What is Otaku?: The Changing Meanings of Otaku in Japan
Colloquium
Speaker: Taishin Ikeda, Visiting Scholar, Center for Japanese Studies; Associate Professor, Konan Women's University
Date: February 1, 2013 | 4:00–6:00 p.m.
Location: IEAS Conference Room — 2223 Fulton, 6th Floor
Sponsor: Center for Japanese Studies
Now, the term, otaku, is widely known all over the world, but the meanings the term indicates aren't entirely clear. In fact, its meanings changed over time. In this presentation, I will examine the change in the meanings and images of otaku in Japanese contexts. The term became popular in Japanese society at the end of 1980's. At that time, it had very negative connotations. After that, as the situation around ACG culture has varying, the meanings, images, and evaluations of otaku are changing together. Finally, I will address the definition of otaku according to my own ideas. In addition, I will explain a new representation about Japanese women. It is called Joshi (女子). Joshi is a very old term, but it has acquired new meanings and is often used in contemporary Japanese media. I would like to examine what this Joshi is and what problem it offers to Japanese culture.
現在、オタクという言葉は、世界中で広く知られるようになった。しかし、その言葉が示す意味内容は、必ずしも明確ではない。実際、その意味はこれまで変化してきた。本発表では、日本文化の中で、オタクの意味内容とイメージがどのように変わったきたのかを明らかにする。オタクという言葉は、1980年代末に日本社会に広まったが、その言葉は極めてネガティブな意味付けがなされていた。その後、日本社会におけるアニメ・マンガ・ゲームといった文化を取り巻く環境が変化するにつれて、オタクという言葉の意味やイメージ、評価も変わってきたのである。最終的には、現在、オタクはどのように定義できるかを示したい。
加えて、新しい日本女性の表象についても報告する。その表象は、「女子」と呼ばれている。「女子」はかなり古い言葉だが、現在、それは新しい意味を獲得して、メディア上で頻繁に使われている。この「女子」という言葉の示す意味内容、およびその言葉が現代の日本文化に対して提起する問題についても報告する予定である。
*Paper will be presented in Japanese, with English translation.
Media Histories / Media Theories and East Asia
Conference/Symposium
Dates: February 7–8, 2013 | 9:00 a.m.–5:30 p.m.
Locations: 370 & 3335 Dwinelle
Sponsors: Center for Japanese Studies, Townsend Center for the Humanities, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Berkeley East Asia National Resource Center, Center for Chinese Studies, Department of Comparative Literature
In February 2013, UC Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive will hold a retrospective of the films of Art Theatre Guild (ATG), Tokyo's center of cinematic innovation from 1961–1988. This conference takes this opportunity, in conjunction with this film series and several exhibitions on Japanese arts, to bring together five invited media theorists from Japan, the prominent film director Hani Susumu from ATG, and scholars from the U.S. and Europe to discuss Japanese and East Asian cross-cultural developments in media theory and culture from the early twentieth century to the present.
The Media Histories / Media Theories & East Asia conference brings together prominent and emerging scholars to discuss Japanese and East Asian cross-cultural developments in media theory and culture from the early twentieth century to the present. The symposium will read East Asian film and visual arts as part of a changing media landscape in relation to commercial cinema, television, and intermedia arts as well as political, economic and cultural transformations. We encourage submissions on topics such as: the relation between urban space and the arts in cultural politics; reading the problems of film audience and reception; the important (and neglected) role of East Asian film and media theory and critical writings; East Asian arts movements in transnational perspective; film and visual art as a mediator of cultural/political history; avant-garde artist networks, commercial culture, and architectural transformation. The symposium aims to foster transnational and local scholarly perspectives on East Asian arts and media theory in the context of recent cross-disciplinary arguments in film and media studies.
Event details will be posted on the official conference website.
Ryuichi Sakamoto: Eco-Activism in Japan and the U.S. Post-Fukushima
Symposium
Speaker: Ryuichi Sakamoto
Date: February 9, 2013 | 1:00–2:30 p.m.
