The main goal of this research is to clarify the concept of “middle power” and to employ the idea to understand the diplomatic strategies that allow so called secondary powers, which are countries without substantial national power, to actively exercise remarkable influence in international politics. In general understanding, this diplomacy is called “middle power diplomacy” or “middlepowermanship” which particularly means diplomacy excising influence and taking international initiative through international co-operation and regimes. This diplomacy is distinguishable in that it is not based on overwhelming national power such as military power, but on persuasion and reconciling with other actors. By such activities, some secondary countries achieved considerable involvement, strong influence, and impressive positive reputation in the world despite their intermediate or small national power. This research examines in what conditions some of these secondary powers can employ this type of active international policies and show remarkable influence in certain international issues. Research for this project involved three processes of examination in five chapters on the topic of middlepowemanship, presented in five chapters. Part I of the thesis contains history and literature review of the idea “middle power”. Based on the review of history and literature, this research assumes the middle power diplomacy or middlepowermanship in this research has theoretically four main features. Firstly middlepowermanship means taking leadership employing cooperation with other actors, including other countries and international organizations, and international institutions rather than just its own national power. Secondly, this type of leadership tends to be entrepreneurial or intellectual leadership, which does not always require massive national power and resource input. Thirdly, this diplomatic option is basically available to very wide range of countries, classified as “possible middle powers” in this research, as one of the policy options. Fourthly, the country applying middle power diplomacy does not always describe itself as “middle power”; in addition, the country calling itself “middle power” is not always conducting middle power diplomacy. The political rhetoric “middle power” and middle power diplomacy is not always inter-related. Lastly, only under certain conditions this policy is chosen and successfully practiced. One distinguishable feature of this research is that it is assuming the neither “possible middle powers” nor self-indicated middle powers always apply middle power diplomacy. The “possible middle powers” have middlepowermanship strategy as an available option. The “possible middle powers” have middlepowermanship strategy as an available option and decide whether middlepowemanship strategy is practicable and effective or not on a case by case basis. This research suggested that if “possible middle powers” seek to show strong influence and leadership, they have to select issues and approaches which their limited diplomatic resource can accomplish. For this selection of issues, firstly, there needs to be domestic agreement. In other words, domestic support and available diplomatic resource have to become available on the right political timing. Particularly for “possible middle powers” the constraints and available resources strongly affect the countries’ approaches to the large scale international policy and new projects. Secondly, “possible middle powers” need to persuade other international actors for support and co-operation to excise international leadership because of their limited national and diplomatic capability. In Chapter 5 of this thesis, a case study is presented on Japanese diplomacy on the idea “human security”. Japanese active policies under the name of human security were middlepowemanship because of the three following features. Firstly, Japanese human security policy has been conducted in cooperation with the United Nations and other countries. Secondly, the Japanese government was seeking the entrepreneurial leadership and influence in these policies. Thirdly, the government consistently put emphasis on the aspect of “freedom from want” of human security and limited its initiative to economy related issues. This case study focuses on factors underlying the policy decision choosing middlepowermanship. Prime Minister Obuchi’s leadership backed up his intellectual advisors who were supporting the idea of “human security” matched the political timing brought by the Asian financial crisis and the Ottawa Process in 1997. The constraints and available diplomatic resources led the Japanese government to take the middlepowermanship approach. The government had certain constraints due to the constitutional restraints in military activities and complexity of relationships with neighboring countries. These restrictions on the approaches resulted in Japan pursuing limited initiative only on economy related issues even though the idea of human security contains “freedom from want” and “freedom from fear.” Combining with the existing Japanese Official Development Assistance (ODA) policies and upcoming ODA policy reform realized the human security as a large scale international initiative, such as the Trust Found for Human Security. In the international sphere, support from other countries and the UN made it possible for Japan to conduct such large scale international policy conducted by Japan.

