Workshop on Tannishō Commentarial Materials
September 2 – 4, 2022
Workshop
The Centers for Japanese Studies and Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, together with Ōtani University and Ryūkoku University in Kyoto announce a workshop under the supervision of Mark Blum that will focus on critically examining premodern and modern hermeneutics of the Tannishō, a core text of the Shin sect of Buddhism, and arguably the most well-read religious text in postwar Japan. Due to the pandemic our schedule had been halted and the 2022 meetings will occur only if conditions allow us to gather. We plan to meet twice this year as before: in Kyoto at Ōtani University from August 6 to 8, and in Berkeley from September 2 to 4. Organized around close readings of the most influential materials produced in early modern, modern, and postmodern Japan, the workshop aims at producing a critical, annotated translation detailing the salient ways in which this text has been both inspirational and controversial, as well as a series of essays analyzing a wide spectrum of voices in Japanese scholarship and preaching that have spoken on this work. For the early modern or Edo period, the commentaries by Enchi (1662), Jukoku (1740), Jinrei (1808), and Ryōshō (1841) will be examined. Papers will also be given on receptivity of the text in the modern period.
Co-Sponsor: Center for Buddhist Studies, Otani University, Ryukoku University, BCA Buddhist Center for Education, Institute of Buddhist Studies, Shinshu Center of America
Accounting History and Buddhism in Medieval Japan: Chronological analysis of accounting materials by Kōmyō-kō-kata in Toji Temple
September 2, 2022
Colloquium
Speaker: Yumiko Sankoji, Wakayama University
Moderator: Mark Blum, UC Berkeley
What is the Accounting History? How can we examine the relationship between Accounting History and Buddhism?
This study aims to consider the raison d'être for the Accounting history of Buddhism. This presentation is a case study of Accounting history in medieval Japanese Buddhist society. The specific objective is to analyze the accounting materials of “Kōmyō-Shingon-kō-kata,” or “Kōmyō-kō-kata.” They are one of the groups responsible for conducting memorial services for the dead and loaning surplus funds to Toji Temple, the fundamental center of the Shingon sect of Buddhism.
This study opens up three possibilities in this field. First, the empirical analysis in this research attempts to provide evidence of the reason and way, to record their transactions in accounting records in medieval Japanese Buddhism society. Second, this research concerns “the simplification of practice (igyō-ka),” one of Japan’s phenomena in the Medieval Religious System to interpret accounting documents. Third, this study answers the meaning of existence for the Accounting History of Buddhism.
Co-Sponsor: Jodo Shinshu Center
This image is taken from the Toji Hyakugo Archives website, operated by the Kyoto Institute, Library and Archives.
The dispersal of rice in prehistoric Japan — tempo, mode, and consequences
September 12, 2022
Colloquium
Speaker: Enrico Crema, University of Cambridge
Moderator: Junko Habu, UC Berkeley
The 1st millennium BC is a major turning point in Japanese prehistory that lays much of the foundations of the cultural, linguistic, and genetic variation observed in present-day Japan. It is a period of transformation triggered by interactions between the incumbent populations of hunter-gatherers and migrant farmer communities from the Korean peninsula. In this talk, I will review old and new evidence from this period, focusing in particular on the patterns of dispersal of rice agriculture within the Japanese islands. The rates of adoption of the new subsistence technology were geographically diverse, including fast uptakes, prolonged resistance, and even episodes of temporary adoption followed by a reversion to a hunting and gathering economy. I will present some preliminary outputs from the ongoing ENCOUNTER project (https://www.encounterproject.info/), placing emphasis on how we can measure the tempo of this dispersal process and its demographic consequences, concluding with some speculations on the mode of transmission of this subsistence technology.
