2012 - 2013 Academic Year
August 5-10, 2012
Conference / Workshop: Architecture.Energy.Japan.2012
Organizer: Dana Buntrock, Architecture, UC Berkeley
New conversations between practicing architects, engineers, construction firms, educators and researchers will explore design and simulation, regulation and policy, sustainable certification and utility and government programs as strategies for achieving a wiser use of energy resources without compromise of comfort or aesthetics.
Keynote Lecture: Japan: Another Lost Decade?
Andrew DeWit, Rikkyo University, Japan
Dr. Andrew Dewit outlined the political economy of Japan's power policy in mid-2012. The Noda regime, backed by the Ministry of Finance and large banks, is attempting to return to the earlier status quo, which remains key to the business models of many extant utilities. However, smaller local governments and innovative capital are strongly incentivized in opposition and Japan's Ministry of Economy Trade + Industry is increasingly aware of a competing economic revolution based on biotech, information technology, and renewable energy. In coddling vested interests, Japan could forfeit its future.
August 10, 2012
Film: Pictures from a Hiroshima Schoolyard
Speaker: Bryan Reichhardt, Director
Moderator: Keiko Yamanaka, Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley
"Pictures from a Hiroshima Schoolyard," is a documentary about the children's pictures from Hiroshima, and the context of their creation. Selected pictures are on display in the exhibit "In the Shadow of Hiroshima" on view at the Institute of East Asian Studies. The film will present war-torn Japan, and the experiences of the Japanese children (now in their late 70's) who drew these pictures. Through interviews and documentary footage of their lives today, these survivors will recount their own memories of the blast, the aftermath of the nuclear attack, school days during reconstruction and the gifts they received from America. The camera will follow them as they reunite with each other and finally with the pictures from their childhood over sixty years ago.
Co-sponsor: Institute of East Asian Studies
August 11, 2012
Special JASC Lecture: Japan: Another Lost Decade?
Speaker: Andrew DeWit, Rikkyo University, Japan
Special lecture hosted by CJS for the Japan-America Student Conference.
September 11, 2012
Colloquium: Hiroshima Maidens and Lucky Dragons: Shaping Japan’s Postwar Nuclear World
Speaker: Elyssa Faison, History, University of Oklahoma
Moderator: Junko Habu, Anthropology, UC Berkeley
In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower made his famous "Atoms for Peace" speech. In 1954 the U.S. conducted the atmospheric nuclear test code named "Castle Bravo" at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, inadvertently contaminating a nearby Japanese fishing trawler. Only three days later, the Japanese Diet approved its first budget for the development of nuclear power. Finally, in 1955 a group of twenty-five young female atomic bomb victims arrived at New York's Mount Sinai Hospital for a series of reconstructive surgeries. This paper will demonstrate how these transpacific events were part of a crucial moment in the development of two imbricated discourses, a scientific discourse and a discourse on peace and Japan's unique role in promoting it, and analyze how the masculinization of the discourse of "science" (in its nationalist frame) was closely tied to the feminization of narratives of "peace."
September 14, 2012
Colloquium: Archaeological Reconstructions of Jomon Period Dwellings in Japan
Speaker: John Ertl, Kanazawa University; Visiting Scholar, CJS
Moderator: Junko Habu, Anthropology, UC Berkeley
This talk examines the practice of prehistoric architectural reconstruction in Japan. The pit house has become one of the most emblematic features of Jomon culture — perhaps second to cord-marked pottery — and hundreds of examples may be found at historical parks throughout the country. As such, these buildings are an essential aspect of the contemporary image of the Jomon period, but one that is only partially informed by the archaeological record. These reconstructions are considered archaeological interpretations, in that any one site or feature provides only limited information on the original shape, materials, and construction techniques. Evidence is thus drawn from a number of sources involving collaboration amongst specialists from fields including architecture, history, ethnology, engineering, and natural sciences. This talk centers on reconstructions at Goshono, a middle-Jomon period site unique for the discovery of burnt remains in 1997 that provided the first evidence of dirt-covered roofs on Jomon pit houses. The research and activities at Goshono are framed in this talk as representative of an increasing "diversity" of contexts in which archaeological knowledge is produced. Specifically, "diversity" is used to reference a broadening of interpretative strategies, the multiplicity of collaborators and audiences, and a sharp increase in the amount and types of data used in analyses.
