Happy Americans, Unhappy Japanese: How Software Engineers work; how they feel about it; and how they are rewarded
Colloquium
Speaker: Professor Yoshifumi Nakata, Doshisha University
Date: January 24, 2017 | 4:00–5:30 p.m.
Location: 2521 Channing Way — Institute for Research on Labor & Employment, IRLE Director's Room
Sponsors: Institute of Research on Labor & Employment
Yoshifumi Nakata holds a PhD in Economics from UC Berkeley and has a long distinguished career researching the relationship between technology and employment related factors. He founded the Institute for Technology, Enterprise and Competitiveness at Doshisha and recently stepped down as its long-term Director. His bio information can be found here.
Right of Passage: A Documentary by Janice D. Tanaka
Documentary Film
Discussant: Janice Tanaka, Director
Date: February 21, 2017 | 7:00 p.m.
Location: Hearst Field Annex, A1 PFA
Sponsors: Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies
Nowadays, when bipartisanship on Capitol Hill is a rarity, filmmaker Janice Tanaka tells the story of a bygone era of human connection inside the Beltway — an unprecedented “American” moment in the US Congress that the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University called an achievement “against all odds.” The Civil Liberties Act of 1988, almost forty-five years in the making, acknowledged the fundamental injustice of the imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II in American Concentration Camps and paid each surviving internee $20,000 along with a government apology. Not many outside the Japanese American community know this story. Right of Passage recounts the journey of a small disenfranchised people who for thirty years buried their shame and indignation but then found the courage and strength to seek justice, which then snowballed into a lesson of the power of American democracy.
The documentary draws upon newly declassified documents, never-before-seen archival films and interviews with players speaking for the first time. Featured are Presidents Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford; Senators Daniel Inouye, Spark Matsunaga and Alan Simpson; Congressmen Barney Frank, Norm Mineta and Bob Matsui; Ken Duberstein, former Chief of Staff to Ronald Reagan; and the men and women from the community who played a significant role in this Herculean effort.
Running time: 98 minutes.
The film will be followed by a panel discussion with director Janice Tanaka, John Tateishi, and others.
Visit the Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/CivilLibertiesAct1988/
Filmmaker's Statement
Every human rights campaign starts with a goal to right a fundamental wrong. It was clear that racial prejudice was the sole reason the U.S. Government imprisoned 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry behind barbed wire in desolate locations around the country. In their quest for justice, Japanese Americans needed not only the three cornerstones of our government — the US Congress, Supreme Court and President — to admit a grievous 40-year old mistake, but to overcome internal community divisions ... and they did, when President Reagan signed The Civil Liberties Act in 1988 that awarded each former surviving internee an apology and $20,000. When the Nitto Tire USA approached me with the idea of creating a documentary film on this subject, my immediate thought was, “This is a complicated story to tell.” My producing partner, Nancy Araki, a former inmate herself, and I started by identifying all the groups involved, then we created ground rules for this journey.
First, the battle for redress was divisive; so we knew every participant firmly believed in his/her version of how it was won. We adopted Akira Kurosawa's “Rashomon” approach — asking each person to tell the story from his/her perspective — which took us from San Francisco to Seattle, Salt Lake City, Washington DC, New Jersey and Worland and Cody, Wyoming.
Second, we decided we would include only those statements in the film that could be substantiated with a paper trail or came from a source with firsthand knowledge, like Ken Duberstein, Reagan's White House Chief of Staff, Senator Alan Simpson and Rep. Norman Mineta. We examined recently declassified documents from the vast collection of papers in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California; the Mike Masaoka Collection, University of Utah; news items from 1939–1988; never-before-seen films from the Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford Presidential Libraries; DENSHO archive of interviews of redress players no longer with us; and scores of personal collections.
Third, we framed the film's structure within the 8-year window of President Reagan's presidency because he was the not only a common thread to span the entire 40-year journey but had unique, unexplored intersections to it, plus I wanted the name recognition to attract an audience beyond the Japanese American community.
Fourth, for a narrator we wanted an icon who was not just immediately recognizable but knew about the incarceration of Japanese Americans. Brooke Shields, a Princeton graduate, was not only aware of the story but felt passionately that it needed to be told.
Fifth, we wanted to use this film to correct the lexicon — that Japanese Americans were not “evacuated,” they were forcibly removed; these were not “relocation camps” but concentrations camps.
My own emotional connection to the story comes from the fact that my mother and grandparents were incarcerated. When, as a film student at USC, I was encouraged to make documentary films about the people and world around me, my parents refused to talk about their camp experience. We lived in South Central Los Angeles, predominantly African American, and I discovered it was one of few areas that Japanese Americans were allowed to resettle after the war. Growing up, my parents warned me never to make waves — a mantra our entire community around me lived by. Many of my generation resorted to gangs, drugs and suicide. My previous film, When You're Smiling: The Deadly Legacy of Internment, tells this story.
