FOURTH ANNUAL OSAKA GRADUATE CONFERENCE IN JAPANESE STUDIESJanuary 8, 2022 (Saturday), Osaka University Toyonaka Campus
Engineering Science International Hall Seminar RoomTime

Speaker

10:00–10:10

Introductions and Opening Remarks(UNODA Shōya and Nicholas LAMBRECHT, Osaka University)

10:10–12:30

PANEL #1

10:10

Japan’s Vaccine Diplomacy:
Impacts of Donor Country Concerns on Humanitarian Aid(Jeehyun PARK, Sophia University)

10:45“Attractive Men” as Objet Petit A in the Self-Help Books of “Ginza Mamas”(Mitsuko ŌE, Nagoya University)

11:20

Female Warriors in Medieval Japanese Video Games:
Representations and Negotiations of Historical and Cultural Understanding(Carmel Anne ABELA, Nagoya University)

11:55

Liminal Identities: Buddhist Image Carvers
in Modern and Contemporary Japan(Alin Gabriel TIRTARA, Osaka University)

12:30–13:30

Lunch Break

13:30–15:50

PANEL #2

13:30

Two Poetries Facing Each Other: Communication between Japanese Poetry
and Chinese Poetry in Premodern Japanese Literature(HUANG Mengge, Osaka University)

14:05

The Mirrored Self and the Epistemology of Reconciliation: Ōe Kenzaburō’s
Okinawa Notes and the Taiwanese Indigenous Film Finding Sayun(GUO Tianyi, Hiroshima University)

14:40

Japanese Reception to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and His 1982 Visit to Japan:
Anti-Communism, Historical Awareness, and the Japanese Communist Party(Ahlam YANG, Nagoya University)
Voices of the Desert and the Sea: Literature and the Environment

15:15

in the Works of Abdelrahman Munif and Ishimure Michiko(Munia HWEIDI, Sophia University)

15:50–16:00

Short Break

16:00–16:45

General Discussion(Comments by Kathryn TANAKA, University of Hyogo; Yufei ZHOU,
German Institute for Japanese Studies; and the conference organizers)

FOURTH ANNUAL OSAKA GRADUATE CONFERENCE IN JAPANESE STUDIES
Osaka University Global Studies Education and Research Incubator / Graduate
School of Letters, Osaka University / Consortium for Global Japanese Studies

Japan’s Vaccine Diplomacy:
Impacts of Donor Country Concerns on Humanitarian Aid
Jeehyun PARK
Doctoral Candidate, Sophia University
Japan has long played a leading role in international cooperation and foreign aid.
Despite recent reductions in the scale of its contributions, Japan is still among the top
five donor countries in the world. Japan has been widely criticized by the international
community for its selective choice of recipients, its preference for environmentally
harmful projects, and its high proportion of projects based on bilateral loans. On theother hand, this sort of donor profile based on geopolitical and infrastructure concerns
can be seen as justified. The high quality of Japan’s infrastructure technology is oneof its most significant strengths among donor countries. In addition, Japan is not the
only country that emphasizes investment in Southeast Asia and the Indo-Pacific area.
However, the character of Japan’s donorship has reemerged as a topic of debate
during the ongoing fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. In giving vaccine aid, Japan
has mainly concentrated on Asian countries, resulting in claims that the fundamental
motivation behind Japan’s vaccine aid has been a desire to combat Chinese andRussian influence in Southeast Asia, rather than an interest in humanitarian support.
In this presentation, I examine Japan’s donorship in order to determine whether
Japan’s recent aid activities and foreign aid performance have taken into consideration
existing criticism and policy recommendations for improving Japan’s humanitarian
donorship. If such policy recommendations have not been implemented sufficiently,
does Japan’s aid today remain centered on geopolitics with a biased preference for a
specific type of aid project? If so, is such a donor-centric approach also evident inJapan’s recent vaccine aid? To find answers to these research questions, I analyze
OECD peer reviews from 2014 and 2020 and compare them to Japan’s donor profile.
Then I evaluate the effectiveness of the humanitarian aspects of Japan’s donorshipby looking at the decisions behind Japan’s vaccine procurement and the selection ofrecipients for Japan’s vaccine aid.

