Where the Girls Are: Establishing Japanese Girlhood and Identity in Women's Magazines
Kazue Sakamoto, Associate Professor, Sociology, Ochanomizu University
August 28, 2003
Center for Japanese Studies
The Japanese Constitution in the 21st Century
Taro Nakayama, Chairman, Research Commission on the Constitution, House of Representatives, Japan
September 2, 2003
Center for Japanese Studies
Dr. Taro Nakayama, the head of a blue-ribbon commission on constitutional reform and a former foreign minister, will speak on "The Research Commission on the Constitution and the Japanese Constitution in the 21st Century" from 12 noon to 1:30, Tuesday, September 2, at Alumni House.
Japan's blue-ribbon commission on constitutional reform will be visiting Berkeley to speak with faculty experts on constitutional law and US-Japan relations. The commission is considering the highly controversial move of revising the constitution's famous Article 9 — the peace clause. Article 9 states that Japan will not maintain military forces or other war potential. The commission is also considering a wide range of other constitutional revisions.
The commission has been deliberating since 2000, and published an interim report in November 2002. It sent a research mission to Europe, but this is its first delegation to the United States. Former Foreign Minister Taro Nakayama is leading the delegation, along with two other Diet members: Yoshito Sengoku (Democratic Party of Japan) and Tomio Yamaguchi (Japanese Communist Party).
Japanese language lecture with English translation.
Regressive Taxation and the Welfare State: Japan in Comparative Perspective
Junko Kato, Associate Professor, Law and Politics, Tokyo University
September 2, 2003
Center for Japanese Studies
This lecture challenges the conventional wisdom that progressive taxation goes hand-in-hand with large public expenditures in a mature welfare state, and qualifies the partisan-centered explanation that dominates the welfare state literature. Since the 1980s, the institutionalization of effective revenue-raising by regressive taxes during periods of high growth has ensured resistance to welfare state backlash during budget deficits and consolidated the diversification of state funding capacity among industrial democracies. While presenting a comparison of eight OECD countries with statistical analysis, this lecture focuses on the Japanese case, in which the lack of a strong revenue machine resulted in a small government with large deficits.
The Archaeology of Ferry Money: An Archaeological Approach to Numismatics and Monetary History of 14th-18th Century Japan
Kimio Suzuki, Professor, Archaeology and Ethnology, Keio University, Japan
September 4, 2003
Center for Japanese Studies
Naturalism, Westernesque Femme Fatale, and Matsui Sumako
Indra Levy, Assistant Professor, Asian Languages and Culture, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
October 2, 2003
Center for Japanese Studies
Japan's Surrender and Redefinition of the Kokutai
Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Professor, History, UC Santa Barbara
Monday, October 27, 2003
Center for Japanese Studies
Although hopelessly divided over whether and on what terms they ought to terminate the Pacific War, Japanese policymakers during 1945 were unanimous about the need to preserve the kokutai, the national polity. Yet, what was meant by this ambiguous term? What Japan's leaders meant by kokutai remained unclear until intense debates took place triggered by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6th and the Soviet entry into the war on August 14th. Advocates of peace successfully challenged the prevailing mythical view of the kokutai as a national essence that transcended the mere political structure surrounding the emperor. In so doing, they jettisoned two of the most crucial features of the kokutai: the emperor's monopoly of the military command and the notion of the emperor as a living god. Drawing on research from his recently completed book manuscript, the speaker demonstrates how concern for preserving the imperial institution and political calculations made in anticipation of peace negotiations with the United States and the Soviet Union influenced this redefinition of kokutai.
East Asia at Berkeley
October 31-November 2, 2003
Faculty Club, Zellerbach Hall, PFA Theater
Institute of East Asian Studies
"East Asia at Berkeley" showcases a small cross-section of the intellectual and artistic pursuits that are an integral part of the East Asia programs on the Berkeley campus. Berkeley is one of the premier institutions for the study of East Asia in the United States.
The Institute of East Asian Studies (IEAS) at UC Berkeley promotes teaching and research on East Asia in all disciplines and professional programs. The Institute and its three regional centers sponsor a wide variety of activities including academic seminars and colloquia series, public lectures, cultural events, and other programs that facilitate appreciation of the multifaceted Pacific Rim.
