ASCJ 2017 Abstracts
SATURDAY MORNING SESSIONS: 10:00 A.M. - 12:00 P.M.
Session 1: Room 5121
Mediated Frontiers of Japanese Culture and Society: Borders Drawn, Translated, orTransported
Organizer and Chair: Andre Haag, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa
To what extent were the political, social, and cultural identities of a putatively insular“Japan” forged through encounters with frontiers real and imagined? A growing body ofscholarship has explored how Japanese discourses surrounding culture and nation wereformed and deformed through negotiation with liminal spaces and marginalized peoples.
This panel begins from a similar premise in order to examine mediated experiences ofcross-cultural contact in frontier-scapes ranging from colonial Korea, to tropicalimaginaries of the South Seas, to the heart of the metropolis itself. We show that theconstruction of Japan’s borderlands relied on an array of cultural technologies includingtranslation, adaptation, ethnography, and caricature. Simultaneously, the processes thatenabled the center’s internalization of its periphery produced disparate effects and affects
within culture: ecstasy, empathy, adventure, romance, conflict, and fear. Andre Haag traces
Takahama Kyoshi’s use of haiku-derived prose “sketching” to make space for newlyannexed Korea within metropolitan culture, even as it distorted the limits separatingcolonizer and colonized. Mark Ombrello contextualizes colonial projects in the South Seasand the creation of an imaginary discursive space capable of affirming modern identities in
the 1930’s children’s comic, Bōken Dankichi. William Hedberg explores representations ofJapan in Chinese fiction—in particular Japan’s transformation from epistemologicalfrontier into a locus of political authority through the act of translation. Kate McDonald
analyzes how literary and social policy depictions of rickshaw pullers served as a nexus ofcritiques for theories of social change and nationhood in Meiji Japan.

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1) Andre Haag, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa
Blurred Lines: Sketching the Frontier of Imperial Subjectivity in Takahama Kyoshi’s
Chōsen (1911)
Imperial Japan’s annexation of Korea in August 1910 triggered a mass-mediatedspectacle in the metropolitan press back home, where triumphalist narratives and visual
images commemorated a union that promised--or perhaps threatened--to radically redefine
the empire’s boundaries and the scope of who was considered Japanese. Largely absent
amidst this celebratory boom, however, were expressions of overt criticism of expansion
on ideological or ethical grounds. Curiously, writer and poet Takahama Kyoshi’s 1911
narrative Chōsen, the first Japanese novel to survey the cultural topography of newlycolonized Korea, has been characterized by critics as either a metropolitan intellectual’s
conscientious objection to his nation’s imperialistic enterprise or, alternatively, a literary
accomplice to colonial policy on the peninsula. Part of the confusion may originate in thepose of calculated ambivalence assumed by the novel’s traveling narrator, which throws
into uneasy suspension both nationalist pride and humanistic guilt. Yet, this paper seeks tocomplicate the narrow interpretative model that pits cultural complicity against principled
anticolonial opposition, by examining how Kyoshi’s novel works to create a space forcolonized Korea within the domain of metropolitan Japanese cultural production. I
emphasize how the haiku poet’s “sketching” (through shaseibun) of this unsettled colonial
milieu, marked by depictions of cross-ethnic close encounters and fleeting glimpses ofsubversive conspiracies, articulates not direct critique but instead anxious apprehension
toward the menace that shifting imperial frontiers pose to the integrity of national
subjectivity.
2) Mark Ombrello, Kansai University
Welcome to Fantasy Island: Othering the South Seas in Shimada Keizō’s Serialized
Comic, Bōken Dankichi
From 1933 to 1939, the highpoint of colonial activity in Japan’s central Pacificterritories (Nan’yō shotō), Shimada Keizō entertained children of the metropole with his
serialized comic, Bōken Dankichi (Adventure Dankichi). The story centered on a boy
protagonist, Dankichi, and his trusted mouse sidekick, Kariko, who drifted to a fantastic
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South Seas island. Upon landing, the heroes encountered fierce but naive natives and easily
persuaded the locals to quickly crown the outsider their new monarch. The island was also
home to an assortment of exotic flora and wild fauna as geographically and temporally far
removed from Oceania and the twentieth century as lions and dinosaurs. Throughout its
six-year run, the illustrations and accompanying text describing Dankichi’s adventuresechoed overtly racist attitudes and mirrored constructed hierarchies affirming Japanesesuperiority in the colonial periphery. This paper will explore the representation of islanders
and the positioning of protagonists detailed in the comic, paying particular attention toparadigms and iconography reflective of a greater discursive tradition that transformed theSouth Seas into a malleable conceptual playground where visions of modern Japanese
identity formation could find expression and take shape. This paper will also discuss thelegacy of Bōken Dankichi by tracking the perpetuation of Orientalist tropes lodged incultural production on the South Seas since the end of World War Two.
3) William Hedberg, Arizona State University
Civilization and Its Discontents: Glimpses of Japan in Meiji-Period Translations of Late
Imperial Chinese Fiction
The centrality of The Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan) in the Chinese canon must be
counted among the great ironies of late imperial Chinese literary culture. A work explicitly
concerned with popular insurrection, The Water Margin was nonetheless positioned at thecenter of larger discussions of Confucian ethics and political ideology. These debates
survived the novel’s exportation to Japan, where beginning in the Meiji period, the work
was presented as a potential heuristic for understanding the contemporary China newly
open for firsthand experience, exploration, and later, colonization. This presentation
explores the Japanese translation and reception of Chen Chen’s Sequel to ‘The Water
Margin’: an early Qing-period work whose action unfolds on an international stagecomprising Siam, the Ryukyus, and most notably, Japan. Although most critical interest
has been directed at Siam’s significance as a possible allegory for Zheng Chenggong’s
regime on Taiwan, less attention has been paid to the presence of Japan: a nation that, inthe novel, mounts a punitive attack against the Chinese colonizers of Siam that results in a
massive (and ludic) defeat of the Japanese forces. My presentation examines the ways in
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which the novel’s author employs China, Siam, and Japan to explore lines of demarcation
between both center and periphery, as well as civilized and barbaric behavior. These issues
were complicated further upon the novel’s translation into Japanese during the 1880s and1890s: translations that attempted to use the novel as a way of representing and explainingcolonial realpolitik during Meiji Japan’s expansion abroad.
4) Kate McDonald, University of California, Santa Barbara
Moving Lines: Rickshaw Pullers and the Boundaries of the Social in Matsubara
Iwagorō’s Saiankoku no Tōkyō and Yokoyama Gennosuke’s Nihon no kasō shakai
This paper examines how the figure of the simple transport worker became the site of
the contested boundaries of Japanese society in the Meiji era. Focusing on the
representation of rickshaw pullers in Matsubara Iwagorō’s Saiankoku no Tōkyō (1893) andYokoyama Gennosuke’s Nihon no kasō shakai (1898), the paper argues that these works’use of rickshaw pullers to expose the dark side of Japanese modernity illuminates asignificant debate over how to understand social change. Matsubara and Yokoyama wrote
in dialogue with Booth’s In Darkest England and Harkness’s In Darkest London toformulate a critique of industrial society from the perspective of the simple transport
worker. Casting an equally global net, social policy experts such as Kanai Noboru drewfrom the works of German and American social economists to argue that the social
problem could be solved by improving the circulation and distribution of jobs and goods.
For social policy experts, transport was a social system. In contrast, for Matsubara andYokoyama, transport was a necessary and precarious livelihood for Japan’s growing
underclass. The different concepts of transportation led the two groups to formulate
radically different proposals for resolving the threat that endemic poverty represented to
the future of the Japanese nation. For social policy experts, the simple transport worker
constituted a border in time—they represented the edge of Japan’s rapidly receding past.
For Matsubara and Yokoyama, however, the simple transport worker exposed theemerging boundary between labor and capital in modern Japanese society.
Discussant: Greg Dvorak, Hitotsubashi University

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Session 2: Room 5124
The Causes of the Misunderstanding and Conflict between Japan and the US
Organizer: Yoshiaki Katada, Meijo University
Chair: Akira Iikura, Josai International University
Our panel will examine why Japan entered the Pacific War, which culminated in thedevastation of its entire society. In order to do so, we will explore the US-Japaneserelations in trade, cultural, and diplomatic terms from the 1910s to the 1930s. In
investigating Japan’s economic relations with the US, Katada will illuminate US-Japanesetrade over the Pacific from the 1910s until the 1920s by focusing on trade between
Yokohama and San Francisco via Honolulu. The port of Yokohama played by far the mostvital role on the Japanese side in this trade, while San Francisco was the chief port on the
US side. In order to comprehend the factors that deteriorated prewar US sentiments
towards Japan, Iikura will explore the changing US attitude towards Japan through the
1930s by analyzing the works of John McCutcheon, the current US leading cartoonist of
the time. Mishima will discuss why the mutual dialogue and understanding that both
Japanese and American leaders had constructed could not prevent future military conflict.
For that purpose, he will investigate the role of “Liberal Internationalists” in both countries
from the 1920s to 1930s. Fujioka will analyze why “Japan’s public diplomacy” could not
pacify public opinion abroad regarding Japan’s imperial expansion of the 1930s by
illuminating the role of Japanese immigrants in the US. Thus, our panel will show why
Japan and the US could not avoid the outbreak of the Pacific War even though they shared
mutual interests and understanding.
1) Yoshiaki Katada, Meijo University
Japan’s Trade with the US over the Pacific from the 1910s to the 1920s
My paper will examine Japan’s trade with the US from the 1910s to the 1920s
because the US was the only country with whom Japan consistently got a large sum of
trade surplus during this period. However, there are very few studies of this trade. Thus,
my exploration of the trade will contribute to further understanding the characteristics ofJapan’s industrialization. In investigating Japan’s trade with the US, this paper will be
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particularly concerned about the trade relations between Yokohama and San Francisco
because they were the most major ports for trade over the Pacific. In order to examine thetrade relations, this paper will see how the harbors of Yokohama, Honolulu, and San
Francisco had been developed throughout the 1910s. The important role that the Honolulu
Harbor had played is due to the fact that commercial ships sailing between Yokohama and
San Francisco usually stopped by Honolulu to resupply water and fuel. Therefore, in
addition to investigating the characteristics of trade goods, it is also crucial to explore thedevelopment of these harbors, which were major infrastructures of the Pacific trade. The
trade relations were also characterized by various factors such as the opening of the
Panama Canal, the outbreak of World War I, and the diffusion of heavy oil as a fuel.
Sometimes, these factors even affected existing shipping routes. Therefore, my paper willshed light upon the changing nature of economic relationship between Japan and the US bytaking these various factors into consideration.
2) Takenosuke Mishima, Waseda Saga High School
The Liberal Internationalists in Japan and the US
Friendship with the US was vital for Japan in its industrialization during the early
Twentieth century because the US was its largest trade partner. Despite its importance,
Japan waged the Pacific War with the US. My paper will explore why Japan could not
avoid such a tragedy. In order to do so, it will investigate why the mutual dialogue andunderstanding of Japanese and American leaders did not come to fruition. In so doing, thepaper will focus on the role of “Liberal Internationalists” in Japan and the US. Actually,
there existed liberal internationalists in both countries. Sometimes, they played leadingroles in foreign policy making and international finance. For example, the Washington
Conference of 1921–1922 owed its success not only to their consensus that naval
curtailment would contribute to both economic prosperities but also to their mutual trust.
However, their mutual understanding started to flounder. The Exclusion Act of 1924
stirred up anti-American sentiments in Japan while Japan’s military expansion in China
caused US antipathy towards Japan. These events undermined the consensus that both
Japanese and US liberal internationalists had shared. Finally, the Marco Polo Bridge
Incident and Tripartite Pact of 1940 put a complete end to the US liberal internationalists’6

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hope that their Japanese counterparts would take control of domestic politics and restore
their previous consensus. Based on my aforementioned understanding, my paper will
examine why the mutual understanding of liberal internationalists between both countries
could not withstand the rise of “Japan’s Monroe Doctrine.”
3) Akira Iikura, Josai International University
The Deterioration of US Sentiments toward Japan in the Prewar Period: Analysis of
Cartoons by John T. McCutcheon, the ‘Dean of American Cartoonists’John T. McCutcheon (1870–1949) was one of the leading American political
cartoonists in the first half of the 20th century. Working at the Chicago Tribune from 1903
to 1946, he published several cartoons now considered iconic, won the Pulitzer Prize in
1932, and was called the ‘Dean of American Cartoonists’ of the day. More than a few of
his vast number of cartoons featured Japan and her relations with the US as it was a period
when the two countries relations turned from being favorable to ones of rivalry and then toantagonism. This paper will examine how the image of Japan in McCutcheon’s cartoons
deteriorated in the course of history. During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, hemade a special short visit to Tokyo and published a dozen cartoons favorable to Japan. Yet
his works became more critical toward Japan after the war. The author will explore thereasons why such a pro-Japanese cartoonist began to turn against Japan and analyze what
landmark events like the immigrant problem, conflicts and wars most influenced thechange of his sentiments toward Japan. Differing from his contemporaries’ works
viciously attacking a hostile nation, his gentle humoristic cartoons showed more moderateviews of the public. And it can be said that no cartoons were more influential than his tothe public opinion in the US at that time. Therefore, an analysis of his works featuring
Japan will clarify the factors affecting the deterioration of US sentiments toward Japan in
the prewar period.
4) Yuka Fujioka, Kwansei Gakuin University
Japan’s Public Diplomacy and Immigrants
From the conclusion of the Pacific War to this day, Japan has received scant support
from Japanese Americans on major issues in US-Japan relations, as was especially
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poignant during the trade friction of the 1980s. However, Japanese Americans were notalways so aloof. During the pre-Second World War period, the Japanese government
enjoyed a “special relationship” with immigrants in the United States. The 1930s, inparticular, witnessed a period of intense support among Nikkei for Japan’s increasingly
militaristic foreign policy. Realizing that adroit public diplomacy by Western powers andChina was a contributing factor to Japan’s diplomatic isolation following the Manchurian
Incident, the leaders in Tokyo understood the need to bolster efforts in public diplomacy toimprove the prevailing international sentiment against Japan. This was the Japanese
government’s primary objective when it decided to mobilize and utilize Japaneseimmigrants in the United States and in other parts of the world where Japan’s sphere of
influence prevailed as the country’s thought war strategy. But, in the end, public diplomacy
failed to produce the desired outcome and Japan was unable to convince public opinion
abroad to support its cause. Using untapped primary sources including diplomatic records
across the Pacific, this paper aims to reveal and analyze Japan’s public diplomacy towards
the United States during the prewar era with a particular focus on the 1930s leading to theoutbreak of the Pacific War, and illuminates the role of Japanese immigrants in the context
of Japan’s imperial expansionism.
Discussant: Go Itō, Meiji University
Session 3: Room 5223
Imperial Female Archetypes: the Disciplined Colonial Girl, the Sexually AmbivalentStudent, and the Grotesque, Old Shōjo (少女)Organizer and Chair: Helen J. S. Lee Yonsei University
This panel investigates three female archetypes from imperial Japan: the malleable(or resistant) colonial girl, the sexually ambivalent student, and the aged shōjo. The birth ofthe colonial girl as an organizing category of calling on young females dates back to late
Nineteenth century Japan, when public attention was fixated on producing the ryōsai kenbo(good wife, wise mother) in order to serve the great cause of the Empire. Focusing on the
1930s, a period of escalation towards world war, Kyung-sook Shin’s paper pays attention
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to the sushin curriculum, cultural representations of girls in magazines, along withcompositions written by school girls in colonial Korea. Shin’s paper primarily focuses on
the processes of internalization and negotiations with the injunctions imposed on thecolonial girl. While Shin’s focus is on the girl in the making, Bong-gwan Jun’s and Su-yun
Kim’s papers look at the female students who were engaged in cultural consumption and ofsame-sex love. In other words, the female students in Jun’s and Kim’s papers claim
ownership of their lives and navigate themselves in intimate quarters of romance. In
contrast to the three papers addressing young female subjection to surveillance andsupervision, Sohyun Chun’s paper narrates the story of the girl fifty years later, through a1974 story by Enchi Fumiko. Chun highlights the aged woman’s unleashing of her sexualdesire and gives a diagnostic analysis by employing the trope of a “grotesque rōjo (老女),”
or a grotesque shōjo (少女), who may be the outcome of the (self-)disciplining colonial
girl.
1) Kyung Sook Shin, Yonsei University
Living as a Colonial Girl: The ‘Sushin’(Self-Disciplining Curriculum) of the 1930s andFormation of the Colonial Girl in Korea
In postcolonial studies on colonial Korea the “colonial girl” has largely been
imagined as a victim of violence or object of sexual desire. Until she is called on to serve
the Empire in a wide-ranging capacity, her development into a young adult was closely
supervised by the State through school curricula such as sushin (修身) classes. In spite ofsuch a presence of the colonial education of the girls, “girls” (少女) were largely absent in
the popular imagination about the future of (colonial) Korea at the time as the icon of
future Koreans was the boy. In an effort to explore the processes through which thecolonial girl grew up to register her place within colonial reality, this paper is shaped byaddressing questions such as how the sushin curriculum may have affected the formationof gender identity, the diversity of the colonial girl’s experiences, and how thoseexperiences were represented. This paper, in other words, aims to scrutinize the discursive
formation of the “girl” in colonial Korea. I engage with representations of girls as depictedwithin colonial Korean (girl’s) magazines, as well as essays penned by girls themselves, allwithin the larger context of the imperial sushin curriculum during the 1930s. I show how
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the sushin curriculum informs and dictates the colonial girl’s life as she develops her
gender identity and negotiates with the official edicts of nation and state while pursuing her
aspirations.
2) Bong Gwan Jun, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
Recalcitrant or Obedient? Same-Sex Love and Female Students
Same-sex love was a discernible feature, a fad, among female students duringcolonial Korea. Intimacy between female students, as long as it did not involve sexual acts,
was considered a healthier form of love than intimacy with male students. Some archival
sources from the era go as far as stating that most female students had experienced samesex love at some point in their school life. Even those female students who disclosed theirsame-sex relationships in the newspaper and magazine, upon graduation, would pursue
heterosexual marriages and dedicated themselves to the making of a “sweet home.” That is
to say, same-sex love was not necessarily tied to sexual identity (although we cannot
eliminate the physical dimension altogether), but rather, it was more of a socio-cultural
phenomenon. By engaging with newspapers, magazines, essays, and literary texts duringcolonial Korea, this paper seeks to examine the social and cultural meanings of same-sex
love among female students. Recent studies in disciplines such as women studies,
anthropology, and sociology indicate that same-sex love was rampant across gender, age,and class, and it was largely overlooked without any stigmatization or restrictions. I
contextualize same-sex love within the imposing feminine ideals of the era which centeredon virginity, chastity and the prejudices against free love stemming from feudalistic
oppression. That is to say, same-sex love was driven by two irreconcilable impetuses:
while defying the heteronormative ideals, it was an offshoot of feudal ideology that upheld
virginity and chastity as women’s foremost important virtue and duties.
3) Su Yun Kim, University of Hong Kong
“Modern Youth” and Gender in Romance Literature in the 1930s Colonial Korea
This presentation explores the theme of “modern youth” and gender in the popularnovel, particularly romance literature from the 1930s in colonial Korea. I will focus on anewspaper-serialized novel Sarang ŭi sujokkwan (The Aquarium of Love) (1939–1940) by
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Kim Namch’ŏn (1911–1953?) and the role of young women—elite girl school graduates
and working class women—in the narrative. In the past, critics identified The Aquarium ofLove as an example of post-conversion and lowbrow popular (t’ongsok) novel by Kim, aformer KAPF (Korea Artista Proleta Federacio) member. Recent scholarships, however,paid attention to the long novel for its representation of colonial reality, Korean modern
youth (hyŏndae ch’ŏngnyŏn) within the Japanese Empire, and suggested that Kim leaned tosupporting the Japanese imperialism. This presentation argues that The Aquarium of Lovenovel fits well with the trend of the contemporary popular romance novel of the 1930s.
While some elite male writers continued to feature modern and enlightened female figures
as embodiments of “pure” or romantic love, popular literature tended to portray modern
but immoral or even licentious women who are in conflict with emerging capitalist culture.
In the case of Kim Namch’ŏn, he combines both trends. In the novel, Kim suggests
idealized gender roles for both men and women in romance relationship, which isparticipated by educated urban youth and upholds patriarchal social values. I will also
discuss how this (un)match with Kim’s other essays on popular and mass literature,especially considering his proletarian activist past.
4) Sohyun Chun, Oita University
The Grotesque Shōjo
Regardless of their age, some women never abandon their adolescent (shōjo)
identity, which grants them a certain freedom to express their true desires and emotions.
This unending girlhood signifies a state of mind unconcerned with maturation—bothphysical and psychological—and the cultural expectations meant to circumscribe ageappropriate behavior. Fumiko Enchi’s 1974 story of a shockingly indulgent old woman(rōjo) who gleefully devours a cactus’s crimson blossoms portrays the rōjo in a grotesque,rebellious, and even childish manner. As a reflection on the patriarchal prescriptions for
women in the Taisho and early Showa periods, this story of a flower-hungry old woman
exposes the suppression and denial that accompanied the aging narrator’s girlhood. As ashameless purveyor of desire, the rōjo prompts the narrator to confront the youthfulsexuality she once suppressed, thereby reliving her juvenescence even as a mature woman.
This paper treats the old woman’s ability to identify and reinvigorate the shōjo within her
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aged body as an expression of unfulfilled desire, love, and passion. Through the rōjo whointernalizes the shōjo, Enchi not only criticizes restrictive social standards, she also
reimagines the function of shōjo culture as practiced by aging women who seek
empowerment against oppressive norms that force women into certain constructed imagesof proper female bodies.
Discussant: Rebecca Copeland, Washington University
Session 4: Room 5224
Science, Literature and Differential Mobilities in Modern Japan
Organizer and Chair: Ryuta Komaki, Washington University in St. Louis
Scholars of globalization argue that the “flow” within the globalized world has notbeen steady for everyone or everything. The cross-border movement of people, material
objects and ideas has been differently enabled and delimited by the place of origin,
materiality, and political and economic conditions. The speed at which they can crossboundaries has also been regulated by the mode of transportation or communication theytake, as well as checkpoints they go through. The transnational history of Japan and Asia issimilarly interlaced with stories of differential mobilities. Human bodies, goods,
knowledge and thoughts moved across—and sometimes with the expansion of—national
borders at different rates, creating uncertainty, conflicts, as well as opportunities. The
papers and presenters on this panel explore niches and disjunctures opened up bydifferential mobilities in Meiji, Taisho and early Showa Japan through the intersecting
lenses of literature and the history of science. The first two papers discuss how “ideas” ofWestern origin—mountaineering and meteorology—have moved into and across Japan and
the Japanese Empire, with specific materiality, artifacts, and human ambassadors
associated with them. The third paper looks closely into the lives of people who have been
ascribed different mobilities because of leprosy—and frictions they encounter. Together,papers in this panel showcase people, objects and ideas in motion at different rates of
movement, and how differential mobilities are sometimes utilized to define, and sometimes
to complicate, national and regional boundaries.
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1) Aaron Jasny, University of TokyoJapanese Mountains on the World Stage
This paper will explore the border crossings between Japan and the west that were
facilitated by the burgeoning sport of mountaineering during the Meiji and Taisho periods.
Walter Weston, an English missionary who was based in Japan on and off between 1988–
1915, was central to the popularization of the sport of mountaineering in Japan. He
introduced Japan to readers abroad in writings such as Mountaineering and Exploration in
the Japanese Alps (1868), and influenced Japanese climbers who were trying to establish
their own climbing tradition. Kojima Usui was especially impressed by Weston. The
founder of the Japanese Alpine Club (JAC) and the forefather of Japanese “mountain
literature,” Usui’s interactions with Weston introduced him to John Ruskin’s romantic
approach to alpine landscapes, modern climbing equipment and techniques, and the idea of
establishing the JAC as a hub for alpine pursuits. During his tenure abroad working for the
Yokohama Specie Bank in California from 1915–1927, Usui explored the Sierra Nevada
and Cascade mountains and discovered the writings of John Muir. My paper will use thewritings of Weston and Usui to consider Japan’s experience of international
mountaineering around the turn of the century. I will argue that while the introduction ofmountaineering and mountain literature from the west was instrumental in establishing a
Japanese tradition, Japanese alpine exploration and literature were by no means wholesale
imports, but were the product of efforts by Usui and other Meiji-Taisho alpinists to create
their own mountain culture.
2) Ryuta Komaki, Washington University in St. LouisOne Weather Station at a Time: Japanese Meteorology and the Boundary of the Empire
Meteorology has simultaneously been an international science and a science of the
Empire. While the former prioritizes collaboration, the latter prefers a domination over and domination by - knowledge. The coupling of meteorological observation and thecolonial ambition of the British Empire is well documented by historians of science. This
paper argues that, similarly, the development of modern meteorology in Japan was deeply
tied to the nation’s Imperial agenda, at the same time being a science dependent on a crossborder exchange of ideas, goods and data. Using a digital archive of Kishō shūshi (Journal
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ASCJ 2017 Abstractsof the Meteorological Society of Japan, Ser. I, published 1882–1922) and the 100-nen
Tenkizu Database, a database of official daily weather charts published since 1883, thepaper traces the movement of the European science of meteorology into Japanaccompanied by its own network of weather stations, meteorologists and communication
technology, which then moved onto Taiwan and Korea following - and sometimes
preceding - the expanding boundary of the Japanese Empire. Meteorology, in addition, wasan Imperial sibling to geographical survey, in that they were both means of extending
power over the Empire’s then-new territories by way of knowledge. Yet, the “mobility” ofthe science of the weather was not the same as that of map-making, as they interacted withdifferent faces of nature with different instruments. This paper shows how they each madedifferently paced progresses into the Empire’s new colonies ahead of, along, and behind
military and administrative frontiers.
3) Walter Hare, Washington University
Fenced Off: Hōjō Tamio and the Loss of Humanity
Now a relic of the early Twentieth century, Japan’s national quarantine of people
with leprosy spanned nearly fifty years, interring thousands within one of five leprosaria
spread throughout the country. Despite the scope of the effort, which grew to the point ofbeing an inter-prefectural competitive effort of who could get rid of their lepers mostthoroughly, the legacy of this program has not endured, likely a result of the minimizationof leprosy as a legitimate health concern in most places around the world. However, theforced isolation and separation of people from their homes and lives left behind a niche
literary domain, mostly comprised of poetry and essays written by sufferers, and amidst
this narrow margin shines one man in particular, Hojo Tamio. Having died in his 20’s aftera relatively short period of production, Hojo’s work captures the immobility of the people
suffering from leprosy at this time. This paper will show that leprosy represented a hardborder in time, separating a pre- and post- germ theory Japan, in space, with the restrictionof movement and isolation of a large number of people. But it also represented a border inthe conceptualization of humanity, a line once crossed could never be retread. Hojo’s
literature gives us insight into these borders and the pain that one experienced in crossing
them, and the stark impossibility of moving beyond them ever again.
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Discussant: Kazumi Nagaike, Oita University
Session 5: Room 5322
Re-reading Three Japanese Filmmakers
Organizer: Earl Jackson, National Chiao Tung University
Chair: Patrick Noonan, Northwestern University
This panel is an experiment in close readings of the work of three Japanese directors
considered “company men” or “contract workers” during much of their careers: Kinoshita
Keisuke is associated closely with Shochiku Studios, Masumura Yasuzo with Daiei, andKawashima Yuzo as a kind of itinerant yeoman at Shochiku, Nikkatsu, Toho and Daiei. A
closer reading reveals a startling range of creativity, innovation and theoretico-practicalengagement with cinema, the studio system, and the role of art in the social order. Hasumi
Shigehiko characterized post-silent era directors, beginning with Kinoshita as identifying
technology with cinema; he saw Masumura as one exception in maintaining a clear
distinction between the two. Assuming that Kawashima falls somewhere between the twoand bracketing the criticism implied in this categorization, our re-readings will explore therelations among technology, technique, and representational practices in the three directors.
1) Yutaka Kubo, Kyoto University
Keisuke Kinoshita Reconsidered: the Confinement of Queerness in the Flashback
Keisuke Kinoshita was one of the most prominent filmmakers of the postwar
Japanese film industry. His works tended to put an emphasis on (sometimes strong)
intimacy between same-sex characters often in the form of adolescent friendship, best
illustrated in Yuyakegumo (1956) and Sekishuncho (1959). These films help us understandhow Kinoshita’s sensibility played an important role in incorporating possibilities ofqueerness within the narrative. However the male-dominant communities of film critics
and scholars have virtually underestimated these films and failed to recognize themultiplicity of Kinoshita’s aesthetics. This paper sets out to investigate Kinoshita’s use of
the flashback in the genre of home drama as a film technique that enables the auteur to
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explore a queer relationship. As Maureen Turim (1989) defines it precisely, “the flashback
concerns a representation of the past that intervenes within the present flow of film
narrative.” Either consisting segments or most of the narrative, temporality created by the
flashback represents a closed realm that no outer force can change what has happened in
the past. Following the concept of queer temporality and space by Judith Halberstam(2005), if we suppose that a flow of time from past to present as a symbol ofheteronormativity, it may be arguable that the flashback is a key film technique that allows
a protagonist, who most likely has to obey heteronormative values at a present temporality,
to re-immerse in memories of a friendship that evokes queerness.
2) Luke Cromer, Waseda University
Kawashima Yūzō: The Alternative Spaces of a Japanese Cinema Modernist
In the Golden Age of Japanese cinema of the 1950s the masters of Japanesefilmmaking, namely Mizoguchi Kenji, Ozu Yasujirō, and Kurosawa Akira, brought Japanto the international stage presenting images of traditional Japanese spaces and humanist
themes. In this paper I discuss Kawashima Yūzō who, working against the grain in the
1950s by rejecting the humanist tendency, subverts the few traditional settings he used andrather worked with alternative spaces such as apartments, bars, restaurants and inns—
spaces of frequent mobility and exchange with characters negotiating modern day
dilemmas against a backdrop of the sociopolitical concerns of the time. In these spaces
satire functions as a playful criticism of Japanese tradition and postwar modernity. With amodern cinema aesthetic that displays an understanding of film history and theoreticalconcerns, I see in the director an auteurship that locates him in a similar context todirectors such as Ichikawa Kon and Masumura Yasuzō, renowned for their use of satire
and modernist approaches to cinema. In examining definitions of auteur and auteurshipwithin a rigid studio system, I demonstrate how Kawashima can be defined as auteur anddiscuss the significance of space in; A Room to Rent (1959), The Elegant Beast (1962), andThe Sun in the Last Days of the Shogunate (1957), a film that Sato Tadao declaresd in 1970
to be a turning point in Japanese comedy launching a trend that dismissed sentimentalism
themes.