In 1981, there was a buzz about Japanese American redress when President Carter signed a bill to appoint a commission to study this “embarrassing chapter.” I volunteered to film the public hearings in Los Angeles — a shocking and moving experience. It was the first time I heard former internees speak of their experience and many just broke down in tears. In 1988 when President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act I really did not have any idea of what it took to get that bill passed.
In making this film I wanted to present a neutral but comprehensive and honest picture of the when and where the movement began, the forgotten players and factions and fractures within a community labeled the “model minority.” I also wanted to capture a time in politics when positions were not as intractable as they are today, a time when there was bipartisanship. While winning redress was an achievement for Japanese Americans, it could not have happened without Democrats and Republicans coming together — this created a unique and unprecedented “American moment” at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, one we are likely never to see again in view of today's political climate.
JANICE D. TANAKA (Director/Producer)
Right of Passage marks Janice D. Tanaka's debut as a feature documentary director. A producer, educator and television executive with 30 years of experience in producing film, cable, corporate media and educational videos for non-profit organizations in the Asian American community, Tanaka provides an unique inside perspective. Her mother was incarcerated at the Amache Concentration Camp and a recipient of the $20,000 monetary reparation and apology from the Civil Liberties Act.
From 2006 to 2011, Tanaka served as Manager, Diversity Development, at Fox where she worked on initiatives to employ writers, actors and directors of color. She specialized in outreach programs to make the studio system more accessible to minority youth. Prior to Fox, Tanaka executive produced over 100 episodes of multiple television shows that presented positive images of Asian Americans for International Channel and AZN Television. Shows included Cooleyville, an animated sitcom featuring a Chinese American family, XBYTES, a hip tech show and Popcorn Zen, a film shorts show.
As an educator for more than a decade teaching video production at Indiana University, Purdue University and the University of Florida, Tanaka instilled in her students the power of communicating and creating their own stories. Prior to teaching, Tanaka was an award winning marketing and public relations video producer at major corporations such as Transamerica, City National Bank and Hughes Aircraft Company. In addition, Tanaka has written and produced several acclaimed documentaries including When You're Smiling: The Deadly Legacy of Internment, the very first documentary to connect suicides in the Japanese American community in the 70's to their incarceration experience.
Her current work includes biographies on Aiko Herzig Yoshinaga, a Japanese American civil rights advocate whose critical discovery made redress possible, and Reverend Emery Andrews, a Baptist minister who dedicated his life to helping Japanese Americans during the war. She is also working on a documentary about Japanese Americans in the Midwest immediately after World War II. Tanaka continues to be involved with broadcast TV as a script evaluator for ABC's New Talent Development program. She also produces videos for clients such as the Japanese American National Museum, Keiro Senior Healthcare, Advancing Justice-LA, the USC Alumni Association and others.
JOHN TATEISHI (Former JACL National Redress Director, Author)
John Tateishi gained national prominence in 1978 when he launched a campaign to seek redress for Japanese Americans who were incarcerated during World War II as the National Redress Director of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL). His work on the legislative and public affairs strategies of this campaign ultimately culminated in the signing of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which granted a formal apology from the President and the Congress, as well as reparations, to the survivors of this incarceration.
He is the author of And Justice for All, one of the first compilations of oral history interviews about the wartime experiences of persons of Japanese ancestry during World War II. He also has been a contributing author to Last Witnesses, a collection of personal essays by children about their incarceration experiences during this time.
New Topics, Technologies and New Times: Japan Ahead
Conference
Dates: Friday, February 24, 2017 | 9:00 a.m.; Saturday, February 25, 2017 | 10:00 a.m.
Location: International House, Ida & Robert Sproul Room
Sponsors: Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
Academic communities play an important role in shaping international perspectives. Scholars work within broad networks, developing thoughtful insights on emerging changes long before others become aware of their implications. Students, whether within Japan and abroad, will in time become tomorrow's leaders. How we shape their understanding of Japan establishes powerful influence on the way they will think for decades ahead.
Japan's role in the world is changing. Its long era of postwar prosperity is signaled with a rich harvest of international awards. The Nobel Prize once seemed an elusive mark of success, but by 2014, there were three Japanese-born Nobel Prize winners and in 2015, two. Japan also boasts more native-born Pritzker Prize winning architects than any other nation, in spite of its small size. But the nation's future international influence is a larger question, its economy overtaken by China's. Both at home and abroad, Japan faces many other unmapped challenges.
We propose to bring together scholars form Japan and the West to discuss the future of Japan in our academic communities.
For more information, please go to the conference webpage: http://japanahead.weebly.com/
SCHEDULE
Friday, February 24
9:00 AM: Opening Remarks
Prof. Dana Buntrock, CJS Chair
Dr. Toru Tamiya, JSPS Director
9:15 AM–10:45 AM: Session 1 Cross-Cultural Exchanges: Study Abroad and Its Impact
Dr. Shingo Ashizawa, Toyo University
Dr. Peter McCagg, Akita International University
Moderated by: Dr. Keiko Yamanaka, Dr. Susan Holloway
11:00 AM–12:30 PM: Session 2 Language Education and Where It Leads
Dr. Mayumi Usami, National Inst. For Japanese Language & Linguistics
Dr. Dustin Wright, UC Santa Cruz
Discussant: Dr. Alan Tansman
Moderated by: Dr. Yoko Hasegawa
1:45 PM–3:15 PM: Session 3 Are Science, Technology, Engineering and Math a Part of Area Studies or Above it?
