This study investigates the political consciousness, identity, and cultural resilience of Okinawan emigrants to mainland Japan, focusing on the Hyogo Prefecture Okinawan Association. Using surveys and interviews, it highlights how Okinawans navigate migration challenges while preserving their heritage. Key findings reveal a strong affinity for Okinawa among members who were first-generation Okinawan, while younger generations showed a shift toward broader Japanese identification. Cultural practices, such as Okinawan cuisine and traditional events, have remained essential but were less common among younger members. Most respondents opposed the concentration of US military bases in Okinawa, though views on economic dependency and base removal were divided.

This article examines legislative waffling behavior—where legislators reverse their position between bill sponsorship and floor voting—in the South Korean National Assembly from 2004 to 2020. Using multilevel logistic regression analysis of 21,292 bill-legislator observations across four legislative terms, we develop a novel theoretical framework that disaggregates waffling into three distinct strategic types: dissent (voting against), abstention, and no-show (strategic absence). Our findings challenge US-based theories by revealing that minority party members in Korea exhibit significantly higher rates of waffling across all types, with the effect particularly pronounced when bills are passed as chairman’s substitutes in majority-controlled committees. We demonstrate that ideologically extreme legislators are more prone to waffling, while main sponsors maintain greater consistency throughout the legislative process. The analysis of committee control structures reveals complex dynamics where minority party members face heightened waffling pressures even in committees they control, suggesting that formal institutional authority cannot fully overcome broader power imbalances in consensus-based systems. These findings highlight how Korea’s distinctive institutional features—including proportional distribution of committee chairs, mixed electoral system, and consensus-oriented legislative culture—create fundamentally different incentive structures for legislative behavior compared to majoritarian systems, underscoring the importance of developing context-specific theoretical frameworks for comparative legislative studies.

This paper scrutinizes an early childhood education institution introduced by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey in the early 2000s. Making Quran kindergartens public, which were previously run only by private enterprises and religious sects, marked a new development for the country. In an effort towards building its cultural hegemony, the AKP established Turkey’s first public Islamic kindergartens as a part of its “raising a new pious generation” policy. This article explores the emergence of these public Islamic kindergartens, referred to as “Quran kindergartens,” and analyzes how these institutions form the concept of the “Muslim child” through their educational practices while also contributing to the transformation of the role of mosques in Turkey. The study was based on qualitative research, comprising interviews with educators and parents.

This contribution presents a tight body of evidence – hoards of medieval coins found during archaeological investigations in churches in a confined area of southern Albania in close proximity to Phoinike – whose formations and abandonments date to within a decade or so of one another in the central years of the fourteenth century. A detailed numismatic analysis of the represented coin issues, principally deniers tournois of Arta and soldini of Venice, and of the hoards themselves, allows the authors to draw monetary and historical conclusions. One of the hoards defines in a decisive manner the pattern of coin production at Arta for about a decade after 1323. The presented evidence highlights the administration and the commerce of the territory, and its geo-strategic fate in the face of serious pressures which came to bear on it from all sides during the 1330s and 1340s. The main protagonists in this story are the lords and despots in Epiros of the house of Kephallenia, Zakynthos, Leukas, and Ithaka; the Angevins of southern Italy who had important holdings in the area, especially the island of Kerkyra; and the Byzantine and Serbian empires which took control respectively in the fourth and fifth decades of the fourteenth century.

Two new folios from the Old Khotanese epic Buddhist poem the Book of Zambasta have recently come to light. One folio contains the word dīñu which is thrice attested elsewhere in both Old (dīñi, dīña) and Late Khotanese (dīñä) and has been puzzling. The new attestation provides context which helps to establish the approximate meaning of the word. It also provides a new shape (-u) which establishes the morphology. Most shapes (-u, -i, -ä) attest a second singular imperative middle of dīñ- “to overthink”. This finding improves the translation of several passages. dīñ- appears to be a denominal verb from *dīnā- “thought”, cognate to Avestan daēnā- “view, vision” and related to Vedic dhī- “think, reflect”. The semantic development appears to be “see” → “think” → “overthink”.