Japanstudien 8

Electronic text corpora play a major role in literary and linguistic study in European languages. The same has not yet been true for Japanese, for among other problems the complexity of the writing system has posed a major obstacle in Japanese text computation. However, a number of major corpora have been published recently, especially in the fields of classical literature, newspapers and language data collections in support of computational linguistics. This article tries to give a critical overview of representative corpora in the first two of these fields, and discusses the possibilities of creating one’s own electronic texts. Furthermore, it introduces software for the analysis of text corpora. The descriptions of the text corpora and programs contain information about availability and price.

Serialized television dramas reflect social tendencies and may equally encourage new trends and intensify those already in existence. A comparison of plot patterns and messages in German and Japanese television series may serve to substantiate this assertion.

Up to the 1970s, TV serial dramas in both countries generally presented families living in harmony, whereas alternative life styles – such as one-person households or single-parent families – were introduced only in the nineties. The dependent wives in German series and the devoted mothers of Japanese dramas are now women determining their own courses in life. At the same time, men are frequently depicted as they confront the sudden responsibility for their children’s upbringing. This happens either because the wife died, as is common in German series, or because she broke out of her role of wife and mother, which has become a topic in Japanese television dramas.

The portrayals of these men show prominent distinctions. In the German series, they usually leave the household and child care duties to female relatives or domestic servants. In contrast, in some Japanese series fathers learn to deal with these challenges on their own. The fact that alternative models of living are increasingly depicted in television series leads one to the assumption that they are increasingly accepted by society. Simultaneously, such series may help advance the general awareness of alternative life styles and their acceptance as an ordinary part of social life. In the case of Japan, this is of special importance, since the social pressure of living in a conventional family environment is still significant.

The academic dichotomy of “Gemeinschaft” and “Gesellschaft” assumes that the formation of theoretical concepts includes the cultural experience of difference. This notion originated in Europe in the 19th century and was in turn adopted by the Japanese social sciences as part of an intercultural discourse. The article describes the process by which this idea was incorporated into Japanese thought since the middle of the 19th century. Using classical academic texts, it elucidates the different perspectives which form part of the ideas of “the Self” and “the Other”. This will demonstrate that, both in the West and Japan, a discourse of self-awareness began through such key academic concepts, a discourse which helped construct cultural identity.

Suicide among Japanese adolescents is a popular topic in the media. However, a comparison of data and research from both countries, tracking the changes from the 1950s to the 1990s, shows that Japan’s present per capita rate of juvenile suicide is lower than that of Germany. Therefore, it seems that cultural interpretations of suicide are responsible for the impression of high suicide rates among Japanese adolescents. This article reviews several recurring arguments about the context of juvenile suicide; for example, suicide as a reaction to a rigid social system or to pressure in the schools. The recently discussed connection between suicide and bullying (ijime) will be given special attention. Different types of media, such as newspapers, popular publications, and scientific reports, address suicide in specific ways. There is a conformity among the international perspectives which is clarified by a review of the research papers. Such a review also elucidates the irrelevance of national stereotypes.

This essay compares the structures of adolescents’ daily lives in Germany and Japan. A survey was used in each country, using questionnaires for eighth grade students in four schools with different academic achievement levels. The lives of German students are structured by various activities influenced by subcultures or social status, whereas school-related activities dominate and homogenize the daily lives of Japanese students. Cultural differences in correlation patterns between structures of daily lives and scholastic achievement are related to culturally sanctioned behavior and views of adolescence.

Since the early 1980s, the comparison with the “German model of mastering the past” has become an important aspect of the Japanese discussion on war guilt. The 1982 textbook scandal in particular forced Japan to confront the legacy of its wartime past for the sake of its diplomatic relations with China and Korea. This article analyses the impact of the “German model” on the debate in Japan using three case studies: the 1982 textbook scandal, the official commemoration at the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, and the question of compensation payments to war victims. The comparison with Germany in this debate falls into three basic patterns:

– Enthusiasm for the German model (especially the famous speech of former president von Weizsäcker) combined with harsh criticism of the prevailing attitude towards Japan’s militaristic past seen in Japanese politics and society. This argument does not offer any solutions to Japan’s problems with its neighbors.

– Nationalistic refusal to compare Japan’s history with the “absolute evil” of Nazi terror. This approach is based on an affirmative view of Japan’s past and tends to deny or diminish the need for reconciliation with Japan’s former enemies and colonies. Such a view of history implies a tendency towards isolationism for present-day Japan. Although this kind of revisionism has lost much of its former influence on Japanese politics, it is still able to prevent a more active stewardship of war guilt and compensation.

– The search for a home-grown approach to reconciliation with the Asian peoples invaded and colonized by the Imperial Japanese army, an approach which would oppose both the eurocentrism and nationalism of the first two patterns. A small group of citizen activists is eager to learn from German achievements as well as from its failures. However, this kind of grass-roots movement is still too weak to influence Japanese politics.

In Western culture, eye contact plays a fundamental role with regards to human relations and identity. But in relation to the Japanese this fundamental role is put in question, because the Japanese concept of eye contact seems different from the Western. Three examples of Western descriptions of Japan are discussed in this paper to demonstrate this collision of Western and Japanese concepts of eye contact.