Dr. Masayo Fujimoto, Doshisha University
Dr. Robert Cole, UC Berkeley
Moderated by: Prof. Dana Buntrock
3:30 PM–5:00 PM: Session 4 Media Gateways, Transnational Frames
Dr. Shunya Yoshimi, Tokyo University
Dr. Christine Yano, University of Hawaii at Manoa
Moderated by: Dr. Miryam Sas
Saturday, February 25
10:00 AM–12:00 PM: Session 4 Area Studies Under Threat: How Will Japan be Taught in the Years Ahead?
Dr. Miriam Kingsberg, University of Colorado
Dr. David Spafford, University of Pennsylvania
Dr. Yuma Totani, University of Hawaii
Ms. Andrea Horbinski (UCB)
Mr. James Stone Lunde (UCB)
Mr. Shoufu Yin (UCB)
Moderated by: Dr. Mary Elizabeth Berry
1:30 PM–2:30 PM: Keynote
Dr. Pat Steinhoff, University of Hawaii
2:30 PM–3:00 PM: Discussion
Moderator: Prof. Dana Buntrock
3:00 PM: Closing remarks
Prof. Dana Buntrock
Township leaders and village chiefs in contemporary China
Colloquium
Speaker: Zhe Ren, Institute of Developing Economies, CJS Visiting Scholar
Discussant: Daniel Mattingly, Stanford University
Date: February 28, 2017 | 2:00 p.m.
Location: 1995 University Avenue — IEAS Fifth Floor Conference Room
The relationship between a township leader and a village chief in contemporary China is something of a political puzzle. Researchers have maintained that China's bureaucratic system contains a very important political contracting framework. Within this framework, the career of a cadre is strongly related to the performance of a contract that may cover not only economic development but also other aspects of political and social development. Accordingly, previous research argued that political contracting was applied to leadership positions at both the town and village levels, making comparable 'contractual' demands on township leaders and village chiefs. Certain characteristics of the two positions, however, differ significantly in their implications for leadership performance and accountability. For instance, a cadre's career strongly depends on his or her performances and their assessments by upper-level and high-level cadres. In contrast, one can only become a village chief through a village election. Moreover, once elected a village chief cannot be dismissed by a township government unless the village chief is convicted of a crime. Furthermore, since a village chief is an elected leader, he or she does not necessarily have a clear and strong career plan akin to that of a cadre working and seeking to rise in the bureaucratic system. For these and other reasons, it is doubtful that the conventional political contracting model can adequately explain the complex relationships that exist today between township leaders and village chiefs in China.
日本の『死の舞踏』: 『九相詩』と『一休骸骨』 Kūsōshi and Ikkyū Gaikotsu
Colloquium
Speaker: Yūichirō Imanishi, National Institute of Japanese Literature
Date: March 3, 2017 | 3:30–5:00 p.m.
Location: East Asian Library, Art History Seminar Room
Sponsors: C.V. Starr East Asian Library, National Institute of Japanese Literature
ヨーロッパ中世を覆った「メメント・モリ」の思潮をもっとも雄弁に表すのは、『死の舞踏』（La Danse Macabre）という絵画で、書物としては15世紀1485年にフランスで出版された。そこには貴賤を問わずすべての人間を死へ誘う骸骨の姿が描かれている。いうまでもなく骸骨は死の象徴である。しかし、人間が死を免れないはかない存在であることは、洋の東西を問わない。日本では仏教の教えに「九相」ということが説かれていた。「九相」とは人間が死後、白骨になるまでの死体の腐敗変貌の過程の九段階のことであり、それはまさに仏教の「メメント・モリ」であった。その九相の図が描かれ、その絵に解説の漢詩と和歌を添えて『九相図』という書物が作られた。生のはかなさと生に執着することの無益を教える書物である。それは「メメント・モリ」に親しんできた西洋人、すなわち16世紀後半から17世紀はじめにかけて日本でキリスト教布教に努めた宣教師達にも注目され、布教のために出版されたイエズス会の出版物にも利用されている。『九相詩』の後、『九相詩』とはまったく別の角度から「メメント・モリ」を教える書物が出現した。『一休骸骨』である。酒を飲み踊り唄い、男女抱擁し、そして病と死、葬送、遺された者の出家・剃髪という人間の営みが、すべて骸骨の姿で示される。その絵は滑稽とユーモアにあふれているとも言えるが、その底に流れているのは、死すべきものとしての人間の究極の姿である。踊り唄う骸骨の姿は、まさに「死の舞踏」であるが、生と死を対立的に捉え生者を死へ誘うヨーロッパの骸骨とは異なり、生とは実は死にほかならないという、生死一如を表周する骸骨の姿がそこには見出される。骸骨はたんに生と対立する死の象徴なのではなく、生の究極の姿なのである。『九相詩』と『一休骸骨』の二書を取り上げて、日本中世の「メメント・モリ」について考えたい。
今西祐一郎（いまにし・ゆういちろう）
国文学研究資料館館長。平安時代文学・日本語表記論。
著書：『源氏物語覚書』（岩波書店）、『蜻蛉日記覚書』（岩波書店） 。校注書：『新日本古典文学大系『蜻蛉日記』・『源氏物語』（共著）、岩波文庫『蜻蛉日記』、『与謝野晶子訳 蜻蛉日記』（平凡社ライブラリー）、東洋文庫『通俗伊勢物語』・『古今集遠鏡』・『和歌職原抄』（平凡社）。
Corporate Governance Reform and the Toshiba Scandal: Did a New System Hide an Old Mess?
