Maruyama Masao and America the Incomprehensible
Yasuhisa Shimizu, CJS Visiting Scholar, History of Japanese Political Thought, Kyushu University
September 18, 2006
Center for Japanese Studies
Maruyama Masao (1914-1996), a distinguished social scientist and historian in postwar Japan, visited the United States four times between 1961 and 1983. America, he confessed after his first stay at Harvard and at Oxford in England, was incomprehensible compared with Europe. This research tries to understand the thought of Maruyama from the viewpoint of his experience of "America the incomprehensible." In this respect, the fact is examined that his visa to the United States was once refused in 1961 and cancelled even in 1973. Possible perception gap between American scholars and Maruyama about the atomic bomb, which he survived in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, may be important. It is also discussed how his stay at Berkeley in 1976 and 1983 caused him to rethink his conception of America.
Asia by Means of Performance: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on Asian Performance
September 22–23, 2006
Center for Chinese Studies, Center for Japanese Studies, Theater, Dance and Performance Studies
Responses to Destruction in Japan: A Multi-Disciplinary Symposium
October 13, 2006
Center for Japanese Studies, JSPS
9:00 am: Opening Remarks
9:10 am: Keynote Talks
Disaster Culture: Violence, Vulnerability, and Japanese Nature — Gregory Clancey, Department of History, National University of Singapore
Society and Commoners after Disasters: Changes from the Early Modern Period to the Contemporary Era — Itoko Kitahara, Graduate School of History and Folklore Studies, Kanagawa University
10:45 am: Session 1 — Earthquake Reactions
Emergency Response and Relief Activities following Major Earthquakes in Japan — Haruo Hayashi, Kyoto University
Imamura Akitsune and the Great Kantô Earthquake — Kerry Smith, Department of History, Brown University
2:00 pm: Session 2 — Restoration Responses
Urban Planning from the Perspective of Disaster Preparedness — Hiroo Ichikawa, Graduate School of Governance Studies , Meiji University
Reconstruction after Catastrophe in Japan: Experiences and Problems — Yoshiteru Murosaki, President, Fire and Disaster National Research Institute, Japan
4:00 pm: Session 3 — Remembering Catastrophe
Remembering the Great Kantô Earthquake while Preparing for Air Defense in Tokyo, 1930-1945 — Cary Karacas, Department of Geography, University of California, Berkeley
The Museumification of Memories: Suffering and Sacrifice on Display in Contemporary Japan — Akiko Takenaka, History of Art, University of Michigan
Geography Lessons: Creating Shinano in the Provincial Press, 1880-1920
Karen Wigen, History, Stanford University
October 20, 2006
Center for Japanese Studies
A century ago, the provincial press in Japan was remarkably robust; Nagano Prefecture alone boasted over 50 local newspapers. But out of that crowded field, one gradually emerged as the flagship newspaper for the region: the Shinano Mainichi Shinbun. This talk introduces a sample of features from this paper, dating from mid Meiji through the Taisho era, to analyze how a mass-circulation newspaper worked to create a cohesive society in a fractious region. Questions to be addressed include: What notion of geography was embodied turn-of-the-century journalism? What vision of "imagined community" comes through in these articles? And how did the provincial press relate regional space to other life-worlds, from the micro to the macro?
Japan's Kamioka Mine: Engineering Human Pain in the Hybrid Environments of the Jinzu River Basin
Brett Walker, Japan, Environmental and Medical History, Montana State University
October 27, 2006
Center for Japanese Studies
With the beginning of Meiji wars, miners started extracting silver and lead from the Kamioka shafts of the mountainous regions of Toyama Prefecture. This technological complex, and the engineered environments it birthed, seamlessly connected to the Jinzu River Basin, which also fed downstream paddies that, in their own way, were engineered environments as well. Smelting and ore flotation devices that allowed miners and processors to extract ever higher percentages of their desired metals caused pollution problems in nearby agricultural lands. But these pollution problems, particularly their consequences for human health, represented the product of hybrid causation. Naturally occurring oxidization processes in riparian ecosystems created the toxins that caused human pain; but "it hurts, it hurts" disease, or cadmium poisoning, was also the product of the physiological consequences of Meiji state pronouncements regarding being a "good wife and wise mother." Women who were both productive and reproductive tended to suffer disproportionately from cadmium poisoning: obeying meant sacrifice for the state. Similarly, women who sheltered themselves from the sun, in a culturally ingrained habit to preserve their white complexion, deprived themselves of nutrients that could have protected them from industrial disease. Mining technologies, engineered environments, natural alchemy, state pronouncements, and cultural habits enmeshed and intertwined to create disease and pain downstream from this important wartime mine.
A Dialogue on Language between a Japanese and Inquirer: Kuki Shuzo's Version
Michael Marra, Japanese Literture and Hermeneutics, UCLA
October 30, 2006
Center for Japanese Studies
The talk will focus on the poetry that the Japanese philosopher Kuki Shuzo (1888-1941) wrote during his stay in Paris in 1925-1927. Through the reading of this poetry an attempt will be made to construct Kuki's post-mortem response to the critique that the German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) moved to Kuki in his 1959 "A Dialogue between Japanese and an Inquirer."
