The Nineteenth Asian Studies Conference Japan (ASCJ)
June 20–21, 2015, Meiji Gakuin University
ABSTRACTSASCJ 2015 Abstracts

SATURDAY JUNE 20
SATURDAY MORNING SESSIONS: 10:00 A.M. – 12:00 P.M.
Session 1: Room 1351
Sporting Histories, Mediated Cultures: Women and Sports in Japan
Organizer/Chair: Michelle Ho, Stony Brook University
Women athletes in Japan have historically been, and continue to be, successful at global elitesporting competitions, such as the Olympics Games and the FIFA Women’s World Cup. This panel
explores the histories, narratives, and representations of Japanese women athletes, such as Nadeshiko
Japan, the national women’s soccer team, the Oriental Witches (Tōyō no Majō), the women’s
volleyball team, and individual female Olympians. Collectively, all four papers interrogate gendered
and normative constructions of class, labor, sexuality, femininity, social roles, and national identity inwomen’s sports. Helen Macnaughtan tracks the corporate history behind the Oriental Witches’ gold
medal at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, drawing mainly on an interview with Kasai Masae, the team’s
captain, and her memoir. Also analyzing the Oriental Witches, Iwona Merklejn focuses on media
representations of the team and the sport in Japanese popular culture, particularly Japanese animationand television drama. Studying Nadeshiko Japan, Michelle Ho negotiates the production of fan affectand the commodification of sport celebrity in social media interactions between the Nadeshiko
members and their spectators. Robin Kietlinski situates historical narratives of female Olympians
within Japan’s ongoing relationship with the Games from the 1920s to the present. In anticipation of
the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, this panel of internationally based scholars is especially significant for
examining the momentous impact and far-reaching implications of women’s sports for Japan today.
1)

Helen Macnaughtan, University of London

The Oriental Witches: Women, Volleyball and the 1964 Tokyo Olympics
This paper tells the story of the gold medal victory by the Japanese women’s volleyball team at
the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, an epoch-making event in Japanese post-war sporting history. The paper
explores the background to that victory, revealing the corporate history of the sport and the role
played by prominent textile companies, arising out of their concern for the education and physicalwellbeing of their primary labour force of young Japanese women. The gold medal success at the1964 Olympics is told from a media perspective, but also from the view of one of the team members.
The paper concludes with an overview of the impact that victory had on the popularity and strength
2

ASCJ 2015 Abstractsof women’s volleyball in Japan in the decades after 1964.
2)

Iwona Merklejn, University of Tokyo

Witchcraft or Teamwork? Women’s Volleyball in Japanese Animation and Television Drama
This paper examines the representations of the “Oriental Witches,” the women’s volleyballteam who won the gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, in Japanese animation and television
drama series. The mediation of sports, especially volleyball, inspired other genres of Japanese
popular culture and produced fantasies about fictional female athletes, blurring the lines between life
stories of real women and their heroic representations in the mass media. Through textual analyses ofthree popular TV series featuring female volleyball players, I demonstrate the connection between
mediated sport and other formats of television practice (Brookes 2002). I focus on Atakku nanbā wan(Attack no. 1, Fuji TV 1971, based on manga by Chikako Urano, Shūeisha 1968), Sain wa V (Thesign is V, Toho/TBS 1969, based on manga by Akira Mochizuki and Shirō Shinbo, Kōdansha 1968),
and Wakko no kinmedaru (Wakko’s gold medal, NHK 1989), investigating the representations offemale athletes in these programs. I argue that in the volleyball-inspired stories of Japanese anime,
manga, and drama series, one can find early traces of the obsession with “beautiful fighting girls”(Napier 1998, Saito 2011 [2000]), who have been identified as a conspicuous trend in late 20th
century Japanese popular culture.
3)

Michelle Ho, Stony Brook University

Following Nadeshiko Japan on Social Media: Women’s Soccer and Fan AffectFollowing Nadeshiko Japan’s victory at the 2011 FIFA World Cup and silver medal at the 2012
London Olympics, the presence of the national women’s soccer team has, in recent years, become
prominent in both the Japanese and international media. This paper examines the relationshipbetween Nadeshiko Japan and its fans and spectators in social media, a largely unexplored mediatedform in sports scholarship. Through textual analysis, I focus on platforms that members of Nadeshiko
Japan are active on, such as twitter, personal blogs, and fan club forums of domestic football clubs;
examples include Nippon Television Beleza and International Athletic Club Kobe Leonessa. As theNadeshiko members become increasingly commodified as sport celebrities, their consumers develop
a sense of intimacy with them through such media forms. I argue that Nadeshiko Japan’s ongoinginteractions with fans and spectators—who are mainly women—offer them affective spaces totransgress constructions of femininity, sexuality, and national identity. Drawing on scholarship in
feminist and queer sports studies and on Japanese sportswomen, this case study explores the affective
3

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
discourses of sport in relation to fan affect and the commodification of sport celebrity.
4)

Robin Kietlinski, LaGuardia Community College, City University of New York

Challenging Women: Female Olympians in Twenty-first Century Japan
This paper will explore the ways that the Olympic Games have historically shone a bright lighton strong and successful Japanese women from the 1920s to the present, and the way that these
women have in turn impacted Japanese society. Female Olympians, in the spotlight of the media,
have challenged conventional understandings of gender roles, class, and feminine aesthetics inmodern Japan, and continue to do so to the present day. A look into Japan’s long history of
involvement with the Olympic Games suggests that, more than a mere sports festival, this event has
held major political, social, and economic roles in shaping modern Japan, and examining someinfluential athletes can tell us much about past and forthcoming changes that result from thisinvolvement. As Japan currently faces economic and demographic crises that challenge “traditional”
roles for women, this paper will speculate on the significance of the Olympic Games in the present
moment and moving forward towards the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Discussant: Keiko Aiba, Meiji Gakuin University

4

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

Session 2: Room 1352
New Processes, New Policies? The Politics of Labor Market Reform in Contemporary Japan
Organizer/Chair: Steffen Heinrich, German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ)
A wave of structural reforms in Japan over the past two decades have resulted in what is now
being described as a process of labour market dualization: Whereas these reforms have overall leftthe employment and social security institutions relatively intact for a core group of employees inlarge firms, they have encouraged a dramatic increase of a second group of workers with lessemployment stability, lower wages and often dismal protection against social risks. Conventionally
this result is explained with the better means regular workers in core industries possess to insulatethemselves from changes. Yet such explanations ignore changes in the labour market policy-making
process, which itself has witnessed dramatic changes since the early 1990s, including a decline inbureaucratic control, the growing importance of politicians for policy formulation as well as anincreased salience of labour issues in elections. This panel seeks to advance the study of labour
market politics in Japan by analysing in more detail the role of Japan’s labour market institutions,different stakeholder groups and the impact of electoral pressures on policy. By contrasting different
cases, such as policies directed at migrant labour, female workers and non-regular workers and by
putting the Japanese case in an international comparative context, the panel seeks to clarify thesignificance of recent changes in labour policy-making.

5

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

1)

Gabriele Vogt, University of Hamburg

Health-Caregivers on the Global Labor Market: A Comparative Study of Japan’s Economic
Partnership Agreements and Germany’s Triple Win Program
Population aging proceeds at high speed in both Japan and Germany, and the number ofhealth-caregivers needed in the profession is on the rise. However, mostly due to structural reasonsthat include low wages and bad working conditions, only few persons opt for a professional career inthis sector; in addition, the turn-over rate in the profession is extremely high. Both countries haverecently jumped onto the bandwagon of international health-caregiver migration. They now both
pursue the highly sought-after human resources in this sector through bilateral treaties; the various
migration schemes, however, are rather diverse, and so are their outcomes. This paper analyses
Japanese and German regimes for attracting migrant workers to serve as caregivers as a way to findaffordable and high quality care for dependent elderly. I shall show that several ministries inJapan—METI, MOFA, MOJ and MHLW—drive policy development, with different powerfullobbies influencing policy development in different ministries. I find that in policy areas that are notclearly assigned to one ministry in particular, political stalemate is likely to occur. In contrast,
immigration policy in Germany is consensus-oriented, and in line both with EU regulations andinternational norms and standards. The Ministry of Labour is in charge of these policies, but it works
in cooperation with the Federal Employment Office, the Chambers of Commerce, the Ministry for
Economic Cooperation and Development, and the German Society for International Cooperation.
Thus, multi-level politics is crucial for migration and integration policy making in Germany.
2)

Mari Miura, Sophia University

Neoliberal Motherhood: Care and Work in the Japanese Welfare State
Women in general, and working mothers in particular, occupy a strategic position in Japan’s
welfare capitalism. In order to generate economic growth amid the shrinking labour force, policy
makers have recognized the importance of pushing women into the labour market. At the same time,
the low birth rate has propelled them to pursue work-life balance policy as well as childcare policy.
Recently, “womenomics” discourse also penetrated into growth strategy, which justifies positive
action measures. Nevertheless, these seemingly working-women friendly policies have not yielded
concrete result. My paper asks why numerous women friendly policies are at best schizophrenic, if
not contradictory with each other. More broadly, it seeks how gender inequality has persisted inJapan, identifying the position of women in policy discourses and partisan debate. I focus on the
6

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
blending of neoliberalism and statist family ideology held by the dominant party, Liberal Democratic
Party (LDP), which I label “neoliberal motherhood” to explain Japan’s schizophrenic policy response.
Neoliberalism is gender-neutral in itself, expanding opportunities for women in paid work, yet serves
to stratify women thereby producing poor women on a massive scale. Statist family ideology
legitimatizes the state’s control of family formation as well as precludes the family from becoming aburden to the state. What it protects is motherhood, not actual mothers, as self-sacrifice is the essenceof motherhood in their thinking. Although neoliberalism and motherhood might appear at odds witheach other, the common thread that ties them up—the objectified women—permits their strange
marriage.
3)

Jiyeoun Song, Seoul National University

Precarious Young Workers and Labor Market Reform in Japan
Japan’s labour market has been under severe stress of institutional changes over the past few
decades, illustrated as the weakening of permanent employment practices and the rapid rise in thenumber of non-regular workers (e.g., temporary, part-time, and fixed-term contract workers), whichhave been driven by a series of labour market reforms and changing labour management practices at
the firm level. In particular, a large proportion of the young workforce has not been able to join thelabour market as regular workers covered by the privileges of strong job security, high wages, andgenerous social welfare benefits, in marked contrast to the experiences of their parents’ generation.
Considering Japan’s imminent socio-demographic challenges, such as an aging society and declining
fertility rates, precarious employment conditions for these young workers tend to lead to far more
complicated problems in various policy domains, ranging from labour market and social welfare
programs to fiscal policy, compared with those in other advanced industrialized countries.
Nevertheless, Japan’s policymakers have not promptly responded to the concerns and problems ofthese young workers through a series of labour market reforms. Rather, the burden of such reforms
seems to fall on shoulders of these young workers. In this paper, I will analyse the rapid raise in thenumber of the non-regular workforce along the lines of age and the unequal distribution of costs andbenefits of Japan’s labour market reform, focusing on the effects of labour market and politicalinstitutions on the diversification of the workforce and distributional consequences.
4)

Steffen Heinrich, German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ)The Politics of Labor Market Reform in Japan and Beyond: Who Decides and Who Cares?

7

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
The 2009 general election to the Lower House of the Japanese Diet has been seen by many as
yet the strongest indication for a fundamental change in Japanese labour politics. The fact that nearly
all parties addressed employment in their manifestos appeared to reflect a shift in policy-making
processes that replaced dominance of the ministerial bureaucracy and advisory councils with that ofpolitical parties and politicians. According to conventional policy studies this would mean thatpartisan differences and interest group politics should now be the key determinants of Japaneselabour politics. This paper shows however that labour market policies follow a much moreheterogeneous pattern than such approaches suggest. In fact, Japanese labour market reforms since
the early 1990s include cases of small and large reforms, measures aiming at de-regulation,
regulation as well as re-regulation of employment. This paper argues that this heterogeneity can only
be explained if one takes into account two factors which conventional policy studies rarely address:
the salience of labour issues for the electorate and the possibility of decision-makers to delegate
political responsibility for changes. To illustrate the argument, the paper traces labour market reforms
related to non-regular employment and working time since 1990.
Discussant: John C. Campbell, University of Tokyo/University of Michigan

8

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

Session 3: Room 1353
The Transformation of Space in Modern China: The Tangible and the Intangible
Organizer: Huang Xuelei, University of Edinburgh
Chair: Paul Pickowicz, University of California, San Diego
The study of space has gained sustained attention in humanities in recent decades. Whileinstitutional, political and social transformations in modern history have been widely explored, thetransformation of space has yet to be adequately studied. This panel brings together four papers thatexamine different aspects of spatial transformation in China (Shanghai specifically) in the earlytwentieth century. We demonstrate that technological, institutional, and industrial developments
profoundly changed physical and social spaces in modern China, and we emphasize that spatialtransformation happened at both tangible and intangible levels. Chen Yunlian and Son An Suk focus
on the reconstruction of the Shanghai port (also known as Whangpoo Harbour) from the 1900s to the1920s. While Chen’s paper provides a close look at the technological details concerning the Shanghai
harbour improvement project, Son’s paper sheds light on the institutional dimension of this project bystudying an international conference of harbour engineers. Both papers reveal how economic andpolitical forces played key roles in changing the physical spaces in modern Shanghai. Huang Xuelei
and Zhang Ling examine intangible social spaces that were perceived by the senses of smelling andhearing. Huang’s paper traces the modern development of the cosmetics industry and its profoundinfluence on urban smellscapes. Zhang explores how modern audiovisual media shaped the sensory
perception of urban soundscapes in 1930s Shanghai. Taken together, this panel brings to light therelationship between concrete technological and industrial practices and the shaping and reshaping ofspace in a broader sense in modern China.
1)Chen Yunlian, Takushoku University

Making a World Harbour in Shanghai, 1908–1920
Shanghai has been celebrated as an international trading centre since the 1840s. The primaryreason for the city’s development was the Whangpoo Harbour, which had supported all of the export
and import business in the whole Shanghai region over the past 166 years. Despite the importance ofthe harbour, its construction process, spatial character and harbour regulation have not been
elucidated yet. This paper will investigate the activities carried out by the Shanghai Whangpoo
Conservancy from 1908 to 1920 to clarify how the harbour engineers were recruited world-wide by
the European authorities, what the main concept of the construction of Whangpoo Harbour was, and
9

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
what the characteristics of the new harbour were by comparing with other contemporary ports in theworld. Up to 1900, the Whangpoo Harbour was suffered from a thick accumulation of mud at thebottom of the Whangpoo River, to the extent that large ocean-going ships were not able to enter the
inner harbour. The Shanghai Municipal Council started employing foreign harbour engineers toorganize the new Shanghai Whangpoo Conservancy in 1908, the main tasks of which were to dredge
the Whangpoo River, design a new water channel, light house, jetty, buoy and harbour regulations.
This harbour improvement project built up the basic infrastructure of Shanghai as a world trading
port. Therefore, people, capital, information and goods were gathered within Shanghai region on amuch larger scale than ever before. It may be concluded as the driving force for the transformation of
the urban space in Shanghai.
2)

Son An Suk, Kanagawa University

Reshaping the Shanghai Port: The 1922 International Conference on the Reconstruction of the
Shanghai Port
Shanghai became a centre of economy and trade in China. This was the foundation for thehealthy development of the Shanghai port. In order to maintain and upgrade the Shanghai port, it wasessential to carry out cutting-edge technological operations. While the colonial powers in Shanghai
made efforts to improve the harbour in order to maximize their interests, Chinese government wasalso involved in the harbour improvement project. In 1915, Beijing government became involved in
the Huangpu River Reconstruction Bureau (Huangpu jiang gaixiu ju). But new problems arose in1918 due to the recent development in world maritime transportation. Therefore, the bureau
convened an international conference on the topic of Shanghai harbour improvement. Engineers from
China, Europe, America and Japan participated in the conference and had heated discussions on how
to build a port that provides high-quality public service. Although engineers from different countries
had varied opinions, Shanghai Harbour Investigation Bureau (Shanghai gangwu ju) was establishedon consensus. This paper takes a close look at this conference and examines how engineers fromdifferent countries envisioned a different spatial configuration of the Shanghai harbour.
3)

Huang Xuelei, University of Edinburgh

The Cosmetics Industry and Changing Smellscapes in Urban China, 1910s—1940s
The term ‘smellscape’ has been widely used in recent studies of sensory history. Smellscapes
exist as a kind of non-visual sensory landscape and their importance tends to be ignored. This paper
explores the development of the modern cosmetics industry and its impact on the transformation of
10

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
smellscapes in China in the first half of the twentieth century. The large-scale import of cosmetics
and toiletries from the West started in the 1880s. Manufactured scents that were carried by soaps,
perfumes, tooth powders, and face cream gained decisive victory over natural floral scents common
in traditional Chinese cosmetic items. The rapid development of the domestic chemical industry fromthe 1910s further speeded up the transformation of urban smellscapes in China. On the one hand, thispaper traces the industrial development of cosmetics manufacture in modern China. On the other
hand, it analyzes the ways in which manufactured fragrances penetrated different social spaces,
including the personal body, the family, and modern public spaces. I draw on various kinds of source
materials (including industrial handbooks, government statistics, advertisements, novels, and essays)
and examine the factors that contributed to this profound transformation of human perceptions andsensibilities. I argue that smellscapes are an important part of the human experience of space.
4)

Zhang Ling, University of Chicago

City Symphony and Shanghai Soundscape in the late 1930s
Uchiyama Kanzo (内山完造, 1885—1959), proprietor of the Uchiyama bookstore in
Republican Shanghai and one of Chinese writer Lu Xun’s best friends, published an essay entitled
Shanghai Soundscape (上海的聲音) in 1939. In this article, Uchiyama vividly depicts a motley mix ofmundane sounds in Shanghai, mediated through a male bourgeois Japanese intellectual’s perspective,
including ambient sounds (birds chirping and cicadas calling) and human voices (peddlers andvendors shouting). The lyrical literary portrayal of the Shanghai soundscape is in chronologicalorder: from morning to night on a summer day. This temporal construction resonates with that of“city symphony” films, a film mode from the late 1920s that was simultaneously globally popularand experimental. The “city symphony” motifs recur in a few late 1930s Chinese films. Besides
underscoring sensational street noises and musicality as well as the cadence they generated, thesefilms also portray industrial and traffic noises that were significant parts of the modern urban
soundscape of Shanghai as a manufacturing center. Drawing inspiration from Uchiyama’s essay, mypaper explores how “city symphony” motifs function in two 1930s Chinese films, Crossroads (Shen
Xiling, 1937) and Street Angel (Yuan Muzhi, 1937), and how the cinematic renditions of Shanghai
soundscape interacted with literary description and historical context, and how modern audio-visualmedia play a pivotal role in mediating and shaping our sensory perception of the urban soundscape.
Discussants: Paul Pickowicz, University of California, San Diego; Christian Hess, Sophia
University
11

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
Session 4: Room 1451
Alternatives and Margins in Japanese Education
Organizer/Chair: Christopher Bondy, International Christian University
Japanese education has undergone tremendous change over the past decade. The Ministry of
Education has swung from more relaxed educational approaches in the classroom (yutori kyōiku) as ameans of easing the pressures faced by students to discussions of returning to Saturday schooling andincreasing the rigor of the curriculum, reflecting the concern of Japan’s ranking on international testscores. Such changes treat educational approaches as being a “fix all” solution, without recognizing
the effects on those most affected by the changes: students and teachers. The papers in this panel
consider how the changes and proposed changes through the lens of a more holistic recognition of therelationship between education and broader social and policy changes. Kaori Oi examines the newly
proposed “English Only” changes to the high school curriculum, where Japanese will not be used inany explanations, and suggests that such changes may be counter productive.

Maiko Sumino

considers the effect of such educational change on underrepresented groups in Japan, borrowing frommodels of underrepresented groups in the US. James Parker looks at teacher education and how
human rights issues are (or more precisely are not) incorporated into the training of teachers.
Finally, Tomoko Tokunaga considers the positionality of researchers conducting research on
marginalized populations in Japanese education.
1)

Maiko Sumino, Graduate School of Education, University of Tokyo

How to Support the Underrepresented Student Population for a Globalized Age: Educational
Structures and Practices in Japan
Secondary education in Japan has now reached its “universal” age. Even higher education is
now turning to be a taken for granted experience for the Japanese middle classes. However, despite
this current situation, it is estimated that the proportion of the foreign students who enter high school
are less than half the ratio of the Japanese students (Kanai 2004). In contrast to other developed
nations, where unequal access to education among different socio-economic backgrounds are often
concerned as serious topics, Japan has rarely discussed on distributing resources considering
student’s diverse situations. However, regarding the fact that early school-leavers are facing strongpressure to find quality jobs, many studies point out the importance of implementing practices within
the educational institution to support these youth (Deil-Amen 2006, Furlong and Cartmel 2009). This
study focuses on underrepresented groups in Japan: those who are composed of lower-income,minority and immigrant students and have been facing harder challenges throughout their education
12

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
process. The discussion will briefly introduce the current research and policies that focus on thisunderrepresented population in Japan. Then, it considers the cases that are implemented by public
educational institutions, which try to work to support this group with complex needs. The purpose ofthis study is to consider the significant role of these institutional practices, and to also discuss thechallenges that remained unsolved.
2)

JD Parker, Arizona State University

From Dōwa to Jinken Kyōiku: Insights on Human Rights Education Teacher Training in a
Multicultural Japan
Human rights education or jinken kyōiku, was first seen in Japanese schools in 1996 when thegovernment enacted the Law for the Promotion of Human Rights Protection Policies (Takeda, 2012).
In 2002, human rights education took over dōwa kyōiku or “social integration education.” The dōwa
educational policies addressed long-term discrimination of Japan’s social minority groups. The dōwa
measures made students aware of human rights and taught them that the responsibility of eradicating
discrimination was their own. The policies were an important focus of both pre-service and in-service
teacher training prior to 2002. When human rights education inherited dōwa kyōiku, I argue that it
stripped it of some of its most important qualities. With new forms of social inequality, changing
demographics and a much more visible minority, new questions are being raised about how teacher
training should respond to increasing diversity in Japanese schools. Using surveys, in-depth
interviews and participant observations, I investigate in-service teacher training programs in Japanese
junior high and elementary schools designed to promote higher quality teaching in jinken kyōiku or“human rights education.” The study’s findings are forthcoming, however, through early analysis, itappears that most knowledge of how to educate students in advocating for human rights comes frominformal communication with other teachers in the area. This study is needed to better understand theeffect that teacher education programs have on training educators with little experience of
discrimination in their personal lives to deal with the changing population in multicultural Japan.

13

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

3)

Kaori Oi, University of Tokyo

Language Use of High School English Teachers in Japan
In 2009, the Japan Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT)
proclaimed the new Course of Study for Senior High Schools. In this Course of Study, which has
been implemented since 2013 academic year, MEXT announced a new policy on English classes that
dictates that, in principle, high school English classes should be conducted in English. This policy
has brought about a great change in English classrooms in Japan, where Japanese has long been the
major means of instruction. In the field of English as a Second / Foreign Language (ESL/EFL),
teachers’ use of students’ first language (L1) in language classes has been a controversial issue. It has
been considered that L1 should be avoided in language classes so that students can be exposed to thetarget language (TL) at a maximum. Recently, however, some researchers have casted doubt on theelimination of students’ L1, regarding L1 as a useful resource rather than a hindrance to TL learning.
Thus, in this paper, I explore how English teachers in Japanese high schools can make the most of
students’ L1, Japanese, in their language classes. At the end of the paper, I argue that teachers canmake use of Japanese as a supplementary means in the basically “English- Only” classes.
4)

Tomoko Tokunaga, Keio University; Christopher Bondy, International Christian

University
Negotiating Hybrid Roles as Researchers: Reflections of Two Ethnographic Studies on Minority
Education in Japan
Experiences of those on the margins have long been silenced in broader discussions of Japanese
education. The Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT)
does not track macro-level data about experiences or outcomes of students with diverse backgrounds.
As a result, the ways in which we can best understand the educational experiences of marginalized
populations has been through a qualitative, ethnographic approach. While a number of scholars havestarted to conduct ethnographic research on minority children and youth in Japan, for example ‘newcomer’ students, there has been a lack of discussion on methodological issues including ethnographic
reflexivity and positionality of researchers. Who is doing fieldwork on minority students andproducing knowledge on this population and how researchers are negotiating complex power
dynamics, roles, and relationships with youth participants are issues that need to be further addressed.
It is crucial to have more critical and reflexive exploration on methodological issues in order to
conduct an ethical research and to avoid further marginalizing this population. In this paper, based on
14

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
two different long-term ethnographic research projects on minority youth in Japanese schools (one on
working class Filipina girls and young women and the other on Buraku youth), we co-reflect on theways in which our complex identities, positions, and roles as ethnographers were (re) negotiated atvarious points in time, and how the marginalized youth responded to us.
Discussant: Yuki Imoto, Keio University

15

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

Session 5: Room 1358
Japan in the late 1940s: The Tokyo Trial, the Yoshida Doctrine and Japanese Geopolitics
Organizer/Chair: Christian W. Spang, Daito Bunka University
This innovative panel examines the immediate postwar years in Japan from three different
perspectives. First, Elliot Milton will trace the trajectory of the Allies’ aims in the Tokyo War Crimes
Trial (1946—1948), from the principled one at the outset of trying those most culpable for Japan’s
war to what later degenerated into a narrow focus on Western, particularly US, national interests in
Asia in the context of the developing Cold War. Second, Sugita Yoneyuki will offer some new views
on how to interpret the “Yoshida Doctrine”, by which Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru (1946—1947
and 1948—1954) focused on achieving economic improvements by closely linking Japanese andAmerican foreign policy. Third, Christian W. Spang will ask whether geopolitics was really a taboo
after 1945 in Japan. A comparison of the pre- and postwar careers of some prominent Japanesegeopoliticians shows that not only did their views differ greatly but also that the Occupation forces
treated them arbitrarily. These three papers will be wrapped up by Mark Caprio, who will discussthem from the wider perspective of the early stages of the Cold War in East Asia. Bringing together
four scholars from Germany, Ireland, Japan and the USA working on wartime and postwar East Asia,
this panel hopes to generate an in-depth discussion on the interaction between the Japanese and theAllied powers in the second half of the 1940s.
1)

Elliot Milton, Embassy of Ireland (Tokyo)

The Tokyo Trial: What the Allies Hoped to Achieve
The eleven Allied nations that comprised the tribunal at the Tokyo Trial (1946—1948) soughtto achieve a number of aims in the trial, more complex than the obvious one of punishing Japan’s
leaders for leading their country into war. They wanted the trial to establish for posterity an
authoritative record of 18 years of Japanese history, from 1927 to 1945. The trial was to exclude any
possibility that the United States and the West might have been partially to blame for the war. It wasalso aimed at demonstrating to the Japanese people that they had been misled by their leaders and to
showcase Western democratic values, so that the people would embrace the democratic reforms thatwere being instituted under the Occupation. These so-called values were also on display to the rest of
Asia. Japan’s successes against the Western powers in Southeast Asia at the beginning of the war
awoke a new consciousness of the possibility for self-determination in many Asian peoples. The trial,
which failed to give much exposure to the Asian theatre of the war given its strong, US-centric focus
16

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
on the attack on Pearl Harbor, was also meant to demonstrate the rectitude of Western values to thesepeoples, especially in the emerging Cold War climate, where they were in danger of being wooed by
Soviet Communism. The US also feared communism spreading in Japan and so the reactions of theJapanese people to the trial were both closely monitored and controlled.
2)

Sugita Yoneyuki, Osaka University

A Reinterpretation of the Yoshida Doctrine
The Yoshida Doctrine has been interpreted as a pillar of post-World War II Japanese foreignand security policy. We take it for granted that Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida formulated this
doctrine as the most advantageous way for Japan to implement a rapid recovery under the auspices of
the United States. In other words, Japan, a defeated former Axis country under Allied occupation,
was able to take the initiative in choosing this course of action. Japan was allegedly so clever andpowerful in using this doctrine to fend off the U.S. ever-increasing pressure for rapid rearmament. It
seems that the U.S., one of only two super powers at the time, had to accept Japan’s shrewd policy.
The Yoshida Doctrine has been very popular among the Japanese people partly because it satisfies
their amour-propre, in that Japan could resist the arm-twisting demands of the U.S. for rapid
rearmament. However, is this view correct? My paper addresses the research question of how it could
be possible for a defeated and occupied country to adopt this kind of approach. My hypothesis is that
the Yoshida Doctrine was, in fact, the result of unintentional coincidences of common interests
between Washington and Tokyo. Japan’s interests were centered on its pursuit for economic recovery
without sacrificing too much of its own resources on national security. The U.S. interest was tomanage Japan’s behavior, making sure that the country would not have the capability to reestablish
itself as a military menace to world peace.
3)

Christian W. Spang, Daito Bunka University

Japanese Geopoliticians after 1945
Since the late 1930s, Japanese scholars and political advisers had been justifying Japanese
pan-Asian concepts and the establishment of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere by referringto German geopolitics, specifically to the writings of Karl Haushofer. While geopolitics had beenused before “Pearl Harbor” as a justification of Japan’s aspirations abroad, after the outbreak of the
Pacific War it became an instrument of “total war” propaganda. The main representative of this kindof geopolitics was Komaki Saneshige, who was the head of the Geography Department at Kyoto
University. Other geopoliticians included Iimoto Nobuyuki (Ochanomizu University) and Ezawa Jōji
17

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts(Hitotsubashi University). Because of its wartime association with Japanese expansionism,geopolitics was to some extent discredited in postwar Japan. Well-known geographers in 1946 and1947 wrongly claimed that academic geography had never been involved in geopolitics. However,outside academic geography, some low-profile support for geopolitics continued even immediately
after the war. While a few geopoliticians were allowed to continue teaching at universities during theoccupation years, others were purged in 1945 before coming back in 1952. A look at the career of
selected academics and their later comments about Japanese wartime geopolitics will offer someinsight into American occupation policy and Japanese immediate post-war society. At the end,
Japan’s second geopolitics boom around 1980 will briefly be mentioned. In contemporary popularscientific publications on geopolitics, Karl Haushofer was frequently referred to, but wartime
association of Japanese geography with geopolitics was largely ignored.
Discussant: Mark E. Caprio, Rikkyo University

18

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

Session 6: Room 1457
Happiness in Modern Japan
Organizer/Chair: Curtis Anderson Gayle, Japan Women’s University
The three proposed papers discuss the issue of happiness in modern Japan from an historicalstandpoint, covering both prewar and postwar periods, with special reference to women in modern
Japan. Dr. Weber will first present on issues of reform of the traditional family and marriage as ameans to pursue and achieve happiness in everyday life in early 20th century Japan. Dr. Gayle willthen take up women during the postwar high growth era and the dichotomy between the official
happiness of the era, and the reality of everyday life for middle class women who were not content
with the interpretation and renditions of happiness provided by elite men. Finally, Dr. Holdgrun will
carry this debate into the 21st century by looking at political participation as a means to happiness by
Japanese women, focusing upon the National Network to Protect Children against Radiation,
consisting of more than 300 organizations that have been established since 3.11, discussing how
mothers turned constraints into benefits and pursued happiness through political activism.
1)

Torsten Weber, German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ)

Marriage or Happiness? Women and the Pursuit of Freedom in Early Twentieth Century Japan
This paper analyzes debates about the reform of traditional family life and marriage as potential
means of pursuing and achieving happiness in everyday life in early 20th century Japan. Presentingcase studies from Taishō and early Shōwa women`s magazines, the paper examines how writers andreaders applied the utilitarian principle of the greatest happiness of the greatest number to discuss
practical and theoretical aspects of two traditional social institutions – marriage and family – inrelation to individual happiness. Many of the participants in these debates regarded free choice as aprecondition to achieving happiness and frequently linked their calls for reform of these traditional
institutions to wider social or political issues. By linking these issues to the widely agreeable andlegitimate concept of happiness, more controversial demands such as legal reforms, freedom of
expression, pacifism, and the right of political participation could be discussed in a non-partisancontext. The debate about happiness and marriage that was initially driven by women activists suchas Hani Motoko, Yamakawa Kikue, or Abe Isoo may therefore be regarded as an important, but
frequently overlooked part of progressive political discourse in Japan during the first half of the 20th
century.

