Hapa Japan Conference 2011

FRIDAY, April 8th

Venue: UC Berkeley Alumni House, Toll Room

Free and open to the public – conference registration required.
Registration begins March 1st.

9:00: Welcome and Opening Remarks by Conference Convener

Duncan Ryûken Williams (UC Berkeley and Hapa Japan Database Project)

9:30-11:45: Session I — Global History and Mixed-Race Japanese

Part-Japanese in Japan and the World, 1543-1859
Gary Leupp (Tufts University)
Professor of History, Ph.D. Michigan; author of Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900 (Continuum, 2003), Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan (UC Press, 1995), and Servants, Shophands, and Laborers in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan (Princeton, 1992)

Japanese Hybridity and Meiji/Showa Influence
Velina Hasu Houston (University of Southern California)
Professor and Associate Dean of Faculty, School of Theater; Ph.D. USC; playwright of Tea, Asa Ga Kimashita, Calling Aphrodite, Messy Utopia, Calligraphy and editor of The Politics of Life (Temple, 1993) and But Still, Like Air, I'll Rise (Temple, 1997); Faculty Advisor for HapaSC

"I Identify All the Cultures Equally": Japanese-Indigenous and Other Mixed Heritage Australians in Northern Australia
Yuriko Yamanouchi (Osaka University of Economics and Law)
Visiting Researcher; Ph.D. Sydney – "Searching for Aboriginal People in South Western Sydney" (2008)

Re-imagining Multiple Identities: Race, Culture, Language among Japanese-descent Multiracials
Teresa Williams-Len (Cal State Northridge)
Professor of Asian American Studies, Ph.D. UCLA; Co-editor of The Sum of Our Parts: Mixed Heritage Asian Americans (Temple, 2001) and No Passing Zone: The Artistic and Discursive Voices of Asian-Descent Multiracials(special issue of Amerasia Journal, 1997)

Discussant: Duncan Ryûken Williams (UC Berkeley)
Shinjo Ito Distinguished Chair in Japanese Buddhism, Ph.D. Harvard; author of The Other Side of Zen: A Social History of Sôtô Zen Buddhism in Tokugawa Japan (Princeton, 2005) and "Camp Dharma: Buddhism and the Japanese American Incarceration during WW2" (UC Press, forthcoming) and editor of Issei Buddhism in the Americas(Illinois, 2010), American Buddhism (Routledge, 1999), and Buddhism and Ecology (Harvard, 1997)

12:00-1:00: Session II — The Celtic Samurai: Storytelling of a Transnational/Transracial Family Life

The Celtic Samurai: Storytelling of a Transnational/Transracial Family Life
Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu (Stanford University)
Consulting Professor, School of Medicine; Ed.D. Harvard – "The Voices of Amerasians: Ethnicity, Identity, and Empowerment of Interracial Japanese Americans" (1987); author of Amerasian no kodomo tachi: Shirarezaru minority mondai (Shûeisha, 2002) and Multicultural Encounters (Columbia, 2002) and editor of Transcultural Japan: At the Borderlands of Race, Gender and Identity (Routledge, 2007) and Japan's Diversity Dilemmas: Ethnicity, Citizenship, and Education (iUniverse, 2006)

Discussant: Keiko Yamanaka (UC Berkeley)
Lecturer in Ethnic Studies, Ph.D. Cornell; author of Feminized Migration in East and Southeast Asia (UNRISD, 2005), and Civil Society and Social Movements for Immigrant Rights in Japan and South Korea (Korea Observer, 2010) and editor of Gender, Migration and Governance in Asia (Migration Journal, 2003)

1:00-2:15: Lunch Break

Food: Hapa Ramen, ~$12/bowl
Owner, Richie Nakano

2:15-4:00: Session III — World War Two, Occupation-Period Japan, and Racial Mixing

Enemies in Miniature: Recovering the Lives of the Mixed-Race Children of Occupied Japan
Walter Hamilton (former Tokyo-based Australian Broadcasting Corporation journalist)
Author of Lest We Beget: The Mixed-Race Legacy of Occupied Japan (2011), Serendipity City: Australia, Japan and the Multifunction Polis (ABC, 1991), and Koala no hon (Simul,1984)

Multiraciality and Migration: Mixed Race American Japanese in Okinawa 1945-1972
Lily Anne Yumi Welty (UC Santa Barbara)
Ph.D. candidate; dissertation title "Advantage Not Crisis: Multiracial American Japanese in Post-World War II Japan and U.S. 1945-1972"

Kant, Miscegenation, and the Biopolitics of the US-Japan Transpacific: Through an Intellectual History of Okinawa's "All Island Struggle"
Annmaria Shimabuku (UC Riverside)
Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Foreign Languages, Ph.D. Cornell – "Securing Okinawa for Miscegenation: A Historical and Literary Discourse Analysis of Amerasians in Okinawa, 1945-2000" (2010)

Discussant: Paul Spickard (UC Santa Barbara)
Professor of History, Ph.D. UC Berkeley; author of Almost All Aliens: Immigration, Race, and Colonialism in American History and Identity (Routledge, 2007), and Mixed Blood: Mixed Marriage and Ethnic Identity in Twentieth-Century America (U-Wisconsin Press, 1989) and editor of Is Lighter Better?: Skin-Tone Discrimination among Asian Americans(Rowman and Littlefield, 2008), Race and Nation: Ethnic Systems in the Modern World (Routledge, 2005), Racial Thinking in the United States (U- Notre Dame Press, 2003), Revealing the Sacred in Asian and Pacific America(Routledge, 2003), Pacific Diaspora (U-Hawaii Press, 2002), and Japanese Americans: The Formation and Transformation of an Ethnic Group (Rutgers, 2009)

4:30-6:00: Berkeley Japan New Vision Award Ceremony and Reception

Venue: UC Berkeley Doe Library, Morrison Room

By invitation only

8:00-9:15: Enka Superstar Jero: A Conversation and Mini-Concert

Venue: UC Berkeley Wheeler Hall

Free and open to the public. 