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FOURTH ANNUAL OSAKA GRADUATE CONFERENCE IN JAPANESE STUDIES
Osaka University Global Studies Education and Research Incubator / Graduate
School of Letters, Osaka University / Consortium for Global Japanese Studies“Attractive Men” as Objet Petit A
in the Self-Help Books of “Ginza Mamas”
Mitsuko ŌE
Doctoral Student, Nagoya University
Since the 1970s, numerous self-help books have been written by hostesses working
at nightclubs in Japan. Many of these books were written by “Ginza Mamas”, head
hostesses working as hostess club managers in the famous Ginza entertainment
district in Tokyo. The books written by Ginza Mamas mostly share advice on the same
theme: how to become an “attractive man”. In all, more than eighty books by Ginza
Mamas about “attractive men” have been published between 1971 and 2021. In thispresentation, I attempt to determine why the self-help book market on “attractive men”
has persisted for such an extended period. To do so, I examine how Ginza Mamas
have characterized “attractive men” in their narratives.
In their self-help books, Ginza Mamas frequently describe examples of customers
whom they consider “attractive men”. These examples are followed by explanations
about the traits “attractive men” have in common or the things one should do to
become “attractive”. Nevertheless, the examples given by Ginza Mamas consistently
fail to pin down the definition of an “attractive man”. In other words, in the narrativesof Ginza Mamas, there is no one who can be considered the ideal “attractive man”. In
this sense the figure of the “attractive man” described by Ginza Mamas can beconsidered what Jacques Lacan identified as objet petit a, the unattainable object
causing desire.
Therefore, in this presentation, I employ ideas from Lacanian psychoanalysis to
explore readers’ desire to become or to meet the “attractive man” idealized in thewritings of Ginza Mamas. I argue that it is precisely because this “attractive man” does
not actually exist that the figure functions as objet petit a, instilling in readers a desire
to embody it. This helps explain why the “attractive man” self-help book market hascontinued to exist for more than fifty years.

4FOURTH ANNUAL OSAKA GRADUATE CONFERENCE IN JAPANESE STUDIES
Osaka University Global Studies Education and Research Incubator / Graduate
School of Letters, Osaka University / Consortium for Global Japanese Studies

Female Warriors in Medieval Japanese Video Games:
Representations and Negotiations of Historical and Cultural Understanding
Carmel Anne ABELA
Doctoral Student, Nagoya University
This research explores representations of female warriors in the historical video
games Ghost of Tsushima (2020) and Sengoku Musō 5 (Samurai Warriors 5, 2021).
Ghost of Tsushima and Sengoku Musō 5 are set in the Kamakura period and Sengoku
period, respectively, thus situating their female characters within predominantly malewarrior societies. Since these characters are responsive and playable representationsof a reimagined past, then to some degree, they may be treated as artifacts of the pastwith which players must negotiate in order to interact with the game setting. In addition,
depictions of female warriors are rare in historical records of medieval Japan, raising
the question of the degree to which the creation of these game characters has been
influenced by contemporary sentiments, popular culture, and idealized imagery.
Scholars including Adam Chapman (2012, 2016), Majed Balela and Darren Mundy(2011), and Jeremiah McCall (2019) have shown that a video game’s form, affordance,
and agency can tell us what parts of the real and reimagined past are deemed
important by their creators. Furthermore, the structures of video games can invite
players to interrogate in-game representations of history, often prompting players to
use their own experiences as touchstones. Therefore, my presentation focuses on twoareas requiring further analysis. First, I examine narrative and game design. Second,
I analyze how representations of characters in video games reflect resonance with, orare subject to the resistance of, video game players. While this research provides a
critical analysis of video game content, it also highlights insights drawn from interviews
with non-Japanese players and viewers in order to understand more fully how
representations of female warriors in works like Sengoku Musō 5 and Ghost of
Tsushima are consumed and interpreted abroad.

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FOURTH ANNUAL OSAKA GRADUATE CONFERENCE IN JAPANESE STUDIES
Osaka University Global Studies Education and Research Incubator / Graduate
School of Letters, Osaka University / Consortium for Global Japanese Studies

