Ioan Trifu
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ioantrifu.bsky.social
Ioan Trifu
@ioantrifu.bsky.social
Political scientist & historian, specialised on Japan (INALCO🇫🇷- FAU🇩🇪- TUFS🇯🇵)
Researching the transformation of the nation-state, writing on heritage politics, thinking about too many things…
フランス人の政治学者。専門は日本政治史、比較政治など。
Reposted by Ioan Trifu
Were former Japanese Prime Ministers Yukio Hatoyama and Naoto Kan security policy amateurs? Conversely, was Abe Shinzō an expert? How and why do reputations for expertise and amateurism emerge and spread? For some answers, see my new article with Björn Jerdén.

doi.org/10.1057/s413...
The narrative construction of political competence: challenging the expert/amateur binary in Japan’s foreign and security policy - International Politics
Whether expertise or amateurism is attributed to political leaders can play a pivotal role in their success. This article analyzes the dissemination of such reputations, focusing on the perceived fore...
doi.org
November 26, 2025 at 8:29 AM
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This number has caused confusion, earlier data suggested the foreigners commit crimes less than Japanese. It's precisely because of that earlier number, that Tsutomu Ohtsu of Sanseito posed the police a different question, to get a different answer.
November 24, 2025 at 9:07 AM
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Ces propos sidérants de Xenia Federova rappellent à quel point l'empire Bolloré est un monde russe. Comme dans les années 30, les médias d'extrême droite n'ont que le mot "nation" à la bouche, mais œuvrent pour les intérêts du pays qui constitue notre principale menace.
November 23, 2025 at 10:44 PM
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Je ne peux remercier tous ceux qui ont honoré Robert Birenbaum. Il aurait été fier mais aurait dit que le héros ce n’était pas lui, mais ses copains de l’Affiche rouge, les #FTPMOI et les résistants qui laissèrent leur vie pour la France. Eux qui n’étaient souvent que des Français de préférence.
November 23, 2025 at 5:33 AM
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« Ami, entends-tu le vol noir des corbeaux sur nos plaines? »

Merci monsieur, de vous être battu pour notre liberté et d’avoir témoigné jusqu’au bout du danger des idéologies mortifères.

Puissions-nous être à la hauteur du sacrifice de vos compagnes et compagnons d’armes quand il faudra dire non.
November 23, 2025 at 4:29 PM
Reposted by Ioan Trifu
(I'll also add that he was always pretty bad at producing takes on his favorite country, Japan, so from my perspective there's a lot here that's just escaped containment)
November 24, 2025 at 4:08 AM
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Some Sunday ready over on the HGN blog! Today’s new post from @xurvermilion.bsky.social explores the potential of videogames as a way of engaging students with historical research, and key skills in critical analysis:

www.historicalgames.net/students-his...
Why should students care about historymaking in videogames?  | Historical Games Network
We might spend time exploring zora monoliths in Breath of the Wild’s (2017) Hyrule and the tales they speak around kings of old, or snooping through an item’s description (such as a holy great sword, ...
www.historicalgames.net
November 23, 2025 at 1:10 PM
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Fukushima Legacies
National Advocacy and Mothers Against Radiation

/ Ayaka Löschke
link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
Fukushima Legacies
This Open-Access-book focuses on the legacies of post-Fukushima activism, which are linked to significant changes in Japan’s civil society.
link.springer.com
November 23, 2025 at 9:08 AM
Reposted by Ioan Trifu
Like US Army plans officers when they get off the plane in Korea. Reinventing the same defense plans, year after year.
I once knew a Federal bank examiner, and one time someone asked him why we had to KEEP inspecting banks over and over. He basically said every new batch of business school grads invents bank fraud from first principles.
AirBnB CEO calling it “vibe revenue” just 👨‍🍳 😘

The underlying cause of every bubble - debt masquerading as financial innovation - depends on not just short financial memory & speculative neophytism, but reinventing jargon of finance, like how each generation of kids has new ways to say same things.
November 23, 2025 at 2:47 AM
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As Maya Goodfellow shows in "Hostile Environment", this is a recurring theme in the political discourse on immigration. Racism is framed as a regrettable but natural response to a number of migrants arbitrarily deemed to be excessive, rather than a socially constructed and contestible subjectivity.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood made more explicit her argument that when ethnic minorities face racism, "we have no choice but to ask: what is the cause of our division"

Her answer is the level of net migration, 2019-23 causes racism. (She on Monday said it was caused by the scale of asylum)
November 21, 2025 at 5:41 PM
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On May 11, 1950, while working on the Rawlins National Bank in Wyoming, a construction crew unearthed a whiskey barrel that contained a human skeleton with its skull cap sawed off & an odd pair of shoes. Dr. Lillian Heath, now in her 80s, was asked if she knew anything about it...🧵
December 3, 2024 at 5:46 PM
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🎉 New publication 🎉 Why do #youngpeople vote for the #AfD? This question has kept our research project busy for quite some time, so I'm beyond excited that our first article - co-authored with @timonscheuer.bsky.social - is now out in #GermanPolitics! 🤩 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
November 22, 2025 at 9:36 AM
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Not all Koreans are happy w/ this framing. Below, the Hankyoreh newspaper warns against seeing S. Korea as "a military stronghold within a striking distance of China."

