Anime, Manga, Sushi, Teriyaki, J-pop, Harajuku fashion ... these are just some of the cultural exports from Japan that the rest of the world have embraced and Singapore is one of Japan's biggest fans. Singaporeans have benefited not just by being a consumer of the many technological advances from Japan (Mitsubishi, Toyota, Honda, Panasonic, and Sony to name a few) but also shared and learnt through economic, political, and intellectual exchanges over the past 50 years since the start of the bilateral ties between these two nations.In 1868, Japan was the first East Asian country that underwent rapid modernization and its development was shared with Singapore from the 1970s onwards as the Japanese growth model was selectively emulated by the Four Asian Tigers (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan). Currently, as the most advanced economies in Southeast and Northeast Asia respectively, Singapore and Japan will continue to be demonstrative case studies of economic development in the region. There are similarities too between these two countries: an aging population, changing geopolitical realities, mature economies, and environmental challenges. The Merlion and Mt. Fuji is not just a historical account of the bilateral cooperation but also includes honest narratives on what it is like being a Singaporean student on exchange in Japan, an anime and manga fan outside of Japan, and some omotenashi appreciation.

This volume will look into some macro factors that have an impact on gender conceptualizations in China. First, China is a highly-centralized state with a one-party political system that is also an authoritarian strongman regime. Thus, policies (including those related to gender) from the center are promulgated centripetally to provinces, cities, towns, villages, and local areas effectively.In terms of policy-making, the Chinese government noted that they have strengthened the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) guide for women's work, enacted/upgraded rights protection law in the National People's Congress (NPC), actualized mechanisms for women's cause in the Chinese People's Political Conservative Conference (CPPCC), streamlined work systems for effective implementation of national gender equality policies, and augmented the Women's Federation as an intermediary between the Communist Party of China (CPC), the state, and all Chinese women.As productive forces, Chinese women in the socialist era were exemplary models of mothers and career women who treated family life and work as equally important priorities. They were upper middle class to high net worth individuals who showed their successes in juggling both as objects of moral suasion for other Chinese women in state-led publicity. Some of them were touted by the state as ideal modern Chinese women in state media, moral suasion campaigns, and/or propaganda.

This pivot considers the use of porcelain vessels within multi-dialect cultural spaces in the consumption of cooked food in Singapore. In a place of ubiquitous hawker centres and kopitiams (coffee shops), the potteries used to serve hawker foods have a strong presence in the culinary culture of Singaporeans. The book looks at the relationship between those utensils, the food/drinks that are served as well as the symbolic, historical, socio-cultural and socioeconomic implications of using different kinds of porcelain/pottery wares. It also examines the indigenization of foreign foods in Singapore, using two case studies of hipster food – Japanese and Korean. While authentic Japanese and Korean cuisines find resonance amongst the youths of East Asia, some of them have adapted hybrid local features in terms of sourcing for local ingredients due to costs and availability factors. The book considers how these foods are hybridized and indigenized to suit local tastes, fashion and trends, and offers a key read for East Asian specialists, anthropologists and sociologists interested in East Asian societies.

This book analyses how children from transnational Japanese-Singaporean families are educated. The author demonstrates that the negotiated educational pathways of these children have significant bearing on the ways in which individual identities of mixedness may be constructed or contested – where notions of mixedness are necessarily recognised for their inherent fluidity, contextuality and contingency. This interdisciplinary book will be of interest to students and scholars across the fields of education, neoliberalism, globalization, multiculturalism, mobility and cross-border migration.

This book explores critical pedagogy and issues relating to entrepreneurialism, commodification, and marketization in education, and their deleterious effects on student agency and subjectivity. The central theme of the book is a cross-border critical ethnographic study of the shadow education practices of an overseas Japanese business community in Singapore which ​d​​ra​w​s attention to the elaborate extent to which families are engaged in shadow or cram tutoring practices as part of their children’s education, supported by the strong presence of overseas branches of well-established corporate tutoring businesses headquartered in Japan. The author ultimately critiques a banking approach to education, particularly in terms of its oppressive and dehumanizing outcomes, sustained by the inner workings of neoliberal forces and mercantilist ideologies.

By highlighting ongoing progress in structural management, this book of our subseries encourages further research regarding the subject. Companies need sustainable solutions to the pressure to deal with high levels of risk and uncertainty. Many companies face this challenge and, therefore, must find new ways to deal with it. These solutions are often based on digital-influenced techniques. Previously understood knowledge, technologies, and data provide a huge assist with this goal.