Japan's Politics of Apology with Korea
Alexis Dudden, Department of History, Connecticut College
Monday, November 3, 2003
Center for Japanese Studies, Center for Korean Studies
What role does "apology" play in Japan's current-day international politics? Most discussions of this question either focus on Japan's inability to apologize for its past aggressions or compare Japanese atonements with that of a supposedly more penitent Germany. This lecture, however, argues that Japan is an apologetic nation according to international standards. The speaker approaches this problem through a selective analysis of Japan's official-level involvement in the politics of apology during the past several decades with special emphasis placed on Japan's relations with Korea. The lecture demonstrates how the Japanese government has co-opted the substance of apology that its historical victims originally wanted for themselves.
Art Imitates Life: The Avant-Garde Works of Akasegawa Genpei
Reiko Tomii, Independent Scholar, Japanese Modern Art
November 13, 2003
Center for Japanese Studies, History of Art
The Japanese artist Akasegawa Genpei first emerged in the vanguard scenes of Tokyo as a member of Hi Red Center in the early 1960s. An adept practitioner of Anti-Art, Akasegawa deployed a methodology that can be best summarized as "art imitating life." This interventional mode of operation could have real-life consequences, as amply demonstrated by his replica 1,000-yen note (1963), which lead to a criminal trial of the artist in 1966. This lecture examines Akasegawa's works before and after the trial, from Hi Red Center's Cleaning Event (1964) to The Sakura Illustrated, within a changing socio-political and cultural context.
Reiko Tomii is an art historian, curator, writer, translator, and editor, based in New York. Since 1992, she has worked as an independent scholar and curator with museums in Japan, Europe, and the United States. She has been a regular columnist for the Tokyo-based thrice monthly publication Shin Bijutsu Shinbun(New Art Newspaper) since 1996.
Imaging War: Japanese Media Printed between 1931 and 1948
David Earhart, Museum of Art & Culture, University of Montana
November 20, 2003
Center for Japanese Studies
World War II in the Pacific (1937-1945) left much of Japan devastated and most Japanese demoralized. From the outset, Japan's military and political leaders defined the war as an ideological struggle, drawing deeply on cultural reserves and radically redefining national identity. By the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the semi-military government controlled nearly every facet of civilian life, including the mass media that, especially in print form, became an indispensable tool in directing the population. Under the strict supervision of the Japanese government's Information Bureau, wartime publications propagated the government's messages of solidarity, spiritual superiority, military invincibility, self-sacrifice, and the determination to fight to the death.
By war's end, between 2.1 and 2.7 million Japanese (representing 3 to 4 percent of the total population) were dead, over 60% of Japan's urban areas lay in ruins, and 17 million other inhabitants of greater East Asia had lost their lives in the conflict. Even now, the tension between history and memory of the war is particularly acute in Japan and wartime publications are painful reminders of a time of great suffering and monumental failure. Understandably, most Japanese want to consign these reminders to the rubbish heap of history. Besides, the Japanese wartime press has been dismissed by scholars on both sides of the Pacific as monolithic, propagandistic, and rife with inaccuracies.
Even so, the daily newspaper or weekly newsmagazine was at the time a lifeline for people on the home front, often serving as the only source of information about an overseas war that directly involved relatives, neighbors, and friends. To see the war through the eyes of contemporary Japanese, without the benefit of hindsight, is not only a key to understanding how the war was experienced on the Japanese home front, it is helpful in comparing how members of modern societies evaluate media-moderated reality. Americans today who are confused by the seeming inconsistencies and nearly instantaneous revisionism of the reportage of events in Afghanistan and Iraq will find interesting parallels in the Japanese media's presentation of the events surrounding World War II in Asia.
This presentation includes some 100 slides, all of them made directly from contemporary Japanese wartime publications in the collection of the presenter. The slides are arranged diachronically to show a cross-section of wartime society and chronologically to show how a reportorial narrative emerged over the course of the war. The emperor was the titular and spiritual head of wartime Japan. In his name the entire war was prosecuted, and so the discussion begins with him. The soldiers and sailors were the arms and legs of the emperor, carrying out his will. They were always fearless, loyal, and ready to selflessly give their lives for the glory of the empire. Thanks to these valiant men, Japan had never lost a war and never been occupied by a foreign invader. During the war, the ideal Japanese woman could be characterized as a "national defense wife." Women played many roles. In addition to being wives, mothers, and homemakers, they were also responsible for boosting morale, performing volunteer war work, and filling roles left vacant by conscripts. The burden of defending the homeland against air raids and invasion often fell largely upon women. Children were often referred to as "little citizens" in war publications, which showed them directly participating in the war effort as the tide turned against Japan. By war's end, children were often pictured taking on many adult responsibilities, including that of combatant. Conspicuously absent from these wartime publications are civilian men, since able-bodied men were expected to be at the front.