"For Brunson, such musings may read like an original 'strategic suggestion.' But for Koreans, they are a matter of life and death."
Perhaps the US views the Korean Peninsula as a military stronghold within striking distance of China. But Americans would do well to remember that the peninsula is also the cherished home of more than 50 million allied citizens.

english.hani.co.kr/arti/english...
[Editorial] South Korea is not a US outpost
The USFK commander overstepped his purview as a soldier in arguing for turning the Korean Peninsula into a launchpad for the US
english.hani.co.kr
November 19, 2025 at 1:11 AM
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With the passing of Rebecca Heineman today, I wanted to share some images from her last, now forever unfinished project. She was working on amazing stuff right up until the end.

It was Dragon Wars remastered.

Jennell Jaquays was art directing.
November 17, 2025 at 11:58 PM
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Les États-Unis ont mené 41 changements de régime en Amérique latine au cours du XXe siècle

legrandcontinent.eu/fr/2025/11/1...
Washington a mené 41 changements de régime en Amérique latine
Au total, 11 pays sur les 20 que compte l’Amérique latine ont vu au moins un de leur gouvernement être renversé par les États-Unis, directement ou indirectement au cours du siècle dernier. Le Nicaragu...
legrandcontinent.eu
November 17, 2025 at 9:58 AM
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"La période que nous sommes en train de vivre n'est pas l'anthropocène, mais le trouduculocène : la période historique au cours de laquelle la figure du trou-du-cul patriarcal, nationalo-égoïste et suprémaciste blanc remplace le sociopathe néo-libéral en tant que sujet dominant."
Die Renten- und Migrationsdebatten erinnern uns daran: wir leben nicht im Anthropozän, sondern im #Arschlochozän: In der historischen Epoche, in der das nationalegoistische, patriarchale Arschloch den neoliberalen Soziopathen als dominantes Subjekt ablöst.
Jenseits von Ethik und Rationalität: willkommen im Arschlochozän
Die Geschichtsphase, in der das nationalegoistische, patriarchale Arschloch den neoliberalen Soziopathen als dominantes Subjekt ablöst: die nenne ich das Arschlochozän.
steady.page
November 17, 2025 at 8:03 AM
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Given that the money raised from this is going to amount to loose change in the government accounts, the only reason it is being proposed is to satisfy the cruellest instincts of the worst voters and media outlets. Gutter politics
Ministers now appear to be confirming in broadcast interviews that they would audit and could confiscate assets (including jewellery) excepting wedding rings from the jewellery that they could confiscate.
November 17, 2025 at 10:46 AM
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« Alors qu’un documentaire sur la figure des «jôhatsu» est disponible sur Arte, le sociologue Hiroki Nakamori interroge la fascination des Occidentaux pour un phénomène pas plus important au Japon qu’ailleurs, selon lui. »
www.liberation.fr/idees-et-deb...
Evaporés du Japon : «La plupart des disparus reviennent d’eux-mêmes la semaine suivante»
Alors qu’un documentaire sur la figure des «Jôhatsu » est disponible sur Arte, le sociologue Hiroki Nakamori interroge la fascination des Occidentaux pour un phénomène pas plus important au Japon qu’a...
www.liberation.fr
November 17, 2025 at 6:04 AM
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NEW: Epstein survivors release the most powerful PSA I have ever seen.

Make this go viral so every member of the House of Representatives sees it.
November 16, 2025 at 11:43 PM
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UNESCO has launched an impressive Virtual Museum of Stolen Cultural Objects - an immersive digital space that brings together over 240 stolen and missing cultural objects in 2D and 3D from 50+ countries — and the voices of the communities they were taken from.

www.linkedin.com/posts/unesco...
November 15, 2025 at 10:54 AM
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#OpenAccess -

Rethinking the ‘Special Relationship’: Examining Japan’s Response to the 2021 Myanmar Coup - https://cup.org/3XfYxc9

- Ryuji Hattori, Sam Baron & Ryan Hartley

#FirstView
November 14, 2025 at 9:30 AM
Reposted by Ioan Trifu
WTF 😳
“There were no political or religious motivations. They were rich people who went there for fun and personal satisfaction. We are talking about people who love guns who perhaps go to shooting ranges or on safari in Africa.” www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...
November 12, 2025 at 4:50 AM
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New piece from Tokyo Review: Writing about Japan's declining suicides, Peter Chai from Waseda University argues that the numbers obscure the unequal distribution of risk www.tokyoreview.net/2025/11/japa...
Japan’s suicide rates decline, but risks persist for youth and women
For much of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Japan faced persistently high suicide rates. According to the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, annual suicides exceeded 30,000 for 14 consecu...
www.tokyoreview.net
November 11, 2025 at 8:15 AM