FIFTH ANNUAL OSAKA GRADUATE CONFERENCE IN JAPANESE STUDIESJanuary 7, 2023 (Saturday)
Osaka University Toyonaka Campus
Engineering Science International Hall Seminar RoomTime
10:15–10:30

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

10:30–10:50

Introductions of Panelists and Commentators

10:55–12:15

PANEL #1
“Flowers Grow on Graves from the Mouths or Hearts of Holy Persons”:

10:55

Common Literary Types and Motifs in Japanese and Spanish Tales(Marta AÑORBE MATEOS, Nagoya University)
Kirishitan History and Historiography: Understanding Communities

11:35and Individuals during the Sengoku and Early Edo Periods(Victor LAUBENSTEIN, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies)

12:15–13:30

Lunch Break

13:30–15:30

PANEL #2
Mizuki Shigeru’s Works Revisiting the War Zone:

13:30

From Essays to Manga(KOJIMA Akira, Nagoya University)
Where the Wild Things Are in Contemporary Tokyo: Half-Japanese,

14:10

Half-Taiwanese Characters in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Café Lumiere(Richard NG, Osaka University)
Punk Lives and Issues:

14:50

Sustaining a Punk Public in Japan(Robert DAHLBERG-SEARS, Sophia University / The Ohio State University)

15:30–15:45

Short BreakGeneral Discussion

15:45–16:45(Comments by Ann SHERIF, Oberlin College; Felipe MOTTA,
Kyoto University of Foreign Studies; and the conference organizers)

FIFTH ANNUAL OSAKA GRADUATE CONFERENCE IN JAPANESE STUDIES
Osaka University Global Studies Education and Research Incubator /Consortium for Global Japanese Studies“Flowers Grow on Graves from the Mouths or Hearts of Holy Persons”:
Common Literary Types and Motifs in Japanese and Spanish Tales
Marta AÑORBE MATEOS
Master’s Student, Nagoya University
This work is a comparative study of folktales classified under submotif V229.2.7 of theStith Thompson Motif-Index of Folk Literature, “Flowers grow on graves from themouths or hearts of holy persons”, examining one tale from the Konjaku monogatarishū of late-twelfth-century Japan and three stories belonging to the Hispanic tradition.
The Japanese tale, story 14 of chapter XIX of Konjaku monogatari-shū, is titled “TheStory of the Fifth-Ranking Courtier of Tado-gun, In the Province of Sanuki, Who Heard
the Word and Decided to Take the Habit at Once”, and the three Hispanic stories are
two cantigas of Alfonso X of Castile (1221–1284) and the miraculous tale “TheClergyman and the Flower” from The Miracles of Our Lady written by Gonzalo deBerceo (ca. 1196–1264). The objective of comparing these works is to determine why
their thematic coincidences exist across regions, while at the same time attempting toovercome the superficiality that often pervades comparative studies.
To find the answer to this research question, I employ comparative textual analysis tothe different adaptations of the motif across several international motif catalogs. I
conclude that in both traditions, flowers are a symbol with positive connotations that
extolling the divine goodness and the purity of divine love, which only requires sincere
prayers to grant Salvation. Moreover, I explain that the cases of Berceo and Konjaku
monogatari-shū have an additional point of correspondence: the literary care seen inboth works may be due to the fact that they were each used for homiletic purposes.
Finally, since the positive connotations of the beauty of flowers transcend the specificreligious circumstances of each country, I conclude that these instances of theV229.2.7 submotif most likely emerged as the result of independent, polygenetic
development on both sides of the world.

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FIFTH ANNUAL OSAKA GRADUATE CONFERENCE IN JAPANESE STUDIES
Osaka University Global Studies Education and Research Incubator /Consortium for Global Japanese Studies

Kirishitan History and Historiography: Understanding Communitiesand Individuals during the Sengoku and Early Edo Periods
Victor LAUBENSTEIN
Master’s Student, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
Although the twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries have seen the production of anumber of studies on the evangelization that took place in Japan during the Sengoku
and early Edo periods, such scholarship has a clear tendency to focus on the agencyof European missionaries. For example, interpretations of the eventual failure of themission are often viewed through Western spectacles, finding priests responsible for
an inability to adapt to local ways of life or for the delay in the creation of a local clergy.
Because these narratives place European missionaries in the role of protagonists,they often render unclear the specificities of the historical agency of the Japanese
population of the time.
In this presentation, I advocate a perspective that reconsiders the role that the groups
known as kirishitan had in the evangelization process. I focus on the dynamics ofinteractions that took place from 1549 and 1614 between missionaries and Japanesepeople, and between kirishitan and non-kirishitan groups, based on previous researchon the letters and chronicles written by missionaries such as Luís Frois, Francis Xavier,Cosme de Torres, and Francisco Cabral, as well as contemporary and subsequentJapanese sources. Through a historical approach to the networks described in thesesources I intend not only to overcome the invisibility of previously hidden historicalactors, but also to promote additional research, anchored in Japanese local dynamics,
on the process of establishing and remodelling this evangelization project, onrepresentations of the kirishitan phenomenon, and on how the process of persecutionof the Christian faith was related to the closure of Japan in the seventeenth century.