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ASCJ 2017 Abstracts3) Earl Jackson, National Chiao Tung University
Realism and Representation in Masumura Yasuzo
Masumura Yasuzo (1924–1986) was a maverick who carved a niche in Japanesecinema history that is at once unique and conversant with his contemporaries andpredecessors in Japan and around the world. Perhaps the lucid ironies of Masumura’s films
derives from the contradictions he lived through, having earned a law degree from Tokyo
University during the final years of World War II and then studied film and filmmaking forthree years at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome. Working through therestrictions of studio production, Masumura’s films are impressive for their range, scope,and variable depths .He wrote copiously and eloquently on film in general, on his own
work, and on the work of other filmmakers. Masumura’s concerns with a balance of theory
and practice is evident in his May 1959 Eiga Geijutsu essay in which he writes that a“technique is thought transformed into perception. A true technician is a true thinker.
Conversely, a mode of thinking that has not yet been able to realize itself in technique is arather vague assemblage of concepts that does not possess a clear enough framework to becalled a way of thinking. This is because true intellect is a two-phase structure—both
perceptual and conceptual.” This paper will explore the implications of this two-phasestructure as articulated in his writings and realized in films such as A Wife Confesses(1961) and his 1957 remake of Yoshimura Kozaburo’s Warm Current.
Discussant: Patrick Noonan, Northwestern University
Session 6: Room 5323
Individual Papers I: People in Motion
Chair: Tanapoom Ativetin, Srinakharinwirot University
1) Akadet Chaichanavichakit, Waseda University
Perpetuating Migration Cycle of Low-skilled Workers from Myanmar to Thailand:
Generations to Generations
Thailand has successfully implemented export-oriented policy to drive its economy
since the 1980s. Precisely, Thailand’s export-driven policy focuses on manufacturingsector, which requires a large number of low-skilled workers with strategy to produce
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ASCJ 2017 Abstracts
goods at a minimum cost. However, with declining birth rate and expanded education, Thai
low-skilled workforce has been steadily shrinking. In 2015, Myanmar was the largest
source of low-skilled immigrant workers in Thailand with more than 1.4 million
individuals, 62.43 percent share of total low-skilled foreign workers. However, the large
share of Myanmar immigrant workers in Thailand is not unheard of; workers from
Myanmar, in fact, has surged into the country even before they were regulated in 1992.
This study aims to investigate this decades-long continual flow of immigrant worker from
Myanmar into Thailand. As modern studies in the field of migration suggested strong
influence from certain socioeconomic determinants on migration decision, this empiricalresearch originally applied perpetuation of international movement framework, an
inclusive socioeconomic framework, together with a comprehensive addition of economic
perspective, to conceptualize migration decision of Myanmar immigrant workers with thecase study of Myanmar workers in Thai seafood processing industry, an industry with thehighest level of immigrant worker dependency in Thailand. In-depth interviews with 18
immigrant workers and three key informants reveal that immigrant workers’ social ties aswell as changing socioeconomic conditions in their origin areas play crucial role
influencing perpetuation of migration cycle from Myanmar to Thailand.
2) Robert Winstanley-Chesters, Australian National University
Navigating Geo-Politics at the Mouth of the Amnok/Yalu: Sindo and its Fisherpeople
From Pyongyang’s urban landscape to Mt. Paektu’s sacred architectures, North
Korea’s topography is vital to its politics. While the coastlines are by their nature a little
more liminal than urban/political terrains, reclamation projects such as Taegyedo havebeen important to drive forward politico-developmental narrative, forge new ‘socialist’
landscapes and geo-political connections. However past research has demonstrated that
North Korea’s developmental projects, even large ones, have a habit of slipping frominstitutional focus, becoming peripheral objects/sites of disinterest. To investigate theimpact of such political diminution and peripherality this paper examines the case of thefishing community on Sindo Island. Once a focus of political commitment Sindo wasforged from the bed of the River Amnok/Yalu, downstream from Sinuiju/Dandong and afishing cooperative (important enough to be visited by Kim Il-sung in 1976), was formed
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ASCJ 2017 Abstracts
on reclaimed land from coastal communities elsewhere in North Korea. Sindo has sinceslipped off Pyongyang’s developmental radar becoming a marginal, half-remembered site.
Yet its resident community continued their work. The paper explores the topographic,social and (geo)political landscapes now inhabited by island residents. The paper considers
the fact that Sindo’s working community are now subjected not only to local institutional
indifference, but also to challenges brought about by global environmental crises. Finallyanalysis of the contestation and restriction of Sindo’s maritime access by a newly muscular
China and wider regional political reconfiguration leads the paper to a determination of thecommunity’s place in newly activated, dynamic political and economic spaces ofsovereignty and exchange.
3) Yuko Yamade, Meiji University
Translation and Exophonie in Yoko Tawada‘s Migrant Writings
Yoko Tawada left Japan and immigrated to Germany in the 1980s. Since then,Tawada writes literary works in Japanese and German, and in both languages, her works
are highly regarded. In Tawada’s early works, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, she oftentranslated one culture into another language, which means, she translated Japanese culture
into German or German culture into Japanese. By so doing, she created a cultural hybrid
space in Japanese and German literature, and such a space was named ‘The Third Space’by postcolonial scholars. Then in 2003 she published an essay entitled Exiphonie: A Trip toEscape from Mother Tongue. In this work, Tawada described another space which she
found by escaping from mother tongue. For example, in Tawada’s works from this period,
such as A Night Train with Suspects (2002) and Traveling Necked Eyes (2004), herprotagonists are often searching for their own space in the foreign cultures without
speaking their mother tongues. Thereby, Tawada’s protagonists are creating an exophonicspace in their new cultures. Thus, in this presentation, I would like to define the meaning of“Exphonie” using Tawada’s essay and some theoretical works, such as Susan Arndt’s
Exophonie: Anders-Sprachigkeit (in) der Literatur (2007) and from there explore thecharacteristics of exophonic space in Yoko Tawada’s works.

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ASCJ 2017 Abstracts4) Andrew Wolman, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
Humanitarian Protection in East Asia: Reviving a Neglected Framework for Asylum
AdvocacyThis paper is comprised of three sections. First, through an examination of thecurrent academic articles and journalistic reporting on forced migration policy, I
demonstrate that current legal discourse and advocacy regarding asylum in East Asia
(specifically, Korea, Japan and China) is focused disproportionately on the international
refugee law framework (rather than a humanitarian protection framework), considering thelimited importance of refugee law on the ground, as judged by the number of individuals
granted refugee status. Second, I argue that this disproportionate focus on refugee law
matters has deleterious consequences for the development of robust asylum protections in
the region, in a number of different ways. I furthermore show that future policy reforms are
more likely to result from the adoption of a humanitarian protection framework than arefugee law framework. Third, I sketch the outlines of how international legal norms
regarding humanitarian protection can provide a coherent legal advocacy strategy that canbe used to supplement—not replace—the current emphasis on refugee law. I conclude thatinternational norms in the field of humanitarian protection do provide an under-utilized
framework for asylum advocacy in East Asia with the potential for advancing productive
reforms in the region.
5) Elim Yee Lam Wong, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Inheritance and the Life of Cantonese Migrants: A Case Study on Shatenki and the Xie
FamilyEver since the opening of the port of Yokohama in 1959, the area has been attracting
Chinese residents to move to the city, especially Chinese from the Guangdong area.
Guangdong migrants became the dominant group in Yokohama and the early Chinatown
was set up by them. Within the small area, under the leadership of Cantonese migrants, set
up clan associations to settle internal matters and functioned as a self-help community tohelp the new migrants out in settling in the new foreign land in Japan. Economically,
Cantonese migrants set up Chinese restaurants, grocery stores and many other kinds ofshops that contributed in consolidating a sophisticated overseas Chinese community.
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ASCJ 2017 Abstracts
Although Cantonese migrants are no longer the majority in the overseas Chinese
population in Yokohama Chinatown since 1980s, until today, most of the major overseas
Chinese associations are leaded by Cantonese migrants, including the Developmental
Association of Yokohama Chinatown. Given the important history and contribution on thedevelopment of Yokohama Chinatown by Cantonese migrants, however, there are little
written materials that recorded the historical facts of Cantonese Chinese residents. The
research focuses on a Cantonese migrant family (The Xie’s family) as to trace how the first
generation adopt to the life in a foreign land and to understand how Cantonese migrants set
up family restaurants in the Chinatown, promote traditional Chinese cultural activities anduphold ethnic Chinese identity in Yokohama Chinatown. It will be a cross-disciplinary
project utilized oral historical and anthropological methodology with oral narratives,
archives and participant observation in Yokohama Chinatown.
Session 7: Room 5210
Individual Papers II: Twentieth Century Politics, China and Korea
Chair: Linda Grove, Sophia University
1) He Le, Cornell University
Illusionary Victory: Shanghai’s Propaganda Posters in the 1950s
The propaganda poster is an art instrument of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to
publicize its political claims and mobilize emotional participation of the masses on
economic construction and political evolvement\. In the early 1950s, propaganda posters
were designed by art school students and artists ranging from woodcut, traditional painting,oil painting and cartoon. It was until 1954 that it became institutionalized with the first
propaganda poster team founded in Shanghai under the East China People’s Art Publishing
House, leaded by Cai Zhenhua. As China’s publishing center in the Republican years,
Shanghai was also the base for propaganda poster production. Hence, focusing on
Shanghai, the CCP was endeavored on cultivating professional propaganda painters byreforming their ideology and, in effect, the style evolved from New Year prints to socialist
realism in reflecting the correspondent policy shift. However, I argue that the popularity
and impacts of the propaganda poster on mobilizing both propaganda artists and the masses
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ASCJ 2017 Abstracts
was overstated by government, which I called it the “illusionary victory.” In fact, themarket share of the propaganda poster was relatively low from 1949 to 1956 in comparison
with non-political posters produced by private publishing houses like Caihuayilian,
Xushengji, Lushan and Sanyi. The urbanites, who were still largely unfamiliar with
Communism, were more inclined to traditional new year prints and calendar posters.
Despite CCP’s mandatory reform and acquisition of private publishing houses, suchsituation was not changed until 1956 when the CCP gained total control of the commercial
publishing industry and eradicated other old forms of posters.
2) Jiayi Li, Columbia University,
Special Political Zone: Political Reforms in Shenzhen, 1978–1990
Many scholars who have studied the history of Reform and Opening Up notice therole that Special Economic Zones (SEZs) played in pioneering China’s economic
development. Shenzhen is among the first four SEZs that were established in the early
1980s. However, beyond its economic success and urban development, other facets of thehistory of Shenzhen have not been fully examined, and, therefore, the role that Shenzhen
played in the 1980s has not been thoroughly comprehended. This paper argues that
Shenzhen was much more than a SEZ in the 1980s. Shenzhen also served as a “special
political zone” where the possibility of political reforms was seriously explored. By theend of the decade, Shenzhen had made great strides toward significant political reforms; itplanned to establish a brand new legislative body—Shenzhen Lifa Weiyuanhui (Shenzhen
Legislative Committee)—outside of the existing constitutional framework. The local
People’s Congress—the legislative body defined in the constitution—was not establishedin Shenzhen during the 1980s. In comparison, the other three SEZs were all administeredunder the established constitutional framework during the same period. The political
reforms in Shenzhen came to an end in 1990—one year after the June Fourth Movement.
Based on local archives, newspaper articles, and oral history materials, this paper enriches
our understanding of the impetus for political reforms coming from inside of theCommunist Party along with its economic reforms and broadens our comprehension ofChina in the 1980s.

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ASCJ 2017 Abstracts3) Peter Banseok Kwon, Harvard University
Puguk Kangbyŏng: Park Chung Hee’s Defense-centered Heavy and Chemical
Industrialization, 1973—1979
Based on empirical study of newly declassified sources from South Korea, myresearch examines the Park Chung Hee regime’s (1961–1979) policy of chaju kukpang, or“self-reliant national defense,” from the late-1960s through the 1970s. In response to North
Korea’s provocations in 1968, the Park regime masterminded an independent militarymodernization program in which citizens and civilian industries, functioning as the de facto
engine of domestic arms production, propelled the emergence of a military-industrial
complex. There remains a gaping need in scholarship for more thorough analysis ofmilitary modernization during the Park Chung Hee era, since this topic is integral toexplaining South Korea’s socio-economic transformation over the last four decades. My
dissertation argues that a distinctively Korean military-civilian convergence enabled thePark regime’s Heavy and Chemical Industrialization Plan (HCIP; 1973–1979) throughwhich the nation built its own defense industry, amid reduced US military aid for Korea inthe 1970s. In this work, I have demonstrated how the state mobilized diverse domestic
actors and agencies to modernize the Korean military in ways that launched an industrial
revolution in South Korea and fueled the country’s unprecedented development from the1970s onwards. The total mobilization effort proceeded through complex mergers,
tensions, and negotiations of state goals with civilian material and ideological interests,
ultimately forging chaju kukpang as a bona fide national movement supported by powerful
Korean agency.
4) Jiyeon Choi, Korea Legislation Research Institute
Regulation Far-Fetched, or Necessary Evil? Review on the Improper Solicitation and
Graft Act of South Korea
South Korea scored 56 on the Corruption Perception Index published byTransparency International, placing 27 among 35 OECD member countries. Hong Kong
Political and Economic Risk Consultancy survey result also evaluated South Korea as themost corrupt country among developed countries in Asia. These records show prevailing
corruption in the public office and political sphere in South Korea, and discussions arose
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ASCJ 2017 Abstracts
on the need to enact a new law specifically regulating improper acts by public officials. As
a result, the Improper Solicitation and Graft Act was enacted in 2015 and became effective
in September, 2016. The implication and application of the law have brought significant
changes to not only public officials but also to people in everyday life, probably more than
anticipated by the legislators. This paper provides review on the procedure of theenactment of the Improper Solicitation and Graft Act of Korea, and introduces key
provisions that may be unique in their applications. Along with the review of the law, thisarticle also evaluates the procedural validity of the enactment of the law, and offer
amendment of the law to remedy the already-apparent pitfalls of the law. Examination on
regulations in a much-too-detailed level of conduct by public officials as specified by thelaw will present a case worth to study from other Asian countries in relation with theirresearch on legislation against corruption.

