In the conduct of prewar Japanese foreign relations, political associations (seiji kessha) – we might also call them pressure groups – exerted considerable political influence, particularly on Japan's relations with China and other Asian nations. One of the best known of these political associations is the Kokuryūkai (the “Amur Society,” also known as the “Black Dragon Society”), which was founded in 1901 and, in 1946, was banned as an ultranationalist association by the American occupation authorities. The Kokuryūkai was also identified as the center of an expansionist conspiracy to steer Japan towards war with the Western powers.

In the absence of detailed studies of the Kokuryūkai, this article aims to clarify the organization's political views and activities and to demonstrate its influence on Japanese foreign relations and involvement in East Asia in the early twentieth century. Drawing on primary sources such as the association's publications and its leaders' memoranda and letters, I show that the Kokuryūkai engaged in intensive networking activities and the accumulation of social capital involving not only Japanese but also Chinese and Korean politicians and diplomats. Nevertheless, I conclude that the association's influence on the origins of the Asia-Pacific War should not be overstated, since its activities reached a climax in the late 1910s and effectively ended with the death of founder Uchida Ryōhei in 1937.

Studies that examine the effects of decentralisation for social change or stasis have placed necessary attention on its institutional dynamics: the ways social institutions have transformed as a result of new governance regimes, or alternatively, how the existing institutional context and attendant power relations determine its actualisation. The second facet of the structure/agency dialectic is often overlooked however, that is, the actors themselves. This article seeks to overcome this lacuna by exploring the effects of citizens' engagement in practices associated with decentralised governance for individuals' understandings of self, society, and their relationship with the state. A comparison of two villages in Telangana, India, and Central Lombok, Indonesia reveals how differences in the distribution of welfare benefits have implications for the potential of such interactions to be sites of creative self-formation. Differences such as the regularity and ability to demand entitlements, preferential versus equal access to resources, and the levels at which citizens engage with the state, may be crucial for processes of subjectification, and by extension, social transformation.

Through an examination of issues arising from mahjong playing, this article explores changes in daily life and popular culture at the turn of the twenty-first century and argues that these changes reflect political, economic, social, and cultural transformations, in which conflicts between individual rights and collective interests have become increasingly prominent. This study discusses issues relating to mahjong from stories at four different levels: individual, community, the city, and the nation, which, respectively, look at conflicts among neighbors, examine the role of the Residential Committee in the neighborhood, observe the responses of the municipal government and official media to the city's image, and reveal the dilemma when the socialist state confronts mahjong issues. From the specific issues arising from mahjong, we can see how the new culture of the market economy in today's China coexists with elements from a more traditional lifestyle.