19

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
2)

Curtis Anderson Gayle, Japan Women’s University

Official and Everyday Happiness: Women in Postwar High-Growth Japan
This paper will utilize women’s journals from the late 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s and will
elucidate their interpretations of happiness in everyday life. First the paper will define happiness andillustrate what official voices and media were saying about what should make Japanese women
happy. Then the paper will proceed to bring forth women’s own voices about happiness, focusing on
the differences between these interpretations and official happiness ideas. Many of middle classwomen during this period took sharp exception to the “material satisfaction=happiness” idea andsought instead to improve the quality of life in ways different from what the government and official
media claimed would make all Japanese women happy after the war. The re-recreation of the nuclear
family after the war and the officially-sponsored domain of separate spheres were challenged inseveral different ways by middle-class women as part of their understanding of what happiness was.
The paper will conclude by discussing the implications for happiness in postwar Japan.
3)

Phoebe Holdgrün, German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ)

Striving for Happiness and Calculating Risks: Mothers’ Strategies as Political Activists
Political participation can be understood as a means to pursue happiness by striving for a better
life. But political activism also means to bear risks – to invest time, energy and money withoutachieving any of the desired aims or being fiercely criticized by opponents. Studies on politicalparticipation and gender in Japan show that the hegemonic understanding of the appropriate behaviorof the ideal mother makes mothers perceive activism as highly risky. On the other hand, women’s
self-conception as mothers raises a high awareness of political problems and the desire to act in orderto protect their children. This paper asks what strategies politically active mothers in Japan apply tosolve this dilemma of contradictory role expectations. How do they calculate risks against the pursuitof happiness through activism? Do their activities facilitate subjective feelings of happiness—or
unhappiness? As a case study, the paper examines the National network to protect children against
radiation consisting of more than 300 organizations that became established after the nuclear
accident of Fukushima. Results of a survey among all members of the network next to a detailed casestudy of one local organization will be presented that explain how mothers find a strategy that turns
constraints into benefits and therefore enables them to actively pursue happiness through politicalactivism.
Discussant: TBA
20

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

21

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

Session 7: Room 1456
Individual Papers 1: Contemporary Images of Japan
Chair: James Baxter, J. F. Oberlin University
1)

Joff Bradley, Teikyo University

On the “Destruction of Every Reason to Hope” in Japan
In this paper, I address a particular focus on Japan in recent continental philosophy, namely aconcern with youth and the apparent crisis and sense of hopelessness. The presentation will flow
through the work of Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Paul Virilio, Franco Berardi, and Bernard Stiegler
and its current will entwine with the thoughts and reflections of the Murakamis Ryu and Haruki, toconsider the question and possibility of a renewed sense of hope among youth in the nihilistic spaceof post-Fukushima Japan. I examine in particular Ryu Murakami’s view on the passage from the"sorrow" of the past to the "loneliness" of the present to consider his verdict that there has never beena Japanese person since the beginning of history who has experienced the kind of lonelinessenveloping the children of today. Through analysis of Stiegler’s thoughts on the disillusionment of
the self in what he terms ‘uncontrollable societies of individuals’; because he takes our era to be oneof techniques of desubjectivation and disindividuation; of mass desaffectation or withdrawal - thepaper provides a crucial update of Deleuze’s thought and applies its criticism of control societies in
Asian contexts. Here Stielger’s sense of the ‘slow decomposition of the motives for living’ and the‘destruction of every reason to hope’ offers a crucial update on Deleuze‘s skepticism of thecontemporary. This focus is especially timely given the recent interest in Deleuze in Asian contexts.
2)

Lorie Brau, University of New Mexico

Grasping for the Ungraspable in a Food Manga: Oishinbo’s “True Story” of Post-3.11
Fukushima
In May 2014, Kariya Tetsu and Hanasaki Akira’s “gourmet” manga, Oishinbo stumbled onto
the terrain of post-311 panic with the publication of the final episodes of “Fukushima no shinjitsu”(The truth of Fukushima.) Many people decried the manga’s spreading of “false rumors” when it
proposed a link between protagonist Yamaoka Shirō’s nosebleeds and exposure to Fukushimaradiation and voiced concern that Fukushima had become unlivable. Analyzing its style, structure,
characters and rhetoric, this paper considers how the ongoing tragedy of the Fukushima nuclear
accident plays out in the medium of a young men’s serialized food manga. The story’s fifteen
22

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
episodes weave together scientific data and tales of human feelings (ninjōbanashi). Accounts of the
struggles of Fukushima farmers and fishermen are punctuated with images of destruction, maps, andgraphs. The manga’s journalist characters recoil at high radiation readings and mournfully remark on
the loss of beautiful, formerly productive land that is off-limits due to contamination. Downcast faces
and sad expressions dominate the pages. Tying together the verbiage and visual images is themanga’s frame narrative, which elaborates an Oedipal conflict between Yamaoka and his gastronome
father, Kaibara Yūzan. In finally bringing about their reconciliation in “Fukushima no shinjitsu,”
Kariya not only identifies Fukushima with Oishinbo’s main characters, but also with Japan, both
future and past. The manga’s controversial claims about radiation’s effects may have garnered themost media attention, but in its idealization of regional food production and nostalgia for regional
cuisine, the genre of “Fukushima no shinjitsu” is less critique than elegy.
3)

Kristine Santos, University of Wollongong

Girls and Amateur Comics: The Creation of Japan’s Delusional Imagined Community
In 2005, seventy percent of the participants in the largest Japanese fan event, Comic Market,
were girls. Some of the earliest academic texts on Japanese fan culture often described Japanese fan
events, particularly amateur comic (dōjinshi) events, were mostly populated by young girls. Despite
this observation, little has been said on why dōjinshi appeals to these young girls and why they
continue to dominate these events. I argue that the answer could be found in the countless dōjinshi
published by girls where they often communicate in a language that is fantastic, pleasurable, intimate
and deeply intertextual. The language seen in dōjinshi helps create an imagined community that ties
these Japanese girls of similar interests, connecting their fantasies to the reality of a social space. Thistransformative potential of dōjinshi in female communities has not been explored in studies ofJapanese girls’ culture and this paper can fill this gap. Through the analysis of various dōjinshi
published by girls as well various texts on dōjinshi and girls' culture, this paper aims to highlight theimportance of non-traditional mediums in generating new social and cultural spaces, one that has thepotential to be transformative media and even be transcultural. While this paper focuses on Japanese
female fans, there are also foreign female fans who are beginning to embrace dōjinshi culture. This
paper serves as groundwork for potential studies of the transcultural potential of dōjinshi.
4)Ashanti Shih, Yale University

Capturing the Invisible: Photographic Depictions of Mercury Pollution in Minamata Bay, 1950s–1970s
Curled fingers, twisted limbs, and roaming eyes; children sprawled out unnaturally on tatami or in the23

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
arms of loved ones. These are the images that come to mind at the mention of “Minamata.” As the firstrecognized case of methylmercury poisoning in the world, Minamata disease was well documented by boththe media and independent photographers. American photographers W. Eugene and Aileen Smith brought
this story to the English-speaking world, warning that the health problems associated with industrial
pollution in modern Japan were likely to happen elsewhere on Earth. Many of these photographers weredrawn to the human victims of the Chisso Corporation’s negligence; they reported on the “strange” diseaseby taking photographs of the dramatic, visible effects of methymercury poisoning on the human body. But
in telling this story, these photographers also had to capture something else: the invisible causes of thispoisoning. Photographers had to explain how mercury, a substance that is present in low concentrations andis undetectable to the eye, had polluted Minamata Bay. Unable to photograph mercury itself, how did
photographers choose to depict this “invisible” change in the environment? Through analysis ofphotographs and their accompanying texts, this paper will attempt to explain how, in lieu of a visiblereferent, waterways, fish, and industrial plants on waterfronts came to symbolize mercury pollution. It willthen argue that these photographs of Minamata’s environment, while less startling than photographs ofpatients, have quietly made a significant contribution to how we have come to imagine industrial waterpollution.

24

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
Session 8: Room 1458
Individual Papers 2: Issues in Twentieth Century Japan
Chair: Koichiro Matsuda, Rikkyo University
1)

Yin Yanfei, Ohio State University

Paintings by One Artist, Agendas of Two Countries: Exhibitions of Sesshū Tōyō in Japan and
China in 1956
The general role of Japan in modern Chinese art has become an interest of many scholars.
However, artistic exchange between China and Japan in the People’s Republic of China (1949
onward), especially before the normalization of the two countries’ diplomatic relationship in 1972,
has not yet been examined. My study explores how and to what degree the art worlds of Japan and
China communicated through exhibitions between 1949 and 1972. Specifically, this paper examines
two art exhibitions of Sesshū Tōyō’s paintings (1420—1506?) in both Japan and China in 1956.
Sesshū’s works were first exhibited at the Tokyo National Museum in April and May. In response,
China’s official art establishment decided to hold an exhibition of fifty replicas of Sesshū’s works at
the National Art Gallery that August. This essay examines the cultural and political circumstances
under which these two events were held, the way in which the Beijing exhibition was transformed
from the Tokyo exhibition, and the agenda behind these two exhibitions. By examining the exhibition
catalogues, related reports, and publications in both Chinese and Japanese, I argue that the Japanese
exhibition of Sesshū, a Zen priest, was a part of Japanese Nationalism. The exhibition in China,
however, functioned as a delicate way of stating China’s relationship with Japan and the US in 1956.
The agendas behind these two exhibitions are the result of the different national identities that China
and Japan’s official institutions hoped to demonstrate.
2)

Charles Cabell, Toyo University

Kawabata Yasunari and the Return of Empire under US Hegemony: Japanese Literature,
National Identity and Postwar Forgetting
In 1968 on the 100th anniversary of the Meiji Restoration, KAWABATA Yasunari escorted
listeners on a dizzying tour through inscrutable Zen poems of emptiness. His Nobel speech made no
mention of Japan’s violent past and diverted attention from the hordes of angry students demanding
the return of Okinawa and an end to the Vietnam War. Kawabata’s elevation to the world stage took
place during a period when US and Japanese academics worked in tandem to ensure theentrenchment of the postwar political unconscious, the public forgetting, that is, of the Japanese
25

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
state’s history of imperialist aggression and domestic repression. This mass amnesia facilitated theuncritical incorporation of Japan within America’s hegemonic expansion, a relationship made easierby similarly ignoring US violence in Asia. Accepting a subservient role within the postwar Americanorder, a relationship mirrored in Kawabata’s relationship with his American translator Edward
Seidensticker, ironically allowed Japan to achieve the dominance over East Asia envisioned during
the Asian-Pacific war. After defeat, Kawabata famously disavowed any association with militarism
or empire, which enabled him to position himself as the nation’s cultural patriarch, lyricallyconstructing a sanitized nativist “tradition” absent of conflict, hybridity and violence. Prime Minister
Shinzo ABE’s referral to dead soldiers as “heroic souls” during a recent visit to Yasukuni Shrine
echoed a phrase Kawabata had used in eulogies of kamikaze pilots, indirectly revealing the degree towhich efforts to aestheticize and forget the violence of WWII have succeeded. Drawing on Japanese
postcolonial theorists, this paper radically reassesses how the postwar construction of Japanese
literature participated in the repackaging of Japanese wartime imperial ambitions under the cold-war
umbrella.
3)

Lee Wai Shing, Chinese University of Hong Kong

Honkon Nippō (Hong Kong News) and Japan’s Southward Advance (1909 -1945): A New
Understanding of the Hong Kong-Japan Relationship
Historical accounts on the Hong Kong-Japan relationships are mostly in economic andsocio-cultural perspective, while studying in political approach is relatively rare. Acknowledging thisresearch gap, this paper analyses Honkon Nippō, the long-lasting Japanese newspaper in Hong Kongwhich had simultaneously published in three languages since late 1930s, and other Japanese archival
documents, to examine the political connection between Hong Kong and Japan. Recognising the
Tatsumaru Incident as a turning point, Japan had considered the necessity of a promotional institutionin Hong Kong, which was eventually discarded. Honkon Nippō, however, could be published withassistance of Japan’s consulate in Hong Kong. Similar to other publications by Japan in other parts ofChina, the publication of Honkon Nippō was based on political concern. As the extent of Japan’s
invasion become deeper and deeper, the Nippō involved in intelligence gathering, facilitating wars of
the Japanese expansion. From the origination, development and termination after Japan’s defeat in
WWII of Honkon Nippō, each stage reflected the desire of “Nanshin” (southward advance). To
supplement the historical account on Hong Kong-Japan relationships, particularly on the politicallevel, this paper discourses the background information of Honkon Nippō, with its developments inchronological order, highlighting the connection between this newspaper and Japan’s southward
26

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
expansion during the period.
4)

Florentino Rodao, Complutense University of Madrid

The Anti-Comintern Pact and Bilateral Relations
It is widely known the evolution of the Anti-Comintern Pact, signed first between Germany andJapan (November 1936) and later enlarged to Italy and other countries, such as Franco's governmentin Spain, Manchukuo or Hungary. The Pact became redundant just days before the outbreak of WorldWar II, when the Third Reich and the Soviet Union signed the Non-Aggression Pact. The impact ofthe many contacts and initiatives between the signatory countries, however, deserves better research,since it influenced on bilateral relations and helped the new rapprochement, leading to the Tripartite
Pact in 1940. Also, the abrupt end of the Pact and the military defeats of Italy made those activities
remain partly elusive, but the role played by Roma was crucial. The paper tries to look into thepromotion of contacts and ideas both among Germany, Japan, Italy, Spain, the Manchukuo and othercountries as being members of the Anti-Comintern. It focuses on the specific case of Italy and Japan
with Spain, as the issue of Spanish adherence to the Pact became a very important one at the end of
the Spanish war, leading Japan to appear as one of the main countries influencing Franco's
government into adhering the Pact.
5)

Letizia Guarini, Ochanomizu University

The Father/Daughter Relationship in Kakuta Mitsuyo and Yu Miri’s Work
Both Kakuta Mitsuyo (1967—) and Yu Miri (1968—) are known for capturing the state of thefamily in contemporary Japanese society in their fiction. Although most of their works focus on the(often single) mother and the relationship with the daughter, the father and his role within the family
cannot be ignored. This is especially true for works depicting not just “fathers”, but “fathering men,”
who affects their daughters both through their absence and presence. In Kakuta Mitsuyo’s
Kiddonappu tsua (Kidnap Tour, 1998) and Yu Miri’s Ame to Yume no ato ni (After the Rain andDreams, 2005) not only fathering, but also travelling is a keyword. By travelling together with thedaughter, or leaving her behind, fathers are participating in their daughter’s education, in some cases
for the first time. The aim of this paper is to explore the father/daughter relationship in contemporary
Japanese society and its representation in literature, focusing on travel as a metaphor for the absent
father as well as for the nurturing father. Moreover, this paper examines travel as a place where bothdaughters and fathers become aware of what is missing in their families, allowing us to see what is
missing in the Japanese family as well.
27

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

Saturday Lunch Time Meeting: 12:10 P.M. – 1:00 P.M.
Session 9: Room 1361
Transformational Effects of Service Learning: The Great East Japan Earthquake Relief
Project (Roundtable)
Organizer: Dawn Grimes-MacLellan, Meiji Gakuin University
1) Kyoko Ichikawa, Meiji Gakuin University
2) Yuriko Saito, Meiji Gakuin University
3) Erika Kojima, Meiji Gakuin University
4) Akemi Shimazawa, Meiji Gakuin University5) Cody Rapley, Victoria University of Wellington
6) Dawn Grimes-MacLellan, Meiji Gakuin University
On March 11, 2011 the 9.0 magnitude Great East Japan Earthquake and ensuing tsunami
brought widespread devastation to the northeastern Tohoku region. Within a few weeks after thedisaster, Meiji Gakuin University’s Volunteer Center set up the Great East Japan Earthquake Relief
Project, bringing students to the region to assist in emergency relief efforts. The Project focused on
the Kirikiri district of Otsuchi Town in Iwate Prefecture that suffered not only extensive physicaldevastation but also the loss of the mayor and nearly all local administration executives. As a result,town administrative activities were severely hampered in the immediate aftermath of the disaster andremained at a standstill for many months. Initially, MGU students assisted at evacuation centers
distributing food, taking inventories of supplies, and cleaning lost photographs found in thedebris. They also supported the resumption of local schools. When emergency relief ended, attention
turned to developing programs that would support the local community in their journey toward
recovery and reconstruction. MGU students worked closely with community members, learning of
their needs, creating programs to support them, and gaining feedback so they could monitor progress
and improve program effectiveness. More than three and a half years later, the MGU Volunteer
Center is continuing its commitment to Otsuchi, having established a formal partnership in 2012. To
date, more than 800 MGU students (including international and study abroad students) and 22 faculty
and staff have participated, and the project has also generated other faculty-led study and training
programs. Work with the Relief Project has been transformative for all those involved. Roundtableparticipants will share their experiences and the impact this service learning opportunity has had on
various participants, beginning with the Volunteer Center Coordinator who will discuss her role inpromoting, supporting, and facilitating student involvement and leadership in the community through28

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
civic engagement opportunities. Two faculty members will share some of the reflective learning
activities that have enabled both Japanese and international students to develop key skills andunderstanding of the local community through the collective experience of working together toward
mutually constructed goals. Finally, student leaders and participants from the project will offer theirperspectives on the ways in which the volunteering experience has transformed their lives.

29

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

SATURDAY AFTERNOON SESSIONS I: 1:15 P.M. – 3:15 P.M.
Session 10: Room 1451
Women and Ambiguous Politics in Post 3.11 Japan: A Collaborative Project (I)Organizer/Chair: David H. Slater, Sophia University
In the post 311, women's voices have played a particularly prominent role in grassroots politics.
Are politics different when practiced by women? And conversely, are women different in somefoundational, even biopolitical, way when they practice politics? Over the past 4 years, we have seenshift in the distribution, profiles, activity and media attention of women doing politics, at the level ofleadership and more “ordinary” participation. Are patterns of mobilization different—that is, arewomen recruited differently and do they join for different reasons? Do women recognize different
opportunity structures? Are issues framed differently to better effect, either as ‘women’s issues,’ oras broader shared issues about which women are distinctly positioned to effectively speak to? Do
they gather, network and demonstrate differently from men? While generation and geography aresystematic shifters of any gender question, by and large, if you ask women from our research, theoverwhelming answer to most of these questions is ‘yes—women do it differently.’ We take thischance to address some of these questions. When we write ‘a collaborative project’ in the title, wemean it both to echo one of the themes at the heart of our informants’ understanding of their politics,
but also to describe our own research project. The papers in these two panels all come from an
on-going project on 3.11 called "Voices from Tohoku," (tohokukaranokoe.org ) with this latest
iteration "Voices of Protest." It is on going collaborative research which takes a form that is stillrather uncommon in the humanities and qualitative social sciences. (All of the data presented in thesepanels are from the project, and shared among us.) We hope to take this opportunity to introduce our
project and to seek new collaborators.
1)

David H. Slater, Sophia University

Making a Collaborative Archive of 3.11 Disaster and Recovery, Mobilization and Protest
Since the 2011 disasters, our project has been collecting oral narrative on digital video fromvarious communities in the affected regions of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima Prefectures, under thetitle “Voices from Tohoku.” A smaller subset our clips are available on our fully searchable and open
Kibou Archive (tohokukaranokoe.org) aimed at a more popular audience. Within our main archive,
we have more than 400 hours of footage, making it one of the largest of its kind. Since October April
30

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
2014, we focused more on effect of radiation on communities in Fukushima and the politicalmobilization around nuclear energy all over the Kanto area, (Voices of Protest. Org). The papers inthis double session are a subset of this project, focusing on the roles that women have played in theircommunities and in the rise of social movements. My presentation will introduce our larger
collaborative projects, point to some of our theoretical and political goals, and some to some of the
ethical and logistical challenges there in.
2)

Maya Houser, Waseda University

The Problem of Politics and Community among Voluntary Evacuees
Most mothers with younger children have some level of awareness of and anxiety about thedangers of radiation. While some have voiced their dissent towards the government and TEPCO,
organizing groups and demonstrating on the streets, far more have kept their political opinions tothemselves. In the most extreme case, thousands have left Fukushima altogether, living as refugees intheir own country. The subject of this paper are the views of one group of mothers who have left
Fukushima as voluntary evacuees, usually living in public housing in Tokyo or with friends. Unlike
the forced evacuees, who have a reason, or even an ‘excuse’ to leave, these mothers have left on theirown. In a cruel irony, these mothers actually faced many of the same troubles in Tokyo that they
were fleeing from in Fukushima. Coming to a new city without a support network, many of thesemothers faced both discrimination (from Tokyo-ites) but also report trouble in making new sets ofrelationships with other evacuees, forced or voluntary. I will document this dynamic with particularattention to these mothers’ views of the meaning and efficacy of activism and protest as a way toaddress their own compromised situation.
3)

Rebecca Milner, Sophia University

The “Passive Politics” of Evacuation?
In the first panel, we saw the substantial power of women working together in activism,
explicitly engaged in political protest, and the transformative effect that this could have on
communities, and even the larger political scene. But what of women to flee, run from the danger ofradiation in Fukushima? Is this a form of activism itself? Is there a politics to evacuation? These
women are not fighting under the banner of any ideology (for example, for a more transparent
government or against nuclear power). Their goals are more modest: they want to continue to receive
housing subsidies so that they support their children in a safe environment—in Tokyo. Their decision
to leave was not always an intentional act of defiance, and yet, it challenged both the national and
31

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
local government’s insistence on the safety of Fukushima, one that they took at great risk to theirfamilies and their relationships in their communities And what does it mean when women feel, assome of these women have expressed, that they were left with no choice but to act in defiance? And
how to we understand it as “political”?
Discussant: Eto Mikiko, Hosei University

32

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
Session 11: Room 1351
Fushigi as Critique – Mizuki Shigeru and Postwar Japan
Organizer/Chair: Christophe Thouny, University of Tokyo
Mostly known in North America and Europe for his manga series Gegege no Kitarō and his
stories of yōkai, Mizuki Shigeru’s work is encyclopedic and eclectic, rewriting national narratives ofthe state, war memories and local folklore legends in the new media ecologies opening up with theHigh Growth Period. In this panel, we propose to read Mizuki’s work in terms of what Gerald Figalcalls “fushigi as critique.” Like the novelist Izumi Kyōka, Mizuki Shigeru participates in a modern
aesthetic of the fantastic that attempts to reopen in the everyday an in-between space of fantasy
where it becomes possible to explore the connections between war, everydayness and technologicalmediation in postwar Japan. In other words, we argue that Mizuki’s monsters and ghosts are not somuch about a traditional Japanese past as they are about staging the unconscious of the JapaneseModern through the figures of the yōkai, the soldier or the unnamed beast, in continuity with bothpre-war Japan and the present age of necropolitics. Presentations will address his historical narrativesof war in Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths (Sōin gyokusai seyo, 1973), his projection ofLovecraftian New England onto the Japanese country in Subterranean Footsteps (Chitei no ashioto,
1962), and his exploration of neoliberal media ecologies through the figure of the kasabake(umbrella-monster).
1)

Akiko Takenaka, University of Kentucky

Yōkai and Ghostly Interventions in Mizuki Shigeru’s War Narratives“Honorable defeat is stupid!” (gyokusai nante kudaranai) emphatically declares Nezumi Otoko,
the trickster semi-yōkai character from Gegege no Kitarō. This is not a scene from the popular yōkai
manga, however. Nezumi Otoko is conversing with his fellow yōkai in the dramatized rendition of
Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths (Sōin gyokusai seyo, 1973), a semi-autographical graphic novel
representation of Mizuki Shigeru’s experience in Rabaul, Papua New Guinea, where he was stationed
as an army private towards the end of the Asia-Pacific War. Entitled Kitarō ga mita gyokusai(“Honorable defeat” that Kitarō witnessed), this adaptation appeared on the NHK television network
in 2007. In addition to these yōkai interventions, the dramatized version also adds another layer as anarrative device: battlefield action is interspersed with scenes from the early 1970s when Mizuki
experiences hauntings by the ghosts of his comrades who died in Rabaul. Through a comparative
analysis of the graphic novel and the television drama, this presentation explores the idea ofrepresenting personal trauma as visual narrative. What drives the author to revisit the traumatic
33

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
moment in order to recreate it for a large audience? What kind of narrative devices are employed, andto what end? What is lost, what is gained in the process? And in Mizuki’s case, what kind of a role dothe yōkai and ghostly interventions play in communicating a trauma that cannot really be conveyed?
References will be made to other examples of wartime trauma represented as graphic novel such asBarefoot Gen and Maus.
2)

Peter Bernard, Harvard University

Dunwich in Tottori: Translating the Weird in Mizuki Shigeru’s Kashihon Manga
Although he is famous for adapting and updating early modern depictions of yōkai, Mizuki
Shigeru’s deep engagement with international currents in Gothic and weird fiction is less widely
discussed. In this paper, I will examine Mizuki’s 1962 Subterranean Footsteps (Chitei no ashioto), atrans-media “translation” of H. P. Lovecraft’s 1929 story “The Dunwich Horror.” In this manga,
Mizuki does not preserve the rural New England setting of Lovecraft’s original but instead
painstakingly resituates the narrative in a moldering village in Tottori Prefecture. Mizuki’s manga,like Lovecraft’s story, can be read on one level as a clear-cut narrative about the triumph ofcivilization over the perverse, benighted folkways of a rural backwater: a professor from Tottori
University ultimately vanquishes a horrifying man-demon that lurked in the village’s shadows. And
yet close attention paid to the formal visual elements of the manga reveals that this text presents a
more nuanced view of translation, foreignness, and rural decay in postwar Japan. I will show that,while being most famous for his later yōkai character designs, Mizuki is an artist deeply concernedwith landscape and place. By superimposing Lovecraftian Massachusetts on rural Tottori, his manga
instantiates a hybrid visual landscape that not only mimics the abject hybridity of its cursed denizens
but in fact enables it. Mizuki’s manga dramatizes the irruption of an abject Other within a rurallandscape of rot and decay, pushing back against the teleological facileness of the narrative itself andsimultaneously avoiding nostalgia for an imagined idyllic past.
3)

Christophe Thouny, University of Tokyo

From Salaryman Revolution to the Media-mix: Post-War Narratives of the Umbrella Monster
Among Mizuki Shigeru’s Japanese monsters and ghosts, the one-eye one-foot umbrella yōkaikasabake remains particularly popular among his fans. In this presentation, I propose to read theKasabake as a particular case of “fushigi as critique” where it is the relation between objects,
atmospheres and media ecologies that articulates the critique of Japanese post-war mass culture.
Kasabake makes its apparition in episode 24 of the 1972 TV animation series Gegege no Kitarō.
34

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
Living in a derelict wood-house, Kasabake dreams of living a human life, that is living the successful
life of a rich Bourgeois. As the salaryman Yamada-san, Kasabake is a perfectly ordinary figure, if
exemplary in its ordinariness. Yet while Yamada-san exemplifies the failed ideals of the post-war
salaryman for who nor individual success nor a Salaryman Revolution (1969) could bring release,
Kasabake already participates in the emerging neoliberal culture of the media mix. Kasabake thus
marks a shift in post-war atmospheres away from revolutionary ideals of the 1950’s and 1960’s asJapan is entering the media ecologies of global neoliberalism. In conclusion, I argue that Mizuki
Shigeru’s use of the Kasabake can be read as a form of ecosophy. Kasabake is literally a transitional
object that both mirrors the changing material culture of post-war Japan while opening, in the
post-war atmospheres of nuclear war and image-commodities, new possibilities of alliance between
human, monsters and things.
Discussant: Anne McKnight, Shirayuri College

35

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

Session 12: Room 1352
R2P in East Asia: Acceptance, Commitment and Practice
Organizer: Sangmin Bae, Northeastern Illinois University
Chair: Martyn de Bruyn, Northeastern Illinois University
The Responsibility of Protect (often referred to as R2P or RtoP) is an emerging international
norm that guides policy and actions to shield populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic
cleansing and crimes against humanity. The R2P principles were unanimously adopted at the World
Summit Conference in 2005, which was the largest ever gathering of world leaders in the history of
the United Nations. While much of the world welcomed the need for the R2P, East Asia has been
known as a region where the traditional principles of state sovereignty and noninterference continue
to dominate. This panel discusses how and why East Asian nations have been resisting to or begun toengage the R2P norm. From a comparative perspective the panel seeks to identify the key similarities
and differences in East Asia nations’ approaches to and acceptance of the R2P norm. Papers on thispanel explore these issues by examining: R2P and the Korean Peninsula, China's approach, lessons
from Australia’s R2P engagement, and the comparison of China and Japan.
1)

Brendan Howe, Ewha Womans University

R2P on the Korean Peninsula: From Resistance to Strategic Engagement

Paper withdrawn
2)Lina Gong, Nanyang Technological University

China’s Role in the Implementation of the Responsibility to Protect
This paper examines China’s approach to the responsibility to protect (RtoP). RtoP is an
important concept for international security but its implementation still faces controversies andchallenges. China’s support is crucial for moving the concept forward, and China also needs thisopportunity to strengthen its image as a responsible power. The analysis of China’s statements on
responsibility to protect (RtoP) in the UN since 2005 shows that it supports the RtoP but hesitates toendorse coercive measures to implement it. This position is rooted in China’s adherence to theprinciples of respect for sovereignty and non-interference. As a result, China often finds itself underwestern criticism for not making contributions to international security in proportion to its risinginternational status. China emphasizes the importance of development and social justice in solving
the root causes of mass atrocities. Hence, assisting local development shall be an area for Chinese
36

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
contribution. In addition, as China is growing more influential and capable, preventive diplomacy
and peacekeeping are another two aspects for greater China’s engagement.
3)

Hiroshi Takazawa, University of Tokyo

A Practical Way Forward: Australia’s Bottom-up Approach in Cooperation with
Nongovernmental Research Institutes
Compared to other regions, Asia is largely disengaged with the R2P norm. This is because
many Asian nations remain skeptical about the development of mechanisms to implement the norm,
especially those opening up possibilities of external intervention. In East Asia, China and Japan
exemplify this skepticism for opposite reasons. China, with its own ethnic and human rights
problems, is afraid of being intervened by pro-R2P nations, while Japan is unlikely to be intervened
but unwilling to be involved in settling others' internal affairs with the use of force. However,Australia has developed a practical way that could be acceptable to R2P skeptics in East Asia. This
paper focuses on Australia’s engagement with non-governmental research institutes. Morespecifically, the paper focuses on the following. First, the Australian government funds the Asia
Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect that recently published a report of the High-Level
Advisory Panel which the UN secretariat requested for promoting R2P in Southeast Asia. Second,
Australia supports the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect and its "Focal Point initiative"
as a leading member, which aims to improve intra- and inter-governmental efforts to prevent mass
atrocities by establishing a global network of senior-level officials appointed as "national R2P Focal
Point" within each government. These examples suggest that Australia takes a government-supported
bottom-up approach. In conclusion, this paper argues that the Australian approach provides us withan indirect but advanced perspective for comparing and evaluating East Asian nations’ approaches tobringing R2P into reality.
4)

Sangmin Bae, Northeastern Illinois University

Active in Not Being Active: How East Asian Powers Accept R2P
The purpose of this paper is to compare and evaluate the positions of two major powers in East
Asia, China and Japan, toward the responsibility to protect (R2P). R2P emphasizes a collective
international responsibility in the event that states are unwilling or unable to protect their people. The
paper reevaluates the mainstream argument in the literature that China and Japan have recently been
welcoming and steadily accepting the R2P norm. How far have China and Japan aligned themselveswith R2P? How does the interest-identity nexus explain their positions to the R2P norm? To
37

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
summarize my findings up front: unlike what much of the current literature argues, China andJapan’s acceptance and practice of the R2P norm is largely pro forma. I suggest that they both appear
active in participating in the debates but only for remaining not active. In other words, they are active
participants in the international discourse of R2P but not to further its usage but rather to contain its
effects. Their current stance on R2P is characterized by what I will call “Active in Not Being Active”(AINBA). The paper explores the key sources and rationale for their AINBA policy toward R2P.
Discussant: Hideaki Shinoda, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies

38

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

Session 13: Room 1353
Water Worlds: The Past and Present of Aquatic Environments in Japan
Organizer /Chair: Roderick Wilson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Wherever one goes in Japan, water is clearly present in the landscape. It trickles from melting
snowpack, roars through electricity-generating turbines at dams, it splashes into and throughirrigation sloughs, eats away at levees and embankments, and flows into lakes, bays, and seas acrossthe archipelago. And yet, perhaps owing to this ubiquity, the importance of water to Japan’s past andpresent has until recently largely been overlooked. To shed light on this indispensable aspect ofpre-modern and modern life, the three papers that make up this panel together focus on the common
theme of fresh water. In doing so, they also reveal the sheer variety of these aquatic environments
and the tremendous change they have undergone since the early modern period. In his paper on theTone River system during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Wilson explores how thequotidian activities of farmers, fishers, and boat pilots helped create and sustain importantenvironmental relations throughout the region. Shifting to a more local scale, Sippel follows the
Senkawa Josui as it has flowed from western Edo to Tokyo to show how this waterway has acted as
an important spatial and temporal conduit, connecting the city with the country and the early modern
with the modern. Moving to the Kansai region, Wood looks at Lake Biwa and an emerging struggle
between species as a way in which to think through the cultural aspects of invasive species discourse
and the limits of co-existence.
1)

Roderick Wilson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Quotidian Routines and Environmental Relations Along the Rivers of the Early-Modern Kanto
Plain
This paper focuses on the role of rivers in providing and destroying people’s livelihoods in the
Kanto region of Japan during the early modern period. The largest alluvial area in the Japanesearchipelago, the Kanto plain surrounding the city of Edo was in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries transformed into one of the country’s most agriculturally productive regions through thererouting of rivers and drainage of marshes. These rerouted rivers and extensive drainage andirrigation canals sustained the fields and rice paddies of the region and acted as the arteries andcapillaries upon which goods flowed between the countryside and city. Just as these rivers sustained
the region, drought, flooding, and even a volcano threatened the slim surplus upon which most
farmers and others in the region survived. Despite these rivers being critically important to the lives
39

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
and livelihood of people throughout the Kanto, historians have largely overlooked or even dismissed
their role in history. Rather than simply add rivers to the dominant tropes of Japanese history,
however, this paper examines people’s everyday interactions with these waters to reconsider how
historians narrate the presence of nonhuman entities like rivers within their historical environments.
Specifically, this paper focuses on the role of work in embedding farmers, fishers, and riverboat
pilots within complex environmental relations and the practical knowledge they gained about thoseenvironments through these kinds of workaday interactions.
2)

Patricia Sippel, Toyo Eiwa University

The Senkawa Jōsui: Views from a Constructed Waterway
In 1696, Edo’s water supply received a significant expansion when Tokugawa governmentengineers built the Senkawa Josui, a canal that diverted drinking water from the main Tama systemwest of the city to Sugamo, some 20 kilometers to the east. From Sugamo, underground pipes carried
drinking water to Hongo, Asakusa and other expanding urban areas. This, however, was just the
beginning of the Senkawa Josui’s successive transformations. In 1707 the Tokugawa government
permitted water-poor agricultural villages along the canal to access it for ricefield irrigation, and by
the 1720s irrigation had become the Senkawa’s primary function. Japan’s 19th-century shift intomodernity brought further changes. In the mid-1860s, it was fitted with a waterwheel to supply
energy for a reverberatory furnace planned in northern Edo; it was also broadened to allow
transportation from the Ara River. From the 1870s, it supplied water to the emerging paper andtextile industries in the Oji area of Tokyo. From the 1880s until 1907, it was revived as a source ofdrinking water for the exploding population of northeastern Tokyo. Using insights derived from theintersection between social and environmental history, this paper explores human interactions withand along the Senkawa Josui from the 18th century into the modern era. It argues that thisconstructed waterway offers a valuable view of the changing relationships between Edo-Tokyo andits surrounding communities as well as the changing interplay between agricultural and industrial
interests during Japan’s transition into modernity.