Liminal Identities: Buddhist Image Carvers
in Modern and Contemporary Japan
Alin Gabriel TIRTARA
Doctoral Student, Osaka University
This research involves analysis of modern and contemporary Buddhist image carvers(busshi) as occupants of a liminal category between the categories of “artist” and“craftsman”. Distinctions between artists and craftsmen were unknown in Japan prior
to the Meiji Restoration. Nevertheless, beginning with the introduction of the Westernconcept of “art” to Japan in the Meiji era, busshi came to be regarded as mere
craftsmen with little of the creative genius of their medieval predecessors. Similarly,
despite forming the backbone of Japanese art history, Buddhist statues were graduallyreplaced by Western forms of sculpture after the start of the modern period. However,in recent years the position of busshi has reemerged as an occupation and busshi
have even begun to attract interest in artistic circles.
Investigating busshi provides an excellent opportunity to explore the liminal spaces
between art and craft, on the one hand, and art and religion on the other. At the sametime, it is important to remain aware of issues surrounding Japanese national identity.
Concentrating on the period from the Meiji era onward, my analysis focuses on threeelements: changing perceptions toward traditional Japanese crafts such as wood
carving, the dynamic between busshi and the concepts of “national treasures” and“cultural properties”, and the religious backgrounds of the images involved. My
presentation argues that two factors contributed in significant ways to the developmentof the modern busshi category. The first factor was the postwar effort to rebuild
Japanese national pride, which led to a positive reevaluation of traditional crafts andthe repositioning of busshi within a larger discourse on “Japaneseness”. The second
factor is new engagement with the art world by busshi in recent years, which has
contributed to increasing challenges to the idea of an art-craft hierarchy.

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FOURTH ANNUAL OSAKA GRADUATE CONFERENCE IN JAPANESE STUDIES
Osaka University Global Studies Education and Research Incubator / Graduate
School of Letters, Osaka University / Consortium for Global Japanese Studies

Two Poetries Facing Each Other: Communication between Japanese Poetry
and Chinese Poetry in Premodern Japanese Literature
HUANG Mengge
Doctoral Student, Osaka University
Many works of premodern Japanese literature are composed of combinations ofJapanese poetry and Chinese poetry. Writings of this kind include kudai-waka(Japanese poetry adapted from Chinese poetry), shika-awase (poetry arranged with
Chinese poetry on the left and Japanese poetry on the right), and wakan-renku (linked
verses of Japanese and Chinese poetry). Such works were often composed at public
events organized by the influential, educated class and are therefore useful materials
when exploring Japanese-Chinese literary communication in the context of premodern
Japanese literature. These works highlight many aspects of the close relationshipbetween Japanese and Chinese poetry, such as the mutual influence between themand the new expressions created by combining them in the same work. These typesof poetry also illustrate the differences between traditional Japanese literary culture
and Chinese literary culture.
With this in mind, my presentation explores the communication between Japanese
poetry and Chinese poetry through kudai-waka and shika-awase works that have notbeen compared in detail in previous studies. By analyzing how Chinese poetry wasadapted into Japanese poetry, and how Japanese and Chinese poetry expressedsimilar themes, I examine the influence of Chinese poetry on Japanese poetry and thedifferences between Japanese-language poetry and Chinese-language poetry. Finally,
I show how such works may have led to the development of later forms of literature.
This research thereby presents a new perspective on the depth of Japanese-Chinese
literary communication, allowing us to think about Japanese literature as always
syncretically constituted.

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FOURTH ANNUAL OSAKA GRADUATE CONFERENCE IN JAPANESE STUDIES
Osaka University Global Studies Education and Research Incubator / Graduate
School of Letters, Osaka University / Consortium for Global Japanese Studies

The Mirrored Self and the Epistemology of Reconciliation: Ōe Kenzaburō’s
Okinawa Notes and the Taiwanese Indigenous Film Finding Sayun
GUO Tianyi
Master’s Student, Hiroshima University
For many people in Okinawa, Ōe Kenzaburō represents the embodiment of mainland
Japan. In the first decades of the postwar period, while Japan was undergoing aprocess of rapid reconstruction and development, occupied Okinawa dealt with aunique set of issues, and Ōe faced criticism from residents of the archipelago due tohis depictions of occupied Okinawa and his status as a member of the Japanese
intelligentsia. In this presentation, I reexamine Ōe’s work by combining decolonizing
epistemologies with scenario studies, an approach that envisages scenarios as theresults of processes of selection that work to relativize episodes and protagonists. The
presentation focuses on the analysis of two works: the Ōe Kenzaburō essay Okinawa
Notes (1970), and the Laha Mebow film Finding Sayun (2011), which explores thehistorical memory of the Atayal people of Taiwan. I deal with Okinawa Notes from theperspective of decolonization, whereas in the case of Finding Sayun I analyze how
the cinematic aspects of the work contribute to recuperation from colonial trauma inways that are independent of normative politics.
First, I assert that taking responsibility for colonialism means sharing colonial anddecolonial memories of historical experience. I show that Ōe depicts a desire fordecolonization, but that his approach is insufficient for taking into consideration
subaltern identities like those of Taiwan’s indigenous peoples. Second, I uncover atrend toward self-reflection based in objections to the act of using the other to define
the self. I argue for the possibility of reconciliation without state intervention andnormalization—processes that would recapitulate a narcissistic mirroring structure—and contend that this sort of undirected reconciliation can overcome the limitations
inherent in Ōe’s slant on historical colonialism. The aim of this paper is thus to consider
redeeming the past through a more effective process of decolonization across Asia, a
process which would give voice to minorities without invoking state intervention andnormalization.