LUNCHTIME SESSION: 12:15 P.M.-13:15 P.M.
Film Preview: Room A203, Building 11
Until the Invisible Handcuffs are Removed”: The Legal Scapegoating of the“Hisabetsu Buraku” Community
Organizer and Chair, David Slater, Sophia University
Director, Kim Song Woong (Interpreter, Matsumoto Chie)

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ASCJ 2017 Abstracts
SATURDAY AFTERNOON SESSIONS I: 1:15 P.M. - 3:15 P.M.
Session 8: Room 5121
Rethinking Sinocentrism in Early Modern Asian Literature
Organizer: Clarence I-Zhuen Lee, Cornell University
Chair: Suyoung Son, Cornell University
This panel reconsiders the specter of Sinocentrism in early modern East Asian
literary studies. Many scholars have hitherto highlighted the inadequacy of Sinocentrism asa framework in understanding the circulation, production, consumption and influence ofliterary Chinese texts. Despite this, the practice of assuming “China” as the center
continues to be a point of departure for new researches. Nonetheless, this panel does not
attempt a direct critique of this framework; enough has been done. Instead, we hope topresent an approach that recognizes the multiple cores of “Chinas” figured by “peripheral”
literature at each historical context. It is therefore no surprise that the subject matter of thispanel will cover a range of works from different regions, fields, and media. Son’s paper
reconsiders the relationship between center and periphery in the Sinographic sphere byreading an eighteenth century Chosŏn writer’s historical record of Ming loyalists. Ling
follows up by discussing the ways in which a form of vernacular Chinese was imagined byChosŏn Confucian scholar Yi Ok in his production of a variety play (zaju). Yamamoto’s
paper highlights the local specificity of poetic composition in Edo Confucian scholar Murō
Kyūsō’s exchange of Sinitic poetry with the Chosŏn mission in 1711. Lastly, Lee examinesa case of production of medical knowledge driving the ways literary Chinese texts wereread and catalogued as specific examples of universal local illnesses. Concluding with
Goyama’s comments, this panel hopes to highlight how versions of “China” wereconstantly reimagined and renegotiated in early modern East Asia.
1) Suyoung Son, Cornell University
Literary Chinese and Reimagining China in Yi Tŏng-mu’s (1741–1793) Noeroe
nangnak sŏThis paper considers how local and peripheral writers read and created text in literary
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ASCJ 2017 Abstracts
Chinese, the so-called central and cosmopolitan language of East Asia’s Sinographic
sphere. The conventional dichotomy between literary Chinese and local vernaculars isoften premised on the antithetical perception that the development of local vernaculars isthe expression of an emerging national consciousness arising from the increased
independence of the peripheral areas, whereas the literary Chinese continues to serve as auniversal written medium without such a strong implication of a discrete distance from thecenter. Reconsidering literary Chinese as a medium of cultural commensurability, thispaper examines the eighteenth-century Chosŏn writer Yi Tŏng-mu’s compilation of Ming
loyalists “Noeroe nangnak sŏ” and explores the ways in which the specific condition of
temporal and spatial differences created the center that was constantly redefined byreferences to its peripheral contexts.
2) Xiaoqiao Ling, Arizona State University
Inventing the Vernacular: Yi Ok’s (1760–1812) Imagination of a Northern Variety PlayThis paper studies ways in which a Chosŏn scholar steeped in Chinese classicallearning created what he imagined to be a variety play (zaju) in plain classical andvernacular Chinese. The Chinese performance tradition of variety plays traces back to thethirteenth century in the Mongol Dynasty, and disappeared from the stage after the second
half of the fourteenth century. However, woodblock imprints of variety plays, often richly
annotated and commented, figured prominently in commercial printing throughout lateimperial China. Some of these books, together with Chinese vernacular fiction, traveled toChosŏn Korea in the eighteenth century. Yi Ok, a well-known Confucian scholar who wassomewhat controversial for his predilection for unconventional writing styles, composed
what he imagined to be a four-act variety play by alternating between arias in plainclassical Chinese and lengthy monologues and dialogues in vernacular Chinese. This paper
will examine how the Chosŏn scholar, who was well versed in classical Chinese but never
had exposure to spoken Chinese, drew upon a variety of lexicons and syntaxes to conjure
an idiosyncratic experience of vernacular Chinese, thus shedding light on the vernacular asa coded writing system that aims at capturing an imagined version of spoken Chinese.

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ASCJ 2017 Abstracts3) Yoshitaka Yamamoto, Osaka University
Poetry as a Non-Universal Medium: Muro Kyūsō’s Literary Exchange with the Chosŏn
MissionMuro Kyūsō (1658–1734) was one of several students of Kinoshita Jun’an who wereselected to exchange Sinitic (i.e. classical Chinese) prose and poetry with the Chosŏn
Mission of 1711. This paper will focus on one of his poems, in which he uses the secondperson pronoun nanji (J. jo, Ch.ru) to address Hong Gyoko, the Chosŏn emissary to whom
he dedicated the poem. Worried that this pronoun may seem overly informal and offend
Gyoko, Kyūsō added a Sinitic prose text explaining that he used this pronoun as part of a“set phrase” (J. seigo, Ch. chengyu) borrowed from a poem by Du Fu, and that his
intention was not derogatory. Around this time, it was standard practice among Japanese
Confucian scholars, including Kyūsō, to ostentatiously lift words and phrases from Tang or
earlier Chinese poets and reuse them in their poems, in line with the compositional methodof the Ming-dynasty school of Ancient Phraseology (J. kobunji, Ch. guwenci) as well asJapanese waka. The fact that Kyūsō felt the need to explain himself suggests that herecognized very well the possibility that his compositional method was not necessarily
common among his contemporaries in Chosŏn Korea. While Sinitic prose functioned moreor less effectively as a lingua franca in early modern East Asia, the case was not so simple
for Sinitic poetry, since poetic compositions and their interpretations could varysignificantly according to the specific styles of composition that happened to be in vogue ata particular point in time across different locales.
4) Clarence I-Zhuen Lee, Cornell University
Reassessing Sinocentrism in Early Edo Medicine: Literary case studies and Local
diseasesThis presentation considers how medical knowledge and Chinese literary texts
intersected in the context of early Edo medicine. Studies on Chinese medicine or kanpō inthe early Edo period often highlight the universal authority in which Chinese medical texts
such as Li Shizhen’s Bencao Gangmu (Honzō Kōmoku) amongst medical specialists. Thisapproach assumes the one-way flow of cultural capital in which the Edo medical
knowledge consisted mainly of the reapplication and eventual authentication of the28

ASCJ 2017 Abstracts
universality of these Chinese texts. What is not considered in such a view are the instancesin which non-medical Chinese literature as non-universal knowledge could havecontributed to the formulation of a “local” kind medical knowledge. It is in response to thisproblematic that this paper focuses on the text Kishitsu Benran (A Quick guide to thetreatment of Odd diseases). Written by Shimotsu Jusen in 1715, the form of Kishitsu
Benran is predicated on producing a practical knowledge by means of collecting “casestudies.” Even though most of these “cases” were taken from Chinese literary texts, thetext directs our attention away from these sources as ultimate truths towards the ways inwhich they were mere examples to elucidate the reality of local illnesses. Using Kishitsu
Benran, this paper explores the possibility of envisaging a different kind of relation
between Chinese texts and medical knowledge in the early Edo period, one that is not
simply bound by the framework of Sinocentric universality.
Discussant: Rintaro Goyama, Keio University
Session 9: Room 5124
Collective Action in Asia: Social Psychological Studies in Japan, Hong Kong, and thePhilippines
Organizer and Chair: Danielle P. Ochoa, University of the Philippines, Diliman
Collective action refers to the intentional actions of members of a particular socialgroup, for example, women in Japan, to create social change and raise their collective, as
opposed to merely individual, status in society. This panel highlights recent research by
Asian social psychologists working to understand collective action in diverse Asian
contexts, particularly in relation to gender and sexuality. The first paper looks into the roleof emotions in influencing women’s collective action intentions to eradicate gender
discrimination, taking into consideration variations in cultural expectations on emotional
expression. The second paper examines the interplay of traditional Chinese values andsexism in predicting men’s intentions to engage in collective action for gender equality.
The third paper integrates sense of place and mindfulness with civic engagement toelucidate links with ally collective action for lesbian and gay individuals. Finally, the29

ASCJ 2017 Abstracts
fourth paper compares ally collective action for stigmatized groups, while examining theimpact of anticipated stigma by association with these groups. In considering such a rangeof variables in understanding collective action within Asian contexts, these studies provide
further directions for both research and social change initiatives distinctly designed for our
respective cultures.
1) Danielle P. Ochoa, University of the Philippines, Diliman
Angry, Ashamed, or Hopeful? Comparing Emotions in Mobilizing Collective Action in
Japan, the Philippines, and Australia
Anger has been tapped as the emotion most associated with collective action; indeed,
it is considered an important predictor of collective action in the Social Identity Model ofCollective Action (SIMCA; van Zomeren, 2013). However, the acceptability of anger
expression varies across cultures. For instance, its role in collective action has been seen insome Asian countries such as the Philippines (Liu & Conaco, 2011). In contrast, in East
Asian cultures, anger is an emotion that one is socialized to suppress (Mauss, Butler,
Roberts, & Chi, 2010). Given such cultural differences in anger expression, the study
examined whether other emotions, particularly shame and hope, can also mobilize
collective action for gender equality in different cultural contexts. Women from Japan, thePhilippines, and Australia were asked to recall an experience of gender discrimination thattriggered either anger, shame, hope, or no particular emotion, and subsequently answered
measures of the SIMCA variables (identification, moral conviction, and efficacy) andcollective action intentions. Indeed, country differences were seen in both baseline levelsof emotions, as well as responsiveness to emotion prompts. While anger consistently
predicted collective action intentions across the three countries, shame and hope played
variable roles across these contexts. Implications for the study of emotions in relation tocollective action will also be discussed.

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ASCJ 2017 Abstracts2) Randolph C. H. Chan, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Collective Action as a Means to Eradicate Gender-based Oppression in
Chinese Culture
HeForShe is a global solidarity movement for gender equality launched by theUnited Nations. The campaign focuses on men in younger generations as the gamechangers for gender equality. It has sparked growing awareness and action to promotewomen’s rights around the world. Nevertheless, it has limited ramifications in the Chinese
community. The present study investigated whether and how the endorsement of Chinese
traditional values influenced men’s attitudes and collective action for gender equality.
Results of path analysis of survey data gathered from 120 male emerging adults in Hong
Kong showed that the adherence to traditional Chinese values was associated withheightened hostile sexism and benevolent sexism. Only hostile sexism was negatively
related to the intention to participate in collective action for gender equality. Social
mobilization for men's action toward gender equality should take culture into consideration
by debunking maladaptive traditional beliefs (e.g., fatalism, male dominance) that underpin
sexism and impede collective action.
3) Gloria Y. K. Ma, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Supporting Collective Action for Sexual Equality: Sense of Place and Mindfulness
SIMCA suggested that identification with groups advocating for collections actions
for social equality is an essential antecedent of collective actions. Apart from focusing on
the cause-specific factors for promoting group identification with advocacy groups, a more
non-specific approach to enhancing the group identification might be useful to a wider
range of causes. The present study examined an integrated meditational model from senseof place and mindfulness to intention of participating in collective action for reducing
stigma toward lesbian/gay individuals. It recruited 375 college students in Hong Kong toparticipate in a cross-sectional survey. Structural equation modeling results showed that the
proposed meditational model had satisfactory fit to the data. Sense of place andmindfulness indirectly and positively predicted collective action intention via positively
predicting active engaged citizenship and then group identification with groups advocating
for sexual equality sequentially. Results suggested that active civic engagement in broad
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ASCJ 2017 Abstracts
range of social issues would be effective in promoting identification with the advocacy
groups and then collective actions for reducing stigma toward lesbian/gay. Findings also
highlighted the importance of a multilevel approach for supporting ally collective actions
for sexual minorities, namely promoting sense of place toward our living city (the macro
environmental level), active and engaged citizenship (at the societal level), andmindfulness (the individual level). Recommended further research directions on extension
from the SIMCA and implications on community work will be discussed.
4) Eric Julian Manalastas, University of the Philippines, Diliman
Ally Collective Action and Stigma in Japan and the Philippines
Though it can go against their interests, members of advantaged groups may at times
act to uplift the conditions of a disadvantaged group. This is called being allies. But what if
acting as an ally might lead others to mistake a people as members of the stigmatizedgroup, thereby subjecting them to the same stigma in question? The goal of our crosscultural study was to investigate a potential barrier to allyship in Asian contexts, namely,
the threat of being misperceived as a member of the stigmatized group. We used the social
identity model of collective action (SIMCA; van Zomeren, 2013) in the context of allyshipfor four stigmatized groups in Asia: sexual minorities, people with HIV, the obese, and inJapan, the Zainichi Koreans. University students in three countries (two Asian countries,
Japan and the Philippines, and one non-Asian contrast country, New Zealand) read ahypothetical scenario about discrimination and answered measures for four collective
action predictors, namely anger, identification with the stigmatized group, efficacy beliefs
about being an ally, and moral convictions, as well as anticipated stigma. Contrary to ourmain hypothesis, anticipated stigma was positively correlated with ally collective action
across all countries. In addition, we replicated the SIMCA in both Japan and thePhilippines, with three out of the four variables (anger, identification, and efficacy)
predicting collective action as allies. Our findings show that, despite conditions of stigma,
allies in Japan and the Philippines can be made to mobilize on behalf of stigmatizedgroups.
Discussant: Makiko Deguchi, Sophia University
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Session 10: Room 5223
Of Bugs, Pigs and Things: Rethinking the Exterior of Human Language, from the
Voice of Non-humans to Image-thinking
Organizer: Hyung Jin Lee, University of Tokyo
Chair: Naoki Watanabe, Musashi University
Anything and everything can become the object of mimetic writing, but as humanbeings and human society is its favorite object, the act of literary writing always becomesan act of self-reflection. In our session we try to envision the exterior of human language
by exploring the various forms of ‘non-human language.’ We will be examining languagethat is spoken not through the mouths of human beings, but through the mouths of bugs,
pigs or even things(images) in various literary texts, which will in turn allow us to reflect
on such questions as ‘What are the limits of human language?’ or ‘What is it that makes
human, human?’ First Hien Nguyen will review various works of fiction in contemporary
Korean literature that portray human beings as bugs or insects, voicing their destitution andself-hatred. In a similar note, Ju A Joung will survey works of literature that employ the
motif of ‘human-animal’ in the works of George Orwell, Miyazaki Hayao andcontemporary Korean fiction, and discuss the conditions for and the moment of ontologicaltransformation from human to animal. Hyung Jin Lee will explore the gender implications
in recent Korean fiction that deal with the similar motif of dehumanizing metamorphosisthat has been sparked by violence. Yerhee Kim will discuss the overall powerlessness ofhuman language and suggest as its alternative, image-thinking. Through thesepresentations we hope to cast new light on the relationship between literary language andhuman beings.

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1) Thi Hien Nguyen, Vietnam National University
Of Bugs and Men: Narratives of Desire and Hatred in Korean Literature from the 1970s
to the Present
Friedrich Nietzsche had announced that human beings are mere animals, mere bugs;
Kafka brought this motif to life in Metamorphosis, the tragic tale of Gregor Samsa’s
sudden transformation into a bug. This presentation will review various works of fiction
from contemporary Korean literature that introduce the bug motif, and discuss theimplications of the frequent appearance of bugs in Korean literature. The poor dwarf fatherof Cho Sehŭi’s A Dwarf Launches a Little Ball (1978), and the incarcerated or debt-ridden
characters of Kim Yŏnghyŏn and Ch'ŏn Unyŏng all call themselves “bugs.” Such a selfdegrading concession, is actually a manifesto of their desire to return to being human.
However just when the main characters are about to achieve their desire of living a humane
life, they transform into bugs and the story comes to an abrupt end. By the end of the
1990s, in the fictional works of young female writers such as O Suyŏn, Kwŏn Yŏsŏn and
Kim Aeran, the bug motif takes an opposite turn, from narratives of desire to narratives ofhatred. Instead of conceding that they are mere bugs, they start to declare that they are not,revealing strong feelings of hatred toward bugs that are deemed to be ugly and harmful.
The ironical part is that their display of hatred point to themselves, becoming feelings ofself-hatred and self-denial as it becomes impossible to escape from their bug-likeexistence.
2) Ju A Joung, Kangwon National University
The Affliction of the Human Body and the Allegory of the “Human-animal” in theworks of George Orwell, Miyazaki Hayao and Contemporary Korean Writers
Both the transformation motif—human beings turning into animals—and
personification—animals standing in for humans—have a long history in literature. Suchtechniques are used to discuss what it is to be human, on the premise that human beings are
qualitatively different from animals. Paradoxically, the repeated use of these techniques
shows that matters concerning the body are basically the same both to human beings and toanimals. In other words, ‘a hungry Socrates and a satisfied swine’-type of rhetoricfunctions as an incantation to turn human cravings for physical pleasure to something
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beyond the pleasure of the flesh. As George Orwell reveals his disappointment and despair
in Stalinism through his novel Animal Farm, revolution caused by anger and physicalsuffering is bound to lose its motivation as soon as the demand for physical pleasure issatiated. This shows that the body, as the most private domain of all human beings, allows
and also limits the adventures of the mind, regardless of ideological or political orientation.
The allegory of “pigs on two legs” as depicted in the Animal Farm suggests that reflections
on human decency should start from an examination of the overlap or coexistence of thehuman-animal. In a world where Stalin’s experiments have become obsolete, and Adam
Smith’s invisible hand breeds human species into docility, what would ‘the human-animal’
look like? This paper examines the moment of, and the conditions for, a switch of beingthat occurs in the overlap of the human and the animal.
3) Hyung Jin Lee, University of Tokyo
Violent Imaginations in Écriture Féminine: Images of Metamorphosis in Contemporary
Korean Fiction
Metamorphosis has always been a powerful literary motif—whether it is depicted asa divine ability of the gods to take on various physical forms as in the Greek and Roman
myths, or as a dehumanizing experience of becoming something other-than-human, such as
an insect as Kafka had exquisitely shown in Metamorphosis. This age-old motif ofmetamorphosis takes on still new implications in contemporary Korean literature as the
motif captivates the imaginations of female writers such as Han Kang and HwangChŏngŭn, and produces images of metamorphosis that is at once violent and feminine. The
two writers are one in depicting violence as the power to distort, forcing the objects ofviolence to undergo physical or mental transformation from humans to non-humans.
However the two writers differ in the way they introduce gender into the issue of violence
and metamorphosis. Han Kang, in her award-winning novel The Vegetarian, depicts afemale character who wishes to metamorphose into a plant, and slowly turns into a tree as
she regresses into insanity. In this case, metamorphosis occurs only in the deluded mind of
the female character while the world stays intact. On the other hand, Hwang Chŏngŭn
portrays people turning into hats, matryoshka dolls or one’s own shadow, notmetaphorically or in a state of delusion but literally and in one’s right mind. In Han Kang’s
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works women are often portrayed as being the object of violence or violation, and as
regressing into insanity as a result of patriarchal violence that permeates the daily lives ofthese women. However, Hwang Chŏngŭn often depicts female characters—none other thanthe mother—as the inflictor of violence, a very unconventional gender portrayal. However
in both works the language of the dehumanized—whether due to insanity or inertia—
become lost, leaving behind only violent images of metamorphosis to speak for in its stead.
In this paper we will be exploring the various aspects of écriture féminine of thesecontemporary Korean writers who lend insight into violent imaginations of metamorphosis.
4) Yerhee Kim, Kangwon National University
The (Non-)Ontology of Image and Image-thinking: Poetic Thoughts in Korean
Modernist Literature of the 1930s
In March 2016, Korea witnessed a sensational event. A Go match between theeighteen time world champion Lee Sedol, and Alphago, the computer Go program
developed by Google, was being broadcasted live in Seoul, Korea. The historic match drew
the attention of the general public, and the game of Go made a great comeback recovering
its popularity of the past before it started to be considered old-fashioned. At the same time,the event exposed increasing fear of the general public, toward scientific advancement in
artificial intelligence. The idea of ‘human beings controlled by machine’ is surely rooted inthis fear. However, such fear was not newly born in year 2016, but is an age-old feelingthat has reverberated throughout human history, as shown in such precept of the Bible as
the prohibition of idolatry, which often turned into contempt for images. Such fear andcontempt toward the image grow on the ambiguity of image, beyond human understanding.
While deep understanding of an object necessarily requires conceptual segmentalization,
images by nature defy segmentalization, thus making such a process impossible. However,
the otherness of image allows for a change in paradigm of the way of thinking, for aconceptual or linguistic way of thinking cannot fully process the otherness of the image.
This paper examines the (non-)ontology of images and the possibility of image-thinking—an entirely different way of thinking from the conceptual or linguistic way of thinking—by
examining the modernist literature of Korea in the 1930s, mainly focusing on the works of
Lee Sang and Jeong Jiyoung.
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Discussant: Naoki Watanabe, Musashi University

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Session 11: Room 5224
Contested War Narratives as Expressed in Textbooks, Museums, and Film
Organizer: Mark E. Caprio, Rikkyo University
The recent conflicts that have erupted between the Northeast Asian states over the
past three decades are in part centered on how twentieth century wars are to beremembered. Collective war memories influence the views that citizens hold of theirnation, as well as those of the peoples their country victimized in these wars. That Japan,
China, and South Korea script their wartime participation as just, that they tend toemphasize their victimization over the victims they create, is hardly unique. That thesenarratives are publicly contested by neighboring states, however, is. This panel focuses
first on how the three states attempt to incorporate their war histories into their national
narrative, second, how these narratives are contested by others, and third, how thiscontestation influences their respective national narratives. Limin Bai compares how anearlier battle, the nineteenth century Sino-Japanese War, was treated in Japanese andChinese textbooks. Xiaohua Ma centers her paper on how museum wars have altered thepresentation of history in China and Japan, while searching for paths leading toreconciliation. Mark E. Caprio examines how Japan’s Yūshūkan and South Korea’s War
Memorial of Korea displays their military’s victimization of the enemy in two different
wars: Japan in the Pacific War and South Korea in the Vietnam War. Finally, Noriko
Kawamura compares how two versions of the popular film “Japan’s Longest Day” depicts
the actions of two controversial historic figures, Emperor Hirohito and General Anami
Korechika, in the final days of the Pacific War.
1) Limin Bai, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
War in Textbooks: A Comparative Study of the Narrations of the 1895 Sino-Japanese
War in Japanese and Chinese Textbooks (1897–1907)
The Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95 was one of the key events in the history of both
Japan and China. Through a textual examination of the war as depicted in Japanese andChinese textbooks in the decade following the war (1897–1907), this study aims todemonstrate how the war was exploited as an educational instrument to stimulate a spirit of38