Location: Alumni House, Toll Room
Sponsors: Center for Japanese Studies, The Japan Foundation, Department of Anthropology
The Center for Japanese Studies welcomes Ryuichi Sakamoto, internationally-acclaimed musician, composer, producer and activist, to campus as the winner of the 3rd Berkeley Japan Prize.
The Berkeley Japan Prize, established in 2008, is a lifetime achievement award from the Center for Japanese Studies to an individual who has made significant contributions in furthering the understanding of Japan on the global stage.
Sakamoto is well known for his involvement in No Nukes activism. He wrote the score for Alexei and the Spring (2002), a documentary film about the aftermath of Chernobyl, and organized the No Nukes Concert 2012 in Japan. In honor of Sakamoto's contributions to the rise of eco-activism, especially in the Post-Fukushima accident era, the Center for Japanese Studies hosts a panel of prominent scholars and activists, to be followed by comments from Sakamoto.
Visit here for more information.
This event is supported by the Japan Foundation.
Ryuichi Sakamoto LIVE: Solo Piano + Talk
Performing Arts — Music
Speaker/Performer: Ryuichi Sakamoto
Date: February 9, 2013 | 8:00–9:30 p.m.
Location: Hertz Concert Hall
Sponsors: Center for Japanese Studies, The Japan Foundation
The Center for Japanese Studies welcomes Ryuichi Sakamoto, internationally-acclaimed musician, composer, producer and activist, to campus as the winner of the 3rd Berkeley Japan Prize.
The Berkeley Japan Prize, established in 2008, is a lifetime achievement award from the Center for Japanese Studies to an individual who has made significant contributions in furthering the understanding of Japan on the global stage.
For this rare Bay Area appearance, Sakamoto performs a solo piano concert followed by a conversation with Ken Ueno (Associate Professor, Department of Music at UCB, Composer/Vocalist).
Visit here for more information.
This event is supported by the Japan Foundation.
Tsuneno's Journey: Households, Networks, and the Limits of the Ordinary in Early Modern Japan
Colloquium
Speaker: Amy Stanley, Assistant Professor, History, Northwestern University
Moderator: Mary Elizabeth Berry, Professor, History, UC Berkeley
Date: February 20, 2013 | 4:00–6:00 p.m.
Location: IEAS Conference Room — 2223 Fulton, 6th Floor
Sponsor: Center for Japanese Studies
Tsuneno, daughter of a Shin priest in a small Echigo village, had an unexpectedly interesting life that produced a large volume of correspondence. Over the course of the 1830's and '40's, she married twice, divorced twice, ran away to Edo, worked as a waitress, took up with a gangster who extorted her family, married a down-and-out masterless samurai, and finally entered the service of the famous Edo city magistrate Toyama Kinshiro. Her brothers, despairing of her behavior, called her a selfish idiot, but she insisted that she was a filial daughter.
This talk investigates Tsuneno's life (and its paper trail) in order to ask: What was the Tokugawa-era household (ie), and what did it mean to its members? And how might a revaluation of the "household system" join the typically small-scale, intimate histories of Tokugawa women to broader narratives about social and economic change in early modern Japan?
Why Did Japan Stop Growing?
Colloquium
Speaker: Takeo Hoshi, Senior Fellow in Japanese Studies, FSI; Director; Japan Studies Program, Shorenstein APARC; and Professor of Finance (by courtesy), Graduate School of Business, Stanford University
Date: February 28, 2013 | 4:00 p.m.
