Europe Japan Research Centre Podcasts

[Recorded 9th December 2020] Recent years have seen an increased focus on global cultural histories of HIV/AIDS of the 1980s and 1990s. However these have tended to focus on the transnational circulation of cultural products, activist networks and people across the North Atlantic, and specifically in the Anglophone world. In this talk marking World AIDS Day, I make some preliminary claims for a greater significance of Japan in a global history of HIV/AIDS of the 1990s. I focus on the events surrounding the first World AIDS Conference held outside Europe and North America (in Yokohama in 1994) and the transnational movements of theatre productions, performance, visual arts and other cultural products in and out of Japan around this time period. Mark Pendleton is Senior Lecturer in Japanese Studies in the School of East Asian Studies at University of Sheffield. He is an editor of the Routledge Companion to Gender and Japanese Culture and has published numerous chapters and articles in journals like Japan Forum and Japanese Studies.

[Recorded 18th November 2020] In this talk, I will discuss competing streams of historical consciousness in Mount Haguro, a sacred mountain in northeastern Japan known for its mountain ascetic traditions. Applying the notion of ressentiment (historical alienation) to the longue dureé of religious history in Mount Haguro, I demonstrate how contemporary conflicts in the mountain ascetic community are rooted not only in a historic rift between Shintō and Buddhism in the early Meiji period, but in a greater dynamic at play in Japanese religious history between nativism and cosmopolitanism. Shayne A. P. Dahl received his PhD in Sociolinguistic Anthropology at the University of Toronto in 2019. His doctoral research considered recent innovations of Shugendo (mountain asceticism) in Yamagata Prefecture, Japan. In 2017, he produced an ethnographic film, The Buddha Mummies of North Japan, which explored the modern worship and significance of mummified monks in a sacred mountain range called Dewa Sanzan. He has published about post-disaster pilgrimage Dewa Sanzan and is currently writing book manuscript based on his doctoral fieldwork that will explore themes of religion, historical consciousness, and ecology in a post-disaster context.

[Recorded 4th November 2020] In Nagoro, in the middle of Shikoku, close to two hundred scarecrows stand in the farm fields where nothing but weeds now grow; they wait at the bus stop past which busses no longer run; and they sit in an elementary school devoid of human children. Day by day increasing numbers of visitors from urban centers of affluent countries are making the trek to this small town and its inanimate inhabitants. Reflexively following that curiosity, for the past five years I have visited this town, made scarecrows, spent time with long-term inhabitants of the valley, and talked to the tourists and reporters who come to see a fading rural life set against a seemingly natural backdrop of stunning beauty. In this paper, I argue that the economic conditions that enable the hyper-mobility of urban public curiosity are precisely those that push small villages such as this one to the verge of disappearance. A gendered, spatial, and temporal organization of labor and leisure, curiosity and possibility — all global in scope — condense here into the scarecrow. This talk was originally presented on 4th November, 2020. Joseph Hankins is Associate Professor and Vice Chair of Anthropology and Interim Director of Critical Gender Studies at the University of California, San Diego. His research examines the interplay of flow and capture – of goods, people, and political possibility. His first book followed raw cowhide from his hometown in Texas to a tannery in Japan, examining the gendered labor required to reproduce political arguments that Japan is multicultural. His talk is from his second book project on deurbanization and rural imaginaries.

[Recorded 21st October 2020] Child welfare and well-being are fragile kin to each other. Such is the case in Japan, where the ethnographic data for this paper originate, but also across the world, as policy makers, caregivers, and people with experience in state care endeavor to imagine—and implement—child welfare systems that truly support well-being. Despite these efforts, social welfare systems too often “produce people who have no one,” in the words of one of my interlocutors. Child welfare policy and practice institutionalize particular visions of kinship relationships, with lasting effects on the people touched by these systems. Some of these systems cultivate the possibility for lasting relationships, and some do not. Relationships can injure and harm, but they can also transform. What are the conditions for a welfare system that nurtures well-being, that produces people who have people? This paper explores how cultural norms surrounding kinship, many deeply connected to national ideologies of Japanese identity, play out when kinship realities diverge from normative expectations surrounding nurturance and care. Originally presented on 21st October, 2020. Kathryn E. Goldfarb is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the Univeristy of Colorado Boulder. Kathryn earned her PhD from the University of Chicago in 2012 and has published widely on kinship, adoption and child welfare in Japan in journals such as Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Japanese Studies and Social Science and Medicine. She is currently preparing a book manuscript titled "Fragile Kinships: Child Welfare and Well Being in Japan"

