Jeff Kingston - The Japan Times

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Jeff Kingston

Jeff Kingston lives in Tokyo, teaches history at Temple University Japan and has been contributing to The Japan Times since 1988. "Contemporary Japan" (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012) is his most recent book.

For Jeff Kingston's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

CULTURE / Books

Feb 6, 2001

Japan must open the doors if it is to survive

JAPAN AND GLOBAL MIGRATION: Foreign Workers and the Advent of a Multicultural Society, edited by Mike Douglass and Glenda Roberts. London: Routledge, 2000, 306 pp., 63 British pounds. Japan's demographic time bomb is ticking away. In the coming decades, the nation faces a labor shortage and insolvency in pension and health programs unless drastic measures are adopted.

CULTURE / Books

Jan 8, 2001

Enjoy a meander down the magnificent Mekong

THE MEKONG: Turbulent Past, Uncertain Future, by Milton Osborne. Atlantic Monthly Press, New York, 2000, $24. This elegiac tribute to the Mekong River is an occasion for a comfortable chair and a languorous afternoon. The intrepid armchair traveler is transported to this magnificent locale and can almost see the morning mists hanging over the banks of the river, experience that frisson of skirting whirlpools and enjoy the sunsets lingering over an aperitif.

CULTURE / Books

Dec 26, 2000

Cold War roots of a noisy marriage

AMERICA AND THE JAPANESE MIRACLE: The Cold War Context of Japan's Postwar Economic Revival, 1950-1960, by Aaron Forsberg. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. 332 pp. $45. Recurring Japan-U.S. trade disputes have hogged the limelight for way too long, forcing assiduous readers to master arcane terms and acronyms while feuding wonks on each side of the Pacific whack at each other with renewed vigor over the dispute of the month. In this dysfunctional relationship, as in most stormy marriages, each partner blames the other and neither is inclined to go into therapy. Outsiders can't imagine what keeps the couple together, much less speculate on what such a rancorous pair saw in each other in the first place.

CULTURE / Books

Nov 28, 2000

Thunderstruck by the Asian ascent

THUNDER FROM THE EAST: Portrait of a Rising Asia, by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000, 377 pp., $27.50. This is a mediocre potboiler of scant significance. One suspects that these Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters for The New York Times know a great deal more about Asia than they convey in these pages, but this blurry collage of vignettes, anecdotes, one-dimensional portraits, self-indulgent asides and wince-inducing comments don't make for a coherent or compelling portrait of the region.

CULTURE / Books

Nov 15, 2000

Textbooks in the service of the state

CENSORING HISTORY: Citizenship and Memory in Japan, Germany and the United States, edited by Laura Hein and Mark Selden. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2000, 301 pp., $24.95. History loomed over the recent visit of Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji like a threatening storm cloud. But other than some scattered showers, this trip was unmarred by the type of cloudbursts unleashed by the demands of President Jiang Zemin during his 1998 visit, when he called for Japan to admit to and atone for its wartime aggression. Tokyo has been pouting ever since and there were clear signs of relief among the Japanese leadership that on the latest occasion the legacies of the past were kept at bay.

CULTURE / Books

Sep 26, 2000

'New Order' was an old nightmare

INDONESIA: The Long Oppression, by Geoff Simons. London: MacMillan/ N.Y.: St. Martins, 2000, 289 pp. $35. Indonesia is just beginning the long process of coming to terms with and overcoming the consequences of three decades of dictatorship under President Suharto. His New Order regime was dominated by the military and, despite efforts to put a democratic gloss on proceedings, the government was authoritarian and frequently violent.

CULTURE / Books

Sep 15, 2000

An activist Emperor, pulling the strings

HIROHITO AND THE MAKING OF MODERN JAPAN, by Herbert P. Bix. New York: HarperCollins, 2000, 800 pp, $28 (cloth). This is a blistering and persuasive reassessment of Emperor Showa's reign, debunking the various myths that have accumulated about his allegedly powerless role in Japan's prolonged period of aggressive expansion between 1931 and 1945.