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nationalism in both countries. Methodologically this study adopts a comparative approachat two levels. Firstly it investigates how the war was depicted in both Chinese and Japanese
textbooks by focusing on a textual comparison. Based on the findings from this textualcomparison, the study then focuses on an analysis of the effects of this Sino-Japanese Waron the content of textbooks and textbook writing practice. It first provides a timeline of the
war against the historical context of the triangular relationship between China, Korea andJapan. The comparative textual examination then demonstrates that the narration of the war
contained within the textbooks from both countries differed in language style, tone andfocus. There was also an enormous disparity between the Japanese and Chinese accountsof the events that led to the war. The study further analyzes such narrative differences toillustrate how textbooks were used as an effective agent through which a certain version of
the war was used to construct historical memory for educational and ideological purposes.
2) Xiaohua Ma, Osaka University of Education
History, Memory, and Reconciliation in East Asia: Museum Wars in Sino-Japanese
Relations
What role has war memory played in Japan’s relations with its neighbors? How has
history played a role in Japan’s relations with Asian countries, particularly with China?
And what effect has this had on Asian-Pacific security? Answers to these contemporary
questions must reckon with the impact of memories of the Asia-Pacific War (1931–1945),
a time of discord that continues to affect Japan’s relations with its neighbors. This paper’s
focus will be primarily on Japan’s relations with China. Media reports from the Chineseside offer recollections of the wartime experience that emphasize China’s disagreementswith Japan, while rejecting the fact that their collective memories also include morepositive features of this relationship. Thus, while not disavowing the negative, this paper
will focus on areas of historical understanding through collective memory that have playeda more constructive role in the shaping of Japan’s relations with China. It will first look at
how disputes over the interpretation of history in war museums have transformed Japan’s
postwar reconciliation policy with China. It will then discuss how more recently museum
wars have intensified and subsequently aggravated the relatively trusting relationship thatthe two countries once shared. Finally it will consider ways of reconciling the history39

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related problems that continue to aggravate China and Japan relations.
3) Mark E. Caprio, Rikkyo University
Reconciling Victimization: War Museums in Tokyo and Seoul
The suffering of innocents in particularly contemporary wars has become anincreasingly more unfortunate staple as the parameters of the battlefield expanded toincorporate urban centers. Aerial indiscriminate bombings of cities target the civilian rather
than the conscripted soldier. To a growing extent states are being pressured by thevictimized peoples to include these atrocities into their national narratives as found in
textbooks and museums. How the nation records its victimization of innocents into its war
museum is the focus of this paper. It focuses primarily on two war museums, the Yūshūkan
in Tokyo with that of the War Memorial of Korea in Seoul (with supplementary
consideration of those in other states) to compare how the museums present two different
incidences where actions of the Japanese and South Korean militaries drew accusations ofvictimizing innocents. While recognizing that the scale of atrocity vastly differs between
the two examples under consideration: Japan in World War II and South Korea in Vietnam,
this paper’s concentration is more on the approach that the two states adopt in arranging
the museum’s displays and explanations to justify the conduct of their military. Do theseapproaches differ significantly from that of other war museums? Do other examples exist
that might offer a better way of airing out the less honorable side of a state’s history?
4) Noriko Kawamura, Washington State University
Historical Memory of Heroes and Villains on Japan’s Longest Day
The Japanese government reached a decision to surrender in World War II after along protracted tug-of-war between the peace faction in favor of ending the war and thediehards who were determined to fight to the bitter end. This event has been dramatized byvarious films in Japan and abroad that contributed to perpetuating myths which createdheroes and villains in the tragic endgame of the war in Japan. This paper will focus on twocontroversial historic figures in two particular films both entitled “Japan’s Longest Day”
produced in 1967 and 2015 in by Japanese filmmakers. One is Emperor Showa, divine
sovereign and daigensui (commander in chief), who is often portrayed as peacemaker who
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saved Japan from national suicide by intervening personally to end the war on Japan’s
longest day in August 1945. The other is General Anami Korechika, the last minister ofwar, the highest military officer of the Japanese Imperial Army in 1945, who led the war
faction and insisted to keep fighting a decisive battle on the Japanese main island to protect
Japan’s national polity (kokutai). By examining how these films portrayed the two historic
figures and whether they reflected what really happened, this paper question what
historical accuracy means to historical but fictional films. The paper will also explore whatroles these films played, both positive and negative, in the broader realm of war memory
and myth making.
Discussant: Torsten Weber, DIJ German Institute for Japanese Studies Tokyo
Session 12: Room 5322
Local Society in Motion: Negotiating Boundaries through Everyday Life in the Early
Modern Era
Organizers/Chair: Boyi Chen, Guangdong Academy of Social Sciences; Gilbert Chen,
Washington University
This panel intends to foreground fluidity of early modern local society and reveals
how different forms of boundaries were continually negotiated and redrawn from theperspective of history of everyday life. The aim is to examine and question various
prevalent metanarratives at a reduced scale of observation. Boyi Chen’s paper investigates
the different daily mechanisms through which Fujianese merchants survived and thrived in
Batavia and Manila, two disasporic communities beyond the geographical boundary of the
Ming-Qing empires. Rather than ascribe to dominant acculturation paradigm, this work
highlights transplantation, fragmentation, and isolation as central to our understanding ofChinese diaspora in the early modern era. Nan-Hsu Chen shows how fluid and shifting
political boundary between legality and illegality was along the Qing empire’s internal
frontier in early nineteenth-century Taiwan. He argues that Fujianese immigrants in
Taiwan appropriated pirate invasion to legitimize their everyday but illegal reclamation bydefending state’s cause in local society. Xiao Chen, by documenting how local litigants
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strategically used community leaders in their routine legal practices, explores themultifunctional roles taken by these legal intermediaries in Ba county of southwestern
China during the Qing, thereby revealing the porosity of power relations in local society.
Finally, Gilbert Chen questions the heightened separation between spirituality andtemporality implied in many works on Chinese religion. Through analysis of daily
practices of sexuality by ordinary monks and nuns, he demonstrates that the claimed
sacred-secular boundary was fluid and constantly negotiated due to ordinary monastics’social embeddedness into local society.
1) Boyi Chen, Guangdong Academy of Social Sciences
Two Types of Segregation: Structural Similarities and Differences of the SouthFujianese Local
This paper analyzes how the embedding and reshaping mechanisms of the diasporicSouth Fujianese worked or failed in the context of local authorities in two Southeast Asian
host societies, Batavia and Manila, beyond the border of the Chinese empire. The
discussion of the mechanisms is a weakness in previous studies since they mostly focus on
the description of adaptation, however, the core issue is not simply different strategies
South Fujianese applied to host societies, but to reveal the process and systematicintertwinement of multiple groups. This issue was not simply the acculturation, but more
the actual practice over the segregation in the daily lives. Except the broad phenomena
such as local marriage and official service by and large in these two host societies, one of
the notable embedding and the reshaping mechanisms in Batavia was autonomous
administrative and juridical systems, while in Manila was merging a market by supplying
the daily utilities and commodities, with limited daily juridical negotiation. This paper uses
Gong An Bu (Minutes of the Board Meetings of the Chinese Council) and some Spanish
colonial records (e.g. Recopilación) to reveal different mechanisms in these two diasporiccommunities. Only when we recognized these mechanisms could we evaluate the successand fail of the South Fujianese or even Chinese communities in pre-modern Southeast
Asia, and understand segregation in a deeper way: there were not only different types ofsegregation, but also mosaic and multi-layers of segregation that reveal the diasporiccommunities in terms of transplantation, fragmentation, and isolation.
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ASCJ 2017 Abstracts2) Nan-Hsu Chen, National Taiwan University
Joint Reclamation? Pirates, Illegal Immigrants and the Local Politics of Early
Nineteenth-Century Taiwan
This article examines the far-reaching consequences of early nineteenth-century
pirate activities in a broad region across contemporary Vietnam and China’s southeast
coast. This article takes Taiwan as an example to illustrate how different Qing officials aswell as local people dealt with pirate invasions and appropriate these events to serve theirdiverse agendas. Namely, this article takes local perspectives to understand trans-border
historical events. The case of Taiwan shows that the consequences of pirate invasions wereembedded in the context of local politics in Taiwan. The officials disagreed with each otheron the reclamation of the eastern Taiwan, where reclamation was forbidden but had been
made by tens of thousands of illegal immigrants. These immigrants refused to cooperatewith the pirates to collectively establish a society autonomous from the Qing
government—a proposal for “joint reclamation.” They, instead, chose to express loyalty to
the Qing while appropriated these events to legitimate their reclamation. The consequencesof the pirate invasions were the establishment of a new administrative division in Taiwan
and the changing philosophy of Taiwan’s governance in the future. The history of Taiwan
shows the social meanings of the boundaries at different fronts to different social actors
when these political lines were arranged, followed, transgressed or transformed.
Furthermore, these lines generated opportunities for non-state actors, namely, pirates andimmigrants, to choose their positions toward the state, so the investigation into the meaningof these political lines also offers clues to the political or cultural integration or
disintegration of the Qing.
3) Xiao Chen, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Community Leaders in Property Disputes in Ba County: Legal Intermediaries andLitigation Strategy 1736–1861
Drawing on both published collections of legal cases and legal archives of Ba county,
this paper reveals that community leaders, serving as legal intermediaries at county level,
were integral to the adjudication and mediation of property disputes in Ba county.
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Functions of community leaders in juridical field could be summarized into three aspects:
construction of “legal facts” through collecting “reliable” information for magistrate;serving as witnesses for involved parties in court; and proposing resolutions for mediationor magistrates’ adjudications. Other than viewing litigants as sufferer of community
leaders’ abuse of power, this paper adopts a bottom-up perspective and also reveals how
litigants used the presence of community leaders as a litigation strategy to serve their own
ends. Community leaders in Qing dynasty referred to those unsalaried semi-official agentsnominated by the local community and licensed by the state. Ba county in southwestern
China was rich of miscellaneous types of community leaders including xiangyue(community compact), baozheng (head of household registration), tuanzheng (leader ofmillitia), zuzheng (lineage elder), and kezhang (head of immigration group). While pastscholarship largely focuses community leaders’ roles in other fields such as collecting
taxes and maintaining local orders, this paper illustrates that capital that community leaders
accumulated in other fields was transferred into the juridical field. Thus the boundaries
between different fields in local society were porous and juridical field in Qing dynasty
was not independent of other power fields.
Discussant: TBA
Session 13: Room 5323
Individual Papers III: Environmental Studies in Northeast Asia
Chair: Jenine Heaton, Kansai University
1) Sang-ho Ro, Ewha Womans University
Damming Rivers: Environmental History of Cold-War Developments in 1960s South
Korea
This paper is intended to analyze environmental impacts of Cold-War developmental
projects in South Korea during the 1960s. From the beginning of the decade, the UnitedStates Agency of International Development (AID) made use of American science andtechnology and countered Asian communist advancement in “Third-World” countries. By
improving living quality of local people, the USAID expected to stop the communism
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which was believed to live on poverty and under-development. In 1960s South Korea, theUSAID and South Korean government collaborated with each other to tame Mother
Nature, especially to control Han River. Multi-purpose hydroelectric dams and new sewage
system, which succeeded the Japanese colonial development, remarkably domesticated theonce-wild Korean river. Nevertheless, the modern development projects caused serious
degradation of environment. Dried up by the dams, the Han River was not only open forreclamation, but also lost its various sources of fresh water and sands from upper river andsmall streams. As small waterways in Seoul disappeared with rapid urbanization anddeforestation, the Han River changed from a gift to a burden. It is, however, striking tonote that the Cold-War developers spared little space for conservation efforts. Such an
imbalance in the development plans will be revisited and examined in this paper.
2) Xiao Yu, East Normal China University
Setting rules through pollution-induced contention: The evidence from rural China
Pollution-induced contention is usually taken as victims fighting against polluters toprotect the environment, in which different levels of government appear either as targets,
initiators of claims, or third parties. This article, however, argues that environmental
protection may be just an illusion while involving the government agencies is more thansimply enforcing laws. By analyzing pollution-induced contention around the electronic
waste processing industry in three small villages (Xiayang, Batang and Yunlin villages) ofrural China, this article will demonstrate how villagers can make use of pollution-induced
contention to set rules among themselves. The existing literature on village politics tends toemphasize that the village has its own distinct logic independent of that of the government
in setting rules. Instead, this article shows that villagers will involve government agencies
on their initiative and twist the two lines of logic for rule setting when pollution provides
them with a legitimate reason to engage government agencies for other ends thanenvironmental protection.
3) Abhik Chakraborty, Wakayama University
Transition and Continuity in Mountain Landscapes of Japan
This paper analyzes social and environmental change in Japan’s mountain landscapes
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by focusing at three iconic mountain tourism destinations in the North Japan Alps (Hida).
Mountains occupy nearly 80% of land surface of the Japanese Islands; they possess
important geological, geomorphological and ecological attributes, and they have sustained
human societies for millennia. Although most mountains are moderately elevated and arelocated in close proximity to densely populated areas, they were considered sacred spaces
and were rarely climbed before Japan’s modernization in the late nineteenth century.
During the wave of industrial modernization and urbanization modeled after the West,Japanese mountains were ‘discovered’ as objects for conquest. During the twentiethcentury, the Japan Alps area witnessed a rapid growth of mass tourism and construction
activities that fragmented the landscape and species habitats. Degradation of the naturalenvironment fueled contemporary nature conservation movements and lately there aresome efforts to promote ecotourism and nature based tourism in the area. This paper
explores aspects of biophysical and social aspects of landscape level transition andcontinuity from three ‘cases’ of the Hakuba, Kamikochi and Kurobe valleys. Based oninterdisciplinary research, the paper finds that while each of these areas has distinct
geological, ecological and cultural attributes, they were subjected to very similar
development pathways leading to the trivialization of place and loss of ecologicalconsciousness. While ongoing efforts to limit human impact to the environment haveenjoyed some success, landscape fragmentation, global environmental change and loss of
traditional knowledge remain as major challenges.
4) Maxime Polleri, York University
Furusato Sweet Furusato: Finding Home after Fukushima
The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster and its subsequent release of radioactive pollutants
have blurred the boundaries upon which the meaning of home once rested. In this context
of uncertainty, I pursue how the socio-cultural sense of home is showing signs of fracture,
while simultaneously being re-imagined in a post-Fukushima context of radioactive
contamination. Through ethnographical work with two types of evacuees, namely, people
that were officially forced to evacuate, as well as voluntary evacuees (jishu hinansha), I
highlight how the lived experience of radioactive contamination challenges what refugees
formerly understood as their home, including the cultural values embedded into such past
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conceptualizations. In Fukushima, radioactive contamination has instigated a figurative
mutation in the concept of home, which cannot be brought back to its original essence.
Such threshold represents a sharp contrast against the state revitalization projects, which
mobilize tropes of nostalgia and resilience in an attempt to make people come back to theirformer irradiated native lands (furusato). Drawing on an anthropological literature upon
precarity, I track the rearrangements of home and homelessness, in addition to theirimpacts on the everyday life and future of Japanese citizens. For the evacuees ofFukushima, the new social designs that surround the concept of home can bring momentsof hope through alternative ways of being, knowing, and belonging, but equally, insidiousforms of structural harms that can be malevolent to their recovery.
Session 14: Room 5210
Individual Papers IV: Print Culture, Translation, and Games
Chair: Yusuke Tanaka, Meiji Gakuin University
1) Machiko Ishikawa, Surugadai University
Producing English Translations of the “Hiragana Poems” of Kishida Eriko
This paper will discuss issues encountered when translating Japanese poems whichfeature the use of the hiragana script. Focusing on Kishida Eriko (1929–2011), one ofpost‐war Japan’s most well-known woman poets, the presentation will provide a close
reading of two of Kishida’s poems: “Kaze to kazaguruma” (The Wind and a Windmill) and“Kuru asa goto ni” (Round it Goes Mornings), both published in Akarui hi no uta (1979,
Songs of A Bright Day). The common feature of these poems is the use of hiragana only. I
refer to these poems as hiragana shi (hiragana poems) in order to emphasise the poetic
effect resulting from the intentional use of hiragana only. I am particularly interested in theissues presented for translators of poetry of this nature. In ‘Translation as Culture,’ Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak (2000) declares translation to be “[i]n every possible sense …
necessary but impossible.” Spivak further argues that the translator needs “intimate
knowledge of the rules of representation” of her own culture, while also being “responsible
and accountable” to the “presupposed original.” I will especially investigate how we might
resolve the “impossibility” of translating hiragana poetry to maintain the significance of47

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the poet’s use of that script, that is to maintain the integrity of the “presupposed [hiragana]original” in terms of the “rules of representation” of English language verse.
2) Zengxian Li, Ritsumeikan University
Japan Printed Books in East Asia: the Lockhart Collection in the Cambridge University
LibraryThis paper will focus on the late Sir James Haldane Stewart Lockhart’s (1858–1937)
book collection, elucidating how those books ended up in the Cambridge University
Library. On April 3, 1898, the late Ch’ing government leased Weihaiwei, Shantung inNortheast China to the British government. The British Royal Navy administered this newcolonial territory for the first few years, but transferred its administration authority to theColonial Office eventually. As a result, in 1902, Sir Lockhart was appointed as the first
civil commissioner of Weihaiwei, who held the post for 19 years until 1921. Before that,
he had spent 20 years in Hong Kong as a registrar-general and colonial secretary. In otherwords, as a British administrator, Sir Lockhart spent his entire career of nearly 40 years in
China. During that time, he built a magnificent collection, including 1,200 titles of books,
800 paintings and 300 artifacts. At the time of his retirement, he brought all his collection
back to Britain with him, but only his book collection was dispersed after his death. One
noteworthy fact about his book collection is that a considerable proportion of those books
are Chinese works reprinted in premodern Japan (Wakokubon). Discussing several
outstanding items of his collection, this paper will not only reveal the historicalcircumstances under which Wakokubon were distributed in those British colonies in East
Asia, but also discuss border-crossing interactions of peoples during the early 1900s.
3) Tin Kei Wong, University of Queensland
A Comparative Study on Images of Mothers in Chinese and Japanese Translations:
Laura M. White and Wakamatsu Shizuko’s Translations of Little Lord Fauntleroy
This paper examines the dichotomy between two mother figures in two translationsof Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886), the Japanese translation
Shōkōshi by Wakamatsu Shizuko (1864–1896) and the Chinese translation Xiao yingxiong
by Laura M. White (1867–1937). In the original, there is a sharp contrast between Mrs.
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Errol, a mother with angelic qualities, and Minna Tipton, a mother “from the lower walksof life.” Juxtaposing the three sets of images of the two mothers in the original and the twotranslations, this paper argues that the translators have intensified the dichotomy between
the two female characters with emphasis on different qualities of a mother. White, an
American Protestant female missionary to China who was a principal of a girls’ school andeditor of a women’s magazine, heavily stressed on inner qualities of a wise mother while
minimizing the depiction of female physical beauty. Wakamatsu was a devout Christian,and her values, Christian or otherwise, also seem to have influenced how she represented
the two characters. Her translation, however, was strongly motivated by her personal
literary aspiration and was not constrained by external factors as White’s translation would
have been due to her affiliation with the missionary and girls’ education. Through a
comparative textual analysis, this paper aims to investigate how the historical, social, andcultural contexts in which the translators were situated significantly influenced the imagesof female protagonists in translations.
4) Man Shun Yeung, The University of Hong Kong
Abel Yen, Benjamin Bowen Carter and Dictionarium Sinicum: Their Place in the
History of Early 19th Century Westerners’ Chinese Learning
Dictionarium Sinicum is the manuscript of a Chinese-Latin dictionary now deposited
at Brown University’s John Hay Library. This manuscript, which is a copy of the second
edition of Italian Franciscan priest Basile de Glemona’s (葉宗賢/葉尊教, 1648–1704)
famous work Hanzixiyi (漢字西譯, Western Translation of Chinese Characters), wastranscribed by a man known as Abel Yen and originally in the possession of Benjamin
Bowen Carter (1771–1831). Yen was a Chinese Catholic who served as an agent for priests
in Canton (Guangzhou) and Macao. In addition, he also provided information toWesterners and taught them the Chinese language. Carter was a native of Providence,
Rhode Island, a 1786 Brown graduate and, more importantly, one of the few Americans
living in Canton at the beginning of the 19th century to feel the need to learn Chinese. He
studied Chinese under Yen’s instruction, and Dictionarium Sinicum was one of the
textbooks they used. Carter’s remarks on the manuscript provide important information on
its transcription, as well as his own explanations of Chinese characters and pronunciation.
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Based on a detailed investigation of Dictionarium Sinicum and other first-hand archival
documents, this paper re-sharpens our image of Carter as an American pioneer in Chinesestudies, re-evaluates Yen’s roles as advisor, teacher and translator to Westerners, andexplores the significance of this important manuscript in the history of China-West cultural
relations.
5) Ben Whaley, The University of Calgary
Phantoms of War and Traumatic Memory in Metal Gear Solid VThis paper investigates how video games can simulate post-traumatic stress andwartime atrocities from Japan’s fifteen-year war through a case study of the 2015 stealthaction game Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (MGSV; Kojima Productions andKonami). While some scholars contend that military-themed video games present war as“cleaned up, void of horrific consequences, civilian casualties, and psychic devastation”(Huntemann, 2010), this paper argues that recruiting and caring for virtual soldiers in
MGSV fosters a form of player empathy that might help one better identify with thoseserving on the battlefield. Moreover, a game-ending mission where players must executemany of these same soldiers they recruited and cared for over the campaign promotes agreater degree of culpability in the game’s wartime atrocities and therefore strengthens theimpact of the antiwar narrative. I begin by reading the game’s complex narrative as an
attempt by antiwar designer Hideo Kojima to undermine what Naoki Sakai identifies as thepostwar foundational narrative between Japan and the United States. This analysis leads
me to a discussion of the main gameplay features of MGSV and how the series deploys
what I term “external engagement” to encourage a merging of the player’s lived experience
with the actions of the in-game protagonist. Finally, I examine how players work throughphantom limb pain and post-traumatic stress in several interesting gameplay scenarios,
illustrating how these moments provide a more personalized appreciation of war trauma
and recovery owing to the players’ moral involvement in the in-game events.