40

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

3)

Michael Wood, Chapman University

Deterritorialized Waters: Invasive Species Discourse and the Lake Biwa Watershed
Lake Biwa is Japan’s largest freshwater body and sits in the heart of the archipelago. Following
outbreaks of red tide and blue-green algae blooms and the subsequent grassroots sekken undō
movement in the 1970s, it has also come to serve as a symbol of success for the Japaneseenvironmental movement and an important stage upon which the shifting relationships between
human community and the environment are dramatized. More recently, it has also become groundzero in the fight against invasive species and the locus of a nostalgia-infused discourse ofenvironmental protection and restoration. I argue that the problem of invasive species in Lake Biwa
demonstrates the limits of both biological diversity in the watershed as well as the limit or blind spotof the dominant ecological discourse. Rethinking the problem of invasive species in terms of thephilosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, as well as the more recent political philosopher Jane
Bennett, I hope to re-imagine political agency within a complex ecology in a manner that accounts
for not only the desires and social practices of people, but also the many non-human assemblages ofpower.
Discussant: Ethan Segal, Michigan State University

41

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

Session 14: Room 1358
Overlapping Cosmologies and Cosmographies in Pre-Modern Asia (I)Organizers: Bill M. Mak, Kyoto University; Cynthea J. Bogel, Kyushu University
Chair: Bill M. Mak, Kyoto University
For over a millennium from the early centuries of the common-era, pre-scientific cultures in
Asia thrived and engaged in an intense dialogue both within itself and with each other. Seen fromboth comparative and connective perspective, such interaction is exemplified by the transmission andevolution of the astral science, considered in its time the foremost intellectual product of therespective culture. Within the vast body of knowledge which constitutes the astral science,cosmology has far-reaching implications, as thinkers constantly strived for new attempts to position
themselves in time and space. In India, various forms of Buddhist cosmology were brought to theneighboring regions. In China and Japan, beside the Indian cosmologies brought by the Indian
Buddhists, other cosmological notions were introduced from the Central Asia against the backdrop of
the prevailing indigenous East Asian worldviews. What happened when two or more conflicting
notions of the world and the cosmos collided? How were overlapping cosmologies accommodated ina highly syncretic context? This panel takes a broad survey of this phenomenon across Asia,
beginning with India and China where different forms of cosmologies underwent a dynamic processof negotiation. The discussion continues to examine how foreign cosmological notions entered East
Asia and what roles the intermediaries played. Drawing from text-critical and iconographical sourcesfrom different parts of Asia, we hope to tackle the topic from an interdisciplinary perspective and toreveal the pattern which underlies the discourse among various cultures in pre-modern Asia, and its
impact to posterity and beyond.
1)Eric Huntington, Princeton University

Buddhist Cosmology in Bhutanese Murals: An Iconographic Negotiation between Kālacakra and
Abhidharma Cosmologies
Recent Buddhism in Bhutan devotes equal attention to the mutually contradictory cosmologies of the
Kālacakra and Abhidharmakośa systems. Each of these models is considered canonical and serves as
the basis for important textual traditions, scientific analyses, and ritual functions. Vasubandhu’s
Abhidharmakośa is a foundational text of many Buddhist traditions, presenting a cosmology that was
concretized at least half a millennium before the Kālacakra system. The Kālacakra, in turn, conveys
the pinnacle of macrocosmic and microcosmic integration into a coherent philosophical and ritual42

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
system. While both of these cosmological models were imported into Bhutan, many Dzongs(fortress-monasteries) prominently display cosmological imagery relating to both of these systems attheir entrances, revealing the prime importance of cosmological thought in Bhutanese Buddhism andthe equal respect that both of these systems receive. Close inspection of these murals actually reveals
a much more complex relationship between the two models: each type of cosmological image
actually borrows specific attributes from the other, such that Abhidharmakośa cosmoses distinctly
utilize the visual language of the Kālacakra versions, and vice versa. Some of the most recent
examples also show subtle evidence of a third influence—the Western scientific perspective. While
textual sources allow one important type of analysis of this kind of cultural negotiation, such visual
imagery provides unique and otherwise unknowable insights into the ways in which competing
cosmologies can be compromised and mediated in the minds of practitioners.
2)

Daniel Patrick Morgan, CNRS-Paris VII

A Sphere unto Itself: The Death and Medieval Framing of the History of Chinese Cosmography
This paper attempts to explain the lack of dialogue between Indian and Chinese cosmologies in
the astral sciences of the Six Dynasties and Tang. The history of speculative cosmography in China,
we are told, died in the eighth century, the final blow having been delivered by the monk Yixing.
Almost everything we know about this history derives from three sources: Shen Yue and Li
Chun-feng’s respective “heavenly patterns” monographs (5th & 7th century) and Gautama
Siddhārtha’s Kaiyuan zhanjing of 729. Shen and Li’s monographs, I argue, impart a messy history
with a neat telos that survives to our day: the history of Chinese cosmography is the history of
instrumentation (two-dimensional diagrams and gnomon planes vs. three-dimensional sphere
instruments); there were three true “schools,” but the contest between them was settled almost assoon as it began in the second century, the subsequent centuries being defined by irresponsible ideasthat threatened the cosmography/instrumentation of the rightful winner. It is the success of these two
men’s frame, I argue, that admitted no viable intellectual place for foreign ideas in their history.
Shifting perspective, I finish with a look at how Buddhist thinkers either engaged with or createdtheir own alternatives to this discourse, examining the case of the astronomers Gautama and Yixing,
the Buddhist monarch and dilettante cosmographer Liang Wudi (r. 464—549), and Buddhist
intellectuals like Daoshi (7th century) of Fayuan zhulin fame.

43

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

3)

Bill M. Mak, Kyoto University

Greek Astral Science in China: Nestorians, Perso-Arabs, and the Jesuits
This paper examines the three phases of Greek astral sciences introduced to China by the
Nestorians, Perso-Arabs and the Jesuits. Though ultimately sprung from the same source, basedlargely on the works of Ptolemy which have established themselves as the authority on the subject inWestern Europe and the Byzantine Empire from the middle of the first millennium for over a
thousand years, the Greek science practiced and brought by these foreigners carried uniquecharacteristics of their own. As the cosmologies encapsulated in these works as well as theaccompanying scientific concepts and techniques are drastically different from those of theindigenous Chinese, each of these "foreign waves" left a different impression in the Chinese world,with different degree of impact which can be observed both historically as well as even today. Someof the legacies of these ongoing dialogues between the Greek and the Chinese can be seen in the East
Asian planetary week, the Zodiac, and a myriad of hybridized forms of genethlical astrology.
4)

Yoichi Isahaya, University of Tokyo

Entangled Representation of the Heaven: Dunhuang Fragment P. 4071 in the Transition andNaturalization of the Western Astral Science
This paper focuses on a fragment—now preserved at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (P.
4071). Unearthed in Dunhuang, it has attracted scholars as one of the most ancient Chinese sources
concerning tuiming (推命), astral divination developed in conflation with western astrology from theTang period—including the four pseudo-planets, Rāhu (羅睺), Ketu (計都), yuebo (月勃) and ziqi (紫気). We investigate two texts in fragment made in 975: the Futian li (符天暦) and Yusi jing (聿斯経).

The former is used to compute the positions of the “eleven luminaries” which consist of the Sun,
Moon, five planets and the aforementioned four pseudo-planets to cast a horoscope. The latter isamong texts in the fragment to interpret the horoscope. From the textual analysis of both eastern andwestern sources, we deduce that the East-Syriac Christians took a crucial role in transmitting the two
texts into Tang China, and Kang Zun (康遵) who made the fate-calculation in this fragment also
belonged to the Church. Through the fragment, we elucidate a phase of the entangled representationof the heavenly phenomena to engage in astral divination, in which the method from the “westernregion, xiyu (西域)” is mingled with the Chinese astral tradition. To deal with this kind of integrationof the astral traditions, we cannot overlook the vital—but sometimes elusive—activity of the
44

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
East-Syriac Christians who trafficked in medieval Eurasia with various commodities, ideologies andtechnologies.
Discussant: Ellen Van Goethem, Kyushu University
Session 15: Room 1458
(Mis)Representing Japan to Western Audiences (Roundtable)
Organizer/ Chair: James Welker, Kanagawa University
1) Alisa Freedman, University of Oregon
2) Patrick Galbraith, Duke University3) Debra Occhi, Miyazaki International College
4) James Welker, Kanagawa University
5) Toby Slade, Tokyo University
This roundtable examines the ways in which Japanese culture has been misleadingly
represented in Anglophone discourse and implications of this for teachers and students of “JapaneseStudies” in Japan and overseas. Alisa Freedman discusses misrepresentations of Japan in American
comedy television. Skits like Saturday Night Live’s samurai slapstick and anime clubs and series likeI survived a Japanese Game Show perpetuate national stereotypes while verifying Japan’sinternational influence. Parody only works when the subject is mainstream enough for audiences toeasily get the joke and shows the impact of Japanese popular culture. Television comedies can beviewed as an alternative history of American fascination with and fear of Japan. Patrick Galbraith
discusses how when Japan banned the possession of so-called “child-abuse materials,” global news
outlets pointed out that manga and anime were exempt. For many, this demonstrated Japan’s
reluctance to give up its market for “virtual child pornography.” The inability of reporters andviewers to interpret what they were looking at raises questions about how certain content isrecognized as objectionable. This mis-recognition has serious consequences for scholars who may
run into legal and ethical issues when researching or teaching manga. Debra Occhi looks at how
Japanese local mascot characters have taken a global turn with their inclusion in the 2014 Japan Expoand related overseas events. There is also a recent development of foreign analogues representing
either local heroes or legendary beasts. Unsurprisingly, underlying differences in worldview andattitude towards such entities impacts on their interpretation. Characters developed abroad may not fit
the Japanese “kyara” aesthetic while “Kumamon” has already been misrepresented abroad as aminion of Satan. Occhi examines these issues as part of character-driven globalized Japanese popular
45

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
culture. James Welker points out how misrepresentations and adaptations can be turned on theirheads. He introduces a course at a Japanese university focused on “Japanese culture” aimed primarily
at Japanese students, where adaptations of Japanese culture from sushi to cosplay, as well as western
media representations of Japanese culture are discussed. These are used as a springboard for
discussions on topics related to globalization, cultural change, and trans-cultural understanding.
Finally, Toby Slade discusses how the foreign representation of Japanese fashion and clothing is
dominated by the portrayal of a tiny minority’s tastes as representative of the entire nation. The desire
to see Japanese as quirky, different and unique in their clothing tastes, despite evidence to thecontrary, often obscures understanding of the dynamics of Japanese fashion in its entirety.

46

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

Session 16: Room 1361
Real and Ideal Mothers: Representations of Motherhood in Japanese Literature from
Gendered Perspectives
Organizer/Chair: Natsumi Ikoma, International Christian University
This panel will examine representations of motherhood in Japanese literary works from themodern period to contemporary times. The shared premise underlying the presentations in this panel
is that the idealized representation of motherhood needs to be revised from critical and gender
perspectives. The panel explores a) how the male gaze idealizes motherhood in its memory or
absence, and b) how the female gaze instead resists and subverts this ideal. The first presentation
tackles the symbiotic, idealized relationship between mother and home (furusato), and how thenotion of nature or biology mediates that connection. The second presentation argues that the very
absence of the mother is the basic condition for the love and respect intrinsic in the idealization of
motherhood by male authors. The third presentation offers varied views on motherhood from female
perspectives: some nearer to an experience of motherhood readers can relate to, and some mocking
and transgressing the ideal mother through parody and fantasy.
1)

Lindsay Ray Morrison, International Christian University

In Search of What Is Real: The Role of Nature in Japanese Literature on the Mother and Home
The primary objective of this paper is to consider the mediating role of nature or biology in thesymbiotic relationship between the mother and home (specifically, furusato) in modern Japanese
literature, particularly in the reminiscences of male authors on their own childhoods. In Japan, theimages of the mother and native home tend to overlap, and in some cases, the mother is even viewed
as the physical embodiment of the home and the nature surrounding it. In this schema of thehome-as-mother, the notion of biology has a singular importance; that is, it is significant for themother to be the biological mother, and not a stepmother or other surrogate maternal figure. In thisway, the flesh and blood connection between mother and child is conceived as possessing a sacred,transcendental quality, and it is the connection to a greater natural force that the adult (usually male)child seeks when remembering the mother and native home. Through examining a selection of shortstories by Japanese male authors—including “Yōnen jidai” (1919) by Murō Saisei and “Ishi no omoi”(1946) by Sakaguchi Ango—this paper will attempt to dissect the nostalgic longing for the biologicalmother and home, and analyze the deeper cultural and psychological implications of this desire.
47

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts2)

Natsumi Ikoma, International Christian University

To Miss the Missing Mother: Absence of Real Mothers in Japanese Literature by Male Authors
This paper examines the proliferation of the image of idealized mothers in the works of maleauthors in Japanese literature, and argues that the abundant affection and respect for mothers
exhibited in those works are conditional on their (mothers’) absence. The works analyzed in thispaper are Captain Shigemoto’s Mother (1949) by Tanizaki Jun’ichiro, The Pornographers (1966) by
Nosaka Akiyuki, and Tokyo Tower: Mom, Me and Sometimes Dad (2005) by Lily Franky. In theseworks, to miss the mother constitutes a significant part of the sexual and gender identity of thecharacters who do the missing, but the reality of the mothers is deliberately overlooked. The paper
looks at the ways the missing of the mothers / the missing mothers play a singular role in theirliterary works and the void created by absent mothers is filled with fantasy in order to argue how theidealized notion of mothers is prioritized over reality. It also pays attention to the increasing
idealization of mothers taking place in the post-1990’s, tying this trend to the conservative swing ofJapanese society as a whole and to the related increase of the desire for housewifery among theyounger generation.
3)

Juliana Buriticá Alzate, International Christian University

Nearer to or Farther from the Idealized Mother: Portrayals of Motherhood by Japanese
Women Writers
This paper explores the representation of motherhood in a selection of literary texts byfive Japanese female authors: Vibrator (Vaiburēta, 1999) by Akasaka Mari, Breasts and Eggs
(Chichi to ran, 2007) by Kawakami Mieko, Tokyo Island (Tokyo jima, 2008) by Kirino Natsuo,“The Unfertilized Egg” (“Museiran,” 2004) by Hasegawa Junko, and poems by Itō Hiromi
including “Killing Kanoko”(“Kanoko goroshi,” 1985) and “Healing Kanoko’s Rash” (“Kanoko
shisshin o naosu,” 1985). These authors, diverse in style and content, share a literary gaze thatmoves away from conventional and idealistic depictions of motherhood and challenges thecasual links between sex, gender and social expectations and ideas regarding motherhood.
These authors do not idealize motherhood as the sole reason for women to exist; yet, in theirworks we can read how this idealization undermines female characters. Motherhood, as anexperience of the female body, is central to their narratives and to the construction of theircharacters. These writers’ female gaze at motherhood allows us to rethink motherhood from48

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
diverse and complex angles. I will argue how their works liberate women from deterministic
visions on what a mother should be or do. This presentation attempts to underline theirindividual contributions to the depiction of the experience of motherhood in Japan but mostly it
expounds the merits of reading their works together. In doing so, I will present a mosaic ofimages of motherhood from gender perspectives and within feminist theoretical frameworks.
Discussant: Fukuko Kobayashi, Josai International University

49

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
Session 17: Room 1457
Individual Papers 3: Northeast Asian Politics
Chair: Mark E. Caprio, Rikkyo University
1)

Lee Sangjoon, Nanyang Technological University

Mission to Tokyo: The Asia Foundation and the Cultural Cold War in Asia
Under the leadership of its first president Robert Blum (1953—1962), The Asia Foundation, aprivate non-profit organization which was established in 1951, was actively involved in the motion
picture industries in Asia since its first feature film project The People Win Through, based on a play
written by a Burmese Prime Minister U Nu, came out in 1953. Roughly from 1953 to 1959, to win
the battle for hearts and minds in Asia, The Asia Foundation had clandestinely supported
anti-Communist motion picture industry personnel, ranging from producers, directors, andtechnicians to critics, writers, and general intellectuals in Japan, Hong Kong, Burma, Korea, as wellas American and British producers in Malaya and Thailand in mostly indirect ways. Nagata
Masaichi-initiated Federation of Motion Picture Producers in Southeast Asia (FPA) and its annual
Southeast Asian Film Festival had been the Foundation’s core venture and other motion picture
operations in Asia, Chang Kuo-sin’s Asia Pictures in Hong Kong and Korean Motion Picture
Cultural Association (KMPCA) in Korea, were more or less related outcomes of FPA. What The
Asia Foundation’s motion picture project team (Charles Tanner, John Miller, James L. Stewart, andNoel Busch) had hoped for was the construction of the league of anti-Communist motion picture
producers in Asia in order to win the psychological war against Communism. Although It was, in theend, a failed project, but it should be noted that The Asia Foundation had played a significant role in
the formation of the inter-Asian motion picture industry network in Cold War Asia, which had
ultimately redrawn the imaginary and geo-political map of Asia. Drawing archival materials from
Asia Foundation Records and Robert Blum Papers, this presentation is primarily concerned with theorigins of the Foundation’s motion picture project in Japan and Korea, with a view to explore theways in which the U.S. government-led cold war cultural policies had influenced the regional film
industry.
2)

Stella Xu, Roanoke University

From A Marxist Universal History to an Ultra-Nationalist Approach: Studies on Ancient History
in North Korea (1950s–2010)
North Korea is arguably one of the most isolated countries of the world. It is mysterious in
50

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
many ways; one such way is how historical studies are approached there, and there is little existing
scholarship on this topic in the US. This project aims to trace the evolution of historical research inNorth Korea with a focus on how North Koreans’ interpretation of ancient history has changed fromthe 1950s to the contemporary period. Issues include what the preferred topics of research are, andhow interpretations evolved over time, especially within the context of ideological change. North
Korean historians have been struggling to balance the Marxist framework of universal history anduniqueness of Korean culture. From the 1950s to the 1970s, these historians strove to identify theexistence of slaves in archaeological excavations, and a slave society in ancient Korea would allow
Korean history to fit within the mode of universal Marxist historiography. However, along with
political and ideological shifts in the 1970s, especially the rise and predominance of Kim Il Sung’s
Self-Reliance Ideology, research on ancient history began to focus on constructing Korean
uniqueness and superiority; this reached its climax through the process of the “rediscovery” ofTan’gun’s burial site and the construction of a massive Tan’gun mausoleum in 1994. As a result,
Tan’gun was transformed from a mythical figure to a genuine ancestor of the Korean people, which
next led North Korean scholars to claim a Taedonggang Civilization as the fifth center of ancientcivilization.
3)

Robert Winstanley-Chesters, University of Cambridge

Uncovering a North Korean Resource History: Mineralogical Narratives of the Captured
Documents Collection
Pacific Century Rare Earth Minerals Ltd. 2013 announcement of a joint venture to exploit
North Korea’s Rare Earth deposits was in one sense demonstrative of the opacity of North Korea’s
developmental reality given the status quo on the peninsula and Pyongyang’s ideologicaldisconnection to the wider world. Equally it made explicit to commentators the fact that the lastsystematic geologic or geodesic analysis of North Korea’s mineralogical resource was undertaken
during the colonial administration of Chosen. Access to more reliable historical narratives of resource
availability is therefore required both to consider the efficacy of mineralogical assessment under theGovernment General and more pressingly to assess the veracity/reality of current projects’ in North
Korea. This paper holds that alternative narratives are available through analysis of rarely accessed
and uncatalogued historical material within the Captured Documents (Korea) Collection of theUnited States National Archives. The collection comprises the documentary spoils of the US Army’s
repeated occupation of Pyongyang during the Korean War. Having uncovered within the archiveextensive documentation and cartographic material sourced from the Mining/Resource Ministries of51

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
pre-war North Korea and the Government General of Chosen, the author investigates the narrativesof mineral/resource availability present in the period following Liberation from Japan and theoutbreak of the Korean War. Through analysis of these narratives and the survey/statistical data on
which they are based, the paper finally outlines a framework for both a more holistic consideration of
North Korea’s contemporary mineralogical potential and the developmental resource bequeathed itby colonial Chosen.
4)

Hovhannisyan Astghik, Hitotsubashi University

War and Eyesight: Ophthalmological Research in Prewar and Wartime JapanIn September 1944, Japanese medical journal Nihon iji shinpō released a special issue called “Warand Eyesight” (Sensō to shiryoku). Contributors to this issue, mainly ophthalmologists and army
officers, claimed that eye problems and diseases such as myopia and trachoma forced a great numberof otherwise healthy soldiers out of the service and emphasized the importance of preventing them.
That same year, the University of Tokyo professor of ophthalmology, Shōji Yoshiharu published abook with nearly the same title, “War and Eyes” (Sensō to me), the first chapter of which is called“Eyes that can be useful in war” (Sensō no yaku ni tatsu me). In fact, bad eyesight had been
considered a serious problem by the Japanese army since early 1930s, and several big-scale projects
were carried out to battle with this problem (including a trachoma research that involved experiments
on human subjects). The aim of this presentation is to describe the scope and nature of cooperation of
ophthalmologists and the Japanese Army in the prewar and wartime period and point out the legaciesof this little-known cooperation.

52

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
Session 18: Room 1456
Individual Papers 4: Literature in China, Japan, and Taiwan
Chair: Angela Yiu, Sophia University
1)

Zhang Yao, University of Tokyo

Cultural Transformation in Chinese Literature in the 1990’s
The history of the reception of Japanese novels and movies in China came to a new turning
point at the end of the 90’s, due to the influence of Haruki Murakami (1949–) and Shunji Iwai
(1963–) ― two figures who gave Chinese writers born from the time of the seventies and eighties
great influence on their work. Fujii Shōzō has redefined them as “Murakami children,” offering aninterpretation of the cultural rules of the Murakami boom in Asia. But the vital cultural route oftransformation and reception background in China of the 90’s should be interpreted through a morenuanced approach, so as to better clarify the way it changed the direction of contemporary Chinese
literature. The worldwide bestseller Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami and box-office hit Love
Letter by Shunji Iwai were held in high regard during the same period in China. Coincidentally, therising Chinese woman writers of the seventies, and the network literature boom happened during thissame period.
2)

Shan Lianying, Gustavus Adolphus College

Eco-feminism in Kirino Natsuo’s Tokyo Island
Kirino Natsuo is known for her depiction of women’s life conditions in contemporary Japan.
One important theme of her fiction is the search for personal and social roots of women’s oppression
and alienation. Another theme is the presence of foreign cultures, especially Chinese and European
cultures in Japanese society. In several of her novels, foreign cultures not only constitute theheterogeneous social context of contemporary Japan, but also are an integral part of the plot, thus
crucial for understanding the female character’s search for self and meaning in a cross-culturalcontext. My paper provides a detailed analysis of Kirino’s three novels: Gyokuran (玉蘭), Tokyo
Island (東京島) and Grotesque (グロテスク), which all depict women’s psychological pain anddistortion as a result of the social oppression and inequality that they suffer. This paper illustrates
how cultural differences, which the character either encounters from without or embodies fromwithin, provide a framework or lens for women to understand self, social reality and the ubiquity of
injustice and inequality. I argue that Kirino’s fiction deconstructs the sentimental approach to
depicting women oppression and cultural difference, and opts for a grotesque way of representation;
53

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
through the experience of the character, we see that the normally perceived boundaries between the
oppressor and the oppressed, the Self and the Other, the familiar and the foreign have all become
twisted or transgressed. Through the grotesque way of representation, Kirino forces readers to open
their eyes to the reality of women’s physical, social and psychological sufferings and individuals’
unspeakable experience of alienation due to cultural differences—a reality that they often choose not
to see in their normal life.
3)

Daniela Kato, Hiroshima Jogakuin University

Geopolitical Imaginings for Tumultuous Times: Political Landscapes in Contemporary Women’s
Travel Writing on Northeast Asia

Paper Withdrawn

54

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

4)

Chang Cheng-Chieh, Nagoya University

Identity, Sexuality, and Mobility in Zenkyoto Fiction: Representation of the Student Movement in
the late 1960’s in Taiwanese Wu Chi-wen’s Galaxy in Ecstasies
Student Movements that occurred during the late 1960’s, in countries such as America, France,
and Germany, was a simultaneous phenomenon in advanced countries that reached its peak in 1968.
It was also the turning point of modern thought. People in Japan expressed a different perspective on
this era through the means of fiction, memoir or cinema and as a result Zenkyoto fiction emerged in
the late 1970’s as a typical literary genre. Observing Zenkyoto from a foreigner’s stance, Galaxy in
Ecstasies (1998) represented life experience of the Taiwanese author in late 1960’s in Japan.
Furthermore, it uses body and desire as themes to discover his identity. In this presentation, I will
pursue the meaning of Zenkyoto to the hero Tokisumi, and how it influenced him as a homosexual,
how the liberation of the disciplined body was represented by the literal narratives, and explain theresonance between the liberation of disciplined body and the spirit of 1968. The prior research on
Zenkyoto fiction focused on Japanese texts; nevertheless, Galaxy in Ecstasies ―written by
Taiwanese author Wu Chi-wen, a Mandarin fiction that describes Zenkyoto― has been overlooked
for a long time due to the limitation of language. Therefore, I expect this study to become the bridgethat connects Taiwan and Japan in the study of 1968.
5)

Wang Yuanfei, University of Georgia

Textual Hangzhou: The Female Body, Romance, and Empire in Feng Menglong’s Vernacular
Short Stories
Existent scholarship on Japanese images in Chinese literature tends to give a general survey ofChinese literature without further looking into how that image is generalized in a specific time period.
This paper will focus on the relation of fictional narratives with historical discourse. It will analyze
two circa 1621 short stories, “Yang Baolao’s Strange Encounters in the Country of Yue” by Feng
Menglong and a short story on a loyal concubine sacrificing her life for her master in time ofJapanese piracy in Zuixing shi. Through close reading and historicizing the texts, the paper analyzes
the visual signs that differentiate “Japanese pirates” in the fiction as well as in paintings andhistorical records of the period to offer a discussion of “race” in the late-Ming context. Meanwhile,
the paper will also highlight how literature functions in the Ming imperial discourse of Japanesepiracy campaigns.

55

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

SATURDAY AFTERNOON SESSIONS II: 3:30 P.M. – 5:30 P.M.
Session 19: Room 1451
Women and Ambiguous Politics in Post 3.11 Japan: A Collaborative Project (II)Organizer/Chair: David H. Slater, Sophia University
This second panel is not focused on the leaders, organizers and spokeswomen of these
movements, but at the “ordinary” women who are struggling with the very idea of “politics” on avery local scale. The articulation of political position and strategic demands from the center of amovement, often generated from Tokyo, and broadcast all over the world, play at very different
resonance to different locations and different women. To women who are struggling to keep theirplace within a community, within a family, maybe to keep a job, one can never separate the fears ofradiation on family, and especially on children’s’ health from the anticipated social costs ofexpressing these fears within a community that often sees radiation fear as one of the things ‘holding
them back.’ Many of the women in our study report anxiety due to pressure from official state
players—from teachers to health workers to goyogakusha—but also from husbands, mothers-in-law
and especially, other women. These fears have a direct connection to the possibility of speaking out,
and thus of mobilizing, of engaging in any form or activism, and of ‘being political,’ in the broader
sense of the term. And yet, often, these women often find a way to be active (if not be an “activist”
per se). Other times, it seems that we as analysts have to reconsider our definitions of what counts asactivism and even what counts as politics to capture the significance of their struggle and success.
1)

Danzuka Haruka, Tokyo University

Political Mobilization over Daily Life of Younger Mothers in Fukushima
After the Nuclear Power Plant accident in Fukushima in March 2011, many mothers wereshocked at the lack of care the government, both national and local, gave to children living inFukushima and their health. As one mother shared her feeling of despair with us; “it was as if
everyone was working for economic reconstruction, but ignoring the care of our children.” Manymothers felt the need to appeal to the government and to other locals with different opinions in order
to be able to raise their children in a better environment. However, if they became too politically
active, they also feared that they would be seen as “extreme radicals” by other members of thecommunity or their family. The larger structural situation that puts so many women as a social
disadvantage often made problematic the sorts of the support that they most desperately needed: that56

ASCJ 2015 Abstractsof other women and mothers. What do women and mothers do in these situations? What strategies dothey use to get their messages across and still maintain their social relationships?
2)

Uno Satsuki, Tokyo University

Militant Women’s Politics: Women against Nukes
This paper is based on research among political movement leadership of one of the mostnotable groups in the post-311 period: Genpatsu iranai Fukushima No Onna-tachi. Many of thewomen were seasoned activists from different political movements long before the triple disasters,
and their ability to mobilize and network stand out as particularly effective. But probably the mostnotable feature of this group is their ability to frame the issues of radiation and nuclear threat as
distinctly a women’s issue, one that women are able uniquely able to address, maybe even suggesting
an obligation for women to address. The frequent essentialization of both women and motherhood
provided them with a social and political platform from which to speak up in opposition to radiationand nuclear energy as part of their cultural and even national duty as mothers: to raise the next
generation of healthy children in a safe environment. Through interviews and fieldwork, I will
present what member refer to as a ‘women’s way of doing politics,’ one centered more on the issuesof everyday life (inochi), flexible connections and loose memberships.
3)

Robin O’Day, University of Tsukuba

Senior Women’s Activism: Generational Dimensions of the Japanese Anti-Nuclear Movement
The anti-nuclear movement in Japan saw a significant resurgence in interest after the
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant accident. Many “ordinary” people, previously unconnected to the
movement, became attracted to their message, events, and protests. Yet, at the core of theanti-nuclear movement it is immediately evident that many of the most prominent movement
members are older, experienced women. Therefore, this paper begins by asking about thesignificance of age and gender among the leadership. Does their social status provide them with anopportunity to voice critique that people in different stages of their lives would find more difficult to
make? Is there a generational dimension to their politics? That is, did living through the 1960s and1970s protest cycle in Japan, provide their generation with a different orientation towards using
protest tactics? Conversely, are there ways in which their gender and generation function as
impediments to the mobilization of younger women, and hindrance to their chance to voice theirclaims to the public at large? This paper explores some of the ways in which the age and gender ofolder women activists shapes the identification of political opportunity, formation of political rhetoric
57

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
and mobilization strategies of the anti-nuclear movement in Post-Fukushima Japan.
Discussant: Yamaguchi Tomomi, Montana State University

58

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

Session 20: Room 1351
Japanese Irrigation and Water Control Engineering in Colonial Taiwan: Views Across theTwentieth Century
Organizer/Chair: Philip C. Brown, Ohio State University
Japan’s colonial policies transformed Taiwan’s agriculture. They included major civilengineering projects, including that focused on and radically transformed southern Taiwan. Japaneseefforts generated both criticism and praise from local populations, but the Jianan water control
complex ultimately became the object of great Taiwanese praise. Even when historians’ evaluations
are more critical of Jianan, they acknowledge positive contributions. Historical evaluation of civilengineering projects necessarily confronts the degree to which the disputes they raised were theproduct of a distinctively colonial relationship or reflected parallel issues faced by similar projects
everywhere. Finally, these projects provided a foundation for current claims of a special, positive
Taiwan-Japan relationship. Panel members treat different segments of the 20th century to the present,
developing complementary themes. Kuo begins with an analysis of the relationship between thefunctioning of irrigation associations in 1982 in relationship to their rootedness in parallel pre-war
Japanese organizations. Her assessment comprises the longest-term and geographically broadest
analysis of Japanese policy in this panel. Brown introduces the largest water control project insouthern Taiwan, the Jianan Dashu (J., Kanan Taishū). Subject to multiple doubts and criticism
during construction, its benefits became apparent to many soon after opening and both it and its chiefengineer, Hatta Yoichi, became the object of accolades that continued in the post-war years despite
strong anti-Japanese Guomindang policies. Shimizu assesses the degree of local cooperation with the
new irrigation regime. Finally, Amae critically examines the late 20th century lionization of Hatta
Yoichi. Together the presenters broadly examine Japanese riparian civil engineering in Taiwan andthe complex relationships they engendered over time.
1)

Kuo Yunping, Kainan University

The Development and Spatial Organization of Taiwan’s Irrigation System During the JapaneseColonial Period
During Japanese Colonial Period (1895-1945), the Taiwan Governor—General’s Office
adopted modern agricultural engineering technology and irrigation management, constructed massive
farmland irrigation facilities, and actively operated water conservancy undertakings. Traditional
Taiwan farmland irrigation undertakings were influenced substantially. In post war period, Taiwan
59

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
local water conservancy organizations (Irrigation Committees) have not all operated under same
conditions, with some having a relative long operation history with solid foundations, healthyfinances and well-functioning organizations. Contracts with others for loans barely functioned. Here I
analyze 17 local Irrigation Committees in 1982, and compared their development history back toJapanese Colonial Period. This history includes the Reservoir and Canal reorganization in the 1910s,
the adoption of modern civil engineering and irrigation technology in the 1920s, the completion ofmodernization of the Irrigation Areas in the 1930s, industrialization transformations of water rightfrom “Land ownership”—oriented to “The subject of water”—based, and the Land Improvement andRice Increase Engineering in war period of the early 1940s. This research utilizes the archives of
Taiwan Governor – General’s Office, water conservancy data, local histories, local social histories,
and fieldwork. In addition to explanations of the natural environment of each region under study, I
also present water resources distribution, the behaviors of water utilization, the contradiction andcooperation relationship between water users, and through the study of irrigation management oflocal water conservancy organizations (Irrigation Association), a top-down viewpoint approach isutilized to analyze the relationship between local water organization and foundational society level.
2)

Philip Brown, Ohio State University

Planning and Commemorating Rural Development: Taiwan’s Jianan (J. Kanan) Water Control
Project, 1920–1955
Planned at the conclusion of World War I, the Jianan Dazhen (J. Kanan Taishū) was such amajor project in Japanese economic development thinking that it was the only major civilengineering project, domestic or colonial) that did not suffer budget cuts after the Great Kanto
Earthquake, but it was also of great importance to the farmers of southern Taiwan who found upon its
completion that they had a much more predictable supply of water, and a modicum of protection
from major floods. Subject to criticism and skepticism as expressed by Taiwanese in both Japaneseand Chinese language newspapers, upon completion there was widespread, if not universal,
appreciation for the accomplishments of the plan. Shortly after its completion in 1930, the project
became the object of an annual commemorative ceremony, complete with a statue honoring its young,and still living, chief engineer, Hatta Yoichi. When Hatta died, followed by his wife in 1945, the site
became a memorial as well to Hatta and his accomplishments. Recent fieldwork has uncovered
documentation that these memorial services continued even at the height of the post-war regime’s
anti-Japanese campaigns that destroyed Japanese shrines and sought to stamp out Japanese influence
where possible. Further, examination of post-war newspapers indicates that while there were60

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
problems with the irrigation organizations the Japanese had left behind in Taiwan, many of thecomplaints were of a sort generic to projects of this sort and generally not anti-Japanese in tone.
3)

Shimizu Misato, Tokyo Foreign Language University

Japanese-Sponsored Irrigation Associations and their Taiwanese Clients: A Case Study of the
Jianan Irrigation
Monitoring stations were installed at 120 sites in the Jianan Water Project after its completionin 1930. Technical specialists called kanshi-in	
 (監視員 inspectors) were posted to each of these sites.
Japanese staffed most of these positions, but among the inspectors were a minority of Taiwanese. The
staffers, and the irrigation channels, were divided into local irrigation associations that have left us
large quantities of numerical data from monitoring the system along with business records, collected
as Kanan Nōden Suiri-kai tōan (嘉南農田水利会档案). Their contents include not only irrigation data
(areas irrigated, etc.) but records of crops grown. By analyzing the numerical data we can assess thedegree to which local farmers cooperated with the Jianan Agricultural Irrigation Association’s
policies, what resistance they exhibited, and acts of tax evasion (e.g., stealing water, growing
unspecified crops) that occurred. The business records, clearly describe by name the farmers
exhibiting both non-cooperative and cooperative attitudes. In addition, by using Taiwan suiri(台湾の水利)magazine, Suiri kankei hanrei shū(水利関係判例集), and Taiwan chihō hōin saiban shiryō (台湾
地方法院裁判資料) (held at Taiwan National University), I analyze the relationship between the

Jianan Agricultural Irrigation Association inspectors and Taiwanese farmers.
4)