[Recorded 14th October 2020] Kinship is a restrictive and yet mutable logic by which many nation-states in East Asia nationalize transnational mobility today. This talk elucidates the seemingly paradoxical but deeply systemic stratification of citizenship intensified by kinship-based migrations, by examining the case of Brazilians in contemporary Japan. At first glance, the kin-based incorporation connotes acceptance: “they” are “us.” Yet the partial inclusion grounded on the idiom of blood ironically preserves perpetual exclusion of those migrants who must seek belonging in a corporeal idiom of family. [NOTE: original presentation contained an 8min video in Porteugeuse with English Subtitles. This part has been edited from the audio pending permission from those involved in the video] Suma Ikeuchi is Assistant Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara. Her first book, "Jesus Loves Japan: Return Migration and Global Pentecostalism in the Brazilian Diaspora", was published by Stanford University Press in 2019.

[Recorded 4 December 2019] Ezra Pound had meaningful interactions with his contemporary Japanese artists. This paper argues that his rivalry with Yone Noguchi, a poet who wrote hokku (Japanese traditional short poems) in English, was significant in his creation of an aesthetic based on hokku. Toru Nakamura is Professor of English and American Literature and Culture at Chuo University in Tokyo, Japan. He is currently a Visiting Scholar in Oxford’s Faculty of English, working on the interaction between early 20th century American (and English) writers and artists who belonged to Non-Western cultures. His main books include: Terminal Beginning: American Stories and the Power of Words [Terminal Beginning: Amerika no Monogatari to Kotoba no Chikara] (Editing and writing, Tokyo: Ronso sha, 2014); and Ernest Hemingway: Author’s Horizon from the 21st Century Perspective [Ernest Hemingway: Nijuisseiki kara Yomu Sakka no Chihei] (co-authored, Tokyo: Rinsen Book Co. 2011). His main translations include Henry Miller’s Book of Friends (co-translated, Suiseisha, 2014).

[Recorded 20 November 2019] Based upon anthropological fieldwork conducted in the Koenji neighbourhood of Tokyo, I examine the lives of street-based amateur musicians newly arrived in the metropolis. In many cases, initial aspirations of progress give way to a realisation that the music industry is deaf to their efforts. They quickly slip into a pattern of irregular work, joining huge numbers of financially insecure and opportunity-poor young people. Prioritising music has put them on the margins of popular discourses of life trajectories in Japan, even though their lived experiences are commonplace to many. While scholarship on “precarity” and the reverberations of “gap society” is plentiful, much less attention has been given to how people respond to these circumstances. In this talk I explore how the musicians carve out new trajectories for themselves by readdressing the role that music plays in their lives, and how their music practices negotiate the space left by diminished hope. That a life in music can still exist despite odds stacked against it is, perhaps, indicative that young people are fast developing the skills and capacities to negotiate the vicissitudes of modern life.