CULTURE / Books

Aug 29, 2000

End this dysfunctional relationship

LEAVING JAPAN: Observations on the Dysfunctional U.S.-Japan Relationship. By Mike Millard. M.E. Sharpe: Armonk, NY, 2000, 200 pp., $37.95. The $79-billion question is why does the United States continue to tolerate the lopsided economic relationship with Japan that led to a such a massive trade imbalance in 1999? Mike Millard, a veteran Asahi journalist, explains how the Japanese government has used the military bases it hosts in Okinawa as an effective diplomatic weapon, preventing U.S. initiatives aimed at creating a more mutually beneficial economic relationship.

CULTURE / Books

Aug 8, 2000

Japan's media watchdog is a lap dog

CLOSING THE SHOP: Information Cartels and Japan's Mass Media, by Laurie Anne Freeman. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000, 256 pp. $39.50 (cloth). This excellent book lays bare the mechanisms of the information cartels in Japan that prop up the state, insulate the elite from sustained critical oversight and rob the polity of the journalistic integrity necessary for the maintenance of democracy. It's a daunting agenda, and it is a tribute to author Laurie Anne Freeman that she carries it off and in the process makes a significant contribution to our understanding of contemporary Japan.

CULTURE / Books

Jul 25, 2000

The debate on Nanjing is now closed

DOCUMENTS ON THE RAPE OF NANKING, edited by Timothy Brook. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 1999, 301 pp., 2,616 yen. AMERICAN GODDESS AT THE RAPE OF NANKING: The Courage of Minnie Vautrin, by Hua-ling Hu. Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000, 184 pp. The adversity and upheaval of the 1990s has led some pundits, intellectuals, cartoonists and leaders to seek solace and inspiration in a nostalgic nationalism. Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori's recent comments are not really that unusual in the context of the LDP's intellectual history and ideological inclinations as elucidated in Yoshibumi Wakamiya's fine study, reviewed in these pages on March 28, "The Postwar Conservative View of Japan."

CULTURE / Books

May 30, 2000

Only atom bombs could end WWII

DOWNFALL: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire, by Richard B. Frank. New York: Random House, 1999, 484 pp., $35 (cloth). The tragic folly of the war-mongering leaders of Imperial Japan and their casual disregard for the welfare of their fellow citizens seem almost forgotten because the end of the Pacific War is controversially tied to the atomic bombs that halted the savage conflict. Richard Frank persuasively argues that this vainglorious elite deserves blame and condemnation for the suffering endured by Japanese civilians and soldiers during World War II. He is especially critical of their obdurate stance in the closing months of the war, when the outcome was a foregone conclusion.

CULTURE / Books

May 16, 2000

Asia's storm clouds haven't dispersed

ASIAN STORM: The Economic Crisis Examined, by Philippe Ries. Translated by Peter Starr. Tokyo: Tuttle, 2000, 2,800 yen. The economic typhoons that swept though Asia in 1997 capsized regional economies, sent the misery index skyrocketing, wiped out colossal amounts of wealth, swept away an aging dictator and exposed the vulnerabilities of the global financial structure. This excellent book is essential reading for anyone wishing both to understand the complex forces that generated this financial implosion and to grasp the regional consequences.

CULTURE / Books

Apr 18, 2000

Lessons of the Nanjing debate

THE NANJING MASSACRE IN HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY, edited by Joshua Fogel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000; 238 pp, $49 (cloth), $15.98 (paper). Did the Nanjing Massacre really happen? In a review of Katsuichi Honda's excellent book on this subject last year ("The Nanjing Massacre: A Japanese Journalist Confronts Japan's National Shame," The Japan Times, Aug. 18, 1999), I opened with the same question, but the ongoing vituperative debate in Japan suggests that it is still worth asking. Synapse-challenged politicians like Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara still argue that it is a complete fabrication, while a range of "revisionist" scholars admit that a massacre happened, but suggest numbers of victims far smaller than is commonly asserted by Chinese scholars (more than 300,000) and accepted at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal (more than 200,000). Asia University's Osamichi Higashinakano and Tokyo University's Nobukatsu Fujioka suggest a precise figure of 47 civilian victims, while Hata Ikuhiko, one of the few credible historians in the "minimizer" school, suggests a total figure of 40,000 deaths. There are a range of estimates in between. A number of scholars who downplay the Nanjing "incident" have formed the Society for New History Textbooks.

