@prefix vivo: . @prefix edm: . @prefix ns0: . @prefix dcterms: . @prefix skos: . vivo:departmentOrSchool "Non UBC"@en ; edm:dataProvider "DSpace"@en ; ns0:identifierCitation "Pacific Affairs 85(2): 406-408"@en ; ns0:rightsCopyright "Pacific Affairs, a division of the University of British Columbia"@en ; dcterms:creator "Kim, Mikyoung"@en ; dcterms:issued "2012-06-27T17:56:55Z"@en, "2012-06-01"@en ; edm:aggregatedCHO "https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/42563?expand=metadata"@en ; skos:note "Pacific Affairs: Volume 85, No. 2 - June 2012 406 ever riskier borrowers, since their best customers left for capital market. He also points to a series of policy blunders by the government that worsened the effects of the bubble, such as the interest rate policy, avoiding cleanup of nonperforming loans, the ill-timed introduction of a consumption tax in 1997, and doing too little too late in the late 1990s stimulus. With their contrasting approaches and very different analyses, particularly of Japan’s postwar political economy, these two books provide effective entry points into interesting classroom and graduate seminar discussions. Stanford University, Palo Alto, USA KENJI E. KUSHIDA University of California, Berkeley, USA JOHN ZYSMAN BUILDING NEW PATHWAYS TO PEACE. Edited by Noriko Kawamura, Yoichiro Murakami, Shin Chiba. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011. xii, 262 pp. (Figures.) US$30.00, paper. ISBN 978-0-295-99103-0. This collective effort to advance our knowledge on peace deserves many accolades. Building New Pathways to Peace is a welcome addition to the field of peace studies, and is a notable improvement of the preceding volume produced by the same editors: Yoichiro Murakami, Noriko Kawamura and Shin Chiba, Toward a Peaceable Future: Redefining Peace, Security, and Kyosei from a Multidisciplinary Perspective (Pullman, WA: The Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service, 2005). While the previous edition makes very important contributions by introducing the Japanese concept of kyosei (English translation: conviviality) as a peace- oriented existential modality, the 2010 volume is more focused in terms of theorizing and themes. As peace is a holistic concept, the field of peace studies is multidisciplinary in nature. This open-endedness is a blessing and a challenge in conducting systematic research, for three primary reasons. First, the existing disciplinary boundaries hinder effective cross-fertilization among pertinent themes. Without the usage of common vocabularies and sharing of core assumptions, the field can entail any topic of, for, and about peace. The wide array of topics ranging from hard-core security strategies to philosophical contemplation of human existence makes a systematic study difficult. Its inclusivity can be a double-edged sword. Second, the academic community has yet to reach a consensus on the definition of peace. Like the air we breathe in, we are supposed to know what the state of peacefulness feels like. Peace as a felt experience exists at an intuitive, not analytical, level. It, again, entails a broad range of analytical levels starting from an individual’s state of mind to the normative trajectory that the human race as one unified entity should aspire to. This aspect Book Reviews 407 calls for further debates on universals vis-à-vis particulars. Finally, peace studies are perceived to be a “para-academic field” blurring the line between scholarly rigour and activist aspirations. This volume takes these challenges in stride and addresses the most pertinent topics related to peace and peace studies. In discussing this volume, let me take the liberty of rearranging the chapters per “unit ideas.” The classification schemes are the reviewer’s suggestion, and can admittedly be arbitrary. “Unit idea,” introduced by Lovejoy (1976) and developed by Nisbet (1993), is an organizing concept that helps analyze a social phenomenon with a more clearly defined set of concepts. A unit idea is different from a hypothesis in that it is not theory- driven. A unit idea also differs from a theory in that it does not attempt to explain, predict or delineate a pattern in parsimonious words. In a nutshell, unit idea is a conceptualized product of empirical observations that serves as an organizing concept for systematic social science research. The unit ideas in peace studies as introduced in this volume include philosophical preponderance elaborated by tolerance, forgiveness and reconciliation and historical perspectives (chapters 1, 2 and 3), peace- building methodologies such as multiculturalism, respect for human security and lessons of kyosei (chapters 4, 6 and 7), peace-building tools such as arts, communicative media, higher education and the functions of state (chapters 5, 8, 9 and 10), and mnemonic praxis as expressed in remembering acts and transnational memory movement (chapters 11 and 