Japan’s pursuit of counterstrike capability exposes tensions between the self-defense limits in Article 9 of its constitution, the evolution of an exclusively defensive defense posture, and international legal standards. Expanding self-defense to include counterstrike requires reconciling constitutional constraints, strategic necessity, and strict tests of necessity and proportionality under Article 51 of the UN Charter. These pressures show that counterstrike is not a technical upgrade but a fundamental challenge to Japan’s legal identity, strategic doctrine, and credibility in the Indo-Pacific.

The special issue “Governing Deviance in Japan” brings scholarship on governance into dialog with sociological approaches to deviance in order to explore how normative boundaries are constructed, contested, and rendered consequential. We conceptualize governance as the multi-actor process in which conduct is steered through varying combinations of formal regulation, administrative discretion, societal cooperation, and informal control. Deviance, in turn, is understood relationally, encompassing both negative deviance, defined as violation of established norms, and positive deviance, through which actors challenge existing normative orders and potentially contribute to their transformation. The five contributions examine youth deviance, sexual violence, smoking regulation, anti-racist counter-protest, and ideological deviation in subnational politics. Together, they demonstrate that deviance is not merely governed but partly constituted through governance, while norm-challenging actors can themselves reshape governance arrangements. We identify selective responsiveness as a central feature of this relationship: different forms of norm departure are recognized, classified, tolerated, regulated, or marginalized in markedly different ways. The special issue thus proposes “governing deviance” as an analytical bridge between governance and deviance scholarship and shows how examining moments of norm transgression can illuminate broader processes of political, societal, and institutional change in Japan.

Pseudexorchis Yamaguti, 1938 is a genus of opisthorchioid digeneans, which is currently classified as a member of the Heterophyidae. Only one species is recognised in this genus, Pseudexorchis major (Hasegawa, 1935), which parasitises freshwater silurid fishes as adults. The aim of this study is to evaluate the family affiliation of Pseudexorchis based on phylogenetic data. We obtained the sequences of several genetic markers from a single adult specimen of P. major ex Silurus asotus Linnaeus, 1758 from Japan, which allowed us to identify it as a member of a phylogenetic lineage previously named by Miura and Takisawa (2024) as Type B. The lineage Type B appeared as a sister to P. major Type A of Miura and Takisawa (2024). The degree of genetic differentiation between Type B and Type A, mainly based on the cox1 gene partial sequence, allows us to hypothesise the species status of these lineages. The trees based on 28S rRNA, 28S rRNA + ITS2, and ITS1–5.8S–ITS2 datasets were most informative for phylogenetic inferences. In our analyses, Pseudexorchis was clustered with cryptogonimids Acanthostomum yahuarcaquense Cajiao-Mora and Bullard in Cajiao-Mora, Brule, Dutton, Caicedo-Portilla, and Bullard, 2025, Neocladocystis spp., Tanganyikatrema spp., and the nonugens KC489791 and KC489792 (28S rRNA-tree), or only A. yahuarcaquense (28S rRNA + ITS2-tree), or Acanthostomum cf. americanum (Pérez-Vigueras, 1956) (ITS1–5.8S–ITS2-tree); the clade of these species was closer to the clade formed by opisthorchids and heterophyids than to other cryptogonimids. Thus, the presented data do not support the hypothesis that Pseudexorchis belongs to the Heterophyidae and demonstrate paraphyly of the Cryptogonimidae.

This article examines how a consumer health crisis transformed cosmetics marketing in Japan’s emerging beauty industry. By the late nineteenth century, the dangers of lead-based oshiroi (white face powder) were widely recognized, particularly among kabuki actors who suffered visibly from occupational poisoning. Although manufacturers experimented with lead-free alternatives, contemporary observers repeatedly judged them inferior to conventional powders, revealing that safer cosmetics required not only scientific innovation but an acceptable substitute for an established and culturally desirable product. Itōkochōen sought to resolve this problem with Misono Oshiroi, a lead-free formulation distinguished by scientific authentication, imperial association, and an ambitious actor-centered marketing campaign. Through serialized advertorials, promotional booklets, and newspaper campaigns, kabuki actors drew on their professional expertise in cosmetics and firsthand experience of poisoning to translate medical beauty knowledge into practical instruction. The campaign reconfigured an Edo-period relationship between kabuki and commercial beauty for a market increasingly organized around hygiene, scientific expertise, and female consumption. In doing so, Itōkochōen demonstrates how Japanese firms modernized established commodities by combining product innovation with culturally specific forms of commercial persuasion.

