Since 1995, perhaps with the first TV program called “Love of Taiwan” (Taiwan nian zhenqin), which showcased the everyday lives of the people of Taiwan and ran for fifteen years at the heat of the “nativization” (bentuhua) movement, love has emerged to be the most powerful, if not dominant, discourse in the island nation shaped by a sharp sense of isolation from the international community since the 1970s and the fear of a rising China claiming Taiwan to be its “inseparable...

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In July 2015, an attack took place on a Muslim prayer house in Papua. The origins of the attack were mysterious, and threatened to inflame Muslim groups, who were then said to be planning to send militias to the island in revenge. The national Coordinating Minister for Politics, Law and Security, Tedjo Edhy Purdijatno, said that...

A day before Taiwan’s presidential election in January 2016, more than three million online users watched on YouTube a one-and-half-minute-long video showing a teenage girl with a ponytail and clad in a black sweater bowing deeply to the viewers and reading a script apologetically: “I’m Chou Tzu-yu. I should have come forward earlier to apologize. There is only one China. The...

Hate speech demonstration against resident Korean people, communities, and schools has recently become aggressive in Japan. According to a governmental survey, there were...

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The headquarters of the Kansai Electric Power Company (KEPCO) is only a short walk from the heart of downtown Osaka, but since it is flanked by two rivers, it can feel like an island. It is already dark by six o’clock, and people are beginning to queue up behind a barricade formed by traffic cones. Standing in the unlit space in front of the building, a man holds a microphone, tapping...

This chapter explores how the official concept of Korean nationalism and the unifying myth of Korean-ness are reconstructed through the figures of the Korean diaspora in the 2013 performance titled An Eternal Parting: Fragmented Memories, a Docu-Performance,...

In the past five years, foreign relations between the Philippines and China have deteriorated over the maritime dispute. China sees the Philippine position as a reflection of the U.S. pivot to Asia and ensuing acts of rebalancing China. The Philippines has taken China to court, resulting in fears of economic implications given the trade asymmetry that favors China...

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In early 2015, the Indonesian President Joko Widodo publicly expressed feeling “broken-hearted” and “ashamed” on behalf of the nation (Wartakota 2015). Addressing reporters, politicians, and his countrymen, he announced plans to stop...

Tomorrow, let’s meet directly with immigration officials to convey our wishes. Tomorrow’s rally is very important. Korea Immigration Service of the Immigration Office is the key institution for establishing and carrying out policies related to foreigners. It’s the institution that “holds a sword by the hilt.” Though the weather may be cold, I hope you take advantage...

Ah Shan is a Singaporean Chinese who works at a local coffee shop in Bedok, a housing estate in the eastern part of Singapore. She is fifty-six years old, primary school educated, and speaks very little English but generally can get by in Mandarin. At the coffee shop, she works the night shift from 11 pm to 7 am serving...

In the mid-1990s, urban geographer Neil Smith identified a creeping sentiment, which he termed “revanchism,” hovering over the city of New York. He noticed that vengeful attacks on minorities emerged at the end of the 1980s boom when the urban growth machine got stuck in recession in...

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Since its beginning in the 1990s, identity politics on the Internet has become increasingly visual. Images and memes, still or animated, now constitute much of the most stimulating content online that receive countless likes, spur endless discussion, and sometimes cause hostilities and confrontations offline. This was, however, not entirely anticipated when...

We are living in uncertain and unsettling times, in which the so-called “rise of China” looms large as a key driver of rapid change and shifting dynamics of global power and influence. As David Shambaugh (2013: 4) states in his book China Goes Global, “In two...

The term “inter-Asia” has achieved some degree of currency in recent years, notably among scholars working off what Kuan-Hsing Chen (2010: 101) has discussed as the “geocolonial historical materialism” of encounters between colonialism and local cultures embedded in our histories. Chen is one of the main founding members of the Inter-Asia...

~Abe, Shinzo (prime minister), 35, 41, 60

The series advances transnational intellectual dialogue over diverse issues that are shared in various Asian countries and cities.