What Happened to Japanese Telecom: Stumbling into the 21st Century
Robert Cole, Professor Emeritus, Haas School of Business, UCB
September 2, 2004
Center for Japanese Studies
Japan was a major player in global telecommunication trade in the 1980s. By 2003, however, METI officials were convening committees to deal with the precipitous decline in the Japanese telecom industry. What happened? Was it simply the overall decline in telecommunications after the 1999 meltdown or were national factors at play? We examine these issues by looking at two major telecom sectors. The first is the emergent network communication equipment industry ushered in by the Internet, and the second is 2nd generation phones. We find that Japanese firms made a number of strategic errors that dramatically worsened their competitive situation on world markets.
Shōsō-in Treasures: Reconstructing Musical Instruments
Music From Japan — Reigaku and Gagaku: A Living Tradition
September 12, 2004
Lecture-demonstration and concert
Lecture-demonstration: Institute of East Asian Studies, Department of Music; Concert: Cal Performances
Living on the Brink in Post-Bubble Japan
Edward Fowler, East Asian Languages and Literatures, UC Irvine
September 16, 2004
Center for Japanese Studies
Japan's day laborer quarters have changed immensely since Edward Fowler's research for "San'ya Blues" (Cornell, 1996). After the so-called economic bubble collapsed in the early 1990s, San'ya (Tokyo) and Kamagasaki (Osaka) have seen their function as sites for recruiting casual laborers become attenuated; and they have been largely transformed, along with certain public spaces (e.g. Ueno Park; Osaka Castle Park), into very visible sites of homelessness. What sorts of people occupy these sites? This talk will attempt an answer to this question, both through the text of a book the speaker is translating by a white-collar worker living in San'ya and through slides taken over the past decade in Tokyo and Osaka.
neo-eiga: New Japanese Cinema
September 17-19, 2004
Film festival
Pacific Film Archive, Consulate General of Japan, San Francisco; The Japan Foundation; NAATA; Institute of East Asian Studies; and Japan Society of Northern California
Join us for Bay Area premieres of diverse, award-winning works that illuminate the multiple realities of twenty-first-century Japan.
The fourth neo-eiga festival brings a new film by a major sixties New Wave director, Kiju (Yoshishige) Yoshida, together with works by exciting younger talents and an influential independent film producer-director. These recent films all explore contemporary characters and modern dilemmas, but represent varied relationships to the past; the perspective of history contrasts with the eternal present of the Internet.
Japanese Cinema Now
Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto, Professor of East Asian Studies at New York University
September 18, 2004
Institute of East Asian Studies
Presented in conjunction with "neo-eiga: New Japanese Cinema," a showcase of Japanese film at the Pacific Film Archive.
It is widely believed that Japanese cinema was reborn in the early 1990s after more than a decade of hiatus. Formal recognition and honors at international film festivals, a strong cult following among international audiences, and wide availability of new Japanese films as DVDs with English subtitles all confirm the vitality of Japanese cinema now. Yet, such understanding of contemporary Japanese cinema misses a fundamental historical break by directly linking the Japanese cinema of the 1990s and after to what used to be called Japanese cinema. Japanese cinema is now in a post-national state, consisting of complex and contradictory trends and developments which do not necessarily form a coherent image of Japan, traditional or otherwise. What is called for is therefore a new critical framework where contemporary Japanese cinema can be discussed as something other than a traditional national cinema or a subgenre of world cinema.
Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto is an Associate Professor of East Asian Studies at New York University. His research interests focus on contemporary Japanese film and media. He is the author of Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Cinema and numerous articles on Japanese film and television, as well as Hollywood cinema.
Errant(d?) letters: Issues of Ownership and Place in Heian Period Nikki by Women
John Wallace, East Asian Languages and Cultures, UC Berkeley
September 27, 2004
Center for Japanese Studies
In the journals and memoirs (nikki) written by women during the Heian period, the time when memoirs were in their early stages as a genre, nothing is more frequently stolen or misplaced than letters and other compositions written by women. This talk explores how misdirected, misplaced, and stolen letters, or even words cut from letters, are entangled in issues of the status of the female voice, both as one of reduced authority and, contrarily, as finding strategic value in its marginalized position.