September 28, 2012
Graduate Student Panel: Bakai
Moderator: George Lazopoulos, History, UC Berkeley
Warriors and the Law: The Goseibai Shikimoku and the Maturing Kamakura Bakufu
Christoffer R. Bovbjerg, History
Responding to 3.11: Parody, Comparison, and the Search for a Language of Disaster
Shelby Oxenford, East Asian Languages and Cultures
The Depopulation of Rural Japan
Grant Schechner, Group in Asian Studies
October 12, 2012
Colloquium: The Afterlife of a Material Object: The Mysterious Gold Seal of 57 C.E.
Speaker: Joshua Fogel, History, York University
According to the Later Han History, in the year 57 the emperor presented an emissary from what is now Japan with a gold seal and accompanying cord. The seal promptly disappeared from history until 1784 when a farmer in Kyushu discovered it while repairing an irrigation ditch in his rice paddy. Since then over 350 books and articles have been written about the seal (roughly one inch square at the base). The historiography can be broken down into four waves represented by distinctive attributes, including the view that the seal is entirely bogus. The gold seal is the first material object to pass between representative governments of "China" and "Japan," and the first instances of Chinese characters making their way to the archipelago from the mainland. It now rests in permanent display in the Fukuoka City Museum.
October 16, 2012
Colloquium: Prisoners’ Rights in Japan: A Tale of Two Detention Bills
Speaker: Silvia Croydon, Graduate School of Law, Kyoto University
Moderator: Andrew Barshay, History, UC Berkeley
Japan's prison system is one of the most orderly in the world. Within it, incidents of homicide or serious injury to prison staff and inmates rarely happen. In each of the years from 1998 to 2005, for example, there were no more than two reported assaults on prison staff and 15 inmate-on-inmate attacks across the entire network of Japanese prisons, which consists of an inmate population of approximately 60,000-70,000. Maintaining such an environment is something that the Japanese Ministry of Justice is extremely proud about. Some have suggested, however, that this order and safety comes at the price of violating the inmates' basic rights. With a view to making the debate on Japan's prison policies more informed, this talk will offer an empirical examination of the processes through which the concerns for safety and security in Japan are balanced against efforts to protect the rights of inmates.
October 24, 2012
Colloquium: The U.S.-Japan Relationship and Global Social Innovation
Speaker: Toshiya Hoshino, International Public Policy, Osaka University
Discussant: T.J. Pempel, Political Science, UC Berkeley
In this talk, Professor Hoshino will contrast two world-views, a state-centric perspective based on national sovereignty and power rivalry among states and a more solidarist perspective on resolving common global problems. He contends that we stand at a crossroads in our understanding of how to build a sustainable future world order. Close bilateral relations between the United States and Japan, based on the security alliance plus common values and interests, can provide public goods to maintain a balance of power in Asia, spur technological innovation, and promote a more just world order.
November 6, 2012
Colloquium: The Rise of China and Japan-South Korea Relations: Potentials vs. Obstacles
Speaker: Yoshihide Soeya, Political Science, Faculty of Law, Keio University
The spectacular rise of China gives rise to two divergent trends of the time. For one thing, the rise of China is the result of China pursuing open door and reform policies within the liberal international order where Japan, as well as South Korea in more recent years, has had an important role to play. At the same time, however, "the China-centric nationalism" seems to be on the rise as well, explicit in its assertion of territorial claims dating back into "ancient times" of Chinese domination, implying a paradigm clash with the liberal international order. How should Japan and South Korea cope with these apparently contradictory realities associated with the rise of China?