Location: IEAS Conference Room — 2223 Fulton, 6th Floor
Sponsor: Center for Japanese Studies
The talk will be based on Takeo Hoshi's NIRA reports with Anil Kashyap in 2011 and 2012. Hoshi will start by arguing that Japan's stagnation in the last 20 years was a result of the failure to respond to the new challenges that started to emerge in the 1970s (i) end of catching up process, (ii) limit of export led growth in the post Breton Woods system, and (iii) rapid aging. In addition, Japanese government and the BOJ made mistakes of (i) not addressing the non-performing loans problem sooner, (ii) expanding fiscal expenditure too much and on wasteful investments, and (iii) keeping the monetary policy too tight to allow deflation. Then, Hoshi argues that Japan needs more than expansionary macroeconomic policy to restore the growth. More concretely, he suggests nine policies in three policy areas that can be implemented to help Japan grow again: (1) deregulation, (2) opening up the country to the rest of the world, and (3) improving macroeconomic policy. The deregulation includes reforms to reduce the cost of doing business, stopping protection of zombie firms, deregulation especially in non-manufacturing, and growth enhancing special zones. Opening up policy includes trade opening including the participation in TPP, agricultural reform, and more open immigration policy. Improving macroeconomic policy includes the commitment to fiscal consolidation in the long run and more aggressive monetary policy. Finally, Hoshi will end the talk by evaluating Abenomics using the framework developed for the NIRA reports.
The Japanese version of the reports has been published as a book from Nihon Keizai Shimbun Shuppan last month.
Japanese Society in Transition: Women, Family and Mental Health Issues
Panel Discussion
Speakers:
• Steven Vogel, Chair, Center for Japanese Studies; Professor,
Political Science, UC Berkeley
• Susan Holloway, Professor, Graduate School of Education, UC Berkeley
• Michael Zielenziger, Author and Journalist
Date: March 13, 2013 | 4:00 p.m.
Location: IEAS Conference Room — 2223 Fulton, 6th Floor
Sponsor: Center for Japanese Studies
This panel discussion will build on the research behind three books: Suzanne Hall Vogel's The Japanese Family in Transition: From the Professional Housewife Ideal to the Dilemmas of Choice; Susan Holloway's Women and Family in Contemporary Japan; and Michael Zielenziger's Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created its Own Lost Generation.
Are Japanese women today more liberated or more constrained than they were in the high-growth era? Are Japanese mothers raising children differently from their mothers and grandmothers? Are Japanese people having trouble coping with an era of greater freedom and choice? Are they under more stress? The panel will address these questions and more, reviewing recent developments in Japanese society.
Three Laughers and Six Friends: Designing Contemporary East Asian Gardens in the USA
Colloquium
Speaker: Marc Peter Keane
Date: March 20, 2013 | 12:30–2:00 p.m.
Location: 315A Wurster Hall
Sponsor: Center for Japanese Studies
The cultures of gardening in East Asia are among the most ancient in the world and are still vital to this day. Garden designer, Marc Peter Keane, who lived in Kyoto, Japan, for nearly 20 years will discuss the process of distilling and reinventing East Asian gardens for settings in the United States. The talk will look at two of his gardens: the recently completed Tiger Glen Garden at the Johnson Museum of Art and the Six Friends Garden designed for the Cornell Plantations. The Tiger Glen Garden depicts the tale known as the Three Laughers of the Tiger Glen, an allegory in which people overcoming differences of creed to find a unity of friendship. The Six Friends Garden is a contemporary expression of Japanese, Chinese and Korean gardening and literary culture.
Tiger Glen Garden wins the Golden A' Design Award (A-Prime Design Award)
The Tiger Glen Garden at the Johnson Museum of Art was chosen for the Gold level of the A' Design Award (A-Prime Design Award). The A' Design Award, based in Como, Italy, is an international award that aims to highlight the best designs, design concepts and design oriented products & services.
The general public announcement of the A' Design Awards will happen on April 15th. In the meantime a summary of the Tiger Glen Garden award can be seen here.
Hafu: a film about the experiences of mixed-Japanese living in Japan
Documentary film
April 7, 2013 | 4:00 p.m.
Location: 100 Genetics & Plant Biology Building
Sponsor: Center for Japanese Studies
Bay Area premiere of the documentary, Hafu.