Amae Yoshihisa, Chang Jung Christian University

Colonial Modernity Revisited: Postcolonial Discourse on Hatta Yoichi in Present-Day Taiwan
Hatta Yoichi (1886—1942) was a Japanese engineer who designed and oversaw theconstruction of a massive reservoir in southern Taiwan, completed in 1930. He is a widely celebrated
figure in present-day Taiwan, an island once ruled by Japan (1895—1945). Hatta is featured in books,
songs, manga, an animation film, a TV drama, a dance drama and a play. He has been deified; every
year on 8 May, admirers flock in the hundreds to the Wushantou Reservoir to pay tribute to thefamed engineer. In recent years, Wushantou has become a popular tourist attraction for both Japaneseand Taiwanese. This paper critically examines the postcolonial discourse and cultural representationsof Hatta Yoichi. Why, after some 70 years, is the ex-Japanese colonial engineer suddenly being
praised as a “Taiwanese hero” if not a deity, on the island? What does this say about the postcolonialsituation of Taiwan? I will argue that, despite the recent discussion on colonial modernity, such
61

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
approach and awareness have helplessly submerged to the “postcolonial realities” that is constructed
as a result of complex political and economic/commercial interests and popularized through media
and popular culture.
Discussant: Douglas Fix, Reed College

62

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
Session 21: Room 1352
Ch’oe Nam-sŏn’s Editorship in Printed Modernity of Korea: Print Culture in Early Colonial
Period Korea, 1910 – 1925
Organizer/Chair: Hyonhui Choe, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
This panel examines Ch’oe Nam-sŏn’s activities as an activist, poet, journalist, and academic in
early colonial period Korea by focusing on his editorial role in print culture. Ch’oe played a crucialrole in the making of Korean modernity in such fields as literature, the publishing industry, academic
research, and social activism. A thinker/activist/artist of the enlightenment, Ch’oe was tasked tospread the culture of modern/Western civilization throughout Korea. We posit his editorship in print
culture as the source of his encompassing influence to modern Korea. Ch’oe introduced modernity toprint culture in Korea, where he took the liberty to select signs of modernity from his collection of
printed materials and arrange them. First, we examine how Ch’oe’s authority served to turn print
culture under his editorship into the immediate realization of modernity. Sin-mun-gwan, Korea’s firstmodern publishing company under his supervision, realized a modern picture of the world. Second,
we investigate how Ch’oe’s editorial service was reflected in his experiments of modern forms inpoetic writing. In doing so, we conceptualize media environment change as a decisive factor ofliterary modernity. Third, we situate Ch’oe’s historical consciousness vis-à-vis Yun Ch’i-ho’sconception of colonial Korea’s status in the modern world. This comparison with Yun from thepre-modern literati will help to historicize the modern significance of print culture. Fourth, we posit
Ch’oe’s nationalist studies as an extension of his editorial work. His methodology combining
etymology, mythology, ethnography was a byproduct of his arrangement of signs of Korea fromprinted materials.
1)

Seulki Park, Hallym University

Ch’oe Nam-sŏn’s Editorial Performativity in Korea’s 1910’s Print Culture
This paper examines the Sin-mun-gwan publishing company, the epicenter of 1910’s Korean
print culture with a focus on Ch’oe Nam-sŏn’s performative role as chief editor. Collecting
contemporary thoughts and relevant knowledge, and spreading them through the reading public, thepublisher worked to bring Korean people into the modern age. In essence, the company was run
singlehandedly by Ch’oe, whose presence in intellectual and social networks was formidable incolonial Korea. It would be impossible to understand how one publishing company influenced almost
every aspect of modern Korean society without examining Ch’oe’s dominant editorship whileserving the institution. I particularly examine the ways in which the masses recognized the63

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
unpublished books advertised as addressing issues of modernity as Sin-mun-gwan’s actual
publications. In doing so, I argue that the reading public considered Ch’oe’s editorship as the solesource of the publisher’s authority. What I call “editorial performativity” is Ch’oe’s presence as
editor encompassing the making of Korean modernity through print culture.
2)

Suk Yun, Hallym University

Transcribing Deformation in the Formation of Poetic Modernity: Ch’oe Nam-sŏn’s Use of
Hyphens in Works of Song Lyrics
Ch’oe Nam-sŏn wrote song lyrics to spread ideas of enlightenment among the Korean people.
These lyrics are considered as one of many poetic forms that he experimented with to realize literarymodernity in the 1910s. In terms of poetic rhythm, Ch’oe clearly stated that his lyrics were written insyllabic meter. It seems obvious that this fixed rhythmic structure was adopted to effectively express
Ch’oe’s thought of enlightenment. However, Ch’oe’s lyrics included deformative traits, such as usesof the hyphen. In other words, Ch’oe inserted a visible deformation into his experimental works ofmodern poetic form. I posit that this self-contradiction reflects the instability of early modern Korean
language and literature. Although Ch’oe’s sense of purpose was clear when writing lyrics in the fixedrhythm, it could not be fulfilled because the language in which the lyrics were written was not yet
formed. This paper posits Ch’oe’s use of punctuation marks, such as the hyphen, as one of his
experiments to invent linguistic and literary modernity in Korea.
3)

Chung Hee Ryu, University of Tokyo

Korean Intellectuals’ Perception of Colonial Korea before and after the March First Movement of
1919: Yun Ch’i-ho and Ch’oe Nam-sŏn’s Perspective on Western Civilization and the Korean
NationYun Ch'i-ho (1865–1945) wrote in his diary on January 28, 1919, that Ch’oe Nam-sŏn had
invited him to the Korean delegation at the Paris Peace Conference to appeal for Korean
independence from Japan. In the next day’s entry, Yun wrote a view opposing external support forsuch independence: “Korean national independence can be justified only when we proved thatJapanese colonial rule had worsened Korea’s general situation. Furthermore, Japan believed thatlosing Korea was a matter of life and death. Most importantly, it would be meaningless to achieve
national independence if Koreans did not earn it by themselves.” This bifurcation between Yun andCh’oe reflects their understanding of the international situation after World War I, which showed
inconsistency in the world order imposed by the imperialist powers. Ch’oe drafted the Korean
64

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
Declaration of Independence for the March 1st Movement (1919) with the conviction thatcolonialism’s demise was in the near future. Yun’s skepticism about the same matter also reflects
their difference of opinion about Korea’s general situation during the decade after the Korea-Japanannexation. In my presentation, I examine how the two intellectuals understood colonial Korea’s
status in the post-World War I world order and their strategies for the nation’s future path. To answer
these questions, I analyze how Yun and Ch’oe grappled with such binary systems as
West/Civilization/Universal and Korea/Nation/Particular.
4)

Hyonhui Choe, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Korea as a Chain of Printed Signs: The Invention of Korea in 1920’s Ch’oe Nam-sŏn’s
Nationalist Studies
In this paper, I argue that Ch’oe Nam-sŏn’s nationalist studies in the 1920s derived from his
service as editor in the previous decade’s Korean print culture. Ch’oe’s 1920’s nationalist studies
consist of three parts: (1) philological research to substantialize the mythological Korean progenitor
of Tan-gun, (2) a travelogue after his trip to the sacred mountain Paek-tu, and (3) the theory of Puram
Culture whose epicenter was ancient Korean civilization. Considering that Korea’s 1920 colonial
government allowed cultural activities to take place in the aftermath of the March 1st Movement,
many consider Ch’oe’s nationalist studies as indirect resistance to colonial rule. However, I posit
Ch’oe’s commitment to nationalist historiography was an extension of his editorial activity in 1910’s
Korean print culture. To confront Korean national studies with Japan’s Oriental studies, he applied aheterogeneous methodology combining etymology, comparative religious studies, mythology, andethnography. Ch’oe invented the method to traverse printed materials and freely associate linguistic
signs with Korea’s national origins. In other words, he imagined history as the kingdom of ends
while modern historiography values the material foundation of historical source. This means that
Ch’oe, as a nationalist historian, was still working as an editor whose primary task was to realize
modern civilization in colonial Korea through his editorial works in the making of print culture.
Discussant: Naoki Watanabe, Musashi University

65

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

Session 22: Room 1353
Postwar Transitions across New Borders: Economic and Political Activities of Repatriates in
Postwar Japan
Organizer/Chair: Jonathan Bull, Hokkaido University
The history of the Japanese empire still casts a long shadow over North-East Asia. The threepapers in this panel re-examine this period by focusing on people who migrated across borders in theempire, as well as their post-war repatriation and its aftermath. The goal is to challenge existing andenduring notions of the history of this period by scrutinizing hitherto unexamined or underutilized
source materials. All three papers focus on Japanese repatriates after WWII and question theconventional narratives’ emphasis on their victimhood. Nishizaki examines their post-war
occupational transitions and their roles in the country’s rapid economic recovery by using a national
survey into the repatriates’ post-war lives (Zaigai Jijitsu Chōsahyō) conducted by the Japanese
government 1956. This research is the first attempt to systematically use these data to gain insight
into their economic transition process. Bull’s paper investigates the belated incorporation of
repatriates into Japan’s public war memory, the process that reveals the multifaceted relationships
among the repatriates and the government. Nakayama’s paper investigates the post-war lives of a
select group of agricultural experts who played particularly prominent roles in mobilizing people for
empire in their pre-war and wartime work. Overall, the panellists argue that a substantial rethink may
be in order when we label and categorize the actors in this historical period. By presenting these
papers at the Asian Studies Conference Japan, the authors aim to attract the attention of researchers
from diverse disciplines to stimulate discussion on the history of the empire and aftermath, which cancontribute towards more well-grounded and productive historical debate.
1)

Sumiyo Nishizaki, London School of Economics and Political Science

After Empire Comes Home: Economic Experiences of Japanese Civilian Repatriates, 1945–1956
The economic impact of large influxes of population is something that has been much debated.
This research contributes to those debates by examining one of the most significant, but least
researched, examples of post-war migration - the repatriation of more than six million people to
Japan after World War II. One pervasive image of Japanese repatriates is that of the immigrant
farmer of Manchuria, despite the fact that many returned from other regions, including Korea and
Sakhalin, and that repatriates consisted of not only farmers but also colonial government officials,
employees of public and private corporations, small business owners, teachers, and priests amongst
66

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
others. This paper examines the profiles of repatriates and their occupational transitions utilizing a1956 Japanese Government survey into repatriates’ post-war lives (Zaigai Jijitsu Chōsahyō) that
includes information such as their date of birth, the timing of emigration and repatriation, andaddresses and occupations (wartime and post-war). Among the four prefectures where the survey
forms are available (Ibaraki, Kanagawa, Osaka and Hiroshima), this paper specifically focuses on
Hiroshima, a traditional origin of Japanese migrants since the 1880s, in order to fully analyze bothcolonial settlers and those who migrated as a part of national policies, especially after Manchukuo
was established in 1932. Whilst it is evident that for many repatriates the post-war transition was notentirely smooth, evidence suggests that in contrast to prevailing notions, some repatriates were able
to re-enter the core of the Japanese employment system and continued to play important economicroles.
2)

Jonathan Bull, Hokkaido University

Repatriate Groups and the Figure of the Repatriate
Research on repatriates has emphasized the role of the Japanese government and repatriates in
co-producing narratives about repatriation and the end of the empire. In particular, the Ministry of
Health and Welfare is said to have influenced post-war understandings of the empire by writing
official histories such as A Record of Repatriate Relief (Hikiage engo no kiroku (1950). This paperargues that central government institutions had a minor role in depicting repatriates. Of greater
importance were repatriate groups acting as an intermediary between the state and individuals.
Contrary to previous research, the significance of these groups was not the amount of influenceexerted over politicians in Tokyo but the degree of control they had to organize repatriates at the
local and regional level. Focusing primarily on repatriates from Sakhalin who moved to Hokkaido
after the end of the war, this paper shows how the leaders of repatriate groups played vital roles inshaping public and private understandings of empire in postwar Japan. For example, the book
Karafuto at the war’s end (Karafuto shūsenshi, (1972), researched and written by the All Japan
Federation of Karafuto, (Zenkoku Karafuto Renmei) was especially influential as the “go-to” sourcefor not only journalists researching Japan’s colonial past but also individuals reflecting on their life
history (and writing memoirs). This source’s persuasiveness for many to be a “true” account of thecolonial past came from the authors’ skillful positioning of themselves as narrators who were firstamongst equals.

67

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

3)

Taisho Nakayama, Hokkaido University

Where have the Subarctic Engineers of Karafuto Gone?: Engineers at the Saghalien Central
Experiment Station in the Postwar
Karafuto was a colony of Japanese empire and it was the southern part of Sakhalin Island. It
was the one subarctic colony of the empire. Because of the climate, it was impossible for farmers to
produce rice in Karafuto. This was one of the most influential climatic features of Karafuto. The
main colonial policy was promoting Japanese migrants to settle the undeveloped lands on Karafuto.
Therefore it was a huge problem how they should supply foods for farmers and the other residents by
the production system of Karafuto. Saghalien Central Experiment Station (Karafuto-chō
Chūō-Shikenjo) was founded for solving this problem in 1929. Most of the engineers of SCES
graduated from the Faculty of Agriculture at the Hokkaido Imperial University. They were brilliant
technological elite of Japan. They attempted to create not only technology but also ideology forsubarctic zone in the 1930s. Contribution to the war was added to their research themes from the endof 1930s. However, the institution was dissolved under the Soviet occupation and these engineers
were repatriated to Japan by 1950. This paper examines how these engineers made the transition
from colonial development to wartime, from wartime to occupation of Soviet and from occupation topost war Japan. The materials for this discussion are official documents on the institution, academic
papers written by the engineers, articles in Japanese media including newsletters published by theorganization of repatriates from Karafuto and individual memoirs.
4)Carly Buxton, University of Chicago

Two-Way Passage: The Nisei of SCAP
When the dust of air raid bombings cleared and the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers(SCAP) assumed command in Tokyo at the end of the Pacific War, Occupation forces called on
multitudes of bilingual Japanese-English speakers to fulfill the mission of transforming Japan from amilitary bureaucracy to a democratic peacekeeper.

In particular, young, educated Nisei (“second

generation”) Japanese Americans who had lived in Japan throughout the war played an integral rolein facilitating American-Japanese interaction, as well as in shaping policies for the postwar era.

Inthis paper, I investigate the “Two-Way Passage” paradigm—an ideal popularized by Louis Adamicin the early 1940s that American-born children of immigrant parents could promote peace by serving
as cultural interpreters—and its effect on the treatment, work environment, and everyday living
conditions of Nisei employees of SCAP in Japan. Using personal accounts from Nisei Occupation
68

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
employees in the form of letters, interviews and autobiographies, I examine the social expectations,privileges, and discrimination challenges of Nisei in Occupation-era Japan, focusing on the ways inwhich the pressures of the “Two-Way Passage” ideal informed Nisei interaction with the Japanese
populace and with GIs, and how assumptions about Nisei multiculturalism shaped these individuals’
racial, gender, and ethnic identities.
Discussant: Mariko Iijima, Sophia University

69

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

Session 23: Room 1358
Overlapping Cosmologies and Cosmographies in Pre-Modern Asia (2)Organizers: Cynthea J. Bogel, Kyushu University; Bill M. Mak, Kyoto University
Chair: Cynthea J. Bogel, Kyushu University
The panel papers features analyses of cosmology as depicted in East Asian text and image,highlighting coexisting and mutually constituting perceptions of the cosmos that representations both
figural and conceptual make evident in ways that philosophical treatises cannot. The papers seek tounderstand how co-existing cosmologies and cosmographies accommodate new knowledge with orwithout friction, how audiences interpret and navigate unfamiliar worlds alongside deeply held
beliefs and established rituals, and how notions of the cosmos are rendered and altered to facilitate
the transmission and creation of meanings. The papers touch upon cognitive shifts required of theuser or viewer. They address a syncretic cosmo-topology, at once Buddhist and European, in anineteenth-century Japanese world map in order to understand what resolution is sought by doing so;a Han-dynasty divination text offering a difficult but accessible technology to non-experts able tocorrelate information that simultaneously required cognitive shifts from diagram to spatial contexts;
Buddhist sutras used in ancient Japan that, at close examination, offer a medley of seemingly“non-Buddhist” elements including Chinese secular and philosophical allusions, transmitting andcreating an East Asian Buddhist cosmography distinct from Indic sources; and the pedestal of aneighth-century bronze Buddha that visually juxtaposes creatures, animals, and motifs from distinct
cultures and cosmologies in unprecedented fashion. The papers grapple with varieties of cognitiveand symbolic shifts conveyed by selected images, marks, descriptions, and words, and the reasons fortangible layerings of cosmology and cosmography generated by their agents and agencies, whether
religious, political, technological, or other.
1)

Anna-Alexandra Fodde-Reguer, Saint Joseph’s University

Divination Manuals of the Han Dynasty: A Case Study of the Yinwan Manuals as Early ChineseTechnology
This paper argues that, when analyzed as a whole, the divination texts discovered in Yinwan
tomb 6 (dating to the Han dynasty) may be understood as technological manuals that detail multiple
methods for divination. Information transmitted in these manuals considers an objective cosmos
whose signs may be read, calculated, and interpreted by competent readers. In this respect,
cosmological patterns portrayed by the authors of the Yinwan manuals relate to a technology that70

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
needs decoding. Empirical information is revealed through the use of sophisticated diagrams, tables,and descriptions, effectively instructing literate readers how to divine without the aid of a specialist,
and indicating intellectual and social changes occurring in early China. To utilize such diagrams,
readers were required to correlate information and make certain cognitive shifts. One diagram inparticular—of a supernatural tortoise—appears also in the Dunhuang caves, dating to hundreds ofyears after the Yinwan version was transcribed. This Tibetan version of the same tortoise points topossible dissemination of such manuals over time and space in early and medieval China. The creatorof the tortoise diagram shapes the way manual-users view the world and cosmos, and by extension
creates conventions and standards of cosmological phenomena. The manual-user is required to focus
and shift perceptual attention from diagram to spatial context and back again. Thus, while they
appear deceptively simple, the Yinwan manuals represent a technological innovation in early China.
2)

Bryan Lowe, Vanderbilt University

Composing the Cosmos in Ancient Japan: Post-Mortem Realms in Dedicatory Prayers
This paper uses dedicatory prayers inscribed in colophons to Buddhist scripture to reassess
cosmology in ancient Japan. It focuses in particular on post-mortem realms such as heavens and purelands. The way the cosmos is expressed in prayers problematizes traditional depictions of Japanesereligions, which often neatly divide worldviews into traditions such as Buddhism, Daoism, andShintō. In contrast to models that adopt a bird’s eye view from which religious traditions areallegedly clearly defined, I take a ground level approach to explore how individuals expressedcosmology in ritual settings. I show that the cosmology as depicted in prayers drew from diverse
textual sources including Chinese literary classics and Buddhist scripture. For example, a prayersponsored by Empress Shōtoku depicts Vairocana’s Realm of the Flower Treasury as a land filledwith Chinese imperial imagery derived from court culture and makes allusions to texts such as
Zhuangzi. This layering of cosmologies and knowledge both informs and constitutes religious praxis.
At the same time, prayers were by no means random collections of materials. Rather, theircomposition was governed by rules regarding literary genre and ritual conventions related to thecontext in which they were uttered and norms adopted from the continent. Poetic rules from theSinitic tradition gave birth to new visions of the order of the universe, worldviews that did not exist
in Indic traditions, but became part of a shared East Asian cosmography.

71

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

3)

Cynthea J. Bogel, Kyushu University

Four Directions and Layered Cosmologies: An Eighth Century Buddhist Monument in the New
CapitalMy research explores fascinating relief imagery on the pedestal of an early-eighth-century
bronze Master of Healing Buddha (Bhaiṣajyaguru) at Yakushiji monastery in Nara, Japan. The
combination of figures and motifs on the pedestal is unique in East Asia. Chinese animal-gods of thefour directions 四神 associated with the workings of the cosmos and, as such, good governance,
occur alongside Buddhist divinities and motifs associated with mortuary culture and cosmopolitan
cultural exchange. Cosmological knowledge of the four directional animals is evidenced in Japaneserecords less than a century earlier, and their representation was limited to subsequent tomb decoration.
This, combined with other mortuary imagery on the pedestal, has led scholars to associate it withdeath symbolism. Instead, I see the pedestal as engaged with world mapping at several conceptual
levels. The Yakushiji icon can be seen as a monument that synthesizes and/or layers existing
Buddhist beliefs concerning healing and rebirth with non-Buddhist (or imminent Buddhist)symbology to convey, through representation, good rule, galactic polity (Tambiah, 1977), and a
degree of continental cosmopolitan cachet. The pedestal serves as the physical and metaphorical basefor the Buddha who heals—by creating order among chaotic forces that cause disease, delusion, anddeath—but this must also relate to the ruler. The pedestal represents an inherited cosmology
associated with the reign of an earlier emperor, suggesting political allegiances to China andengagement with the other-worldly yakshi described in the Healing Buddha sutras for an
unprecedented Buddhist monument.
4)

Cindy Postma, Independent Scholar

On the Cosmology and Cosmography of Pre-modern Japan, Through the Prism of an EighteenthCentury Shogunal Scholar
My research concerns the early-eighteenth-century text, Account of the Western Ocean (Seiyōkibun, 1714), a three-volume study of the Occident by Japanese scholar and shogunal adviser Arai
Hakuseki, based on conversations with Italian missionary Giovanni Battista Sidotti. The earliest
introduction to Japan of a European worldview, this work presented both Mercator’s accurate global
mapping and the tools for reading celestial bodies (astronomy). It presented a new cosmology thatnullified the still-extant Japanese Buddhist concepts. The typical Buddhist map printed in Japan since
the medieval period visualized the world as a single egg-shaped continent. Around it were depicted
72

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
Japan, China, and Korea, with known parts of the Indian subcontinent drawn within the egg. The
world map described by Hakuseki (1657—1725) presented a different picture. This depicted fivecontinents, with Africa, Eurasia, and the two Americas dominating; China, Japan, and Korea were
miniscule in proportion. The Buddhist-egg map had denied a Europe, Africa, or the Americas, otherthan as a hint of western isles, or unknown lands, included at the top of the large, egg-shaped,
southern continent. I conclude with Hakuseki’s radical proposal that Europe was separated from
China by only a strip of land. My paper turns thus on a global perspective of European cartography, acosmographic depiction, and a cognitive shift facilitating a new overview of history by Hakuseki.
Discussant: Ellen Van Goethem, Kyushu University

73

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

Session 24: Room 1458
Tokyo: The City, the Fringes, the Created Spaces Between
Organizer/Chair: Alejandro Morales Rama, Sophia University
The rise of the metropolis of Tokyo, Japan’s post-1869 center, was not accomplished without
stirring tensions amongst its citizens that still bubble beneath the concrete behemoth’s surface. The
rapid modernization of the new capital ensured the relegation of the old traditions to the fringes of thecity. Furthermore, an increasing population coupled with the development of such new technologies
as the cinema, the train and the gramophone resulted in new experiences for city dwellers in the final
years of Meiji. The burst of the economic bubble during the mid 1990s, accompanied by the adventof the Internet, created new generations of atomized denizens of Tokyo now bereft of the communal
ties that once bound them. This panel articulates the possibilities that Japanese literature and theater
offer for understanding the experiences at the fringes of the modern city. Higuchi Ichiyō complicatesthe male narratives centered on the Yoshiwara pleasure quarters by including contradictory female
voices, normally relegated to silence. Natsume Sōseki astutely perceived the effects of the modern
Metropolis on human subjectivity and portrays a proto-modernist consciousness in Daisuke’s
movements throughout the city in his novel And Then. Izumi Kyōka sided with the underdog
characters, whose memories of the fringes of the city at times of personal crisis create uncanny
spaces. Finally, the multimedia performance group dumb type offers, through their use ofsoundscapes and noise, new possibilities for contemporary urban Japanese to reimagine a
communitarian ritual experience that includes the marginalized bodies of minorities and outsiders.
1)

Lei Hu, Sophia University

An Urban Space Study of Higuchi Ichiyō’s Nigorie
Depictions of the geisha district are not a new topic in Meiji literature. Yet, while such
early-Meiji male writers as Ozaki Kōyō (1868—1913) describe Yoshiwara as a paradise in which
men can pursue erotic love affairs, Higuchi Ichiyō’s (1872—1896) Nigorie (“Troubled Waters”
1895) offers readers distinctly female perspectives on the pleasure quarters, reconstituting them as
space of conflicting desires through the multi- perspectival visions and narratives of its lower classcitizens. Similar to contemporary male writings, the major voices of the story present Yoshiwara as aplace ostensibly inhabited by erotic pleasure. However, conversations held by Oriki, a yūjō(prostitute) in the pleasure quarters and the first of the story’s protagonists, complicates the picture byundercutting the narrative of Yoshiwara as a place of lust and love to recast it as a place of work,
74

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
where lower class women can sell their bodies in order to survive. Moreover, the Yoshiwara depicted
by Ohatsu, the story’s second protagonist who suffers from poverty due to her husband’s extravagant
spending on yūjō, is a place of sin in which heartless yūjō conspire to destroy the happiness ofordinary families. Ichiyo shifts the focus from bodily pleasure to the voices of female characters,
whose narratives carry the suffering of lower class women in Meiji Japan.
2)

Kevin Niehaus, Sophia University

Painting the Town Red: Uncovering the Modern City in Natsume Sōseki’s And Then
Research on Natsume Sōseki (1876—1916) has enjoyed a recent boom, and amongst othertopics, researchers and scholars have begun focusing on how Sōeki’s novels uniquely depict city lifein the late Meiji and early Taisho periods. Still missing from the discussion, however, is the
specifically modernist approach Sōseki uses to present his vision of the city. Drawing upon recent
anthologies that have begun conceptualizing Japanese modernism, this paper proposes a reading of
Natsume Sōseki’s And Then (1909) as a modernist text. Daisuke, And Then’s main character, is wellknown for being himself wedged between the incompatible worlds of tradition and modernity, but itis the liminal city spaces that truly mark this text as modernist. Sōseki’s Tokyo is a site of order andchaos alike, as the ubiquitous Tokyo streets of the daytime become scenes of brilliant illuminationand desperate confusion upon nightfall, marking a shift from the Naturalist use of fukei to a
proto-cinematic, modernist kōkei. Furthermore, concomitant with the rise of the city is the frequentappearance of anxiety in literary texts, and Tokyo is here cast as a modernist space of anxiety onto
which Daisuke’s internal thoughts and emotions can be externalized and projected on to the city itself.
And, although it is clear that Soseki was never able to fully reject literary naturalism as an effectivemode of storytelling, this essay will argue that reading Soseki as a modernist author offers a newperspective on the experimental nature of his texts.
3)

Alejandro Morales Rama, Sophia University

Protean City, Liminal Citizens: A Study on the Importance of Urban Space and Memory in the
Fiction of Izumi Kyōka.
Izumi Kyōka (1873—1936) is renowned for stories of the supernatural, where beauty and thegrotesque intermingle. While Tōgō Natsumi and other scholars agree that mountains feature as aspace for the marginalized and the sacred in Kyōka’s fiction, little scholarship has focused on the roleof urban space. Many of Kyōka’s characters undergo significant transformation through crisis; thispaper argues that these transformations can be better understood taking into account the role of urban
75

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
space in the narratives. An analysis of Yōjutsu (1911), Sannin no mekura no hanashi (1912) andBaishoku kamonanban (1920) suggests that there is a significant relationship between urban spaceand character in Kyōka’s works. In Kyōka’s fiction, the landscapes of Tokyo, including both thealleys of the Yamanote area and the surroundings of the Kanda Myojin Shrine, come alive in the eyesof the protagonists, undergoing wondrous transformations that reflect the mutability of the characters
inhabiting them. This paper concludes that the liminal or “twilightized” aspect of Kyōka’s charactersis enhanced by their surroundings, becoming urban recipients full of memories that are the catalysts
of change and awakening for the male protagonists. The “experience of the city” for the maleprotagonists becomes not a realistic portrayal of the city itself but a reinterpreted or reborn city that is
grotesque and protean. The affect of these liminal characters and their attitudes on the outskirts,
fringes and hidden areas of the city remind us that cities and their transformations are, in the end,
products of memory and language.
4)

Saki Inoue, Sophia University

Innovating the Urban Soundscape: Semiotic Noise and the Creation of Spatial Ma in
Contemporary Japanese Theatre
Dumb Type (1984—), a multi-media performance group known for portraying a dark, cynical,
yet humorous world of telecommunication, mass media, and digital electronics, has explored thecontemporary body through soundscape effects and aural semiotics to uncover spaces of personal
subjectivity, social-collectivity in community, and a mediatized and technological body. Their latest
work, Memorandum OR Voyage (2014), offers possibilities for forging a new relationship between
contemporary Japanese performing arts and urban space by drawing a common thread between
Dumb Type’s minimalist style and traditional Noh theater. Their conceptualization of the aestheticsof spatial ma –intervals or gaps in time and space– creates a meditative public space which allows theaudience to be disentangled, as bodily space is fragmented and newly unified by dissonant voices andother noise. This paper argues that illegible, and thus marginalized, sonic codes echo the entangled
soundscape of contemporary Japan. Through an analysis of the noises in both Dumb Type’s earlier
performance S/N (1984) and its new installation entitled Memorandum OR Voyage (2014), this paper
will suggest that the repetitive aural environment of an embodied spatial ma, depicted in such forms
as the indistinct utterances of speech-impaired characters, computerized beeping sounds, murmuringvoices, and dispersed, scattered, or disseminated soundtracks, allows the audience’s personal space tobe reimagined and reintegrated into a communitarian ritual experience. Thus formulated this ma
provides the space to liberate the marginalized bodies of minorities and outsiders in contemporary
76

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
Japanese society from the necessity of sense.
Discussant: Kendall Heitzman, University of Iowa

77

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
Session 25: Room 1361
Individual Papers 5: Modern Japanese Society
Chair: Robert Eskildsen, International Christian University
1)

Akiko Hayashi, Meiji University

Learning Embodied Culture
Embodied Teaching: Japanese Preschool Teaching as Cultural Practice (Hayashi and Tobin,
May 2015) is an ethnography of how Japanese preschool teachers act, think, and talk. This talk will
present a key argument from this book: in Japanese preschools Japanese children learn to modulate
their posture, gestures, and facial expressions to indicate a shift from informal to formal contexts andback. A key emic Japanese concept is kejime, which means “to draw a line between two situations,”“to make distinctions,” or “to act in a way appropriate to the context.” We argue that children learnkejime first not as an abstract principle but rather as embodied practice. This logic follows Blaise
Pascal’s argument that you do not pray because you are religious; you are religious because you pray.
In other words, the bodily action precedes rather than follows the belief. This is the core logic of thispresentation, which suggests that: “You don’t bow because you are Japanese. You are Japanese
because you bow.” The research method of this study combines video-cued ethnographic
interviewing (Tobin, et al., 1989), with microanalyses of classroom videos. The argument of thispresentation is that Japanese preschool provide young children with exposure to a range of clearly
demarcated spatial, temporal, and social-emotional contexts and opportunities to develop the social
skills and intercorporeal techniques of the body appropriate to these contexts. A key bodily techniqueinvolves various forms of bowing, along a continuum of more informal and formal, and polite
registers.
2)

Julija Knezevic, RMITIn House Interpreter: “Office Flower” of “Gender Escalator”?
This study examines the professional occupation of interpreters working as temporary agency(haken) workers in Japan. The role of interpreter is seen as highly prestigious within Japan, however
the occupation is potentially highly gendered. I start with a paradox: haken interpreters are locatedwithin a precarious, gendered workforce, but at the same time the occupation of an interpreter may be
a ‘gender escalator’ by providing women with an opportunity to tap into the ‘boys club.’ The study
seeks to explore how women, haken interpreters understand and deal with the complex and contested
meanings of their work. It will explore what this means for how they present themselves, how they78

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
do their work, and how they see their gender impacting on their job. The study is based on in-depth
interviews of 20 interpreters in Melbourne and Tokyo. It draws on gender and precarious work
theories as an analytical framework.
3)

Lori Kiyama, Tokyo Institute of Technology

How Japanese Adoption Mediators Envision the Future of Social Welfare in Japan
Although the population of Japan continues to drop, infant abandonment and death by abuse
are increasing. 43% of girls in juvenile prisons for serious crimes tried to rid themselves of anewborn. 88% of children whose parents cannot care for them are in orphanages. This situation has
been called child abuse at the national level. Yet pending legislation would ensure that all needy
infants spent their earliest months in institutions. Meanwhile, the government continues to build
orphanages and financially supports foster families, but provides zero benefits to families adopting. A
handful of private adoption mediators are vociferously advocating for the normalization of adoption,better care for pregnant women and new mothers in need, and the institutionalization of children as alast resort. This paper presents the results of a phenomenological study of Japanese adoption
mediators. It describes adoption facilitators’ interactions with the police, government social workers,
politicians, the media, orphanage employees, family court investigators, birth parents, adoptees, andadoptive families. The paper explains, in their own words, what adoption facilitators say motivatesthem to work in the face of stigma, how they see their contributions, and what they hope for the
future of adoption in Japan.
4)

Takama Saori, Hitotsubashi University

The Conditions for the Use of Hospitals as Nursing Homes in Postwar Japan
After the Second World War, Japanese hospitals went through a development unique to Japan,
in comparison to other developed countries; they became not only sites of medical treatment, but also
places for housing the elderly. This situation continued until the 1980s, when the government
rethought the healthcare system and tried to reform elderly care, by housing elderly who did not
require medical treatment and did not live independently in their own homes, in nursing homes.
While the reorganization of the Japanese health care system still advances steadily, its progress is not
smooth. The purpose of this study is to tackle this problem by asking: why have hospitals in Japan,
and only in Japan—been used as nursing homes in the first place? To answer this question, this study
adopts a historical approach, using documents concerning the Postwar medical and welfare system,
as well as an interview-based investigation of medical practitioners. Its preliminary findings show
79

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
that hospitals, which were managed by medical practitioners, were more likely to be used as nursing
homes than other hospitals or even public nursing homes, which existed in Japan at the time as well.
The study also reveals the particular conditions that led to this situation. As such, the study hopes tocontribute not only to the understanding of the history of Japanese elderly care and health caresystem, but also to contribute to contemporary elderly and health care policies in Japan and without.
5)

Jeniece Lusk, Miyazaki International College

Assessment and Evaluation of the Effect of Family and Labor Reform in Japan on Fertility Rates
and Attitudes toward Childbearing
The future of Japan lies in its people; more specifically, the future lies in the ability of Japan toreplace its population through either immigration or increase in fertility rate. This study centers on
the latter demographic process. The Japanese total fertility rate (TFR) of 1.43 (National Institute ofPopulation and Social Security Research, 2014) is one of the lowest-low fertility rates in theworld. However, Japan recognizes this threat and has been somewhat aggressive in its attempts toincrease national fertility rates via government incentives such as cash allowances for children up to
age 15, subsidized childcare, subsidized child health care, subsidized infertility treatments,
progressive maternity leave policies, and other implemented programs. Extant literature provides
thorough consideration towards the reasons for Japan’s incredible TFR decline to a low of 1.26 in2005 (Lam, 2009; Atoh, 2008) and explanations concerning the effects of the low TFR on theeconomy and population projections, as well as the need for interventions such as the aforementioned
interventions. However, assessment and evaluation of the direct effect of these incentives on boththe TFR and attitudes remains unacknowledged. Although we recognize the recent rise of Japan’s
TFR, how much of this increase can be correlated to improvements in the economy? Are theJapanese government’s incentives indeed effective, and are they changing attitudes towards
childbearing? This inquiry uses quantitative methods to analyze Japanese population data, as well as
data provided by Japan’s National Fertility Survey (National Institute of Population and Social
Security Research, 2010).

80ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

Session 26: Room 1457
Individual Papers 6: Northeast Asian History
Chair: Christian Hess, Sophia University
1)

Feng Jiren, University of Hawaii, Hilo

The Eighth-Century Building Code Yingshanling and Its Place in Chinese Architectural
Literature
Tang dynasty (618—907) witnessed a prosperous society in which literature, arts, andarchitecture flourished and achieved a high level of refinement and novelty. While only a few Tangwood-framed buildings have survived, contemporary texts provide significant references, of which
the most important is the Yingshanling (Rules of construction and repair), a code enacted during the
Kaiyuan reign (713—741). In addition to an official documentation of Tang building system andarchitectural terminology, it reveals, for the first time in Chinese architectural literature, that almost
every aspect of Chinese architecture was associated with social status and hierarchical order. Not
only different social statuses are correspondent to different building types, structure, elements,
measurements, and ornaments, but within the same social status, buildings of different importancemust also have different sizes and structures. The architectural details as recorded in theYingshanling are not only great materials for extending our knowledge of Tang architectural art andtechnology beyond the few extant examples, but they also are essential for understanding Tangsociety and culture. Analyzing the government rules for architecture in the Yingshanling andcomparing this text with other important historical texts on architecture, this paper will show theextremely unique place of the Yingshanling in Chinese architectural literature and in the study ofChinese architectural history.
2)

Cecily McCaffrey, Willamette University

Geographies and Place-Based Identities in the History of the White Lotus Uprising
The White Lotus Uprising (1796—1804) in central China was notable for both its temporal andgeographical scope. Even though the movement attracted broad support in five provinces, in many
ways the uprising reflected local particularities; it evolved in ways that reflected discrete
geographical characteristics of the region. For example, the rebels favored the internal frontier thatmarked the borderlands of Hubei, Sichuan, and Shaanxi provinces, a mountainous region that wasdifficult to bring under the political control of the state. This paper explores the intersection between
81

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
different imagined geographies—physical, political, social, economic—of central China during theeighteenth century and place-based histories of the uprising as a means of better understanding therelationship between culturally specific conceptions of space and historical narratives. Accordingly,
this paper examines geographies as a tool to illuminate the history of the uprising and examines
place-based history, often expressed through identity-specific genres such as folklore andethnography, as a lens with which to consider the historiography of the event. Sources to be
examined include local gazetteers, contemporary accounts of the uprising, folklore studies of theregion, and modern day ethnography and local history.
3)

Caremon Sutt, Austin Peay State University

The Rules and Realities of Inheritance in Hungary and Kamakura Japan
This paper investigates the patterns of inheritance and intergenerational control over land in
Kamakura Japan and in contemporary Árpádian and Angevin Hungary. The tension between clan and
immediate family (parentela) characterized issues of inheritance in the Kingdom of Hungary, andlands were thought to be either the property of the clan or of the parentela. In Kamakura Japan two
conflicting interests created tension. On the one hand, respect for parental authority demanded thatparents choose their heir. On the other, the long-established custom of partible inheritance demandedthat all children receive fair shares. The sōryō system was the attempted solution to these tensions.
Neither society was static, and it was impossible to put either of the idealized modes of inheritanceinto practice on every occasion. I look at three areas of action used by families in each society toprotect their interests. First, I will discuss how the central authorities were enrolled in the furtheranceof their interests. Then I discuss how women in the family, particularly daughters and widows, wereused. Finally, I explore how the two societies differed in their use of violence as a tool for inheritancecontrol.
4)

Lee Jae-yon, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology

Keywords and the Intellectual Landscape of Kaebyŏk (1920–1926) in Korea
Korea’s literary history has witnessed the prolific rise of creative writers in the 1920s, alongwith literary critics. Literary historians often attributed this unforeseen institutionalization of modern
writers to the power of authoritative authors. For instance, Yi Kwangsu, one of the Korea’s mostrevered writers, is known to play a role of a reviewer and to place aspiring writers on the literary
scene. Yet many of Yi’s roles and much of his power has commonly been assumed by literaryscholars, rather than having been critically examined. Furthermore, during the 1920s when82

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
professional critics were yet to be bifurcated from creative authors, the influence of the former wascompounded with that of the latter. This paper aims to visualize literary critics’ networks of influenceby separating them from those of creative authors. More specifically it examines the interpersonalties of literary critics and their roles in linking and mediating sub-groups while tracing therelationship between reviews and their object, literary works-for-criticism. I look at the contributionof a review to a magazine, which created a connection not only between the critical work and thecreative pieces, but also between the reviewer and writers who were reviewed. The intention is todemonstrate that the lesser-known creative writers, such as Kim Kijin and Pak Chonghwa, may also
play more engaging roles (than Yi Kwangsu) in the critics’ network clusters. This sociologicalapproach allows us to explore another type of literary spheres, which came into being, and which thecontemporary writers were unaware of.

83

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

5)

Joo Woojeong, Nagoya University

An Audio-Vision of Peripheral Territory: Imperial Gaze in the Early Japanese Talkie
Documentaries of the 1930s
Imperial or colonial gaze embedded in cultural texts has been a major topic in Western
academia, as seen in Mary Louise Pratt’s analysis of European’s travelogue in Imperial Eyes (1992).
The empire of Japan present a more complex case, where the imperial eyes onto expanding periphery
are complicated by both the process of internalizing the West's orientalism and constructing atransnational identity via contact with her colonies. Recent studies regarding the formation ofregional film culture in East Asia (Michael Baskett, The Attractive Empire, 2008) and interaction
with indigenous Korean culture (Everette Taylor Atkins, Primitive Selves, 2010) show suchcomplexity existing in Japan's imperial gaze. In order to develop this point, I will analyze two
Japanese documentaries in the 1930s, Umi no seimeisen (Lifeline of the Sea, 1933) and Hokushin
Nippon (Japan Advancing to the North, 1934), each of which deals with the culture and people ofJapan’s Southernmost and Northernmost imperial territory. As the genre of kokusaku eiga (national
policy film) sponsored by the Navy and major newspapers, the two documentaries appeal to a thenemerging nationalistic concern to reconfirm the imperial boundary and assimilate the frontier into theinterior. At textual level, I will pay attention to the role of talkie, a significant (yet incomplete)cinematic technology at the time, in facilitating the imperial gaze as an aural and verbalized form.
This will be also supported by contextual discourse analysis of media reports, criticisms andadvertisements of the films using contemporary newspapers and magazines as resources.

84

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

Sunday June 21
Sunday Morning Sessions: 10:00 A.M. – 12:00 P.M.
Session 27: Room 1451
Struggles over Boundaries: China’s Expansion in Various Spheres and International Responses
Organizer/Chair: Yang Jiang, Danish Institute for International Studies
This panel convenes scholars of political economy, strategic and defense studies, andinternational relations with their expertise on China, Japan and Asia Pacific. It looks at China’s recent
and current expansion in various spheres: in East Asian seas, in Asia Pacific security affairs, in the
Arctic, and in international peace-building missions in conflict zones. Instead of asking the simple
question of whether the rise of China is a source of peace or instability, the papers provide a morenuanced and informed analysis of the nature of China’s expansion—to what extent it is mainly driven
by economic or political interests, and to what extent China’s behaviour is very different from that ofother countries. The responses by regional and incumbent powers are also crucial to the shape ofthese spheres. Through a dynamic discussion of the pushes and pulls, the papers provide description
and understanding of the international struggles over boundaries of sovereignty, economic interests,
strategic influence, international norms, and civilizations.
1)

Christian Wirth, Griffith University

Securing the Seas, Securing the State: The Politics of Social Order and Identity in China, Japan,
and South Korea
Even more than ‘regional integration’, the ‘rise of China’ and ‘power shift’ have come todominate the agenda of international politics and academic debates about Asia-Pacific order. The
maritime sphere is the center stage on which this shift unfolds. Even though neither regionalism nor
the rise of China would be possible without the connecting elements of the ocean, East Asian Seas
have in the minds of politicians, bureaucrats and scholars of international politics become mostdangerous and divisive. I argue that this is a result of efforts to secure or ‘stabilize’ the moving
boundaries of the current socio-political order in three dimensions. First, East Asian seas areborderlands between civilized, modern society and uncivilized nature. Second, the seas coincide withthe political boundaries among China, Japan and South Korea and their safeguarding is imperative
for the preservation of the legitimacy of postwar-era political systems. The third delineation that cuts
85

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
across the ocean is one between ‘East’ and ‘West.’ This makes East Asian seas also borderlands inthe global civilizational order. Analyzing international politics through the prism of ocean politics,
therefore, allows capturing the social and economic bases of states and the structural determinants
that constitute the international system of states.
2)

Aki Tonami, University of Copenhagen

China and Japan in the Arctic: Economic Security and the Role of Foreign Policy
In May 2013, five Asian states became the new observers at the Arctic Council. In this paper,
we focus on two of the most prominent Asian states that became new observers: China and Japan.
We show that China and Japan implement economic diplomacy, defined as diplomatic measures of astate where the national power is strengthened through industrialisation and economic developmentin their Arctic affairs. Our analysis indicated that both China and Japan use more of ‘political’ toolsof economic diplomacy to achieve primarily economic goals than ‘economic’ tools to achieve
primarily political goals. This suggests that both China and Japan regard that the economic aspect of
the Arctic is far more important than the political aspect for the time being, while at the same time
the Chinese government has been less reluctant to show the signs that the Arctic Region has apolitical significance for China.

3)

Jeffrey Ordaniel, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Tokyo

US-Japan Balancing Acts in the South China Sea: Multilateralism, International Law and theMaintenance of Status Quo
Lately, China’s new assertiveness has unsettled Southeast Asia. In particular, Beijing’s moreaggressive efforts to press its claim over 90% of the South China Sea (SCS) have worried ASEAN.
In recent years, non-claimants to the SCS disputes have expressed their interests in their peacefulresolution. The United States and Japan have been particularly the most vocal among non-claimants.
It begs the questions- why is Washington so passionately getting involved? And why is Tokyo too
worried? First, this paper traces the origins of the expressed interests of the US and Japan in the SCS.
Second, this paper argues that the relevant strategies of the US and Japan revolve around three
concepts: internationalization, legalization and deterrence. These three have been the primarymodalities for both non-claimants to protect their own interests in the SCS and prevent China fromcontrolling the very important sea-lane and critical choke point. These three also happen to be thestrategies of ASEAN claimant states resisting Chinese assertiveness. The interplay of these strategies
86ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
could shape, not just the discourse of dispute resolution, but also the peace and security of East Asia,
at large.
Discussant: Yang Jiang, Danish Institute for International Studies, Denmark

87

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

Session 28: Room 1351
Temples and their Patrons: New Research on Local Religious Practices in China and Taiwan
Organizer/Chair: Randall Nadeau, Trinity University
In the modern period, the nature of temple patronage in China has undergone significant
changes. Chinese religion has always been blended and multi-faceted, but since the late imperial andearly Republic periods, other traditional lines of demarcation have been erased: between religious
ritual and cultural performance, between commercial and religious interests, between patrons andpractitioners, between religion and the state. This panel will examine local religious practices fromthe late Qing and Republican Periods to contemporary China and Taiwan through the lens of temples
and their patrons. The papers will explore Daoist sponsorship of literati arts, as well as new liturgicalpractices of the late Qing and early Republican periods; changing government policies towards
temple worship and religious festivals in contemporary China; and new definitions, roles, andmarketing of temple festivals in contemporary Taiwan. Together, these papers challenge traditional
assumptions about the status of local religious practices, and suggest new paradigms for the study ofreligious patronage in Chinese-speaking communities. In addition, they offer new insights into thenature of religious ritual, extending from liturgical practices (worship and offering) to performativearts (dance, procession, calligraphy, painting, and music). The four panelists are all engaged inon-going research on embedded (local) Chinese religion.
1)

Xun Liu, Rutgers University

Of Poems, Calligraphy, Zither, and Gardens: Quanzhen Monastic Hosting of Literati Arts in Late
Qing Nanyang
Focusing on the case of the Monastery of Dark Mystery (Xuanmiao guan 玄妙觀), a public
Quanzhen Daoist monastery located in Nanyang (南陽) in Central China, I seek to re-examine andreinterpret the old familiar practice of Daoist patronage and sponsorship of elite or literati arts fromthe new perspective of religious sovereign and subjectification. In this study, I trace the history of the
Quanzhen monastic and clerical practices of hosting the literati arts such as poetry, calligraphy, zither
playing, and constructing retreats and gardens at the Monastery of Dark Mystery in Nanyang fromthe early nineteenth to the early twentieth century. I then explore the underlying motives, and culturaland political implications of the Daoist hosting and pursuits of literati arts in the context of the
Quanzhen Daoist monastic activism in local politics, pubic philanthropy and modern reforms in thelate Qing and early Republican Nanyang. I argue that the Nanyang case shows that Daoist acts of88

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
patronage or sponsorship of literati arts must not be seen as unauthentic and opportunistic. Rather,
these Daoist hosting practices are better and more profitably understood as genuine manifestation of
Daoist sovereignty, and embodied practices of Daoist monastic culture and life.
2)

Tyler Feezell, National Chengchi University

Macheng Jiao: A Case Study Concerning the Relationship Between Ritual, Practitioner, andPatronWhile recent research on temples has focused on the position of elite patrons in temple
activities, scholars have yet to give sufficient consideration to ritual and its practitioners, two pillarsof the temple community, within the nexus of temple relationships. In this paper, I set out to probe
this intricate convergence of temple, patron, ritual specialist, and deity through an examination of
Daoist ritual manuscripts (科儀本) and traditional historical sources. The Daofa haihan (道法海涵), a
newly published, rich compilation of late imperial and Republican Daoist ritual manuscripts, contains
a number of liturgical manuals for offerings (jiao 醮) that originate in Macheng County, Hubei:
Guandi Offering (Guandi jiao 關帝醮), Master of Earth Offering (Tuzhu jiao 土主醮), Master ofTransformation Offering Liturgy (Huazhu jiaoke 化主醮科), and Aged Official Offering Liturgy(Laolang jiaoke 老郎醮科). Where might we situate these emergent small-scale offerings in this webof temple relationships highlighted above? Were these new forms a response to patron demands,
anxieties, concerns, etc.? Were they a response to particular historical circumstances? Furthermore,these offerings represent liturgical forms heretofore unrepresented in Daoist canonical collections;thus, it is important to consider the reasons for their newfound prominence. This paper attempts toelucidate these and other related questions.
3)

Shin-yi Chao, University of Rochester

Secularizing Religious Revival in China: A Case Study
This paper explores the complex dynamics of restoring and repackaging sacred space in ahighly secularized world. An apotheosized local saint in China, Lady Wei, whose worship is still
popular today, provides the case study. Lady Wei was a historical figure in the 4th century, and wasworshipped by the locals as a tutelary deity for over a millennium. Temple fairs in her honor werecommunal festivals attracting pilgrims from distance through the earlier part of the 20th century. The
communist government, established in 1949, however, determined that folk religion was superstition.
Village temples dedicated to local saints were deconsecrated and religious festivals were banned. It
was not until the beginning of the reform era in 1979 that the tides changed once more. State89

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
restrictions on religious activities became more flexible. Village leaders took the opportunity topetition the authorities to restore their Lady Wei temples and the annual festivals. The argument theyused in the petition was that of restoring the region's valuable cultural heritage. Yet the value, in theeyes of the government, was not simply cultural but also monetary; the temple festival is potentially atourist attraction and thus a moneymaker for the government and emerging local entrepreneurs. The
negotiation between believers and government as well as between villagers and entrepreneurspresents a good opportunity to explore sacred space as a contested field between secularism andreligiosity.
4)

Randall Nadeau, Trinity University

The Cultural Capital of Local Religious Practices in Taiwan: From Miao-hui to the “Cultural Arts
Festival”
In recent years, temple celebrations on Taiwan have been marketed as “cultural arts fairs,” withgovernment support. Based on fieldwork conducted at Bao’an Temple, Taipei, I examine the political,
social and economic factors that have led to the reformulation of temple festivals as cultural arts fairs,
including (1) the role of popular religion in promoting political and social ideals, (2) the temple as anegotiated space in the formation of hybrid (Taiwanese, Mainlander, and Aboriginal) cultural
identities, (3) the importance of temples in local economies, (4) religious tourism and cross-strait
relations, (5) “church-state” dynamics in government promotion of religious/cultural performances,and (6) the promotion of scholarly lectures, conferences, and publications in the cultural
legitimization of popular religious belief and practice. Bao’an Temple is one of hundreds of temples
on the island of Taiwan, Republic of China, that sponsor annual festivals in birthday celebrations of
the gods. Bao’an Temple is especially known for its principle deity, Baosheng dadi, the Great
Physician, and its hundred-year-old festival in his honor. This paper focuses on economic, political,
and social factors, but will also introduce the Bao’an Festival as a microcosm of popular religious
culture in Chinese-speaking communities, especially in Taiwan and China, with a brief introduction
to the history of Bao’an Temple (completed in 1830), an overview of the festival, and observations
on political and economic trends in contemporary Taiwan (based on fieldwork conducted2012—2014).
Discussant: David Wank, Sophia University

90

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

Session 29: Room 1352
Policing Delinquency and Dissent in Prewar Japan
Organizer/Chair: Max Ward, Middlebury College
By the turn of the twentieth century, the Japanese state was forced to confront new social issues
that were (and are) constitutive of capitalist society, including poverty, urban homelessness, youth
delinquency and migrant labor from the countryside. However, beyond the “social question” (shakai
mondai) itself, the state was also if not more concerned that these dislocations would provide
opportunities for political radicals to spread “dangerous ideas” (kiken shisō) and incite rebellion.
From the prosecution of anarchists in the Great Treason Incident in 1910, through the 1925 Peace
Preservation Law targeting communists in the late 1920s, to the policing of rightist activists in the
1930s, the imperial state struggled to define what constituted a threat against the empire, and how toeffectively police such threats. Rather than a simple narrative of increasing state repression, then, thepolicing of dissent in prewar Japan reveals the contingencies and contradictions that underwrite theoperations of state power more broadly. The papers of this panel explore the policing of politicaldissent at specific moments in prewar Japanese history. Robert Tierney analyzes police surveillanceand prison memoirs of political activists before the important Great Treason Incident of 1910. John
Person explores the state’s attempt to police right wing radicalism in the 1930s and how the state
struggled to define legitimate patriotism against such radicalism. Max Ward’s paper outlines theinfluence of youth delinquency reform measures from the 1920s on later attempts to reform politicalcriminals in the early 1930s.
1)Robert Tierney, University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign

Before the Thought Police: Policing Socialists and Anarchists in the Early Twentieth Century
This paper focuses on the experiences of early Japanese socialists and anarchist in the Japaneseprison system and judicial system prior to the High Treason Trial of 1911. The High Treason Trial
was a catalyst for the establishment of the emperor ideology and for the reinforcement of new
repressive mechanism applied to dissent in Japanese society. The establishment of the Thought
Police (Tokubetsu Kōtō Keisatsu) to secretly monitor opposition movements symbolized this neworder. I focus on law enforcement prior to this time and its surveillance and discipline of Kōtoku
Shūsui and other socialists and anarchists. An essential aspect of the police surveillance at this time isthat it was carried on openly and in full public view. After describing the surveillance of a “socialist
named Kōtoku” in Sore Kara (And Then), Natsume Soseki concludes that it epitomizes “the91ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
absurdity of modern life.” Besides examining police surveillance and judicial harassment, I consider
the peculiar genre of prison memoirs by jailed socialists. Almost all major opponents of the Meiji
regime described their experiences and reaffirmed his beliefs in this new genre of literature. After his
release from jail, Sakai Toshihiko noted: “Samukawa Sokotsu wrote a work called The New Prisoner.
Taoka Reiun wrote Record in Jail. When a writer is sent to jail, as a general rule, he has to write avolume as a souvenir of his experiences. So I have to write something now.”
2)

John Person, University at Albany, SUNY

Policing the Right: The Japanese Wartime Government’s Problems with Patriotism
This paper focuses on thought criminal specialists in the Home and Justice Ministries as theyattempted to contain the activities of nationalist organizations responding to the Imperial Organ
Theory Incident of 1935. The threat of nationalist groups was not a new one. Due in part to a systemof political surveillance built around the Peace Preservation Law (1925) designed to contain threats
associated with socialism, Marxism, and communism, Japanese police were blindsided by massive
breaches perpetrated by nationalists throughout the 1930s including the May 15 Incident and the
Blood Oath Gang Incident that claimed the lives of a prime minister, a former finance minister, andthe head of the Mitsui conglomerate. Because the Peace Preservation Law essentially defined thought
criminals as leftist revolutionaries that conspired to alter the kokutai and the system of private
property, attacks upon the government and its allies in the business sector committed in the name of
the kokutai by radical nationalist activists presented an ideological conundrum for secret police
organs like the Special Higher Police. As efforts to expand the jurisdiction of the law to include
rightwing movements ended in failure, thought criminal specialists faced the need to create newcategories to guide their efforts in curbing nationalist attempts to attack the government, including
rightwing thought, nationalist movements, fake patriots, and violence groups (bōryokudan). The
bumbling attempts by these bureaucracies to demarcate a legitimate patriotism reveal that ideology
was only a matter of secondary importance to its task of protecting the government and its allies.
3)

Max Ward, Middlebury College

From Youth Delinquency to Dangerous Thought: Rehabilitation and Reform in Interwar Japan
In the history of modern Japan, the early 1930s are portrayed as a turning point between thelimited experiments with political liberalism in the 1920s and the effective suppression of politicaldissent in the 1930s. Symbolizing this turning point is the tenkō phenomenon (ideologicalconversion) in which incarcerated communists renounced their political affiliation and declared a92

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
newly found appreciation for emperor and nation, setting a precedent for political criminals that
continued into the 1940s. However, this tenkō phenomenon was largely engineered by Justice
Ministry officials who, since the 1920s, had been advocating for policies of reform and rehabilitation
against a more general tendency of longer incarceration and stricter suppression. In other words, thephenomenon that has come to symbolize the increasing state repression of the 1930s—hi.e.,tenkō—was the product of state officials who explicitly couched their arguments in the 1920s
discourse of progressive penal reforms. This paper will outline how the state’s “thought reform”
policies of the late 1920s were influenced by policies targeting “delinquent youth” earlier in thedecade. I will analyze the writings of Justice Officials who, following the mass arrests of suspected
communists in the late 1920s, drew upon their earlier experience with reforming delinquent youth inorder to rehabilitate ex-communists as productive and loyal subjects of the empire.
Discussant: Robert Eskildsen, International Christian University

93

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

Session 30: Room 1353
Social and Political Relationships Revealed by the Great East Japan Earthquake
Organizer/Chair: W. Lawrence Neuman, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater; Yoichi Murase,
Rikkyo University
Disasters and their immediate aftermath have the ability to make underlying social and political
relationships more visible. The Great East Japan Earthquake of March 2011 had unequal impacts
across geographic areas and social groups, and it disrupted established patterns and relationships
within the affected region. Papers in this panel use quantitative data gathered after the 3.11 disaster toexamine how it affected social, political and demographic conditions, and what the disaster’s impact
reveals about social and political relationships in Japan.
1)

Daniel Aldrich, Northeastern University

Social Ties and Mortality in the 3.11 Great East Japan Earthquake
The human consequences of the 3.11 tsunami were not distributed equally across themunicipalities of the Tohoku region of northeastern Japan. Instead, the mortality rate from themassive wave varied tremendously from zero to close to ten percent of the local residential
population. What accounts for this variation remains a critical question for researchers and policy
makers alike. This paper uses a new, sui generis data set including all villages, towns, and cities on
the Pacific Ocean side of the Tohoku region to untangle the factors connected to mortality during thedisaster. With data on demographic, geophysical, infrastructure, social capital, and politicalconditions for 133 municipalities, we find that two types of social ties - bonding and linking strongly influenced mortality rates. Given the high probability of future large-scale catastrophes,
these findings have important policy implications for disaster mitigation policies in Japan and abroad.
2)

W. Lawrence Neuman, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and Yoichi Murase, Rikkyo

University
Explaining Differences in Resident’s Anxiety over Recovery after the Great East Japan
Earthquake
Quantitative survey data from Sendai area residents six and eighteen months after the 3.11
tsunami and earthquake reveal that anxiety levels about the future are unrelated to amount of property
damage suffered due to the disaster. Instead, levels of anxiety correspond to a pre-disaster social
division among Sendai residents. Those who express the greatest concern about recovery are
94

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
established long-time residents. They tend to be less educated, self-employed, and well-connected
within local social networks. The least anxiety was reported by recent, educated residents who tend towork for large companies and who are less integrated into local community networks. The division inanxiety levels parallels a social cleavage within Japanese society between the localized, “old middle
class” and a more mobile “new middle class.” It suggests one outcome of the disaster has been to
widen the gap between place-bound residents with limited economic options and the less-rooted
residents who have more opportunities and are less locally involved.
3)

Eijiro Fukui, Keio University

What Kind of Information Did Embassies in Japan Want at the Great East Japan Earthquake?
Embassies play core roles to collect information in foreign countries such as confirming thesafety of their citizens and security situations, but they could not do that for the Great East Japan
Earthquake. This presentation shows the kinds of information embassies wanted and the problems
they encountered when they tried to gather it. Data comes from a mail survey of all embassies inTokyo in the middle of November 2011. The questions are related to the information whichembassies in Tokyo needed since the Great East Japan Earthquake. The survey makes two points
clear. The first point is that local governments had responsibilities for the protection of foreigners inaffected areas. The Japanese central government was not functional for such a huge disaster that went
beyond the scope of the government’s assumptions about what could happen, namely sōteigai (想定外) in Japanese. Normally, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) sends embassies in Japan theinformation which they need, but the MOFA was unable to do that after the 3.11 earthquake, so
embassies contacted local governments in Tohoku directly. The second point is the change ofembassies information needs. Shortly after the earthquake they wanted information on which of theirnationals had survived or did not. After three months, they needed information about the after quakes
and the safety due to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant meltdown.
4)

Kazunori Kawamura and Dávid Bohács, Tohoku University

Confidence in Japanese Administration in Areas Affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake
The Great East Japan Earthquake, created not only many tsunami victims but also refugees
caused by nuclear-power plant meltdown in Fukushima. In addition, there are the inhabitants
unharmed by the earthquake disaster. During the disaster, many victims maintained public order.
They formed lines and quietly waited their turn. The mass media broadcast the orderly behavior
worldwide and praised it. Why did the people maintain good order? The Japanese are generally
95

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
considered to put confidence in local community and public administration, and researchers hadreported especially high levels of trust by the Tohoku residents. This has been offered as the
explanation for social order in the stricken area. However, many community leaders living inFukushima reported that the relationship of mutual trust between victims and the local government
became lost since the Great East Japan Earthquake. This is a puzzle. This paper reports on levels ofconfidence in public administration from survey data in the stricken area (Iwate, Miyagi, Fukushima
and Ibaraki prefectures) by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). Our report compares
the people’s trust in the Japanese administrative system with their trust in specific government
members (i.e. governor, local council member and municipality’s employee). It is our hypothesis that
there is a gap among both, and we expect that this is a key to understanding Japanese reactions at thetime of the disaster.
Discussant: Yoshikuni Ono, Tohoku University

96

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

Session 31: Room 1358
Creating and Maintaining Cultural Traditions through Music
Organizer: Yuri Ishii, Yamaguchi University
Chair: Wai Chung Ho, Hong Kong Baptist University
This panel’s common theme revolves around the processes of musical and culturaltransformation in East Asia. The topic of cultural transformation has become popular since the 1990s
largely due to phenomenon of globalization. For various reasons, however, such transformation has
occurred for a much longer time through a complicated process of selecting and transmitting culturalelements. Shun-hing Chan analyzes how Christian hymns were adapted to Chinese musical culture in
the early 20th century so that Christian people in China would construct their specific identity as
Chinese Christian. Ishii’s case study discusses cultural identity by looking at the external rulers’
efforts to transform Taiwanese people’s cultural identity since 1895 and contemporary Taiwanesepeople’s perception of Taiwan’s musical culture. Ho’s paper considers education as a medium fortransmitting musical culture and the ways in which it does so. Integrating a large range ofcommunication elements to facilitate teaching and learning in one of her undergraduate courses, she
examines Chinese university students’ knowledge and perceptions of cultural and global awareness.
Finally, Mau’s case study of amateur Japanese folk song musicians investigates the various factorsthat have led to a transformation of the genre, both culturally and musically. Their paper examines
the interactions between transmission process and performance context in order to understand theirrelationship to contemporary practice.
1)

Shun Hing Chan, Hong Kong Baptist University

Nationalism, Religious Identity, and Christian Hymns in Modern China: A Sociological Analysis
This paper examines the efforts of constructing a Chinese Christian identity by introducing
Chinese elements into Christian hymns in early twentieth-century China. During the nineteenth andearly twentieth centuries, Christianity and missionaries were seen by many as tools used by Westerncolonial powers to capture the souls of Chinese people. During that time, some Chinese church
leaders suggested establishing a Chinese Christian church independent from the missionaries thatwould express the concerns of Chinese Christians, which was seen as a solution to differentiating
Chinese Christians from colonial powers and integrating national identity with their Christian faith.
The creation of Chinese hymns was a project aimed at constructing a collective identity of Chinese
Christians. These efforts included adopting melodies from Chinese folk songs, using vocabulary
97

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
expressing the communal life of Chinese people, and introducing ideas of Chinese Christian theology.
The culmination of these efforts of identity construction was the publication of the Hymns ofUniversal Praise in 1936. In the Conclusion section, I will discuss the contributions and limitationsof this project in relation to nation building and the establishment of a Chinese Christian church in
China.
2)

Wai Chung Ho, Hong Kong Baptist University

Perspectives on Cultivating Cultural Awareness and Understanding in Chinese Undergraduate
Students in Hong Kong Through Music, Society, and Culture Education
This study examines Chinese undergraduate students’ knowledge and perceptions of culturaland global awareness, from the perspective of their own experience, and the extent to which theylearned these topics in the General Education Course entitled “Music, Society, and Culture” that wasoffered in two individual sessions by the Department of Music, Hong Kong Baptist University, in thesecond semester of 2013—2014. To maximize the students’ learning ability, I took advantage ofmultimedia classroom facilities and multimedia lectures to expand the way in which subject materials
were presented. The course integrated a large range of communication elements—text, sound,photographs, animation, and videos—to facilitate teaching and learning and to articulate the values ofmusic and culture in society. The principal research question is: To what extent might students behelped in knowing and understanding music and society in this course, and how might such culturaland social awareness be perceived by students and inform contemporary educational practices? The
findings were based on two respective survey questionnaires administered to the two classes ofstudents, and semi-structured interviews conducted on a one-on-one basis with 40 of these students.
In addition to the surveys, my classroom observation analysis, the students’ final projects, and theirindividual reflection essays were utilized as a means of evaluating the students’ understanding of thevaried and complex nature of learning in terms of music and society. This study also addresses theissues of how to promote and increase university students’ social and cultural awareness throughmusic education to non-music students in higher education.
3)

Yuri Ishii, Yamaguchi University

Creating and Maintaining Cultural Traditions through Music: The Case of Taiwan
It tends to be taken for granted that ‘cultural tradition’ is something that has been passed onfrom generation to generation by people in a certain locality, forming the basis of their common
identity. However, because of this general understanding, it is sometimes used by political leaders as
98

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
a tool to unite people under a common identity, regardless of their actual identity/ies. If the enforced
cultural tradition is not one that is shared by the local people, the likely consequence is a conflict
between the intentionally enforced cultural tradition and the actually existing cultural tradition. What,then, will be the result of the conflict? By using a case study in Taiwan, this paper investigates theconflict between an enforced cultural tradition and actually existing ones and peoples’ choices of
their own cultural tradition/s. Due to the change of rulers in the late 19th and the mid 20th centuries,
and the fact that the rulers came from outside of Taiwan, the cultural tradition that the government of
the time tried to promote among local people also changed twice. This paper first introduces whichmusical culture was promoted by the government of the time through school education. It goes on to
discuss what kind of cultural tradition people in Taiwan have created or maintained, based on the
results of questionnaire-based research conducted in 2013.
Discussant: Mari Shiobara, Kunitachi College of Music

99

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

Session 32: Room 1458
Rethinking the Relationships between Borders, Community, and Place in Modern Japan
Organizer/Chair: Joshua Solomon, University of Chicago
The field of Japan studies has seen a recent proliferation of scholarship deconstructing andcritiquing the myth of the Japanese nation and its mobilization within a matrix of unequal political,
economic, and cultural power relations. Despite its critical perspective, critiques of this matrix almost
inevitably reinforce a Tokyo-centric nation concept. In contrast, this panel seeks to rewrite theboundaries of that map through critical engagement with people and texts which problematize
notions of community implied by political demarcation and discourse. By moving the discussion
away from the context of "nation-states" and toward the "the local" we hope to provoke a discussion
about lived experiences of community and everyday life which challenge polarizing and limiting
categories like those of ethnic nationalism (Makiko Shoji), geographically-bounded place (Joshua
Solomon), and urban/rural society (Motohiro Koizumi). The chief challenge to these categories, anda theme uniting each of these papers, is that of the physical mobility of "local" actors (who cross both
local and national boundaries) in the space of modernity. In this way, the panel intends to actively
problematize the category of “the local” itself as well. These issues will be approached from a variety
of methodological perspectives including literary theory, sociology and anthropology, andintellectual/art history, in the interest of providing a broad base for discussion.
1)

Joshua Solomon, University of Chicago

Regionalism Beyond Borders: The Creation of Place by “Local Authors” Beyond Locality
This paper aims to propose a theory of "place" which moves beyond geographic bounds andtowards one in which regionally-identified places like furusato ("native place," one's home andorigins) are actively created and performed by mobile actors. I look specifically at the case of
Fukushi Koujirou, an influential proponent of Japanese "regionalism" (chihoushugi), and his literary
protégés, and how their actions as "local authors" (kyōdo sakka) in a regional literary community(chihō bundan) participated in the redistribution of the boundaries of their native Tsugaru region.
The field of furusato studies has strongly identified its object as a fantastic (re)construction in service
to the project of modernity and the nation-state, and thus been largely understood in Tokyo-centric
terms which divide Japan geographically into Tokyo and Elsewhere, rupturing it into temporal
categories of future/modernity and past/origins respectively. In contrast, through an investigation intoelements of the regional Tsugaru literary establishment I hope to show that while Tokyo may have
100

