 - 16:30
Philip Streich (Osaka University)
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Philip_Streich
Title: The Empirical Record on Island Disputes and War
Abstract: The islands disputes in the East and South China Seas are widely considered be the one of
the world's most likely locations for a major power war. Clashes between the disputants’ naval,
coast guard and fishing vessels occur frequently, often with violent results. In the South China Sea,
fishermen’s vessels are routinely harassed, sometimes seized, and sometimes even sunken by other
states’ naval and coast guard ships. China, meanwhile, recently decided to ignore a ruling by the
Permanent Court of Arbitration that their maritime claims are baseless. And in the East China Sea,
the Sino-Japanese dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands reached the point at which Chinese
military units locked their missile guidance radar onto Japanese Self-Defence Forces.
Fortunately, war has not yet broken out yet. This paper seeks to address the question: How
often do states actually fight wars over islands? Research shows that territorial disputes are the
most common cause of interstate war in history, but islands are different from continental territory
? on average, they are less valuable and more remote, which makes sending military forces more
costly. This project uses data on territorial disputes from 1816 to 2001 to compare the likelihood
of war between island and non-island disputes.
Chair: Nathan Hopson (Nagoya University)
Discussants: Lindsay Black (Leiden University / Osaka University) & All

Best,
Yone