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Osaka University Global Studies Education and Research Incubator /Consortium for Global Japanese Studies

Mizuki Shigeru’s Works Revisiting the War Zone:
From Essays to Manga
KOJIMA Akira
Doctoral Student, Nagoya University
Mizuki Shigeru (1922–2015) was among the most famous manga authors in postwar
Japan, and was particularly well known for his manga about spirits (yōkai). However,Mizuki’s works based on his personal experiences as a soldier during World War II arealso highly regarded. After Mizuki returned to Japan at the end of the war, he revisitedthe war zone in Rabaul, Papua New Guinea in 1971. Mizuki especially wanted toreconnect with his friend Topetoro, a local resident who had helped him during the war.
Mizuki visited Topetoro’s village many times until Topetoro’s death in 1994.
Mizuki wrote several essays based on his experiences of returning to Papua New
Guinea, but these works have not been the subject of previous research. Therefore,
this study focuses on Mizuki’s experience of revisiting the war zone and considers how
he reshaped his experiences into his written works. First, I analyze the differencesamong his works about revisiting the war zone. For example, “A Father’s Story for His
Daughters about the War” (Musume ni kataru otōsan no senki, 1975) was written for
Mizuki’s daughters, so the work’s primary target was readers without direct experienceof the war, while the essay “Fifty Years with Topetoro” (Topetoro to no 50-nen, 1995)
is set apart by its use of many pictures taken by Mizuki in Rabaul. I focus on thedifferent styles Mizuki used in such works and how they changed over time as they
were reproduced and reprinted with additions and amendments. Finally, I discuss amanga called “Dream Guide Cat” (Yume saki annai neko, 1994). In this work of fiction,a cat spirit appears and guides the character “Mizuki” (named after Mizuki Shigeru
himself) through Topetoro’s village. I use this example to discuss how Mizuki fused hisreal-life experience with his vibrant imagination.

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FIFTH ANNUAL OSAKA GRADUATE CONFERENCE IN JAPANESE STUDIES
Osaka University Global Studies Education and Research Incubator /Consortium for Global Japanese Studies

Where the Wild Things Are in Contemporary Tokyo: Half-Japanese,
Half-Taiwanese Characters in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Café Lumiere
Richard NG
Doctoral Student, Osaka University
In 2003, the film production company Shochiku invited Taiwanese filmmaker Hou
Hsiao-hsien (1947– ) to create a Japanese-language film to commemorate the 100thanniversary of the birth of the director Ozu Yasujirō (1903–1963). Hou’s film, CaféLumière (2003), depicts everyday life in Tokyo alongside a search for traces left behindby Jiang Wenya, a Taiwanese musician who gained popularity in Japan in the 1930s.
Though Café Lumière has generally been considered an homage to Ozu’s Tokyo Story,
some have argued that it is in fact a rival to Ozu’s film because it reverses theemphasis placed on the value of family in Tokyo Story. Moreover, evidence that theprotagonist Yōko should be understood as an outsider provides important clues for anew reading of Café Lumière based upon the perspective of mixed identities.
Therefore, this paper reads Hou Hsiao-hsien’s film Café Lumière as a social allegory
by questioning the mode of existence of the half-Japanese, half-Taiwanese charactersin the film.
This paper uses the concept of intersectionality to clarify the role of mixed-backgroundcharacters in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s film. In doing so, I find that in Café Lumière, thesecharacters are often portrayed as occupying multiple socially disadvantaged positionsin terms of gender, socioeconomic class, and family structure, thereby resulting in an
independent lifestyle that clashes with traditional social and family values. Based uponthis observation, I argue that while Ozu’s Tokyo Story explores the traditional conceptof family, Café Lumière instead sheds light on how people who are considered
unconventional find ways to survive in the city of contemporary Tokyo, a city full ofimpermanence and opportunity, through creation of a new sort of home that does not
require dependence on the family.