The Voyage of the Senzaimaru to Shanghai in 1862 and Its Representation in Wartime Japanese Cinema
Joshua Fogel, Comparative East Asian History, UC Santa Barbara
October 4, 2004
Center for Japanese Studies
The first modern Japan voyage to China took place in 1862. This trip carried 51 Japanese to Shanghai, the first legal touching down of Japanese on Chinese soil in well over two centuries. While the Japanese were present in the city, the Taiping rebels attacked in the outskirts of Shanghai. The experiences of their two months in Shanghai helped shape the course of subsequent Japanese history. Several years ago a joint venture film made in occupied Shanghai and directed by none other than Inagaki Hiroshi was discovered which portrays this mission and the principal actors in it. With eerie precision, the 1944 movie folds seamlessly into the narrative of the 1862 mission.
The 12th Annual Bakai (バークレー大学研究大会)
October 11, 2004
Center for Japanese Studies
Schedule
2:10 — Welcome / Announcements
2:15 — "'Bowling Together': Social Networks and Social Capital of a Nepali Migrant Community in Japan"
Keiko Yamanaka, Faculty, Ethnic Studies/Institute for the Study of Social Change, UCB
2:30 — "Human Resource Management in Japan and the U.S."
James Lincoln, Faculty, Haas School of Business, UCB
2:45 — "Localization and Globalization of Multi-National Corporations"
Yasuyuki Motoyama, Graduate Student, City and Regional Planning, UCB
3:00 — "Intrapreneurship: The Driving Force behind Japan's Innovative Economy"
Jordan Steinke, Graduate Student, Asia Pacific Studies, USF
3:15 — "Three Taiwanese Funerals in Japanese Fictions: Politics of Translation in 'Ethnographic Fictions' of Colonial Taiwan"
Huei-chu Chu, CJS Visiting Scholar, Social Science, UCB
3:30 — "English Language Education in Japan from an International School Perspective: A book for the Japanese general public"
Kenji Kushida, Graduate Student, Political Science, UCB
4:00 — "Soliloquy (monologue) in Polite Discourse in Japanese"
Yoko Hasegawa, Faculty, East Asian Languages, UCB
4:15 — "The Stakes of Aesthetics: Ernest Fenollosa's Theory of Art in Japan"
Namiko Kunimoto, Graduate Student, History of Art, UCB
4:30 — "Performing for Self/Performing for Others: Cultural Politics of a Vietnamese New Year's Festival in a Multiethnic Community of Osaka"
Yuko Okubo, Graduate Student, Anthropology, UCB
4:45 — "Teaching Responses to Hiroshima and the Holocaust"
Alan Tansman, Faculty, East Asian Lanauges, UCB
5:00 — "Humanism in the Gulag: Takasugi Ichirô's Memoir of Siberian Internment, 1945-1949"
Andrew Barshay, Faculty, History, UCB
5:15 — "Representation for Foreigners Or a Misrepresentation of 'Deliberative Democracy'? Consultative Bodies (shingikai) and Local-Level Political Incorporation of Foreign Residents in Japan."
Ken Haig, Graduate Student, Political Science, UCB
5:30 — "Representation of the Other: Japanese Perceptions of the Ainu as Exhibited in Ainu-e"
Sarah Sutton Weems, Graduate Student, Asian Studies, UCB
5:45 — "Engaged Theater and Film in Postwar Japan"
Miryam Sas, Faculty, Comparative Literature, UCB
6:00 — Further Questions / Closing Comments
Expanded Visions — JPEX: Japanese Experimental Film and Video, 1955–Now
October 19, 2004
Film screening
Pacific Film Archive; Image Forum Archive; University of California, Irvine; University of Chicago; Center for Japanese Studies; Institute for East Asian Studies
The playful insistence and explosive subversion of Japanese experimental film traditions remain neglected terrain for North American audiences. In an effort to globalize what has often been a primarily Western understanding of postwar experimentalism, JPEX: Japanese Experimental Film and Video, 1955–Now, touring North America this autumn, documents the radical medium of postwar Japanese experimental film, video, and animation at its fiftieth anniversary. PFA is screening two programs from the JPEX series.
