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Open research questions in Japanese History and Culture

85 unresolved questions extracted from the limitations and future-work sections of 6,702 Japanese History and Culture papers in our library. Each links back to the study that raised it.

What the literature leaves open

  • The paper demonstrates that postwar American-style certification and licensing systems in Japan persist alongside traditional master-disciple relationships and collective responsibility structures in medical schools, but does not empirically investigate how these dual institutional logics currently coexist or conflict in contemporary Japanese medical education practice and curriculum design.

    The history of Nagasaki, the Japanese birthplace of Western medicine and its education · 2026 · DOI

  • The paper traces how Japanese medical education maintained epistemic sovereignty while adopting Western forms, but does not systematically compare this historical pattern with other non-Western societies' reception and negotiation of Western medical education during the same period (19th-early 20th century). A comparative historical analysis examining medical education transfer in other Asian or non-Western contexts would validate whether Japan's syncretic approach was distinctive or part of a broader global pattern.

    The history of Nagasaki, the Japanese birthplace of Western medicine and its education · 2026 · DOI

  • The paper proposes that Bushido—a Japanese ethical framework emphasizing non-self-indulgence and service to society—may have functioned as a cultural bridge for medical students to adopt Western physician professionalism, but this connection remains speculative. Concrete textual analysis of autobiographies by Pompe's students (Matsumoto & Nagayo) is needed to determine whether and how explicitly Japanese medical trainees drew on Bushido or other indigenous ethical concepts when engaging with Western medicine.

    The history of Nagasaki, the Japanese birthplace of Western medicine and its education · 2026 · DOI

  • The paper relies primarily on Pompe's writings as primary sources, which represent only an outsider's perspective on Western medical education transfer to Japan. An in-depth examination of Japanese archival sources documenting how Japanese medical students and physicians (particularly Matsumoto Ryōjun and Nagayo Sensai) actually interpreted and adapted Western medical knowledge and techniques is needed to balance the epistemological perspective.

    The history of Nagasaki, the Japanese birthplace of Western medicine and its education · 2026 · DOI

  • I conclude that the study of disability in Japan and other parts of the world must include the study of successes and failures of activism for accessibility in differing cultural contexts, and that further research on Japan is needed to continue improving the inclusivity of our increasingly global society.

    A Recent History of Activism for Accessibility in Japan (1981–2006) · 2024 · DOI

  • Highlighting the previously understudied interaction between popular media and its impact on the professionalization of biomedical research in modern Japan, this paper reveals the active and multiple roles that popular media plays in determining legitimate research topics and appropriate conduct for biomedical researchers.

    “Traitors to Their Profession”: Popular Media and the Repudiation of Sakaki Yasusaburō’s Rejuvenation Study in the 1920s · 2024 · DOI

  • By reframing Agent-Structure dynamics, by which actors and social structures reproduce one another, into Watsuji Tetsurō's idea of aidagara ("inter-relationships") consisting of the Agent-Structure relationship being mutually constitutive with space within which the relationship is situated, this article fills a gap in the literature by bringing space back into discussions on international political dynamics.

    Re-reading The Indo-Pacific as <i>Aidagara</i> : Watsuji Tetsurō’s Relevance to Japan’s Foreign Relations · 2024 · DOI

  • Over 10 percent of all Koreans forcefully mobilized throughout the empire are estimated to have died or disappeared, but the precise number of Korean forced laborers’ deaths inside Japan remains unknown.

    Japan’s Forgotten Korean Forced Laborers: The Search for Hidden Wartime Graves in Hokkaido · 2024 · DOI

  • This transnational story of wartime Nisei formed a grossly understudied aspect of American (im)migration and ethnic history—one that seldom views native-born US citizens as immigrants or an ethnic group in a foreign land.

    Toward a Transnational History of Wartime Japanese Americans: Nisei and Imperial Japan's Race Propaganda · 2023 · DOI

  • The modernization prints in the Náprstek Museum have not yet been evaluated by scholars; the aim of this article is to provide information concerning this part of the woodblock print collection – the artists of the prints, the subjects depicted, and the question of the donors through whose agency the prints came into the museum’s possession.

    Japanese Modernization Prints Collection (Yokohama-e and Kaika-e) in the Náprstek Museum · 2022 · DOI

  • Using the Japanese case, the study elucidates the ways in which the particular policy context of the Anglo-American countries, where datafication has been extensively studied, sets certain limits on the existing discussion and leaves underexplored certain questions that might be more relevant to countries and regions beyond Anglo-American education policy contexts.

