Evaluating the Japanese Election
T.J. Pempel, Political Science, UC Berkeley
Steve Vogel, Political Science, UC Berkeley
Ethan Scheiner, Political Science, UC Davis
Robert Madsen, MIT Center for International Studies
Rob Weiner, Cornell University
September 16, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi won an overwhelming victory in Lower House elections September 11. His party and its coalition ally will have a key two-thirds majority in the new parliament. This forum will provide a small panel to assess what the election means for Japanese politics and economic reforms.
The Body in Naturalist Literature and Modern Social Imaginaries
Christopher L. Hill, East Asian Languages & Literatures, Yale University
September 16, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
The literary school of naturalism spread rapidly around the world from the time of its rise in France in the mid-nineteenth century. By the early twentieth century writers acknowledging a tie to naturalism could be found on every inhabited continent. Naturalism was not a solitary traveler, however: it moved along with other genres such as criminology, reportage literature, and evolutionary social theory that together constituted a modern social imaginary. The example of Japanese naturalism shows that representation of the degenerate body played an important role in this imaginary as an anchor for the description of society and the rapid changes it was experiencing. Free and open to the public.
Globalization and the Intellectual Future of Women's Emancipation
Nobuyo Goto, Political Economy, Fukushima Medical University
September 19, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
At present, Globalization is underway, on one hand via the Information-Communication Revolution, and on the other hand making Asia the workshop of the world. In cyberspace, we have the Internet Community, while in the real world, the back-office and sweatshop of women's workers for low wages. Meanwhile, in the U.S. the family is the focus of "the cultural war." What does that mean? This lecture tries to dissect those problems by using concepts of some Japanese social scientists as discussed in A. E. Barshay's The Social Sciences in Modern Japan.
Race, Empire, and the Dominatrix in the Novels of Japanese Author Numa Shozo
Christine Marran, Asian Languages & Literature, University of Minnesota
September 30, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
Fukuzawa Yukichi and Maruyama Masao: Two Visions of Japan
Alan MacFarlane, Social Anthropology, King's College, University of Cambridge
October 6-7, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
In conjunction with: Alan MacFarlane's October 7 Maruyama Seminar, "Fukuzawa and Maruyama: How to Understand Japan."
The Maruyama Lectures are named in honour of the late Maruyama Masao (1914-96), historian of East Asian political thought and one of the most influential political thinkers in twentieth-century Japan. Sponsored by the Center for Japanese Studies, the series brings to the university important scholars and thinkers who will offer reflections on the problem of political engagement and responsibility in modern times, which was the central and overriding concern in Maruyama's work. This series is supported by a grant from the Konishi Foundation for International Exchange, Tokyo.
On October 6-7 (Thursday-Friday), Alan MacFarlane, Professor of Social Anthropology at King's College, University of Cambridge will offer the 5th Maruyama Lecture and Seminar.
Alan Macfarlane was born in Assam, India, in 1941. He gained doctorates in history (Oxford, 1967) and anthropology (London, 1972) and has taught at the University of Cambridge since 1971. He became a Fellow of King's College in 1981, the British Academy in 1986 and Professor of Anthropological Science in 1991. He has given the Frazer, Malinowski and Marrett Lectures in Britain, the Silver Jubilee Guest Lecture at the Delhi School of Economics, and is the Sir Li Ka-Sheng distinguished lecturer in China in 2005. He has taught at the University of Tokyo and lectured at a number of Japanese universities.
He has undertaken extensive historical and anthropological work in England, Nagaland, Nepal, Japan and China. Among his fifteen published books are: Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England (1970); The Origins of English Individualism (1978); Marriage and Love in England (1986); The Culture of Capitalism (1987); The Savage Wars of Peace - England, Japan and the Malthusian Trap (1997); The Riddle of the Modern World (2000); The Making of the Modern World (2002 - on F.W.Maitland and Fukuzawa Yukichi); Glass: A World History(2002, with G.Martin); Letters to Lily - On How the World Works (2005).
His website contains interviews of sixty leading academics and thinkers, films from around the world, and various historical and anthropological databases and sets of writings.
