Date: March 7 th\, 2024
Time: 12:45-14:00
Location: Choi 120\, C.K. Choi Buil ding\, UBC
Speaker: Dr. Millie Creighton
Event Descript ion:
Tourism is highlighted in Japan for community revival a nd sustaining outlying areas. Japan is an archipelagic country comprised en tirely of islands. However\, there are islands and there are islands\, with Japan’s four ‘main islands’ considered more central than its thousands of other islands. These ‘other’ islands once held vibrant communities of small er cities\, towns\, and villages. With exodus into urban centers\, they wer e depopulated. One major international touristic art festival occurring eve ry three years\, involves Japan’s Seto Inland Sea islands. Renowned Japanes e architects designed world famous museums on these islands\, and internati onal art installations are featured. One question is whether incoming globa l flows of people really constitutes community survival. However\, locals a ttempt to redefine their identities rather than simply being caught in glob alizing processes. For tourists\, island hopping allows them to navigate th e Seto Inland Sea islands via diverse travel mobilities. Among the Seto Inl and Sea islands is Oshima which for nearly a century was used for exiling H ansen’s Disease (aka ‘Leprosy’) patients. This island reveals historic trau ma and human rights abuses when Hansen’s Disease patients were feared and m istreated (which happened not only in Japan but elsewhere). Japan renounced this legal exile towards the 20 th century’s end. (A small community of Ha nsen’s Disease patients still resides there by choice). The timing coincide s with recognitions of Indigenous Ainu and other minority groups in Japan\, in a country previously proclaiming homogeneity. Many festival art works a lso deal with human environmental destruction. Art Seto\, as a continuing a ll-year project deals with environmental concerns just as art installations during the festival periods bring together a human history of throwing awa y\, often by dumping into oceans\, seas\, or other waterways\, unwanted mat erial objects and pollutants creating environmental degradation\, mirroring a human tendency of using islands to ‘throw away’ unwanted people.
< strong>About the Speaker
Dr. Millie Creighton is an anthropo logist\, Japan specialist and Asianist based in the Department of Anthropol ogy at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver\, BC\, Canada. She was one of the founders of the Centre for Japanese Research at UBC and continues to work in conjunction with it and on the Executive Board of the Centre for Korean Research. She has done extensive research in Japan on de partment stores\, consumerism\, tourism\, popular culture\, gender\, minori ties\, work and leisure\, and identity. She was awarded the Canon Prize for her work on Japanese department stores showing how department store market ing reflected nostalgia and the search for community\, tradition and cultur al identity. Her research on the Seto Inland Sea art festival circuit explo res domestic and international tourism within Japan\, showing how tourism c an highlight art\, architecture\, nature\, the environment\, and sustainabi lity\, while at the same time being a response to rural depopulation aimed at sustaining communities.
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LOCATION:Room 120\, C.K. Choi Building GEO:49.267258;-123.257967 URL;VALUE=URI:https://sppga.ubc.ca/events/event/seto-inland-sea-islands/ ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://sppga.cms.arts.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2024/03/Seto-Islands-CJR-March-7th-crop.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Vancouver BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0700 TZOFFSETTO:-0800 DTSTART:20231105T090000 TZNAME:PST END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR