Contemporary Japan is an international peer-reviewed journal edited by the German Institute for Japanese Studies Tokyo (DIJ) and published biannually by de Gruyter, Berlin and New York.

Contemporary Japan publishes in-depth, original work from all disciplines as they relate to present-day Japan or its recent historical development.

Start-up ecosystems within regional agglomerations have been intensively studied in Western countries, but much less in East Asia. Therefore, little is known about the specific features of East Asian start-up ecosystems.

We study the high-tech start-up ecosystems within four leading East Asian agglomerations: Tokyo, Seoul, Suzhou and Chongqing.

The Newsletter, which since June 1997 appears two times a year in German and English, contains information about DIJ research projects, events and publications.

Das im Frühjahr 2016 erschienene Bulletin informiert ausführlich über die Aktivitäten des Deutschen Instituts für Japanstudien im vergangenen Jahr (2015).

Diese auf deutsch herausgegebene Publikation kann direkt beim DIJ in Tokyo bezogen werden.

In this issue, contributors consider feelings, perceptions, and narratives of hope and hopelessness in Japan: tracing, as it were, the work of hope.

Hope (kibō) in this context can be understood as at once a disposition, a tool, and a collective resource. People may actively seek out or attempt to foster hope; but hope is also, at times, felt as external: bestowed upon some and not others. That is to say, hope can be situational. Both fostered hope and situational hope can have an impact on people’s actions, but it is the latter that highlights the significance of the “independent action of hope in the world” (Reed 2011: 533). The contributions to this issue, in this sense, enlarge our understanding of what hope does.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a topical issue in many countries. What are the drivers for the global spread of explicit CSR- practices that are demonstrated to the outside- even in countries where companies had addressed CSR implicitly? What catalyzes organizations to adopt CSR and how does their adoption influence other companies’ likelihood to adopt CSR? This book approaches the recent world-wide adoption of CSR practices as part of the global spread of management concepts.

2015, Deutsches Institut für Japanstudien / Stiftung D.G.I.A., Tokyo, 29 p.

Der „Inhalt” und seine „Form” sind seit jeher Objekt der Begierde jedes Literaturtheoretikers. Viele verkünden, in deren Relation den Stein der poetischen Weisheit gefunden und sich mit ihm den richtigen Zugang zur literarischen Formästhetik verschafft zu haben – so auch die japanischen Literaten, welche gegen Ende der 1920er-Jahre einen heftigen Streit um jene poetische Weisheit ausfechten.

Dabei prallen zwei gegensätzliche Kunstkonzepte aufeinander: Während die Neosensualisten wie Yokomitsu Riichi oder Inukai Takeru um jeden Preis das Konzept der Kunstautonomie verteidigen, bangen die Marxisten wie Hirabayashi Hatsunosuke oder Kurahara Korehito um den Utilitarismus der Literatur.