Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Japanese critic'
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Matsumura, Misako. "Abe Tomoji, Japanese modernist novelist as social critic and humanist, the early years (1925-1936) /." Connect to resource, 1998. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=osu1176215501.
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Bell, Annika. "The Comic Artist as a Post-war Popular Critic of Japanese Imperialism : An Analysis of Nakazawa Keiji’s Hadashi no Gen." Thesis, Stockholms universitet, Avdelningen för japanska, 2015. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-121925.
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Ueda, Kōzō. "Macroeconomic models of the Japanese crisis." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2006. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:94b10e1e-26d2-44a4-8182-6b26b06f59be.
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Japan has experienced a prolonged stagnation since bursting the asset market bubble early in the 1990's. It is very important to understand the underlying problems in order to find a remedy to escape this stagnation. This thesis aims to theoretically analyse the current Japanese economy, especially from the viewpoint of multiple equilibria. According to this view, the same fundamentals can yield a multiple outcome depending on history or expectations. This thesis argues that Japan's situation can be regarded as a bad equilibrium which has been provoked by wide-spread pessimism and a bubble collapse. Three chapters independently attempt to construct theoretical models describing the current Japanese situation. Chapter 2 demonstrates that demand externalities yield multiple equilibria. In a bad equilibrium, firms dare not participate in trade, which causes aggregate demand and welfare to decrease. A global games approach then illustrates how equilibrium is selected. Chapter 3, with the objective of seeing if Japan's depression was provoked by the misconduct of monetary policy, investigates the relation between indeterminacy and a monetary policy rule using a sticky price and firm-specific investment model. The standard Taylor principle is shown to be almost sufficient to eliminate indeterminacy, which suggests that the Bank of Japan did not exacerbate the economy while interest rate rules functioned, that is, until 1999. Chapter 4 focuses on a zero nominal interest rate bound, which has been observed since 1999. The ineffectiveness of the monetary policy yields a bad short-run outcome where real economic activity and asset prices become lower. There are long-run multiple equilibria in this story, and that is our explanation for the problem. Within this model, however, our .analysis does not justify a claim that a zero bound for the interest rate causes a long-run equilibrium to be a bad one.
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Jaques, Thomas Matthew. "Translating the Nakazuri : translation of eighteen contemporary Japanese short stories and critical essay /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/6687.
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Poncelet, Eric Claude 1962. "The Japanese family/firm analogy: A critical analysis." Thesis, The University of Arizona, 1991. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/291719.
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The Japanese family/firm analogy has been utilized in the past by anthropological and business scholars for the purposes of better understanding the traditional Japanese family household (the ie) and the modern-day firm. The purpose of this study is to determine the appropriateness and utility of this analogy. To accomplish this, the study reconstructs the analogy by describing the models and theories upon which it is based and then examines it from a critical viewpoint. The conclusions are mixed. The study finds that the family/firm analogy is applicable, but only within the narrow limits defined by the specific ie and modern firm models. The analogy suffers further from its misrepresentation of Japanese families and firms, internal contradictions, and a disregard for social, economic, and political contexts. What is ultimately lost through the use of the analogy is the great complexity and diversity of Japanese society.
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Wilson, Sandra. "Popular Japanese responses to the Manchurian crisis, 1931-33." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1989. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.385744.
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Sato, Yasunobu. "Commercial dispute processing : the Japanese experience and future." Thesis, University of London, 2000. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.313405.
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White, Saira Sultana. "Banking Crisis in Japan: Prediction of Non-Performing Loans." Thesis, Virginia Tech, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/43758.
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Japan is currently suffering its third economic downturn of the past decade. While Japan suffers from a variety of structural problems, the most acute is the crushing burden carried by the banks. They still suffer under the weight of thousands of billions of yen of bad loans resulting from the collapse in asset prices a decade ago. Japan's still unsolved banking crisis constitutes a threat to a large component of the global financial system.Some economists believe that these events were avoidable. Better underwriting by Japanese banks and more prudent monetary policies by the Central Bank of Japan could have prevented the subsequent downturn and losses. It may be impossible to prove that sound policies could have avoided the persistent crisis altogether, but it seems unarguable that better professional underwriting by Japanese banks and more prudent monetary policies by the Central Bank could have mitigated the severity of the economic downturns and reduced huge losses.
The model I have constructed analyzes whether the events leading Japan into financial crisis could have been anticipated. The model is a simple multivariate econometric equation estimated monthly data between 1980 and 1990. This model appears to explain much of the variation in non-performing loans during this period. The model simulated during the period 1990 to 2001 indicates that the non-performing loans could have been anticipated.
This model or one like it could have given bank regulators basic tools to anticipate the incidence of non-performing loans during the 1990s. Had regulators done so, it might have been possible for them to take those remedial actions that would have limited the subsequent numbers of poorly underwritten loans during the 1990s.
Master of Arts
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Yoshida, Hisayo. "A Cross Cultural Analysis of Japanese Art Critical Writings and American Art Critical Writings." The Ohio State University, 1998. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1408539349.
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Sato, Fumiaki. "A critical study of housing and sustainability : a Japanese exemplar." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/27343.
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This thesis investigates the relationship between housing and sustainability within a critical framework. It seeks to identify a possible new direction for Japanese house design, derived from an revised version of Patrick Geddes' theory and prioritising the reintroduction of a sense of continuity and gradual evolution. The argument starts from the presupposition that the issues surrounding architectural practice are intimately linked to global environmental concerns. Successful architecture depends on the interrelation of two factors, art (aesthetic criteria) and science (environmental awareness). In order to establish an approach towards sustainable development in housing the relationship between the two will be explored. One approach towards developing a new sustainable architecture will be derived from the idea of reintroducing a greater degree of continuity. Contemporary society broke with traditional society when mythology (narrative knowledge) was replaced by reason (scientific knowledge) as society's organising principle. The distortion and unsustainability of the post-Enlightenment project led to the immobilisation of traditional narrative knowledge, particularly with regards to what it has to offer in relation to enhancing the quality of life, outside the domain of empirically-quantifiable material criteria. Geddes' vision is based on the accumulation of individual syntheses, which help to generate the equilibrium between human and ecological activities at regional level, seen as the ultimate goal. This vision is set out in his diagram, "the Notation of Life", in which he proposed four stages of development - "Acts", "Facts", "Dreams" and "Deeds". Through the "Notation of Life" regional factors and the collective consciousness of citizens are brought together to work towards the establishment of new settlements. The investigation into sustainability in Japan will follow these four stages of the Notation of Life. It compares two administrative regions of Japan, Tokyo and Hokkaido, whose social and environmental conditions are both very different. It will look at their respective situations in relation to the policy of scrap and build and to the use of imported wood and will attempt to assess how any differences can be related to different regional characteristics and lifestyles. In the conclusion, the two case studies will be brought together in order to develop a model for generating consensus between different groups of people in the house design process. The conflict between economics and ecology (both forms of scientific knowledge) will be resolved through the intervention of narrative knowledge. The alternative model for the design process will be characterised by the drawing together of art and science, representing a return to traditional notions of architecture. As a fusion of art and technology, the new architecture will have a part to play in building a new social consensus, crucial in order to re-establish a sense of continuity between personal experience and global environmental issues.
