Dear All,

We are pleased to announce that the newest issue of Contemporary Japan is now available online:

Volume 37 Issue 1 (Spring 2025)
https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rcoj20/37/1?nav=tocList

Volume 37 Issue 1 features a range of issues that are at once of local import and of global relevance. The issue includes six research articles plus our book review section. The research articles include qualitative research on new forms of labor market dualization in the platform economy (Deborah Giustini), an analysis of Murakami Ryu's Popular Hits of the Showa Era from the perspective of precarity in recessionary Japan (Barbara Greene), a discussion of media discourses of the peaceful use of nuclear power in the early postwar period (Jincao Wang), an analysis of Japanese identity construction through railway technology at home and abroad (Taku Tamaki), narratives of multiculturalism and community-building among Nikkei in the city of Toyota (Scott Ma and Mariana Alonso Ishihara), and an assessment of political rhetoric, public contest outcomes, and populism in 21^st century Japanese politics (Petter Lindgren). Our book review section covers publications on Jesuit enterprise in Japan in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, on the impact of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on psychological science, on East-West encounters in Japanese art, and on the history of the Japanese business community in Düsseldorf, Germany.

 

Please explore the articles through the links below.

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Editorial
Message from the Editor-in-Chief
Franz Waldenberger
https://doi.org/10.1080/18692729.2025.2462859

Research Articles

Digital work across the divide: Japan's platform economy and labour market dualisation
Deborah Giustini  
https://doi.org/10.1080/18692729.2023.2206339

A subaltern civil war: Precariat in-fighting in Murakami Ryu's Popular Hits of the Showa Era
Barbara Greene
https://doi.org/10.1080/18692729.2023.2208400

Newspaper reports and the peaceful use of nuclear power from 1945 to 1963: An analysis of Japan's Asahi and Yomiuri Shimbun
Jincao Wang
https://doi.org/10.1080/18692729.2023.2214480

Railways as Japanese identity: Riding between confidence and inexperience
Taku Tamaki
https://doi.org/10.1080/18692729.2023.2218015

Multiculturalism between ideology and practice: Immigrant self-narrations of community activism in Toyota, Japan
Scott Ma & Mariana Alonso Ishihara
https://doi.org/10.1080/18692729.2023.2220467   

Explaining important public contests in Japan: Rhetorical strategies, causality, and populism
Petter Y. Lindgren
https://doi.org/10.1080/18692729.2023.2247278

 

Book Reviews
The Samurai and the Cross: The Jesuit enterprise in early modern Japan, by M. Antoni J. Ucerler, S.J., Oxford University Press, 2022.
Reviewed by Sophie Takahashi
https://doi.org/10.1080/18692729.2023.2266898   

Nuclear Minds: Cold War psychological science and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by Ran Zwigenberg, Chicago University Press, 2023.
Reviewed by Florian Coulmas
https://doi.org/10.1080/18692729.2024.2348773

Japanese art in perspective: East-West encounters, by Shūji Takashina/高階秀爾, Translated by Matt Treyvaud, JPIC, 2021.
Reviewed by Philippe Bürgin
https://doi.org/10.1080/18692729.2024.2348811   

Die Geschichte des japanischen Wirtschaftsstandortes Düsseldorf [The History of Düsseldorf as a Business Location for Japanese Companies], by Konstantin Plett, IUDICIUM Verlag, 2023.
Reviewed by Jonathan Krautter
https://doi.org/10.1080/18692729.2024.2350084

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We extend an open invitation for all interested scholars to submit their work to Contemporary Japan. We are a Scopus-indexed journal with rolling submissions, a double-blind peer-review process, advanced access (online first) publishing, and language support for non-native English speakers. We also continue to accept proposals for special issues. Instructions for submission can be found here:
http://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=rcoj20&page=instructions

We look forward to your readership, submissions, feedback, and support.

With best wishes,

Isaac Gagné
Managing Editor, Contemporary Japan (me@contemporary-japan.org)
Principal Researcher, German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ-Tokyo)