Prior to each screening, the JPEX curators will discuss the films from a historical and formal perspective. Full program information will be available at the screenings.
Exploded States: War, Politics, and National Identity — JPEX: Japanese Experimental Film and Video, 1955–Now
October 26, 2004
Film screening
Pacific Film Archive; Image Forum Archive; University of California, Irvine; University of Chicago; Center for Japanese Studies; Institute for East Asian Studies
Resident Korean Literature in Occupied Japan, 1945-1952
Christopher D. Scott, Asian Languages, Stanford University
October 28, 2004
Center for Japanese Studies, Center for Korean Studies
As World War II ended and the Cold War began, Korean residents of Japan (and other former colonial subjects) quickly became personae non grata: they were perceived as threats to national security, public safety, and the objectives of the Allied Occupation (1945-1952) itself. This paper explores the cultural stigmatization of these Resident Koreans as subversive yet emasculated — invisible men, as it were — in the early fiction of Kim Tal-su (1919-1997). The author discusses how racial tensions and gender anxieties both underwrite and complicate Kim's status as the "father" of the genre now known as "Resident Korean literature" (zainichi Chôsenjin bungaku).
Christopher D. Scott is a Ph.D. candidate in modern Japanese literature at Stanford University. He is currently completing a dissertation entitled "Spies, Rapists, Ghosts, and Queers: Misrepresentations of Resident Korean Men in Postwar Japan."
The Centennial of Korean Immigration to America: A Look Back at the Role of the United States and Japan in the Events of 1902-05
Wayne Patterson, Department of History, St. Norbert's College
October 29, 2004
Center for Korean Studies, Center for Japanese Studies
This lecture will examine the immigration process that began one hundred years ago reveals that American policy and actions toward late Choson Korea operated at two distinct levels that were at cross purposes with each other. It also suggests that the Japanese takeover of Korea was not only a matter of security but also involved considerations of national prestige.
Wayne Patterson is the author of numerous books and articles on Korean immigration including The Golden Mountain: The Autobiography of a Korean Immigrant, 1895-1960 by Easurk Emsen Charr. Second Edition. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1996; Korean-American Relations, 1866-1997. Albany: SUNY Press, 1999 (With Yur-Bok Lee); The Ilse: First-Generation Korean Immigrants in Hawaii, 1903-1973. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2000. (Nominated for the Kapalapala Po'okela Award and the Association for Asian American Studies Book Award); The Korean American Journey [Korian Amerikan ui Paljachwi]. New York: Canaan Printing Company, 2002. (With Daniel Eunsup Shim, Hesung Chun Koh, Edward Taehan Chang, Sang Joon Choi, and Robert Hyung-Chan Kim); The Koreans in Hawaii: A Pictorial History, 1903-2003. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003. (With Roberta W. S. Chang).
The Politics of Postal Savings Reform in Japan
Jennifer Amyx, Political Science, University of Pennsylvania
November 4, 2004
Center for Japanese Studies
A hallmark of the Koizumi Administration has been the prime minister's attempt to privatize Japan's government-backed postal savings system. This talk will examine the political economy of postal savings reform in Japan, analyzing the factors enabling reform to move forward under the Koizumi Administration and the role of key actors involved in the reform battle. By comparing the Japanese path to reform with reform paths taken elsewhere, the talk will also highlight the peculiar challenges faced in reforming the postal savings system in Japan today and make the argument that privatization is not necessarily the optimal reform path for Japan.
Taisho "Modernity" or Japanese Civil War?: Political and Cultural Conflict in the Shadow of the Great War, 1919-1931
Frederick Dickinson, History, University of Pennsylvania
November 18, 2004
Center for Japanese Studies
Long neglected as the step-child of modern Japanese history, the "Taisho" period has attracted increasing scholarly attention in recent years, particularly for its record of dramatic social and cultural change. Although commonly described as a crisis of "modernity," this change may more profitably be viewed in a context familiar to students of modern Europe and the United States: the profound impact of the First World War. This talk will offer a glimpse of the shadow of war in interwar Japan and its pivotal effect upon the renewed drive for power in the 1930s.