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
been a geographical object of desire, many writers actively created a community of furusato
wherever they happened to be, blurring the lines between city and country, past and present. In thecase of the Tsugaru literary community, this can be specifically observed via publication in regional
media, regionally-identified collaborative literary projects, and the qualitative performative conceptof "Tsugaru esprit." "Tsugaru" as a place thus exceeds its geographical limitations as it exists within
a communal consciousness in the form of a living social imaginary.
2)

Makiko Shoji, Doshisha University

Border and Bordering: Questions Drawing out of Local/Personal Experience and Hate SpeechThis paper attempts to reexamine racism and its critique by closely looking at life history
narratives of “ordinary” citizens who commit a right wing social movement in Osaka, in a groupcalled “Zaitokukai (“Citizens Against Special Privileges for Zainichi Koreans”)”which exemplifies
the phenomenon of drift towards the right in society. Zaitokukai, which originally came out of avirtual board community, has now grown to found their local branches all over Japan. As they are
distinctive from conventional nationalists, they have gained much attention by domestic/foreign
media, especially for hate-speech act on streets targeting zainichi Koreans and South/North Korea.
Meanwhile the criticisms given by the academia remain to reconfirm the fact of discrimination; theearlier studies have explained the cause of growing racism in either personal background or thestrained Japan-Korea relations. However, the narratives shared a characteristic speech pattern, whichis reminiscent of what is discussed as “Kotoba no Omamori-teki Shiyōhō (talismanic use of words)”
by Tsurumi Shunsuke in context of war-time experience. Thus, this paper focuses on the introductory
part of multiple contentions must be problematized―knowledge discusses colonialism. In thisattempt, the discussion primarily relies on the life history narrative of a Zaitokukai member who is
Korean descent will present 1) effect and meaning the speech has in subjectification as bordering
one’s identity and body, 2) why local/personal arena has to be placed at the center of this political
discussion in a different manner from direct causal interpretation.
3)

Motohiro Koizumi, Tottori University

New Art Movements of Co-Creation, Challenging “Borders”
This paper attempts to examine cultural movements in terms of the sociopolitical and cultural
conflicts they present to urban and regional communities. Local art spaces in Japan have undergone amajor transformation since the 1990s. During this time, there has been a remarkable trend toward thesuccessive creation of new local art spaces, referred to as Art Projects. Art Projects do not require the101

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
use of cultural facilities like museums or art galleries; they are developed in social spaces such as
kominka (old folk houses) and former schools, an increasing number of which have closed due to therapidly aging society and declining birth-rate. The majority are based within local governments,
intertwined with ‘the invigoration of community projects.’ Currently, including government-led
projects, more than 200 Art Projects take place each year in Japan. They frequently include
Collaborative Art, which focuses on the structures of relations between people. As a result, we see art
works being created through collaboration between local residents and volunteers, project staff, theaudience, and artists from within and without the community and nation. This means that Art Projects
are cultural movements, where the diverse subjectivity of the people who participate in them isconnected through artistic activities, although many of them are often initiated with the goal of‘particular’ regional revitalization. Based on extensive field research, this paper provides
considerations on how cultural movements and their (historic, political and ethical) borders are
struggled with and interconnected in newer art spaces.
Discussant: Anthony Rausch, Hirosaki University

102

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

Session 33: Room 1361
Flipping the Script: Women and Performance from Noh to Shōjo
Organizer/Chair: Nathen Clerici, SUNY New Paltz
What does it mean to perform? It can be an act of play, of pretending to be something one isnot. Performance is a mode of storytelling that marries text, performer and audience. Or, in theformulation of theorists such as Judith Butler, it can be the mechanism by which gender normativity
is constructed and reinforced. In this panel we take on performance in both senses of the term inorder to examine the way that women are performed—and perform—in narratives that stretch fromthe noh theater to the modern shōjo. Nahoko Fukushima begins the conversation with a look at thetransformation of the once-maligned Murasaki Shikibu into a paragon of spiritual yūgen through thenoh theatre performance of Genji kuyō (To Hallow Genji). Patricia Welch takes us to another type ofstage—that of the comic rakugo—where she shows how the parodic interplay between text andperformance exposes gender assumptions. Nathen Clerici turns to the hen’ai, or “queer love,” of poetand novelist Osaki Midori, a self-avowed cinephile who tried her hand at scripts for the stage andscreen, and brought cinematic techniques to her comical stories of romance and girls’ lives in the
1920s and early 1930s. Finally, Hiromi Tsuchiya-Dollase analyzes the way that authors have adopted
styles of writing for shōjo narratives that purposely perform (or pretend) immaturity and imperfection
as a means to make social commentary.
1)

Nahoko Fukushima, Tokyo University of Agriculture

Transforming Feminine Immorality into Aesthetics: The Case of Murasaki Shikibu’s Death
This paper will analyze how a female author once thrust into a marginal social position
succeeded in being transformed into a representation of yūgen beauty and was even sublimated into a
religious figure through a performable Buddhist sutra. In the literary history of Japan, Murasaki
Shikibu has not always been praised as the author of The Tale of Genji. Buddhist norms prevailing in
the medieval period initially criticized her as highly immoral for her story about indulgence inephemeral romances. However, due to the surprising linkage between the text and the peculiar
philosophy of Tendai Buddhism, the value system seen in the text is overturned in the course of aritual treatment of the deceased author. The specially made sutra for this was turned into a Noh play,
entitled Genji kuyō (To Hallow Genji) and performed with mai-dancing. This Noh piece, which isstill popular and widely and frequently performed in the modern Noh theaters, reveals anotherdimension of the Japanese aesthetic concept of yūgen (ineffable depth) as the product of an
103

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
unexpected linkage between a marginal woman and social norms. Moreover, analysis of themechanism here also helps us to obtain a deeper and more innovative understanding of the idea ofyūgen as it evolved out of its native habitat of courtly grace, as seen in the original text.
2)

Patricia Welch, Hofstra University

Acts Like a Girl: Gender Performativity in Rakugo
This paper will explore the intersections of gender, performativity and subjectivity in rakugo,
Japan’s comic oral narrative, by examining representative female characters in rakugo. I will lookprimarily at the “ojōsan” type in tales such as “Tarachine” and the far more common “wife”
character type. My investigation will draw heavily on Judith Butler’s conceptualization of gender as
performance, with its resultant corollary of destabilizing the conceptualization of “natural” gender
identity. Leaving aside for now the expedience of “drag” in rakugo (as a solo performance, obviously,
by definition a single performer enacts all roles) and even the fact that the vast majority of rakugo
hanashika are male, I will suggest that gender performance in rakugo suggests how easily gender isdone and undone, thus calling into question the supposedly “natural,” even beyond questions ofgender. Thus the parodic performance of gender in rakugo with its conspicuous excesses enhances
the subversive potentialities of the comedic form, in deliberate contrast to the conservative thrust of
the main narrative, in which the fool is typically unmasked.
3)

Nathen Clerici, SUNY New Paltz

The Performance of “Queer Love” in the Narratives of Osaki Midori
In 1960, literary critic Hanada Kiyoteru (1909—1974) made an obscure reference to Osaki
Midori (1896—1971), a forgotten author who had stopped writing in 1935. He recalled a novel ofhers in which she—his “muse” (myūzu)—had written in a wonderfully cheeky way about love
between moss. Though a compliment, “muse” is a clearly gendered term, and one role a muse plays
is that of performer; she must inspire as she “sings” through—and to—men. His comments were aharbinger for the gendered way in which Osaki would thereafter be received; her stories have cometo be seen by many as overlooked representations of a subversive female agency whose influences
extends to modern shōjo narratives. Her stories were frequently about love, or ren’ai, that mostcommon domain of the female writer, but her perspective was filtered through the lens ofpseudo-scientific hentai (perverse) discourses popular in the pre-WWII era. I argue that Osaki’s
comical, often absurdist, take on romance could more accurately be called hen’ai (変愛), or “queer
love.” Moreover, she was keenly aware of the power of performance—scholars such as Kawasaki
104

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
Kenko and Livia Monnet have written about Osaki’s command of cinematic techniques, such asmontage, in her writing style—and even wrote a play and a movie script in addition to an essay series
on cinema. In this talk I look at the way that her “queer love” intersects with techniques of
performance to explore the terrain of prewar gender assumptions.
4)

Hiromi Tsuchiya Dollase, Vassar College

Performativity of Shōjo Narratives
My presentation will revisit the study of shōjo and shōjo narratives, which have already been
discussed by such critics as Honda Masuko, Miyasako Chizuru, Yokokawa Sumiko and Takahara
Eiri. These critics attempted to define the notion of shōjo and its cultural meanings, and to present thepower of narratives (such as literary works and manga) that contain the idea of shōjo. My
presentation will place particular focus on the performative aspect of the shōjo narratives written byyoung authors. The origin of shōjo narratives can be traced back to girls’ magazines, which werecreated during the rise of female education in Meiji Japan. The term “shōjo” indicated schoolgirls
and female adolescence. It also connoted immaturity and imperfection. The original mission of girls’magazine stories was to educate young girls to grow up into proper Japanese women. However, as
time went by, magazine stories came to be a means for young women to express their desires anddreams. The idea of “shōjo” came to be utilized as a narrative tool to challenge cultural and social
norms; the immaturity and imperfection implicit in the concept of shōjo provided young women withan excuse to candidly reveal their honest desires. Young women performed “shōjo” in the act ofwriting. I hope to reexamine the study of shōjo in the light of international girlhood studies and to
shed light on the uniqueness and originality of Japanese girls’ narratives.
Discussant: Sharalyn Orbaugh, University of British Columbia

105

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

Session 34: Room 1457
Individual Papers 7: Multicultural Japan and Korea
Chair: Wayne Patterson, St. Norbert College
1)

Jacqueline Andall, University of Tokyo

Migration Dynamics and Blackness in Japan: West Africans in Tokyo
While the bulk of labour migration out of Africa was directed towards Europe in the post
WWII period, this pattern started to change in the 1980s. Since then, the destination choices ofAfrican labour migrants have encompassed a much wider range of geographical regions, including
Asia. In the 1980s, Japan’s phenomenal economic growth drew a first group of pioneering Ghanaian
migrants to the country and to the Asian region, followed by other West Africans. In the face ofrestrictive immigration policy, the majority entered the country legally and subsequently became
irregular workers. This paper addresses the economic and settlement outcomes of West Africans inrelation to their racialization as black men. Based on qualitative research conducted with West
Africans labour migrants in Tokyo, the paper differentiates between their blackness as African men
and the commodification of African-American and Caribbean blackness in Japan. It examines
strategies adopted both in terms of settlement and in terms of successful entrepreneurship where
migrants have drawn on performances of blackness to assist in their broader migratory objectives.
The paper focuses on the early phase of Africans’ settlement in Japan and argues that, whencompared to the experiences of African migrants in Europe, their performance of positively-connoted
blackness has had important implications for their settlement, economic outcomes and the continuinglure of Japan as an attractive destination country for potential migrants still living in West Africa.
2)

David Rands, Austin Peay State University

Varying Attractions: Function-Based Spatiality and the Migration of Koreans to Japan andJapanese to the United States
Acting as a gateway for migration is an integral aspect of urban centers. However, cities vary
widely in which immigrants they attract. Comparing the cases of Korean migration to Japan andJapanese migration to the United States from the late nineteenth through mid-twentieth centuries canbe an excellent lens through which to explore the relationship of cities and migrant communities.
While both Japanese living in the United States and resident Koreans in Japan, may consider
themselves to be solely the products of the globalization and restructuring of the past thirty years,
106

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
understanding the role of function-based spatiality and the development of unique migrantcommunities is vital. This paper discusses the intersection between the processes of social interaction
and innovation that leads to viable urban spaces, and ethnoscapes, of two Japanese and two American
cities that seemingly face completely opposite directions. The areas are not only different because of
the Korean and Japanese populations which have migrated to them, but conversely, the social
interactions which constitute the synergisms of each city act to attract or repel different migrants whocreate urban ethnoscapes. The history and development of Tokyo and Osaka in Japan, and New Yorkand Los Angeles in America, led to different social characteristics and spatialities based upon urban
functions nested in local, regional, national, and international spheres. These function-based
spatialities are influential determinants in understanding the nature of the development of migrantcommunities in Japan and the United States, and remain important in understanding migration.
3)

Seo Akwi, Fukuoka Women’s University“We Are Voters!”: Political Representation of Marriage Migrants in Korea
The influx of immigrants to Korea has urged transformation of self-image of Korean society,from ethnically “homogeneous” to multi-ethnic and multi-cultural one. Among them, marriage
migrant women are the focus of the discourse of multiculturalism as they are considered to be thefirst ‘settle-down type’ immigrants in Korea, due to their roles as bearers of future Korean nationals.
Korean government adopted “multicultural society” model as its national doctrine to assure
legitimate membership to marriage migrants and their children. Under multicultural policy,
systematized education of Korean language, “Korean style” home making, child-rearing weredeveloped, and marriage migrants were supposed to take these services to “successfully adapt” toKorean society. As a result, Korean multicultural policy was criticized as assimilative imposing
specific gender roles on marriage migrants. However, marriage migrants have not remained simply as
recipients of these services. In parallel with multicultural policy, marriage migrants have emerged
actors in various Korean social scenes such as culture, art, voluntary work, business, and politics.
They established transnational organizations to promote their rights and status through these
activities. Among them is an organization of marriage migrants holding a unique campaign at local
election, asserting “We are voters.” They attempt to raise political awareness among marriage
migrants, and express their wishes for the future of multicultural Korea. The paper discusses its
implication in terms of migrant women’s political citizenship.

107

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

4)

Wong Yee Lam Elim, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Overseas Chinese Women and Education: A Case Study of an Overseas Chinese Women’s
Association in Yokohama Chinatown
This paper examines the impact of tourism toward overseas Chinese association in Yokohama
Chinatown in Japan and how they react to the growing industry. The research is based on the author’s
self-financed fieldwork done in 2011 and 2012, including observations and in-depth interviews withfour overseas Chinese associations. As the biggest Chinatown in Japan, Yokohama Chinatown isdifferent from any Chinatown in the world. It is a self-sustaining town catering to domestic tourists
rather than purely a residential area for ethnic Chinese people living in Japan. In 1995, the Chinatown
even attracted more tourists than the Tokyo Disneyland with a total number of 18 millions tourists.
Yokohama Chinatown further increased its accessibility with the opening of Minatomirai line in 2004.
As of 2011, the Chinatown has 143 Chinese restaurants, 48 shops selling Chinese food and sundries,
eight Chinese fortune teller’s stores, five hotels and more than 80 other stores that serve different
needs of tourists. However, current researches focus solely on how business sin Yokohama
Chinatown, especially in the F&B industry, meet with the tourism boom. Records on how overseas
Chinese associations experience the change of Chinatown from a local ethnic community to awell-known sightseeing spot and how these association’s help boosting the tourism industry in Japanare clearly insufficient and not comprehensive enough to narrate the intricate well-documented
history of ethnic Chinese in Yokohama. The paper argues that overseas Chinese associations have an
important role in the tourism industry in Yokohama Chinatown by promoting a better environment in
the Chinatown on one hand, and they organized variety of festivals annually not only to maintain the
traditional Chinese culture among ethnic Chinese living in Japan but providing a greater
entertainment for tourists on the other hand.

108

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

SUNDAY AFTERNOON SESSIONS I: 1:30 P.M. – 3:30 P.M.
Session 35: Room 1361
Bringing Turkey into Asia and Asian Studies (I)Organizer: Romit Dasgupta, University of Western Australia/Middle East Technical University
Chair: Bahadır Pehlivantürk, TOBB University/Middle East Technical University
Asian Studies as a discipline tends to be heavily slanted towards research on (and researchfrom) East, Southeast, and South Asia. The dominant (mis-)perception seems to be that “Asia” ends
at the Pakistan-Iran border. This is problematic, as it excludes entire regions and societies that also
fall within the rubric of “Asia.” Indeed, we need to bear in mind that the term “Asia” was first
applied with reference to a region (Anatolia, in Turkey) that in contemporary Asian Studies gets left
out of the conversation. Accordingly, this panel, using Turkey as a fulcrum, aims to disrupt anddestabilize fixed assumptions and understandings about “Asia” and Asian Studies, by deliberately
traversing borders and boundaries in multiple senses—physical, conceptual, and disciplinary. The
panel members coming together are physically located at the “fringes” of Asia, in Japan, Australia,
and Turkey. They represent a range of disciplinary approaches and standpoints includinginternational relations, history, anthropology, and literary/cultural studies. However, what we have incommon is that we all work on some aspect of “Asia” and/or Asian Studies. Moreover, the reference
point for all of us is Turkey. We are all either located there, or we work on Turkey’s relationships andinteractions with Asia. Thus, through reconsidering these historical and contemporary intersections
between Turkey and “Asia” this panel aims to further contribute to scholarly conversations about
what exactly constitutes “Asia” and Asian Studies.
1)

Smita Tewari-Jassal, Middle East Technical University

Tracing the Turkish Footprint in North Indian Oral Traditions
The extraordinary cross-cultural fertilization brought about through the Turkish presence inIndia from as early as the 11th century has engaged successive generations of historians. A wealth ofscholarly enquiry exists for example, about how the encounter impacted material cultures,architecture, gardens, cuisines, languages, religiosity, and even, medicine. For instance, principles ofgovernance introduced by the 11th century Delhi Sultanate of Turkish origins, were replicated inother parts of north India and further built upon subsequently by the originally Turkic-speaking
Mughals. The story of regimes and dynasties, rulers and their rule, will continue to pose challenges
109

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
for the historian's craft. In this paper instead of the written record, I turn to relatively unexploredpeople's oral traditions for possible traces of the encounter with Turkish rulers/ghazis/ travelers/saints/sultans, on life ways and practices. How this legacy might surface in oral traditions and how
people engage with, imagine, absorb and reconstruct their pasts, is reflected upon. Through such afocus on the oral archive and ethnographic thrust, my aim is to displace the emphasis on the written
record as a means of reconstructing the past. In thus foregrounding people's collective memory, theessay highlights the significance of such reconstructions for contemporary reality and for a past"remembered" sometimes through creative divergence with the historical record. The forms ofcultural production discussed are also associated with women and marginalized groups, which offers
the possibility of interrogating conventional forms of knowledge production wherein primarily
masculine concerns get foregrounded and valorized.
2)

Esra Demirkol, University of Sussex/Middle East Technical University

Transnational Family Life across Continents: The Experiences of Turkish Migrants in Japan and
Their Left-behind Families in Turkey
The aim of this paper is to explore the impact of transnational migration on family life.
Specifically, its purpose is to gain a better understanding of how transnational migrants and their
non-migrant relatives build relationships across nation-states. To do this, the present research
proposes to focus on the construction of family relations among Turkish transnational migrants,
particularly labour migrants, in Japan and their non-migrant family members in Turkey. While
Turkey has long been a dispatching country for labour migrants, the impact of this process on family
dynamics has not received adequate attention within Turkish migration studies thus far. Moreover,most studies of Turkish migration have focused on migrants in the West. In this regard, by focusing
on Turkish migrants in Japan, the paper seeks to draw attention to non-Western, specifically Asian,contexts too. Accordingly, with reference to the specific context of Turkish migrants in Japan, thepaper will engage with such considerations as what motivates individuals within a family to migrate
or not migrate, how migration transforms family lives, and the maintenance of long-distance ties
between migrant and non-migrant family members. Moreover, the paper will also reflect on theimpact of migration among different family members, and variations across different generations andgenders. Through the exploration of such issues the paper aims to address gaps in the literature in
Turkish migration studies, both with reference to the relationship between migration and family, andin relation to Turkish migrant communities in non-Western settings.

110

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
3)

Besim Can Zırh, Middle East Technical University and Chang Yau Hoon, Singapore

Management University
Religious Minorities in Two Muslim-Majority Societies in Asia: Turkey and Indonesia
Situated at opposite ends of Asia, Turkey and Indonesia appear to have little in common.
However, they share numerous commonalities. Both are Sunni-Muslim majority societies, withsignificant non-Sunni minorities, both were founded as secular republics, and both underwent long
periods of military authoritarianism, when alternative religious /cultural identities were discouraged.
From the late-1990s, both countries made the transition to a multi-party democratic system, a processthat allowed for greater expression of cultural/religious diversity. However, this was also
accompanied by greater visibility of political/politicized Sunni-majoritarianism, in the public sphere.
This paper discusses the experiences two religious minorities—Alevis in Turkey, and Christians inIndonesia. Although the world’s largest Muslim nation, Indonesia has also seen a rapid growth inChristianity in recent decades, attributed to Pentecostal/Charismatic mega-churches finding fertile
ground among urban middle classes. This section will narrate the experience of the Indonesian
Christian minority in negotiating and expressing their identity vis-à-vis rising religious intolerance.
The following section will juxtapose the situation of Christians in Indonesia against the question of
Alevism in Turkey, another country with politicized Sunni-majoritarian political Islamism. In Turkey,
Alevis, the second largest belief community after Sunnis, have been demanding official recognition
and access to resources since the 1990s. Consequently, in 2007, the AKP government initiated aprocess to resolve long-standing political and cultural problems confronting minority groups,
including Alevis. However, the process concluded in 2010 without adequate resolution. Conversely,
new tensions including the Syria conflict (2011) and the Gezi Protests (2013) further complicated theAlevis’ struggle for recognition.
Discussant: Romit Dasgupta, University of Western Australia/Middle East Technical
University

111

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

Session 36: Room 1351
Emotion and Social Movements in Modern Japan
Organizer/Chair: Nathan Hopson, Nagoya University
After March 11, 2011, Japanese and foreign media lauded Japanese forbearance and restraint.
During the postwar reconstruction period, too, a calm and orderly response was prescribed, idealized,
and instrumentalized; emotions were (to be) sublimated and suppressed in the service of theeconomic miracle. Yet trauma was equally a factor in shaping postwar and now post-3/11 society.
Opposition movements “emotionally mobilized” constituencies by capitalizing on anger at the failed
wartime regime, the ravages of war, and postwar social injustices. When A-bomb survivor
Yamaguchi Sasako addressed the first World Congress against Nuclear Weapons in Hiroshima in
1955, crying, “War is horrible!” the whole auditorium wept with her, galvanizing the antinuclear
movement. Social movements of all types are grounded in emotional response, but emotions haverarely been subject to sustained historical inquiry. Recent work by historians of Europe like Barbara
Rosenswein, William Reddy, etc., has championed the importance of emotion to history, challenging
its equation with irrationality. Though emotions, and narratives of emotion, are critical in defining
social imaginaries -- and therefore prescribing and proscribing action -- no body of work on emotion
in Japanese history yet exists. This panel examines student, antinuclear, and regionalist movements inpostwar Japan to address this lacuna. By examining the critical interaction of emotions and “rational”
political decisions in the “emotional mobilization” of political groups, we demonstrate theimportance of emotion to shaping history.
1)

Chelsea Szendi Schieder, Meiji University

The Martyring of Kanba MichikoThis paper focuses on the intersection of emotional mobilization and a politics of representationin the 1960 death of Kanba Michiko, a female student involved in mass demonstrations against the
U.S.-Japan Security Treaty (Anpo). The context in which popular sympathy emerged for Kanba as a“maiden sacrifice” for postwar democracy encompassed a broader discourse of anger as a legitimate
form of political expression for certain segments of the population, in particular young, middle-classwomen. I also explore, however, how Kanba’s own radical politics were undermined by various
attempts to speak on her behalf and fit her into shared frames of popular empathy. This dynamic, inwhich young women with elite access to higher education in the postwar period both obtained ameasure of political influence yet also served more frequently as symbols of postwar peace and112

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
liberal democracy, is repeated in subsequent social movements in Japan. I contrast the case of Kanba
with female student figures from the later student movement of the late 1960s to demonstrate how
young women who did not allow for an image of vulnerability failed to arouse popular sympathy forthe movements in which they were active. I use this case to open up a more general discussion ofpolitical voice and agency, and to consider how a discourse of vulnerability and victimization, whilemobilizing popular sympathy to a political cause, also threatens to reinforce existing values andemotional standards.
2)

Ran Zwigenberg, Pennsylvania State University

Emotional Mobilization and the Antinuclear Movement
Following the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and its occupation by Allied forces, Hiroshimacity elites presented the rebuilding of their city as a symbolic enterprise for the cause of peace.
Facing severe censorship, and in need of funds, Hiroshima and Nagasaki embraced a discourse oftransformation focusing not on grief but on reconciliation and hope. With the emergence of theantibomb movement, this message expanded beyond the stricken cities. This discourse obtained
special potency through the testimony of hibakusha (bomb survivors). This paper examines theorigins of testimony in Hiroshima as a social practice and the use of survivor testimony by antibomb
groups to galvanize support. Using “emotional mobilization,” the antibomb movement brought
together private pain and public speech and turned the suffering of hibakusha into political capital.
This move had wide, though not unanimous, support among the survivor community. Similarly to thelater AIDS movement and the use of testimony by Zionist groups in the sixties following the
Eichmann trial, political organizers in mid-fifties Hiroshima told hibakusha “do not mourn, organize.”This positive message led many to find meaning in the movement to gain compensation and work forpeace and had important implications to the rise of the practice of bearing witness and later practicesof transnational justice. Such practices are usually thought of in connection with Western traditions
and historical trajectories but as the Japanese example shows they were in fact a transnational
development with varied roots.
3)

Nathan Hopson, Nagoya University

The Chosen Traumas of Postwar Tohoku Studies
I trace the roles of resentment and collective identity in postwar Tōhoku studies as it moved
from intellectual to social movement. Said’s remark, “nations... are narratives,” is broadly applicable
to collective identities. From Ernest Renan on, national identity has been understood as a process of113

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
mythmaking, of selective memory and interpretation; as Richard White wrote, “Myths are stories thattell why things and people are what they are [and] facts are rarely at the heart of historical disputes.”
Identity movements are often fueled by “chosen glories” and “chosen traumas,” the latter of whichbequeath “unfinished psychological tasks... to future generations” (Vamik Volkan). Defeat in 1945
spurred reimagination of Japan’s history. In Tōhoku, intellectuals discovered “chosen glory” in a
distinct, even independent, regional history and culture. Trauma was found in historical maltreatmentby the Japanese “center(s),” and fused with rejection of Japan’s imperial past as the Northeast wasrecuperated as a source of political and cultural legitimacy for the postwar. Though it began as anintellectual movement, postwar Tōhoku studies has spawned a wider social movement to validate
regional identity, from the rehabilitation of “Noble Savage” antiheroes who fought against Japan to
the glorification of rice-less cultural identity in popular cultural forms. The movement to see Tōhoku
as “another Japan” was co-opted nearly in toto into popular and academic neo-Nihonjinron(discourses of Japaneseness) of the 1990s, but 3/11 and its aftermath have once again provided theemotional fuel for a regional reevaluation in sharp opposition to the national.
Discussant: Kawanishi Hidemichi, Hiroshima University

114

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

Session 37: Room 1353
Mass Literacy in Modern Japan: Transformed Practices of Reading and Writing
Organizer/Chair: Yusuke Tanaka, Meiji Gakuin University
Japan’s rapid modernization after the Meiji Restoration transformed the way people read andwrote. The new education system installed shortly after the restoration played a major role in thistransformation, but equally important was the growth of printed materials and their circulation
system nationwide. Newspapers, magazines and books were essential for developing reading literacy
in the everyday life; moreover, readers nourished their writing literacy by keeping diaries,
exchanging letters and sharing their thoughts in the discursive space of their favorite media. In orderto understand the meaning and function of this developing mass literacy, noting both how literacy
was obtained as well as how it was practiced, it is crucial to examine social change and individual
behavior in modernizing Japan. This panel examines the phenomena of mass literacy in modern
Japan with particular focus on daily practices of reading and writing. Kakimoto will investigate thereading life of children in early and mid-Meiji period through an analysis of a diary written by ahigher elementary school boy. Ōoka will reveal the reading and writing practice of housewives in
Taisho and early Showa periods, focusing on their contributions to Shufu No Tomo. Tanaka will
discuss the significance of wartime diaries kept by Christian dormitory students in the Second Higher
School. Nakano will illuminate the reading and writing environment of Japanese soldiers on thefields of battle. Based on these four studies, the panel aims to provide new perspectives to the social
history of literacy in modern Japan.
1)

Mayo Kakimoto, Jin-ai University

The Lives of Children and Their Reading Habits in the Meiji Period: A School Boy’s Diary
During Meiji period, the establishment of the educational system brought about many changes
in literacy education of children and reading materials for children. Not only enlightening books
translated from American textbooks, but also magazines only for children appeared. In the 1870s,
many of these were contribution magazines, as typified by Eisai Shinsi, first published in 1877.
These magazines aimed to improve the writing ability of children. However, in the middle of the
1880s, particularly after Shonen En was first published in 1888, the magazines began to print mainly
the articles for children’s reading written by educators or thinkers rather than contributions bychildren. What kind of influence did these new media for children have on the lives of children? To
understand the reading habits of children in the Meiji period, this paper will examine a 10 year-old
115

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
boy’s diary included in the Fukuda Hideichi Diary Collection stored in the library of the Institute of
Asian Cultural Studies, International Christian University. This diary was kept by a student of thehigher elementary school in Minami-Kuwata-Gun, present-day Kameoka City, Kyoto Prefecture,
during the period from 1895 to 1896. In his diary, the boy wrote about various events, such as thecontents of his classes, running errands and seeing a magic lantern show. It provides valuable clues
as to what children’s lives were really like at that time. In addition, I hope to illuminate the context ofthe boy’s life by referring to local histories, such as The History of Kameoka City.
2)

Kyoko Ooka, University of Tokyo

The Act of Writing by Women in the Boundary Between Private and Public: An Analysis ofContributions to Shufu no Tomo
The history of women’s magazines in Japan goes back to the beginning of the 20th century.
Previous researches on reading habits of women have been mainly classified into two categories: 1)
one type was reading actively, 2) the other was reading passively. Women who had been classified as
active readers were regarded as “new women” (atarashii onna). They chose liberal politicalmagazines, for instance Fujin Koron, and kept their distance from the thought of ryosai kenbo (goodwife, wise mother). On the other hand, the latter type of women read popular magazines, including
Shufu no Tomo which sought to provide practical information in order to deal with various problems
faced by women in managing their family, as well as everyday household duties. Popular women’smagazines such as Shufu no Tomo were generally regarded as an apparatus to facilitate women inaccepting their gender role. Household works that reinforced gender roles have been discussed
mainly from the point of view of the sociology of the family and Marxist feminism. However, any
discussion on unpaid domestic work based on love relations is one-sided. Drawing on a textual
analysis of contributions to Shufu no Tomo, this study reveals that women gathered information on
housework, especially cooking, from the magazine and expressed themselves through the act ofwriting. I will discuss the agency of women who composed and renewed themselves dynamicallywith regard to the roles that they played in their family and in society, thereby emphasizing the act ofwriting about housework as a social practice.