Colloquium
Speaker: Christina Ahmadjian, Professor, Hitotsubashi University
Moderator: Steven Vogel, Professor, Political Science, UC Berkeley
Date: March 6, 2017 | 4:00–6:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
An ongoing financial reporting scandal has stunned and puzzled observers of Japanese corporate governance reform. Toshiba was one of the first companies to adopt so-called “US-style” corporate governance practices. How could a company that had seemed to think so carefully about good governance have ended up like this? Where was the board? This presentation considers the possibility that the uneasy combination of elements from two very different business systems and institutions of governance at Toshiba may have created the conditions for scandal. This presentation uses the Toshiba case as an entry point to examine the larger theme of corporate governance reforms in Japan, and more generally, the unanticipated consequences of the convergence of business systems. Dr. Ahmadjian’s analysis of Toshiba and corporate governance reform in Japan is based on her experience as a researcher on Japanese corporate governance and Asian business systems, as well as her experience as a an external director at several large Japanese firms.
Christina Ahmadjian is a professor at Hitotsubashi University's Graduate School of Commerce and Management and former dean of the Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy. Her research interests include comparative corporate governance, globalization, systems of capitalism, business groups, and Japanese business and management. Her publications have appeared in journals including the American Sociological Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, and California Management Review. She teaches courses including organizational behavior, corporate governance, leadership, and global management. She received a BA, magna cum laude, from Harvard University, an MBA from Stanford University Graduate School of Business, and a PhD in Organizational Behavior and Industrial Relations at the Haas School at the University of California at Berkeley. Prior to her position at Hitotsubashi, she was an assistant professor at Columbia Business School. Her business experience includes positions at Bain & Company and Mitsubishi Electric. Currently, serves as an Outside Director of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. (since June 2012) and at Japan Exchange Group, Inc. (since June 2014). She was an Outside Director at Eisai, Ltd. from 2009–2013. She is an American citizen, but has lived in Japan for 20 years.
The Prism of Youth: Life Writing by Japanese Children and Teenagers during WWII
Colloquium
Speaker: Aaron William Moore, Senior Lecturer, The University of Manchester
Moderator: Andrew Barshay, Professor, History, UC Berkeley
Date: March 7, 2017 | 4:00–6:00 p.m.
Location: 3335 Dwinelle Hall
Even when compared with the West, Japanese children and teenagers arguably left the most extensive historical record of young people's personal experiences of total war from 1937 to 1945. In particular, evacuation, rationing, family life, compulsory labor, and conscription reach a level of detail rarely seen in adult accounts. Nevertheless, in the historiography of childhood and youth, the importance of "age as a category of analysis" can be in conflict with the notion that "children" and "teenagers" are culturally constructed categories which change throughout history. This talk will feature close readings of hand-written manuscripts, published, and self-published personal documents, including diaries and letters, to discuss how the war was described when we strictly limit our perspective to materials composed by young people aged 8 to 16. In doing so, we will see how important social expectations for young people were for framing their descriptions of the war years, but also how adult efforts to discipline youth were ultimately unsuccessful in controlling the process of learning about language, society, and the larger world.
Aaron William Moore is a Senior Lecturer in East Asian History at the University of Manchester. He is the author of Writing War (HUP, 2013), a major comparative study of Japanese, Chinese, and American soldiers' diaries describing combat experience and subjectivity in WWII. His second book, Bombing the City, is a narrative history of civilian accounts of the air war on British and Japanese cities, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press in 2017. He has published articles on children's descriptions of war in China and Japan, and is currently preparing a book on Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and British youth accounts of WWII. In 2014 he was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize for his work in comparative history.
Redefining Japaneseness: Japanese Americans in the Ancestral Homeland
Lecture
Speaker: Dr. Jane H. Yamashiro, Author
Date: March 9, 2017 | 2:00–5:00 p.m.