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Lambertson, Kristen. "Mariko Mori and Takashi Murakami and the crisis of Japanese identity." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/1244.
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In the mid-1990s, Japanese artists Mariko Mori (b. 1962) and Takashi Murakami (b. 1967) began creating works that referenced Japanese popular culture tropes such as sexuality, technology and the idea of kawaii, or cute. These tropes were associated with emerging youth cultures instigating a “soft rebellion” against social conventions. While emancipated female youths, or shōjo, were criticized for lifestyles based on the consumption of kawaii goods, their male contemporaries, the otaku were demonized for a fetishization of kawaii girls and technology through anime and manga, or animation and comic books. Destabilizing the nation’s patriarchal theory of cultural uniqueness, or nihonjinron, the youth triggered fears of a growing infantilized, feminized automaton ‘alien’ society during Japan’s economically tumultuous 1990s.
In response to these trends, Mori and Murakami create works and personae that celebrate Japan’s emerging heterogeneity and reveal that Japan’s fear of the ‘alien within’ is a result of a tenuous post-war Japanese-American relationship. But in denoting America’s position in Japan’s psyche, Mori’s and Murakami’s illustration of Japan as both victim and threat encourages Orientalist and Techno-Orientalist readings. The artists’ ambivalence towards Western stereotypes in their works and personae, as well as their distortion of boundaries between commercial and fine art, intimate a collusion between commercialization, art and cultural identity. Such acts suggest that in the global economy of art production, Japanese cultural identity has become as much as a brand, as art a commodity.
In this ambivalent perspective, the artists isolate the relatively recent difficulty of enunciating Japanese cultural identity in the international framework. With the downfall of its cultural homogeneity theory, Japan faced a crisis of representation. Self-Orientalization emerged as a cultural imperative for stabilizing a coherent national identity, transposing blame for Japan’s social and economic disrepair onto America. But by relocating Japanese self-Orientalization within the global art market, Mori and Murakami suggest that as non-Western artists, economic viability is based upon their ability to cultivate desirability, not necessarily authenticity. In the international realm, national identity has become a brand based upon the economies of desire, predicated by external consumption, rather than an internalized production of meaning.
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Takagi, Akiko. "A critical analysis of English language entrance examinations at Japanese universities." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10036/117893.
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This study investigates the influence of university entrance exams on the perceptions and attitudes that Japanese students and teachers have towards English-language exams. It is a qualitative study conducted within the framework of a critical paradigm and specifically refers to the theory of critical language testing proposed by Shohamy (2001). The study was conducted within this framework to highlight the current problems of university entrance exams and emphasize the need for change. It also challenges the positivist view which is dominant in Japanese language testing research and expands the research area within the Japanese context. The aim of the study was to empower both students and high school teachers who, as the highest stakeholders, are in a weak position and give them an opportunity to express their opinions and feelings through an open-ended questionnaire and interview. The study also intended to raise their awareness about their rights as test-takers to question the misuse of tests and encourage them to develop a critical view about the exam system. The results demonstrated that university entrance examination has a negative impact on both language learning for students and high school teaching for teachers. The students experience a psychological burden while preparing for and taking the exam. Likewise, teachers feel pressured by various stakeholders including students, parents, and administrators. In addition, both students and teachers realize that entrance exams have an important influence on the life and future of a student and that they cannot be avoided in an exam-driven society. The dissertation concludes with practical implications for both test-takers and testers to improve the current entrance examination system, in order to elicit positive feedback and better outcomes, as well as recommendations for further research.
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Mack, Lindsay. "Importing the writing center to a Japanese college : a critical investigation." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10871/15361.
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The purpose of this study is to enrich understandings of the major issues encountered when tutoring writing with beginner-intermediate level Japanese EFL students in a Japanese university. Specifically, the thesis examines how students and tutors perceive the challenges experienced in EFL tutoring and the various roles tutors adopt during EFL writing tutoring sessions with Japanese beginner-intermediate students. A mixed method approach is employed utilizing different methods that combine qualitative and quantitative data. Four data collection methods were utilized: pre and post-semester interviews with writing tutors: student questionnaires from a sample size of 24: 30 tutorial observations: and two tutor training workshops (quasi-focus group). Symbolic interactionism (SI) provided a framework for analyzing tutors‟ roles and their practices during EFL writing tutorials. This view assumes that roles emerge from, and are significantly shaped by, interactions in specific social settings. It was found that writing tutors adopt the following roles: proofreader, translator, coach, teacher, mediator, and timekeeper based on their interaction with the individual student. Each role was adopted as a reaction to a challenge but also created new problems. Many of the roles the tutors adopted in this study parallel the research on roles tutors adopt in the ESL writing center, however in EFL tutoring these roles are magnified. For example, in this study tutors play both the role of teacher and mediator to a much larger degree. The translator role however is unique to EFL tutoring. The roles put forth encompass a different way for tutors to think about effective tutoring in an EFL setting with beginner-intermediate students. This study contributes a deeper understanding as to how administrators and writing tutors can better conduct writing center tutorials with EFL students.
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真梨, 永冨, and Mari Nagatomi. "Tokyo rodeo : transnational country music and the crisis of Japanese masculinities." Thesis, https://doors.doshisha.ac.jp/opac/opac_link/bibid/BB13100462/?lang=0, 2019. https://doors.doshisha.ac.jp/opac/opac_link/bibid/BB13100462/?lang=0.
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本論文は、日本人男性とカントリー音楽を事例とした、日本人のアメリカ文化との遭遇に関する研究である。本論文では、なぜ日本人男性がアメリカのカントリー音楽とそのシンボルであるカウボーイを消費したかについて考察する。日本人男性は、これらの「典型的」とも言われるアメリカのシンボルを通して、日本の国家建設や、方向性に必要不可欠な、日本人男性性について議論していたと主張する。This dissertation is a case study about the Japanese encounter with American culture by dealing with Japanese men and American country music. I investigate why Japanese men consumed American country music and cowboy images that served as the music's main symbol. Those Japanese men's encounter with American country music shows us that Japanese men received this music from the US in multifaceted ways, rather than simply as a way to understand US-Japan relations. I argue that these Japanese men used American country music and cowboy images to debate about Japanese masculinity, which was intrinsic to Japanese nation-building, aims and identities.
博士(アメリカ研究)
Doctor of Philosophy in American Studies
同志社大学
Doshisha University
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Kim, Se Young. "Crisis in neoliberal Asia: violence in contemporary Korean and Japanese cinema." Diss., University of Iowa, 2016. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/3116.