November 13, 2012
Panel: Women’s Activism and Post-3.11 Japan
Women and Youth Leading the Grassroots Movements in Post-3.11 Japan
Yasuo Goto, Fukushima University
Nobuyo Goto, Fukushima Medical University
Fall of Mainstream Media and Rise of Citizen Centered Independent Media
Hiroko Aihara, Freelance Journalist, Fukushima
Fight Against Radiation Contamination as a Family Farmer in Solidarity with Consumers
Ayumi Kinezuka, Shizuoka Family Farmers Movement
Grassroots Women's Actions for Peace and a Nuclear Free World
Hisae Ogawa, Codepink Osaka
November 15, 2012
Japanese Performance Night: Koyo Culture Show
In collaboration with: East Asian Languages and Cultures Undergraduate Student Association (EALC USA) and the Nikkei Student Union (NSU)
世界に一つだけの花 (A Flower Unlike Any Other in the World)
上を向いて歩こう (Sukiyaki)
Nikkei Choral Ensemble
Rakugo Performance
Akiko Oguchi
Matsuri Danshaku
NSU Yosakoi
Kimono Lecture & Demonstration
Akiko Oguchi and Hisae Ogawa
November 16, 2012
Colloquium: Constructing “Home” in Transnational Spaces: The Case of Japanese-Pakistani Muslim Families
Speaker: Masako Kudo, Cultural Anthropology, Kyoto Women’s University
This presentation explores the ways in which the lives of Japanese-Pakistani Muslim families expand across national boundaries as their life-cycles evolve. This type of family increased in number following the influx of Pakistani labor migrants to Japan in the late 1980s. Upon marriage to Pakistani men, the vast majority of the Japanese spouses converted to Islam, and consequently, religion became one of the main factors that affected the process of family making.
Besides examining the changes that took place after marriage, this presentation will also focus on the recent tendency for these mixed households to cross national boundaries as the offspring grow up, namely, the pattern where the Japanese wives and the children relocate to Pakistan or to a third country, leaving their migrant husbands behind in Japan. What are the motives behind this transnational dispersal of the family, and how is such a move made possible? Furthermore, what are the limitations and possibilities involved in the transnational practices? By using longitudinal data obtained through in-depth interviews with a number of Japanese spouses, this presentation aims to illustrate the complex dynamics involved in family making in this type of newly emerging cross-border marriage in contemporary Japan.
January 30, 2013
Graduate Student Panel: Bakai
Moderator: George Lazopoulos, History, UC Berkeley
Background Aesthetics and the Problem of Actionable Worlds in 1990s Japanese Role-Playing Games
Michael Craig, East Asian Languages and Cultures
Record of Dying Days: Ôoku as Alternate History
Andrea Horbinski, History
Poetry and Diplomacy in Early Heian: The Embassy of Wang Hyo-ryŏm from Parhae to the Kōnin Court
Brendan Morley, East Asian Languages and Cultures
February 1, 2013
Colloquium: What is Otaku? The Changing Meanings of Otaku in Japan
Speaker: Taishin Ikeda, Konan Women’s University; Visiting Scholar, CJS
Now, the term, otaku, is widely known all over the world, but the meanings the term indicates aren't entirely clear. In fact, its meanings changed over time. In this presentation, I will examine the change in the meanings and images of otaku in Japanese contexts. The term became popular in Japanese society at the end of 1980's. At that time, it had very negative connotations. After that, as the situation around ACG culture has varying, the meanings, images, and evaluations of otaku are changing together. Finally, I will address the definition of otaku according to my own ideas. In addition, I will explain a new representation about Japanese women. It is called Joshi (女子). Joshi is a very old term, but it has acquired new meanings and is often used in contemporary Japanese media. I would like to examine what this Joshi is and what problem it offers to Japanese culture.
February 7-8, 2013
Conference: Media Histories / Media Theories and East Asia
Organizer: Miryam Sas, Film & Media Studies, UC Berkeley
In February 2013, UC Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive will hold a retrospective of the films of Art Theatre Guild (ATG), Tokyo's center of cinematic innovation from 1961-1988. This conference takes this opportunity, in conjunction with this film series and several exhibitions on Japanese arts, to bring together five invited media theorists from Japan, the prominent film director Hani Susumu from ATG, and scholars from the U.S. and Europe to discuss Japanese and East Asian cross-cultural developments in media theory and culture from the early twentieth century to the present.