[Recorded 6 November 2019] Following decades of low fertility and long average lifespans, Japan's aging society is currently undergoing a social and demographic transformation on a scale never before seen in human history. Concerns about the care of Japan's aging population has concentrated either on the provision of formal care services through the Long-Term Care Insurance system or on the support of unpaid family and community carers. But what about older people who fall through the social 'safety net' of care? For more and more older people, one consequence of the Japan's aging society has been an increased risk of going to prison, usually as a result of minor nonviolent property crimes. As the prison population ages, guards and fellow prisoners become care assistants, while facilities, daily routines, food, and even the architecture of prisons are all become adapted to the older body. In many ways, it appears that in the aging society, prisons become nursing homes. This talk examines the lifeworlds of older ex-offenders to try to learn how this deepening connection between prison and social welfare is reshaping what it means to grow old in today's Japan. In particular, I look at the temporality of the carceral condition, as reflected in the rhythm of re-offending that has emerged as an alternative to the isolation and alienation of aging in the community. Is this rhythm and repetition an echo of other patterns of care and the life course? Or is it best seen as the inescapable machine of governmentality? Or perhaps there is something in-between (間), a space suspended in contradictions of frailty and violence, connection and separation, in and out?

[Recorded 16 October 2019] In the mid-nineteenth century, showmen like P. T. Barnum were earning big money by displaying Japanese mummified mermaids to their British and US audiences. At the same time, naturalists were inspecting these specimens, trying to ascertain whether they were genuine, or what sorts of creatures they were composed of. Either way, these mummified mermaids made in Japan became part of the debates about the natural world order, taxonomy, and the theory of evolution. For centuries before that, it was common to include mermaids both in natural history books and books on monsters, alongside other mythical creatures. The material objects brought from Japan, exquisitely crafted, and presented with stories about the newly-discovered fertile exotic lands filled with hybrids and “missing links” such as platypus were bringing chaos into the natural history world that the ever-developing taxonomical systems such as Linnaeus’ were attempting to put back into order. This talk looks at the Japanese mummified mermaids (one can be found in the British Museum in London) and their role in the making of Darwin’s West and in the global scientific modernity by examining the material Japanese mermaid at the intersection of myth and popular culture and science and modernity in the Euro-American context.

[Recorded 27 March 2019] Anticipating a major retrospective of Koreeda Hirokazu’s films at the British Film Insitute in London during April and May, this mini-symposium brings together two researchers currently working on the director’s cinema at British universities. In recent years, Koreeda Hirokazu has produced a series of dramas focusing on family relationships amid the changing social landscape of post-bubble Japan. Duncan Breeze, under the title ‘Three Ryōs’, will discuss three of Koreeda’s most personal narratives – Still Walking (2008), After the Storm (2015) and TV series Going my Home (2012) – in which he casts Abe Hiroshi as central protagonist ‘Ryōta’. Abe’s characters are unrelated to one another yet are consistently typified by their (often humorous) inability to fulfil social and familial expectations. The resulting alienation experienced by Abe's characters can be seen as emblematic of similar anxieties faced by many adult Japanese males who, following the declining strength of hegemonic gender identities, struggle to negotiate competing masculine discourses. This talk will explore Abe as a ‘man out of place’ in Koreeda’s cinema. Alexander Jacoby will discuss ‘the abnormal family’ in Koreeda’s recent Palme d’Or-winning film Shoplifters (2018) as a key example of the director’s representation of families that differ from the assumed norms of Japanese kinship structure and accepted conduct. These trends are brought to an extreme in Shoplifters, where the central “family” is both socially marginalised, making a living through crime, and structurally aberrant, consisting of a group of people who share a home but are not blood relatives. This talk will set the concerns of Shoplifters in the context of Koreeda’s central theme: the interrogation of what it really means to be part of a family.

[Recorded 20 March 2019] This talk explores the intersections between Buddhism/Buddhist institutions and madness/mental institutions. After a general discussion of the place of madness within the Buddhist tradition I will move to the intriguing history of the institutional connections between Buddhist monasteries and mental institutions in Japan. What, I will ask, is the historical relationship between the Buddhist monasteries and the new mental hospitals, which often grew up within the precincts or adjacent to Buddhist monasteries? In addressing this questions we encounter a history of the fundamental role played by Buddhist monasteries in the therapy of those beset with mental illnesses. Due to modern changes in the care for the insane—including a move toward mandatory hospitalization— the earlier history of the connections between the Buddhist monasteries and the insane became occluded. This talk will recover some of that history and show the role that was played by Buddhist temples in providing therapies, magical cures, and day to day care for the insane. I will conclude the talk by briefly shifting our attention to the West and the dramatic increase in the number of psychotherapists, counselors, mental health workers, and neuro-scientists who have become interested in meditation and various forms of what have come to be called “Buddhist Psychotherapy” and “Buddhist Mindfulness,” by drawing on Japanese traditions.