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This dissertation performs close readings of a body of well-known East Asian films. The Japanese films discussed include Kitano Takeshi's Hana-bi (1997) and Fukasaku Kinji's Battle Royale (2000). From Korea, the dissertation focuses on Peppermint Candy (1999, Lee Chang-dong), The Coast Guard (2002, Kim Ki-duk), The Chaser (2008, Na Hong-jin), and four films by Park Chan-wook: Joint Security Area (1999), Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002), Oldboy (2003), and Lady Vengeance (2005). Through an analysis of these films, this dissertation argues that the narrative cinema of South Korea and Japan, produced between 1997 and 2008, uses the representation of violence to foreground and critique the ideology of capitalism.
Both South Korea and Japan see substantial economic growth, collapse, and rebuilding in the twentieth century. From 1986 to 1991, Japan experienced an asset price bubble, but its collapse in 1991 led to the period known as Japan's “Lost Decade” which marked the end of the nation's post-war economic miracle. A comparable trajectory occurs in South Korea. Following significant development in the 80s and 90s, the Asian Financial Crisis brings South Korea to a halt in 1997. In what came to be locally known as the “IMF Crisis,” South Korea had to rely on a $21 billion bailout loan from the International Monetary Fund. Just as Japan's economic collapse almost immediately preceded Korea's, both countries attempt to work through the trauma of the Lost Decade and the IMF Crisis in their national cinemas.
Mirroring what audiences in East Asia were experiencing, the characters in these films endure instances of violent displacement. In response to their disenfranchisement, the protagonists of films such as Hana-bi and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance brutally lash out. But unlike in the majority of narrative cinema, the characters' violent actions do not lead to resolution. Instead, violence only creates a recursive loop where systemic inequity persists. As a result, the brutal cinema of Korea and Japan pushes the representation of violence to its limit point and reveals the tacit goal-oriented logic where it is repeatedly used as a justified means to legitimate ends. By illustrating and problematizing this idea, these films uncover how this ideology of violence is a central tenet to the larger structure that actually produced the source of alienation: neoliberal capitalism.
This dissertation thus demonstrates two points. First is the way in which economic trauma in Japan resonates in Korea, a process that carries over into their respective cinemas. Second is how these films assert that the representation of violence does not merely concern issues of film and media, but rather shares a deeper connection with the dominant ideology within globalization. As the films demonstrate, capitalism ultimately benefits the capitalist, a dynamic that can only occur at the expense of the laborer. These films thus articulate the inherent violence in this worldview that disregards the wellbeing of the Other. At the same time, the films also contend that it is that single-minded impetus towards profit that fueled the economic collapse, an almost inevitable result of the region's furious adaptation of industrial capitalism in a process referred to as ‘compressed modernity.’ Less interested in the enormous prosperity resulting from modernization in the region, the films confront and lament the often neglected but equally exorbitant costs. The violent cinema of South Korea and Japan thus insists that the financial crises of the late twentieth century, the persistence of economic inequality, the cinematic representation of violence, as well as the growth of its own industries, constitute a knot that can only be understood in its totality.
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Takizawa, Hiromi. "The Yagyu Plot : a translation with critical/contextual introduction and commentary." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2001. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.364429.
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Erzen-Toyoshima, Mary. "An exploration of cultural differences in Japanese/American intercultural marriages." PDXScholar, 1986. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/3595.
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Shindo, Yuko, Kei Tomimura, Kazumine Kondo, and Nobuyoshi Yamori. "Japanese Banking Regulations under a Series of Financial Crises Since the 1990s." 名古屋大学大学院経済学研究科附属国際経済政策研究センター, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/2237/16947.
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Shibata, Chihaya C. "Honorific predication in early middle Japanese : a critical survey with examples from the Ookagami /." Connect to this title online, 1997. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=osu1116609758.
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Nakagawa, Y. (Yu). "A phenomenograpihacal study of the role of critical thinking in Japanese primary education." Master's thesis, University of Oulu, 2016. http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:oulu-201606042352.
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Nowadays, critical thinking is globally conceived as one of the most important skills. A good example of this is that critical thinking is included as one of the twenty firs century skills and the foundation for key competencies which is determined by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as a critical stance. In spite of this fact, the conception of critical thinking is not common in Japan and its study is work in progress. In this thesis, thus, I have attempted to find out the role of critical thinking in primary education in Japan. The main focus of this research is on Japanese primary school teachers since they are the most significant elements for children’s learning in schools. It is assumed that the role of critical thinking can be studied through analysing the teachers’ experiences. The theoretical framework consists of several theorists starting with John Dewey.
In this thesis firstly, the current situation of the Japanese education system is discussed in terms of critical thinking. This consists of the basic Japanese education system and working culture of Japanese teachers in primary school. Secondly, the definitions of critical thinking by several prominent scholars were explored so as to understand the conceptions of critical thinking. Yet, the single definition of critical thinking cannot be determined, however, the common characteristics of critical thinking can be found in these definitions. After that, the methodology of research was discussed. Phenomenography was the main approach of this research and the means of data analysis was conducted by thematic content analysis. The participants of this research were five Japanese primary school teachers, three women and two men, ranging from a novice teacher to those who have more than thirty years’ experience. The data was collected through semi-structured individual interviews which lasted approximately thirty minutes each.
Although almost all teachers did not know the concept of critical thinking, they attempted to conceptualise it by their experiences through the interviews. Their conceptualisations are quite similar to Dewey’s concept of reflective thinking and they discussed the concept of critical thinking in terms of nurturing children as future citizens who will make decisions, develop the society, and live in social and cultural diversity. Simultaneously, the teachers feel difficult to apply critical thinking and express differences in Japanese society which is quite collective and homogenous. Furthermore, there are only few opportunities to learn critical thinking during teacher training even though this concept is gradually emerging in formal training, as one of the teachers indicated in the interview.
Despite the low number of participants (5), this research came up with certain findings which can be considered highly relevant. Another challenge of this research was the language; the interviews were conducted in Japanese after which the transcripts were translated into English. Hence it is possible that some nuance in detail was lost which is why the translation process was revised several times comparing carefully the Japanese and English transcripts.
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Bašlajeva, Taťjana. "Japonská hospodářská krize v 90. letech minulého století a její odkaz dnešku." Master's thesis, Vysoká škola ekonomická v Praze, 2011. http://www.nusl.cz/ntk/nusl-81937.
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This thesis analyzes the Japanese economic crisis that broke out in the country in the 90th the 20th century after the fall of the mortgage bubble and compares it with the latest economic crisis that began in the fall of the U.S. real estate bubble. The work explores the roots of the Japanese crisis in the 80th years after the actual course of the 90th years. It focuses on the financial crisis of 1997-1998 in detail and its consequences and implications for Japan. Further work briefly addresses new economic crisis, its course in the United States and spread to the world. Furthermore, analyzing the causes and reasons, looking for possible solutions and compares with the Japanese crisis.