The reportorial narrative of the war begins in the late 1920s, when Japanese society basked in the glow of Taisho democracy, internationalism, and the jazz age. The mood grew somber after the Japanese military became enmired in Manchuria and later China, following a string of "incidents." With all-out war erupting in China in 1937, the Japanese government launched its own weekly newsmagazine and the National Spiritual Mobilization Movement. Despite the international debacle following the Lytton Report and Japan's stormy withdrawal from the League of Nations, the Japanese government continued to court international favor. The Japanese media and the Japanese people were tired of the war in China, which was still inconclusive after three years. In 1940, the Japanese government staged a large-scale celebration for the 2,600th anniversary of the legendary foundation of the Japanese nation. There was a major effort to draw tourists to Japan to witness these events, which were planned to coincide with the 1940 Olympics, scheduled to be held in Tokyo but cancelled due to the outbreak of World War II in Europe. In the same year, 1940, the fascist-inspired New Structure was installed. This endless stream of restrictions and directives spelled the beginning of the end of civilian life in Japan. By the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the slogan was "the one hundred million of one mind" (ichioku isshin).The stunning victories of the first six months of the war seemed to prove that this one mind of the one hundred million was superior to western powers. In 1942 and 1943, the Japanese on the home front were treated to a flurry of pictures and articles describing the many parts of Asia liberated by the Japanese military. Photos of exotic places and smiling faces, new members of the Great East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, filled the magazines. In 1943 and 1944, one common slogan seen on posters, billboards, magazine covers and even trinkets was "Continue to Shoot, Until they Desist." The idea was to push on through, now that victory was close at hand. However, in 1943 came the first report of a military "gyokusai" (a euphemism for a "banzai" suicide charge), followed in 1944 by a civilian "gyokusai" on Saipan. The catch phrase became "fight to the finish" (kessen, literally, "blood-battle"). The final year of the war saw massive air raids on the Japanese home islands, and magazines often showed images of downed American B-29s and kamikaze pilots, with exhortations that all Japanese embody the kamikaze spirit and fight to the death.
Taken as a whole, these images from contemporary publications convey something of the "look" and "feel" of the war. They were carefully orchestrated by the Information Bureau to give home-front Japanese the chance to experience the war vicariously, to put themselves in the "picture." By turns these images provoke empathy, revulsion, dismay, and bewilderment, begging a number of questions: How much information did ordinary Japanese citizens have? Did all Japanese believe the misinformation seen everywhere? Why would a government lead its people into a maelstrom of death and destruction? And why did so many people allow themselves to be consumed by it?
There are no simple answers, of course. The culpability of Japan's wartime leaders seems clear enough, the complicity of the mass media is surely blameworthy, and the soldier in the field can be judged by a military code of conduct. But what of the wives, mothers, and children pictured in these publications, those who, willingly or not, served as cogs in the machinery of war and died by the thousands in air raids? Ultimately, in assigning responsibility to other human beings and their social institutions, we arrive at choices about how we lead our own lives and the social institutions to which we belong. In judging others, we judge ourselves. We live by what we choose to remember — and to forget.
Kanze Nobumitsu and Furyû Noh: an Examination of Late Muromachi Noh
Beng Choo LIM, Japanese Drama, East Asian Languages and Cultures, UCB
Monday, December 1, 2003
Center for Japanese Studies
Kanze Kojirô Nobumitsu (1435–1516) was an important noh practitioner in the late Muromachi period (1392–1573). Included in Nobumitsu's repertoire are plays such as Funabenkei (Benkei on Board), Momijigari (Winter Excursion) and Rashômon (Rashômon Gate). These plays, famous for their dramatic plots and spectacular stage presentations, are categorized as furyû noh by modern scholars, often with a subtle implication that they are not as good as the yûgen style plays advocated by Zeami Motokiyo (1363–1443). But what exactly are furyû noh plays? Are they plays with a rowdy presentation but lacking in depth as some scholars suggested? Is it a coincidence that other late Muromachi noh practitioners such as Konparu Zenpô (1454–?) and Kanze Nagatoshi (1488 - 1541) also wrote furyû style noh plays and the late Muromachi period is sometimes called the "Period of furyû plays"? What does the existence of this "sub-category" of noh play say about the genre, the performers and the audience, as well as the time? Using Nobumitsu and his works as illustrations, I will present a reading of furyû style plays and examine their significance in the discourse of the noh theater.