Location: 554 Barrows Hall
Sponsors: The Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies Program
Lecture and Book Signing with Dr. Jane H. Yamashiro
Introduction by Michael Omi
Redefining Japaneseness chronicles how Japanese American migrants to Japan experience both racial inclusion and cultural dislocation while negotiating between the categories of Japanese and “foreigner.” Drawing from extensive observations and interviews with Japanese Americans who are geographically, culturally, and linguistically diverse, Jane H. Yamashiro reveals wide variations in how Japanese Americans perceive both Japaneseness and Americanness. Her findings have major implications for both Asian American studies and scholarship on transnational migration and global diasporic identity.
"Not only does Yamashiro give us engaging portraits of how Japanese Americans navigate the social and cultural terrain of contemporary Japan, but she also provides a fundamental rethinking of the analytic frameworks by which migrant identities have been contextualized and understood."
Michael Omi,
University of California, Berkeley
Jane H. Yamashiro is a sociologist whose comparative and transnational work on race and ethnicity, culture, globalization, migration, diaspora, and identity sits at the intersection of Asian American and Asian Studies. She has previously been based at USC's Center for Japanese Religions and Culture and the UCLA Asian American Studies Center. She holds a B.A. from the University of California at San Diego and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa. While conducting research in Japan, Dr. Yamashiro has been funded by the East-West Center and the Crown Prince Akihito Scholarship, and has been a visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo and Sophia University. Her academic research has been published in Ethnic and Racial Studies; AAPI Nexus: Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders Policy, Practice and Community; Sociology Compass; Geoforum; CR: The New Centennial Review; and Migrations and Identities.
Contents Tourism: Fictional narratives and locations that beckon us to travel
Conference
Dates: March 10–11, 2017 | 6:30 p.m.
Featured Speaker: Takayoshi Yamamura, Hokkaido University
Speakers:
• Millie Creighton, University of British Columbia
• Akiko Sugawa-Shimada, Yokohama National University
• Michael Dylan Foster, University of California, Davis
• Margaret B. Swain, University of California, Davis
• Rongling Ge, Xiamen University
• Deirdre Clyde, City College of San Francisco, and University of
Hawaii, Manoa
• Min Joo Lee, University of California, Los Angeles
• Kyungjae Jang, Hokkaido University
Discussants:
• Daniel Fischer, University of California, Berkeley
• Nelson Graburn, University of California, Berkeley
Speakers/Performers:
• Shinobu Myoki, Tohoku University
• Ryoko Nishijima, University of California, Los Angeles
Location: Kroeber Hall, Gifford Room, 221
Sponsors: Townsend Center for the Humanities, Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, Department of Anthropology, Center for Chinese Studies, Center for Korean Studies, Cambria Press
The focus of this conference emphasizes the contemporary contents tourism, based mainly on the stories and characters of manga, anime, the internet, young peoples’ “virtual world,” rather than commercial or politically/geographically driven cases. The components are: the artist/creators who may or may not be professionals, the distribution media which may be broadcast programs or interactive media, the fans who admire and attribute special qualities to the fictional beings and places, and the tour, the (self)organized travel and the ritualized performances, often considered pilgrimages (Jang 2015) at the chosen destinations. These performances usually involve cosplay [costume play], that is the fans dressing up as or for the fictional characters.
These forms of contents tourism pertain to age groups, especially as a kind of rebellion of detachment of the (unmarried, underemployed) youth from those older, much as did Banana Yoshimoto’s inventive fiction since 1988. There is also a strong gender component with different personages and “cults” appealing to different genders. Prime is the proto-adolescent female figure engendering moe [burning, attraction] to young people of both genders but tending towards porno-attraction for middle-aged and older males (Yamamura 2008). There are more specialized programs, “cults” and events appealing to narrower gender audiences. For instance Yaoi-con consists of homo-erotic male figures which are designed to and in fact attract and fascinate — and arouse female “fans” (Uzama 2011) and this had grown to be popular abroad, especially in the United States (Masaki 2008). In 2015 the Yaoi-con (convention) took place in a hotel near San Francisco airport and two of the conference participants attended for research purposes.
Not all contents tourism is so esoteric or limited to Japanese fans. “Power Spot” tourism is a Japanese “spiritual craze” which designates certain places and spiritual destinations engendering “pilgrims” for “worshippers” in places not necessarily celebrated by Japanese traditional religions. While this relates culturally and overlaps with Japans animistic Shinto (the religion of 8 million kami [“gods’]),” it has generated its own fan groups and promoted visual consumption life styles such as Yama girls. It also bears resemblance to European-derived Geo-caching (Elder 2016) which is also practiced in Japan by tourists and Japanese alike. Clothilde Sabre, a French scholar associated with the Hokkaido équipe, is writing on Pokémon-Go as a driver of new tourism destinations in Japan (personal communication 2016). Above all, anecdotal evidence and preliminary research suggests that similar Contents Tourism phenomena are growing elsewhere in East Asia (McCarthy 2016), the USA and Europe.