Taiyō (The Sun) – the monthly Review of Politics, Economics, Sciences, Literature, and Art, published from 1895 to 1928 with a circulation of 100,000 – plays an important role as a mirror which reflects contemporary currents of thought and culture. This paper introduces a representative sampling of articles from this review related to German matters, and analyzes the writings of three well-known intellectuals which appeared in this review. Three debates command particular attention: the “Dispute About Aesthetics” (1896) between Takayama Chogyū and Mori Ōgai, the correspondence between Chogyū and Anezaki Chōfū,(1901-1902) and its literary significance, and the contrary opinions of Ōgai and Chōfū concerning studying abroad and the Yellow Peril. Central to this analysis are patterns of transmission and reception of German thought in late Meiji Japan, a transitional stage in Japanese history when the spiritual basis of modern Japan was rapidly being solidified. The conclusion confirms the cultural and literary significance of the review Taiyō as a conduit for matters German into the wider currents of Japanese thought and culture of the period.

This essay argues that the Japanese thinker and aesthete Takayama Chogyū (1871-1902) did not theorize within concrete dimensions of rock-bottom logic, but rather within concrete abstractions. Thus, he aspired not so much to the creation of ideals and forms of beauty, but rather tried to illuminate how beauty is born somewhere between the ideal and so-called reality. Furthermore, that this technique of combining the ideal and the real is a pivotal point in his thinking becomes obvious in his attitude towards the German philosopher Eduard von Hartmann (1842-1906), well-known in Japan at the time, whom he criticized harshly. This essay aims to show, moreover, that Takayama’s criticism of Hartmann was driven not so much by nationalism but rather by a deep concern for aesthetic ideas.

The 1890s saw the birth of two key literary works in Japan and Germany: Mori Ōgai’s Mahime and Theodor Fontane’s Effi Briest. Both confront as their central theme an old order in deep crisis in a mix of spiritual, cultural and social critique. This contribution shows that – despite all the cultural differences between the two countries – this crisis has a common core: the disintegration of the supporting pillar of society, as represented by the masochism of honor.

The possibility of achieving financial independence as a writer – Higuchi Ichiyō (1872-1896) was the first to achieve this in Japan – enabled women to realize their female subjectivity through their literary work, relatively free of the dictates of society . Beyond the artistic sphere, in their material lives, they necessarily encountered difficulties and conflict in their pursuit of self-realization. The following essay considers two examples of turn-of-the-century women writers, the Japanese Tamura Toshiko (1884-1945) and the German Franziska Gräfin zu Reventlow (1871-1918), as the starting point for addressing the following questions. Why, on the one hand, does the concept of the autonomous subject, fundamental to the modern age, serve to impede the female search for identity. And why, on the other hand, did unity of art, life, and love for these two women constitute the precondition for their self-realization? For both women, female subjectivity appears to mean that an individual identity could only be forged in the simultaneity or interplay between demarcation or delimitation with regard to others and the dissolution of barriers in togetherness with one person. The intercultural comparison demonstrates basic structural similarities between the two women despite all differences. From this one may conclude that the process of modernization in Japan and the modern age in Europe constituted the precondition for women to be able to develop their own subjectivity, but that it nevertheless hindered the development of a (collective) female subjectivity. Here we may recognize the ambivalence of the modern age and its fundamental concept of the subject.

Prompted by the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War, the Japanese literary world once again looked back at the core texts of the post-war period. However, there was an astonishing absence of thorough new studies which examine the literature of the immediate post-war era in their historical context. This article is a small-scale, concrete analysis comparing two representative texts of Japanese and German postwar literature; Shiina Rinzo’s “Banquet at Midnight”, and Wolfgang Borchert’s “Draußen vor der Tür”. The article considers the parallels and differences in the manner of representation, for example with regard to gender descriptions, and critically evaluates these texts from today’s perspective.

This essay presents a quantitative and qualitative analysis of newspaper and magazine articles on Japanese literature which appeared in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland between 1988 and 1994. The first part evaluates statistically the subject matter (i.e. pieces of Japanese literature) as well as authorship and publication of the newspaper entries themselves. The second part discusses typical patterns in German-language essays about Japanese literature since the early seventies. The case study of Ōe Kenzaburō. in the final section presents an example of the reception in Germany, Austria and Switzerland of a single Japanese writer.

In translating works of art there is no room for mediocrity. Translated art is art or it is nothing. The indifference of European or German readers towards Japanese literature is for the most part caused by bad translating, i.e. by transformation of art into nothing. Citing representative examples, the author reveals the various kinds of damage done by such transformation, the worst being the creation of myths that not only dominate common views of Japanese language and literature in Germany, but views of Japan itself.

Prompted by the rising publication of manga in Germany, this article deals with the problems occurring when manga are transferred from the Japanese original to books for Western readers. After listing the constituent components of a comic/manga, the article gives three examples of transferred manga: works by Ōtomo Katsuhiro, Genji monogatari Asakiyumemishi by Yamato Waki and Ironfist Chinmi by Maekawa Takeshi.

The first problem which must be resolved is whether to remount the pages, which in the original form are read from right to left and now must convey the story from left to right for a Western readership. When remounting the pages, written Japanese characters in the picture have to be prepared separately. By duplicating the pages in mirror-image form, a new and different story is born: right-handed persons become left-handed and clocks show different times.

The article discusses the pros and cons of transferences which – for example by coloring and remounting the pages – primarily speak to the expectations of the Western readership as well as those transferences which mainly try to convey elements of the manga in their original form.

Scholars interested in Japanese studies have at their disposal a steadily increasing number of electronic reference works on CD-ROM and similar media. Most of these electronic aids are dictionaries, both monolingual and bilingual, as well as specialized reference works in the technical, medical, economic or legal areas, to name just a few. However, ever more multiple-volume general encyclopedias are making their debut on the market as well. This report centers on a description of the present state of the art in order to give readers a clearer picture of which electronic dictionaries might be of use to them in their studies of things Japanese. It also considers how to better use this new media and explains which technical conditions must be met, in terms of hardware and software. Finally, it tries to give a brief preview of developments expected in the near future and how such developments will force us to gather information in new ways.