Sociological Studies of Nation-racial Attitudes of Japanese People in Wartime Japan

1985 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 59410004
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for General Scientific Research (A)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Research Field: 社会学(含社会福祉関係)
• Research Institution: Kyoto University
• Principal Investigator: NAKA Hisao 京都大学, 文, 教授 (80025030)
• Project Period (FY): 1984 – 1985
• Keywords: nationality / Japanese society / 戦時

Research Abstract

Studies of World War 2 have remarkably developed in the disciplines such as politics, history and economics. It may be doubtful, however, whether sociologists are even now able to contribute to the studies of World War 2, or not. So we organized a research group of sociologists of Kyoto University, looking for new perspectives in this sphere, .
The activities of this group have been as follows ; 1) we have collected literature and documents that might be lost sooner or later, if sociologists like us did not collect, 2) based on interview researches ( e.g. interviews with foreigners in Japan, emigrants to Manchuria, Japanese christian soldiers and so on ) as well as investigations of official and private documents, each member of the group pursued their own themes.
Main themes in which we have obtained results are as follows ; 1) nationracial awareness of Japanese people in pre- and in World War 2 , 2) social structure : relations among the army, the Diet and buraucracy in Japan, 3) Japanese people's experiences of encounters with other cultures and races (ethnic groups) in and out of Japan.
From the sociological point of view, we are going to continue the activities of our group and develop the studies of World War 2.