Kwaidan
October 8, 2005
Institute of East Asian Studies, Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan
This film, described as a re-discovery of Japanese beauty through non-Japanese eyes, is based on Yakumo Koizumi's series of short spooky stories. Kwaidan is comprised of four parts: the story of a samurai, a young woodcutter, an expert biwa player, and a man named Kannai. This screening of Masaki Kobayashi's Kwaidan will be introduced by actress Yoko Sugi, Special Advisor for Cultural Exchange for Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs.
The Space Between: The Cartographic Imagination of Japanese Modernism
October 14-15, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities
Spirits of the State
John Nelson, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of San Francisco
October 28, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
Yasukuni Shrine is one of Japan's most controversial and important religious sites. This presentation will begin with Nelson's 26-minute documentary film that addresses the complex and contentious positioning within the shrine of nationalism, cultural identity, religion, and historical revisionism. Based on ethnographic and other video footage, the film provides a rare look into rituals carried out for spirits of the military dead and bereaved families, as well as exhibits from the shrine's museum of war memorabilia. Following the film will be a short lecture on recent developments related to the shrine – including the Prime Minister's fifth visit on Oct. 18th – that have the potential to destabilize East Asian security, international investment, and regional cooperation.
John Nelson, Associate Professor of East Asian Religions at the University of San Francisco, is the author of A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine (1996) and Enduring Identities: the Guise of Shinto in Contemporary Japan (2000), an article on the shrine itself, "Social Memory as Ritual Practice: Commemorating Spirits of the Military Dead at Yasukuni Shinto Shrine," (Journal of Asian Studies, May 2003), and the 1997 documentary film, "Japan's Rituals of Remembrance: Fifty Years after the Pacific War."
Koizumi's Gamble and Its Consequences
Gerald Curtis, Political Science, Columbia University
October 31, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
Japan's September 11th general election was one of the most interesting, entertaining, and important elections in recent memory. The election's outcome tells us a lot about what has changed in Japanese society. The key questions now are what Koizumi is going to do with his victory and what the implications of the election are for Japanese politics over the longer term.
Gerald L. Curtis is the Burgess Professor of Political Science at Columbia University and a visiting professor at the Graduate Research Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo. He is former Director of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University. Professor Curtis is the author of The Logic of Japanese Politics and numerous other books and articles on Japanese politics, government, and foreign policy and U.S.-Japan relations. He is a columnist for the Chunichi and Tokyo Shimbun, senior advisor to Newsweek for Newsweek Japan, and a regular contributor to mass media and intellectual journals in the United States, Japan, and other countries. Professor Curtis has held appointments at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, London; the College de France, Paris; Keio and Tokyo Universities; and the Research Institute for Economy, Trade and Industry in Tokyo. He is the recipient of the Chunichi Shimbun Special Achievement Award, the Masayoski Ohira Memorial Prize for The Japanese Way of Politics, and the Japan Foundation Award for his writings on Japanese politics and society and his contributions to increasing knowledge about Japan abroad. In 2004 Professor Curtis was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star by the Emperor of Japan. Professor Curtis is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Board of Directors of the U.S. Japan Foundation. He is advisor and consultant to numerous public and private organizations in the United States and Japan.
Unspeakable Acts: The Avant-Garde Theatre of Terayama Shuji and Postwar Japan
Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei, Japanese Theater, UCLA
November 4, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
Unspeakable Acts interrogates postwar Japanese culture and theatre through the creative work of Terayama Shûji (1935-1983), one of postwar Japan's most gifted and controversial playwrights/directors, also a filmmaker, poet, novelist and theorist. Using Japanese and Western theories of psychoanalysis, anthropology, sociology, gender studies and aesthetics, Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei situates this unique yet emblematic artist – hailed as a genius and denounced as a terrorist/pornographer – in historical and cultural context. She explores why Terayama remains a cult hero today by examining issues such as the postwar ruins of personal and national identity; nostalgia; post modernity; the theory of Japan as a "mother-centered culture"; and the artistic legacies and practices that bind Terayama to – and sever him from – the international avant-garde and the popular performances of his rural youth. Translations of three key plays and portions of Terayama's dramatic theory enhance the analysis. The video-illustrated lecture will emphasize Terayama's tortured "love-in-hate" for his mother and other females.