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SATURDAY AFTERNOON SESSIONS II: 3:30 P.M. – 5:30 P.M.
Session 15: Room 5121
Contemporary Japanese Foreign Policy
Organizer/Chair: Robert D. Eldridge, International Policy Studies
NOTE: This is a panel that the organizer kindly put together from four individual
papers. It thus lacks a panel abstract.
1) David Adebahr, Kyoto University
Introducing a New Strategic Approach by Orienting “South”? Testing Strategic
Elements in Japan’s Evolving Security Policy for Asia
This paper aims to answer the question whether Japan’s pivot south introduced by
the second Abe administration is strategically sustainable and offers a possibility to replace
the Fukuda Doctrine in regards to Japan’s evolving security cooperation with countries inSoutheast Asia. While Former Prime Minister Fukuda introduced a comprehensive
approach to engage with other Asian countries in the sphere of economic and politicalcooperation and exchange, Abe’s strategic ‘pivot’ towards Southeast Asia, for the firsttime, contains specific military elements. After introducing the theoretical parameters thatmark the notions of “strategy” and “strategy shift,” this paper first lays out the strategic
patterns found in Japan’s Security Diamond approach outlined by Prime Minister Abe
during his first term in office and explains the shortcomings of this approach. On a second
empirical stage this paper will introduce Japan’s new and emerging security alliances with
Southeast Asian neighbors, analyzing their new strategic elements in a qualitative
approach. This paper will analyze several bilateral security cooperation and compare their
evolving (or declining) strategic element due to policy measures introduced by the Abeadministration. Thus, the paper helps to estimate the impact of Japan’s new strategic stanceon Tokyo’s overall foreign policy within the bilateral cooperation with the U.S. The paper
concludes that by carefully embracing Southeast Asia the new evolving strategy isbroadening Japan’s strategic scope, limiting fear of abandonment by the U.S. and presents
a possibility to replace the Fukuda Doctrine.

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ASCJ 2017 Abstracts2) Maria Malashevskaya, Saint Petersburg University
Mongolia in Japan’s Eurasian Policy (1996–2016)
The proposed paper deals with the problem of Japan-Mongolia relations since 1990s
that marked a new turn in Japanese strategy of foreign policy toward Mongolia against
Eurasian diplomacy adopted by Hashimoto cabinet in 1996–1997. Despite the fact thatthese two states have forty-year history of official diplomatic relations, the period of realpositive Japan-Mongolia cooperation started only in 1996, when two governments set out
the goal of building “Comprehensive Partnership.” It is of particular importance to reveal
the new diplomatic framework under which this mutual cooperation became possible
taking into consideration such factors as regional security and policy towards the third
parties, like North Korea (“Building a Strategic Partnership,” 2010). The focus of the paper
is the essential features of the twenty-year bilateral economic and strategic cooperation,
which determined the role of Mongolia in new Eurasian policy of Japan as the radar pointin the center of trans-Eurasian roots of China, Russia and Central Asian states as well as
strategic base for the Japan-USA interaction in Eurasia.
3) Edward Boyle, Kyushu University
Tracing “Integral Territory”: Sovereignty, Access and the Body of the Japanese Nation
Over the past five years, the Japanese government has made concerted efforts toattempt to homogenize the notion of territory deployed by Japan in her disputes with
Russia, Korea and China. Under the rubric of “integral territory”, what for the majority of
the Cold War were understood as competing claims over islands, able to be resolved
through bilateral negotiations between the parties, have now been transformed into
disputes over vast expanses of maritime territory, the outcomes of which will literally
shape Japan in the future. The successful prosecution of such disputes is now presented as
being absolutely essential to the maintenance of Japan as a sovereign nation in the twentyfirst century. Currently, although Japan proclaims its sovereignty over all three of theseisland groups as well as their surrounding maritime areas, it is in possession of the Senkaku
Islands, while Takeshima and the Northern Territories remain under the authority of South
Korea and Russia respectively. Consequently, access to these border areas of the nation forJapan’s own citizens is subject to a variety of institutional and practical hurdles. Yet what
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does the notion of territorial sovereignty mean in a situation in which the only one of these
territories able to be currently accessed from Japan is the Northern Territories? This paper
will examine the implications for notions of sovereignty and territory implied bydifferentiated access to these disputed island spaces bordering the nation.
4) Tatsuro Debroux, Pompeu Fabra University
Japan’s Foreign Policy under Abe Administration: A Role Theory Analysis of Japan’s
Foreign Policy initiatives between 2006–2007 and 2012–2016
In my PhD thesis, role theory is used as theoretical framework. It focuses on nationalrole(s) conceptions, defined as shared, value-driven expectations about the appropriate
roles a state should play in the world. The thesis analyzes the constitutive elements ofJapan’s role conceptions, but also the possible roles competition, role conflicts andinconsistency between role conceptions and role performance between Japan and the main
alter-parts (external expectations). There was no major inconsistency between Japan andmain foreign countries around Japan for a long time. However, Japan changes its roles overtime. In this context, ‘value-oriented diplomacy’ and ‘proactive pacifism’ proposed byPrime Abe since 2006 raises issues from a role theory perspective. The Abe Cabinet aims
at becoming an important power in the world, cooperating with friendly countries. In suchconditions, the question is to investigate if, why and how the role conceptions andperceptions evolved from the end of the Cold War to the Abe administrations. In my thesis,
a qualitative content analysis of important foreign policy speeches of Japanese leaders andforeign leaders will be conducted because they reflect not only the constituents but also
main role conceptions on foreign policy issues that international society ascribed to a given
country. Statements of foreign policy indicating responsibility and duty will be analyzed.
My tentative conclusion is that Japanese government became proactive to keep the US
presence in East Asian region to keep China and North Korea in check primarily but there
are consistency and inconsistency between Japan and key alter-parts.

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Session 16: Room 5124
Tiger, Journal, and Film: Negotiating Modernity in Twentieth-Century China
Organizer/Chair: Fei Chen, University of Tokyo
The first half of the twentieth century witnessed the rapid advancement of imperial
expansion in China. Various actors were closely woven into a modernization project thatwas either initiated by the Chinese or imposed by the foreigners. This panel looks at theresistance, confrontation, negotiation, and integration between modernity and tradition inthis process. Fei Chen’s research uses student-edited journals to explore the emergence of a“modern” perception of Tibet among Chinese students in Meiji Japan. It is aimed at findingout how Japanese knowledge facilitated a form of nationalism that demanded the territorial
unification of China and mobilized the Chinese state to continuously strengthen its control
over Tibet. Le Wang’s study examines how a mobile propaganda team equipped withvarious media devices, including films, picture-story shows, and radio broadcasting,undertook the propaganda project in rural Manchuria. It reveals the techniques used by a“modern” empire to control its colonial subjects. Ying-kit Chan’s research looks at
missionaries’ efforts to help rural inhabitants in Fujian Province hunt tigers in the early
Republican era. It discusses the ways in which missionaries advanced the Bible with his“modern” gun to compete with local religions.
1) Fei Chen, University of Tokyo
From Empire’s Frontier to Sichuan’s Treasury: Japanese Knowledge, Japanese
Practice and the Tibetan Crisis, 1895—1911
This study explores an intellectual change underlying a shift in Qing China’s Tibet
policy in the early twentieth century, one that negated the principle of loose control and led
to Sichuan troops’ invasion of Tibet. I trace the policy shift back to a change in theperception of Tibet among Chinese officials in Sichuan and Beijing. In their eyes, Tibet
was no longer a barren land or an inaccessible fence in traditional narratives, but a treasury
and an indispensable part of Sichuan. The new perception renounced the conventional ideathat the management of Tibetan affairs was a costly project contributing little to revenue,
and encouraged Sichuan and the state to expand their influence into the unexploited land. I
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argue that the new view of Tibet was enabled by Japanese intellectuals’ studies of Tibet,
which were introduced to China through Chinese students in Japan. Through an in-depth
examination of the discourse of Tibet in both Japanese and Chinese sources in the earlytwentieth century, this study aims to shed light on a process in which a new perception of
Tibet was produced, disseminated and turned into practices.
2) Ying-kit Chan, Princeton University
The Bible Through the Gun: American Missionaries and Tiger-Hunting in RepublicanEra Fujian Province
In the 1860s, the first American Methodist missionaries arrived in China. They based
themselves in Fujian and looked to spreading their faith to other parts of China. The 1911
republican overthrow of Qing imperial rule dismantled the cosmological basis of theChinese civilization. While mired in cultural crisis, political fragmentation, and social
disorder, the early Republican period was an “age of openness,” when the Chinese people
were receptive to new ways of ordering their mental and physical worlds. Chinese
Methodist churches expanded in the urban Fuzhou area in facilities and membership. Yet,
Methodist missionaries continued to face resistance to their proselytization in the
countryside, where they had to compete with local religious specialists and local deities forattention. One of the missionaries, Harry R. Caldwell, attempted to advance the Bible withhis gun in the tiger-infested countryside. By helping rural inhabitants kill the “great,
invisible” man-eating tigers, Caldwell empowered his god with his gun, desacralized thetiger, and claimed that only the Christian God could immunize them from animal attacks
and “superstitious” beliefs. Native beliefs included the Tiger Marshal (huye) cult, whose
devotees remained antagonistic to the missionaries’ construction of churches, hospitals,
and schools in the countryside.

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ASCJ 2017 Abstracts3) Le Wang, University of Tokyo
Film, Picture-story Show and Radio Broadcast: Entertainment and Pacification in
Rural Manchukuo
This study examines the role of mass media in Japanese propaganda in rural
Manchukuo. It looks at how a mobile propaganda team equipped with various media
devices, including films, picture-story shows, and radio broadcasting undertook the task of
pacifying colonial subjects in the rural area, who accounted for more than 90% of
Manchukuo’s total population. It explores the practical methods employed in propaganda
by analyzing the data from multiple archives of internal publications of the Manchukuo
government. I am interested in investigating how diverse media with different functions
formed a multi-media environment, which triggered an emotional arousal among its
recipients for propaganda. The research is aimed at uncovering the specific structure ofJapan’s multimedia strategy, which allows its configuration to cater to new needs.
Discussant: Chien-Shou Chen, Academia Sinica
Session 17: Room 5223
Language Ideologies on the Move: Scales and Stakes of Linguistic Alterity
Organizer: Shunsuke Nozawa, University of Tokyo
Chair: P. Kerim Friedman, National Dong Hwa University
This panel contributes to the growing body of literature on “language ideologies” inAsia. By “language ideologies,” we are referring to the beliefs and attitudes people holdabout languages, the people who speak those languages, and the communicative practicesof those speakers (Woolard and Schieffelin 1994). The panel pays particular attention tobeliefs and attitudes toward linguistic alterity—minority languages, “foreign” languages,
indigenous languages, etc.—and the stakes and “scales” (Carr and Lempert 2016) of their
movement across geographical, political, and media spaces. How do new identities, newresources, and new conflicts emerge through the movement of people across political andlinguistic boundaries and through the movement of discourses about “othered” languages?
How do speakers, scholars, activists, officials, and the public understand political stakes of56

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language ideologies at different geographical and temporal scales? Papers on the paneleach investigate these questions through ethnographic research. Friedman demonstrates
how Taiwanese indigenous language revitalization activism indexes competing politicalstakes as it gets recalibrated at different scales of activity. Yamashita explores multilingual
mosque communities in Japan whose language ideologies put into question the
dichotomous scaling of ‘minority/majority languages’ presupposed by scholarship andbureaucracy, while putting into motion their continuing project of religious virtue. Liu
examines the online communication of trilingual Wa migrant workers in China and theircomplex self-positioning vis-à-vis the monolingual Chinese language ideology. And Occhi
analyzes the characterization of linguistic alterity in promotional media products forsouthern Kyushu municipalities, revealing differing images of how language should
animate regional identity.
1) P. Kerim Friedman, National Dong Hwa University
Learning How Not to See Language Like a State
This paper looks at how language ideologies (Woolard and Schieffelin 1994) andpedagogical practices are transformed by the movement of discourses about language
education between various communities of practice (Wenger 1998) engaged in efforts torevitalize Taiwan's endangered languages. Based on ongoing ethnographic fieldwork with
community based language activists seeking to revitalize Taiwan's Pangcah language (oneof sixteen officially recognized indigenous languages) and the state agencies that they
appeal to in order to get funding for their pedagogical efforts, this paper explores thetensions between a pedagogy based on active engagement in village life and a bureaucracy
driven by audit culture. Particular focus will be paid to changes brought on by contact
between indigenous language activists in Taiwan and New Zealand. These connections
have been facilitated by the rise of an emergent pan-Austronesian indigenous identity, andwith it the rise of a new ideology of scale (Carr and Lempert 2016) which challenges thehegemonic understanding of the relationship between indigenous communities and thestate. However, while these changes may have empowered language activists to redefine
the role of indigenous languages in contemporary Taiwan, they must still deal with parents,
students, and government officials who do not necessarily share or understand their beliefs.
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This paper seeks to understand how they negotiate these differences while remaining true
to their vision of indigenous language revitalization.
2) Rika Yamashita, Kanto Gakuin University
Beyond the Minority/Majority Dichotomy: Language and the Muslim Ummah in
Globalizing Japan
Previous studies of minority languages in Japan have discussed indigenous groups
and their language revitalization (Heinrich 2012) and flexible ethnolinguistic membership(Maher 1997) often in terms of critical stances towards ideologies of standardization andhomogenous nation. Such studies assumed migrants as non-native Japanese speakers,socially disadvantaged, who live a life going back and forth between the Japanese world ofwork and their ethnolinguistic community outside work. However, recent flow of migrant
workers and their work-life do not fit assimilationist views. In public discourse of local
authorities and the media, diverse migrants are gaining a positive status as representative ofthe ‘globalizing Japan.’ As an example of such rupture, this paper ethnographically
explores language ideologies of the members of a Muslim community in Japan, an
ethnolinguistically diverse religious community. The migrant Muslims identify themselveswith English and Japanese, differently from the public ideologies or the ethnolinguistic
identity view that previous scholars took for granted. Referring to the ideology ofpanethnicity in Islamic scriptures, the migrant mosque members do not have
ethnolinguistic conflict with the Japanese language. Rather, the leaders name Japanese an
asset in promoting Islam, one of the important aims of the community. Meanwhile, English
is considered more important than the mother tongue or national language. MigrantMuslims consider ‘the Japanese people’s inability to speak English’ as somewhat
backward in the age of globalization. Such view is possible due to the imaginedcommunity of the global ummah (religious community), in the time when “Islam isnegatively portrayed by the West.”

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3) Tzu-kai Liu, Academia Sinica(Re)configuring Language Ideologies Online and Offline: Wa Migrant Workers’
Multilingual Identities on the Move
This paper examines the identity politics of the trilingual Wa migrant workers (aged18-35) who make use of smartphones and social media (QQ) to connect and communicate
their views of ethnic identities in everyday interactions and mobile communications when
they migrate to work in the multilingual manufacturing districts in southeast China. The
dominant monoglot language ideology of Mandarin Chinese, which devalues their
nonstandard regional Chinese and their Wa language, is a constant ethos that characterizes
their experiences of cross-cultural communications. The language ideologies of their native
language and accented Chinese often index their regional origins, reproducing
hierarchically defined “scale” and “space” (Dong and Blommaert) including standard/nonstandard and urban/rural. Using or switching among three different languages, online oroffline, I argue, is not simply an act of code-switching. Rather, it is a scaling act forreconfiguring the dominant Chinese language ideology and for voicing their polyphonous
identities (Barrett; Bakhtin) which are linked together sequentially by these Wa speakers
into a complex chain of social relations. They constantly present different aspects ofidentities through choices of language use according to their audience and the affordanceof multimodal communicative channels in mobile texting and voice chats. They often
create unique linguistic expressions or phonetic change to express their ethnic identities bytyping the sounds of regional Chinese dialect and Wa into standard Chinese words. In thisway, non-standard or phonetic changes can resemble locally defined ethnic expressions
and offer the meaningful resources for them to express their regional identities when on the
move.

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ASCJ 2017 Abstracts4) Debra Occhi, Miyazaki International College
Othering, Success, and Failure in the Representation of Rural Identities: Two Local
Promotion Videos in Kyushu, Japan
Within the video mediascape we find increasing numbers of Japanese local
promotion videos that seek to forefront particularities of their areas. This paper takes up theissues of language and image in promotional video representations of Kobayashi and
Shibushi, two locations 70 kilometers apart in southern Kyushu, Japan. Both locales usednational advertising agencies to produce promotional videos in 2016 that used humanrepresentations of local particularities. One, using a Frenchman to voice local dialect, hasbeen successful; the use of ‘role language’ (yakuwarigo) was found to be amusing.
However, the other, which used a Japanese man speaking so-called standard language andfeatured a Japanese girl to represent local eel farming, was deemed offensive and removed
from YouTube in a week. This paper examines the videos and associated materials,
interview data with responsible parties, and some reactions by the Japanese public to assess
what aspects of characterization (Nozawa 2013) and yakuwarigo led to the varying successof these stories.
Discussant: Shunsuke Nozawa, University of Tokyo
Session 18: Room 5224
Race under Occupation Conditions
Chair: Paul Christensen, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
NOTE: This is a panel that the organizer kindly put together from four individual
papers. It thus lacks a panel abstract.
1) W. Puck Brecher, Washington State University
Neither Friend nor Foe: Being Multiracial in Wartime JapanIf, as eminent historian John Dower attests, the Pacific War was a race war
characterized by pathological racial hatred between “yellows” and “whites,” how did it
affect individuals of both races? As one of the most racially charged events of thetwentieth century, this conflict presented half-Japanese Westerners and half-Caucasian60

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Japanese with distinctive challenges. By mutual agreement and design, most Westerners
residing in Japan lived in settlements insulated from Japanese society. Interactions between
the two races were generally respectful and amicable, but for both sides interracial unions
remained a point of consternation. In this society where each race had its prescribed place,
mixed-race children faced public enmity and few systemic accommodations. As such, they
were compelled to navigate between the structures and ideologies that insulated Caucasians
from Japanese. How did they do so? How was racial exclusion practiced by Japanese andWestern communities, and what sorts of hardships did it engender? In addition toanswering these questions, this paper considers race relations, nationality, and wartime
experience to explore the ethnic identities of mixed-race individuals living in Japan during
the war. To do so it begins by considering the hardships they confronted (racial scientificclaims of biological inferiority, discrimination, identity crisis, alienation, hostility) as wellas the mechanisms they used (wealth or status, bilingual and bicultural skills, masking
physical features) to navigate wartime race relations. It then uses a diverse set of casestudies to explore how members of this contingent were variously exploited as spies orinterpreters, illegally imprisoned, conscripted into the military, or given deferential state
protection. The paper includes discussion of German, U.S, and Japanese citizens, enabling
it to connect individual treatment to legal status (nationality).
2) Ai Baba, Cornell University,
Who’s Afraid of Being Called a Racist? On Fear and Intermarriage in the Japanese
EmpireIn the twentieth century, the Western empires increasingly condemned intermarriage
between the white, colonizing and the non-white colonized peoples, because it was seen asa threat to colonial social order, national identity formation, and/or racial purity of the
oppressors. One may expect Japan to take a similar action and oppose miscegenation, as it
had copied other aspects of the major Western powers in its development as an empire, but
the Japanese government allowed intermarriage between Japanese and non-Japanese fromits colonies. However, just because intermarriage was permitted, this should not lead to aconclusion that Japan was less racist toward the colonized peoples than its Westerncounterparts. Then how can the sanctioning of intermarriage in the Japanese Empire be
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interpreted? While existing studies on intermarriage in the Japanese Empire have focusedon assimilation as the major motive in the colonies (Korea and Taiwan), this paper
examines the role of fear to analyze Japan’s decision to allow intermarriage between
Japanese and Koreans, and Japanese and Taiwanese in the metropole (naichi). By taking
into consideration the discourse on race mixing in Japan and historical contexts within andwithout the Japanese Empire, I argue that Japan had fears similar to the Western empires,but a greater concern of being called a racist. This paper also questions the trope of theJapanese Empire as an anomaly, then makes a case for including Japan in the larger studiesof empires.
3) Chia-ning Chang, University of California, Davis,
Representations of the Asian Others: War and Resistance in Modern Japanese Cinema
This paper analyses an array of Japanese cinematic representations of its Asianneighbors and their countrymen during the course of the Fifteen-year War, from Japan’s
invasion of Manchuria in 1931 through its expansion of the continental war theatre into
China proper after 1937, until the end of the war in 1945. With due attention to theinteracting dynamics of contemporary cinematic imagination, ingrained politicalproclivities, cultural prejudices, and onscreen artistic manipulation, the paper examines thecomplex manners with which victims of Japanese aggression were variously imagined,
understood, and packaged in wartime and postwar Japanese war films. To contextualize
such varied presentations over time, my paper focuses on an extraordinarily popular andrepresentative “national policy” film (kokusaku eiga) called China Nights (Shina no yoru,
1939, with Yamaguchi Yoshiko and Hasegawa Kazuo in the leading roles), and seminal
postwar war epics produced by such prominent masters as Kobayashi Masaki andYamamoto Satsuo, including their major signature works The Human Condition (Ningenno jōken, 1959–1961) and Men and War (Sensō to ningen, 1970–1973), respectively.
Among the Asian others represented in these important works were divergent as well as
resonant articulations of the passions and national sentiments of the colonized peoples ofAsia under the yoke of Japanese domination—Chinese from its overrun northeastern
provinces as well as those from south of the Great Wall, Korean resistance fighters, a
Korean communist in a brutal Japanese prison, Chinese “horse bandits” and guerilla
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fighters, along with an accompanying cast of self-aggrandizing Japanese war merchants,
continental adventurers, political assassins, military leaders, and, last but not least, Japan’s
beleaguered liberals.
4) Jonathan Glade, Michigan State University“Fraternization: Censorship and Expression in US-Occupied Japan and Southern
Korea”The post-World War II US Military Occupation of Japan (1945–1952) and southern
Korea (1945–1948) is almost always treated as two separate occupations. Although theactual implementation of occupation policy in Japan and southern Korea differedsignificantly, the former imperial power (Japan) and former (colony) Korea were still
intricately connected as parts of broader occupation administration. One such connection
can be found in the way occupation authorities in both areas strongly discouraged“fraternization” between male occupation troops and local women. In Japan, discussions offraternization—explicit portrayals of relations between occupation troops and Japanesewomen as well as allusions to such relations—were prohibited under the system ofcensorship implemented by the US Military Occupation. Though these types of expression
were not forbidden by occupation policy in southern Korea, they were certainly taboo.
Ironically, this suppression of expression not only silenced critiques of the US Military
Occupation, but also limited the ability to conduct thorough assessments of Japan’s
imperial past, resulting in the construction of a discursive boundary that continued to
impact cultural production in South Korea and Japan long after the occupation’s end.
Discussant: Paul Christensen, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

