Japan Forum

Japan Forum is the official journal of the British Association for Japanese Studies. Its primary objectives are to publish original research in the field of Japanese Studies; and to make international scholarship available to both specialists and non-specialists.

Japan Forum is multidisciplinary; publishing contributions from across the arts and humanities and the social sciences including from: archaeology, language, literature, philosophy and culture; as well as history, economics, politics, international relations and law.

The current editorial team took over in 2021 and are chiefly based at University of East Anglia.  Through our connection with the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures we are wishing to increase submissions from the visual arts, but we also welcome submissions that cross disciplinary boundaries or that do not otherwise match the above subject areas. 

We award the annual Ian Nish Prize to early career submissions that demonstrates innovation through research. (For previous winners, including this year’s, please follow this link.)

All submissions are independently refereed.

Please follow this link to the journal’s website and the latest online issue.

Latest articles

  • Changing scripts, changing storytellers: the role of katakana in English-language textbooks
    by Naoko Hosokawa Naoko Hosokawa is an Associate Professor at Tokyo University of Science. She holds a PhD in Oriental Studies from the University of Oxford, an MSc in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science, an MA in Political Science from Columbia University, and a BA in Policy Management from Keio University. She previously worked at the University of Tokyo, the University of Strasbourg, and the European University Institute as well as the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS). Her recent publications include the monograph Loanwords and Japanese Identity: Inundating or Absorbed? (Routledge 2023). Email: naoko.hosokawa@gmail.com
  • British veteran reflections on the British Commonwealth Occupation Force and experiences in Japan during the Korean War
    by Steven Ivings Steven Ivings, Ph.D. (2014), London School of Economics and Political Science, is an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Economics Kyoto University. His research examines socio-economic change in Northeast Asia, particularly in port cities and Japan’s former colonial empire.
  • Visual Counterculture in Japan: Political Shifts and the Dynamics of Resistance
    by Kosuke Fujiki Hiroshima University
  • The Cambridge Companion to Manga and Anime
    by Oscar Garcia Aranda Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) (Cerdanyola del Vallés, Spain)
  • Correction
  • Imperial Intersectionalities in Pre-1945 Japan: Art-Historical Interventions – Introduction
    by Jaqueline Berndt Jaqueline Berndt, Aesthetics/Art Theory PhD, Humboldt University Berlin; Professor in Japanology, Stockholm University. Dr. Berndt’s primary academic focus is on comics/manga studies, with a special emphasis on media aesthetics, new formalism, and phenomenological approaches. Research fields: visual arts and aesthetic culture in modern East Asia, comics museums and exhibitions, anime/animation.
  • Imperial Feminism in Japan: on the activities of the Women Artists Patriotic Service Corps during the Asia-Pacific War
    by Tomoko Kira Independent scholar, research fellow at Japan Women’s University, TokyoDr. Tomoko Kira is an independent scholar, research fellow at Japan Women’s University, Tokyo. specializing in Japanese art history and gender history. She received her PhD from Chiba University in 2010. Her publications (all in Japanese) include War and Women Painters (2013) and Women Painters’ War (2015), the latter of which earned her the Aoyama Nao Prize in Women’s History (2014). She has published widely on women artists, wartime visual culture, and craft history, with articles in Bijutsushi and Ningyōgangu Katachi Asobi, and has also contributed cultural columns to the Tokyo Shimbun. Her current research focuses on gender and visual culture in modern Japan. Email: sasterawatikira@gmail.com
  • Occupied Japan through British eyes: recollections of the veterans of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF) and the British Commonwealth Forces Korea (BCFK)
    by Hidekazu Sensui Hidekazu Sensui, DPhil, is Professor of Cultural Anthropology in the Department of International Business, Faculty of Business Administration, Kanagawa University. His research focuses on postwar Japan, particularly on Okinawa under the United States administration. His recent work examines the history of field sciences, rural healthcare and public relations in that region. He edited Kindai Kokka to Shokuminchisei (Modern States and Coloniality, 2022) and Beikoku Shiseikenka no Telebi Eizō (Enlightening through TV, 2020).
  • Global English, neoliberalism, & governmentality: towards an understanding of globalization in japanese higher education policy
    by Christopher Samuell Kyoto Institute of TechnologyChristopher Samuell has taught English in Japan for 15 years, working with students across a range of disciplines. He is a doctoral candidate in Education at the University of Bath, and also holds a Master's degree in TESOL. He is currently a Junior Associate Professor at a Japanese university, where he teaches courses in academic English, Media & Language, and intercultural communication. His research explores sociolinguistics, English as a lingua franca, and intercultural communication, with a focus on how globalisation and policy shape language learning in Japan. Email: samuell@kit.ac.jp
  • Retelling the Riot: a Content Analysis of Okinawan Online Reporting on the 50th Anniversary of the ‘Koza Riot’
    by Nathan Turner Nathan Turner currently an MA student in the Joint Degree in Transcultural Studies at Kyoto and Heidelberg Universities, he researches Muslim migration to Japan with the aim of expanding this focus in a PhD. He holds a BA in Japanese Studies from the University of Sheffield.

Japan Forum Editorial Team

Chief Editor:

Hannah Osborne – University of East Anglia, UK (hannah.l.osborne@uea.ac.uk)

Managing Editor: 

Laurence Green – SOAS University of London, UK (japanforum@soas.ac.uk)

Editors:

Simon Kaner – University of East Anglia, UK (s.kaner@uea.ac.uk)

Rayna Denison – University of Bristol, UK (r.denison@bristol.ac.uk)

Ra Mason – University of East Anglia, UK (ra.mason@uea.ac.uk)

Sherzod Muminov – University of East Anglia, UK (s.muminov@uea.ac.uk)

Reviews Editors:

Eriko Tomizawa-Kay – University of East Anglia, UK (e.tomizawa-kay@uea.ac.uk)

Christopher Hayes – Teesside University, UK (c.hayes@tees.ac.uk)

You can follow us on Twitter at: Japan Forum (@JapanForum21)

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