Events at: Room 604, Asian Centre

The Rise of the Beautician in Modern Japan

The Meiji period (1868-1912) was a turning point in Japanese society, which underwent a renaissance in law, politics, and social structure. With the renewal of society, cosmetic culture and makeup practices followed suit. Shaved eyebrows and blackened teeth fell out of fashion. Later, Japanese makeup adopted more influences from western cultural aesthetics. This new western […]

What Did Panasonic Learn in China? Japanese Electronics Firms and the Greater China Market

Japanese electronics firms such as Panasonic, Sony, Hitachi and Toshiba have set up a wide array of factories, sales offices and management offices over the past 35 years. This study focuses on how their strategies have changed since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. Theoretically, Japanese companies should now have a greater opportunity […]

Lunchtime Lecture Series: Professor Nakano Kiwa on “How Do People Reconstruct Former Disaster Areas? The Case of Genkai Island”

Lunchtime Lecture Series featuring Professor Nakano Kiwa (Daito Bunka University; visiting scholar, Department of Anthropology) How Do People Reconstruct Former Disaster Areas? －The Case of Genkai Island : Fukuoka Prefecture Western Offshore Earthquake－   ABSTRACT After the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, rebuilding the devastated area became a major challenge. Many areas […]

Lunchtime Lecture Series: Textual Representations of Sexual Violence in Heian and Kamakura Monogatari and Beyond

Abstract: Readers and scholars of monogatari—court tales written between the ninth and the early twelfth century (during the Heian and Kamakura periods)—have generally agreed that much of their focus is on amorous encounters. They have, however, rarely addressed the question of whether these encounters are mutually desirable or, on the contrary, uninvited and therefore aggressive. […]

Moomin and the Conceptual Chase: What Moomin in Japan Tells Us about Globalization

By: Professor Hyung-Gu Lynn Moomin has been popular in Japan since 1969 when an animated series based on Tove Janssen’s books hit the airwaves. This talk will present a project in its early stages using the history and the popularity of Moomin in Japan to question notions of soft power, globalization, glocalization, and contraflow.

Do Virtual Earthquakes Still Shake Us to the Core? Simulating Survival in Japan’s Disaster Report Video Game

By: Ben Whaley (Ph.D. student, Asian Studies) Abstract: This talk asks the question of whether a video game might help us better understand the trauma of another through an analysis of the PlayStation 2 game Zettaizetsumei Toshi (2002, Disaster Report, 2003). In the game, players must use limited resources to escape from an earthquake- and […]

Pakistan as an Alternative to the Idea of an Impossible India

By: Atiya Singh (PhD Candidate, University of Chicago) According to popular perceptions, Pakistan came into being as a result of a specific vision of the Muslim League shaped in the political milieu of the 1940s. Yet this perspective ignores the role played by the Communist-Left in India not only in articulating the idea of Pakistan, […]

How Huang Zunxian Helped Canadian-Chinese in an Age of Chinese Exclusion (1882-1885)

About the Event The great poet, diplomat, and reformer Huang Zunxian (1848-1905) is one of the most widely studied figures of nineteenth-century China, but so far little has been written about his activities in the United States during his period of service as the Chinese Consul-General in San Francisco (1882-1885).  This talk will make use […]

What Would Aristotle Think? A Japanese Production of the Greek Tragedy Medea

Miyagi Satoshi has directed several productions of Euripides’ tragedy “Medea”, using a number of conventions found in traditional Japanese theatre, in particular the use of a narrator speaking for a moving actor. Miyagi thinks that Meiji period Japan in which his play is set and Athens of the 5th century BCE were similar in a […]

Sex and the Stereoscopic City in Kanshi: Mori Ōgai and Niigata

Professor Wixted has written several articles on kanshi (Sino-Japanese poetry). His talk, “Sex and the Stereoscopic City in Kanshi: Mori Ōgai and Niigata,” will treat selections from two series that Mori Ōgai (1862-1922) wrote when on expedition in northern Japan as a twenty-year-old army officer. In addition to their intrinsic interest, the poems throw much […]

Critical Ethnography of Decorative Rebellion: Japanese Girls Subculture in Harajuku

The research examines the young female specific subculture called Decora in Harajuku by applying critical ethnographic approach in order to retheorize the notion of resistance. Subcultures generated from the streets has been merged with and disseminated by main-stream culture and provoked a number of criticism towards their political stance. Other theories such as (neo) tribe […]

The Writing Center as a Globalized Pedagogy: A Case Study of an Internationalized University in Japan

The Writing Center as a Globalized Pedagogy: A Case Study of an Internationalized University in Japan Due to increased pressures of internationalization, universities around the world are compelled to implement language education models and frameworks with global recognition  (Byram & Parmenter, 2012; Doiz, Lasagabaster, & Sierra, 2012; Imoto & Horiguchi, 2015). Given this trend, I […]

Okinoshima: A Field Visit Report with Dr. Christina Laffin

From October to November 2015, Professor Christina Laffin and four graduate students of Japanese literature travelled to the remote islands of Okinoshima in Shimane Prefecture to present an exhibit, workshop, and series of lectures aimed at making local cultural heritage more accessible. Over the course of a week they collaborated with local government staff, community […]

What Does it Mean to “Abolish” a Language? – Some Thoughts on Mori Arinori and Shiga Naoya

Speaker: Dr. Christina Yi, (Assistant Professor, Department of Asian Studies) With the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1894, Japan officially embarked on an enterprise of territorial expansion. Acquisition of Taiwan occurred in 1895, soon followed by the annexation of Korea in 1910. The unconditional surrender of Japan to the Allied Powers in 1945 signaled not […]

Four Women – Four Lovers – Four Documents: female bodies and voices in Kishida Rio’s play “Four Letters”