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Session 19: Room 5322
British Diplomats in Bakumatsu and Early Meiji Japan
Organizer and Chair: Ian Ruxton, Kyushu Institute of Technology
A discussion of the three British diplomats (Alcock, Parkes and Satow) together israrely attempted, which enhances the value of this panel. In the Bakumatsu period
particularly, Anglo-French rivalry was critical, since the American Civil War prevented theUnited States from playing a major role, and German unification only occurred in 1871.
How did these three diplomats interact, and what was their combined effect on Japan at
this critical point in the country’s history?
1) Mayuko Sano, International Research Center for Japanese Studies
Rutherford Alcock, a Promoter of Tokugawa Japan
It is known that Rutherford Alcock, the First British Minister to Japan, arranged
Japan’s participation in the International Exhibition in London in 1862, and that a largepart of the Japanese exhibition there—the first of its kind in history—was composed of
Alcock’s collection. However, it is not widely known that he served as JapaneseCommissioner at this International Exhibition. In what way did this come to happen? And
what did it mean in his career as a diplomat?—This paper will address these questions,aiming to reach a broader understanding of the nature of Alcock’s Japan diplomacy, someyears before the Meiji Restoration. The role that Alcock played for Japan in the 1862
London Exhibition has to be explained in connection with a series of his experiences, inparticular those in 1861, including on the one hand the Tozen-ji Affair, in which he could
have been assassinated, and on the other hand his efforts to realise Japan’s first diplomatic
mission to Europe. His attitudes and thoughts will be examined using his letters, official
reports, as well as his later writings.
2) Robert Morton, Chuo University
Friend or foe? Sir Harry Parkes, Japan and the Meiji Restoration
Sir Harry Parkes, the British Minister to Japan from 1865 to 1883, had a towering
reputation in Britain and among Europeans in east Asia. He was seen as the model of the64

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firm but far-sighted diplomat, dealing toughly with local governments, yet also promoting
enlightened reforms. His reputation among the Japanese was much more mixed. To some,he was an arrogant, ill-tempered martinet, who was only interested in what would benefit
his own country. However, the Japanese government certainly saw him as someone who
had assisted the Imperial side in the Meiji Restoration and for this alone was viewed as
worthy of admiration. Using material gathered at the British National Archives, as well as
letters sent to colleagues and friends, this paper will examine how justified these views ofParkes were. What were his real feelings about the Meiji Restoration and is it possible toperceive an overarching strategy amidst the many day-to-day decisions he had to make?
What were the expectations of the British Foreign Office? What were his relationships
with his Japanese counterparts like and what, ultimately, did he feel about Japan?
3) Ian Ruxton, Kyushu Institute of Technology
Ernest Satow’s Role as a Catalyst in the Meiji Restoration
This paper will examine and introduce Satow’s undiplomatic activity in writing threeanonymous articles for the Japan Times of 1866 urging reform of the national polity,
which were later translated and widely circulated in Japan. They were assumed by many
Japanese to represent British policy, as is shown by the fact that they were given the title“Eikoku Sakuron” (英国策論), though Britain was officially neutral. It is also proposed toinvestigate briefly Satow’s reasons for writing the articles, his relationship with Alcock andParkes, under both of whom he worked in the 1860s, and to ask whether Parkes turned ablind eye to Satow’s subversive journalism which the latter admitted much later in his A
Diplomat in Japan (1921), was “altogether contrary to the rules of the Service,” and if so
why he may have done so.
Discussant: Sven Saaler, Sophia University

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Session 20: Room 5323
Idol Apocalypse: Media Environments and the Body in Contemporary Japan
Organizer/Chair: Andrew Campana, Harvard University
Two female idols who began a gendered division in pop fanbases that continues on tothis day; another idol who used her pop stardom as a vehicle for poetry about thetransforming and mutating female body; two manga series in which women’s bodies andsexuality threaten the world’s existence; a photographic project that uses social media totake on questions of contamination in a post-Fukushima era. To consider media
environments is to look at media in its broadest, most ubiquitous form: as a dense networkof visual, sonic, textual and tactile platforms and articulations which we engage with, move
between and think through each day. The body is always central to this engagement—how
it experiences, is portrayed in, and communicates through media. In this panel, we focus on
the context of contemporary Japan, and key moments of transition in the role bodies playin relation to these media environments from the 1980s to the present. We focus inparticular on women’s bodies as expressed through media on the one hand, and on bodies
under threat in disastrous or apocalyptic environments on the other. In both of thesethreads, and the entanglements of the two, we pinpoint instances where bodies actively
shape and are shaped by media environments around and within them, expanding theboundaries of each.
1) Kukhee Choo, Sophia University
Female idols at a crossroad: 1980s Matsuda Seiko and Nakamori Akina
The Japanese idol culture that emerged during the 1970s was concretized during thefollowing decade, often referred to as the “golden era of idols.” After the popular female
singer Yamaguchi Momoe retired in 1980, her void was filled by Matsuda Seiko, a singer
famous for her burikko persona. Matsuda also epitomized and helped shape the female idol
culture that followed; restrained dance movements, high-pitched voice, and “cute”
demeanor. Matsuda Seiko’s legacy continues on in contemporary Japanese popular media
especially owing to majority of her fans being men. What is often forgotten in the
discourse of Japanese female idol culture during the 1980s is that of Matsuda’s counterpart
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Nakamori Akina, famous for her husky voice and unique and rebellious style. Both female
idols topped the charts during the 1980s as well as appeared as regulars on TV musicprograms and the NHK Kohaku Utagassen events, the end of the year singing competition
between male and female entertainers. Unlike Matsuda, Nakamori Akina’s fans were
mostly young women who felt like their voices were marginalized by mainstream society.
Nakamori Akina’s surprise appearance on the 2015 NHK Kohaku Utagassen after decadesof absence, demonstrates to the legacy that Nakamori established during her prime years.
The gender-divided consumption of these two female stars during 1980s Japan marked the
beginning of a bifurcated female idolhood that continues on in contemporary Japanese
media. My paper will examine how the rise and fall of Matsuda Seiko and Nakamori Akina
heavily influenced the Japanese media environment for decades to come.
2) Andrew Campana, Harvard University
As a Piece of Flesh: Togawa Jun’s Alternative Pop Stardom and Cross-Media Poetics
Togawa Jun quickly ascended to fame in the 1980s in Japan as an alternative idol,
actress, and fashion icon; a lesser known fact is that she was also a poet, and many of her
poems became the basis of her later songs. Wearing dragonfly wings, lobster costumes,
cyborg arms and military outfits, she performed avant-garde pop music with dense anddifficult lyrics that regularly focused on women’s bodies, sexuality, the posthuman,
menstruation, and violence. In this paper, I consider Togawa’s broader body of work
centered around her poetry, with an approach informed by feminist media theory anddisability studies. Within the media ecology surrounding pop stars in the 1980s—where
singers formed the center of a constellation of records, music videos, television andmagazine appearances, photo books, and more—she developed a kind of cross-media
poetics, in which her verse and body were inextricably linked in video, audio, and on the
page. By expanding what is conventionally considered poetic practice to include Togawa’s
work across disciplines, we are vividly confronted with a kind of literariness deliberately
conveyed by and through an embattled and mutating woman’s body, embedded within andpushing the boundaries of the media environment of the time.

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ASCJ 2017 Abstracts3) Caitlin Casiello, Yale University
Transgressing Human: Monstrosity, Gender and Erotic Encounters in Helter Skelterand Urotsukidōji
Drawing on feminist theorizations of monstrosity by Rosi Braidotti and Elizabeth
Grosz, I examine the intersection of bodies, monsters, and the erotic in two manga series,
Okazaki Kyoko’s Helter Skelter and Maeda Toshio’s Urotsukidōji. Though the works
emerge from highly different artistic, generic, and production contexts, both struggle with
the question of human encounters with the monstrous etched on women’s bodies andthrough the flexibility of manga as a medium. In both texts, reproduction emerges as anunquenchable fixation, a lingering threat, even a catalyst for apocalyptic change, which istied inextricably to the potential for the female body to transform itself into something
beyond a single human subjectivity. Okazaki’s critical engagement with media
presentations of feminine beauty ideals uses medical transformation to carve a path for
women to something beyond beauty or ugliness, beyond sexual reproduction, and, perhaps,
beyond human. The potential for the woman-become-monster represented by Okazaki
stands in contrast to Maeda’s fetishization of sexual encounters and violence between
monsters and the idealized feminine figure, where her ultimate transformation comes only
through impregnation by the male hero; her pregnancy, however, triggers the prophesied
destruction of the world, breaking the playful eroticism of the series with the threat of thetrue potential of sexuality.
4) Franz Prichard, Princeton University
Embodying Evidence: Re-mediation, Decontamination, and the Expanded Ecologies ofDisasterThis essay will explore the media/ecological dimensions of the ongoing Fukushima
Dai’ichi reactor meltdown disaster from the perspective of Akagi Shuji’s photography.
Mobilizing twitter to record the uncanny traces of Fukushima-city’s decontamination andrecovery efforts, Akagi’s photography affords a renewed consideration of the expanded
ecologies of disaster. Akagi’s work troubles the ideologies of recovery that ring hollow
before the unprecedented realities of the ongoing disaster by recording the residual vestigesof the state’s decontamination process. His tweets constitute an archive of bodily
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encounters with the visible and invisible remnants of disaster, disclosing a profound crisisat the heart of the state’s increasingly desperate attempts to manage the accumulating
contaminants, such as the Sisyphean efforts of the subcontracted day laborers who
decontaminate the city’s surfaces and resultant “temporary storage facilities” thatproliferate across the landscape. I will explore how Akagi’s “traces” are re-mediatedthrough the specific channels of the twitter platform—attending to how such work
mobilizes the unique rhythms and affective pathways of the post-disaster twitter-sphere in
Japan—and consider the ways this work presents a new modality of self-reflexive
documentary media. Moreover, I will map the ways that Akagi’s work forces us toreconsider the established vocabularies of environmental disaster through the expanded
ecologies and residual materialities of nuclear waste. Along the way, this paper will situate
Akagi’s work among other aesthetic interventions that similarly seek to grasp thegeopolitical dimensions of ecological disaster based on critical forms of exchange among
bodies and media environments.
Discussant: Anne McKnight, Shirayuri College
Session 21: Room 5210
Individual Papers V: Issues on Religions Across Asia
Chair: Alex Vesey, Meiji Gakuin University1) 1) Jeongeun Park, University of British Columbia
An Examination of Korean Monks’ Household Registers and the Issue of Clerical
Marriage in Early Twentieth-Century Korea
When it comes to the issue of clerical marriage during the Japanese colonial period in
Korea from 1910 to 1945, Japanese colonial policy that aimed to assimilate Korean
Buddhism into Japanese Buddhism has long been thought of as a key factor in the spreadof this practice among Korean monks. However, insufficient research on clerical marriage
stands in the way of drawing any firm conclusion about its major triggers. One of the main
obstacles in the way of a clear understanding of clerical marriage is a narrow-sighted
nationalistic view that dichotomizes monks’ celibacy and marriage casting it as purity vs.
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contamination of the Korean Buddhist tradition. This paper investigates the practice ofclerical marriage through an examination of Korean monks’ household registers called“hojŏk.” Buddhist clerics’ household registers are significant because they provided
concrete evidence of Korean Buddhist secularization and the change in the relationshipbetween master and disciple in Korean Buddhist monasteries. This paper considers theways in which the modern household register system became entangled with the issues ofclerical marriage, Japanese colonial rule, and the succession of monks’ private property. It
does this by examining uninvestigated source materials, such as Korean monks’ household
registers, their resumes, and unpublished documents of the Office of the Governor-Generalof Korea. In this paper, I argue that clerical marriage was neither a “Japanization” nor a“deterioration” of pure Korean Buddhist tradition by exploring this practice in the lives ofordinary monks.
2) Rui Oliveira Lopes, Universiti Brunei Darussalam
Mirrors of Devotion. Artistic Appropriation and Cultural Negotiation of Religious Art inPortuguese India and the Mughal Court
During the sixteenth-century the Portuguese established a maritime route between
Europe and Asia giving place to an unprecedented cultural, religious, and artistic exchange.
As a result, the Catholic Church saw the opportunity to spread Christianity in India. The
missionaries had a major role in cultural, religious and artistic exchange, as that they
enacted as diplomatic envois to the imperial court of Mughal India as well as they dealt
with local communities preaching in the Indian regions controlled by the Portuguese.
Facing the lack of understanding on Catholic faith by the local cultures, missionaries used
images as a powerful instrument to illustrate the mysteries of Christianity and disseminate
spiritual teachings. This paper examines the impact of Christian imagery in the context of
the European missions as a result of the western perspective over cultural, religious andartistic values in India, focusing on two contrasting settings: the Portuguese India and theMughal court, particularly during the reigns of Akbar, Jahangir and Shahjahan. It will
focus on the missionary’s accounts about Hindu and Buddhist imagery and their similarity
with Christian iconography; how the missionaries took advantage of a considerable
knowledge on the local cultural background, the religious practices and the ground rules of70

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Hinduism, Jain, and Buddhism, to replace, imitate or dissimulate local iconography
introducing or ‘translating’ Christian symbols and narratives. Finally, I will evaluate thedifferent levels of cultural and artistic permeability to Christian art accordingly with thepolitical power establishing a comparison between Mughal India and Portuguese India.
3) Nahoko Fukushima, Tokyo University of Agriculture
Comic and Enlightening: Kyōgen Plays as a Genealogy of Buddhist Humorous
LanguageIn this paper, I would like to reiterate one aspect of Kyōgen plays that allows us tounderstand them as in part a spinoff of Buddhist Humorous Sermons. To do so, I will focus
on a Kyōgen piece, Shūron (宗論 Religious Controversy), and other performances
depicting Buddhist monks, and inspect what we, the audience, eventually apprehend fromthe play by the examination of the way the monks are portrayed. Since Kyōgen has been
performed as an interlude in between Nō plays, the peculiarity of Kyōgen has been
considered to present simple, naïve and ludicrous human beings, as opposed to the
manifestations of the sublime and the process of obtaining enlightenment that occupy
protagonists in Nō dramas. Within this framework, the monks in Kyōgen plays only
emphasize their stupidity to cause chuckles and giggles. However, on closer observation,
we realize that these Kyōgen plays also make the audience experience an alternate aspectof that same enlightenment which is hidden under the comical language and actions. This
process, that is to say, comical at first and enlightened later, also reveals one of theessential teachings of Buddhism, the idea of Upaya, which means skillful means ofpedagogy as the path to liberation. This teaching can be considered precisely as a methodof resolving ecumenical disputes.
4) David Henry, University of Alaska
Nakazato Kaizan and Ishii Tsuruzo: Text vs. Image in Daibosatsu toge (Great
Bodhisattava Pass)
Newspaper serialization in Japan was a primary form of publication for modern
Japanese literature in which novels would appear several times a week in newspapers and,if popularity warranted, would then later be republished in a single volume. Nakazato
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Kaizan’s (1885–1944) Daibosatsu toge (1913–1944, Great Bodhisattva Pass), serialized
across multiple newspapers for over thirty years, is not only the longest running major
work of fiction in Japan it is also a unique test case that calls into question the normal
teleologies of moving from part into a single comprehensible whole. Kaizan’s sword
wielding anti-hero, Ryunosuke Tsukue, traveled the country moving from one cliff-hanger
to another even as the narrative itself found its ending only with the death of its author.
From the 1930s, Daibosatsu toge was adapted for live theater versions and numerous film
versions. For this paper, I will consider in particular the struggle between Nakazato andIshii Tsuruzo, one of the most famous early illustrators for the series. In 1934, Ishii
published a collection of his illustrations for the series (with no accompanying text),
prompting Nakazato to sue for copyright infringement in a legal battle that lasted for a
decade and involved both judges and literary critics in a pitched struggle to define therelationship between image and text in serialized fiction.
5) Jonathan Stockdale, University of Puget Sound
Re-reading Japanese Whale Memorials (kujira-zuka): the Historical and Religious
Context
Can one really—as a recent series of books proclaims—see into the Japanese spirit
by looking at Japanese whale memorials (kujira-zuka)? It’s easy to get the impression(from both sides of the Pacific) that the practice of whaling is exactly that which sets Japan
most apart from the U.S. A brief glance below the surface, however, reveals a different
story. First, there are the deep cultural histories in both Japan and the U.S. related towhaling, which in both cases are reflected in literary and artistic works. Second, there is
the more literal connection established in 1853 when the U.S. sought to open Japanese
ports for provisioning of U.S. commercial whaling interests. Both examples (the culturalhistorical and the political-economic) point to the need for a more nuanced and historicallycontextualized discussion regarding whaling. As one step toward providing such context,
my research focuses on the spiritualization of whales in Japanese cultural history. For thispresentation I analyze the distribution of whale memorial markers across the Japanesearchipelago over the past 300 years, as well as the theories of the late scholar Nakamura
Ikuo regarding the influence of the Suwa cult on the formation of such memorials.
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SUNDAY MORNING SESSIONS: 10:00 A.M. – 12:00 P.M.
Session 22: Room X202
Configuring the People: Semiotics and Subjectivity in Modern Japan
Organizer/Chair: John Branstetter, University of California, Los Angeles
Japanese intellectuals and writers have redrawn the figure of “the people” manytimes in modern history. These articulations have authorized both constitutionalism anddemocracy in one time as well as colonialism and war in another. Although many believe“the people” are universal political phenomenon, we show that “the people” emerged as a
figure in history in part as a result of certain poetic or semiotic representations ofcommunity. In Japan, people like the participants in the Freedom and Popular Rights
Movement, writers of the prewar years, and students of the 1960s have variously altered
the horizons of historical possibility through their different portrayals of politicalcommunity. This panel seeks to explore some of these figurations in a diachronic way.
Each paper deals with different moment of semiotic configuration, and considers its
political and historical significance. John Branstetter analyzes the role of the discussion
associations of the 1870s and 1880s in knitting together a Japanese “people.” Wakako
Suzuki demonstrates how intellectuals and writers described the ambivalent position ofchildren as the figure of “the people” by looking at both children’s magazines andYanagita Kunio’s ethnography in early twentieth century Japan. Christophe Thorny will
discuss Kon Wajirō’s cartography of Tokyo in the aftermath of the 1923 Great Kantō
Earthquake, where new collective dwelling experiences provided foundations for new
kinds of political life. Finally, Chelsea Szendi Schieder discusses the ways women were
figured in debates about the meaning of individuality, citizenship, and “the people” in the
media of the postwar period.

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1) John Branstetter, University of California, Los Angeles
Debating the People: Individuality, Knowledge, and Politics in Meiji Japan
Many existing accounts of the Freedom and Popular Rights Movement focus either
on the role of elite figures in spreading liberal ideas from the top-down, or the figure of an
eternal, organic “people” rising from the bottom up. I challenge both of these narratives byarguing instead that the idea of “the people” was in fact a dialogical phenomenon whichgrew out of the practices of the many speechmaking and debating associations of the late
19th century. These societies, which brought urban intellectuals into conversation with rural
framers, contributed to the construction of a discourse of “the people” quite opposed toexisting figurations which characterized them as mute subjects. More important than what
was said in the associations, however, were the formal procedures which governed theirinteractions. I show that the societies were based on three implicit philosophicalassumptions which disciplined those participating in them in new ways. First, the societies
subjectivized people as individuals by valorizing their interior thoughts. Second, theirprocedures implied an empiricist epistemology where knowledge had to be tested in the
crucible of debate. Third, the associational model connected this new subjectivity andmodel of knowledge explicitly with political institutions. These assumptions spread andwere internalized through participation in the enzetsukai, and allowed the participants tosee themselves as individual citizens capable of making valid statements about politics,
therefore constituting a constituent power.
2) Wakako Suzuki University of California, Los AngelesChildren as Imaginary Citizens: Politics of Childhood in early 20th-century Japan
This paper analyzes the ambivalent role of children as the figure of “the people” inboth endorsing and subverting the political discourses of “little citizens” in early twentiethcentury Japan. Children were often depicted as immature citizens—passive, innocent, andvulnerable subjects in need of protection. Yet, they also embodied the hopes of the state,
the core of democracy, and the driving force of economic growth. Despite the print
media’s celebration of children’s citizenship,” the rights bestowed upon children wereinconsistent, as was the expectation of their actions as citizens with political identity. Early
children’s magazines, such as “Shōnen sekai (The Youth’s World, 1895–1914),” created a75