Contents Tourism is already an important topic in Japan at the economic, sociological, geographical and cultural levels. There is an Academy of Contents Tourism (Academic, Governmental and Business Membership), there are two volumes on Contents Tourism (Nishikawa et al. 2015; another that I have just reviewed for a press); and there are a number of research centers. The British Association of Japanese Studies held a Mini-Conference: “Civil Society, Tourism, Anthropology” in July 2016, at the Research Faculty of Media and Communication, Hokkaido University. Above all it is a field of immense creativity, of importance to major groups of Japanese (and Korean and some Chinese) nationals. The power of the symbolism and attraction is perhaps best measured by reports (Jang 2016; Okamoto 2015) that these “cults” are the only successful way of getting hikikomori (self-imposed recluses), out of their isolation into civil society. About a million young people, mainly men aged 18–35, live permanently in their bedrooms parents’ homes! (Zielenziger 2006).
Schedule and Participants:
Friday March 10th
5.00pm — Opening Reception, Sponsored by Cambria Press
(P A Hearst Museum, Main Gallery, 102 Kroeber Hall)
6.30pm — Opening Address
Prof. Takayoshi Yamamura (Center for Advanced Tourism Studies, Hokkaido University)
“Who Creates ‘Contents Tourism’? A new tourism model induced by pop culture in the age of mixed media.”
(Gifford Room, 221 Kroeber Hall)
Saturday March 11th
(All in the Gifford Room, 221 Kroeber Hall)
9.15–11.00 am — Neo-Destinations and Community Focus
Millie Creighton (University of British Columbia)
Akiko Sugawa-Shimada (Yokohama National University)
Michael Dylan Foster (University of California, Davis)
11.15 am–12.25 pm - Media and Representations over Time
Shinobu Myoki (Tohoku University)
Margaret B. Swain (University of California, Davis) & Rongling Ge (Xiamen University)
12.25–1.40 pm - Lunch Break
1.40–2.50 pm - Media and creation of pilgrimage/tours
Deirdre Clyde (City College of San Francisco, and University of Hawaii, Manoa)
Bianca Freire-Medeiros (University of Texas at Austin and Universidade de São Paulo, Brasil)
3.10–5.00 pm - Multi-cultural, cross-cultural youth tourism
Min Joo Lee (University of California, Los Angeles)
Ryoko Nishijima (University of California, Los Angeles)
Kyungjae Jang (Hokkaido University, Japan)
5.15–6.00 pm - Discussants
Daniel Fischer (Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley)
Nelson Graburn ((Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley)
6.00–7.00 pm - Open Discussion among participants and audience
Workshop on Tannishō Commentarial Materials
Workshop
Dates: March 25–27, 2017
Location: Jodo Shinshu Center — 2140 Durant Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94704
Sponsors: Center for Buddhist Studies, Otani University, Ryukoku University
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. Beginning in 2017, the workshop will continue for five years, meeting twice a year for 3 to 4 days each time, in late March in Berkeley and early August in Kyoto, where it will be hosted alternately by Ōtani and Ryūkoku universities. 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), Jinrei (1801–1808), and Ryōshō (1841) will be examined. For the modern period, works by Andō Shūichi (1909), Chikazumi Jōkan (1930), and Soga Ryōjin (1947) will be the major concern. And for the postwar/postmodern period, due to the sheer volume of publications (over 300 titles), reading choices will be selected at a later date in consultation with participants.
Format: The language of instruction will be primarily English with only minimal Japanese spoken as needed, and while the texts will be in primarily in Classical Japanese and Modern Japanese, with some outside materials in kanbun and English. Participants will be expected to prepare the assigned readings, and on occasion make relevant presentations in English about content.
Dates: Exact dates will vary from year to year based on academic calendars, but for 2017 the meeting hosted by U.C. Berkeley will take place from the 25th to the 27th of March at the Jōdo Shinshū Center in Berkeley, and in Kyoto the seminar will be hosted by Ōtani University from the 4th to the 7th of August.
Cost: There is no participation fee, but in recognition of the distance some will have to travel to attend, a limited number of travel fellowships will be provided to qualified graduate students, based on preparedness, need, and commitment to the project.
Participation Requirements: Although any qualified applicant will be welcome to register, graduate students will be particularly welcome and the only recipients of financial assistance in the form of travel fellowships. Affiliation with one of the three hosting universities is not required. We welcome the participation of graduate students outside of Japan with some reading ability in Modern and Classical Japanese and familiarity with Buddhist thought and culture as well as native-speaking Japanese graduate students with a scholarly interest in Buddhism. Although we welcome students attending both meetings each year, participation in only one is acceptable.
Application Procedure: Applications must be sent for each year that one wants to participate. To apply to register for either or both of the workshops for 2017, send C.V. and short letter explaining your qualifications, motivations, and objectives to Kumi Hadler at cjs@berkeley.edu by February 10, 2017. Applications are by email only, and application deadlines will remain as end-January in subsequent years as well. Requests for a travel fellowship money should be included in this letter with specifics of where you will be traveling from and if you plan to attend one or both meetings that year. Questions about the content of the workshop may be sent to Professor Blum at mblum@berkeley.edu.