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FOURTH ANNUAL OSAKA GRADUATE CONFERENCE IN JAPANESE STUDIES
Osaka University Global Studies Education and Research Incubator / Graduate
School of Letters, Osaka University / Consortium for Global Japanese Studies

Japanese Reception to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and His 1982 Visit to Japan:
Anti-Communism, Historical Awareness, and the Japanese Communist Party
Ahlam YANG
Doctoral Student, Nagoya University
This research examines the sociocultural significance of the 1982 visit to Japan madeby the prominent Soviet dissident writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008),
including how the trip affected the reception of Solzhenitsyn’s works in Japanesetranslation. In Japan, Solzhenitsyn was recognized as an anti-communist, a camp
writer, and an intellectual. Solzhenitsyn attracted significant attention in Japanese
media at the time of his expulsion from the Writers’ Alliance in 1969, upon being
awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970, and when he was deported in 1974. In
particular, Japanese media showed interest in the Japanese Communist Party’s
reaction to the deportation of Solzhenitsyn.
In order to understand the degree of acceptance of Solzhenitsyn’s works in Japan, I
begin by examining responses to the Japanese translation of The Gulag Archipelago,
the work that had been the trigger for Solzhenitsyn’s deportation, including the reactionof the Japanese Communist Party. Second, I deal with Solzhenitsyn’s visit to Japan in
1982. For Solzhenitsyn, his visit to Japan was an opportunity to reconsider not only
his own camp literature but also the level of historical awareness in Japan.
Solzhenitsyn, who valued accurate depictions of life in the Soviet Union, criticized theJapanese Communist Party and pointed out distortions present in authorized
textbooks. Finally, I examine Solzhenitsyn’s understanding of Japan, showing how theRussian writer’s visit served as an instance of bidirectional cultural exchange.

9FOURTH ANNUAL OSAKA GRADUATE CONFERENCE IN JAPANESE STUDIES
Osaka University Global Studies Education and Research Incubator / Graduate
School of Letters, Osaka University / Consortium for Global Japanese Studies

Voices of the Desert and the Sea: Literature and the Environment
in the Works of Abdelrahman Munif and Ishimure Michiko
Munia HWEIDI
Doctoral Candidate, Sophia University
The purpose of this study is to widen the scope of research on world literature andliterature focusing on the environment by putting Japanese author Ishimure Michiko’s
Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow (1969) into conversation with Arab author Abdelrahman
Munif’s Cities of Salt (1984). Ishimure and Munif are from vastly different cultures andparts of the world, but both write about the human interaction with the environment byfocusing on the ongoing effects of man-made environmental crises. In particular, it issignificant that each looks at the relationship between the human and the more-thanhuman within the environment through the lens of place.
Acting in concert with deliberate choices concerning narrative voice and structure,
place is a central entity in these works by Munif and Ishimure, creating a sense of
longing and nostalgia after the shocking loss of identity caused by environmental
change. In each case, the environmental changes involved are the result of the rapid
encroachment of industrialization into traditional spaces with identities that had beenmolded by the environment and the space the environment created for the people living
within it. The importance and influence of place, in these cases the desert and the sea,
is so pivotal that it can be argued the central figures in these works are not the people,
but the places whose voices are clearly heard under the roar of the modern industrial
machine. Through the use of the shamanistic narrator and the ecological Bedouin,
Ishimure and Munif channel the voices of the sea and the desert, allowing readers toexperience the stories of these places in addition to the stories of the people who have
lived and lost or found their identities in them. This prompts readers to reassess theirown relationships with the environment and to reflect on the places that have shaped
their own cultures, identities, and existence. The fact that authors from such vastlydifferent parts of the world write about similar themes in a universally intelligible
manner shows the importance and potential impact of works like these, especiallywhen they are read within the current landscape of growing environmental awareness.