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sense of national belonging by bringing individual readers together through stories related
to political history. By claiming the centrality of marginal figures, in this case children,these magazines frequently appropriated the notion of “the people” by weaving thediscourse of childhood into national narratives. For this part, folklorist Yanagita Kunino
obscured the boundaries between adults and children, suspending a clear definition of “thepeople” in his early work. By examining both Yanagita’s work on children and thediscourse of “little citizens,” this paper demonstrates how the cultural imagination ofchildhood and children reflected the negotiation of the boundaries of reality and fiction—
the very formation of imaginary citizens—in an age characterized by a growing print
industry.
3) Christophe Thouny, University of Tokyo
Mobile Places, Urban Masses: Dwelling Experience in Kon Wajirō’s Urban Topologies
of Taishō Tokyo
Urban modernity in Japan has been historically articulated as an experience of radical
disorientation and at the same time as part of a global movement of urbanization.
Evanescence might be the term that best captures this experience, and the urban architectand ethnographer Kon Wajirō precisely attempted to give shape to this everyday
experience of evanescence, to a present that keeps receding from sight. And rather thanarticulating his work in terms of a nostalgic desire for a vanishing place of belonging, Kon
instead tried to figure how urban movement, of goods, people and things, crystalized in
specific configurations of place, allowing for an imagination of urban dwelling in tune withan ongoing planetary movement of people. Kon however is not concerned with thepolitical potential of “the people,’ and while this raises complicated questions as to thepolitical valence of his work in its embrace of an anonymous everyday spectacle of speed,
his urban ethnography allows us to examine the relation between urban masses and urban
places in terms of rhythmic movements, dwelling experiences, and a post-disaster
temporality. In this presentation, I will discuss how Kon Wajirō’s cartography of Tokyo
establishes a typology of urban places in the aftermath of the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake
where place, population and environment give shape to collective dwelling experiences,which might be where starts a political life.
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ASCJ 2017 Abstracts4) Chelsea Szendi Schieder, Meiji University
Do Coeds Ruin the Nation?: The Female Student at the Limits of Postwar CitizenshipIn this paper, I consider debates on the role of the female student—a middle-class
identity in an increasingly self-identified middle-class society—that circulated in the mass
media of the late 1950s and early 1960s. In some contexts, such as the massdemonstrations against the US-Japan Security Treaty, female students became idealized asa new hope for postwar democracy. However, female students also became the symbol fora host of anxieties about massification and democratization in higher education in the early
1960s in a widely publicized “Theory of Coeds Ruining the Nation” outlined by a Waseda
University professor. I examine the terms of these debates, through which public
intellectuals struggled to define the ideal Japanese democratic subject that was supposed tosupersede the imperial subject. What can the history of integrating women into higher
education in postwar Japan tell us about the challenges posed by the promise of radical
democracy and the demands of a rapidly changing industrial society? What might thatmean for conceptualizing the tensions between a universal versus a particular image of thedemocratic subject?
Discussant: Tsuboi Hideto, International Research Center for Japanese Studies
Session 23: Room X203
Tokyo 2020: Framing a Mega-event
Organizer: Barry Natusch, Nihon University
Chair: Beryl Hawkins, Temple University Japan
This panel is focused on the concept of framing the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, in media
stories, in documentary films and how the organizing committee frames Tokyo as a venue.
The first paper considers how two news media stories are framed in reporting on the Tokyo
Olympic bid for an international readership. It is argued that these stories will be framed
differently according to the location of the media reporting the stories. Controversies
emerging since Tokyo won the bid and the disputes surrounding the proposed Tokyo
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stadium are the focus. The inquiry looks at what political, economic and culturalconsequences there are in media framing. The second paper considers the role of
documentary film creating a cultural legacy for hosting Olympic games by comparing thefilms of Berlin 1936, Tokyo 1964, and Munich 1972 in terms of framing their narratives,
visuals and release. Ichikawa Kon’s Tokyo Olympiad (1964) is subjected to a
microanalysis case study in framing. Much has changed since that film was made,particularly in the way films are made, who is involved, where sponsorship comes from;there is speculation on how a documentary of the Tokyo Olympics 2020 might leave alegacy with the impact of Ichikawa’s film. The third paper considers what impact theTokyo organizing committee’s core concepts might have on defining the character of thegames themselves and how the event could be an opportunity to nudge changes in Japanesecultural identity, behavior and political process. Models describing nation branding areused to relate the core concepts with cultural identity.
1) Beryl Hawkins, Temple University Japan
News Framing Analysis: Tokyo 2020’s Olympic Bid and the Zaha Hadid Olympic
Stadium Controversy
For Olympic host nations, a global event of this magnitude could increase politicalvisibility, expanding exponentially as the country gains international stature during the preOlympic, Olympic and post-Olympic periods (MacAloon, 1984). Along with politicalvisibility, powerful media images dominate news coverage, and the upcoming Tokyo 2020
Olympics is a prime example. This emerging scenario underscores the need to examine thedynamics that occur between media and society in hosting an Olympic event. News
framing is an appropriate theoretical concept to help understand these dynamics between
media and society, by examining (1) the power of the text and (2) the competing
newsmakers who dominate the stories (Entman 1993). As a precursor to the Tokyo 2020
Olympics, this news media study was conducted to provide insight into Japan’s current
pre-Olympic national image and foreshadowing the upcoming challenges and potential
outcomes for Tokyo, by examining two news stories; the Tokyo Olympic bid and the Zaha
Hadid stadium design controversy. The research question for this inquiry is: What are thedominant news frames and could they have any political, economic or cultural implications
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for Tokyo as it prepares itself to be the next Olympic host city. Qualitative and quantitative
content analysis was the methodology approach in this study, based on a corpus of English
language news stories from Japanese, British and U.S. news agencies, with the aim ofidentifying dominant news frames, the frequency of news frames (e.g., effectiveness of
economic resources or Zaha design criticism), and disparities among the tri-country news
coverage.
2) Barry Natusch, Nihon University
In Ichikawa’s Footsteps: Framing a 2020 Tokyo Olympic Documentary
Post-Olympics, the memory of such a mega-event can live on in documentary filmsof the event for example, films of Berlin 1936, Tokyo 1964, Munich 1972. Such films
combine elements of Nichols’ poetic and expository modes but beyond Nichols’
taxonomy, the issue of framing is also paramount in deconstructing an Olympic
documentary. Filmmakers face dilemmas, for example, choosing between depicting events
within a national frame or an international frame. There are also stakeholder issues such as
national and international politics, nation branding, commercial sponsorship, and issues of
discrimination. Two classic Olympic documentaries, Olympia by Leni Riefenstahl (1936)
and Tokyo Olympiad (1964) by Kon Ichikawa are analyzed in terms of framing theirnarratives, visuals and release. Issues affecting both production and direction are discussed.
Both films employed cutting edge filmmaking technologies of their time, highlighting thecompetitive identities of each country. Controversies such as states commissioning
filmmakers who are sympathetic to their agendas, and the funding of productions which
promote national agendas over those of various competing nationalities and minorities are
addressed leading to a conclusion on how a documentary of Tokyo 2020 Olympics mightcompare with the Tokyo Olympiad of 1964. Modern filmmaking sponsorship,technologies, and democratization of filmmaking are also discussed in terms of theirinfluence on a legacy documentary.

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3) Maria Guajardolucero, Soka University
Three Core Concepts and the Tokyo 2020 Olympics: Shaping a Nation’s Image
Three core concepts have been identified by the Tokyo Organizing Committee as thefoundation for the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, with the anticipation of shaping Japan's
national image or nation brand. The Tokyo 1964 Games propelled Japan forward onto aninternational stage and the Tokyo 2020 Games are anticipated to be equally impactful. The
vision for the 2020 Games is based on building three core concepts: 1. Striving for yourpersonal best/Achieving Personal Best; 2. Accepting one another/Unity in Diversity; and 3.
Passing on Legacy for the future/Connecting to Tomorrow. These three core concepts areinclusive of a cultural approach to nation branding, and aligned with the Cultural Olympiad
launched in Tokyo in October, 2016. The Cultural Olympiad is designed to unify
communities through the power of culture, art, and innovation. Building on the concept ofnation branding how can a mega-event such as the Olympics impact cultural stereotypes,
either positively or negatively? Redefining cultural identity driven by a mega-event such as
the Olympic Games has been described in several case studies such as Chen (2012). This
study highlights efforts towards operationalizing the three core concepts, addressing
Japanese cultural behavior, to suggest a cultural identity which could contribute towards
Japan’s nation brand for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Specifically, this paper reviews how
the three core concepts for the 2020 Olympic Games provides Japan with an opportunity toshape a cultural narrative relevant to a global audience.
Discussant: Tadahiro Tsuji, Nihon University
Session 24: Room X104
Propaganda as Affective Mediums: Rethinking Propaganda from Imperial toContemporary Japan
Organizer: Wan-ting Wang, National Chengchi University
Chair: Pei-chen Wu, National Chengchi University
Propaganda, though often condemned for their deceptive nature, offer a vantage
point to examine the affective impacts of the media on the masses. In Japan, propaganda astactics for agitating collective sentiments and actions, reveals the mechanisms of inclusion
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and exclusion in Japan’s imperial and nation-state formation. This panel explores Japanese
propaganda in two phenomenon of collective agitation: the wartime mobilization during
WWII and Japanese animation fever overseas in contemporary era. The former serves forimperial Japan’s military ambition and the latter represents postwar Japan’s cultural soft
power, but both rely on the politics of differentiation, especially differentiation between
ethnicity and gender, to establish Japan’s status as imperial or nation state. We draw
special attention to colonial Taiwan, where the most intense debates between thehomogeneity of an imperial body and the heterogeneity of diverse ethnicities took place inJapanese Empire. In the overwhelming media war in Taiwan during WWII, war
propaganda seek to build a mechanized collective body but ambivalently revealing thealienated individual bodies. Chang focuses on the poetry promoting volunteer soldiers incolonial Taiwan, discussing their emphasis on musicality and attempts to discipline humanbody. Wang looks at the ethnic male bodies in propaganda documentaries and Zhou
Jinbo’s fictions, analyzing the struggle of the colonized under the co-constitution oftechnological visuality and imperial subjecthood. Lin examines Yang Yunping’s fictions ofwartime farming production in colonial Taiwan, scrutinizing Yang’s negotiation between
Taiwan local culture and Japan’s Great East Asian imagination. Such imperial imagination
soon dissolved after Japan’s defeat of WWII in 1945. Being incorporated into the US
neoliberal project in the postwar era, Japan finds anther battlefield in the global market.
Animation became a typical propaganda of the disarmed Japan to promote its cultural
influence on the globe. Mezur examines the gendered cute culture in Japanese state andbusiness propaganda, analyzing the cute girl phenomena as a subversive expression ofyouth culture across Japan and abroad.
1) Wan-ting Wang, National Chengchi University
Internalized Machinery: Ethnic Male Bodies in Propaganda Documentaries and Zhou
Jinbo’s Literature of Colonial Taiwan during World War II
This paper explores the shaping of the male bodily experience under the system of
total war through comparing propaganda documentaries and Zhou Jinbo’s wartime fictions
in colonial Taiwan. Documentary is a valued instrument and investment for the colonial
government of Taiwan to educate the colonized and promote its achievement of81

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governance. During wartime, the colonial government produced several documentaries
calling for young men to join the army, training camps and intense labor services. Thesefilms emphasize homogeneous and ritualized body movements, promoting the submission
to order. Taiwanese writer Zhou Jinbo, though mobilized to write propaganda fictions,expresses a heterogeneous experience of male bodies in training. His fictions, revealing the
failure of the forceful masculinity and the irreducible ethnic differences, fiercely point to
the problematics of the wartime policy “imperialization of the subject” (kōminka). If the
propaganda documentaries represent an external imposition of mechanical surveillance,
Zhou’s literature depicts an internalized mechanization and a paranoia resulting from it.
Such internalized mechanization, expressed in a tension between the individual body andsenses of a machine-like operation of a collective body and an omnipresent eye watching
above, reveals that the “imperialization of the subject” in wartime is a mental, embodied,and technologically induced process.
2) Shih-chin Chang, National Chengchi University
Musicality and the Discipline of Body in War Poetry of Colonial Taiwan
War poetry for war mobilization have usually been regarded as a call simply for
dedication, but there are some aesthetic considerations in it. Analyzing the aesthetic effects
would be helpful in realizing why people would risk their lives to fight for the country,
especially colonial people like Taiwanese. While Taiwan was involved in WWII during
Japanese colonial period, numerous war poems were published on the mass media. These
poems, which created by both Taiwanese and Japanese poets, have been simply considered
propaganda and rarely discussed in both Japan and Taiwan. These war poems, however,are crucial texts in colonial literary history because they reveal the operation of colonial
apparatus. This paper focuses on the poems about the volunteer soldiers (shiganhei) incolonial Taiwan and explores how these war poems mobilize the colonized though its
aesthetic effects. I would like to analyze two aspects of the aesthetic considerations ofthese war poems. In terms of form, the poets emphasize musicality in order for readers torecite easily. Poets who used to focus on visual representation of poems before also pay
more attention to musical elements of poems during wartime. Through reciting and singing
these poems, people’s emotions would be linked without difficulty. In terms of content, the82

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poems about volunteer soldiers focus on the elimination of individual bodies and thereinforcement of a collective body. The poems convey that Taiwanese volunteer soldiers
would be not second-class citizens but the real Japanese, and their bodies as a part of thesacred whole would be able to dedicate to the Emperor of Japan. By emphasizing these two
aspects, these war poems seek to convince the colonized to fight for Japan during wartime.
3) Pei-Jung Lin, National Chengchi University
Hidden Movements of Cross-Language Intellectuals During World War II: On Yang
Yuping’s “Railway Poems” (Tetsudō shishō) and “Tribal Diary” (Buraku nikki)
Cross-language intellectuals refers to those born in the 1910s who received Chinese
language education as youths in their homes, but were then educated under a new system
under Japanese colonial rule, and thus used Japanese to access modern knowledge while
simultaneously being able to write in Chinese. The intellectuals of this era witnessed thedevelopment of Taiwanese literature from its inception to World War II (1937-1945) andits post-war transformation into a developed, structured field. Their thoughts and works
show the trajectory of the changes in Taiwanese literature during this period. This paper
will use the work of the founder of the first vernacular magazine Everyone (Renren), Yang
Yunping, as a subject of analysis, along with his wartime literary activities and publishedworks to examine the hidden thoughts that emerged from cross-language intellectuals in
the face of war. The background for this paper is situated in 1941 when Yang Yuping
participated in compiling and writing for Folk Taiwan (Minzoku Taiwan) —a role hemaintained until the end of the war. During the war, he was appointed by the Japanese
governor to serve as a battlefield dispatch writer, and he completed his works “Railway
Poems” and “Tribal Diary,” the latter of which can be considered the only-long form novel
produced by Taiwanese writers during the wartime period. By sorting through Yang
Yunping’s wartime writings, this paper seeks to explore literary mobilization under thewartime system, and whether the cross-language intellectuals had corresponding andlinkage reactions to the government policy and practical matters as their intellectual
context extended to the new regime of postwar Taiwan.

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ASCJ 2017 Abstracts4) Katherine Mezur, University of California, Berkeley/San Francisco Museum of
Performance and Design
Cute Girl (Kawaii shôjo) Propaganda: Japanese “Soft Power” and Subversive POP
Cute or kawaii characters and their products dominate popular culture in Japan.
These products are also at the forefront of the Japanese government's promotion of a “SoftPower” image. In particular the cute girl and the cute animal-like characters are very
popular across a wide-range of age groups, from pre-school to adults. While the kawaii
industry associated with the shôjo (girl) culture got its big push in the 1970s with the waveof shôjo manga (girl comics), cute girl culture (kawaii shôjo) has been part of Japanese
literary, visual, design, and fashion cultures since the Heian Period. This period produced
the singular work of Murasaki Shikibu and other women whose work reveals the love andcare for cute things, animals and landscapes in writing, brushwork, and painted scrolls. In
her book, Pink Globalization, Christine Yano writes about the surge of Hello Kitty
products all over the globe and how the kawaii kitten has adapted and assimilated tovarious cultural conditions. Today this trend of kawaii products goes along with the J-POP
girl band artists who tour on a circuit of festivals and commercial fairs that promote
Japanese products and soft power through these kawaii shôjo (cute girl) performances andproducts. Kawaii shôjo has become a market of both virtual and material products, whichmove across continents, oceans and hemispheres. The kawaii shôjo range of sweet,
innocent creatures, which may begin in comics, then move to anime and on to real andvirtual pop music icons have become simultaneously a political tool of state and businesspropaganda and a subversive expression of youth culture in Japan and abroad. This paper
will examine two examples, which support several divergent streams of kawaii shôjo
propaganda, a girl band and vocaloid performer IA, and a performance group KATHY who
perform kawaii but perform its “failure.” This presentation demonstrates how kawaii shôjo
propaganda may have its own subversive influence, though under the radar of the Japanese
government.
Discussant: Yukari Yoshihara, University of Tsukuba

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Session 25: Room X105
The Aesthetics and Politics of Chinese Characters and Language
Organizer/Chair: Jin Liu, Georgia Institute of Technology
This panel focuses on Chinese characters and Chinese language, and presents aninterdisciplinary examination of the aesthetics and politics of various linguistic codes, fromvisual characters, coded language, vulgar puns, argots, to metaphors in various mediums
from high art, literature, to the Internet. We start with Yu Li’s paper, which presents alinguistic analysis of Chinese characters in contemporary art movement led by avant-garde
artists such as Xu Bing. It is suggested that the linguistic characteristics of the Chinesewriting system, particularly its morphographicity, are fundamentally attributive to its
artistic potency. Next, Jin Liu examines the aesthetic and the socio-political aspects of theartist Li Xiaoguai’s invented Chinese characters and his comic blogging, and compares his
characters with Xu Bing’s linguistically nonsensical characters and Gu Wenda’s simplified
characters, thus making a dialogue with Yu’s paper. While Li’s characters form a powerful
online discourse against the Internet censorship in contemporary China, In Young Bong’s
paper moves back to the Manchukuo period (1932–1945) and analyzes another form ofcensorship and its impact on literary production and linguistic creativity in colonial
literature. In particular, it explores the cultural politics of argot and the artistic effect oftropes in envisioning a special denationalized space. Finally, Lijie Dong argues that thegenre of science fiction can facilitate the use of political metaphor to evade ideologicalcontrol and offer nuanced criticism and commentaries. She explores how politicalmetaphors are presented differently in recent works of sci-fi writers including Hao
Jingfang, Liu Cixin and Liu Yukun.

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1) Yu Li, Emory University
The Primacy of Morphographicity as Inspiration: A Linguistic Analysis of the Chinese
Script in Contemporary Visual Art
Since the phenomenal success of Xu Bing’s Book from the Sky (1987–1991) aquarter century ago, Chinese characters have remained a prominent visual and thematiccomponent in contemporary art. Works by such authors as Gu Wenda, Wu Shanzhuan, and
Qiu Zhijie, created not long after Book from the Sky, are among the most influential of thecontemporary Chinese art repertoire. What has made Chinese characters such a vibrantforce in the imagination and expression of contemporary artists? This paper offers alinguistic approach to addressing this question. It closely examines how Chinese written
symbols have been distorted, restored, deconstructed, and reconstructed phonologically,
semantically, and graphically in a wide range of works, and picks apart the multiple
linguistic layers that contribute to the main creative mechanism of each of them. The paper
suggests that the linguistic characteristics of the Chinese writing system are fundamentally
attributive to its artistic potency. Furthermore, it argues that the existence of pictographs is
only a secondary, or superficial, reason, for the near ubiquity of Chinese characters incontemporary art. Instead, it demonstrates that the most productive characteristic of theChinese script is its morphographicity, that is, the fact that a character represents thesmallest combined unit of sound and meaning. In conclusion, therefore, to fullycomprehend the role the Chinese script serves as artistic inspiration in the modern sense, it
is critical that we accurately understand the morphographicity of the Chinese script.
2) Jin Liu, Georgia Institute of Technology
Subversive Writing: Li Xiaoguai’s Newly Coined Chinese Characters and His Comic
Blogging
This paper examines the emerging phenomenon of creating new Chinese characterson the Internet with a case study of the artist Li Xiaoguai’s work. First it analyzes theaesthetics of Li’s new characters and neologisms. It explores how the new characters as analternative translation achieve the Austinian performative force through an iteration of theoriginal official language, which is thus displaced and subverted; how the puns become
double-voiced and double-signified utterances in the Bakhtinian sense of folk humor; and86

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how the vulgarities are pervasively used as interjections and intensifiers to vent out strong
emotions in the struggle against the state’s anti-vulgarity campaign and Internet
censorship. Next, it studies how Li’s characters are integrated in his artistic creation incomic blogging. It further explores how his comic strips evoke carnivalesque laughter bysatirizing the social ills, the officialdom, and the increasing gap between the Party and thePeople, the country and the family, and the privileged and the under-privileged. Finally,
this study puts Li’s work in a bigger context. Synchronically, it compares his characterswith Xu Bing’s linguistically nonsensical characters and Gu Wenda’s simplified charactersin brush painting. Diachronically, it briefly reviews the significance of creating new
characters in modern China.
3) In Young Bong, Chungbuk National University
The Cultural Politics of Argot and Censorship in Modern Chinese LiteratureThis paper links the legal discourse of censorship with its actual impact on literary
production in Manchukuo (1932–1945). The first part of this study addresses therelationship between laws of publication and state control of print media, which compelledauthors to come up with creative figures of speech when writing fiction. Utilized as asurvival strategy to evade censorship, argot and secret codes thus emerged as principalmeans of expression. Through a close reading of literary texts, such as “Roads” by Xing
(1933) and “Two Blue Frogs” by Xiao Hong (1933), the second part of this study explores
the cultural politics of argot and the artistic effect of tropes in thematizing nomadic
existence and social relations, as expressed by words concerning nature. Furthermore,through an analysis of the rhetoric of contrast and repetition, the paper discusses how
landscape and affect are intimately woven together, and their role in envisioning afresh adenationalized space and social ideals. By examining narratives on internationalist cohorts
and an anti-Japanese revolutionary, it attempts to broaden the range of argot studies, thus
far mainly limited to the subcultures of prison, queer, and youth. It further suggests thesignificance of colonial literature in overcoming the colonial past, which is still entangled
in historical disputes over its “truth” in East Asia.