CULTURE / Books

Mar 28, 2000

Blindness tips the scales of history

THE POSTWAR CONSERVATIVE VIEW OF ASIA: How the Political Right has Delayed Japan's Coming to Terms with its History of Aggression in Asia, by Yoshibumi Wakamiya. Tokyo: LTCB International Library Foundation, 1999, 370 pp. 3,000 yen, This study of Japan's dilatory and grudging attempts to come to terms with, and take responsibility for, its imperial aggression throughout Asia over the past century provides some interesting insights about contemporary Japan. Wakamiya argues that the ideology of Pan Asianism developed in the late 19th century remains vibrant as a means to obscure the reality of and to justify Japan's self-serving aggression and systematic trampling of Asians' interests since the Sino-Japanese War of 1895.

CULTURE / Books

Feb 16, 2000

Will Indonesia survive Suharto?

INDONESIA BEYOND SUHARTO, edited by Donald Emmerson. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1999, 395 pp., $26.95 (paper). Can Indonesia succeed in returning the troops to the barracks? Can it afford not to? Recent rumors of an impending coup against President Abdurrahman Wahid, moves by the president against some top military officers, and suspicions of military involvement in instigating unrest in the archipelago, highlight the importance of understanding the political role of the armed forces in post-Suharto Indonesia.

CULTURE / Books

Jan 25, 2000

Women pay for Asia's successes

WOMEN IN THE NEW ASIA, by Yayori Matsui. London: Zed Books, 1999, 194 pp., $19.95 (paper). THE SEX SECTOR: The Economic and Social Bases of Prostitution in Southeast Asia, edited by Linda Lean Lim. Geneva: International Labor Office, 1998, 232 pp., SFR35. Yayori Matsui, author of "Women in the New Asia," worked as a journalist for the Asahi Shimbun for 30 years and now directs the Asia-Japan Women's Resource Center in Tokyo. She is a passionate advocate for women's rights and is very critical about Japan's negligent, arrogant and destructive behavior toward other Asians. At times the strident voice of righteousness backfires and complex issues are reduced to a simplistic black-and-white interpretation, but this is a powerful book with a message about important issues involving the matrix of development, globalization and women that deserves a wide readership.

CULTURE / Books

Dec 30, 1999

Japanese politics, a model democracy

JAPANESE DEMOCRACY: Power, Coordination and Performance, by Bradley Richardson. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. 325 pp.. $17. Do the revisionists have any clothes? Bradley Richardson argues that the interpretations of Japan popularized by the revisionist school do not bear scrutiny and that the political economy of Japan is far more complex than is asserted by authors such as Chalmers Johnson, Karel Van Wolferen, Clyde Prestowitz and James Fallows. He also defends Japanese democracy, suggesting that it is far more robust and pluralistic than prevailing media images would suggest.

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 6, 1999

Back to the brink in Indonesia

"What we have now in Indonesia is the same old New Order without Suharto. Nothing is really changing."

CULTURE / Books

Aug 18, 1999

Yes, there was a Nanjing Massacre

Did the 1937 Nanjing Massacre really happen? This might seem like an absurd question, but then the recently elected governor of Tokyo is on record as having denied that the looting, rape and assembly-line murder reported by eyewitnesses ever took place. The Dr. Feelgoods of Japanese history, Yoshinori Kobayashi and Nobukatsu Fujioka, have penned best-selling books that seek to deny, mitigate, rationalize and minimize the atrocities committed by the Imperial Army during Japan's 15-year rampage in Asia.

CULTURE / Books

Jul 6, 1999

Glimpses of Indonesia after Suharto

THE POLITICS OF POST-SUHARTO INDONESIA, edited by Adam Schwarz and Jonathan Paris. New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1999, 120 pp.. $17.95 MILITARY DOCTRINES AND DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION: A Comparative Perspective on Indonesia's Dual Function and Latin American National Security Doctrines, by Jun Honna. Discussion Paper Series #22, Regime Change and Regime Maintenance in Asia and the Pacific. Canberra: Australia National University, 1999, 62 pp. "The Politics of Post-Suharto Indonesia" is a timely and useful collection of essays on Indonesia that will help readers better understand the implications of the recent elections and the extraordinary challenges facing Indonesians as they try to recover from the economic tsunami unleashed in Bangkok in July 1997. These five essays, four by U.S. specialists on Indonesia and one by a prominent Japanese Indonesia hand, survey the generally unfamiliar terrain of Indonesia's political economy. They succeed in presenting a succinct and accessible analysis.

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