CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2023
| Author | Nago, Fumiko |
|---|---|
| Title | Embracing Japan's Post-Cold War: An Examination of Intellectuals' Opposition to the Gulf War |
| Summary | During the Gulf War in 1991, a group of Japanese intellectuals released the “Statement from ‘literary persons’ in opposition to the Gulf War.” This statement not only expressed an anti-war stance but also gestured to redefine Japan’s position in the post-Cold War world. 1989-1991 was a period of global and domestic changes, which involved complex questions about “Japan” as a nation. My central question is: what do the debates of the “Statement” reveal about the Japanese intellectual sphere in 1989-1991? Through the analysis of publications contemporary to the statement, I examine how the statement responded to the question of “Japan” as a nation. The first chapter offers contextual frameworks for historicizing the moment of 1989-1991 and the Japanese intellectual sphere at that moment. The second and third chapter builds on the contextualization in the first chapter to analyze the statement as a text and the discussions that followed considering the moment of 1989-1991. The second chapter addresses how the statement and its discussion respond to the question of “Japan” as a nation, building on the legacy of intellectual struggles over the Japanese constitution and the emperor system in the postwar. The third chapter examines how the statement reflects some of the intellectuals’ awareness of the “Others,” namely the United States and East Asia, in thinking about Japan in the post-Cold War. In contrast to the narrative of the “uselessness” of intellectual debates around the statement, this thesis argues that the discussions reveal the intellectuals’ desperate effort to present a future-oriented national identity for Japan and at the same time to acknowledge the need to critically historicize the past. Embracing the past and the future, the anti-Gulf War statement was an attempt to open the possibility for dialogue to negotiate the ideas of national and transnational in Japan’s national identity. |
| Supervisor | Rin Odawara |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2023/nago_fumiko.pdf |
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