Co-Sponsors: Department of Anthropology, Archaeological Research Facility
Watch the recorded talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmCPwO5Yy1A
Rethinking Jomon Demography
September 13, 2022
Lecture
Speaker: Enrico Crema, University of Cambridge
The Jomon period of Japan refers to an extraordinary long temporal span covering a geographic region with a substantially diverse range of ecological settings. It thus comes as no surprise that the Jomon period was characterized by major demographic fluctuations and that these episodes of population booms and busts were not necessarily synchronous across the archipelago. Investigating these divergent population trajectories offers an unique opportunity to study human adaptation, but to date the most comprehensive review of Jomon demography remains Shuzo Koyama’s seminal work published over 40 years ago (Koyama, S. 1978. Jomon subsistence and population, SENRI Ethnological Series, Vol 2). In this talk I will review the current state of Jomon demography, highlighting what questions remain to be tackled, what theoretical and methodological challenges it needs to face, and what contributions it can offer on a wider debate on prehistoric demography.
This is an open lecture for the class Anthro C125A/EALC C175 Archaeology of East Asia.
Co-Sponsors: Department of Anthropology, Archaeological Research Facility
Managing the Land, Forest and Water: Historical Ecology and Landscape Archaeology in Japan and Beyond
September 14, 2022
Lecture
Speakers: Junko Habu; Emanuele Guglielmini; Anna Nielsen; Sandra Oseguera Sotomayor - Anthropology, UC Berkeley
In the summer of 2022, graduate students of the East Asian Archaeology Lab and I were able to visit Japan after 3-years of entry restrictions into the country due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our goals were 1) to collect archaeological data to understand continuity and change in landscape practice in mountainous regions of Japan, 2) to resume paleoethnobotanical research that we started before the pandemic, and 3) to start discussions with Japanese scholars and local stakeholders to develop inter-and trans-disciplinary approaches. This bag lunch highlights our research trips to different parts of Japan as will be presented by our four speakers. Comparative perspectives from other parts of the world, including Mexico, will also be presented.
Co-Sponsor: Department of Anthropology
YU Miri & YANAGI Takeharu: Listening to Voices of Residents in Fukushima
September 29, 2022
Lecture
Speakers: YU Miri, YANAGI Takeharu
Moderator: Junko Habu, UC Berkeley
In this special undergraduate class lecture of September 29, 2022 at UC Berkeley, YU Miri, an internationally acclaimed novelist, talks about her reasons why she decided to move to Odaka, Minami-soma in Fukushima Prefecture, and her experiences of listening to local residents’ voices, weaving stories, and working with community members. This will be followed by a short presentation by Mr. YANAGI Takeharu on the ecology of plants and insects in Minamisoma. YU Miri is a citizen of South Korea who was born and grew up in Japan, and who writes her works in Japanese. The English version of her recent novel "Tokyo Ueno Station" (translated by Morgan Giles) won the 2020 National Book Award for Translated Literature in the U.S. YU Miri is the recipient of the 5th Berkeley Japan Prize awarded by the UC Berkeley Center for Japanese Studies, and this special lecture was held in conjunction with the Berkeley Japan Prize Award Ceremony on September 30, 2022.
Watch the recorded talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTIu2U3GCrw
YU Miri, Berkeley Japan Prize Recipient: In Conversation with Karen Tei Yamashita - Diasporic Imagination, History, and Writing
September 30, 2022
Colloquium
Featured Speaker: YU Miri
Speaker: Karen Tei Yamashita
Moderator: Andrew Leong, UC Berkeley
The Center for Japanese Studies welcomes internationally acclaimed novelist, playwright, and essayist YU Miri to the campus as the recipient of the 5th Berkeley Japan Prize for her genre-defying work as an author. YU Miri, a citizen of South Korea, was born in Tsuchiura, Ibaraki, Japan, in 1968 and grew up in Yokohama. YU's Family Cinema received the 1997 Akutagawa Prize, Japan’s most prestigious literary award, and the English version of her recent novel Tokyo Ueno Station (translated by Morgan Giles) won the 2020 National Book Award for Translated Literature. Conveying the scale of historical trauma through their intimate focus on the suffering of individuals and families, the works of YU Miri have brought critical attention to the challenges of socioeconomic inequality, ethnic discrimination, and everyday precarities that continue to shape the life of minoritized and traumatized individuals. YU’s 2004 novel End of August, whose protagonist was modeled after her marathon runner grandfather, vividly describes the injustice, indignity and hardships that he, his family, and many other Korean people had to suffer during and after the Japanese occupation of Korea. Many of her recent works, including Tokyo Ueno Station, tell stories before and the aftermath of the triple disaster, tsunami, earthquake and the Fukushima nuclear accident, of March 11, 2011, through the diverse perspectives of the survivors as well as the deceased. She currently lives in Odaka, Minami-Soma City in Fukushima, where she runs a bookstore/café called Full House.
