After 1910, Japan experienced an unfavourable trade balance with Australia for an extended period. The only time that Japan posted a trade surplus against Australia during this period was in 1918, when its exports surged due to the economic boom generated by World War I. However, in the 1920s, Japan's exports of rayon and cotton products to Australia increased, and there were times when Japan overtook Britain's share of exports of cotton products to Australia. After 1932 in particular, Japan's exports to Australia rose sharply as a result of the depreciation of the yen caused by a prohibition on the export of gold, and in 1935, the value of Japan's exports to Australia exceeded 70 million yen. Meanwhile, because Australia's wool exports to Japan rose rapidly in the 1930s, the value of Australia's exports to Japan exceeded 200 million yen and Japan's adverse trade balance with Australia reached more than 100 million yen. Japan's massive imports of Australian wool were spurred by the development of the Japanese wool industry, and the demand for wool from companies in the industry. In terms of Australia's wool export value by country, Britain always held the top position, but Japan moved up to second place in the early 1930s. In Australia, Japanese traders such as Mitsui & Co., Ltd, Kanematsu (Aus) Ltd., Iida & Co., Ltd., and Mitsubishi Trading Co. were extremely active in the wool market. In the wool auctions held in cities across the nation, including Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne, each buyer's allotment of bidding seats in the sale room was decided based on the amount of wool bought in the past 5 years. Because Japanese companies purchased large quantities of wool in the 1930s, they were placed in the upper position in the allotment of bidding seats for many Australian auctions. This paper considers the dramatic increase in wool purchasing by Japanese companies in the 1930s, and attempts to conduct an analysis from the perspective of the allotment of bidding seats in Australian auctions. The study also considers the competition between Japanese companies as wool purchases surged and the effects of the trade protection law against Australia passed in June, 1936 on their wool buying activities.

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How did Australian society project an alternative national image through tourism and promote its engagement with Asia in the 1980s? Australia was not a popular tourist destination before the 1980s, because of its geographical isolation from other affluent countries. However, during the 1980s, Australia found an opportunity to promote alternative national images through tourism sponsored by Japanese capital. This process is exemplified by the development of tourism in Cairns, a small village on the periphery which gained recognition as a tourist destination in the 1980s. This paper focuses on a period during which Cairns underwent dramatic changes (the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s) and investigates: i) The politico-economic circumstances behind the promotion of tourism and attempts to attract tourist developments; ii) Actual social changes in Cairns; and iii) The local people's reactions to tourist developments and the consequences of these developments. The paper concludes that: i) The promotion of tourism was a strategy to attract capital investment to deal with politico-economic problems, rather than a tactic to change Australia's national image. The Japanese bubble economy enabled the people of Cairns to avoid their own economic crisis, in spite of a lack of strategic promotional policies and activities; ii) The citizens of Cairns sought to control development projects. The establishment of resorts lacking in any "Australian" characteristics by Japanese investors aroused ill-feeling from the local citizens. The Australian government could not restrict Japanese investment in the tourism industry, however. Daikyo, a major investor in Cairns, invested in tourism-related facilities (e.g. hotels and golf courses) as well as in the public domain (e.g. housing developments and the improvement of the port facility). Although Daikyo's activities changed the landscape of Cairns, the company did not face strong opposition, because it pacified government officials and residents by means of donations and other benefits. By contrast, the mayor and other citizens of Cairns opposed Toko House due to its failure to gain the approval of citizens for its projects; iii) The tourism industry was once referred to as 'a panacea for economic growth'. Cairns developed its tourism industry without specific strategic initiatives. The industry is now declining, however. Not only has the number of Japanese tourists declined dramatically, but Japanese capital is no longer investing in Cairns. Cairns is now experiencing great difficulty in attempting to maintain its status as one of Australia's most-visited tourist destinations.

