Front Page - Deutsches Institut für Japanstudien

Among the many women’s organisations emerging in late 19th- and early 20th-century Japan, the Aikoku Fujinkai was one of the most prominent. Founded in 1901 by Okumura Ioko to support the Imperial Army through donations and aid supplies, it soon expanded into colonised Taiwan and Korea, where it recruited not only Japanese but also Taiwanese and Korean women as member...

Popular imaginations of Japanese society are deeply intertwined with work, often oscillating between stereotypes of the exhausted salary man and idealized concepts of optimization (kaizen) or life purpose (ikigai). While work has been a celebrated pillar of Japan’s postwar identity, it has also faced scrutiny for fostering inequality and precarity. Beyond the familiar...

The book Unleashing Innovation the East Asian Way. Startup Ecosystems in Japan, South Korea and China (Springer Singapore 2026) provides new perspectives on startup ecosystems in East Asia – a region which has over decades shaped innovation and global co...

Popular imaginations of Japanese society are deeply intertwined with work, often oscillating between stereotypes of the exhausted salary man and idealized concepts of optimization (kaizen) or life purpose (ikigai). While work has been a celebrated pillar of Japan’s postwar identity, it has also faced scrutiny for fostering inequality and precarity. Beyond the familiar...