116

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

3)

Yusuke Tanaka, Meiji Gakuin University

Polyphonic Space for Self-expression: Christian Dormitory Diaries at the Second Higher School
during World War Two
This presentation focuses on the discourse of highly educated Christian students in World War
Two. Chūai Ryō Nisshi (忠愛寮日誌)is a series of diaries kept by the Christian dormitory students at
the Second Higher School in Sendai city. Under the cruel religious oppression in wartime, Chūai
dormitory managed to sustain its operation and students continued their common practice: praying in
the morning, singing hymns, group Bible study, and, most notably, keeping dormitory diaries. The
diaries are vivid documents of how young elite students, with high level of reading and writing
literacy, sought to understand their lives and dreamt about the future in the ever-worsening situationof Japan’s holy war. Moreover, the diaries show how they, as believers or at least as having
sympathy for Christianity, suffered from jingoistic aggression by professors and other dormitory’s
students. In contrast to general diaries that provide users private space for reflection andself-expression, the Chūai dormitory diaries were shared among the dormitory students. Students leftcomments on what other student wrote; the diaries were not purely private, but rather a sort ofpolyphonic social space for self-expressions and intense discussion, sometimes erupting withcriticism and anger against an inflammatory note. By listening to the various voices of the diaries,
this presentation aims to elucidate not only what Japanese elite youth in World War Two thought andbelieved in fear of impending death, but also how they communicated and interacted with each otherin a school culture characterized by high literacy.
4)

Ayako Nakano, Waseda University

The Expansion of Reading Environment: An Analysis of the Practice of Reading and Writing by
Soldiers
During the Pacific War, it was thought that reading on the battlefield had been nearly banned.
And if reading were permitted, only textbooks for soldiers would be allowed. However, in reality,
comfort magazines (imon zasshi) were printed by major publishers or by the Japanese Army andNavy, and were sent to the battlefield. In addition to magazines, newspapers and books were sent. It
is therefore important to examine the culture of reading on the battlefield. Through an expansion of
the reading environment, a new type of reader, “the soldier reader” emerged. People belonging todifferent classes came to perform the same reading acts as "a soldier" while maintaining theirdifferences. For example, people who had never read a book began to read books, and those more
117

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
educated began to read even simple books that they would not have read before. It can also be said
that this change in reading influenced writing as well. The purpose of this paper is to analyze theexpansion of the reading environment to the battlefield, how it originated and what effect it had on
the practice of reading and writing by soldiers. First, I will discuss the types of comfort magazines byinvestigating the distribution status on the battlefield. Next, through an examination of diaries, letters,
and poems and other texts by soldiers, I hope to reveal the practice of reading and writing by soldiersthat developed in the unique reading space of the battlefield.
Discussant: M. William Steele, International Christian University

118

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

Session 38: Room 1352
Bordering Japan: The Representation as Act of Bordering
Organizer/Chair: Yuri Takahashi, Doshisha University
In a significant book, Border as Method, or the Multiplication of Labor, Sandro Mezzadra andBrett Neilson provide us with a revolutionary view about border; every subject is exposed to multiple
border of, say, nation, race, and gender, and therefore recognizing border just as territorial one is too
simple to comprehend contemporary world. In addition, they argue that border not only divides
something but also connects what seems to be divided. By appropriating their view about border, we
will further investigate what they seem to miss in their discussion but leaves its great significance;
the border on representation. We consider the representation as act of bordering, embodying the
subject of specific nation, race and gender, and our guiding question is as follows; if border connects
as well as divides something, and if representation is an act of bordering, then, how does
representation, through the act of dividing, fix the specific identity of subject in a certain specificregion, and at the same time through the act of connecting, form the new relations among the subject?
With this thesis in mind, each of discussant argues its own case; Nishikawa takes up Japanese art
during the Asia and Pacific War, Shoji reexamines racism and its critique by closely looking at theordinary citizens who commit a right wing social movement, Asato deals with the “pineapple boom”
during the US occupation period in Okinawa, and Takahashi presents Asian-American andJapanese-American Film Festival in the United States.
1)

Kazuki Nishikawa, Doshisha University

Nation and Bordering in the Case of Art during the Asia and Pacific War
The central question of this discussion is how Japanese art during the Asia and Pacific War
embodies the economy of colonialism concerning nation, race, gender, and so on. In this discussion,
the question will be investigated by considering the act of painting as the bordering of nation, race,and gender. Since Japan acquired its first colony after the Japanese-Sino war in 1894, it got on the
track of nation expanded. Not only did Japan Imperialism mean the expansion of its territory, but also
institutional extension was followed by it, which also happened in the realm of art. Institutions suchas art education, exhibition, and criticism were exported to the colonies of Japan, modernizing the art
world there and establishing the standard of evaluation. Therefore, what is to be questioned here is
how Imperial Japan, in the representation on paintings, hierarchized itself in the relationship with its
colonies at the same time producing affinities between them to carry out the war. It was compulsory
119

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
for Japanese painters who painted the war to create the views of nationalism; soldiers were elevatedas sacred beings, enemies are those to be killed. Through the analysis of social background of this era
and art works by such painters as Tsuguharu Fujita and Saburo Miyamoto, the question of how thenationalism of Imperial Japan are represented and how the bordering of nation, gender, and race areworked will be sought.
2)

Yoko Asato, Doshisha University

Proliferation of Borders and the “Pineapple Boom”: Rethinking Postwar History from Ishigaki
Island of Okinawa
This presentation explores how borders have crucial impact on producing the “pineapple boom”
and recalling memories during the United States occupation period in Okinawa which were not themaster narratives of history, within the proliferation of national border, economic border, politicalborder and so on. Pineapple industry was brought to Ishigaki Island, Okinawa from Taiwan in 1930s
when Taiwan was a colony of Imperial Japan. During the US occupation up to the reversion of
Okinawa to Japan in 1972, the pineapple industry became one of the key industries. The boom has
been through the five aspects of the proliferation of borders. First is the US dollar economic bloc
under the US occupation that attracted various kinds of capitals. Second, the boom attracted various
migrant laborers from the US, Japan, Taiwan, China, the Philippines, Korea, and so on. Moreprecisely, mainland Chinese from Taiwan to Singapore came to Okinawa, in the height of the Cold
War. Third, Okinawan underemployed returnees from Hawaii, Saipan, Singapore and so forth cameto Ishigaki Island as laborers. The fourth is the sovereignty change put the industry decline after 1972.
On the contrary, when tourism industry has developed, pineapples started to represent the images oftropical islands. However, in 2012, a monument was built in memory of Taiwanese contribution to
the pineapple industry on the Island; and it seems the fifth case. As mentioned above, proliferation ofborders seem to produce the “pineapple boom” and to recall the other history.
3)

Yuri Takahashi, Doshisha University

The Asian American Film Festival as a Contact Zone: Rethinking the Subjectivity of JapaneseAmericans in the Perspective of Representation and Bordering
This research investigates embodying the subjectivity about Japanese Americans, regarding the
Asian American film festival as a contact zone and Asian American cinema as an expression ofself-ethnography (Pratt, 1992). It is a question of how the subjectivity	  and the community arearticulated with the film festival being regarded as the bordered space. Third world film is not
120

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
converting the outside of representation and the device which merely projects an existing thing, butrather it is regarded as a form of the representation to build the subjectivity newly from the inside of
the identity (Hall, 1990). The form of the film is the projection causing the graphics with the shock
and an internal projection, and it produces self-consciousness in the non-Western culture, thepost-colonial Third World (Chow, 1992). Japanese Americans have been regarded as those who havetheir origin in Japan or those whose ancestors have their origin in Japan. Mapping corresponds to thegrouping the people, based on their nationality. Let me consider bordering as a process, not just ageographical concept but inscribed on individual bodies, marked by race, nation, geographical origin,and gender. Borders cause inclusion and exclusion of the subject. Importantly, borders themselves
are already naturalized and inscribed on their bodies. In the film festival as a contact zone, how are
the subjectivity and the community articulated through the act of making and watching the films?
This research examines the possibility of articulation of subjectivity of Japanese Americans in theperspective of representation and bordering.
Discussant: Shujin Lee, Cornell University

121

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

Session 39: Room 1451
Encountering the Genji: The Varieties of Literary Experience
Organizer/Chair: Jeffrey Knott, Stanford University
This panel addresses the pressing problem: What is the Tale of Genji? Certainly it has neverbeen what it is today. Modern Genji resembles but little any Genji that Teika, Zeami, or Saikaku
might have recognized. Yet this is due not to textual divergences, but rather to radical changes intextual approach. For the extreme (physical, linguistic, scholastic) accessibility which modern
infrastructure has brought today’s Genji cannot be projected into the past. Pre-modern readers, Eastand West, typically encountered the Genji not in solitary, complete readings, but instead though avariety of mediated literary experiences, involving texts yet not limited to them. Depending on thereader, there were many ways the work could be “read”: lectures, debates, and initiations; copying
and chanting; anthology, translation, even rumor, and also, reading. This panel confronts the Genjiquestion by examining the literary experiences of specific readers across boundaries of space, time,
medium, and language. Tarin Clanuwat explores the surprising range of Genji commentaries that
constituted reception in the unsettled early centuries of the medieval era. Jeffrey Knott focuses on theearly modern figure Kitamura Kigin, whose synthesis of medieval aristocratic lore for mass
publication in his Kogetsushō commentary remained definitive into Meiji. Makiko Tsuneda
investigates an early French feminist reaction to the first partial English translations available in theWest. Ultimately, the panelists argue that such “less-than-complete” experiences must be recognized
not as failures of reception, but rather as its pre-modern core, without understanding of which the
Genji’s present must remain a question.
1)

Tarin Clanuwat, Waseda University

More than Just a Love Story: Medieval Genji as Gate to Knowledge
Within 150 years after the Tale of Genji was finished, readers were already approaching it
through commentaries. Over the next few centuries, these commentaries continually increased in
number and variety. Simultaneously, they came to provide readers with an even greater range of
information beyond what was necessary to appreciate the story. Even commentaries surviving fromthis early period display a remarkable range of formats. It is clear that for people of the time, Genji
was more than simply a tale, but also a source of knowledge. This variation among commentaries
argues for changes in the work's anticipated readership. The first Genji commentaries provided little
more than source-poems for poetic allusions in the text. No further explanations were thought
122

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
necessary for readers whose culture was still so similar to that of Murasaki’s own time. Thingschanged after the center of political power shifted to Kamakura in the late 12th century. People in
Kamakura required more information from commentaries because they were not as familiar as earlier
readers with Kyoto court culture. Reading Genji was no longer only about appreciating the story, but
was also a part of elites' required education. Commentaries now had to offer basic information thatearlier commentaries could assume readers already knew, for example about word pronunciations,
items of material culture, and court ranks and ceremonies. In this paper, I will show how audiences
influenced the types of knowledge that commentaries were created to give, and also discuss how
eventually, some of this knowledge became secret traditions.
2)

Jeffrey Knott, Stanford University

On First Looking into Kigin’s Murasaki: Becoming a Genji Reader
Kitamura Kigin (1624-1705) is the author of the most widely known commentary on the Taleof Genji composed. Called the Kogetsushō (1675), it also was the most widely read until the 20th
century. Credit for this success has traditionally been given to Kigin’s innovative layout, which on
one page combined text, interlinear reading aids, and detailed commentary in footnotes for a reading
experience of information-rich ease. Ssuch a view, this paper argues, fundamentally misunderstands
the work’s achievement. For even granting the role played by Kigin’s media sophistication, it is clearthat his greatest effort went into the selection of the commentary material itself. I will show how it isin fact through this selection that Kigin’s Kogetsushō made possible the first Genji encounters of somany. The importance of Kigin’s commentary selection has been difficult to grasp. Partly this is dueto the Kogetsushō’s reputation as a mere omnibus collection of the main commentaries that preceded
his era. But it is also misappreciation of what it means to “read” in pre-modern times. Ill fame as amere anthologizer is contradicted by an examination of Kigin’s sources. The vast amounts ofpre-existing commentary demanded culling, and clear principles that can be detected in his selection.
It is also clear that reading comprehension help was only one such principle. “Reading” the Genji for
Kigin meant initiation into the concerns of its medieval lore, and participation in the society of fellow
initiates. By performing these concerns, Kigin was teaching how to become a Genji reader.

123

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

3)

Makiko Tsuneda, Waseda University

A “Féministe” Finding the Tale of Genji in Nineteenth Century France
In 1883, Arvède Barine (1840-1908), a French historian and critic, wrote an article entitled “La
Haute société japonaise au Xe siècle : Un don Juan japonais” (Japanese High Society in the 10th
Century: A Japanese Don Juan). It was a review of the Tale of Genji (Genji monogatari) based on
Suematsu Kenchō’s partial English translation of 1882. She not only retranslated a portion of it into
French but also offered her own opinions and interpretations. Barine, considered by today’s standards
to have been a moderate feminist, seems to have been adept at expressing her beliefs indirectly.
Focusing on her commentary, I will examine how her reading of the story and the themes she chose
to emphasize subtly reflected her feminist ideas. I will also show that Barine was able to provide asurprisingly accurate commentary both on the story and on Japanese society, particularly when her
work is contrasted with other Western receptions of the Tale of Genji in the latter half of the 19th
century. In addition to appraising Barine as a reader of the Tale of Genji, this paper also seeks toreevaluate the role of Suematsu Kenchō. In contrast to the famous translation of Arthur Waley (thefirst volume of which appeared in 1925), Suematsu’s work has been comparatively neglected. In thispaper, I will bring to light how Suematsu’s translation was more significant than is generally
supposed, particularly given its early reception in France.
Discussant: Keisuke Unno, National Institute of Japanese Literature

124

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

Session 40: Room 1458
Bandits, Borders, Empire: On the Pleasures & Perils of Crossing The Line
Organizer/Chair: Andre Haag, University of New Mexico
Nowhere is the unstable ground of empire more visible than at its borders. This panel proposes
to rethink the history of modern Japan and the Japanese Empire from the perspective of those whocrossed, guarded, or warily eyed the empire’s borders during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Imperial
borders were sites of intense migration, negotiation and conflict. The Korean annexation of 1910
presumably erased national borders between Japan and Korea, while establishing the empire’s
vaunted “only land border” between Korea and Manchuria as an object of fascination and anxiety.
From official attempts to freeze the nebulous sea border between the Japanese archipelago andKorean peninsula to pop fiction’s exploitation and subversion of the northern border frontier, thiscollection of papers introduces human-scale visions of Japanese imperial history defined less byclear-cut periods, polities, and leaders than by micro-encounters in spaces of transition. McDonald
analyzes Japanese travelers’ obsession with bandits on the border as reflecting the changing
resonance of an imagined “Man-Sen” geography within imperial visions. Haag’s paper examines theambivalence of tense narratives of border crossings and clashes told from the perspectives ofJapanese border guards and Korean insurgents. On the other side of empire, Noh interrogates
imperial authorities’ efforts to reassert national borders and control the transnational flow ofdestabilizing “rumors” in the wake of disaster and atrocity. Finally, Kim considers what the“cosmopolitan” northern border and frontier signified to colonized Korean men and women in thecontext of pulp genre fiction from the 1930s and 1940s.
1)

Kate McDonald, University of California, Santa Barbara

White Robes, Black Robes, Horse-Riding Bandits: Stories of the Yalu River Rail Bridge
For Sachi Hachirō, the first sign that he had crossed the border was the change of color. "Thewhite clothing of the farmers suddenly became black," he wrote in his 1934 Traveling Manchukuo.
Yet the color of clothing was not the only change that Sachi registered. At Antung, police boarded
the carriages as a precaution against bandits (bazoku), causing no small amount of anxiety for Sachi.
"[E]ven in the evening edition on the table on which I am writing, at 8am on the morning of the
2nd...thirty leaderless bandits appeared near Antung, attacked an elementary school, and ran off withthree teachers and over one hundred students as hostages.... In recent days, bandits are attacking
Japanese and raiding trains. This means that more than in the past, the danger to travelers has all the125

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
more increased.” Sachi’s anxiety stands in stark contrast to earlier descriptions of the
Korea-Manchuria border and its most famous landmark, the Yalu River Rail Bridge, whichcelebrated the "new Japan" that the bridge's connection of Manchuria and Korea promised to bring.
The proposed paper explores how Japanese travelers used the border and the bridge to think throughtheir broader anxieties about the place of "Manchuria-Korea" (Man-Sen) within the Japanese Empire.
Although the majority of scholarship uses 1932 as a turning point in Japanese attitudes toward
Manchuria and China, I show here that for those who traveled to investigate the empire, theKorea-Manchuria border provided a constant source of fear and fascination about the future of Japan.
2)

Andre Haag, University of New Mexico“Guerillas in the Mist,” and Other Stories of Close Calls on Empire’s Edge
On the occasion of Japan’s annexation of Korea in August 1910, metropolitan Japanesenewspapers proudly gushed that now, for the first, territory ruled by the empire was contiguous with
the Asian continent. If the sudden creation of the empire’s sole land border inspired fascination andpride, however, it quickly transformed into an object of imperial anxiety and abjection. The border,
and adjacent Kando region, came to serve as a key safe haven for Korean resistance groups, whostaged daring raids across the Yalu River against occupying Japanese forces. As security concerns
mounted, the Japanese border police charged with guarding empire’s edges from these “futei Senjin”
guerrillas—a threat more terrifying than even Chinese bandits—became heroic icons of postcards,
song and film. This paper traces the shifting meanings projected onto this fraught periphery—proud
symbol, menace, and sanctuary—by reading discourses of northern border security in official reports
and newspapers against real and fictionalized accounts of chilling border crossings and violations. Of
central interest is the proletarian writer Nakanishi Inosuke, who strained to see both sides of theborder through double-edged narratives that juggled the mismatched subjectivities of incompetentJapanese border guards, subversive travelers from the metropole, and intrepid Korean guerrillas indisguise. These borderline discourses reveal glimpses of the uncanny thrills available whenconfronting the limits of imperial authority and identity, and suggest that fixation on the physicalborder was mere cover for a deeper ambivalence about the threats and opportunities engendered bycreeping continental contact zones.

126

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

3)

Jooeun Noh, University of Tokyo“Rumors” at the Borders of Empire: Reading Post-Kanto Earthquake Information Flows Between
Japan, Korea, and China
How was information related to the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923 and resulting ethnic
violence produced, circulated and erased in East Asia? What was the impact of 1923 earthquake on
the larger political context of the Japanese Empire approach to the “Korea problem?” Historiographyon the Kantō Korean massacre has thus far centered on uncovering the basic facts of the atrocity,such as the number of people killed. Recent studies have shed new light on how the news of themassacre spread to and affected Koreans in Manchuria and China. However, it remains necessary to
examine the ways in which Japanese government dealt with information in the wake of the 1923
earthquake at the borders of its empire between Japan, Korea and China. This paper explores how theGovernment-General of Korea and Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs addressed the massacre in
its immediate aftermath. Using reports published by the Police Affairs Bureau of the GovernmentGeneral of Korea and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in China, I compare the ways that the colonial
government and Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs characterized the ‘rumors’ of a massacre of
Koreans, and how these two organizations reported on the responses of Koreans in China to theJapanese government in the metropole. I will argue that the Kantō earthquake presents a unique casestudy through which to consider the imperial state’s approach to controlling the flow of information
and rumor across national and imperial borders.
4)

Su Yun Kim, University of Hong Kong

Life on the Borderline as Cosmopolitan: Manchurian Popular Narratives in Colonial Korea
In this presentation, I discuss how the “paperback popular narratives” (ttakjibon sosŏl), a
low-brow literary genre, opened up alternatives way of imagining borderline life in Manchuria fromthe late 1930s to 1945, which colonial censorship authorities did not allow in high literature. A
popular reading genre, the “paperback popular narrative” has been considered as a broad literary
genre with unclear authorship and market-driven narratives, ranging from the 1910s to thepost-colonial era (1940s and 1950s). Similar to the printing format of the American dime novel orJapanese enpon, the ttakjibon sosŏl were published in cheap bulk paperback form with a multi-genre
modern fictional writing style. I consider the “paperback popular narratives” as a type of modern
popular narratives, an alternative genre to “pure” literature, particularly through “Manchurian
narratives” (stories set in Manchuria) in the 1930s. At the time of the Japanese Empire’s Manchurian
127

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
boom, “pure” literature presented the region as a frontier for Korean peasants’ struggle. Manchuria in
the “paperback popular narratives,” however, is a space for sensationalism, showcasing international
crimes, criminals with multiple ethnic identities, mixed communities, all possible due to the hybrid
settlements around the borders. The end result were plot-driven and entertaining stories that appealed
to a wider audience in colonial Korea, while providing alternative narratives of Koreans living under
the Japanese Empire. Interpreting imperial expansionism as new way of accessing cosmopolitan
desire, these stories illustrate life in the border as exciting and employ modern cosmopolitan styles inways not possible in high literature.

Discussant: Kang Sang-Jung, University of Tokyo

128

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

Session 41: Room 1457
Individual Papers 8: Modern and Contemporary Visual Culture
Chair: Noriko Murai, Sophia University
1)

Timothy Iles, University of Victoria

Kawase Naomi and the Sympathetic Gaze
Mak Yan Yan’s film Hu die (Butterfly, Hong Kong, 2004) presents the story of a woman’s
realization of her sexual identity against a backdrop of memory, rebellion, and repression incontemporary Hong Kong. The film explores layers of responsibility, guilt, self-awareness, andpersonal integrity, while arguing that these issues exist on both the macro, or national-political level,
and micro, or personal level. This paper will demonstrate the overlap of memories of Hong Kong
student political activism at the time of the Tiananmen Massacre with the protagonist’s growing
acceptance of her sexual identity, arguing that the film reveals its stance on liberation as being
equally valid for the person and the nation through the motivating force of love. “Love” here assumes
dimensions that are truly interpersonal―between people, on the small scale of a couple, and thelarger scale of patriotic attachment to the nation.
2)

Kang Inhye, Doshisha University

Race and Monyō: The Racial and Ethnic Discourses of Modern Japanese Anthropologists on the
Pattern Designs
This paper examines how the modern Japanese anthropologists investigated the specific patterndesigns engraved on the Neolithic potteries—largely known as monyō in Japanese—, and sought toidentify the racial and ethnic identity of the creator. My paper pays a particular attention to Ōno
Ungai, a modern anthropologists and illustrator who worked for Tokyo Anthropology Laboratory,
and his study of pattern design on ancient artifacts. Ōno Ungai, often known as Ōno Entaro, was oneof the main artists who took charge a wide variety of pictures and illustrations for the Journal of theTokyo Anthropological Association. He also attempted to find the racial identity of Jomon pottery
creators, along with Tsuboi Shōgoro, by investigating and comparing the patterns designs to thosefrom other races. In examining Ōno's study of patterns designs, my paper attempts to compare thepatterns design system of artifacts to the fingerprinting system. The ways the modern anthropologists
attempted to trace the racial identity of the pattern creators can be compared to the way policeman
traces the criminal's identity. By comparing the visual technologies of the two different
129

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
system—monyō and fingerprinting—my project examines the ways in which the modern
anthropologists categorized and catalogued the racial and ethnic traits with special focus on the visual
information.
3)

David Sprague, National Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences and Iwasaki

Nobusuke, National Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences
New Meanings for Old Places for All to See: Japanese Historical Maps in the Age of theInternet
Scholars looking for evidence on traditional Japanese land use often find historical maps to be
extremely valuable. While many maps have been produced throughout Japanese history for many
purposes, the earliest maps based on modern surveying methods covering a large area are the Rapid
Survey Maps, or Jinsoku Sokuzu. Surveyed in the 1880s to cover the Kanto Plain surrounding Tokyo,
they make possible the analysis of rural land use change from a temporal baseline prior to the adventof modern chemical or mechanized farm inputs, when much of Japan’s natural resources were
supplied domestically. These maps allow scholars to examine the validity of many theories about therural Japanese landscape such as the claim by some historical geographers that traditional Japaneseland use of the Tokugawa Period was a model of sustainable rural natural resource utilization.
However, historical maps are taking on new lives on the Internet due to recently developed,
inexpensive web-based map presentation technology allowing personal computer and smartphoneusers to view old maps matched to present locations. Now the broad public can easily see historicalmaps, including the Rapid Survey Maps, whenever and wherever they wish. The Great East Japan
Earthquake of March 2011 heightened the public’s geographical awareness about the historical
topography of their homes and communities. Furthermore, local museums planning exhibits,
geography hobbyists looking for lost landmarks, or high school students working on school projects
are finding new uses for old maps beyond the original intent or imagination of scholars.
4)

Du Daisy Yan, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

From Monkey King to Astro Boy: The Roles of Chinese Animation in Tezuka Osamu’s Mangaand Anime
Chinese animation films produced in socialist China traveled abroad and won many
international awards. Some critics argue that it is the assertion of “nationality,” “Chineseness,” and“tradition” that paradoxically makes Chinese animation film transnational. However, as Mary Ann
Farquhar has pointed out, the over-emphasis on Chineseness, nationalization, tradition, and essence
130

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
in Chinese animation film can be seen as a “frog-in-the-well” mentality—namely “a walled inignorance which believes the sky is only as large as the patch glimpsed from the bottom of a well.”Taking cue from Farquhar’s metaphor, this paper attempts to jump out of the “well” by looking at thetransnational undercurrents neglected in the homogeneous grand narrative of “national” cinema. I
argue that it is actually the “transnational” that makes Chinese animation film “national.”
Emphasizing more on multiple transnational “routes” than a singular Chinese “root,” I examine
Chinese animation film not as a static and essentialist entity rooted in a fixed time and space, but as
fluid movements enmeshed in transnational flows and relations. More specifically, I will examine therole of Japan in the history of Chinese animation film by focusing on Mochinaga Tadahito(1919-1999), a Japanese animator who became the founding father of the animation film industry insocialist China. Tracking the multi-directional movements of people, studios, ideology, films, andfilm style, I argue that the “Chineseness” of Chinese animation film was a media construct, and had
always already been contested by those transnational flows from the very beginning of socialist New
China.
5)

Ohsawa Yuki, University of British Columbia

Sex, Gender, and Sexuality in Japanese Contemporary Science Fiction Animations
Japanese animation featuring cyborgs in various ways has caught the eyes and minds ofaudiences around the world. The reasons for this are diverse, but we can point to specific textual
features such as futuristic cyber narratives, unique hybrid robots and sophisticated cyborg characters,
which are involved with advanced technology. Those cyborgs demonstrate features of posthumanism.
This paper argues that, since the 1990s, some science fiction anime have depicted posthumancharacters to suggest the necessity of changing the modern conceptualization of the body—that is, toargue that the relation between the modern body and mind does not fit what we may argue is thecurrent posthuman situation, including as it does such beings as robots and cyborgs. Through anapplication of cyborg (feminist) theory, utilizing the perspectives of Donna Haraway and N.
Katherine Hayles, I will analyze two contemporary anime―Knights of Shidonia (2014), directed by
Shizuno Kōbun, and Expelled from Paradise (2014), directed by Mizushima Seiji―to reveal how
contemporary Japanese anime express “queer,” as used in Judith Butler’s “Critically Queer” (1993),
characters to go beyond social normativity, specifically sex and gender. My analysis will demonstrate
the arguments these works make for new sex/gender possibilities through technology, in order to free
our conceptions from existing, potentially oppressive categories. I will do this by analyzing how
anime are constructed, with a particular focus on the element of characterization, and in turn how
131ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
anime construct both an ironic modernity, incorporating specifically dualistic and patriarchal ideas,
and a postmodernity able to move beyond normativity. My analysis will also reveal a limitation inanime, such as the persistence of heterocentrism and an insistence on representations of extremely
gendered feminine bodies.

132

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

Session 42: Room 1358
Individual Papers 9: Women in Japanese and Chinese Literature
Chair: John Dorsey, Rikkyo University
1)

Aoki Arisa, Waseda University

The Dawn of the Self-Sacrificing Stepmother: Breaking down One Archetype to Create Another in
Chikamatsu’s Plays
In Japanese literature, stepmothers fall into three main types: a stepmother who bullies her
stepchild, a stepmother who falls in love with her stepchild, and a stepmother who sacrifices herself
for her stepchild. The self-sacrificing stepmother, invented by Chikamatsu Monzaemon, became
typical and idealized in 18th century Japanese puppet theatre. Yet, in order to create this new
character type, Chikamatsu had to break down the popular model of the child-abusing stepmother.
First, by examining representations of a stepmother’s bullying in Chikamatsu’s earlier plays, I argue
that the stereotype became so predictable that he had to change it. Then, I analyze four plays in which
Chikamatsu wrote a self-sacrificing stepmother: Keisei Yoshioka Zome (傾城吉岡染, before 1707),
Jitō Tennō Uta Gūnpō (持統天皇歌軍法, before 1714), The Battles of Coxinga (国性爺合戦, 1715),
and Izutsu Narihira Kawachigayoi (井筒業平河内通, 1720). In these plays, which feature stepmothercharacters from a range of social positions, stepmothers break free from the evil behavior expected of
their stereotype, and thus recast the possibilities for stepmother characters. I contend that byhighlighting the hardships inherent in the stepmother stereotype, Chikamatsu was able to develop themore sympathetic image of the self-sacrificing stepmother. Understanding Chikamatsu's
transformation of the stepmother figure not only reveals that saturation of one character type leads tothe invention of another; it also establishes how Chikamatsu created a new character archetype forthe next generation of writers.
2)

Shen Ruihua, Morehouse College

The Women’s Voice: How Web-Feminism Has Changed Gender Discourse in China
This paper examines how the independent feminist web-journal “The Woman’s Voice”, which
first acted as a media feminist watchdog, has become the most active and influential center of
independent Chinese feminism. It explores the ways in which web-feminism has changed thelandscape of Chinese gender discourse. Created in 2009 by a couple of Chinese independent
feminists, the Women’s voice has developed over the last five years into a powerful website
133

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
discussing topical social issues and bringing them before the forum of public opinion in China.

Asthe strongest voice of Chinese independent feminism, the web-journal takes a critical stand not only
against the current capitalist-misogynistic culture, but also against the state’s hegemonic control of
the academic discipline of women’s studies. The paper discusses the development of this webjournal-website and its importance for Chinese gender studies and offers an in-depth analysis of how
web-feminism has challenged traditional gender studies in both academic and the state's research
institutions in China. The paper argues that through political activism the Women's Voice and otherfeminist websites have created new ways to study women’s problems and, in so doing, have
revolutionized Chinese gender discourse.
3)

Joanna Sturiano, Harvard University

Hirabayashi Taiko’s Gangster Fiction and the Limits of Modern Japanese “Women’s Literature”
Women writers within and on the periphery of the proletarian literature movement in early
Shōwa (1926—1989) Japan forged a creative network which undergirded a new professional spacefor women in modern Japan. For these women writers who first penetrated the male space of theJapanese literary establishment, a prominent discourse of gendered conventions of authorship bothcreated space for them to publish, and set a framework within which their writing became received(and critiqued) as “women’s literature” (joryū bungaku). Hirabayashi Taiko (1905—1972), one
woman writer who achieved literary acclaim in this moment, notably shirked any easy allegiancewith conventional thematic models of womanhood or stylistic references that could be construed asconventionally feminine. Hirabayashi’s innovations include her celebrated work in traditionallymale-authored genres such as detective fiction and gangster fiction (sometimes called ninkyō
shōsetsu). I consider Hirabayashi’s standout work in the genre of gangster fiction, Song of theUnderworld (Chitei no uta, 1948), as it brings to the fore the tension between Hirabayashi’s persona
as a “woman writer” and the unconventional gendered contexts of her writings. Hirabayashi’s
success within this genre complicated her "woman writer" persona as a producer of “women’sliterature.” Committing the radical act of writing in a male-dominated genre, Hirabayashi claimed
new territory for women writers while pushing the limits of the essentialist labels with which
women’s intellectual work and cultural production were sidelined apart from a male-dominatedmainstream.

134

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

4)

Kelly Hansen, San Diego State University

The Language of Women in Natsume Sōseki’s MeianThis paper examines indices of power and solidarity reflected in the speech patterns of female
characters in Natsume Sōseki's unfinished novel Meian (Light and Darkness, 1916). Numerous
studies have examined the gendered nature of speech in Japan, contrasting the assertive, direct styleof male speech with the more deferential, passive characteristics of female speech (Shigeko Okamoto,Janet Shibamoto, Miyako Inouye). Building on these studies, this project examines how variations inspeech forms used in interactions among women serve to either denote power or promote solidarity.
Power language is defined here as strategies promoting a non-reciprocal relationship in which the
speaker determines the mode of interaction, whereas solidarity language encourages camaraderie andharmony. Meian is particularly suitable for this project not only because the novel depicts a large
number of female characters representing a range of social positions and ages, but also because of themany complex relationships and power conflicts which develop among the women. Drawing on
strategies of corpus linguistics, this study will examine sentence-final verb forms and sentence-final
particles used by the female characters, focusing particularly on instances where female speech
appropriates conventional male speech patterns, or deviates in other ways from societal expectationsof proper women’s language (onna kotoba). By drawing on data nearly a century old, this study also
highlights how challenges to gendered language expectations are not only a contemporary
phenomenon, but rather reflective of communication patterns among women that have been present
since the early decades of Japan’s modern period.
5)

Eugene Lee, SOAS, University of London

The Female Other: Images of Qing Women in Eighteenth-Century Yŏnhaengnok
Traveling through Qing China as part of an all-male, Chosŏn diplomatic mission did not allow
for many interactions with women, nor was it common for Chosŏn male writers to write about
women outside the genres of fiction and biography. Why, then, did so many authors of yŏnhaengnok,
travel accounts of China from the latter half of the Chosŏn period, choose to write about the local
women they saw during their travels, even when their encounters were usually brief and amounted tono more than a momentary glimpse? What purpose, if any, would such information serve, and could
it be explained as a strategy of othering? In this paper I examine representations of Qing women inseveral 18th-century yŏnhaengnok texts with a view to better understanding the following: firstly, theauthors' possible preconceptions and expectations with regards to femininity, gender roles, and China
135

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
under Qing rule; secondly, the authors' narrative choices, especially when viewed as negotiations
between the imagined and the real, between the social and personal aspects of the self, and between
literary convention and individual expression; thirdly, the possible impact of the images of Qing
women on Chosŏn readers; and lastly, how this particular line of research may be further pursued tocontribute to ongoing scholarly discussions of Chosŏn-Qing relations and travel literature.

136

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

SUNDAY AFTERNOON SESSIONS II: 3:40 P.M. – 5:40 P.M.
Session 43: Room 1361
Bringing Turkey into Asia and Asian Studies (II)Organizer: Romit Dasgupta, University of Western Australia/Middle East Technical University
Chair: Besim Can Zirh, Middle East Technical University
Asian Studies as a discipline tends to be heavily slanted towards research on (and researchfrom) East, Southeast, and South Asia. The dominant (mis-)perception seems to be that “Asia” ends
at the Pakistan-Iran border. This is problematic, as it excludes entire regions and societies that also
fall within the rubric of “Asia.” Indeed, we need to bear in mind that the term “Asia” was first
applied with reference to a region (Anatolia, in Turkey) that in contemporary Asian Studies gets left
out of the conversation. Accordingly, this panel, using Turkey as a fulcrum, aims to disrupt anddestabilize fixed assumptions and understandings about “Asia” and Asian Studies, by deliberately
traversing borders and boundaries in multiple senses—physical, conceptual, and disciplinary. The
panel members coming together are physically located at the “fringes” of Asia, in Japan, Australia,
and Turkey. They represent a range of disciplinary approaches and standpoints includinginternational relations, history, anthropology, and literary/cultural studies. However, what we have incommon is that we all work on some aspect of “Asia” and/or Asian Studies. Moreover, the reference
point for all of us is Turkey. We are all either located there, or we work on Turkey’s relationships andinteractions with Asia. Thus, through reconsidering these historical and contemporary intersections
between Turkey and “Asia” this panel aims to further contribute to scholarly conversations about
what exactly constitutes “Asia” and Asian Studies.
1)

Ceren Ergenç, Middle East Technical University

Citizen Participation in Recent Neoliberal Transitions: A Comparison between China and Turkey
Deliberative democracy has been a part of discussions on public policy in the West, but isrelatively new to developing countries. The importance given to the non-electoral ways of public
participation in politics dates back to the communicative action theory of Habermas in the 1980s andit has been used as an analytical tool to examine the limitations of Western liberal democracies inproviding a transparent structure engaging citizens with the political process. The second wave ofstudies on public participation appeared in development literature. In the post-Cold War development
paradigm, citizen participation in younger states was offered as a formula to overcome corruption and137

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
stimulate grassroots welfare policies. The 2000s witness a third wave of interest in citizen
participation in public policy, when countries that underwent neoliberal transition in the 1980s
introduced new mechanisms to counter corruption and increase accountability of their public policy
making systems. China and Turkey appear to be comparable among the third wave of citizen
participation experiences for several reasons. Both share a similar historical background of latemodernization. Both transformed from different forms of state-centered economies in the 1980s.
Both have large state apparatuses despite different regime types. Moreover, both started toexperiment with participatory democracy through encouragement from international organizations in
the 2000s. These similarities and differences make China and Turkey an interesting comparison tosee how citizen participation models operate in different political contexts. This study, accordingly,
focuses on town hall meetings held in cities across China and Turkey in the 2010s.
2)

Bahadır Pehlivantürk, TOBB University/Middle East Technical University

Middle Power and its Limits: Japan and Turkey as Traditional and Emerging Middle Powers
The rising foreign policy activism of new players in the world presents an increasingly complex
world with an enriched agenda. This necessitates the construction of new analytical tools and new
ontologies that will aid to a better understanding of new international political dynamics. This study
aims to contribute to this effort by fine tuning the middle/central/constructive power concept throughanalyzing foreign policy behavior of two non-Western countries; Turkey and Japan. By real world
application of a previous attempt to theorize the middle power concept, which was by distinguishing
between “emerging” and “traditional” middle powers, this study aims to bring a new ontological tool
to help a beter understanding of the emerging new world structure, while contributing to the clarity
and applicability of the middle power concept. It is argued that Turkey and Japan are classic
examples of “emerging” and “traditional” middle powers respectively. By comparing the extent andlimits of these two countries’ foreign policies, this study also explores whether the concept of“middle power” and development of such ontologies can contribute to the development of a“non-Western” International Relations approach as well.