The Media Histories / Media Theories & East Asia conference brings together prominent and emerging scholars to discuss Japanese and East Asian cross-cultural developments in media theory and culture from the early twentieth century to the present. The symposium will read East Asian film and visual arts as part of a changing media landscape in relation to commercial cinema, television, and intermedia arts as well as political, economic and cultural transformations. We encourage submissions on topics such as: the relation between urban space and the arts in cultural politics; reading the problems of film audience and reception; the important (and neglected) role of East Asian film and media theory and critical writings; East Asian arts movements in transnational perspective; film and visual art as a mediator of cultural/political history; avant-garde artist networks, commercial culture, and architectural transformation. The symposium aims to foster transnational and local scholarly perspectives on East Asian arts and media theory in the context of recent cross-disciplinary arguments in film and media studies.
Co-sponsors: Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Berkeley East Asia National Resource Center, Center for Chinese Studies, Arts Research Center
February 8-9, 2013
Berkeley Japan Prize: Ryuichi Sakamoto
The Center for Japanese Studies welcomes Ryuichi Sakamoto, internationally-acclaimed musician, composer, producer and activist, to campus as the winner of the 3rd Berkeley Japan Prize. The Berkeley Japan Prize, established in 2008, is a lifetime achievement award from the Center for Japanese Studies to an individual who has made significant contributions in furthering the understanding of Japan on the global stage.
February 8
Colloquium: Ryuichi Sakamoto, Composer Colloquium
Speaker: Ryuichi Sakamoto
Moderator: Ken Ueno, Department of Music, UC Berkeley
Organizer: Department of Music
Berkeley Japan Prize Award Ceremony
Private ceremony awarding Sakamoto with the Berkeley Japan Prize, held at the Women’s Faculty Club.
February 9
Panel: Eco-Activism in Japan and the U.S. Post-Fukushima
Moderator: Junko Habu, Anthropology, UC Berkeley
Ryuichi Sakamoto is well known for his involvement in No Nukes activism. He wrote the score for Alexei and the Spring (2002), a documentary film about the aftermath of Chernobyl, and organized the No Nukes Concert 2012 in Japan. In honor of Sakamoto's contributions to the rise of eco-activism, especially in the Post-Fukushima accident era, the Center for Japanese Studies hosts a panel of prominent scholars and activists, to be followed by comments from Sakamoto.
Nuclear Power: A False Solution to a Systemic Crisis
Fritjof Capra, Center for Ecoliteracy
Nuclear Disaster: The Marshall Islands Experience & Lessons for a Post-Fukushima World
Barbara Rose Johnston, Center for Political Ecology
The Birth of Eco-Activism: Defending Livelihood and the Global Body
Brett L. Walker, Montana State University, Bozeman
Comments: Dana Buntrock, Architecture, UC Berkeley; Laura Nader, Anthropology, UC Berkeley
Ryuichi Sakamoto LIVE – Solo Piano + Talk
Guest appearance: Ken Ueno, Department of Music, UC Berkeley
For this rare Bay Area appearance, Sakamoto performs with Ken Ueno (Associate Professor, Department of Music at UCB, Composer/Vocalist), followed by a solo piano concert.
Co-sponsors: Japan Foundation, Department of Anthropology, Department of Music
February 11, 2013
Colloquium: Law and/or Justice in Island Disputes in East Asia
Speaker: Tetsuya Toyoda, International Law, Akita International University
The remaining three major territorial disputes in East Asia are over small islands, the Dokdo/Takeshima dispute between the Republic of Korea (and DPRK) and Japan, the Senkaku/Diaoyutai dispute between Japan and China (and Taiwan), and the Paracel and Spratly dispute between China (and Taiwan), Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines. With the rise of nationalism in East Asia, the disputes over those islands have become serious impediments to regional cooperation. One of reasons of unease comes from the fact that the rules of modern international law for territorial demarcation are not fit to the sense of justice of the peoples in East Asia.
This presentation is about possible solutions best fit to the sense of justice, and thus least unacceptable, in the region, with particular attention to Art. 121(3) of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea which provides that rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zone or continental shelf.