1895: Kyoto and the Navigation of Japanese Art History
Alice Tseng, Japanese Art & Architecture, Boston University
November 3, 2006
Center for Japanese Studies
The year 1895 figures prominently in not only Japan's political history but also its art history. The Fourth National Industrial Exhibition opened on 1 April 1895 in Kyoto in the final days of the nation's victory in the Sino-Japanese war. Seizing national attention from Tokyo, Kyoto took center stage, as the host of the Industrial Exhibition, along with celebrating the 1100th anniversary of its founding by Emperor Kanmu and the completion of two landmark projects — the Heian Shrine and the Imperial Kyoto Museum. This talk will explore the confluence of prominent events and works in 1895 Kyoto and the apparent contestation over the course of art, past and future.
Japan Remodeled: How Government and Industry Are Reforming Japanese Capitalism
Steven K. Vogel, Professor of Political Science, UC Berkeley
November 7, 2006
Center for Japanese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, Walter H. Shorenstein Fund
As the Japanese economy languished in the 1990s Japanese government officials, business executives, and opinion leaders concluded that their economic model had gone terribly wrong. They questioned the very institutions that had been credited with Japan's past success: a powerful bureaucracy guiding the economy, close government-industry ties, "lifetime" employment, the main bank system, and dense interfirm networks. Many of these leaders turned to the U.S. model for lessons, urging the government to liberate the economy and companies to sever long-term ties with workers, banks, suppliers, and other firms.
Despite popular perceptions to the contrary, Japanese government and industry have in fact enacted substantial reforms. Yet Japan never emulated the American model. As government officials and industry leaders scrutinized their options, they selected reforms to modify or reinforce preexisting institutions rather than to abandon them. In Japan Remodeled, Steven Vogel explains the nature and extent of these reforms and why they were enacted.
Vogel demonstrates how government and industry have devised innovative solutions. The cumulative result of many small adjustments is, he argues, an emerging Japan that has a substantially redesigned economic model characterized by more selectivity in business partnerships, more differentiation across sectors and companies, and more openness to foreign players.
Steven K. Vogel is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Freer Markets, More Rules: Regulatory Reform in Advanced Industrial Countries (Cornell University Press), and editor of U.S.-Japan Relations in a Changing World.
The Occupation of Japan: Personal Reflections Six Decades Later
Hans Baerwald, Political Science, Emeritus Professor, UCLA
November 13, 2006
Center for Japanese Studies
The 14th Annual Bakai バークレー大学研究大会
November 17, 2006
Center for Japanese Studies
Program
1:15-1:50 — Buffet Lunch
1:50-2:00 — Opening Remarks: Alan Tansman, CJS Chair
2:00-2:20 — Fieldschool and soil sampling at the Jomon period Sannai Maruyama site in Aomori, Japan — Junko Habu, Faculty, Anthropology, UCB
2:20-2:40 — Courtesans and the Shimabara Toad War: Chikamatsu's Retelling of the Shimabara Uprising — Janice Kanemitsu, Grad Student, East Asian Languages & Cultures, UCB
2:40-3:00 — The Role of Women in Otaku Subculture: Research Proposal — Ieva Tretjuka, Grad Student, Group in Asian Studies, UCB
3:00-3:20 — Significance and Acceptance of Otaku within Japanese Society — Hayone Chung, UnderGrad Student, PEIS, UCB
3:20-3:40 — The Impact of Neo-liberal Reforms on Childcare Policies: Why Does Childcare Matter Now? — Yoshiko Konishi, Grad Student Anthropology, UCB
3:50-4:10 — Increasing Cross-border Marriage in East Asia: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan — Keiko Yamanaka, Faculty, Ethnic Studies, UCB
4:10-4:30 — The Shifting Otherness: Dynamic Boundaries of Japaneseness — Bruce Hsueh, Grad Student, Public Policy/IAS, UCB
4:30-4:50 — Institutionalizing Imagined Toyama: Selling Traditional Images of Medicine Through Science — Kensuke Sumii, Grad Student, Medical Anthropology, UCB/UCSF
4:50-5:10 — Locating the Village and the Village Study in Japan — John Ertl, Grad Student, Anthropology, UCB
5:10-5:30 — Q&A and comments
Records of Self-Salvation: Memoirs of Kagero Nkki (蜻蛉日記) and Hanjungrok (閑中録)
Youn-eun Huh, CJS Visiting Scholar, Japanese Language and Literature, Daegu University
November 20, 2006
Center for Japanese Studies
Kagero Nikki, the memoir by Mother of Michitsuna is a lifelong record of a Heian era noblewoman, who wrote about her miserable life: her marriage to one of the most powerful politicians of his time. Hanjungrok, the memoir of Lady Hyegyong, written by the Korean crown princess Hong, is a recollection of her life written when she reached her 60th birthday. The former expresses the agony of a woman who was not allowed to keep affection of her husband all for herself due to the "Kayoi-kon" marital custom. The latter recorded the tears and lifelong regrets of a crown princess whose husband, crown prince Sado, was killed by his father, King Youngcho. Despite their differences in cultural backgrounds, period and genre, these two works share considerable things in common, while their process of self-salvation through writing practices differed in certain respects. By comparing representative diaries of a Korean and Japanese woman, the author will consider the significance of feminist writings in patriarchal societies.