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This paper examines a peace movement active in the 1950s and the 1960s, directed by Hector Chalmers, a former Australian POW in a Japanese internment camp. Chalmers led several organisations after the war, ranging from an anti-nuclear campaign to an organisation for exservicemen and women. His case was unique in that the dominant role in representing ex-servicemen and women at the time was taken by the Returned and Services League (RSL), an organization which tended to glorify the war. Japanese and Australian peace organisations tried to support each other in the peace movement after the Second World War, but these collaborations were hindered by strong opposition fuelled by anti-Japanese feeling. The post-war peace movement discussed here, led by an ex-POW, is worthy of study not only in order to enable us to understand the meaning of an ex-POWs wartime experience and its effect on his post-war life, but also to enable us to rethink the past and the future of Australia-Japan relations.

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Gesturing towards the possibility of an alternative area studies, this paper focuses on the genealogy of criticism of Nihonjinron, or theories of 'Japaneseness,' which emerged in the context of 'Australian-style Japanese Studies' in the late 1970s. Hundreds of texts fitting the Nihonjinron category were written by Japanese and foreign specialists on Japan, both in Japanese and English. Usually, such texts argued for and emphasized the uniqueness of Japanese society. In particular after the rise of the Japanese economy in the late 1970s, these texts often tried to explain the uniqueness of Japanese society as underlying its economic 'miracle' in nationalistic tones, while Japanese scholars who obtained their Ph.D.s overseas critiqued such trends. In this paper, I focus on the works of 'border-crossing intellectuals' such as Sugimoto Yoshio, Yoshino Kosaku, and Iwabuchi Koichi. Focusing upon such figures, I argue that their specific scholarly initiatives were centered around Australia, and were directed against the conventional Japanese Studies established in the United States within the context of post-war Japan-US relations. They were also critical of the idea of modernity which underlies Japanese Studies in the United States, and self-reflexive in their attempt to formulate alternative images of Japan. However, we can still observe exclusivist nationalism involving ethnocentric interpretations of Japanese culture in today's Japan. This cultural essentialism is derived from a certain understanding of area studies, and functions as a logic calling for the elimination of ethnic minorities today. Such exclusivist movements and ideologies are deployed by a fearful majority who can no longer recognize themselves as members of the Japanese middle class amid a situation of rapid globalization. This seems to indicate that we need alternative ways to understand localness. Based on the efforts of the border-crossing intellectuals mentioned above, I would like to seek an alternative mode of depicting 'areas' by deploying the idea of 'liquid area studies' advocated by Tessa Morris-Suzuki. This concept does not try to grasp areas and their cultures as something essential and solid, but rather focuses on how areas are constructed by the flows of global economic, political, and social power. From such a perspective, and in order to develop an alternative view of areas, this paper focuses on local minorities, which are often excluded in the process of constructing local identities.

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This paper considers the Yorta Yorta people's actions to secure a role in the management of river and forest resources located at the middle basin of the Murray River on the Victoria - New South Wales border. First, the paper briefly reviews political action by the Yorta Yorta in relation to the history of their land rights struggle. Following this, it examines a recent Yorta Yorta movement focusing on the Co-operative Management Agreement between the Yorta Yorta Nation Aboriginal Corporation and the State of Victoria, which was reached in 2004. In so doing, it analyzes the concept of environmental management and the relationship among each stakeholder from the perspective of accounts by Yorta Yorta people, local non-Aboriginal people, and the staff of environmental NGOs, in addition to government reports and opinions from each stakeholder. By means of this examination, the paper shows that the Yorta Yorta people's struggle for environmental management has not been taking place within the conventional binary opposition between White and Black, but in a situation of interaction with individuals and groups from diverse backgrounds. It also shows that the Yorta Yorta movement is becoming more broadly accepted in the wider society, but that this universalization of the Yorta Yorta people's struggle as an environmental movement is a threat to the way outsiders view the Yorta Yortas' authenticity as indigenous people. The Yorta Yorta people have therefore been forced to attempt to enhance their authenticity as 'real' indigenous people in order to persuade non-indigenous people to recognize their struggle for control of their environment and their social situation.

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