This dissertation examines how Western-style confectionery such as caramel, chocolate, chewing gum, and other sweets became intertwined with Japan’s empire-building from the Meiji period (1868–1912) to the early postwar years. While there have been extensive studies on sugar labor, empire, and capitalism, this dissertation focuses on what happened after the sugar was harvested until it was manufactured into delicious confectionery goods. Using a wide array of sources from colonial and corporate archives, science magazines, trade journals, films, artworks, oral history, and diaries, I examine three major confectionery companies—Morinaga, Meiji, and Niitaka—and how the production and marketing of their commodities were entangled with Japan’s imperial expansion. The production process reveals the unexamined colonial networks through which these companies sourced raw materials like sugar, cocoa, and banana powder from Japan’s tropical colony, Taiwan. When these products were sold across the empire, they were marketed alongside messages that embodied Japan’s imperial ambitions and colonial ideology. During the total war (1937–1945), sugar and confectionery continued to play a significant role by sustaining soldiers’ stamina on the battlefield and enticing enemy children to develop affection toward Japan. Altogether, this dissertation argues that Western-style confectionery should be understood as a commodity of the Japanese Empire: its production expanded alongside the empire, while its sweetness, in turn, helped sustain imperial power by functioning as a form of “soft power.”

Japan and South Korea have expanded marriage-related housing policies amid dwindling marriages and childbirths. To examine the extent to which these policies are arranged to support marriage, this article adopts the capabilities approach and identifies key dimensions of housing policy that affect individuals’ capabilities to marry. Despite some merits, the cross-national comparison reveals that they fall short of enhancing individuals’ marriage capabilities. This article highlights that these policies have limited accessibility due to a strict age limit in Japan and more complex legal marital, parental, and economic requirements in South Korea. Regarding direct housing provision, this article finds that stocks in Japan are old – far beyond the average lifespan of residential buildings – and those in South Korea are small and offer inadequate living conditions. Regarding financial assistance, this article underlines the unreliability of direct cash transfers in Japan and low mortgage limits relative to actual housing prices in South Korea.

Variations in diet quality across the lifespan remain insufficiently characterised, particularly in non-Western populations. We aimed to examine age-and sex-specific variation in diet quality and identify associated dietary components and socio-demographic and lifestyle factors in a Japanese population. In this cross-sectional study of 4455 Japanese individuals aged 1–79 years, dietary intake was assessed using 8-day weighed dietary records collected across four seasons. Diet quality was evaluated using the Healthy Eating Index-2020 (HEI-2020) and Nutrient-Rich Food Index 9·3 (NRF9·3). Associations with dietary components and lifestyle and socio-economic factors were examined separately in children and adults, with tests for interaction by age. Both indices showed marked age-and sex-specific variation. HEI-2020 scores reached estimated nadirs at 16·1 years in females and 23·4 years in males, whereas NRF9·3 scores were lowest in early adulthood (approximately 24 years) in both sexes; older adults consistently exhibited the highest scores. Across age-sex strata, the components contributing most to total score variation were dairy, fatty acids, Na and saturated fats for HEI-2020 and Na and added sugars for NRF9·3. Socio-economic disparities emerged early, with higher household income and parental education associated with better diet quality in children. In adults, lower diet quality was associated with lower income and education, smoking and breakfast skipping in both sexes and full-time employment in males. In conclusion, diet quality was lowest in adolescence and early adulthood in this Japanese population, with distinct socio-economic and lifestyle determinants across life stages, thereby highlighting critical periods for targeted, age-appropriate nutritional interventions.

This study examines the use of English grammatical elements in fashion magazines targeting young women published in Japan. A total of 48 tables of contents from three different magazine series were analysed using a list of categories created on the basis of pre‑analysis. These categories include the following: functional words (prepositions, auxiliaries, conjunctions and pronouns), determiners (articles, possessive apostrophe ‑’s and pronouns), inflectional attachments (the plural morpheme ‑s and third‑person singular present morpheme ‑s), and complete sentences. The analysis also found locally constructed forms that comprise an extra plural s, such as gaaruzuguruupu ‘girls group’, in addition to all the listed items. Additionally, the analysis observed approximations to the English system through the attachment of inflectional morphemes and the non‑attachment of Japanese adjective morphemes (e.g. HAPPY NEW ME1). This voluntary incorporation of morphosyntactic elements from English, despite the absence of any linguistic obligation in Japanese, is characteristic of this expanding‑circle context. The nativised forms comprising the distinctive use of s (e.g. gaaruzuguruupu ‘girls group’) indicate more than simple lexical borrowing, as they emerged from the systematic application of an L2 grammar rule. This not only indicates highly advanced code‑mixing but also morphosyntactic transfer from English to Japanese. People’s orientations towards hybrid mixes, exposure to external equivalents, negotiation between exnormative and endonormative forms upon use, actual usages and the subsequent processes of nativisation/stabilisation could be interrelated and require further research.