The CJS Berkeley Japan Prize is a lifetime achievement award from our center given to an individual who has made significant contributions to enriching the understanding of Japan on the global stage.
YU Miri will deliver a short acceptance speech. This will be followed by a conversation with Karen Tei Yamashita, a celebrated Japanese American writer and professor emerita of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Yamashita’s representative works include The Arc of the Rain Forest (1990), I Hotel (2010) and Sansei and Sensibility (2020).
Watch the recorded talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoTKuQ707KU&t=1s
What does matter?: Beyond the cultural explanation of the immigrant society of Japan
October 19, 2022
Speaker: Yu Korekawa, Ph.D., Director, National Institute of Population and Social Security Research
Discussant: Kazuo Yamaguchi, Professor, The University of Chicago
Moderator: Keiko Yamanaka, Lecturer, UC Berkeley
Japan has experienced a rapid increase in its immigrant population since the 1990s. Although the size of the immigrant population is still small compared to other developed countries at around 2% of the total population, it has experienced a net influx of nearly 200,000 foreign nationals annually in recent years, which represents an annual increase of 3-5%. Moreover, approximately 1/10 of young people under age 44 will be those with migrant backgrounds by 2030.
Against this backdrop, Japan has garnered attention as an immigrant society in recent studies. However, most of these studies focus on the cultural and consciousness aspects of Japanese culture, such as the high homogeneity of Japanese society and its strong sense of exclusion, and few studies have clarified the characteristics of acceptance and integration into the social structure, such as the labor market. This is due to the hidden assumption that Japan is a latecomer or an exception as an immigrant society, which is a viewpoint held by academics both inside and outside Japanese society.
In this study, I analyzed the immigrant population's integration into Japan from the social stratification perspective, such as the Japanese employment system (JES). This is a standard approach in immigration studies in the U.S. and other countries. As a result, it was found that some of the characteristics of foreign workers in Japan, such as their low average wages, which have been thought to be caused by homogeneity and exclusionary attitudes of the Japanese society, are caused by the JES in general, which is known as lifetime and seniority-based employment without precise job descriptions/skill requirements. This sheds new light for those who view Japan as an exceptional immigrant society. It also demonstrates that migration study is a framework that can be applied to multiple societies.
Watch the recorded talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5hVpAeX1lg
Talking About The Tale of Genji
November 4, 2022
Panel Discussion
Speakers: Dennis Washburn, Dartmouth College; Marjorie Burge, University of Colorado Boulder; Brian Hurley, The University of Texas at Austin; Keith Vincent, Boston University
Moderator: Alan Tansman, UC Berkeley
The eleventh-century Tale of Genji—sometimes (controversially) called the world’s first novel, always (uncontroversially) called a world masterpiece--will be the focus of a conversation joined by its most recent translator, Dennis Washburn (Dartmouth), and three scholars of Japanese and Comparative literature: Marjorie Burge (CU Boulder), Brian Hurley (UT Austin), and Keith Vincent (Boston University).
The conversation will range across topics such as: the history and challenges of Genji translation; beauty and sexuality in the tale; Genji and nativism; Genji and Proust; Genji and Bloomsbury; mapping world literature; teaching Genji.
