1995: a “Black Box” for Reflections on Contemporary Japan
1995, une « boîte noire » pour penser le Japon contemporain
1995年－現代日本を考えるための「ブラックボックス」
Revue « Ebisu. Études japonaises », numéro 64
Abstract
The year 1995 is often regarded as a turning point in the history of contemporary Japan. The country suffered two traumatic shocks in rapid succession: the Kobe earthquake in January and the Tokyo subway sarin attacks carried out by the Aum Shinrikyō cult in March. It was also struck by an economic crisis following the collapse of the speculative bubble in the early 1990. Thirty years later, this issue brings together transdisciplinary perspectives—from case and comparative studies to longue durée analysis—to present a renewed understanding of 1995, reassess its importance and singularity, and confirm or challenge previous work.
Announcement
Scientific direction
Antonin Bechler with the Editorial committee of Journal Ebisu. Études japonaises
Argument
The year 1995 is often regarded as a turning point in the history of contemporary Japan. The country suffered two traumatic shocks in rapid succession: the Kobe earthquake in January and the Tokyo subway sarin attacks carried out by the Aum Shinrikyō cult in March. It was also struck by an economic crisis following the collapse of the speculative bubble in the early 1990s, leading to a profound questioning of the then-prevailing social and economic model. Simultaneously, a political realignment ended forty years of conservative dominance over Japanese politics. Scholars across fields such as history, economics, sociology, philosophy, and cultural studies have conceptualized the paradigm shift initiated around 1995, often focusing on postmodernity and the rise of a post-industrial society.
In this view, 1995 acts as a matrix shaping Japan’s subsequent transformation, yet also as a “black box”—a site of more or less conscious repression. Is there a clean-cut “before” and “after” delineated by that year? If so, what changed? If not, what continuities lie beneath the media-driven façade of drama? What insights do the discourses and studies produced on this period offer for rethinking contemporary Japan, or even the world today?
Thirty years later, this issue brings together transdisciplinary perspectives—from case and comparative studies to longue durée analysis—to present a renewed understanding of 1995, reassess its importance and singularity, and confirm or challenge previous work. The issue also aims to dispel received notions, starting with the idea that 1995 was uniformly negative. Indeed, that year stood at the intersection of contradictory paradigms: economic crisis and bank failures alongside booming industries such as publishing and television, as well as emergent fields like video games and animation. Social crises coexisted with real progress in women’s rights, LGBT activism, and massive civic solidarity following the January earthquake. However promising, these advances were often fragile—followed by stagnation, regression, or political co-optation. These and other phenomena are open for exploration in this issue.
Four (non-exhaustive) thematic axes are proposed:
- Economy and Politics: Beyond the speculative bubble, causes of economic crisis and the “lost decades”; the shift to a service-oriented economy; from the Hanshin-Awaji quake to Tōhoku disaster; political realignments from 1993–96 and the 2009–12 shift, and more.
- Society and Religion: “Social problems” and their media treatment (e.g. katei hōkai 家庭崩壊, gakkyū hōkai 学級崩壊, ijime, futōkō 不登校, shōnen hanzai 少年犯罪, enjo kōsai 援助交…); advances in gender equality; LGBT rights movements; “1995 as a Year of Volunteering”—state co-optation vs genuine civic engagement; Aum Shinrikyō and new religions; mass media excess at the height of their influence, etc.
- History: Memory politics around the 50th anniversary of WWII’s end, the Murayama Statement on Japan’s wartime responsibility, and more.
- Culture: Artistic, narrative, interactive production; limits of publishing industry expansion; the arrival of internet and spread of personal computing, etc.
Instructions to authors
The submissions will be translated into French.
Paper proposals should be sent by email, as an attached file (.doc or .docx), to the following address: ebisu [at] mfj.gr.jp
They should consist of a provisional title and a summary of 2000 characters, and must be accompanied by an indicative bibliography. The author should take care to specify their name, their institutional affiliation and their email address.
Papers will be a maximum of 50,000 characters in length.
Please read the instructions carefully.
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Deadline for declarations of intent: December 15th, 2025
- Deadline for submitting papers: July 31st, 2026
Review policy
Review process: double blind peer review
Average time between submission and publication: 52 weeks
Attached files
Keywords
- japon contemporain, société, religion, histoire, culture, LGBT, économie, politique, 1995, Tokyo, Kobe, Aux Shinrikyô, médias, mémoire
Reference Urls
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.
To cite this announcement
« 1995: a “Black Box” for Reflections on Contemporary Japan », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Wednesday, August 27, 2025, https://doi.org/10.58079/14ipd
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