    Datafication of schooling in Japan: an epistemic critique through the ‘problem of Japanese education’ · 2018 · DOI

  • The change that started in this period (the “strategic inflection point,” according to Schaede) is likely to continue as the repositioning is (as of 2010) still limited to a subset of Japanese corporations.

    Japan’s “Lost Decade”: Causes, Legacies and Issues of Transformative Change ed. by W. Miles Fletcher III and Peter W. von Staden (review) · 2015 · DOI

  • This article tries to answer two questions: Why has Japanese sociology been so little known in the world? How do we internationalize Japanese sociology? The first point which this article raises is that Japan and Japanese sociology tend to presuppose two dichotomies: premodern–modern and particularism–universalism.

    Internationalization of Japanese sociology · 2014 · DOI

  • Actor network theory, I argue, is insufficiently sensitive to these lurking irrationalities that haunt postcolonial technonational developmentalism, and if scholars want to understand the history and sociology of these projects, they have to take these fears and their politics mobilization seriously.

    Cultures of Fear: Technonationalism and the Postcolonial Responsibilities of STS · 2012 · DOI

  • Little is known about the impact of Western educational ideals in Japan during the Meiji (1868–1912), Taisho (1912–1926) and Showa (post‐1926) eras, although, in reality, there was considerable interest among Japanese educators in Western thought and practice and there were numerous attempts to disseminate these ideas widely.

    The impact of Western progressive educational ideas in Japan: 1868–1940 · 2010 · DOI

  • To the question, “does our management style matter”, this paper has answered “Yes”, not because this is not economically or rationally efficient, but because it has been confined to it and has not been examined in the light of the JOY criterion including efficiency.

    Gakumon-Ryoku and japanese style of management- does our management style matter? · 2010

  • While From Space to Environment is commonly mentioned as a benchmark in the history of post-1945 Japanese art, its actual contents and impact have rarely been examined.

    From Space to Environment: The Origins of<i>Kankyō</i>and the Emergence of Intermedia Art in Japan · 2008 · DOI

  • Our interpretation of the processes by which Japanese and Anglo-Saxon practices are situated suggests that KM is limited by the separation of knowledge from power and information from meaning.

    Power, Rules of the Game and the Limits to Knowledge Management: Lessons from Japan and Anglo-Saxon Alarms · 2003 · DOI

  • (2) The identities of the full-time housewife and the white-collar husband working at a large company remain compelling and widely held symbols of middle-class success, even though postwar institutions have insured that access to these identities is limited to a minority of Japanese (Kelly 1993:203).

    Volunteering as a Lifestyle Choice: Negotiating Self-Identities in Japan · 2000 · DOI

  • Power analysis gives some answers for Japan's increasing assertiveness since 1986, but does not account for Japan's decreasing interest in tangible economic gains.

    Japan and the Asian Development Bank · 1995 · DOI

  • The authors conclude that for all its strengths, the team system requires the sacrifice of individual interests to the good of the group, and that no matter how hard an individual tries to become part of the Mazda team, advancement for both managers and workers will be limited by the fact that they are not Japanese.

    Working for the Japanese: Inside Mazda's American Auto Plant. · 1991 · DOI

  • Although from the sociological point of view there were scarcely proper studies on urban phenomena in pre-wartime, we must remember that Fukutaro Okui's “Essays on Contemporary Metropolitan Cities” was published in 1940 and this work was first intensive sociological study of urban society and of urban way of life.

    Urban Studies in Pre-wartime · 1977 · DOI

  • Population data from scattered Tokugawa villages indicate a relatively low birth rate, a death rate which varied widely at times but which tended to fluctuate around the birth rate, and a life expectancy similar to that in western Europe prior to 1850 and not unlike that in Japan in the early twentieth century.

    Fertility, Mortality, and Life Expectancy in Pre-modern Japan · 1974 · DOI

  • industrial interest longer-term of and the number such a perspective relations than the let job of meeting so as to be-of vital a wider and employment unfortunately countenancing all too few. Industrial strategies less naive one: avoiding a row get on with the “real” for (And. or should attempting of policies relations.

    British factory-Japanese factory · 1974 · DOI

  • _ The party and its leader Chiang were sheer fact of their limited by the inexperience, projected an increasingly militaristic image and lost sympathy with the more radical nationaist opinion. There was a basic lack of agreement among the leaders about the use of political terms and in understanding and interpretation of political concepts.

    The Kuomintang · 1974 · DOI

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85 open questions have been extracted from the limitations and future-work passages of 6,702 Japanese History and Culture papers in our library. Each one below links back to the study that raised it, so you can read the original claim in context.

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