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FIFTH ANNUAL OSAKA GRADUATE CONFERENCE IN JAPANESE STUDIES
Osaka University Global Studies Education and Research Incubator /Consortium for Global Japanese Studies

Punk Lives and Issues:
Sustaining a Punk Public in Japan
Robert DAHLBERG-SEARS
Researcher, Sophia University / Doctoral Candidate, The Ohio State University
Punk music communities are often the most comprehensive repositories of their own
particular histories and canons, but only slowly, if ever, does this information filter into
mainstream awareness. Despite having developed the first punk music scene in
Eastern Asia, Japan is little different in this regard. Over the last decade Englishlanguage research on punk music and its history has revealed interconnectionsamong local varieties of the genre and has illuminated how it fits into a broader, global
music culture, highlighting the deep connections between punk music and otherpopular musics the world over. Yet Japan’s punk history remains conspicuously absent
from this research, with only a few books published on aspects of punk music in either
Japanese or other languages.
This presentation addresses issues concerning the history, development, and global
connections between Japan and other music scenes around the world by examining
the circulation network and content of Punk Rock Issue Bollocks, the only punk music
specialty magazine currently in publication in Japan. I argue that Bollocks is involvedin generating a punk “present” for its Japanese readership as a way of reifying andcanonizing Japanese punk music within the larger Japanese popular music sphere.
By providing punk music a legible and public history as “un-popular” music, Bollocks
is involved in shaping a punk listening public that is connected to a larger aural sphereboth internal and external to Japan. Further, by making this history at once accessible
to new fans (both listeners and readers) and legible for self-identified “punks”, Bollocks
is actively involved in defining and sustaining a national music scene while offering agateway to broader global musical entanglements.

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FIFTH ANNUAL OSAKA GRADUATE CONFERENCE IN JAPANESE STUDIES
Osaka University Global Studies Education and Research Incubator /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, and his recent research has involved Zainichi Korean culturaland social movements and the circle movements of the early postwar period. He chairs theGlobal Japanese Studies Program at Osaka University and is Associate Director of GJS-ERI.
Nicholas LAMBRECHTAssistant Professor of Global Japanese Studies, Osaka University
Nicholas Lambrecht holds a PhD in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from theUniversity of Chicago. His research examines modern and contemporary Japanese literature,
particularly works dealing with postwar repatriation. At Osaka University, he offers courses on
Japanese media and culture and co-organizes the GJS-ERI’s Incubator-Supported Project“An International Collaborative Network for Research on Zainichi Korean Literature”.
Yulia BURENINA
Lecturer, Global Japanese Studies Education and Research Incubator, Osaka University
Yulia Burenina holds a PhD in Japanese Language and Culture from Osaka University, andher research centers on Japanese religion, with a particular focus on modern Japanese
Buddhism. Burenina currently serves as the first full-time faculty member of GJS-ERI andteaches courses on Japanese religion and intellectual history in Japanese and English.
Ann SHERIF
Professor of Japanese, Oberlin CollegeAnn Sherif holds a PhD in Japanese Literature from the University of Michigan. She is theauthor of Japan’s Cold War: Media, Literature, and the Law (Columbia University Press) andhas published widely on postwar Japanese literature and literary criticism. At Oberlin, Sherif
teaches courses on Japanese literature, cinema, and language, and coordinates the Green
Legacy Hiroshima Initiative.
Felipe MOTTA
Assistant Professor of Brazilian and Portuguese Studies, Kyoto Univ. of Foreign Studies
Felipe Motta holds a PhD in Literature from Osaka University and specializes in Migration
Studies. His Japanese-language book The Immigrant Thinking the Immigrant: Tomoo Handa
and the Writing of the Japanese-Brazilian Community’s History was released by Osaka
University Press in 2022. In addition to his work at the Kyoto University of Foreign Studies,
Motta teaches courses in the Global Japanese Studies Program at Osaka University.
Conference Staff
HIRAO Sōta (Graduate Student, Graduate School of Humanities, Osaka University)
Fernanda MOURA (Graduate Student, Graduate School of Humanities, Osaka University)

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FIFTH ANNUAL OSAKA GRADUATE CONFERENCE IN JAPANESE STUDIES
Osaka University Global Studies Education and Research Incubator /Consortium for Global Japanese Studies

Conference Access
The Graduate Conference in Japanese Studies is being convened in the Seminar Roomof Engineering Science International Hall on Osaka University’s Toyonaka Campus. Themaps below provide general guidance on access from nearby railway stations.

About the Global Japanese Studies Education and Research Incubator
The Global Japanese Studies Education and Research Incubator (GJS-ERI),
established at Osaka University in 2020, aims to generate new advances in researchand education by integrating the benefits of work done in both the humanities and social
science disciplines. GJS-ERI promotes interdisciplinary and international research byserving as a platform for the exchange of advanced academic dialogue relating to thestudy of Japan. Further, GJS-ERI endeavors to translate research results into valuableinterdisciplinary and society-oriented educational programs that incorporate the study ofJapan as part of an essential foundation for the training of global talent.
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 thedomestic research community to international research networks. In addition, by
promoting joint research and holding international joint research workshops, theConsortium’s activities are helping to build the academic foundations of global Japanesestudies as a field, as well as to contribute to the training of young researchers.

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