Imperial Army General and wartime Prime Minister Tōjō Hideki is widely reviled today as a dictator or a war criminal. But in the early years of his premiership (1941–1944), he was a media darling, praised as a decisive leader and a warmhearted human being. This article spotlights wartime storytelling about Tōjō’s past and family life. It shows how media used biographical stories to champion an emotional politics of hope and unite the public behind Japan’s wartime leadership. Lionizing Tōjō represented a cry of hope that a strong, compassionate, and dutiful leader could help Japan escape its wartime crisis unscathed.

We study the impact of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on public pension spending (PPS) in Japan from 1997 to 2024, employing the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach alongside kernel-based regularized least squares (KRLS), a machine learning method that does not require a predefined functional form. The results show that higher EPU is negatively associated with PPS in the long run, while short-run estimates indicate a significant positive association. The KRLS results show a somewhat larger negative association compared to the ARDL model, and estimates across EPU quantiles indicate that the negative association varies across the EPU distribution. Heterogeneity analysis further shows that the negative association differs between the pre- and post-Abenomics periods and strengthens during major global shocks, particularly the 2008 global financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on these findings, we discuss the policy implications and identify directions for future research.

Voters with greater political knowledge are more likely to participate and to make judgements that advance their own interests. This raises a vital question about how such knowledge is distributed across citizens. In particular, how large is the gender gap in political knowledge among Japanese voters? Does measurement influence the observed gap? Using two large-scale online surveys conducted in 2024 and 2025 and fifteen face-to-face surveys fielded between 2000 and 2018, we first show that Japanese women answer questions on political institutions and leaders correctly at rates 10 to 15 percentage points lower than men. Using the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems data Modules 2–4, we also show that the gender gap in Japan is comparable to that in other countries. We then demonstrate that the magnitude of the gender gap depends on how political knowledge is measured. Women are more likely to select DK, and the gap shrinks substantially when DK responses are excluded or when knowledge items related to women are included. Overall, the findings are consistent with those from other countries. While a gender gap in political knowledge is non-trivial in Japan, its size is strongly shaped by the measurement context.

We report a new commensal relationship between oerstediid nemerteans and deep-sea ascidians. A total of six nemertean individuals were collected from the peribranchial cavities of several Styelidae ascidians attached to small rocks at bathyal depths (1,400–1,409 m) off northeastern Japan in the northwestern Pacific Ocean. Phylogenetic analyses based on combined mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI), 16S rRNA, histone H3, 18S rRNA, and 28S rRNA gene sequences placed this species within the ‘Clade Gononemertes’ of the hoplonemertean family Oerstediidae. Previous records of commensalism between nemerteans and deep-sea ascidians are restricted to the genus Culeolus (Pyuridae). The present finding therefore suggests that ascidian-host diversity may be greater in Oerstediidae than previously recognised.

This article aims at describing the sixteenth-seventeenth century Jesuit Japan mission’s finances through its accounting documents. The article demonstrates that accounting documents played a key role in the dialogue with Rome over the mission’s financial management and needs. Portraying a mission dependent on Europe and India to secure its resources, the accounts raise the question of how religious orders managed funds on a global scale. This article provides a detailed analysis of a type of source specific to the Society of Jesus, namely its catalogues. While it was common for overseas missions to purchase goods from Europe or other distant places, the Japan mission was singular in that it also had highly dispersed sources of income, spreading between Europe and Asia. This article demonstrates how the Jesuits of Japan articulated these resources and their disbursements, so that they could meet the material and spiritual needs of their evangelical project. The study of the catalogues thus reveals the challenges faced by a mission trying to manage its finances between Europe and Asia. It questions the order’s ability to design and enforce an administrative and institutional framework that could fit the complex case of globally deployed religious missions.

Esping-Andersen’s (1990) The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism classified contemporary welfare states into three different regime types: liberal, conservative, and social-democratic. Although the welfare regime was used as a broad concept, the operationalisation largely focused on income maintenance programmes in his typology. Intellectual efforts have been invested in testing and expanding Esping-Andersen’s typology. Within the welfare modelling business, Japan is one of the controversial cases, as it was included in both Esping-Andersen’s typology and the East Asian welfare model. This paper provides an up-to-date classification of Esping-Andersen’s typology using cluster analysis. The results show that the patterns of institutional features of income maintenance programmes in 18 OECD countries and 4 East Asian economies did not correspond to Esping-Andersen’s (1990) prediction. Furthermore, this paper uses Japan as an analytical example to demonstrate that more caution is needed when applying the concept of welfare regime to analyse cash benefits.