[Recorded 26 February 2020] Our understanding of language in Meiji Japan is chiefly focused upon the changes to the Japanese language itself: the creation of a central standardised Japanese and the relegation of regional variants to the status of dialects, as well as the simplification of grammar and the unification of spoken and written language. However, alongside this inward looking history, there is another, outward looking one: a history of debate about what the right language was for Japan to use to talk to the rest of world. This history features a range of unfamiliar languages: Volapuk, Esperanto, Zilengo, and Yokohama Kotoba, and reveals an important but forgotten dimension to Japan’s modernity.

[Recorded 27 February 2019] Old Japanese is the name given to the stage of the Japanese language as it was spoken during the eighth century CE. The corpus of written text that is understood to encode this language is small but of considerable qualitative significance for students of language, literature and ancient history. My talk will first introduce, briefly, some visual materials which help to illustrate how Old Japanese literature was encoded in writing and transmitted through time to the present day. After this, it will explore one dimension of Old Japanese texts which, more than any other, ties them to the oral traditions by which they are underpinned – rhetoric. In particular, the discussion will focus on the role of repetitive sound textures in Old Japanese rhetoric and, in the process, will highlight one area in which historical linguistics may be fruitfully deployed in support of literary analysis.

[Recorded 21 February 2019] Science fiction existed in Japanese since the early years after the Meiji Restoration (1868), but primarily as translations of Western canonical works. Between 1890 and 1910, new stories were written by Japanese authors, which quickly gained an enthusiastic audience. After WWI, however, popular scientific journals, catering to educated middle class readers and non-specialists, began publishing speculative science writing and science fantasy. Researchers, engineers, and technical specialists also were involved, both in the production and critique of these new visions of Japan's future. In this talk, Moore explores the intersection between fiction writing, imperial politics, and the dissemination of scientific knowledge. Using scientific studies to structure their imagination of possible futures, Japanese writers asked: what will space travel be like? Can we make artificial humans? Will super-weapons change the global political order? And what role will the Empire of Japan play in this new world?

[Recorded 13 February 2019] For a number of years, Japanese stand-up comedians have also been successful with publications on the domestic book market. Benefiting from their high popularity and constant presence in the media, publications by comedians-cum-book-authors often turn into media scoops, be it youth memoirs such as Tamura Hiroshi’s Homeless Middle School Student (2007) or autobiographic novels winning Japan’s coveted Akutagawa Prize like Matayoshi Naoki’s Spark (2015). Manga, film or even Netflix adaptations boost the popularity of the writing comedians even further, while also creating or re-confirming audiences’ ideas about the life of a professional comedian. In his talk, Till Weingärtner, who himself performed as a manzai comedian in Osaka during his doctoral research, will examine the relationship between comedians’ on-stage/on-screen personae with selected books and their adaptations. By doing so, he will offer a better understanding of how comedians’ images are constructed in Japanese show business.

[Recorded 28 November 2018] For over fifty years the shinkansen has been transporting people across Japan punctually, quickly, comfortably and safely. When it began services on 1 October 1964, in time for the Tōkyō Olympics, it heralded a new age in railway transport and since that time the shinkansen network has continued to grow with many changes since the break up and privatisation of the railways in 1987. Meanwhile the aviation market has also continued to evolve, with ANA becoming Japan’s biggest airline in recent years, the construction and expansion of airports, and the introduction of Low Cost Carriers. But there is more to these trains and planes than merely means of transportation; they also reflect a range of aspects of Japanese society. This paper will look at a range of issues relating to their design and usage that will reveal ways in which they can help us to understand Japanese society.