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Gilbert, Joan Elizabeth. "Classroom Approaches and Japanese College Students' Intercultural Competence." ScholarWorks, 2017. https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/4442.
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Preparing college students to be contributing members of local and global societies requires educators to analyze the capabilities and needs of their students and to adjust instructional content and practice. The purpose of this mixed-methods study was twofold: (a) to explore how classroom approaches designed to facilitate students' questioning of assumptions and beliefs regarding different cultural beliefs, social structures, and practices might influence Japanese college students' self-reported development of intercultural competence, and (b) to investigate whether or not the students developed their potential for intercultural competence. Mezirow's transformative learning theory informed this study. Archival qualitative data were from 137 Japanese undergraduate students' journals from a course with approaches designed to facilitate questioning their assumptions and beliefs. Multilevel coding was used to support thematic analysis. Archival quantitative data of students' pretest and posttest scores on the Intercultural Adaptation Potential Scale (ICAPS) were too few for meaningful analysis. Limited trend interpretations of the quantitative data helped support the qualitative data findings. Key findings included students identifying the importance of opportunities to discuss conflicting cultural beliefs, social structures, and practices; several questioned their assumptions and enhanced their intercultural competence. Expanded research into the challenge of enhancing cultural competence is needed. Positive social change is possible when intercultural competence and understanding the importance of dealing with cultural conflicts in an informed manner are enhanced. Students who expand their comfort levels and understandings will gain membership into multiple societies, reflect critically on their worldviews, and be able to take positive actions during conflicts.
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Sanders, Vicky Louise. "Evolution of the Japanese forestry crisis (1945-2004) and the search for a future /." Title page, table of contents and introduction only, 2004. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09ARAS/09arass2151.pdf.
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Coates, Jennifer. "National crisis and the female image : expressions of trauma in Japanese film, 1945-64." Thesis, SOAS, University of London, 2014. http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/20301/.
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Inspired by recurring themes in the representation of the female body during the early postwar period of Japanese film production, this thesis investigates the affective impact of the female image during national crisis. Following scholars such as Miriam Hansen, Isolde Standish and Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano, who posit film as a reflexive medium which expresses and mediates popular anxieties, I suggest that the popularity of certain reoccurring female images on film can be understood in terms of their expressive and cathartic affect during the Allied occupation of Japan (1945-1952) and its aftermath. My art-historically informed iconographic analysis of popular film texts is contextualised by contemporary criticism and viewer responses published in major commercial film journals of the period, with reference to Japan's socio-political climate during the first decades of the postwar era. This study addresses the affect of film on the viewer as a means to understand the popularity of repetitive imagery. I suggest that recurrent trends within the presentation of the female image are coded to reflect viewer concerns and allay popular fears. In focusing on reoccurring themes in the female image on film, I engage with extant scholarship which identifies popular tropes in the representation of women in Japanese cinema, but which has yet to fully interrogate their impact or the reasons for their popularity, which engenders their repetition. The interdisciplinary approach of this thesis contributes to methodological questions within film studies as a discipline, while my use of affect theory is a new theoretical approach to postwar Japanese film. Analysis of the impact of affective imagery addresses concerns expressed in scholarship and in popular media throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first as to the impact of film imagery on the viewer.
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KINOSHITA, TORU. "HONNIN : A Critical Application of Katada' (1999) LF Representation of Anaphors to Another Japanese Reflexive." 名古屋大学大学院国際言語文化研究科, 2000. http://hdl.handle.net/2237/8025.
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Fraser, Nicholas A. R. "Constitutional oligarchy : the complex unity of the imperial Japanese state in the face of crisis." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/15878.
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Under the Meiji Constitution, a political system designed to create an institutional framework that allowed for the sustained oligarchic rule of the Meiji Genrō, Japan experienced multiple crises generated by popular upheaval against the government during the interwar years. One was an economic crisis in 1918 triggered by Japan’s participation in the First World War which generated an unprecedented level of popular protests in the form of nation-wide riots and some strikes. Known as the Rice Riots, this crisis threatened to unleash a confrontation of the Meiji Genrō by political parties holding seats in the Diet who sought to establish party-led cabinets. A second crisis occurred in 1936 when 1400 soldiers of the Imperial Army stationed in Tokyo occupied government buildings and assassinated several high-ranking government officials in an attempt to set up a an all-military cabinet. While both party-politicians and military officers had further expanded their influence over the policy-process after these crises neither set of actors suspended, revised or replaced the Meiji Constitutional system. It is the purpose of this thesis to explore the reason why the Imperial Japanese polity was not structurally altered as a result of power change that accompanied the Rice Riots and the 1936 Incident. This essay makes two arguments about the Meiji Constitutional system’s sustainability during the prewar years. First, it argues that the Meiji Constitutional system due to institutional design and elite political culture functioned in practice as an oligarchic state. Second, it argues that the reason the Meiji Constitution was never revised, suspended or discarded during the course of regime change was because political parties and high ranking military officers ended up using the same strategies as the Meiji Genrō to successfully maneuver the institutional structure of the policy-process. Hence, in the process of learning how to master the institutional dynamics of the political system, they eventually overcame legislative deadlock and in the process stabilized the oligarchic state without having to reform it in order to expand their power within it.
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LaBauve, Jeffrey W. "China and Japan's strategic nuclear relationship." Thesis, Monterey, California : Naval Postgraduate School, 2009. http://edocs.nps.edu/npspubs/scholarly/theses/2009/Sep/09Sep%5FLaBauve.pdf.
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Thesis (M.A. in Security Studies (Far East, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific))--Naval Postgraduate School, September 2009.Thesis Advisor(s): Twomey, Christopher P. "September 2009." Description based on title screen as viewed on 5 November 2009. Author(s) subject terms: Deterrence, Japan, China, Nuclear Missile Defense. Includes bibliographical references (p. 57-66). Also available in print.
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Yoneda, Fusako. "The Sociocultural Contexts of Being/Becoming Japanese within a Japanese Supplementary Culture/Language School: A Practitioner Researcher’s Un/Learning of Culture and Teaching." The Ohio State University, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1245416649.
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Armitage, Nicole. "From crisis to Kyoto and beyond : The evolution of environmental concerns in Japanese official development assistance." 名古屋大学大学院国際開発研究科, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/2237/14061.
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Liu, Chang. "Critical Discourse Analysis of the Constructions of China Daily in Terms of Sino-Japanese Communication Issues." Thesis, Högskolan för lärande och kommunikation, Högskolan i Jönköping, HLK, Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap, 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hj:diva-40769.