Kishida Rio was the only female playwright in angura (underground/avant-garde) movement in 1960-70’s Japan. Kishida Rio began her work in theatre when she joined Terayama Shûji’s “Laboratory of Play” Tenjô Sajiki (The Peanut Gallery) in 1974 and worked as Terayama’s collaborator on plays and films, helping develop the company into one of the major angura […]

Resilience in the Margins: Grassroots Women’s NGOs, Feminist Expertise, and a New Paradigm for Japanese Post-Disaster Reconstruction (JR Lunchtime Lecture Series)

Abstract This research project investigates how Japanese grassroots women’s organizations are contributing to disaster recovery and reconstruction in Japan. As a global leader in disaster planning and mitigation, Japan’s state of the art earthquake and tsunami preparation guidelines are disseminated around the world as best practices. In spite of Japan’s long history and proficiency in […]

Workshop on Literary Production and Language Politics in Postwar Japan

This event features keynote talks by Toeda Hirokazu (“Japanese Literature and Two Systems of Press Control: The Intersection of Home Ministry and GHQ/SCAP Censorship During the Occupation Period”) and Tanaka Yukari (“The ‘Dialect Cosplay’ Phenomenon: Detaching Regional Dialects from Geographic Localities”).

Virtual Ninja Manifesto: Ethics, Violence, Video Games, and Martial Arts

Speaker: Dr. Chris Goto-Jones Educated in Cambridge, Keio (Tokyo), and Oxford Universities, host Chris Goto-Jones is Professor in Philosophy and Dean of Humanities at University of Victoria. He is also a Professorial Research Fellow at SOAS, University of London, and a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for International Studies at Oxford University. He was […]

Individuality in Early Modern Japan: a discussion of and launch for Peter Nosco’s recent book

Two of the most commonly alleged features of Japanese society are its homogeneity and its encouragement of conformity. Join Peter Nosco as he challenges these a number of other long-standing assumptions regarding Tokugawa (1600-1868) society, thus opening a dialogue regarding the relationship between the Japan of two centuries ago and the present.

Trust and Promise: Foundations of Tokugawa Altruism and Cooperation

Abstract: Historical literature often suggests that Japanese people hold harmony and group solidarity in high regard. Tokugawa-period agreements, or what I call Bonds of Trust (tanomi shōmon), shed light on the mechanisms and guiding principles that buttress social cohesion in early modern Japan. The Bonds of Trust were written promises primarily used to elicit and […]

Soul Traders: Early 17th Century Trading and Religious Controversies in Japan

In 1603, Tokugawa Ieyasu became the Shogun and ruler of all Japan. His economic and trading policies served well to strengthen his position, however the repercussions that was felt in the trading environments of the time brought to the fore incredible paradoxes that will be addressed in this presentation by Maria Grazia Petrucci.

“Wartime Japan” as a Divided, Ambivalent Entity: The Eurasian Experience

Historians have called wartime Japan a racist polity and the Asia-Pacific War a “race war” saturated by “race hate.” This talk will challenge the “race war” thesis by arguing that “wartime Japan” was a more ideologically divided polity than is generally recognized, and use the experiences of resident Eurasians to demonstrate a pervasive racial ambivalence among Japanese citizens.

Colonizing Language: Cultural Production and Language Politics in Modern Japan and Korea

Please join us for the book launch of Colonizing Language by Dr. Christina Yi. In this monograph, Yi investigates how linguistic nationalism and national identity intersect in the formation of modern literary canons through an examination of Japanese-language cultural production by Korean and Japanese writers from the 1930s through the 1950s, analyzing how key texts were produced, […]

Owning the Ocean: Alaska Fishermen and the Japanese ‘Invasion’ of Bristol Bay, 1937-1938

The entry by Japanese fishing vessels to Bristol Bay, Alaska, in 1937-38—what Alaska salmon fishermen invariably referred to as an “invasion”—not only fed the fishermen’s anxiety over the imperialist ambitions of the Asian nation, but forced them to confront their own ideas of ownership over the salmon and the very ocean itself.

Narrative, Performance, and “Premodern” Forms: Ishimure Michiko’s Contemporary Noh Play Okinomiya and its Costuming by Shimura Fukumi

Abstract: Ishimure Michiko is often represented as a founder of Japan’s environmental movement, thanks to her efforts to represent those affected by Minamata Disease through grassroots organization, direct action, and literary works. Among Ishimure’s writings are two noh plays: Shiranui, staged in 2002, and Okinomiya, which will be performed in October 2018 featuring costumes naturally […]

Enlightenment for Plants and Trees: Sōmoku jōbutsu in Medieval Japanese Short Stories

Part of the CJR Lunchtime Lecture Series Abstract: In medieval Japan, popular arts often took advantage of a blending of religious ideology and entertainment in order to educate, attract audiences, and solicit donations. Enter otogizōshi—a genre of short stories from the Muromachi period (1392–1573). Originating in popular performance and “picture explaining” (etoki), otogizōshifrequently delivered didactic messages through […]

Promoting Positive Attitudes for Linguistic and Cultural Diversity in Higher Education in Japan

Abstract: Japanese society is changing rapidly toward having more linguistic and cultural diversity since the Japanese government is strongly promoting a system where more international workers and students stay in Japan. In order to promote a linguistic and culturally inclusive society, Japanese people need to change their outlook and overcome their attitude of dealing with […]

Remembering the Dreams, Forgetting the War: How the Republication of Shōjo no Tomo Reconstructed Japanese Girls’ Culture

Shōjo no Tomo, one of the leading prewar girls’ magazines in Japan, was republished in 2009. Magazines including girls’ magazines were the important media for propaganda during WWII. At the same time, however, girls’ magazines enabled girl readers to have a site to express themselves. Therefore, some readers attach themselves in it and establish their own […]