February 20, 2013
Colloquium: Tsuneno’s Journey: Households, Networks, and the Limits of the Ordinary in Early Modern Japan
Speaker: Amy Stanley, History, Northwestern University
Moderator: Mary Elizabeth Berry, History, UC Berkeley
Tsuneno, daughter of a Shin priest in a small Echigo village, had an unexpectedly interesting life that produced a large volume of correspondence. Over the course of the 1830's and '40's, she married twice, divorced twice, ran away to Edo, worked as a waitress, took up with a gangster who extorted her family, married a down-and-out masterless samurai, and finally entered the service of the famous Edo city magistrate Toyama Kinshiro. Her brothers, despairing of her behavior, called her a selfish idiot, but she insisted that she was a filial daughter. This talk investigates Tsuneno's life (and its paper trail) in order to ask: What was the Tokugawa-era household (ie), and what did it mean to its members? And how might a revaluation of the "household system" join the typically small-scale, intimate histories of Tokugawa women to broader narratives about social and economic change in early modern Japan?
February 28, 2013
Colloquium: Why Did Japan Stop Growing?
Speaker: Takeo Hoshi, Japan Studies, Stanford University
The talk will be based on Takeo Hoshi's NIRA reports with Anil Kashyap in 2011 and 2012. Hoshi will start by arguing that Japan's stagnation in the last 20 years was a result of the failure to respond to the new challenges that started to emerge in the 1970s (i) end of catching up process, (ii) limit of export led growth in the post Breton Woods system, and (iii) rapid aging. In addition, Japanese government and the BOJ made mistakes of (i) not addressing the non-performing loans problem sooner, (ii) expanding fiscal expenditure too much and on wasteful investments, and (iii) keeping the monetary policy too tight to allow deflation. Then, Hoshi argues that Japan needs more than expansionary macroeconomic policy to restore the growth. More concretely, he suggests nine policies in three policy areas that can be implemented to help Japan grow again: (1) deregulation, (2) opening up the country to the rest of the world, and (3) improving macroeconomic policy. The deregulation includes reforms to reduce the cost of doing business, stopping protection of zombie firms, deregulation especially in non-manufacturing, and growth enhancing special zones. Opening up policy includes trade opening including the participation in TPP, agricultural reform, and more open immigration policy. Improving macroeconomic policy includes the commitment to fiscal consolidation in the long run and more aggressive monetary policy. Finally, Hoshi will end the talk by evaluating Abenomics using the framework developed for the NIRA reports.
March 11, 2013
Share 3.11: the Great East Japan Earthquake
An event to remember the Tohoku Earthquake that devastated Japan two years ago , and to connect Japan and Berkeley by "sharing" the information using social media.
Please join us between classes on the anniversary of this event [on the Savio Steps, Sproul Hall], as we share information about the disaster and write messages of support to show that we have not forgotten.
Co-organizers: Nikkei Student Union, Cal Japan Club, Issei Okumura (Waseda University)
March 13, 2013
Panel: Japanese Society in Transition: Women, Family and Mental Health Issues
Speakers: Steven Vogel, Chair, CJS; Political Science, UC Berkeley; Susan Holloway, Graduate School of Education, UC Berkeley; Michael Zielenziger, Author and Journalist
This panel discussion will build on the research behind three books: Suzanne Hall Vogel's The Japanese Family in Transition: From the Professional Housewife Ideal to the Dilemmas of Choice; Susan Holloway's Women and Family in Contemporary Japan; and Michael Zielenziger's Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created its Own Lost Generation.
Are Japanese women today more liberated or more constrained than they were in the high-growth era? Are Japanese mothers raising children differently from their mothers and grandmothers? Are Japanese people having trouble coping with an era of greater freedom and choice? Are they under more stress? The panel will address these questions and more, reviewing recent developments in Japanese society.