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The Sino-Japanese relationship occupies the top diplomatic priority in modern history for the Chinese government. The bilateral communication, including the communication of political issues between China and Japan has always been the focus of the Chinese media. China Daily, the largest English language publication plays a particularly important role in establishing national identity as one of the most important websites which clearly expresses and propagates the national agenda. Since media representations and discourse can shape ideology, on the basis of reviewing the previous researches and theories of media representations and critical discourse analysis, this research examines how China Daily constructs discourse regarding Sino-Japanese communication issues on its website. The research methods of this study are quantitative method and critical discourse analysis (CDA). The linguistic study in media discourse is generally concerned with the reproduction of ideology in language use, which is also one of the goals of CDA. The starting point of this research is that the propaganda and dissemination for relevant Japanese news in China can be better understood in the context of Chinese foreign policy news. Studying propaganda as a narrative form and strategic research rather than prejudiced and distorted investigation allows us to delve further into the process of transforming incidents into politically powerful symbols.
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Yamakoshi, Atsushi. "A study on Japan's reaction to the 1973 oil crisis." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 1986. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/26635.
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The object of this dissertation is to investigate Japan's reaction to the 1973 oil crisis in order to answer two major questions. First, why and how was Japan able to recover from the 1973 oil crisis? Secondly, what was distinctive about Japan's reaction to the oil crisis as compared with the reactions of other countries?
Chapter One provides a general review of the 1973 oil crisis. It also discusses the focus and the basic methodology of this dissertation.
Chapter Two examines the political aspects of Japan's reaction to the oil crisis. At the beginning of the 1970's, the Japanese political scene was in a state of historical transition mainly because the. opinions of Japanese people were becoming diversified after the accomplishment of extensive economic growth. The 1973 oil crisis reflected the differences of opinion in the government and the conflict of interests among industrial sectors. This chapter pays special attention to Japan's bureaucracy in facing the oil crisis.
Chapter Three discusses the economic aspects of Japan's reaction to the oil crisis. The oil crisis created great confusion within the Japanese economy because it occurred at the time of the inflationary situation after the "Nixon Shock" in 1971. However, Japan recovered from the crisis by changing its industrial structure. The oil crisis elucidated the vulnerability, efficiency and flexibility of the Japanese economy.
Chapter Four deals with the business aspects of Japan's reaction. Japanese business leaders tried to influence the decision-making process of the Japanese government through the activities of four major business organizations: Keidanren, Nissho, Nikkeiren and Doyukai. Companies made efforts to rationalize their production process by decreasing intermediate inputs. These rationalization efforts decreased demand for the materials produced by oil-reliant industries and accelerated the structural change in Japanese industry. The cooperative relations between the government and business and between management and labour moderated the friction caused by this structural change.
Chapter Five offers the major findings of the preceding chapters. Based on those findings, it concludes that Japan's recovery from the 1973 oil crisis was accomplished by the voluntary commitment of various social factions to solving the problems caused by the crisis rather than by the consensual efforts led by the government. This voluntary commitment is recognized as the most distinctive feature in the Japanese reaction to the oil crisis.Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies
Graduate
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Innami, Fusako. "The touchable and the untouchable : an investigation of touch in modern Japanese literature." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:29608446-afd6-4b05-b096-d4ffd5ccf3fd.
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This thesis examines how the experience of touch is depicted in modern/contemporary Japanese literature and culture. Employing touch-related 20th century French thought (Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, Nancy) and psychoanalytic theory (Klein, Anzieu, Kimura), it discusses how the representations of touch illuminate various aspects of human existence, specifically: the mediated nature of touch, the process of the bodily encounters, the formation of subject identity, sexual differences, and the way memories of touch depicted in literature affect our sense of temporality. Touch is a particularly interesting way of approaching Japanese literature because touching between people (apart from mother and child, called skinship) has been considerably repressed at least until after WW2, due to the relative absence of public practices of touch, authors’ aesthetic choices and censorship. Opposing this tendency, female authors born postwar write freely about touch. In comparison to Judeo-Christian cultures, Japanese culture has historically not been open to tactile communication, nor is explicit articulation of internal experience, as in psychoanalysis, particularly prominent. Japanese literary characters are thus especially self-conscious about touch. Following a theoretical and historical overview regarding touch and contact in the Introduction, Chapter 1 discusses different ways of mediating touch in the works of Yoshiyuki Junnosuke, Tanizaki Jun’ichirō, and Abe Kōbō. Chapter 2 argues how high levels of mediation affect the manners of engaging in direct encounters with others in Yoshiyuki, Kawabata Yasunari, and Matsuura Rieko. Chapter 3 discusses the temporality of tactile memories in Yoshiyuki, Kawabata, and Ogawa Yoko. Reflecting on such a complicated portrayal of touch in Japanese culture will help fill a gap in the existing scholarship regarding touch in literature. By critically examining the relationship between theories and literature in the East and West, this thesis also significantly contributes to the field of comparative literature and cultural studies as an example of cross-cultural research on touch.
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Stapleton, Paul. "Assessing critical thinking in the writing of Japanese university students : insights about assumptions, content familiarity and biology." Thesis, University of Leicester, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/2381/30979.
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Recent beliefs over the appropriateness of using cultural constructs as a tool to enhance foreign language learning have become entrenched into polarized camps. Disagreement between these two sides most often arises in the field of L2 writing. While writing encompasses many different facets, one of these, critical thinking, has received considerable attention. Some research suggests that Asians, including Japanese, do not display critical thinking as conveyed by their writing in English. On the other hand, other researchers claim that Asian learners are far too diverse to make claims about the whole group's thinking abilities. The present study proposes a model for assessing critical thinking in the writing of L2 learners in order to determine whether: 1) Japanese learners think critically, 2) instruction in critical thinking enhances their ability to think critically, 3) content familiarity plays a role in critical thinking, and 4) hierarchy and collectivity prevent Japanese from criticizing. Findings of an experiment performed on 69 Japanese undergraduate students using control and treatment groups and a pre- post-treatment design indicate that subjects did think critically and showed improvement after receiving instruction. However, the quality of critical though appeared to depend on the topic content with a familiar topic generating better critical thinking. In addition, it was found that notions of hierarchy or collectivism did not prevent subjects from being critical. Recent disagreement over whether Japanese language learners have critical thinking abilities is used here as a representation of how TESOL researchers have confirmed themselves to the intellectual framework of the social sciences. Working under assumptions about human behaviour that consider the brain a tabula rasas, TESOL researchers fail to consider new understandings coming from evolutionary psychology. This paper explains how critical thinking may be just one of many domain specific mechanisms with which all humans are equipped at birth. On a larger level, it is suggested that the TESOL community needs to broaden beyond the notion that 'learning' is the one and only way in which human behaviour can be understood.