138

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

3)

Kōhei Imai, JSPS/Meiji University

Comparative Studies of the Foreign Policy Styles of Japan and Turkey
This presentation aims to shed light on the similar foreign policy approaches of both countries,
especially the trading state policy, public diplomacy, and humanitarian diplomacy, based on “liberal
middle power.” From 2005 to 2011, Turkey had enjoyed the so-called “liberal moment” in relation toforeign policy. Yet, the Syrian civil war brought Turkey’s “liberal moment” back to the traditional“balance of threat”, which jeopardized foreign policy. The recent closer relations between Turkey
and Japan may offer a chance for restoring the earlier liberal strand. Japan and Turkey havemaintained good relations since the Ertuğrul frigate incident in 1890. In recent years, this relationshiphas strengthened. In July 2012, Japan and Turkey decided to promote negotiations of the Economic
Partnership Agreement (EPA). In 2013, the Japanese company Mitsubishi Heavy Industry Ltd and its
French counterpart Areva SA, officially agreed to build a nuclear plant in Sinop. Japanese Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe visited Turkey in May and October 2013. The Turkish Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdoğan visited Japan in January 2014 and Japan and Turkey formally decided to start EPA
negotiations. For Turkey, it is not only Japanese hardware that is attractive, but also its image andprestige as an economic superpower and peace loving nation. Put simply, Japan is seen as a pioneerof trading state policy, public diplomacy, and humanitarian diplomacy. For Japan, spreading of
positive Japanese values to Turkey through its foreign policy fits the “globe-trotting” diplomacy
advocated by the Prime Minister Abe.
Discussant: Aysun Uyar Makibayashi, Doshisha University

139

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

Session 44: Room 1451
Intersections of Gender and Race in the Imagination of Mobility and Futurity in East Asia
Organizer: Baryon Tensor Posadas, University of Minnesota
Chair: Jooyeon Rhee, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
This panel attempts to explore what space exists for articulating acts of transgression when
historical circumstances render such acts almost immediately recuperable in the service of the
reproduction of the status quo, if not already circumscribed in advance. It tackles this impasse that
resides at the heart of any attempt to imagine different forms of mobility and futurity. By weaving the‘imagination of difference’ as a common theme, papers in this panel discuss such issues as migrationand translation, affective and reproductive labor, and the imagination of other words at theintersections of colonial and transnational conception of race and gender with fictional articulationsof the desire to imagine other modes of mobility and futurity. Jooyeon Rhee examines Japanese andKorean translations of The Count of Monte Cristo as a means of exploring colonial masculinity andfemininity. Chikako Nagayama investigates how the normative space of heterosexual home isdeconstructed while different temporalities and spaces of intimacy are sought in the work of Kakuta
Mitsuyo. Baryon Posadas looks at the science-fictional work of Masaki Goro by focusing on the
problem of passing in the context of the techno-orientalism of virtual worlds. Finally, Haerin Shinexamines the staging of difference and repetition in the writing of Sakurazaka Hiroshi and its
transnational adaptation. Against the twinned forces of nationalism and reproductive futurism thathave organized social relations through the past century, these texts speak to the desire to conceive ofother worlds and other modes of social life.
1)

Jooyeon Rhee, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The [Im]mobility of Vengeful Masculinity in Colonial Space: Focusing On A Korean Adaptationof The Count of Monte Cristo
This paper examines the ways in which colonial masculinity manifests in a Korean adaptationof Alexander Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo by focusing on the transnational mobility as thecondition to actualize the hero’s masculine act of vengeance. A Korean adaptation of The Count,which used Kuroiwa Ruiko’s translation of the original as an intermediary text, became popular whenserialized in a colonial newspaper, Maeil sinbo (The Daily News, 1916-17). One contributing factor
for the high popularity of the fiction in colonial Korea is the change of geographical and historicalbackgrounds, thus appealing to the readers with cultural familiarity: the Chinese Edmond Dantès
140

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
travels across contemporary East Asia, moving freely from one major city to another in order to bring
vengeance upon people who deprived him of love, family, and his identity. Korea remains largely
invisible in this adaptation, and yet the near-invisibility of Korean component in the fiction issignificant because it became a space to express a colonized man’s imagination of mobility that is
expanded beyond the colonized territory; and it rather affirms the otherwise ‘invisible man’ whose
immobility is conditioned by the colonial rule. By paying a special attention to the theme ofvengeance as a conduit to express the masculine imagination of freedom in colonial context, this casestudy will demonstrate how the transnational flow of European texts helped translators of receiving
cultures to articulate their experience of social reality.
2)

Baryon Tensor Posadas, University of Minnesota

On the Internet, Nobody Knows You’re a Japanese Woman: Transgression andTechnoorientalism in Japanese Cyberpunk
A characteristic feature of many science fiction writings since the 1980s, especially in the wakeof William Gibson’s groundbreaking novel Neuromancer (1984), is the tendency to meld images ofhigh-tech information networks with gendered and racialized images of an imagined “orient” in acontinuation of the genre’s long-standing historical linkage with colonial discourse. My paper
examines the problem of techno-orientalism from the standpoint of those locations that have become
the object of the science fiction genre’s fantasies of difference. While science fiction often employscolonial imagery with an eye towards its subversion or reversal, my contention is that theexamination of Japanese science fiction texts often reveals the limitations of this gesture, and by
implication, the gendered and racialized infrastructure that sets the terms of the genre’s attempts toimagine other worlds and futurities. In this effort, I take up Masaki Goro’s novel Venus City (1992).
Featuring scenes of racial and gender passing, diasporic virtual worlds, and the commodification oforientalized images in online spaces, Masaki’s novel articulates (without necessarily offering a
resolution to) the persistent challenges involved in envisioning a futurity that does not simply
reproduce the terms of the present not only within the science fiction genre, but also, more broadly,
within the network cultures of the contemporary conjuncture, whose very conception is alreadyinflected by the language of science-fictionality.

141

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

3)

Chikako Nagayama, OCAD University

Resisting the Normative Space of Home: Kakuta Mitsuyo’s The Eighth Day
Gendered divisions of space and labor are one fundamental component in modern capitalist
societies, in which the family is typically maintained through the feminized work of care as well as apatriarchal bloodline. The icon of the good home has been a pivotal stage to construct the moral
significance of women’s sexual containment within normative boundaries and a nostalgic gaze
toward motherly love. Told in two parts, Kakuta Mitsuyo’s novel Yōkame no semi (The Eighth Day,
2007/2010) unsettles taken-for-granted assumptions that underlie this dominant formation of space,gender, affect and time. The first part is told from the perspective of a woman who abducted the
6-month old child of her deserted male lover in 1985. Constantly on the run from one place toanother, the seeming mother-and-daughter bonding between the kidnapper, Kiwako, and the childoccurs in non-home spaces such as love hotels, a women-only religious community, etc. The child’s
gender fluidity is emphasized by her clothing and new given name, Kaoru. The novel’s second half istold from the perspective of the now 20 year-old former abductee going by her legal name, Erina,
since returned by the police to her biological parents at the age of four. This section deconstructs themystification of motherly care, homecoming, blood lineage and heterosexual parenting. Throughdelineating what a child signifies in Kiwako’s and Erina’s searches, this paper will explore how
different spaces and sensibilities of intimacy can be described while undoing gendered norms ofparenting and home.
4)

Haerin Shin, Vanderbilt University

Play. Die. Repeat: The Ludology of Alterity in All You Need Is Kill and The Edge of Tomorrow
In the near future, belligerent alien entities called the Mimics threaten to colonize Earth. The
human protagonist perishes in battle only to be reawakened into a time loop, having absorbed his
foe’s ability to rewind time and preclude the possibility of defeat by death. Accumulating skills andinsight with each reset, the hero inches on towards the task of defeating the enemy race. Hiroshi
Sakurazaka‘s light novel All You Need Is Kill (2004) and its Hollywood adaptation The Edge ofTomorrow (2014) thus set the stage for a mission-driven game narrative, combining the thrills of“vanquish or perish” with the joys of incremental learning. However, the disparate ways in which thetwo texts enlist the Mimics as an ambiguous object of both identification and conquest suggest that“mimicry”—in light of Homi Bhabha’s conceptualization—can be a double-edged sword that cuts
into visions of futurity from both within and without the fabrics of historicity. Does the impulse to142

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts“repeat and reset” one’s relation with the radical other simply subvert and thus ironically sustain
existing hierarchy? Or does the “resetting” mechanism of mimicry neutralize the foundation of theconflict itself? Drawing on the discursive tradition of identity politics, I position the ludology of“repetitive mimicry” at the intersection of post- and decolonial subject formation, whereby futurity
either hinges upon an ontological cannibalization of the threatening other or an epistemic disavowalof the relational logic that constitutes the boundary between the I and the Other.
Discussant: Akiko Shimizu, University of Tokyo

143

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

Session 45: Room 1351
Metropolis in Asia: Representations and Reconfigurations of Contemporary Urban Spaces
Organizer: Gala Maria Follaco, University of Naples L’Orientale
Chair: Alessandra Cappelletti, The American University of RomeThe objective of this panel is to investigate the dynamics of appropriation, reappropriation, andrepresentation of the urban space in Asia by its inhabitants and to relate it to the policies of spacepursued by the authorities. In the last century, countries such as China and India have experienced avertiginous rate of change, and the role played by the cities is becoming more and more crucial, since
governmental authorities acknowledge the potential of urban landscapes as means of advertising andassertion of power. The present panel aims at deconstructing the image of the new urban sceneries inorder to analyse the rhetorical apparatus at work in the processes of constitution of globally
acknowledged cityscapes. The Asian City can be considered a visible form of the current changes, aspecimen of contemporary life, the setting of multiple narratives speaking their own languages,
representing and disguising reality through specific rhetorical systems: cities can be shelters orstrongholds, but also weapons shaped by the needs of power. Inscribed with its past, the City
provides insights for a hermeneutic reread of history: like the Bakhtinian chronotope, its space“becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot and history.” Chinese and Indian
cities can, thus, be read not under the obsolete binarism of centre vs. periphery, good areas vs.
ghettoes, but rather like alternative examples of fluid and ever-changing “metropolitan modernities,”
where the imaginary of the world is deconstructed and reconstructed without solution of continuity.
1)

Tommaso Bobbio, University of Turin

The Will to Appear Global: Urban Development, Marginality and Territorial Transformation in
the Narratives of Slum Dwellers of Ahmedabad (West India)
The city of Ahmedabad, in the northwestern state of Gujarat, emerged as one of the fastest
growing and wealthiest cities in nowadays India. Since the early 1980s the city went through a
decade of deep economic crisis and was shaken by recurrent episodes of collective violence between
Hindus and Muslims. Facing this situation, urban authorities and planners sought to revive the city’s
economy by making Ahmedabad the vanguard of neo-liberal economic development in India. Plansof urban beautification were launched along with a systematic deregulation of the labour market, inorder to transform the city in a store-window and to attract investment from both local and foreign
corporations. The success of such a strategy projected Ahmedabad to be considered as one of the144

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
most ‘globalised’ and ‘modern’ cities in the context of rising India. By analysing the narratives
emerging through individual memories, collected from the most backward areas of Ahmedabad, thispaper proposes to reconsider the process of urban transformation from the unprivileged angle of theurban poor. Popular accounts engage with issues like citizenship, migration, access to services andinfrastructure, political mobilisation, and violence revealing discrepancies from the abstract languageof politicians, administrators and planners, and the actual effects of planning policies on the socialand cultural fabric of the city. People’s strategies to adapt to urban life are also the result of constantnegotiations with the public authority, in a way that shows how the urban poor perceived, dealt withor reacted to the administrative and political powers.
2)

Mara Matta, Sapienza University of Rome

Dhaka, a Multi-Minded City of Thousands of Villages: The Case of the Micro-Polis of the Mandi(Garo) Tribal Women
Dhaka, with her thousand mosques and muezzins chanting the azan five times a day, with thedilapidated old buildings sandwiched between new piled-up apartments blocks and ancient minarets
quickly and messily turbaned by electric wires, leaves you constantly breathless with a sense ofdisplacement and the physical feeling of being—always and everywhere—an outsider. The city,
despite some timid efforts, seems unable to attract potential tourists. This may be due to the feelingthat the ‘slumification’ of the world (Davis, 2006) has been particularly successful in the urban
enclaves of Bangladesh, at least according to the outsiders’ imaginary. And yet, Dhaka is a historical,
situated and layered ancient South Asian city that deserves more attention. Dhaka needs to be thoughtof as a city created out of the juxtaposition of little villages, as the poet Azfar Hussain puts it, “At
least eighty-five thousand villages that keep sticking out like night-black veins and arteries all overyour body.” My paper aims at presenting the micro-polis of the Mandi (Garo) tribal women who live
and work in Dhaka, having chosen this city as the place where to nurture their idea of modernity andsocial uplifting, far from the green villages and the wild hills. In particular, I would like to address
the creation of a ‘space of survival’ where they try to reconfigure their lives, whilst keeping a strong
tie with customary laws and traditions recreated in the ‘home away from home’ constituted by the
micro-polis inside the Dhaka megalopolis.

145

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

3)

Alessandra Cappelletti, American University of Rome

The New Xinjiang: Towards a Reassessment of the Interpretative Binarisms, Centre-Peripheryand Urban-Rural
This paper is an effort to deconstruct the traditional binarism centre-periphery and rural-urban
adopted to analyse socio-political change in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. On the basis of
the most recent publications on the region (Cliff, 2013; Finley, 2013; Hillman, 2013), and fieldworks
in the rural and urban areas of Xinjiang (2007—2012) - including interviews to local authorities andfarmers, participant observation and analysis of land contracts and documents - a grounded theory
approach has been adopted to explore the dynamics of socio-political change, and to place Xinjiang
neither at the edges of Chinese culture and society nor at the margins of its political discourse, but atthe center of a new matrix of power interactions in the socio-political environment of today’s China.
The traditional interpretative categories adapted to understand changes in Xinjiang will bereconsidered and reassessed through two case studies: the shift from long-term land use certificates toshort-term land leasing contracts and the consequent increase of land seizures in the region; thegrowing migration waves of Uyghur peasant workers from the rural areas to perceived-as-alien newurban landscapes. Peasants move to cities and urban investors to the countryside, setting new rules
for understanding urbanities and farmers' ares. The transformation of rural villages in towns, and the
new urban districts where peasant workers live, will be considered as cases of the new situation,
while the resistance of traditional mechanisms are generating a new geography of power in the whole
region, characterized by many centers of economic and social development.
4)

Giulia Rampolla, University of Naples L’Orientale/ University of Macerata

Individualism, Reshaping of the Urban Space and Migrations: Perspectives of the Metropolis in
Twenty-first Century Chinese Fiction
The incredibly fast urban development that China has been experiencing over the last few
decades, along with the country’s involvement into the global market and the modernisation process,has caused radical changes not only in the big cities’ exterior shape, but also in the whole culturalconfiguration. Chinese rapidly expanding metropolises are vectors for new cultural sensibilities,
moral values and social contradictions, brought about by the impact of the fast growing economy on
the life of urban dwellers. Chinese contemporary literature could not but show the traces of thissituation, revealing individualism, eclecticism, foreign influences, a new attention for lower classes
and migrant workers, social competition, a new gender awareness of women, web influences, and146

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
other aspects directly related to metropolis. Thus we may argue that each feature of the Chinese
metropolis exerts direct influence on literary production and each literary trend is somehow linked toan aspect of the new urban life. The urbanisation process, tangible in the proliferation of construction
sites everywhere, through which the space is constantly expanded and redesigned, communicates afeeling of bewilderment and anxiety, which often emerges in writing. This paper analyses the relation
between urbanisation and literature in contemporary China, focusing on the fictional representationof social contradictions produced by capitalism and globalisation.
Discussant: Gala Maria Follaco, University of Naples L’Orientale

147

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

Session 46: Room 1458
Ethics of Representation in Modern Japanese Literature
Organizer/Chair: Kathryn Tanaka, Otemae University
Questions of the writer’s position and the ethical representation of experience in literature havelong been an issue of scholarly interest: examples are concerns over the representations of traumatic
events such as the Holocaust or the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. This panel seeks to expand thestudy of ethical perspectives beyond trauma to include literature in specific historic and culturalcontexts. Kathryn Tanaka explores the ethical implications of a gendered representation of Ogawa
Masako and her work with sufferers of Hansen’s Disease (leprosy) through women’s magazines andOgawa’s bestselling 1938 novel Kojima no Haru (Spring on the Small Island). Mika Endo revisits
the ethical tensions faced by pioneering children’s writers Suzuki Miekichi, Ogawa Mimei, and poet
Kitahara Hakushu as they sought to preserve the innocence and purity they valorized in the young
subjects they wrote for. Kayo Takeuchi examines the ethics of animal and human relations inliterature through a queer reading of Matsuura Eriko’s Kenshin (The Dog’s Body), and finally Shun
Izutani takes up Shinoda Setsuko’s Chōjo-tachi (Eldest Daughters) to examine the ethics behind therepresentation of care for the aging as a women’s social issue. Collectively, these scholars examine
ethical tensions and ambiguities in literature and reveal the ways in which ethical readings challenge
and enrich literary engagement.
1)

Kathryn Tanaka, Otemae University

Heroic Women, Tragic Fates: Representing Women and Hansen’s Disease in the 1930s
In the early twentieth century, government policies regulated the quarantine of patientsdiagnosed with Hansen’s Disease (leprosy). As government policies were increasingly streamlined,
the issue of Hansen’s Disease sufferers and their care received growing media attention. Thisattention peaked in the mid-1930s with the rising popularity of a genre known as “leprosy literature,”
writings by institutionalized sufferers. As this patient literature gained more attention, so too did theliterary works of the doctors who treated them. The best-known example of physician writing is the1938 novel Kojima no Haru (Spring on the Small Island) by Ogawa Masako, a doctor at Nagashima
Aisei-en, the first national Hansen’s Disease hospital. Later made into a movie, Kojima no Haru andOgawa as its author received broad media attention in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Taken up in
newspapers, popular women’s magazines, and hygienic journals, articles about Ogawa highlighted
the role of women in the fight to rid Japan of the illness. Women and their role in illness prevention
148

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
became one of the points in the national battle against Hansen’s Disease. Ogawa and women like her
were lauded as heroines working for the nation, and as a result, scholars have treated her as an agent
enforcing quarantine policies. In this presentation, I draw on feminist theories of representation toargue against such a reading, and reveal ambiguities and tensions between Ogawa’s text and hertreatment in popular media. In doing so, I highlight the questions of ethics and representational
practices her writings reveal.
2)

Mika Endo, Bard College

The Trouble with Children: Ethical Dilemmas in Creating a New Children’s Culture in 1910s and1920s Japan
Conventional narratives of the emergence of children’s culture often describe a ‘romantic’ turnin the Taisho period, following an initial Meiji period phase during which children’s culture washeavily influenced by the view of children as future national subjects to be inculcated. During thisperiod, the child was celebrated as an antidote to modernization’s excesses and possessors of a link toman’s natural state: the child was a powerful figure embodying the possibilities for retrieval andaccess to something lost. Suzuki Miekichi’s pioneering children’s magazine, Akai Tori (Red Bird)
was at the center of this paradigmatic shift away from various forms of moralistic Meiji children’sculture toward the embrace of such forms as dowa and doyo that were concerned with impeding lessheavily on the child’s natural state. But what has been overlooked in the scholarship on children’sculture of this period is the historical tension experienced by children’s writers as they confronted theadult desire to engage, teach, and please the child, and the concomitant ethical impulse to leave as
little mark as possible upon the child’s perceived purity. Through an examination of their literaryworks, professional activities, and personal writings, I shed light on the ethical dilemmas encounteredby pioneering figures of children’s culture including Ogawa Mimei, Suzuki Miekichi, and Kitahara
Hakushu as they laid down a foundation for modern children’s culture in the twentieth century.
3)

Kayo Takeuchi, Nihon University

The Cared for Dog and the Caring Dog: Ethical Possibilities in Matsuura Reiko’s Kenshin (The
Dog’s Body)
Matsuura Eriko is well known as a novelist who has challenged gender norms and normative
sexuality in Japan. In particular, one of the most prominent themes in her oeuvre deals with acts ofsurrendering to pleasure and deep intimacy between two persons (particularly women) without
reliance on sexual apparatuses or regard for heterosexual norms and gender roles. In most cases, she
149

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
depicts sadomasochistic subordinate-superior relationships between females and the ensuing conflicts
that emerge therein. A work that is in keeping with this theme is Matsuura’s novel, Kenshin (The
Dog’s Body, 2007), which portrays the rapport between a woman, who willingly transforms into adog, and a dog-loving woman. As for the relation between the dog and the woman, however, inKenshin, we can see neither a subordinate-superior relationship nor conflict. Then, given Matsuura’s
previous works, what meaning can we read in the relationship between dog and dog-lover? What is
the meaning of the appearance of a dog rather than a woman? In this presentation, I will reinterpretthe relation between these two women (although one might argue that this is a relationship between
dog and woman) not only in the light of the ethical problems concerning animals and their care, butalso through the critical lens of queer theory. I will argue that in Kenshin Matsuura experiments withthe critical potential within a relationship based on an "ethics of care" (Carol Gilligan) that resists not
only a family fantasy dependent on gender and genitals, but also the neo-liberalism of Japan.
4)

Izutani Shun, Ritsumeikan University

Self-reliance and Escaping the Family: Contemporary Japanese Women’s Literature and Ethics
of CareThe phenomenon of an aging society is an inescapable social and political issue in Japan today.
As early as the 1970s, Japanese authors took up the topic of an aging society, and the issue is only
gaining more attention. In general, such works depict the conflict of ethics and ego involved in careof aging parents. In this presentation, I take up Shinoda Setsuko’s 2014 work, Chōjo-tachi (Eldest
Daughters). Chōjo-tachi is a series of three novelettes, each featuring an eldest daughter as aprotagonist. In these works, the protagonists serve as a representation of issues women face inmodern Japan. Indeed, Shinoda orients care of the elderly as a gendered social issue through her
depictions of friction with parents, marriage, and caring for aging mothers. This paper analysizes
social relations, gender hierarchy, and the problems of an aging society in Shinoda’s work. I argue
that while in Japan it is often believed that the specifics of providing care are closely tied to blood
relationships, Shinoda in fact suggests that it is necessary for women to be economically independentand escape the social orientation on the family. Indeed, this theme is not unique to Chōjo-tachi; in thepast, Shinoda depicted the image of a woman’s life before and after the passage of the Equal
Employment Opportunity law. Shinoda depicted a burly, self-reliant woman who did not rely on
corporate society. Thus, I read Chōjo-tachi as a development of the themes of women, work andfamily begun in her previous works.

150

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
Discussant: Tsuboi Hideto, International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken)

151

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

Session 47: Room 1353
Individual Papers 10: Nineteenth Century History
Chair: Bettina Gramlich-Oka, Sophia University
1)

Michael Abele, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

From Bakurō to Butchers: An Osaka Outcaste Community in Japan’s Long Nineteenth Century
This paper examines the establishment of the Saraike village slaughterhouse (located in modern
day Osaka Prefecture) in the early Meiji period, and its link to status-based society of the earlymodern era. Following its establishment in 1879, the Saraike slaughterhouse was initially able toprocess thousands more cattle than its nearby competitors. I argue that this was due to the role ofSaraike village’s former outcastes in early modern Kansai society, which included both nursing sickdraft animals back to health, and slaughtering those too sick to live for their hides. My paper utilizes
the documents of the former headman of Saraike village, which cover cattle trading and butcher
related matters from the late eighteenth century to the mid-Meiji period. From the late sixteenth
century on, Japanese outcaste communities were tasked with the collection of draft animal carcasses
by the feudal state. This ready access to hides also gave these communities a monopoly on leather
production. The rapid growth of the consumer economy in the late seventeenth century led to rise in
the value of leather, which proved a great source of income to outcaste communities. Yet by the earlynineteenth century, the outcastes of Saraike village were so dependent on the leather economy thatthey increasingly turned to slaughtering cattle illegally under the term “bakurō” (horse trader) to meetthe demands of the Osaka leather merchants. As a result, Saraike village already possessed several
skilled butchers before ordinances banning the slaughter of cattle were relaxed in the Meiji period.
2)

Joshua Schlachet, Columbia University

Social Ills and Poison Foods: The Culture of Productive Digestion in Late-Tokugawa Japan
This paper links the history of health to food and popular culture to explore how the category of
poison was conceived in Tokugawa-era dietary texts. It focuses on two key terms: nōdoku, themedicinal benefits and poisons inherent in ingredients, and kuiawase, the hazardous consequences of
eating foods in improper combinations. I argue that anxieties over the dangers of improper
consumption loomed large in discussions of diet during the late-Tokugawa era (1600—1868), andauthors responded by advocating patterns of consumption that shunned hazardous foods whilebolstering the body’s productive capacity within the Tokugawa economic and social order. At the152ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
interface between food and the body, the digestive system provided the means to maintain longevity,
but only when fueled with the proper ingredients. Conversely, it was also understood as fragile andsusceptible to interruption, poisoning, and premature death if treated improperly. By addressing what
could poison you, under what circumstances, and in what combinations, vernacular dietary texts
aimed to demystify the inner workings of the body. Yet their consequences reverberated beyond theboundary of one’s own skin. Medical practitioners and popular authors likened the proper
functioning of the digestive system to the functioning of a well-nourished body within the
agricultural labor-oriented economy, framing the body as a unit of productivity. I trace dietary bestpractices and their social implications through manuals and works of urban fiction such as An
Illustrated Guide to the Benefits and Poisons of Various Fish and Shellfish (1849) and Food Fight in
the Stomach Capital (1788).
3)

Sohn Heejeong, SUNY at Stony Brook

Photography and Kojong’s Body Politics
In negotiating the old and the new to create a modern visual regime, Korea’s King Kojong(1852—1919) played a salient role as both decision-maker and connoisseur of modern photography.
However, photography neither officially replaced the role of the traditional ŏjin (royal portrait
painting) nor was it adopted as an official state device as it had been in Meiji Japan, the country fromwhich Chosŏn dynasty learned it. As Kojong was publicly transgressing many traditional visual
norms, and transforming himself from an invisible to a visible monarch through photography, thecourt’s official approaches to Western visual technology were ambiguous, seemingly anachronistic,
and even contradictory in practice. For the same goals of creating the aura of modernity through theroyal/imperial body, the monarch and the court differed in their approaches and official government
records hint a clear dissonance between royal photographic practices and the court’s visual policies.
This does not mean that visualizing the monarch was suppressed or discouraged. Instead, modern
images of Kojong were created and controlled by the court in particular ways. This presentation willaddress visual negotiations and compromises over the body politics of King Kojong in Chosŏn
dynasty Korea (and later the Taehan Empire) at the turn of the last century.

153

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

4)

Gary Chi-hung Luk, University of Oxford

The British Expedition to China and the Chinese Junk Trade during the Opium War, 1840–1842
This paper examines the relations between the British Expedition to China and the Chinese
junk trade during the Opium War in 1840—42 to show how the British forces affected thesocio-economic activities of the Chinese in South China’s maritime and riverine regions affected by
the war and brought a new order to these regions. The first part of this paper quotes numerous
examples to show that the British expeditionary forces greatly disturbed the Chinese junk trade.
During the war, many Chinese merchant junks changed their routes or anchorages. The delay of thearrival of the cargoes at their destinations caused problems to many Chinese shippers. On manyoccasions trading craft and cargoes were even condemned and sold on public sale. The Chinese junktrade beyond the regions where the war was fought and the British forces were present was also
adversely affected. Nevertheless, junk trade between China and Singapore somehow became more
prosperous during the war. The second part of this paper examines the wartime regulations, taxationand tax exemption that the British Expedition imposed on the Chinese junk trade. The British
authorities of the China Expedition regulated the Chinese junk trade by imposing a certificate system
on Chinese merchant vessels. While the British forces taxed the cargoes of Chinese merchantmen in
the east of Zhejiang province, they exempted Chinese trading junks from paying taxes at the freeports of Hong Kong and Zhoushan during the war.
5)

Warren Stanislaus, Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation

Laughing at Japanese History: Satire and Laughter in the Late Nineteenth Century
This paper examines the significance of satire and laughter during the Bakumatsu and Meiji
period. The established narrative of the birth of modern Japan has seldom been questioned, withnation building from above and progress along the lines of western civilization being the primarymeanings attached to the ‘opening’ of Japan. As such, the history of Japan’s ‘opening’ has ironically
been a closed study. Developments in historiography has meant that alternative narratives of Japan’s
opening are now being told, with unconventional sources and the stories of those on the peripheries
nuancing our understanding of events. Through the use of hitherto neglected sources such as political
cartoons, illustrated newspapers and gesaku literature produced by both Japanese and foreign satirists,
this paper attempts to re-open the history of modern Japan. In particular this essay explores the
preponderance of laughter during this period. Using theoretical works on laughter, parody and satire
by Mikhail Bakhtin and others, this paper argues that laughter was used to deconstruct, break open
154

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
and challenge the established definitions of ‘civilization and enlightenment.’ While some scholars
have sought to fit such works within the modernization discourse, and have concluded that they are
merely nativist, traditionalist or orientalist expressions of resistance, this paper contends that laughterand satire was employed to empower the masses to engage in a debate surrounding the meanings ofprogress, in order to offer up competing views of modernity. As such the implications of thetransnational and collaborative nature of satire during this period is also underscored.

155

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

Session 48: Room 1358
Individual Papers 11: Nineteenth Century Northeast Asian History
Chair: Ed Drott, Sophia University
1)

Greg Wilkinson, Brigham Young University

Ritual Processes and Material Exchange in Modern Shingon Pilgrimages
In 2014 the Shikoku Pilgrimage Association commemorated the 1200-year anniversary of their
88-station pilgrimage. Tradition holds that the pilgrimage route follows the travels of Kobo Daishi in
814. Through field work in Shikoku and Hokkaido in the summer of 2014, this paper explores the
success of the Shikoku pilgrimage by analyzing the relationships among temples and the pilgrimage
association in order to create an ever evolving, creative, and complex system of ritual processes andmaterial exchange. Material exchange most commonly includes gaining stamps (goshuin) on scrolls
or jackets, and in books. It also includes the depositing of name cards (osame fuda), and thecollecting of temple cards (omie). Material exchange results in collections, which set standards forritual participation, evidence pilgrims’ effort and commitment, and even distinguish one pilgrim fromanother. These practices have been copied by pilgrimage associations and Shingon temples
throughout Japan. Notably, several Shingon Buddhist temples have cooperated in creating an
88-station pilgrimage circumscribing the island of Hokkaido. These attempts of Shikoku pilgrimage
replication consistently focus on ritual processes of recording temple visits through material
exchange. Conditions such as temple size, location, weather, and number of visitors limit the typeand quality of material exchange that Shikoku replications can practically provide. However, theeffectiveness in providing these ritual processes is essential to the success and perpetuation of the
Shikoku pilgrimage and its replications.
2)

Malgorzala Citko, University of Hawaii, Manoa

Ritual as a Means of Establishing Power: Ritualistic Character of the Rokujo and Mikohidari
Poetic Schools’ Practices
In ancient Japan various religious rituals were one of the means to enhance the central positionof the emperor and to legitimize the imperial court. Ritual was thus a tool in the process ofestablishing power. This paper examines how the practices of the Rokujo and Mikohidari poetic
schools also served as media to gain power in the early medieval poetic world. It turns out thatvarious rituals, e.g. Hitomaro eigu (a ceremony worshiping the portrait and poetry of a Manyoshu
156

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts
poet Kakinomoto Hitomaro [late 600’s]) practiced by the Rokujo school, and certain practices
cultivated by both the Rokujo and Mikohidari schools, e.g. transmission of texts and literaryknowledge orally and in a form of karon (poetry criticism), participation in utaawase (poetry
contests) as contestants and poetic arbiters, were means to establish their position in the early
medieval era. Ritualistic character of the Rokujo and Mikohidari schools’ practices enabled them not
only to demonstrate that they possessed traditions, lineages of scholarship and knowledge about
literature, but it above all allowed them to advertize their poetic activity to potential patrons. I believeboth schools attempted to legitimize their position as specialists about certain literary texts.
Ultimately, they attempted to ensure sponsorship of their poetic activity in the future. The history ofJapanese poetry demonstrates that the Mikohidari poets “won the battle” for the poetic patronage andposition of leaders of the medieval poetic world.
3)

Wilburn Hansen, San Diego State University

Jindai Moji Discourse: “Aliterate” Literacy
My study is an attempt to reach an understanding on various interconnected levels of thenineteenth century Japanese religious ritual entitled Maichô shinpai shiki written by the nationalist
scholar, Hirata Atsutane. My thesis in this endeavor is the assertion that this ritual worked as nativist
rhetoric, and that it was intentionally crafted in order to work. By “work” I mean that it had an“explanatory affect,” so that by some various modes of persuasion and by the attendant modes ofunderstanding consistent with such persuasion, this ritual made sense to the practitioners. That is, it
was purposefully constructed to create, maintain, and reinforce a religious understanding of thecosmos and the practitioners’ role and orientation in that cosmos. I will show that this ritual is notjust about a list of kami and shrines to be worshiped each morning as its title would suggest.
Instead, it is a ritual that by various interesting strategies, some obvious and some subtle, creates a
new and special identity for the Japanese people. It provides a strong sense of unity and community.
And also, it empowers a symbol, an abstraction of the emperor, which could politically subjugate any
and all Japanese. But by the same token, this same symbol could then be used to empower not only
those close to the emperor, but actually any and all Japanese who chose to wield this symbol for theirown religious and political interests.

157

ASCJ 2015 Abstracts

4)

Cindi Textor, University of Washington

Queer(ing) Language in Yi Kwangsu’s Mujong
Yi Kwangsu’s Mujŏng (Heartless, 1917) is described as Korea’s first modern novel. The“modernity” in the work is located both in its innovative vernacular language and in its concern withthemes of individual subjectivity and romantic love. In this way, the style and content of Yi’s longserialized novel provide a glimpse of Korean language and culture in transition in the early years ofJapanese colonial rule (1910—1945). The text illuminates the tension between the diverse modes ofwriting existing in pre-colonial Korean and the pressure to conform to a hegemonic “modern” formof written language. At the same time, the novel depicts a variety of romantic relationships—many
outside the bounds of compliance with heteronormative notions of acceptable love—and the pressure
on subjects engaged in these romances ultimately to comply with dominant “modern” ideas aboutromance and sexuality. Thus, the novel depicts the process of constricting, in colonial context,
acceptable possibilities in the realms of language and sexuality simultaneously. In spite of this senseof constriction, however, Mujŏng also subtly offers sites of resistance to these imperial
reconfigurations of sexuality and language. This paper explores these sites, viewing the hybrid andmultifarious nature of the novel's language as a form of queerness that mimics the queer sexualities
presented in the course of the story. I argue that even as the politically tenable possibilities available
in the realms of language and sexuality are diminished, the queer practices legible in Yi Kwangsu’s
text offer the chance to forge new and empowering linguistic and sexual possibilities.

158