March 20, 2013
Colloquium: Three Laughers and Six Friends: Designing Contemporary East Asian Gardens in the USA
Speaker: Marc Peter Keane
Moderator: Dana Buntrock, Architecture, UC Berkeley
The cultures of gardening in East Asia are among the most ancient in the world and are still vital to this day. Garden designer, Marc Peter Keane, who lived in Kyoto, Japan, for nearly 20 years will discuss the process of distilling and reinventing East Asian gardens for settings in the United States. The talk will look at two of his gardens: the recently completed Tiger Glen Garden at the Johnson Museum of Art and the Six Friends Garden designed for the Cornell Plantations. The Tiger Glen Garden depicts the tale known as the Three Laughers of the Tiger Glen, an allegory in which people overcoming differences of creed to find a unity of friendship. The Six Friends Garden is a contemporary expression of Japanese, Chinese and Korean gardening and literary culture.
April 7, 2013
Film: Hafu: a film about the experiences of mixed-Japanese living in Japan
Speakers: Megumi Nishikura and Lara Perez Takagi, Directors and Producers
Bay Area premiere of the documentary, Hafu.
With an ever increasing movement of people between places in this transnational age, there is a mounting number of mixed-race people in Japan, some visible others not. "Hafu" is the unfolding journey of discovery into the intricacies of mixed-race Japanese and their multicultural experience in modern day Japan. The film follows the lives of five "hafus" — the Japanese term for people who are half-Japanese — and by virtue of the fact that living in Japan, they are forced to explore what it means to be multiracial and multicultural in a nation that once proudly proclaimed itself as the mono-ethnic nation. For some of these hafus Japan is the only home they know, for some living in Japan is an entirely new experience, and others are caught somewhere between two different worlds.
April 17, 2013
Colloquium: Seamless Space: Home and Temple in the Contemporary Jodo Shinshu
Speaker: Jessica Starling, Shinjo Ito Postdoctoral Fellow, CJS
More than 90% of Buddhist monks in Japan today are married and live together with their families in the temple. In the traditionally monastic sects, a publicly married clergy is a relatively recent development, dating roughly to the turn of the 20th century, and the phenomenon has produced no small amount of anxiety over its seeming incoherence with the ideal of world-renunciation. But in the Jōdo Shinshū, or True Pure Land School of Buddhism, the custom of clerical marriage dates back to the movement's inception in the 13th century, and Shin clerics and their families bring doctrinal resources to bear on their domestic life in the temple.
This talk focuses on the role of the priest's wife (known as the bōmori or temple guardian) in order to illuminate the seamlessness of private and public space and domestic and religious action at the temple. Drawing from Shin doctrinal sources and the narratives of wives themselves, as well as anthropological research on the construction of home and domesticity in contemporary Japan, I explore the implications of the temple family's boundary-crossing existence, in particular the role of temple wives in carrying out this "domestic religion."
Supported/Co-sponsored:
November 30, 2012
Colloquium: New Human Interface for Improvisation and Musical Performance: Ikue Mori Speaker: Ikue Mori
Organizer: Department of Music
December 2, 2012
Performance: Ikue Mori: E@RLY: Sundays at BAM/PFA
Performers: Ikue Mori; Ken Ueno, Department of Music, UC Berkeley
Organizers: Department of Music, BAM/PFA
January 24-26, 2013
Conference: Connected Worlds: New Approaches across Pre-Modern Studies
Keynote: A Supernova’s Starry Spheres and the Intersection of Art and Observation in a Medieval Japanese Painting of the Buddha Tejaprabhā
Speaker: Mimi Hall Yiengpruksawan, History of Art, Yale University
Organizer: Haas Junior Scholars Program at the Institute of East Asian Studies
February 21-23, 2013
Conference: On Location: The Second International Berkeley Conference on Silent Cinema
Keynote: Re-locating Japanese Cinema: The Universal, the State, and the Everyday
Speaker: Aaron Gerow, Film Studies, Yale University
Organizer: Department of Film and Media Studies
April 18, 2013
Natsume Soseki Seminar
Speaker: John Nathan, East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, UC Santa Barbara
The public is invited to join Alan Tansman's seminar on Natsume Soseki in which John Nathan--author of Mishima: A Biography, among other books, and translator of Oe Kenzaburo's A Personal Matter, as well as Natsume Soseki's Meian (light and dark)--will be presenting his thoughts on Soseki and Light and Dark.
Organizer: Alan Tansman, East Asian Languages and Cultures, UC Berkeley