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Lamshed, Josephine Ann. "A crisis of race : the experiences of Japanese immigrants in the United States of America, 1890-1924 /." Title page, preface and contents only, 1996. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09AR/09arl241.pdf.
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Fooken, Kerstin. "Camille in crisis : adaptation, stardom and scandal in 'La Dame aux Camelias' on the Japanese silent screen." Thesis, SOAS, University of London, 2018. http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/30297/.
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Tohzumi, Dai. "An intellectual foundation for postwar Japanese democracy : a contextual and critical analysis of Masao Maruyama's political thought." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2008. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.612218.
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Tanaka, Mayumi. "Appropriate pedagogy for critical reading in English in the Japanese secondary school context : an action research investigation." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2015. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/77464/.
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This study investigates the development of an appropriate pedagogy for critical reading in the Japanese secondary school context, adopting an action research approach as a methodology. It was conducted in a national college of technology in Japan, which offers five-year education for students over the age of 15. The target students were between 15 and 18, who were equivalent to upper secondary students. This study consisted of three phases, lasting from 2008 to 2014 overall. Data were collected by means of several methods: journal writing, interviewing, observing, video- and audio-recording, questionnaires, and documents. Written and oral data were analyzed using thematic analysis. During the process of this action research investigation, teachers in an English language teaching (ELT) study group were engaged as advisors for my teaching as well as informants. The opinions of these teachers as well as students’ opinions were incorporated into this study. This study contributes to ELT in the Japanese context. First, it shows that locally produced, government-approved textbooks could be used as materials for critical reading. Second, it shows that critical reading is a type of instruction which aims to develop students’ reading skills. Third, it shows that developing students’ thinking skills can be used as a rationale for critical reading. Fourth, it developed a framework for critical reading. This framework of critical reading can be used for developing intercultural understanding in other ELT contexts. Another contribution of this study to wider ELT contexts is that it reveals some teachers’ resistance to the political orientation of critical discourse analysis (CDA) and critical pedagogy (CP). There are also methodological contributions. One is that this study reveals the paradoxical nature of action research outcomes affected by social or policy changes. The other is that this action research with other teachers’ participation raises an issue of power relationships in a context where age matters in social interactions and decision-making.
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Inagawa, Machiko. "Japanese American Experiences in Internment Camps during World War II as Represented by Children's and Adolescent Literature." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/196135.
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This study examines the representation of Japanese American experiences in internment camps during World War II in children's and adolescent literature. This study focuses on a specific set of children's and adolescent books about one time period in the history of Japanese Americans. I have formulated two major research questions for this study. The first question: What are the characteristics of the selected children's and adolescent books about Japanese American experiences during World War II? The second question: How do the selected children's and adolescent books portray the experiences and responses of Japanese Americans during World War II?I selected fourteen books for inclusion in this study and analyzed the books related to my research questions. These books are organized into three genres: picture books, historical fiction, and nonfiction. The research methodology for this study is qualitative content analysis that includes methods for data collection and analysis and descriptions of the books and illustrations. I used the research questions to first examine books in each of the three genres and then make comparisons across the three genres.The findings based on the first research question include that the books are based on the research and experiences of both authors and illustrators and have a range of time periods from before the war to after the war. The findings also show that in the books, the authors and Japanese Americans express their criticism of Japanese Americans' experiences in the difficult situations related to the internment camps. They criticize the treatment of Japanese Americans by the U.S. government and discrimination against Japanese Americans.The analysis of the books based on the second research question provides insights into the experiences of Japanese Americans and how they felt, thought, and acted. The books portray the prejudice and discrimination faced by Japanese Americans from the point of immigrating to the United States and even after the war. The most important finding is that the books portray Japanese American children as creating lives of significance in the difficult conditions of assembly centers and internment camps.
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Sato, Tetsuya. "Social Asymmetries in Online Personal Ads in Japanese: Discursive Construction of Desirable Personae, Bodies, and Practices." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/194627.
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The Internet is increasingly becoming a key medium through which people establish social contacts and form interpersonal relationships. In particular, online dating websites are gaining popularity and rapidly expanding around the world. This study explores the discourse that constitutes the practices of the deai-kee-saito 'encounter-oriented sites' in Japanese, as observed in three major personal ad websites, namely 1) Ekisaito furenzu 'Excite Friends', 2) Match.com, and 3) Yahoo!Japan paasonaruzu 'Yahoo!Japan Personals'. It focuses on the ways that self-advertisers express their socio-sexual desires and describe their ideal partners and relationships, and analyzes them with respect to the reproduction of social asymmetries.More specifically, it examines the discursive construction of the kinds of personae (personality characteristics) and bodies (physical features) that advertisers aged 20-29 wish in their future partners, as well as the kinds of practices (activities and actions) they wish to engage in with their partners, what they wish to do for their partners, and/or wish the partners to do for them in their envisioned interactions. Out of the 1200 ads collected from these websites, a total of 463 ads are identified as target-gender-explicit and analyzed at lexical, morphosyntactic, phrasal, clausal, sentential and discourse levels. It pays close attention to the linguistic resources utilized in the articulation of socio-sexual desires and desirability, and the textual formation of the addresser(advertiser)-addressee(ad reader) relationships, including adjectives, nouns, verbal phrases, person references, desideratives, conditionals, and the formula yoroshiku/o-negai shimasu 'Thank you in advance'. It also analyzes para-linguistic resources, such as emoticons, symbols, and unique use of hiragana/katakana syllabaries. These discursive processes involve prioritization, or hierarchization, of personal attributes and consequently of the owners of those attributes. It argues that socio-sexual desirability is reflective of the hegemonic ideologies of gender and sexuality in today's Japanese-speaking communities.In addition, it examines explicit and implicit language related to race, class, and similar constructs. It also investigates the functions of style-shift that advertisers use in expressing desire. This study shows that individuals' 'innocuous' expression of socio-sexual desires through personal ads is a locus for the reproduction and contestation of the hegemonic order of gender, sexuality, race and class.
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Gustafsson, Karl. "Narratives and Bilateral Relations : Rethinking the "History Issue" in Sino-Japanese Relations." Doctoral thesis, Stockholms universitet, Statsvetenskapliga institutionen, 2011. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-57197.
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The overarching aim of the thesis is to present a framework that makes possible an understanding of bilateral relations that challenges mainstream International Relations (IR) approaches through a study of the “history issue” in Sino-Japanese relations. A secondary aim is to provide an alternative understanding of this issue. Discussions of the issue are often highly influenced by the objectivism, rationalism, state-centrism and agent-centrism common in mainstream IR theory. This has several consequences, primarily that the focus is chiefly on behaviour and that equal emphasis is rarely put on both contexts. In order to address these consequences, the question of what kinds of narrative, as expressed in museum exhibitions about war in both countries, can be found and which ones dominate is addressed using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The narratives, which contain the stories “we” tell about “our” past, are important components in and instantiate the abstract images that are identities, through which people make sense of the world. The context-sensitive analysis confirms the constructivist assumption that narratives matter by demonstrating that political actors strongly believe narratives shape people’s minds and act accordingly. It also shows that different narratives are present in both countries. It is suggested that the narratives are closely linked to domestic identity politics. Nonetheless, the depiction of self and other in these has consequences for bilateral relations. This has several implications, for example, that changes in the behaviour of leaders, while they may have a positive impact on relations, are insufficient as solutions to the problems. This has consequences for approaches preoccupied with behaviour. The study contributes to constructivist IR through a close textual analysis of narrative structure that illustrates the significance of labelling and categorizing in identity construction that is easily missed by less fine-grained analyses.