Who Cares for Japan's Aging Society? How Are Immigrant Nurses and Care Workers Faring in Japan?
November 15, 2022
Colloquium
Speakers: Michiyo Yoneno-Reyes, University of Shizuoka; Sachi Takahata, University of Shizuoka
Panelist/Discussant: Pei-chia Lan, National Taiwan University
Speaker 1
Michiyo Yoneno-Reyes, Ph.D., Professor, University of Shizuoka
Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA) as Forerunner and Benchmark: Revisiting the EPA Program in the Proliferation and Diversification of Foreign Nurses and Care Workers in Japan
Abstract
Japan began to receive foreign nurses and care workers in 2008 from Indonesia under the EPA program (followed by the Philippines in 2009 and Vietnam in 2014). That marked a breakthrough in Japan's migration policy, leading to the abolishment of the restrictions on the number of years of employment for foreign nurses in 2010, the establishment of a kaigo (care work) visa category and a kaigo subcategory in the Technical Intern Training Program visa both in 2017, and that of a kaigo subcategory in the Specified Skilled Worker visa in 2019.
Before the EPA, there was some emotional opposition to the entry of foreigners into the nursing and care work fields among Japanese citizens, as they believed that the services could not be properly rendered by foreigners–––these fields require a high level of Japanese language proficiency, involve physical contact with patients/service receivers, and are “cultural.” However, over the past decade or so, acceptance of care work as a job for foreigners has spread, and nursing home operators are openly looking to Asian caregivers to help solve their chronic labor shortage.
Indeed, the EPA programs triggered substantial changes in the practice of caregiving in Japan—development of a new field of Japanese language education for foreign workers and critical evaluation of Japanese manners of kaigo by foreign care workers with nursing backgrounds, to name a few. In addition, the EPA programs have produced role models for the government in its search for measures to promote foreign workers to settle in Japan and circular migration models as some of the EPA health professionals begin to settle in Japan for good and some of the returnees re-enter Japan to continue working in their profession.
I argue that the EPA remains a significant social experiment mechanism and propose some improvements of the system based on the narratives of past and current EPA workers.
Speaker 2
Sachi Takahata, Ph.D., Professor, University of Shizuoka
Filipino Marriage Migrants in Japan as Care Workers through Re-skilling
Abstract
Filipinos in Japan are known for being the majority among foreign care workers. As of October 2021, the largest number of health and welfare workers in Japan (mostly care workers), 14,704 (25.4%) out of 57,788, are Filipinos. This includes those with residence status for nursing care work (“EPAs” or certified care worker candidates under the Economic Partnership Agreement scheme, technical interns, specified skilled workers, and nursing care students), but the largest number are marriage migrants.
They are those who entered the nursing care workforce through re-skilling. They came to Japan in their late teens or early twenties and had almost no opportunity to learn Japanese language systematically. After marriage, they did housework, raised children, cared for their parents-in-law, and worked part-time jobs (factory work, cleaning, etc.) for close to minimum wage.
With the introduction of the long-term care insurance system in Japan in 2000, caregiver training programs for “middle-aged women” were held throughout Japan, and many Filipino marriage migrants began taking caregiver training designed for Filipinos and started working as caregivers in the mid-2000s. One of their motivations for entering the nursing care profession was to improve their social reputation, an attempt to overcome the labeling of Filipino women as “women who work in the nighttime.”
However, in the nursing care field, these women faced many disadvantages, such as discrimination from Japanese staff and lack of information about benefit programs being offered at their workplaces. Another major challenge is that, compared to EPAs and technical interns, marriage migrants lack the time, resources, and Japanese language skills to pass the care worker examination, the higher qualification for nursing care.
Co-Sponsors: Center for Japanese Studies (CJS), Center for Global Studies, University of Shizuoka, Center for Southeast Asia Studies