About the film...
With an ever increasing movement of people between places in this transnational age, there is a mounting number of mixed-race people in Japan, some visible others not. "Hafu" is the unfolding journey of discovery into the intricacies of mixed-race Japanese and their multicultural experience in modern day Japan. The film follows the lives of five "hafus" — the Japanese term for people who are half-Japanese — and by virtue of the fact that living in Japan, they are forced to explore what it means to be multiracial and multicultural in a nation that once proudly proclaimed itself as the mono-ethnic nation. For some of these hafus Japan is the only home they know, for some living in Japan is an entirely new experience, and others are caught somewhere between two different worlds.
Seamless Space: Home and Temple in the Contemporary Jōdo Shinshū
Colloquium
Speaker: Jessica Starling, Shinjo Ito Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Japanese Studies, UC Berkeley
Date: April 17, 2013 | 5:00 p.m.
Location: IEAS Conference Room — 2223 Fulton, 6th Floor
Sponsor: Center for Japanese Studies
More than 90% of Buddhist monks in Japan today are married and live together with their families in the temple. In the traditionally monastic sects, a publicly married clergy is a relatively recent development, dating roughly to the turn of the 20th century, and the phenomenon has produced no small amount of anxiety over its seeming incoherence with the ideal of world-renunciation. But in the Jōdo Shinshū, or True Pure Land School of Buddhism, the custom of clerical marriage dates back to the movement's inception in the 13th century, and Shin clerics and their families bring doctrinal resources to bear on their domestic life in the temple.
This talk focuses on the role of the priest's wife (known as the bōmori or temple guardian) in order to illuminate the seamlessness of private and public space and domestic and religious action at the temple. Drawing from Shin doctrinal sources and the narratives of wives themselves, as well as anthropological research on the construction of home and domesticity in contemporary Japan, I explore the implications of the temple family's boundary-crossing existence, in particular the role of temple wives in carrying out this "domestic religion."
The Sound of Weaving at Ôzu
Exhibit
Speaker/Performer: Fukuko Katsuura, Independent craftswoman
Dates: May 15, 2013 – September 10, 2013, Monday – Friday* | 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
Location: Institute of East Asian Studies (2223 Fulton, 6th Floor)
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Japanese Studies
The ancient arts of weaving and dyeing live on in the handwork of dedicated craftspeople such as Fukuko Katsuura. From a love of Japan's textile arts came a dedication to mastering traditional weaving. From a life lived on and of the land, came experiments in coaxing color from plants gathered and grown. "The Sound of Weaving at Ôzu" features a selection of her work in silk, paper, and other fibers dyed and woven, work that at once exemplifies centuries-old technique and personal vision. A series of illustrative photographs of the creative process supplement the display.
Public Event: June 13, 2013
Institute of East Asian Studies Conference Room
2223 Fulton Street, Berkeley — 6th Floor
Weaver and dyer Fukuko Katsuura discusses textiles in the exhibition and demonstrates aspects of her craft. Free and open to the public.
Weaving Discussion and Demonstration
Lecture
Speaker: Fukuko Katsuura, Weaver and dyer
Moderator: Joyce Hulbert, Textile Collections Manager at the San Jose Museum of Art
Date: June 13, 2013 | 4:00 p.m.
Location: Institute of East Asian Studies (2223 Fulton, 6th Floor)
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Japanese Studies
Weaver and dyer Fukuko Katsuura discusses textiles in the exhibition and demonstrates aspects of her craft. Katsuura, who grew up in the Japanese countryside, taught herself to weave, and to use plant dyes to obtain the colors she needed for her materials. This talk is offered in conjunction with the exhibit, "The Sound of Weaving at Ôzu," which is currently on view at the Institute of East Asian Studies and features a selection of her work in silk, paper, and other fibers dyed and woven.
This talk will be in Japanese, with English translation by Hidefumi Katsuura. A reception will follow the lecture.