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Tanaka, Masato 1965. "A new approach to resolving Japan's real estate crisis : will securitization follow?" Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/70310.
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Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1998.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 72-73).
Within the current condition of the Japanese financial markets, there exists a great problem that must be dealt with, or else run the risk of further escalation of that problem. That problem is with the Japanese real estate market. In this thesis, the impact of the implementation of securitization into the Japanese real estate markets will be examined by first taking a look at the proposed regulatory changes, and then at the impact they may have upon the market itself. Also, I try to analyze the nature of Japanese real estate investment trusts (J-REITs). The results show that the implementation of securitization into the Japanese real estate market will indeed succeed, but not immediately. Some economic and political factors that will help with securitization's success include firmer real estate prices, economic expansion, low interest rates, strengthened reserves, experience, and political resolve. However, it will be the government's actions that will ultimately decide the fate of the Japanese real estate market concerning the implementation of securitization.
by Masato Tanaka.
S.M.
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Shimada, Naho. "'Zest for living' (ikiru chikara) in Japanese schools : critical analysis of the key concept underlying the education reform 2002 /." Title page, table of contents and introduction only, 2002. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09AR/09ars555.pdf.
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Xie, Xiaojian. ""Words Must Mean Something" : A Critical Discourse Analysis of Some Aspects of Ideational Meaning in a Japanese Newspaper Editorial." 名古屋大学大学院国際言語文化研究科, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/2237/17877.
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Thomas, Mariette L. "Critical encounters: How some Japanese students understand and adapt to the practice of critique in the U.S. design studio." Scholarly Commons, 2015. https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/uop_etds/246.
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Critique, or "crit," is a central feature of instruction in art and design programs. Critique is an event in which students present their work and receive feedback from faculty, visiting professionals, and their classmates. Critique can be formative or summative. In formative critiques, the instructor intervenes in the creative process, reviews drafts of work, and makes recommendations for revision. In summative crits, the instructor evaluates a finished product for a grade. The goal of a summative critique is to evaluate and rate the quality of student work. However, success is not necessarily determined by student work alone. Critique also requires mastery of a number of communication and cultural competencies. Crits can be challenging for students of all cultural backgrounds but may be especially difficult for international students who are adapting to a new culture and academic environment. This study examined the difficulties that some Japanese students experience in summative crits often due to cultural differences and language problems. The purpose of this study was to investigate challenges experienced by Japanese international students and identify types of support that Japanese international students may need in order to be successful in crits. This study had three goals: (1) provide Japanese students with recommendations for success in crits; (2) help faculty learn international perspectives and contribute to their cultural sensitivity in the classroom; and (3) encourage greater institutional support for international students at American design schools. This research aims to contribute to a better understanding of the challenges and needs of international students in the U.S. design classroom.
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Batyko, Richard J. "The Impact of Japanese Corporate and Country Culture on Crisis Communications: A Case Study Examining Tokyo Electric Power Company." Kent State University / OhioLINK, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1352852227.
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Shigetomi, Yosuke. "Study of Mid-Term Impact of Japanese Households on Formation of Low-Carbon Society from Consumption-Based Approach." Kyoto University, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/2433/215644.
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Kyoto University (京都大学)0048
新制・課程博士
博士(エネルギー科学)
甲第19818号
エネ博第324号
新制||エネ||65(附属図書館)
32854
京都大学大学院エネルギー科学研究科エネルギー社会・環境科学専攻
(主査)教授 東野 達, 教授 宇根﨑 博信, 准教授 MCLELLAN,Benjamin
学位規則第4条第1項該当
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Jayman, Jayantha. "A critical understanding of Japan's improved late 20th century relations in Eastern Asia." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2004. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/2790/.
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Japan's imperial history and its narrow self-interested post-WWII policies caused much animosity in Eastern Asia, yet its improved relations in the region from the 1980s onwards, even when assessed from a critical perspective, demand scholarly attention. This dissertation finds improved relations a result of Japan legitimating its regional hegemony. The critical theories of Gramsci (1937) and Habermas (1976) applied within international relations suggest legitimation of hegemonic power at the international level only occurs when providing 'global public goods'-defined metaphorically with the UNDP's modification of Kindleberger's (1986) work-such that post colonial states achieve rapid economic development to close the rich-poor gap as understood by Strange (1950). Analogous to the enabling notion of Sen's (1974) "positive freedoms," such 'public goods' are needed by states to enable nationalist projects of development, and as such their delivery is seen by Murakami (1996) as the responsibility of hegemonic powers of the day. In order to assess 'global public goods' the dissertation deploys Susan Strange's (1988a) framework of 'structural power.' Within the knowledge structure, it is shown that Japanese Prime Minister Fukuda's 1977 doctrine successfully guided policy towards improving regional relations in Eastern Asia. On the economic side, the Fukuda Doctrine provided 'global public goods' in knowledge by deploying Japan's own experience of 'developmentalism' for the Eastern Asian region thus countering neo-liberalism of the "Washington Consensus," while it also assisted in the transfer of appropriate and absorbable technology. The provision of 'global public goods' over the 1980s put Eastern Asia on course to catch-up with industrialised nations as Japanese firms, aided by a rising yen, went on to invest in the region. These firms began to transfer production bases from Japan, such that by the end of the 1990s each of these post colonial states saw their manufactured exports leading to economic growth rates that put them on a path to catch-up to Japan and other industrialised nations in time. In military security terms, Japan continued its pacific and defensive military posture thus calming a volatile region to enable economic development. Tokyo also pushed for collective regional security, while tacitly supporting the upgrading of post colonial Eastern Asia's own defence capabilities. The implications of the dissertation are that Japan's success in improving its regional relations places it in the international system as a responsible self-interested power to be emulated by other powers interested in a peaceful world, thus contributing to scholarship in international relations, development and history.
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Hall, James M. "A linguistic ethnography of learning to teach English at Japanese junior high schools." Thesis, University of Stirling, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/26002.