Gamushara (Live Recklessly)
Documentary Film
Speakers:
• Hidekazu Takahara, Director and Filmmaker
• Yuka/Act Yasukawa, Professional Wrestler and Actress
Date: April 6, 2107 | 6:30 p.m.
Location: 142 Dwinelle Hall
Sponsors: Center for the Study of Sexual Culture, Center for East Asian Studies
Hidekazu Takahara, 2015 (102 Minutes)
In Japanese with English subtitles
In Attendance:
Hidekazu Takahara, Director and Filmmaker
Yuka/Act Yasukawa, Professional Wrestler and Actress
In Hidekazu Takahara’s Gamushara (Live Recklessly), professional wrestling/joshi puroresu star Yuka/Act Yasukawa confronts her own past sexual trauma through the performance of violence in the ring. The fluidity between Yuka and her wrestling persona Act raises key questions: what are the documentary's limits in crafting a vision of a shifting identity, when so much of its subject’s personality is performed? Where is the Act in Yuka and the Yuka in Act? Where does Act's act begin? As a film that cannily and critically engages with the genre aesthetics of both documentary and pink film, the unreleased Gamushara has been heralded as a major work of documentary cinema by preeminent Japanese filmmaker Hara Kazuo.
Takahara, and the subject of the film, Yasukawa, will be on hand for a Q & A following the film. This will be an exciting opportunity to discuss the film with its creator and principal actor to probe the tensions between performing a transgressive femininity on camera and in the wrestling ring.
Event Contact: cjs-events@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑3415
On Belonging: Gender, Sexuality, and Identity in Japan
Conference
Dates: April 7–8, 2017 | 2:00–5:30 p.m. (Friday); 9:45 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. (Saturday)
Location: Stephens Hall, Geballe Room, The Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities
The UC Berkeley Center for Japanese Studies presents its fourth annual graduate student conference: On Belonging: Gender, Sexuality, and Identity in Japan. We invite proposals for papers from current graduate students and recent graduates from any discipline that focus on past and present inquiries into and expressions of identity and community formation vis-à-vis gender and sexuality in Japan. In particular we welcome abstracts that explore the role of identity (including gendered, sexual, social, and ethnic) in relation to Japanese Buddhist institutions, texts, and community practices.
This conference will also explore representations of and critical engagements with notions of gender, sexuality, and identity that illuminate where and how interpretations of such concepts have manifested barriers to belonging in the forms of discrimination and marginalization.
Friday, April 7, 2017
(2:00–2:10p)
OPENING REMARKS — Prof. Dana Buntrock
(2:10–3:40p)
Panel 1: "Transformations, Gender, and Buddhism in the Popular Imaginary"
• Kim McNelly (UCLA)
• Deirdre Clyde (University of Hawaii, Manoa)
• Stephanie Hohlios (UC Berkeley)
Respondent: Professor Mark Blum, Shinjo Ito Distinguished Chair in Japanese Studies, UC Berkeley
(4:00–5:30p)
KEYNOTE TALK: Professor Jessica Main, The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Chair in Buddhism and Contemporary Society, University of British Columbia
Saturday, April 8, 2017
(9:45–9:55a)
OPENING REMARKS
(9:55–11:25a)
Panel 2: "Constructing Race and Gender"
• Wakako Suzuki (UCLA)
• Lani Alden (University of Colorado, Boulder)
• Asheli Mosley (International Christian University)
Respondent: Professor Alan Tansman, Louis B. Agassiz Chair in Japanese, UC Berkeley
(11:45–1:15p)
Panel 3: "The Construction and Consumption of Gender and Sexuality"
• Sayo Sakamoto (University of Washington)
• Hannah Dodd (Ohio State University)
• Kirsten Seuffert (USC)
Respondent: Professor Joseph Lavery, UC Berkeley
(2:00–3:30p)
Panel 4: "Voice, Identity, and the Performance of Community"
• Pedro Bassoe (UC Berkeley)
• Pontus Andersson (University of Helsinki)
• Justine Wiesinger (Yale)
Respondent: Professor Jessica Main, The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Chair in Buddhism and Contemporary Society, University of British Columbia
(3:50–5:20)
Panel 5: "Economies of Identity"
• Andrea Horbinski (UC Berkeley)
• Valerie Black (UC Berkeley)
• Caitlin Casiello (Yale)
Respondent: Professor Karen Nakamura, UC Berkeley
(5:20–5:30p)
CLOSING REMARKS Prof. Dana Buntrock
Visit the conference website here.
Looking at Okinawa: Race, Gender, Nation
Conference
Speakers:
• Ishikawa Mao, Photographer
• Wendy Matsumura, Professor, UC San Diego
• Annmaria Shimabuku, Professor, NYU
Date: April 9, 2017 | 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Location: Moffitt Undergraduate Library, 340 (BCMN Commons Seminar Room)
Sponsors: Townsend Center for the Humanities, Department of African American Studies, Asian American Studies, Department of Ethnic Studies, Department of Gender and Women's Studies, Center for Race and Gender, Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures
This is a one-day event being held in order to create a dialogue on issues of race and gender in the study of Okinawa, and to contemplate the relationship between the study of Japan and the study of Okinawa.