[Recorded 21 November 2018] September 1964, when the Tokyo Olympics were about to start, the reputed American middle-class- oriented Life magazine published a large special issue on Japan, teeming with superb photography and acutely written chronicles. Over the decades, it has become a sought-after collector’s item, especially cherished for a remarkable photographic piece on Tokyo’s underground music scene signed Michael Rougier. However, its interest goes beyond its graphic beauty, since this issue can easily be considered one of the most complex and illuminating documents on the convoluted relationship between Japan and the U.S. after World War II. The impassioned account of the economic miracle, the purposefully naive portrayal of Emperor Hirohito, the philosophical analysis of some of Japan’s most pervasive moral contradictions, the tender look on Tokyo’s distraught youth and the significant page layout and management of advertisements both to American and to Japanese brands are only some of the aspects that will be focused on in this lecture, all pointing to the serious political revelations that are hidden behind this fascinating array of texts and images.

[Recorded 17 October 2018] Ordinary, Japanese idol means young boys/girls groups which is constructed by singers, actors and TV talents. In these days, it is said that idol is one of the typical Japanese pop culture. They look really good-looking and cute. On the other hand, it is said that almost all of them don’t have a great talent for singing, dancing and acting, especially comparing to Star singers or Movie Stars. For a long time, idol has been criticized as incomprehensible culture by the people who likes traditional and authentic cultures. But there are so many fans in Japan. And they enthusiastically love these idols. Therefore, in this presentation, I would like to understand this typical Japanese pop culture from a viewpoint of sociology of fan culture. From this point of view, we can understand they love idol as a culture of communication rather than a culture of content.

[Recorded 10 October 2018] The Japanese kimono is iconic – an instantly recognisable marker of Japanese aesthetics and nationhood throughout the world. Little is known however about the industry that makes and sells the kimono. How is the industry structured, and what challenges does it face in the 21st century? How has the economic crisis of the 1990s affected the industry? And what is the role of traditional industries in a modern, industrialised nation? This talk explores the ways in which the kimono retail industry in contemporary Japanese society is changing in response to the economic crisis of the 1990s and the declining popularity of the kimono as formal wear, leading to falling demand and sales. Based on doctoral research in anthropology and twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork in Aichi prefecture, Kyoto, Tokyo and Yamagata with kimono shop owners, wholesalers, craftspeople, writers, bloggers, designers, government officials and consumers, this talk will showcase how a small but influential group are aiming to change the industry from within by marketing the kimono as fashion and framing the kimono as a lifestyle choice. Their efforts have led to a shift in manufacturing, marketing and selling strategies that have effectively aligned the kimono with global discourses about fashion. This shift has split the kimono retail industry into two camps: those who sell kimono as ceremonial wear for key ritual occasions such as weddings, funerals, tea ceremonies, coming of age ceremonies, graduation and school entrance ceremonies, and those who increasingly turn to the discourse of fashion and lifestyle to market their wares.

[Recorded 22nd November 2017] Japanese anime, a global phenomenon and a locally powerful industry, has a tendency to be viewed outside Japan in relation to its extreme content, lending it a ‘cult’ air. Through such discussions, it becomes easy to paint all anime as ‘cult’ without ever considering the wider implications of this Euro-American concept for Japanese media texts. Therefore, in this talk, I revisit the relationship between cult and anime in order to examine how and when the term might be useful, taking an industrio-historical view of the relationship between cult and anime. Gainax, one of Japan’s foremost anime companies presents a useful focus for this analysis. Formed out of an amateur collective to become one of the most (in)famous companies in anime history, Gainax has helped to make anime a global phenomenon. Moreover, the founders of Gainax have gone on, in some cases, to become important voices in the debates around how to conceptualise anime. By re-examining the competing discourses around anime and the idea of ‘cult’ media I argue for a more meaningful association between cult and anime. In essence, I argue that cult has only a limited usefulness in relation to anime, despite the fact that our early and main way of defining anime has been through its Euro-American ‘cultification’. This seminar took place at Oxford Brookes University on 22 November 2017.