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The study examined three Japanese junior high-school English teachers’ initial years of full-time employment. It investigated the type of pedagogical puzzles these teachers experienced, how their practice developed over 18 months, and my role as a Teacher of Teachers (TOT). Drawing on linguistic ethnography, this study took an ethnographic approach to understanding the teachers’ social context and used techniques from discourse analysis to consider how they interpreted their puzzles and constructed their practice. These techniques were also used to analyze my working relationship with the teachers. The purpose of this endeavor was to contribute to the understanding of novice teacher development in an ‘expanding circle’ country. Over the course of the study, I observed the teachers’ classes and interviewed them once or twice a month. Using the coding of interview transcripts and class fieldnotes, I identified Critical Incidents that represented the teachers’ pedagogical puzzles and typical practice, as well as my role as a TOT. Using Cultural Historical Activity Theory(CHAT), I analyzed how elements of the social context brought about the teachers’ pedagogical puzzles and affected their capacity to address them. Coding of the interviews and a microanalysis of the interactions showed my role as a TOT. Overall, the CIs gave an emic portrait of each teacher’s experience and my efforts to support them. The pedagogical puzzles the teachers faced were a result of their personal histories and school conditions. These puzzles did not change, which indicates that teachers will face complex issues that cannot be resolved. Understanding them, however, can promote teacher development. Applying CHAT, I could identify the conditions that helped determine the types of pedagogy in which teachers engaged. I tried to fulfill my role as a TOT by conducting a form of reflective practice (RP). An examination of the RP I conducted with the teachers challenged the notion that it involves the sequential steps of identifying issues, attempting to resolve them, and reflecting on one’s efforts. This dissertation concludes with a discussion about the contributions it has made toward the field of English teacher development: using CHAT to understand the English teaching experiences, the development of an understanding of RP as it can be carried out in the field, an understanding of novice teachers in expanding circle countries, and the value of linguistic ethnography for researching novice teachers.
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Mestre, Michel. "First-line management : the critical link between goal perception and performance : a multicultural study of Canadian and Japanese first-line managers." Thesis, Middlesex University, 2003. http://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/8006/.
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The need to be and stay competitive has corporations reassessing their organisation and management processes. Productivity, performance management and motivation include goals as one of their basic building blocks. These concepts, when operationalised, highlight the role and effectiveness of fîrst-line managers, who directly control the majority of human resources. Changes in organisational design such as leaner and flatter management structure, combined with employee empowerment, further underscore the pivotal role of first-line managers. They represent a key link in the management chain. Yet, it is evident that the focus or nature of goals, specifically at the first-line management level, is left largely untouched in the literature. Many disciplines explore the topic of goals. The number of variables that affect the outcome explodes as each field conveys its own perspective. Existing research either investigates goals in a controlled environment, anecdotal by relating corporate practices or case studies of a general nature, or posits a paradigm from the perspective of the author's discipline. Some research addresses the features of goals whilst others concentrate on the factors affecting outcome. This situation has raised the question as to the nature and focus of goals: the 'end' or the 'means'? It is acknowledged that there is a lack of research dealing with the 'actual' focus of goals. The objective of this thesis is to fill this gap in the literature with respect to the first-line manager's perception of goals. This study aims to ascertain the nature of goals as perceived by first-line managers. A survey conducted in Canada and Japan contrasts first-line managers' responses as well as provides a valuable insight on the effect that different management practices have on the nature of goals. It is evident that much has been written about Japanese practices at the corporate level as a whole, but little information is available on individual performance orientation, particularly at the first-line management level. The data collected in this research furnishes a deeper insight on goals and some factors that affect performance, as perceived by first-line managers. Goals can take a variety of forms and focus. As such, it was deemed imperative not to bias responses by producing pre-selected categories but to employ open-ended questions. The use of phenomenological mapping is not intended to test a particular hypothesis but aims to understand the situation by allowing the data to speak for itself. The results supply a first-hand understanding as to the actual focus of first-line managers, unadulterated by theories and speculations. A number of fmdings have evolved. The choice between 'end' or 'means' goals is related to basic management philosophies which are characteristic of the two populations. The general conclusion is that the values of the organisation are reflected in the type of goals being pursued. The same values are also reflected in the training received - or absence of it - and, eventually, are evident in the nature of goals being set. This duality of perspective is also found in the literature. On one hand, goal or outcome oriented employees willing to make tough decisions are key managerial characteristics to be displayed by individuals who want to progress within the organisation. On the other hand, many preach the basic philosophy that employees are a key resource which should be developed to achieve better results. These two concepts are expounded independently of each other in the literature. The general fïeld of research does not provide any criteria to measure the superiority of one System over the other; their mutual exclusivity is usually implied. It suffices to say that output goals are necessary under both Systems but not suffïcient to assure adequate attention to the human side of the equation. The research does widen the existing literature in a number of areas. Firstly, it illustrates how corporate managerial practices and values influence the outlook of first-line managers; while such a phenomenon has been postulated in the past. The results of the survey demonstrate it categorically. Secondly, it demonstrates how two viable perspectives of goals, the 'end' or the 'means', are as present in the academic thinking as, they are in the work environment. Thirdly, the goal perspective of first-line managers, indicates that a different focus may be necessary to be commensurate with their respective roles and responsibilities as compared to the rest of the organisation. The apparent dichotomy in the literature, between 'end' goals and 'means' goals, is also found between the responses of the two populations. The results clearly show that there is a need to rethink corporate practices in the area of human development, especially at the first-line management level. In addition to providing insights on goals, adequacy and recognition, this research implicitly raises the issue of the role which corporations should play in moulding human behaviour, and more specifically that of first-line managers. Conversely, there is the question of the degree to which individuality and personal responsibility for skill development should be left to the individual to decide. Better understanding of the nature of goals in the mind of first-line managers should enable organisations to effectively address the practice of goal setting and the management process entailed. There are some limitations within the research. The qualitative nature of the research, due to the use of open-ended questions, requires interpretative analysis of responses. The choice of categories, while free-flowing from the data, could also be considered as subjective. However, external audit of the tabulation, through the independent evaluation performed by an interrater, proved the process to be consistent. Through triangulation between existing published practices, plant visits and interviews as well as the internal consistency between the responses to different questions, the results of the tabulation exhibit congruity. The thesis comprises fifteen chapters, organised into four major sections. Part I contains the theoretical content of the research. It provides the backdrop for the importance of goals and the relationship with productivity, the different paradigms being put forth, a detailed discussion on the nature of goals and the key role of first-line managers. Part II describes the design of the survey and the analytical procedures employed. Part III presents the actual tabulation of the data with observations related to the results. Part IV analyses and discusses the major findings in context with the theories expounded and as well, provides conclusions and recommendations for future research.
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Nyqvist, Jakob. "Dispatch Workers as an Irreversible Trend : A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Representation of DispatchWorkers in Editorials of two Japanese Newspapers." Thesis, Stockholms universitet, Institutionen för Asien-, Mellanöstern- och Turkietstudier, 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-158715.
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