We will initiate this dialogue with a lecture by photographer Ishikawa Mao, whose work explores the complex relationships of gender, race, and national identity in Okinawa and Japan. Her works have included including candid photographs of African American servicemen and their Okinawan and Japanese wives and girlfriends in Okinawa in the 1970s; and portraits of Japanese and Okinawan people with the national flag of Japan, interacting with it in various ways to demonstrate their complicated and often troubled relationship with the nation of Japan. Ishikawa is to give a slide show and talk about her work, focussing on her photographs of African American servicemen.
In the afternoon, we will hold a discussion between scholars, students, and members of the public, to be led by Professor Wendy Matsumura (UCSD) and Professor Annmaria Shimabuku (NYU), who, from the fields of cultural studies, sociology, and history, have been engaged in thinking about the role of Okinawan studies and its place in Japanese studies more generally. We will discuss what it means to study Okinawa in the American academy, and, drawing on Ishikawa's work, we will examine the complicated role of race and gender in Japanese studies and Okinawan studies.
Presenter bios:
Ishikawa Mao is an Okinawan photographer, who has been active since the 1970s. Having studied with Tomatsu Shomei in Tokyo, she went on to photograph soldiers and locals in Okinawa and Japan, and over 40 years has created a candid and intimate style of photography which humanizes her subjects while also offering political critique.
Wendy Matsumura is assistant professor of history at the University of California, San Diego. She works on Okinawan history, as well as the history of labor and race in the Japanese Empire. Her book, The Limits of Okinawa: Japanese Capitalism, Living Labor, and Theorizations of Community, was published by Duke University Press in 2015.
Annmaria Shimabuku is assistant professor of East Asian Studies at New York University. She works on postcolonial feminism and theories of race in Japan, Okinawa, and beyond.
Visit the conference website here.
ARCH Lecture: Kazuyo Sejima
Lecture
Speaker: Kazuyo Sejima, SANAA
Date: April 10, 2017 | 6:30–8:00 p.m.
Location: Zellerbach Hall
Sponsors: College of Environmental Design
Kazuyo Sejima is a principal of SANAA, a Tokyo-based architecture and design firm she co-founded with Ryue Nishizawa in 1995.
SANAA’s architects and designers work on projects ranging in scale from residential and interior design to large complex buildings and urban planning schemes, as well as product and furniture design. SANAA “approaches each project with a fresh perspective,” believing that designs “arise from conditions particular to the site and program.”
Recent work includes the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan, the Rolex Learning Center in Switzerland, and the Louvre-Lens in France. In the United States, SANAA designed the recently opened Grace Farms in Connecticut as well as the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York and Toledo Museum of Art Glass Pavilion in Toledo, Ohio.
Kazuyo Sejima studied at the Japan Women’s University where she received a master’s degree in architecture in 1981. Shortly thereafter she worked in the office of architect Toyo Ito. Kazuyo Sejima has taught at Princeton University and Tama Art University among other institutions, and with her partner Ryue Nishizawa curated the 12th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennial in 2010. She and Ryue Nishizawa were named Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureates that same year.
This lecture is presented with the College of Environmental Design and the UC Regents Lectures Program.
Reading Technopoetic Japan
Colloquium
Speaker: Earl Jackson Jr., National Chiao Tung University
Date: April 24, 2017 | 2:30 p.m.
Location: 142 Dwinelle Hall
Sponsors: Department of Comparative Literature, Film & Media Studies
What is often dismissed as “otaku culture” actually names a complex network of creative industries and equally creative engaged participants. The media that emerge and sustain these subcultural formations include anime, manga, novels, etc.. In studying these media I focus on relations among technology, representation, and subjectivity as well as the politics that inform and circumscribe those relations. In the course of these inquiries I have adopted the term “technopoetics” as a way to characterize both my object and method of analysis. In other words, I study representational technology on at least two levels: on one level, what it does; another level: what it means. The second level encompasses at least two registers of “meaning”: [1] changes in conceptual systems; [2] new metaphorical lexicon.
In this lecture I will survey three anime (Serial Experiments: Lain; Perfect Blue;and Ergo Proxy) and examine the media-mix experiment of Otsuka Eiji’s MPD-Psycho Detetctive project. My technopoetical reading of these will be guided by the technopoetical readings the media themselves perform: one level they depict the functions of technology, and on another they exploit its imagery and the fantasies it elicits and sustains.
Earl Jackson Jr., Associate Professor emeritus from UC Santa Cruz, is currently Professor at National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan. He is author of Strategies of Deviance: Studies in Gay Male Representation, and essays on Japanese literature and Japanese and Korean cinema. He worked in Korean indpendent cinema as screenwriter, editor, and actor. He appeared as the villain in Barbie (Sangwoo Lee 2010). He has recently completed a monograph on Japanese anime, Technopoetic Japan, and is currently writing a study of the relation of theory and practice in Japanese Cinema.