KEIO SFC JOURNAL Vol.13 No.1 Japan Studies Platform Laboratory and a Globalization Strategy of Keio SFC "Theory and Practice in New 'Japan Studies'"

Founded in 2002, the Institute of Japanese Studies at Kookmin University has set a model for area studies in ROK. After a mere span of ten years, the IJS stands today at the forefront of Japanese studies in Korea by accumulating an array of critically acclaimed projects ranging from primary source compilation to multidisciplinary analyses of Japanese society and the post war ROK-Japan relations. In celebrating the first successful decade, all of us at the IJS continue to do research of our historical agenda and renew our commitment to the common problems between the ROK and Japan in the near future. And we are prepared, as in the past, to put our findings to the test with the same rigor by working with fellow researchers from all over the world.

The postwar Japan studies in Taiwan, previously rather limited, under certain government policies gradually opened in 1990s. After 2000, with the influx of the new-generation researchers, it gradually developed toward specialization. Overall, Japan studies in Taiwan are currently facing seven significant problems. First, the gradual decrease of Japan's international influence; second, its priority of practical applicability; third, the lack of area studies tradition; fourth, Japan's relatively low interest toward Japan studies in Taiwan; fifth, shortage of professional Japan studies periodicals in Taiwan; sixth, discrepancy in the supply of the area professionals; seventh, not yet established Japan studies in the country. In addition to these problems, Japan studies in Taiwan also are confronted with three major challenges. That is construction of the core values of the study field, training and employment of the area professionals, as well as the contribution that academic exchange could make to the development of Japan-Taiwan relations. Given the current tasks and challenges, contemporary Japan studies should develop to link the scholarship and practice, system and tendencies, as well as global and local levels.

In this essay, I give an overview of some of the main ideas of my new book The Soul of Anime: Collaborative Creativity and Japan's Media Success Story. Drawing on ethnographic research, including fieldwork at Madhouse, as well as a historical consideration of the original Gundam series, I discuss how anime can be best understood in terms of platforms for collaborative creativity. I argue that the global success of Japanese animation has grown out of a collective social energy that operates across industries?including those that produce film, television, manga (comic books), and toys and other licensed merchandise?and connects fans to the creators of anime. For me, this collective social energy is the soul of anime.

This study is about Chinese Communist policy towards Hong Kong just before and after the establishment of the People's Republic of China. In previous studies, it is said that the Chinese Communist Party decided to delay to get HK back because such an action could trigger a war which was able to get the US involved. This study concluded that the CCP never planned to retrieve Hong Kong from Britain from the very beginning. Chinese HK policies were one of its strategies towards countries in the intermediate area where Britain was included. Realism and flexibility played a much more important role in Chinese Communist foreign policies in the 1950s.

This is a study of the "Cross-border transporters" in a Vietnam-China border region, the longheld practice of supporting livelihood. On the one hand, they have successfully adapted to politicaleconomic changes as reflected in the border trade regulations since the 1991 China-Vietnam normalization, and, at the same time, they have sustained the long-held perception of their sphere of livelihood as encompassing the areas lying on both sides of the border. A close examination of their activities, which involve the transport of diverse daily commodities from a Chinese town to a Vietnamese town, uncovers the transporters' careful calculations of risks and returns involved, and, more importantly, the persistent perception that their livelihood depends on their ability to transcend the existence of the border.

Georgian parliamentary elections in October of 2012 provide the first precedent of a peaceful regime change by elections in the country. At the same time it is a rare case in the whole region, and thus captured considerable attention all over the globe. In this paper, I evaluate the role of the Georgian society in these elections, which has been severely ignored in the discourse over the Georgia's political development, and in contradiction to widely spread presumption, I argue that the political process of transfer of power displayed some elements characterizing a nonviolent revolution and was far from being democratic and fair. At the same time, I argue that the discourse, which portrays the newly elected Ivanishvili's government as a pro-Russian regime, as an attempt to analyze the elections in the prism of international conjuncture is fundamentally misleading and lacks wellfounded arguments.

This research aims at analyzing the possible problems which tend to take place when Japanese learners of English learn "three-word phrasal verbs". Previous research has shown that phrasal verbs are generally difficult for second language learners to acquire. This study focuses on the area of "three-word phrasal verbs," an area which has not been explored yet in the field of second language acquisition. The main question is: How do the variables such as semantic transparency, familiarity with the target phrasal verbs, overseas experiences, and the level of English proficiency influence the acquisition of "three-word phrasal verbs" by Japanese learners? On the basis of the findings, we make some pedagogical suggestions for teaching phrasal verbs in the context of Japanese classrooms.

Masao Maruyama, a representative intellectual of the twentieth century, praised the USA's "bourgeois democracy" for its prewar opposition to fascism, while criticizing it postwar for bringing about the remilitarization of Japan and the McCarthyism that accompanied the Cold War. After visiting the US in 1961, Maruyama avoided giving public lectures on America, first because of a change in research focus from political science to the history of political thought, and second because of the inscrutability of a modernized US without history. However, Maruyama privately maintained an interest in the diversity in the USA. This was because of the existence of a liberal climate that urged reflection on the conservative swing, including antiwar and antinuclear perspectives.