The main goal of this research is to clarify the concept of “middle power” and to employ the idea to understand the diplomatic strategies that allow so called secondary powers, which are countries without substantial national power, to actively exercise remarkable influence in international politics. In general understanding, this diplomacy is called “middle power diplomacy” or “middlepowermanship” which particularly means diplomacy excising influence and taking international initiative through international co-operation and regimes. This diplomacy is distinguishable in that it is not based on overwhelming national power such as military power, but on persuasion and reconciling with other actors. By such activities, some secondary countries achieved considerable involvement, strong influence, and impressive positive reputation in the world despite their intermediate or small national power. This research examines in what conditions some of these secondary powers can employ this type of active international policies and show remarkable influence in certain international issues. Research for this project involved three processes of examination in five chapters on the topic of middlepowemanship, presented in five chapters. Part I of the thesis contains history and literature review of the idea “middle power”. Based on the review of history and literature, this research assumes the middle power diplomacy or middlepowermanship in this research has theoretically four main features. Firstly middlepowermanship means taking leadership employing cooperation with other actors, including other countries and international organizations, and international institutions rather than just its own national power. Secondly, this type of leadership tends to be entrepreneurial or intellectual leadership, which does not always require massive national power and resource input. Thirdly, this diplomatic option is basically available to very wide range of countries, classified as “possible middle powers” in this research, as one of the policy options. Fourthly, the country applying middle power diplomacy does not always describe itself as “middle power”; in addition, the country calling itself “middle power” is not always conducting middle power diplomacy. The political rhetoric “middle power” and middle power diplomacy is not always inter-related. Lastly, only under certain conditions this policy is chosen and successfully practiced. One distinguishable feature of this research is that it is assuming the neither “possible middle powers” nor self-indicated middle powers always apply middle power diplomacy. The “possible middle powers” have middlepowermanship strategy as an available option. The “possible middle powers” have middlepowermanship strategy as an available option and decide whether middlepowemanship strategy is practicable and effective or not on a case by case basis. This research suggested that if “possible middle powers” seek to show strong influence and leadership, they have to select issues and approaches which their limited diplomatic resource can accomplish. For this selection of issues, firstly, there needs to be domestic agreement. In other words, domestic support and available diplomatic resource have to become available on the right political timing. Particularly for “possible middle powers” the constraints and available resources strongly affect the countries’ approaches to the large scale international policy and new projects. Secondly, “possible middle powers” need to persuade other international actors for support and co-operation to excise international leadership because of their limited national and diplomatic capability. In Chapter 5 of this thesis, a case study is presented on Japanese diplomacy on the idea “human security”. Japanese active policies under the name of human security were middlepowemanship because of the three following features. Firstly, Japanese human security policy has been conducted in cooperation with the United Nations and other countries. Secondly, the Japanese government was seeking the entrepreneurial leadership and influence in these policies. Thirdly, the government consistently put emphasis on the aspect of “freedom from want” of human security and limited its initiative to economy related issues. This case study focuses on factors underlying the policy decision choosing middlepowermanship. Prime Minister Obuchi’s leadership backed up his intellectual advisors who were supporting the idea of “human security” matched the political timing brought by the Asian financial crisis and the Ottawa Process in 1997. The constraints and available diplomatic resources led the Japanese government to take the middlepowermanship approach. The government had certain constraints due to the constitutional restraints in military activities and complexity of relationships with neighboring countries. These restrictions on the approaches resulted in Japan pursuing limited initiative only on economy related issues even though the idea of human security contains “freedom from want” and “freedom from fear.” Combining with the existing Japanese Official Development Assistance (ODA) policies and upcoming ODA policy reform realized the human security as a large scale international initiative, such as the Trust Found for Human Security. In the international sphere, support from other countries and the UN made it possible for Japan to conduct such large scale international policy conducted by Japan.

I en allt mer globaliserad värld ökar konkurrensen då fler företag ska tävla om de kunder som efterfrågar de produkter som erbjuds. Den ökande globaliseringen medför dock inte enbart negativa effekter för företag. En ny möjlighet ges till att lära sig av andra mer framgångsrika företag och ta del av vad som utmärker dem. Det japanska begreppet kaizen anses vara en del av vad som ligger bakom de japanska företagens framgångar och deras starka position på den internationella marknaden. Men vad är då kaizen? Detta är en av de frågor som vi försöker besvara i denna uppsats där begreppets ursprung, användningsområde samt vilka effekter som kan uppnås genom kaizen undersöks. Vi belyser även hur kaizen kan implementeras inom ett svenskt tillverkningsföretag. Denna undersökning har bedrivits genom en kvalitativ metod där ett antal semistrukturerade intervjuer har genomförts. Uppsatsen har en hermeneutisk utgångspunkt då olika texter har studerats och tolkats. Då det under forskningens gång ständigt tillkommit ny information, som varit av betydelse för oss att undersöka närmare, har vi använt oss av en abduktiv strategi där vi växlat mellan att studera vår referensram och empiri. Genom denna undersökning har vi insett att kaizen saknar en klar definition och dess olika benämningar är lika många som de förslag som finns på hur det kan implementeras. En gemensam översättning av ordet kaizen har vi dock funnit i form av ständiga förändringar till det bättre. Kaizen har ett tydligt samband med det produktionssystem som Toyota har utvecklat samt det som i västvärlden benämns som lean production. Divisionen Products inom det trucktillverkande företaget Atlet AB i Mölnlycke genomgår nu ett förändringsarbete där deras tolkning av lean production, vid namn Atlet Operations System, införs. Systemet består av en rad verktyg och metoder som implementeras med syfte att öka företagets effektivitet och där ett av de framtida verktyg som de avser att använda är kaizen. Vi har även kommit fram till att kaizen kan ses som en mentalitet eller ett tankesätt som genomsyrar det japanska samhället. De tankar som råder har lett till utvecklandet av en mängd olika metoder och verktyg som kan hjälpa ett företag att bli mer effektivt och minska sitt ickevärdeskapande arbete. Då andra företag började intressera sig för japanernas överlägsenhet inom produktion krävdes en mer konkret bild av kaizens innebörd. Detta erhölls genom att dokumentera de metoder som utvecklats ur tankesättet. Dessa metoder har därefter exporterats världen runt, bland annat i form av boken the Toyota Way, men även under det mer västerländska namnet lean production. Trots att samma metoder implementeras av de företag som befinner sig utanför Japan ställer vi oss frågande till om kaizen verkligen kan tillämpas fullt ut. Detta då vi anser att kaizen består av så mycket mer än metoder, det är ett tankesätt och en mentalitet som har formats utifrån den kulturella bakgrund som härstammar från Japan.