Part Japanese and part African American, Jero (born Jerome Charles White) is enka's rising star ever since his hit single Umiyuki burst onto the charts in 2008. His albums, Yakusoku (2009), Covers (2008), Covers 2 (2009), and Covers 3 (2010) have been widely acclaimed as he has revived interest in this music genre. Winner of the 2008 Best New Artist Award at the Japan Record Awards and the 2011 Berkeley Japan New Vision Award, he has also regularly appeared on Japanese TV and commercials as well as performing at the prestigious New Year's Eve Kôhaku Utagassen concert twice.

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SATURDAY, April 9th

Venue: UC Berkeley Faculty Club, Great Hall

Free and open to the public – conference registration required.
Registration begins March 1st.

9:30-11:30: Session IV — Okinawa and Racial Spaces

Black-Okinawa: Historical Development and Expression of Mixed Space/Race
Ariko Ikehara (UC Berkeley)
Ph.D. Graduate Student; dissertation title "Meditation on mixed space/race in-between: Black-Okinawa Phenomenology"; founder of BAAD Perspectives (Black-Asian-Amerasian-Diaspora), co-founder of TMABS (Transnational Mixed Asian in Between Spaces)

Nappy Routes and Tangled Tales of Blackness in Militarized Okinawa
Mitzi Uehara Carter (UC Berkeley)
Ph.D. candidate; dissertation title "Base(ic) Bodies and Tours of Duty: Mapping Militarized Space, Race, and Movement in Okinawa"; founder of website – gritsand sushi.com – her "musings on okinawa, race, family, militarization, blackness, and the south" – and the Afro-Okinawan Family Network

Discussant: Wei Ming Dariotis (San Francisco State University)
Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies, Ph.D. UC Santa Barbara; special guest editor of Asian American Literature: Discourses and Pedagogies (AALDP), special issue on Mixed Heritage Asian American Literature; Co-founder of SF chapter of Hapa Issues Forum and Faculty Advisor for Variations: Mixed Heritage Student Club at SFSU

1:00-2:45: Session V — A Changing Japanese-American Community

The New Nikkei: Towards a Modern Meaning of "Japanese American"
Cynthia Nakashima (UC Berkeley)
Ph.D. Candidate; Co-editor of The Sum of Our Parts: Mixed Heritage Asian Americans (Temple, 2001)

We Are No Longer Forced to 'Please Choose One'...Or Are We?
Christine Iijima Hall (Maricopa Community College)
District Director, Office of Equity, Opportunity and Engagement for the Maricopa Community College District, Ph.D. UCLA – "The Ethnic Identity of Racially Mixed People: A Study of Black-Japanese" (1980)

Discussant: Michael Omi (UC Berkeley)
Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies, Ph.D. UC Santa Cruz; author of Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s (Routledge, 1994)

2:45-3:30: Coffee Break

3:30-5:00: Session VI — "Representing" and "Representations" of Mixed-Race Japanese in the U.S. and Japan

Cherry Blossom Dreams: Racial Eligibility Rules, Hapas and Japanese American Beauty Pageants
Rebecca Chiyoko King O'Riain (National University of Ireland)
Faculty of Sociology, Ph.D. UC Berkeley – The Changing Face of Japanese America: The Making and Remaking of Race in the Japanese American Community (1998); author of Pure Beauty: Judging Race in Japanese American Beauty Pageants (U-Minnesota Press, 2006)

Screening of a Trailer for the Documentary Film Hafu: A Film about the Experiences of Mixed-Japanese Living in Japan

Discussant: John Lie (UC Berkeley)
Professor of Sociology, Ph.D. Harvard; author of Zainichi (Koreans in Japan): Diasporic Nationalism and Postcolonial Identity (UC Press, 2008), Modern Peoplehood (Harvard, 2004), Multiethnic Japan (Harvard, 2001), Han Unbound: The Political Economy of South Korea (Stanford, 1998), and Blue Dreams: Korean Americans and the Los Angeles Riot(Harvard, 1995)

5:00-5:15: Closing of Conference

7:00-10:00: The Hafu Project Photo Exhibit and Hapa Japan Database Launch Party

Venue: NEW PEOPLE - 1746 Post Street, San Francisco

Tickets limited. Registration begins March 1st, $35/person.

The Hafu Project Photo Exhibit: Curator's Tour
Marcia Yumi Lise (Social Researcher, M.A. Goldsmiths College, U-London)
Natalie Maya Willer (Photographer – M.A. Royal College of Art)

Hapa Japan Database Presentation
Duncan Ryûken Williams (UC Berkeley)

Screening of the Documentary Film "One Big Hapa Family" (2010) with a conversation with film director, Jeff Chiba Stearns

Comments by Kip Fulbeck (UC Santa Barbara)
Professor of Art; Artist; Filmmaker; Spoken Word Performer; Author of several books including Part Asian, 100% Hapa (Chronicle, 2006) and Mixed: Portraits of Multiracial Kids (Chronicle, 2010)

Food: Catered by Peko Peko
Owner, Sylvan Mishima Brackett, former Creative Director at Chez Panisse

Music: by DJ Saul Kato