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FOURTH ANNUAL OSAKA GRADUATE CONFERENCE IN JAPANESE STUDIES
Osaka University Global Studies Education and Research Incubator / Graduate
School of Letters, Osaka University / Consortium for Global Japanese Studies

Conference Organizers and Commentators
UNODA Shōya
Professor of Japanese Studies, Osaka University
Unoda Shōya holds a PhD in Japanese Studies from Osaka University. He specializes inJapanese intellectual history from the early modern period to the present day. Recently, he
has conducted research into the circle movements of the early postwar period. His current
research focuses on Zainichi Korean cultural and social movements. He chairs the programin Global Japanese Studies at Osaka University.
Nicholas LAMBRECHT
Assistant Professor of Global Japanese Studies, Osaka University
Nicholas Lambrecht holds a PhD in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from the
University of Chicago. His research examines modern and contemporary Japanese literature,
particularly works dealing with postwar repatriation. At Osaka University, he teaches courses
on Japanese literature and culture and courses on writing and presenting research in English.
Felipe MOTTA
Assistant Professor of Global Japanese Studies, Osaka University
Felipe Motta holds a PhD in Literature from Osaka University. He specializes in Migration
Studies, with a focus on Japanese migration to Brazil. His current research project investigates
the intellectual activities of Japanese migrants in Brazil between the 1920s and the 1980s. He
teaches English-medium courses in the Graduate School of Letters at Osaka University.
Kathryn TANAKA
Associate Professor of Japanese Literature and Culture, University of Hyogo
Kathryn Tanaka holds a PhD in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from the University of
Chicago. Her research deals with the connections between medicine, writing, and gender inmodern Japan, with special emphases on Hansen’s disease literature and human rights. At
the University of Hyogo, she teaches courses in the School of Economics and Management.
Yufei ZHOU
Senior Research Fellow, German Institute for Japanese Studies
Yufei Zhou holds a PhD from Osaka University, where she has also taught modern Japanese
intellectual history and comparative thought. Her dissertation traced how the idea of a peculiar
Asiatic path toward modern capitalism was disseminated and interpreted in East Asia in the
prewar and wartime periods. Her current research focuses on the effects of Western thought
on East Asia’s historiography and social sciences in the first half of the twentieth century.
Conference Staff
Burcu ALACAKLIOĞLU (Doctoral Student, Graduate School of Letters, Osaka University)
CHAEN Naoto (Doctoral Student, Graduate School of Language & Culture, Osaka University)
HIRAO Sōta (Master’s Student, Graduate School of Letters, Osaka University)

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FOURTH ANNUAL OSAKA GRADUATE CONFERENCE IN JAPANESE STUDIES
Osaka University Global Studies Education and Research Incubator / Graduate
School of Letters, Osaka University / Consortium for Global Japanese Studies

About the Global Japanese Studies Education and Research Incubator
The Global Japanese Studies Education and Research Incubator (GJS-ERI), establishedat Osaka University in 2020, aims to generate new advances in research and education
by integrating the benefits of work done in both the humanities and social science
disciplines. GJS-ERI promotes interdisciplinary and international research by serving as aplatform for the exchange of advanced academic dialogue relating to the study of Japan.
Further, GJS-ERI endeavors to translate research results into valuable interdisciplinaryand society-oriented educational programs that incorporate the study of Japan as part ofan essential foundation for the training of global talent.
About the Graduate School of Letters at Osaka University
The Graduate School of Letters has its intellectual origin in the Kaitokudō, which wasestablished in the eighteenth century as an independent school of the humanities for
Osaka merchants. In line with this tradition, the Graduate School of Letters makes
persistent efforts to explore relevant questions through systematic methods, and then to
return the knowledge and experience gained to society. The Graduate School of Letterscurrently offers courses in over twenty disciplines. Through research and education in thehumanities, the Graduate School of Letters aims to achieve a clear understanding ofpresent-day society and culture, as well as to investigate its future possibilities.
About the Consortium for Global Japanese Studies
The Consortium for Global Japanese Studies (CGJS) is Japan’s first effort to meet theneeds of university research institutes and graduate programs in international Japanesestudies and encourage coordination and networking among them. The Consortium aims,
through participation in joint research meetings and international symposiums relating to
global Japanese studies, to serve as an intermediary through which to link the domestic
research community to international research networks. In addition, by promoting joint
research and holding international joint research workshops, the Consortium’s activities
are helping to build the academic foundations of global Japanese studies as a field, as
well as to contribute to the training of young researchers.

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