Vivian Blaxell - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Vivian Blaxell
Asia Pacific Journal Japan Focus, 2020
Counterinsurgency tactics for winning hearts and minds are key weapons in state efforts to suppre... more Counterinsurgency tactics for winning hearts and minds are key weapons in state efforts to suppress rebellion and the possibility of rebellion. Always predicted on the threat of state violence, hearts and minds counterinsurgency is usually thought to originate in British or French strategies for managing insurgency in their colonies in Asia, especially in suppression of the 1948-1960 communist insurgency in Malaya. However, work with archival data, a genealogical approach to clear, hold and protect population management, which is a key principle of hearts and minds strategy, and careful review of scholarship on Japan's colonial military and governance (especially but not only in Japanese language) indicates that hearts and minds/hold and protect counterinsurgency principles have origins in imperial management of insurgency in Japan's colonies. It is also possible that elements of imperial Japanese "soft" counterinsurgency strategy undergird American and British hearts and minds counterinsurgency strategies in Malaya and South Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s.
The Asia-Pacific Journal, May 5, 2014
Vi vi a n Bl a xe l l Précis :
The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 9, Issue 36 No 3, September 5, 2011
The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty. KenkŠ, c. 1283KenkŠ, c. -1350 When my marri... more The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty. KenkŠ, c. 1283KenkŠ, c. -1350 When my marriage ends I am in the middle of reading Norwegian Wood. Traumatized by the news that Naoko, the enigmatic and troubled woman he loves, has committed suicide, Murakami's narrator, Watanabe Toru, packs his rucksack, empties his bank account and takes the first express train out of Tokyo. For months he wanders through Japan from town to town. He sleeps in doss houses and car parks, stations, and on beaches, eats anything or not all. Movement is meant to be the antidote to Watanabe's trauma and sorrow, and what Watanabe does inspires me. Shocked and grieving, I travel. I go back to Japan planning to leave my sorrow behind me, dump it in the exhaust of Pratt and Whitney jet engines, meditate it away at a Zen temple, return to the safety of a land that was once my home, forget the loss in work and weeks of wandering throughout southwestern Honshū. But once I go, what I find in Japan is more sorrow than I have ever known, more loss than it seems possible for any community to sustain. In my quest to escape my own sorrow I find many other sorrows layered across time and space in a Japan deeply etched by the traumas of catastrophe, traumatic memory and history. Once I am there in Japan, it is all so sad or so enduring in the sadness, that my own grief at losing the person I love more than any other is simultaneously exacerbated and absorbed by it.
The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty. KenkŠ, c. 1283KenkŠ, c. -1350 When my marri... more The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty. KenkŠ, c. 1283KenkŠ, c. -1350 When my marriage ends I am in the middle of reading Norwegian Wood. Traumatized by the news that Naoko, the enigmatic and troubled woman he loves, has committed suicide, Murakami's narrator, Watanabe Toru, packs his rucksack, empties his bank account and takes the first express train out of Tokyo. For months he wanders through Japan from town to town. He sleeps in doss houses and car parks, stations, and on beaches, eats anything or not all. Movement is meant to be the antidote to Watanabe's trauma and sorrow, and what Watanabe does inspires me. Shocked and grieving, I travel. I go back to Japan planning to leave my sorrow behind me, dump it in the exhaust of Pratt and Whitney jet engines, meditate it away at a Zen temple, return to the safety of a land that was once my home, forget the loss in work and weeks of wandering throughout southwestern Honshū. But once I go, what I find in Japan is more sorrow than I have ever known, more loss than it seems possible for any community to sustain. In my quest to escape my own sorrow I find many other sorrows layered across time and space in a Japan deeply etched by the traumas of catastrophe, traumatic memory and history. Once I am there in Japan, it is all so sad or so enduring in the sadness, that my own grief at losing the person I love more than any other is simultaneously exacerbated and absorbed by it.
Asia Pacific Journal Japan Focus, 2020
Counterinsurgency tactics for winning hearts and minds are key weapons in state efforts to suppre... more Counterinsurgency tactics for winning hearts and minds are key weapons in state efforts to suppress rebellion and the possibility of rebellion. Always predicted on the threat of state violence, hearts and minds counterinsurgency is usually thought to originate in British or French strategies for managing insurgency in their colonies in Asia, especially in suppression of the 1948-1960 communist insurgency in Malaya. However, work with archival data, a genealogical approach to clear, hold and protect population management, which is a key principle of hearts and minds strategy, and careful review of scholarship on Japan's colonial military and governance (especially but not only in Japanese language) indicates that hearts and minds/hold and protect counterinsurgency principles have origins in imperial management of insurgency in Japan's colonies. It is also possible that elements of imperial Japanese "soft" counterinsurgency strategy undergird American and British hearts and minds counterinsurgency strategies in Malaya and South Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s.
The Asia-Pacific Journal, May 5, 2014
Vi vi a n Bl a xe l l Précis :
The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 9, Issue 36 No 3, September 5, 2011
The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty. KenkŠ, c. 1283KenkŠ, c. -1350 When my marri... more The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty. KenkŠ, c. 1283KenkŠ, c. -1350 When my marriage ends I am in the middle of reading Norwegian Wood. Traumatized by the news that Naoko, the enigmatic and troubled woman he loves, has committed suicide, Murakami's narrator, Watanabe Toru, packs his rucksack, empties his bank account and takes the first express train out of Tokyo. For months he wanders through Japan from town to town. He sleeps in doss houses and car parks, stations, and on beaches, eats anything or not all. Movement is meant to be the antidote to Watanabe's trauma and sorrow, and what Watanabe does inspires me. Shocked and grieving, I travel. I go back to Japan planning to leave my sorrow behind me, dump it in the exhaust of Pratt and Whitney jet engines, meditate it away at a Zen temple, return to the safety of a land that was once my home, forget the loss in work and weeks of wandering throughout southwestern Honshū. But once I go, what I find in Japan is more sorrow than I have ever known, more loss than it seems possible for any community to sustain. In my quest to escape my own sorrow I find many other sorrows layered across time and space in a Japan deeply etched by the traumas of catastrophe, traumatic memory and history. Once I am there in Japan, it is all so sad or so enduring in the sadness, that my own grief at losing the person I love more than any other is simultaneously exacerbated and absorbed by it.
The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty. KenkŠ, c. 1283KenkŠ, c. -1350 When my marri... more The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty. KenkŠ, c. 1283KenkŠ, c. -1350 When my marriage ends I am in the middle of reading Norwegian Wood. Traumatized by the news that Naoko, the enigmatic and troubled woman he loves, has committed suicide, Murakami's narrator, Watanabe Toru, packs his rucksack, empties his bank account and takes the first express train out of Tokyo. For months he wanders through Japan from town to town. He sleeps in doss houses and car parks, stations, and on beaches, eats anything or not all. Movement is meant to be the antidote to Watanabe's trauma and sorrow, and what Watanabe does inspires me. Shocked and grieving, I travel. I go back to Japan planning to leave my sorrow behind me, dump it in the exhaust of Pratt and Whitney jet engines, meditate it away at a Zen temple, return to the safety of a land that was once my home, forget the loss in work and weeks of wandering throughout southwestern Honshū. But once I go, what I find in Japan is more sorrow than I have ever known, more loss than it seems possible for any community to sustain. In my quest to escape my own sorrow I find many other sorrows layered across time and space in a Japan deeply etched by the traumas of catastrophe, traumatic memory and history. Once I am there in Japan, it is all so sad or so enduring in the sadness, that my own grief at losing the person I love more than any other is simultaneously exacerbated and absorbed by it.