Japan's FTAs with Southeast Asia: Economic Interests and a Contest with China
Kitti Prasirtsuk, Political Science, Thammasat University, Thailand
November 7, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
It is both economic and political interests that have driven Japan towards the establishment of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with Southeast Asia. Perceivably, Japan has three goals in launching these FTA negotiations. First, Japan desires to contest China's increasing clout in Southeast Asia following Beijing's initial proposal of the China-ASEAN FTA in 2001. Second, Japanese industries aim to advance their economic interests in Southeast Asia by lessening restrictions particularly in regards to investment rules and the service industry. Third, FTAs are expected to exert external pressure (gaiatsu) for structural reform in Japan.
This presentation argues that Japan has given priority to the first and second goals which, it turns out, are quite intertwined. With China in perspective, Tokyo always emphasizes high standards on investment rules and the protection of intellectual property rights, which should be useful when Japan has to deal with China on such issues whether bilaterally or regionally. The third goal of FTA gaiatsu meanwhile, is greatly compromised by Japan's reluctance to embrace labor and agricultural imports. Political leadership on FTAs is lacking as Koizumi has been focusing elsewhere.
From the Roji to the World: Nakagami Kenji and the Politics of Translation
Sayuri Oyama, Japanese Studies, Sarah Lawrence College
November 21, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
In his fiction and ethnographic writing, postwar Japanese writer Nakagami Kenji (1946-1992) explores the connections between place and identity. As a writer from the Kumano region of Japan, Nakagami has been framed in criticism and translation in terms of his specific connection to buraku by birth. Yet Nakagami's writing calls for a rethinking of what it means to belong to a place or for places to represent people. This paper will examine how Nakagami's narratives, including Misaki (The Cape) and Kishu: Ki no kuni, ne no kuni monogatari (A Tale of the Land of Trees, a Land of Roots), complicate readings of Nakagami as a writer from or of the buraku.
Mishima Yukio: Camp, Kitsch, or Crazy?
Keith Vincent, Japanese Literature, New York University
December 2, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
Mishima Yukio knew how to push people's buttons. As an ambiguously gay neo-fascist driven by an unapologetic narcissism that was leavened in turn with a heavy dose of irony, Mishima's life and work is as fascinating for the reactions it provokes as it is on its own merits. From the far left to the far right the Mishima phenomenon has brought out the worst in people, stirring up equal measures of outrage and adoration. Mishima forces us to think about the political and psychological factors that might distinguish kitsch from camp, and the genius from the madman. This talk looks at a variety of texts written about Mishima before and after his death in 1970 as a means of better understanding the dynamics of reception in political and historical context.
Keith Vincent teaches in the departments of East Asian Studies and Comparative Literature at New York University. His work focuses on modern Japanese literature, novel theory, psychoanalysis, and queer theory. He is currently completing a manuscript entitled The Exciting Cause: Paranoid Homosociality in Modern Japanese Narrative.
Fiscal Decentralization and Education in USA and Japan
Hiroaki Hayashi, Economics, Kansai University
December 5, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
The financing of education has been an important subject of discussion for a number of years now, in both Japan and the United States. In Japan, education is largely centrally planned and financed. The United States offers a different model. Recently, in Japan, decentralization has become a hot topic of political debate. This debate has often occurred by way of comparison to similar discussions in the United States. The talk will focus on this discussion.
Publishing and the Creation of a Cultural Identity: Selling Modern Japanese Literature
Ted Mack, Asian Languages & Literature, University of Washington
December 9, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
The intellectual historian Maruyama Masao described his experience at the beginning of the Shôwa period (1926-89), when the status of modern Japanese literature changed dramatically in the national consciousness: at the end of the Taishô period (1912-26), someone "who spent all his time reading novels was doing one of two things: avoiding his studies or corrupting his morals"; yet after the one-yen book boom that began in 1926, "everyone – not just students – had to at least know the names of famous Japanese and world authors and their works, whether you had read them or not. After these one-yen series appeared, this sort of information became 'common knowledge.'" This talk looks at the ways in which publishing gave modern Japanese literature a cultural prestige it had not previously possessed and changed the way we think about Japanese-language literary production in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Ted Mack teaches at the University of Washington, Seattle. His work focuses on the material history of modern Japanese literature. He is currently completing a manuscript entitled Manufacturing Modern Japanese Literature: Publishing and the Creation of a National Culture.