2020, Vol., No.27

JAPAN SPACE 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.29

pISSN : 1976-1481
https://journal.kci.go.kr/japanspace

This paper reevaluates the factors of domestic politics in the Japanese security policy in the late 1990s. Japan has strengthened the US-Japan security alliance with the revision of the Guidelines for US-Japan Defence Cooperation in 1997 and the legislation for Situations in Areas Surrounding Japan (Shuten Jitai-ho) in 1999. This policy change was realized in the context of weakening opposition from the Japan Socialist Party(JSP) and the solid supports from Japan’s public opinion on the US-Japan security alliance. In the Liberal Democratic Party(LDP), meanwhile, there had been differentiated policy orientations on China’s inclusion as a target of the upgraded US-Japan security alliance framework. The LDP’s pro-Chinese politicians were Japan’s domestic assets for constraining potential risks of Japan’s entrapment in the US’s military operation against China.

This study is aimed at exploring the trend of military relief over the periods before and after the implementation of the Army Special Volunteer System and in the run-up to the Japanese conscription of Koreans into the armed forces by looking at military relief programs under the Service Members Relief Act. In particular, the study paid attention to the fact that the military relief disguised Japan’s attempt for spiritual education and imperialization of bereaved families of fallen soldiers. Reportedly, the sheltered workshop was set up to provide financial support for the wives of fallen soldiers but the true intention was to encourage them to proud as a bereaved family by making them a role model for other wives and mothers of men in services. As the number of Korean conscripts increased in the run-up to the Japanese conscription of Koreans into the armed forces, there was a recognition of possible increase in bereaved families of fallen soldiers and growing importance of spiritual education of such families. In this regard, this study intended to point out that the Japanese GovernmentGeneral of Korea aimed to make the bereaved families imperial subjects of Japan under the disguise of moral and financial support for them.

The massive earthquake, tsunami, and Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accidents, which had occurred in Tohoku, Japan, have brought various discussions to Japanese society. In the Japanese literature, this event was recognized as the moment of change as shown in the expressions of “After” of the Great East Japan Earthquake, ‘saigo(災後)’, ‘post 3.11’ etc. However, there is a mixture of the nuclear accident and the impact of the tsunami death. In this article we examine that the death of the tsunami appeared as the events showing that the world has changed or there are limits to language or representation in Japanese literature, and analyze Shibasaki Tomoka's On The Street Where I Wasn’t focusing on the perspective of the distance from a disaster. This work, like other works affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake, starts from the history of Japan's past war. However, it makes us think how we can deal with deaths in distant places through the protagonist who repeatedly watches the wars having occurred elsewhere in war documentaries and raises a question about the distance between disasters and people who look at it from a distance. Natural disasters and wars are represented not so differently in this work, therefore the problem of causal relationship or responsibility is not considered. And this is common to many discussions comparing the Great East Japan Earthquake to Japan’s past war. The work shows that the distance between all of the events and the people who look at them is equally far, making many of the wars the protagonist looks irreversible past events, but nevertheless we try to find a tiny clue in it that there is still a possibility to relate the deaths outside the border to ourselves.