Adolescent in Taiwan and Japan Drama: Obversation, Interpretation and Consumption

Thesis (M.S. in Meteorology and Physical Oceanography)--Naval Postgraduate School, September 2003. / Thesis advisor(s): Peter C. Chu, Steve Haeger. Includes bibliographical references (p. 73-77). Also available online.

Thesis (doctoral)--Hochschule St. Gallen für Wirtschafts-, Rechts- und Sozialwissenschaften, 1995.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1971. / Typescript.

My thesis explores the ways in which Japanese landscape and modern tourism mutually constitute and influence each other. It argues that the reproduction of tourist landscapes is the dynamic relationship between place-images, discourses, and embodied practices enacted in sites. Based on a case study of Asuke, a popular destination in Japan, this research analyses the formation and the practices of tourist landscapes in the context of contemporary Japanese domestic tourism. My analysis considers tourist landscape as a social-cultural construction where shifting social values, meanings and sensibilities are inscribed. It looks at the changing ideologies of societies and the shifting interpretations of place in modern Japan. In particular, the thesis highlights the 'practice' dimension of tourist landscapes in order to investigate how constructed visibility and materiality are used and accepted by contemporary Japanese. Furthermore, I foreground the crucial role of individuals/social groups in the process of development and popularisation of the modern idea of landscape in Japan with the assistance of tourism. By using visual ethnography and interviews, the empirical study of Asuke confirms that the tourist landscape is simultaneously shaped and re-shaped both by visual and textual representations and embodied practices in actual sites. The reproduction of tourist landscapes in Asuke is intimately linked with the sense of ‘Japaneseness'. Such constructed landscapes in Asuke are repeatedly practiced by different social actors through their mobility and visibility. Furthermore, exploring the actual landscape experiences through photography reveals the fluidity of relations between different social positions - the gazer and the gazed. Through attention to the changing forms of representation of 'Japanese landscape' and practices of modern tourism, this thesis explores the potential of the modern notion of landscape to examine the social construction of difference in a non-western society.

This dissertation considers the failure of the Japanese government from 1991 through late-1998 to take measures to bring swiftly under control the threat to the nation's finance system posed by nonperforming loans that arose with the collapse of the late-1980s land-price bubble. While some works plausibly argue that this record of delay, and a larger failure of the Japanese state to adjust its general economic policy strategy, can be attributed largely to a progressive fracturing of a 1950s consensus on basic economic policy objectives between relatively internationally competitive firms and firms more dependent on state protection of their business opportunities, this insight has led few scholars to enquire into the role played by advocates of the policy interests of Japan's most competitive large firms in producing the widely lamented policy of delay on nonperforming loans. Counter to the literature's preponderant emphasis on political pressure from protection-dependent firms as impediment to swift state adjustment to nonperforming loans and other economic policy challenges of the late-20th century Japanese state, this dissertation finds that state officials and expert commentators who in debates on nonperforming loans and closely related policy issues strongly advocated dismantling protections on which large numbers of firms depended and in their stead adopting policies more favorable to the firms best able to weather the harsh economic conditions of the 1990s, displayed willingness to tolerate further delay comparable to (and sometimes greater than) that shown by state officials and expert commentators who advocated greater solicitude for the protection-dependent. This finding is based chiefly on a reading of official Ministry of Finance policy statements, transcripts of hearings of relevant Japanese House of Representatives committees, public opinion polls, reporting and commentary published in two national-circulation and two local Japanese newspapers, and a variety of books and longer articles published in the mass-audience Japanese business press. This finding, I argue, suggests a need for more sustained critical analysis of the role of leading business interests in Japan's political processes, which in turn argues for a closer engagement than is now commonly attempted with the work of Karl Marx and Chalmers Johnson, and for following up some preliminary suggestions in the existing literature of an emergent economic policy dimension of Diet party competition. / text

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, established in 1955, remains the primary site for recuperating and transforming memories of the atomic bombing into a message for global peace. Within the museum’s transcendental politics, American and European visitors are a key presence, evident in the site’s 1994 renovation adding historical context for the bombings, its design as a bilingual space using both Japanese and English, and in its refusal to criticize the United States for their use of the bomb. However, what remains excluded from this global view is a discussion of race, a critical dimension of U.S.-Japanese relations and Pacific Rim colonialism during and after World War II. This thesis utilizes scholarship on cultural memory and cultural trauma to interrogate how the museum has been constructed as a site of post-racial politics. In examining the mechanics of this space, this thesis focuses on the “objects” that the museum describes as “material witnesses,” to interrogate the historical links between Orientalism and cultural trauma. Through a theoretical development of my fieldwork in Hiroshima in 2011, analysis of the space, and relevant literature, I argue that the gaze of Western tourism is fundamental in the construction of Hiroshima as a global, peaceful, and post-racial experience for museum visitors. / text