12). The unit ideas introduced here are by no means exhaustive. Other perspectives not mentioned here are conflict resolution, nonviolence, religious inspirations, and peace movements among others. Let me selectively discuss the contributions made by leading peace researchers introduced in this volume. Anri Morimoto engages in a very thoughtful analysis of forgiving acts in chapter 2. In the piece entitled “To Forgive Is Human: A Theological Reflection on the Politics of Reconciliation,” Morimoto analyzes the intrigues involving the agencies of forgiveness. In answering the question of who has the right to forgive and who can be forgiven, he argues against the victims’ exclusive rights to pardon and the perpetrator’s lack of repentance as necessary conditions. Morimoto instead suggests that “forgiveness can still be practical, though not perfect, means for our modus vivendi, a way for us to live together without bloodshed” (44). As “to err is human, to forgive divine,” so human beings might aspire to reconcile within our limited capacity. Living with an imperfect state of affairs might be an optimal solution considering our humanly shortcomings. Yoichiro Murakami of chapter 1 shifts the focus to theorizing the interrelationship between structure and function to achieve a more tolerant state of humanity Chapter 6 by Martha Cottam examines the concept of kyosei by deploying the analytical concepts of social categories, privilege and Pacific Affairs: Volume 85, No. 2 - June 2012 408 violence. Social categorization distributes differential amounts of privilege per class- and status-based groupings. Cottam links social inequality to violence by expanding its scope from interstate wars, interstate and intrastate mass killings to the “ordinary violence” to which the socially underprivileged are most vulnerable. The spirit of kyosei can be a remedy for culturally embedded violence, she argues. By the same token, Takashi Kibe calls for decency in building a tolerant multicultural society in chapter 4. Kibe examines the experiences of Brazilian Nikkeijin, a notable minority group in Japan, and asserts that decent peace requires not only cultural sensitivity, but also socioeconomic structural backings. In addition to the chapters on peace-building tools by Reed (chapter 5), Ross (chapter 8), Yamamoto (chapter 9) and Hooks (chapter 10), chapters 11 and 12 shed a unique light on the association between memory and peace. Sun’s analysis of German narratives on self-serving selective memory and Kawamura’s call for transnational memory movement between the US and Japan deserve a careful reading for their provocative insights. Building New Pathways To Peace is a welcome addition to the field of peace studies for its thoughtfulness, comprehensiveness and dedication to build a more peaceful human society. I highly recommend it for the upper-level undergraduate and lower-level graduate courses on peace as well as Japan studies. Hiroshima City University, Hiroshima, Japan MIKYOUNG KIM THE DIPLOMATIC HISTORY OF POSTWAR JAPAN. Edited by Makoto Iokibe; translated and annotated by Robert D. Elridge. London and New York: Routledge, 2011. xiii, 246 pp. (Graphs.) US$150.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-415-49847-0. The original Japanese version of this edited volume is one of the most widely used textbooks on Japan’s postwar foreign policies in Japanese universities. As the editor points out, while several works have been written to date in Japanese on the history of modern Japanese diplomacy since the Meiji Restoration, no book by a Japanese author has been written on the overall history of postwar Japanese diplomacy. Five authors chronologically describe a decade of Japanese diplomacy in each chapter, from the 1940s through the new millennium. All of them are well-known scholars on Japan’s foreign policy (including the translator). Despite the fact that this is an edited book, the contents and arguments are consistent, as if written by a single author. This can be attributed to the fact that all the authors share a sort of core view and understanding on postwar Japanese diplomacy. These views, primarily, emphasize the importance of political leaders. "@en ; edm:hasType "Article"@en ; dcterms:spatial "Japan"@en ; edm:isShownAt "10.14288/1.0045124"@en ; dcterms:language "eng"@en ; ns0:peerReviewStatus "Unreviewed"@en ; edm:provider "Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library"@en ; dcterms:publisher "Pacific Affairs, a division of the University of British Columbia"@en ; dcterms:rights "Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported"@en ; ns0:rightsURI "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/"@en ; ns0:scholarLevel "Other"@en ; dcterms:subject "Japanese political economy"@en ; dcterms:title "Building new pathways to peace : [book review]"@en ; dcterms:type "Text"@en ; ns0:identifierURI "http://hdl.handle.net/2429/42563"@en .