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ASCJ 2017 Abstracts4) Lijie Dong, University of Alberta
The Political Metaphor in Contemporary Sinophone Science Fiction
Science fiction, a literary genre under the name of science, is a combination of the
discourses of truth, knowledge and legend; compared with fantastic literature and realistic
novels, the unique combination in science fiction makes it a perfect site to use politicalmetaphors. Although Chinese writers began to create science fiction as early as the late
Qing, science fiction did not become a fashionable topic in Sinophone literary studies until
Liu Yukun won the Hugo Award in 2012. This article will mainly examine the politicalmetaphors in contemporary Sinophone science fiction. By examining the writings of Hao
Jingfang, Liu Cixin and Liu Yukun, all winners of The Science Fiction Achievement
Award, this article will show how the above-named authors used different politicalmetaphors in different ways, finally forming a complementary relationship incontemporary Sinophone science fiction. If the three spaces in Folding Beijing explicitly
represent the hierarchy in metropolitan Beijing, in The Three-body Problem, Liu Cixin not
only depicted the political circumstance in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, butalso used the “three-body” as a metaphor to construct the political society of contemporary
China. In addition, this paper will further explore the political metaphors that constitute Liu
Yukun's writings and through these metaphors, how he “gazes” at China from the positionof a Chinese American.
Discussant: Alexander Des Forges, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Session 26: Room X106
Barriers at work—Employment and entrepreneurial possibilities and problems incontemporary Japan
Organizer/Chair: SPF Dale, Hitotsubashi University
There has been a recent emphasis on “diversity” in the Japanese workplace – theneed for more women in the workforce, for culturally diverse and internationally-oriented
work environments, and for non-discriminatory work policies that treat individuals thesame irrespective of gender or sexuality. The Abe government has issued statements to88

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work towards an economy where “women can shine,” and an open and accepting society
where “sexual minorities will not have to come out,” as well as the need to accept more
immigrants to work in certain fields. Although change may be taking place at a policylevel, change at a social level seems to be taking more time to achieve. Focusing on thetheme of barriers, this panel looks at the very real hurdles that prevent certain individuals
from participating and progressing in specific fields, and looks at how gender, ethnicity,
sexuality, and nationality may play a role in maintaining and shaping these barriers.
Examining female film stars, women who work in the adult industry, Chinese immigrants
in Japan, and transgender individuals, this panel explores the experiences of various
minority groups at work, and looks at the intersections of gender, sexuality, ethnicity,
nationality, and employment choices. In our panel, we seek to investigate how barriers in
employment are constructed and maintained, and the role that social institutions and theindividual play in doing so. How do barriers influence employment possibilities andchoices, and what are the possibilities of breaking them down?
1) Jennifer Coates, Kyoto University
The Film Star and the Housewife: The Strange Case of the Invisible Career
What happens when we overcome a barrier? This paper analyses the career of film
star Kogure Michiyo (1918–1990) to argue that overcoming gendered barriers in
employment does not necessarily erase those barriers for future employees. Sometimes
overcoming a barrier can contribute to the cementing of that barrier for others. In the earlypost-war years, Kogure maintained a comfortable career playing loveable sidekick
characters in critically acclaimed hits such as Blue Mountains (1949). However, her
increasing visibility led to an increase in public scrutiny. Gossip magazines began to
speculate about her home life, questioning whether Kogure could be an adequate wife andmother when she spent so much time working outside the home. Kogure took control ofher personal narrative, penning a column in Eiga Fan called “The Secret to My Life as aHousewife.” She emphasized her work within the home, obfuscating her film work tocreate the impression of a full-time professional housewife. As her popularity increased, so
did offers of employment; Kogure took her first leading roles from 1950, and was cast as“Mrs Sanyo” in a long-running series of advertisements for the home wares brand. Kogure
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overcome gendered barriers to her employment by cultivating the popular persona of astay-at-home housewife. By creating this persona in the public sphere however, she
contributed to popular discourse that posited the domestic sphere as the ‘proper place’ forwomen’s work. Taking Kogure as case study, this paper explores how one person’s
breakthrough can contribute to another’s oppression in the workplace.
2) Alexandra Hambleton, Bunkyo Gakuin University
The Feminist Entrepreneur: Labor and Self-Actualization in the Japanese Adult
Industry
Once relegated to seedy alleyways and the back pages of men’s magazines, theJapanese adult industry has expanded and now targets a whole new clientele—women.
Previously inaccessible, online adult shops now provide a whole new space in whichfemale customers may explore their sexuality and purchase pornography, sex toys, anderotic literature. This paper examines the young female entrepreneurs who are
spearheading this movement—women who view the adult industry as a way to overcome
their frustrations about how female sexuality is marginalized in contemporary Japan, and toaffect social change. Adult industry entrepreneurs commonly expand their activities
beyond online commerce to include workshops and events at which participants areencouraged to open up and discuss sex, with the goal being to help women overcome
emotional barriers to the purchase of adult products. There remains however a great
tension between the financial and political goals of the entrepreneurs, and their actual
work. In Japan, as Allison (2013) writes, women have long been overrepresented inirregular employment. Gabriella Lukács (2015) in writing on the Japanese digital economy,adds that individuals are compelled to “invest unpaid emotional labor in order to develop
work opportunities that are more conducive to their projects of self-actualization.”
Consequently, entrepreneurs commonly find themselves engaged in an ongoing battle toovercome financial, emotional, and social barriers to success, while clinging to the ideathat their work can contribute to the creation of a Japan accepting of female sexuality.

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ASCJ 2017 Abstracts3) Jamie Coates, Sophia University
The Intersectional Labyrinth of Chinese Entrepreneurialism in Japan
Chinese migrants in Japan face a range of intersectional barriers that shape many of
their aspirations and desires. Despite being the largest non-Japanese minority in Japan,
they face obstacles based on their status as ethnic-outsiders, which affects theiremployment opportunities and experience of Japanese institutions. However, these
dynamics are by no means the end of the barriers they face. Based on ethnographic
fieldwork among young Chinese in Ikebukuro, Tokyo, this paper explores how intra-ethnic
problems of gender, region and class compound the migrant experience in Japan. Many
young Chinese find themselves stuck between the vicissitudes of being an outsider in a
Japanese workplace, and potential exploitation within Chinese employment networks.
Hegemonic masculine ideals among Chinese migrants also ensure that women, those fromregions associated with poorer education, and non-Han Chinese face particular difficulties.
Within this context, barriers take on new meaning for young Chinese, acting as walls thatare not always overcome but rather channel their aspirations. In particular, the emphasis on
entrepreneurial success in popular Chinese culture becomes an idealized part of the
migrant project, and is envisioned as a means to escape intersectional barriers. From
women touting cosmetics and sexualized services, to Uyghur musicians and Mongolianchefs, the independence afforded by entrepreneurialism is seen as a form of freedom thatside-steps a variety of structural barriers. However, entrepreneurialism often conforms or
reproduces other hegemonic frameworks. These case studies suggest ways in whichintersectional barriers and strategies to overcome them are deterritorialized,
reterritorialized, and amplified in the migrant context.

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ASCJ 2017 Abstracts4) SPF Dale, Hitotsubashi University
How Friendly is LGBT-friendly? Experiences of LGBT Employees and Diversity
Policies in Japanese workplaces
Major international companies in Japan such as Panasonic, Rakuten, and Softbank
have proclaimed themselves “LGBT-friendly.” LGBT-friendly company policies include
giving employees with same-sex partners similar benefits to married heterosexual couples,
recognizing the gender identity or preferred name of an employee who may not havelegally changed sex, and providing staff training about LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender) issues. Research done by the NPO Niji-iro Diversity demonstrates that many
LGBT individuals have experienced some form of discrimination at work. Althoughcompanies may have LGBT-friendly policies, in many cases discriminatory work
environments continue to exist, making it difficult for employees to come out and makeuse of these policies. Following an examination of LGBT-friendly company policies, thispaper turns to look at the experiences of LGBT workers, focusing mostly on transgenderindividuals. Depending on their stage of transition, transgender individuals experience
different problems at work. For those who transition on the job, how their company willtreat them administratively (in terms of name and legal gender) as well as collegially(informing co-workers of transition, creating a supportive environment) are defining
issues. For transgender workers who have already transitioned, coming out depends highly
on how transgender-friendly they perceive their workplace to be. Many transgenderindividuals (in particular non-gender binary identifying individuals) opt for temporary
employment because of how gendered they feel typical office environments can be.
Through their experiences, I examine the barriers that exist for LGBT workers in Japan
today—how these barriers are constructed, and the potential for breaking them down.
Discussant: Diana Khor, Hosei University

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Session 27: Room X107
Individual Papers VI: War and Occupation
Chair: Robert Eskildsen, International Christian University
1) Simon James Bytheway, Nihon University
Currency Problems in Allied Occupied Germany and Japan, 1945–1952
The continued use and circulation of Nazi, Imperial Japanese, and assorted Allied
military currencies, and the redemption of these currencies in U.S. dollars, were the sourceof a huge financial threat to U.S. military authorities in Germany and Japan. Historically,
currency reform is best enacted hot on the heels of regime change. In both Germany andJapan, however, hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars were exchanged by military
authorities for dubious paper currencies issued by the defeated enemies, and by otheroccupying powers (principally the Soviet Union in Germany). The scale of these exchangetransactions was such that the U.S. Treasury Department made dire warning of financial
dysfunction and insolvency at the very highest levels of military command. Against thisbackground, what were the currency and monetary policies of the Allied occupational
forces in Germany and Japan? Which individuals or institutions benefited most from thesepolicies? And how did U.S. currency policy proceed given the wider frameworks ofquadripartite and Far Eastern Council oversight and requisite negotiations? In order toanswer these questions, my presentation at the forthcoming ASJC aims to shed some lighton the “shoddy history” (in Charles Kindleberger’s words) of how U.S. military authorities
managed to “squeeze” U.S. dollars back from Allied occupation personnel “without loss”
to the U.S. Government, and ultimately, to present new insights into how the introductionof new currency systems helped reinforce America’s position in Germany and Japan
during periods of great economic instability and the emerging cold war.

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ASCJ 2017 Abstracts2) Christian W. Spang, Daito Bunka University
Nazi Racism and Japanese-German Marriages
From 1933 onwards, a local Nazi structure was established in Japan. By 1936—38
most Germans had been integrated into two separate “German Communities” (Deutsche
Gemeinde Tokyo-Yokohama & Kobe-Osaka). From then on, the Nazis exercised a rather
rigid control over Germans living in Japan. Jews and Anti-Nazis were excluded from thesecommunities. Non-Jewish half-German children continued to be allowed to attend the twoGerman schools in Yokohama and Kobe, as well as to participate in the local chapter of the
Hitler Youth (called “Deutsche Jugend Japan” [German Youth Japan]) until the end of
WWII. Despite the notorious German-Japanese “Axis,” ardent Nazis were actively
agitating against Japanese wives (and husbands) of German nationals. Based on their beliefof German-Aryan superiority, they actively discouraged and threatened Germans who
intended to marry Japanese. Those who married after 1933 lost their citizenship. NonGerman spouses were frequently excluded from Nazi-sponsored events in Japan. My paper
is based on documents by the Nazi embassy in Tokyo and the local Nazi Party’s“Landesgruppe”, i.e. the umbrella organization of all Nazi organizations in Japan between
1935 and 1945. Following a short introduction of the build-up of Nazi organizations inJapan, It will present some cases of how dissenters were excluded from the “Gemeinde”
and how German nationals were discouraged from marrying Japanese.
3) Ji Hee Jung, Seoul National University
Rearticulating the American Way across the Pacific: The U.S. Cold War Politics ofDomesticity and Its Ruptures in Occupied Japan
This paper addresses how the U.S. occupation-promoted idealized representations ofAmerican domesticity were decoded and rearticulated by non-elite Japanese women,
whose voices have remained largely silent in studies on the U.S. global promotion of theAmerican way. Specifically, I investigate the case of Takehisa Chieko, an actress and thewife of an American officer who enjoyed perhaps the highest visibility in popular women’smagazines as a reliable Japanese informant and model practitioner of the American way. In
analyzing Takehisa’s magazine writings, interviews, and photographs housed in the Prange
Collection, this paper discusses the socio-political implications of her activities in relation
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to the larger U.S. global promotion of American domesticity for Cold war containment.
Mediated through her admiration of “America,” imagined as the opposite to occupied
Japan, and the middle-class gender norms of her own, Takehisa’s discourses on American
domesticity generally reinforced the ideal images promoted by the occupation. At the sametime, rearticulating American domesticity to fit into the socio-cultural fabric of postwar
Japan, she inadvertently revealed the peculiar nature of the supposedly universal Americanmodel. Focusing on Takehisa’s subject position as a Japanese woman and an embodimentof the American model, this paper argues that her case demonstrates the dilemma resulting
from the simultaneously seductive and alienating American way, which even a willing
follower could not evade. In so doing, my study illuminates some ruptures in the larger
U.S. global promotion of American domesticity for Cold war containment in the early
postwar era.
4) Hyewon Um, University of Hawai’i at Manoa
Litigation, Administrative Relief, and Political Settlement for Japanese War Orphans:Cause Lawyering and Its Implications for Social Movements in JapanHow does the active involvement of the legal profession change the landscape ofsocial movements in Japan? Robert Pekkanen argues that Japan’s dual civil society brings
about the phenomenon of “members without advocates.” Focusing on the war orphans’lawsuits against Japanese government, this paper argues that active involvement of cause
lawyers in various social movements create significant opportunities to strengthen the
integration of the movement actors and re-vitalized political movements throughmobilizing thousands of participants in the protest rallies and other social events. This
paper also contends that cause lawyers play a vital role in influencing policy debates evenafter the litigation ends. Preliminary research analyzing newspaper articles and supporters’
documents on the war orphans’ litigation revealed that cause lawyers got deeply involvedin planning movement activities in and out of the court. By analyzing collected materials
including newspaper articles, government documents, supporters’ documents, publishedbooks, and in-depth interviews with the movement participants, this paper will present how
the legal profession changes the overall views on the movement goals and methods, howdifferent views among various movement participants about their issues have been shaped
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and reshaped during the series of the lawsuits, and how the legal profession keeps abalance between activists and government officials during and even after the movement.
This paper will contribute to deepening our understanding of the relation between the law
and social movements in contemporary Japan.
5) Astghik Hovhannisyan, Hitotsubashi University
Eugenic Sterilizations in Postwar JapanIn 1948, Japan enacted the Eugenic Protection Law (Yūsei hogo hō) that, along withlegalizing abortion under a wide range of circumstances authorized physicians to perform
forced sterilizations on people with various hereditary and non-hereditary diseases. Under
the law, which was abolished only in 1996 (to be more precise, it underwent majoramendments and was renamed Maternal Body Protection Law), about sixteen thousandpeople, majority suffering from mental disabilities or mental illnesses were sterilizedagainst their will. Circumstances under which these sterilizations happened are little
known, and despite victims’ and disability rights groups’ demands for investigation andcompensation, the Health and Welfare Ministry has repeatedly refused to proceed with thecase, stating that “the operations were legal at the time.” The aim of this paper is to shedlight on circumstances under which sterilizations were performed based on newly foundmaterials and explain how the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Ministry of Justiceinterpreted the law and the Constitution of Japan to legally allow coerced eugenic
operations.
Session 28: Room X201
Individual Papers VII: Chinese and Japanese History
Chair: Bettina Gramlich-Oka, Sophia University
1) Nobuko Senoo, Independent Scholar
The Assimilation of Exotic Cultures in Tang China: The Tri-Colored Glazed Ewer of the
Arab Shipwreck
Among the cultural relics excavated from the ninth century Arab shipwreck in theJava Sea in recent years, there is a magnificent white-glazed green-and-brown colored96

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ewer with incised floral lozenges on the body and a dragon head on its top, all Persianstyled design incorporated in the Tang-dynasty tri-colored glazed pottery. This ewer is asignificant object that reflects the cultural exchange between Central Asia and China andthe acceptance of foreign cultures in Chinese lands. While produced in China, the style wasmodeled after the silverwares of the Sassanid Empire (224–651) of Persia that weretransmitted into China, as evidenced by the sixth century gilded silver ewer excavated from
Guyuan, Ningxia. Since the fifth century, the trading of the Sogdiana merchants in Central
Asia became rather active and a great amount of articles were transmitted to China,
reaching a peak during the Tang dynasty. As a consequent, the Persian culture prevailed atthat time, as represented by murals, pottery figurines, and ceramics of the Tang period.
Along with the tide, the Persian culture was also introduced to Japan and Southeast Asia.
Exploiting archaeological materials and Tang historical records, this paper will examine
the forms and details of Persian styled ewers excavated in China and how Persian culture
was assimilated in Tang China. Exploring the perception of exotic cultures in the Tangsociety, it proposes that Tang society not only was open to foreign cultures but there wasalso a trend of appreciating and aspiring to a fusion with exotic cultures.
2) Roman Pasca, Kanda University of International Studies
Visions of the Human Being in Tokugawa Philosophy: Nature as Shizen and the “HomoNaturalis”
In Shizen shin’ei dō (自然真営道, The True Way of the Functioning of Nature),Andō Shōeki 安藤昌益 (1703–1762) proposes a vision of the world where two different
realms exist: shizen no yo (World of Nature), and shihōsei (World of the Private Law).
One of Shōeki’s most original and significant contributions is his understanding of thehuman being: the notion of hito envisaged not only as a hub of man-and-woman fused
together, but also as an all-encompassing self that expands into all of humankind. In thispresentation, I propose an analysis of Shōeki’s vision of the human being within the Worldof Nature. I focus on some of the principles that govern the existence of hito such as
chokkō (straight cultivation) and the three energies tsūki, gyakki, and ōki (descending,lateral and ascending). I suggest that Shōeki’s understanding of the human being is threeleveled, spanning from the single individual to the whole of humankind, and I propose the97

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term homo naturalis to refer to this interpretation. My conclusion is that Shōeki’s notion of
hito can not only shed some light on the evolution of the concept in the history of Japanesephilosophy, but also provide us with clues useful in the interpretation and discussion ofconcepts such as self and subjectivity in twentieth-century European history of philosophy.
3) Sergey Tolstoguzov, Hiroshima University
Tenpo Reforms in the Time and Space of Premodern Japan
Traditional or pre-modern societies had principles and practices for dealing withnatural disasters that included socio-cultural aspects which differ from modern society.
This can be more easily understood from a consideration of the Tempo reforms
proclaimed on May 15 1841, which were designed to (1) restore the policy of the Kyoho
and Kansei and (2) to reduce the effect of the Tenpo Famine. Traditionally, Tempo policies
were considered in connection with Meiji Ishin or Kyoho and Kansei Reforms rather thanin connection with the Tenpo Famine. However, most elements of Bakufu activity wereefforts directed at restoring moral health or dealing with inflation, rather than deep levelstructural changes. A policy aimed at restoring economic stability is quite different fromone aimed at reordering feudal institutions. Considering the Tenpo “reforms” from thispoint of view, at least part of them can more accurately be seen as pragmatic attempts torestore social and economic stability after the Tenpo Famine. In a sense, this period inJapanese history could be better evaluated in the context of the history of the first half of
19th century—the Tenpo Famine and the Opium War. These and other questions must be
discussed in the details through the examination of the Bakufu edicts, orders and visual
information of the Tenpo period.

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ASCJ 2017 Abstracts4) Carolyn Pang, Columbia University
Destroying to Appease the Gods: Challenges of Historical Preservation in Present-Day
Japan
With the demise of each practitioner of the Izanagi-ryū, family members often had toconsider how to deal with the cache of ritual texts and tools belonging to the deceased
priest. Some resorted to destroying the items to prevent possible punitive effects from thegods. Yet, by destroying these valuable resources on the ritual procedures and healing
techniques of this local religious tradition in the Kōchi prefecture, we lose pertinent
historical information on the cross-influences between this distant region and other parts ofJapan, as well as its linkages with the Asian continent. Attempts by museums and scholars
in Japan to retrieve such private collections of historical records often met with difficulties
as the artifacts are usually disposed of before the scholars are informed of the situation. In
face of a rapidly aging population and depopulation of the region to city centers, thediminishing number of practitioners and the lack of successors to continue the practices of
the Izanagi-ryū meant that this local religion faces the risk of fading into extinction. In thispresentation, issues on the preservation of intangible cultural heritages, and the relation
between local religious customs and academic research will be discussed. Examples fromfieldwork observations will also be engaged to highlight the situation in which local
traditions cope with the issue of disused religious artifacts, such as talismans and ritual
tools and texts, that have lost their venues of operation but are still believed to retain potent
ritual efficacy.

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SUNDAY AFTERNOON SESSIONS I: 1:30 P.M. – 3:30 P.M.
Session 29: Room X202
Modern Tokyo: Public Spaces, Gendered Places
Organizer/Chair: Roderick Wilson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
As the city of Tokyo grew and changed between 1868 and 1945, the expectations andactivities of women and men in the metropolis also changed. In this panel, we focus on theemergence of a variety of public spaces—restaurants, city parks, YWCA facilities—toshow how they were also inherently gendered places. In these histories, we do not lookupon Tokyo as simply a convenient backdrop or stand-in for a national story. Rather, we
examine the capital city as its own dynamic site within the modern world where activists,
students, and others engaged with one another to fashion vibrant social networks andthrough their public activities created gendered places. In the first paper, Yuko Nakamura
focuses on Meiji-period Western-style restaurants, Rokumeikan, Kazoku Jogakko, gardens,
parks, and related venues where women left the domestic-realm to create new “women’splaces for socializing.” Next, Roderick Wilson examines the establishment, regulation, anduse of Tokyo’s first city parks to show how class and gender each played a role in theformation of these public places. Finally, Sally Hastings explores the spatial relations andsocial networks that emerged with the founding and growth of the Tokyo Association of
the YWCA. Together this panel examines Tokyo as a local site within global movementsthat shaped the role of women and men in society and in turn transformed the very city inwhich they worked, entertained, and organized for social change.
1) Yuko Nakamura, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Spaces for Socializing: Emergence and Development of Women-only Gatherings in preWorld-War-II Tokyo, Japan
This paper examines the spaces for women’s socializing [shakō] in Tokyo, Japan,
before World War II. In pre-modern Japan, women were not expected to join activities in
non-domestic spaces. Onna Daigaku, a set of neo-Confucian principles about women’s
behavior that prevailed in pre-modern Japan, urged women under the age of forty not to100

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visit spaces where people gathered and mingled, such as shrines, temples, and theaters. It
also suggested that women should focus on housework, and in their spare time, they should
be engaged in sewing or reading, both of which were solitary activities at home. The
ideology of female domesticity thus shaped the traditional gender structures. When Japan’s
government started the idiosyncratic modernization combining industrialization andpseudo-Westernization after Meiji Restoration (1868), the non-domestic spaces wereparticularly unprepared for women’s activities. Fast forward half a century, around 1915,
places like Shiseidō Parlor, Senbikiya Parlor, and department stores, began being accepted
as new “women’s places for socializing” in Tokyo’s non-domestic realm. By this time,modern women socializing without men’s escort had been legitimated and even targeted inmarketing. Then, how can we make sense of the emergence and increase of women’spresence in the non-domestic spaces through the lens of socializing? By interpreting thevenues that Japan Women’s Association for Education (est. 1886), one of the oldest
women’s groups for socializing, used for their gatherings, this paper illustrates the process
in which women’s networks of non-domestic spaces expanded as their expectations anddesires shifted in negotiation with ideas from overseas.
2) Roderick Wilson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Tokyo’s First City Parks: The Making of Public Places in the Meiji Period
In the late nineteenth century, Japanese visitors to Europe, the United States, andtheir colonies largely experienced “western civilization” through its cities. For many, thepublic park held an integral place in the cityscape of that “civilization.” Theses visitors,
however, appear to have been less aware that the parks they wrote about—whether Parc
des Butte-Chaumont in Paris or Central Park in New York, were themselves new additions
to their respective cities. That is, just as the public park was being introduced into Japan in
the 1860s and 1870s, it was itself still new to Europe and the United States and undergoing
constant redefinition as these public places became symbols of social progress, examplesof government largess and responsibility, and places of political protest and culturalchange. In this paper, I begin by exploring the efforts of the Tokyo government to redefine
and regulate various public places in Asakusa and elsewhere as the city’s new public parksor kōen. Next, I trace the debates over the design of Hibiya Park, the capital city’s first101

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western-style park, within the Tokyo Municipal Reform Projects. In a final section, I focus
on how both women and men actually used Hibiya and the city’s other parks to examine
the role of class and gender in the formation of these particularly public places.
Throughout, I argue that Tokyo’s city parks were constantly being recreated as genderedsites through their planning, regulation, and quotidian use by the women and men ofmodern Tokyo.
3) Sally Hastings, Purdue University
The Tokyo YWCA: Constructing Places to Advance the Needs of Young Women, 1905–
1940
When in 1905, the Canadian Caroline Macdonald brought together independentgroups within mission schools that identified with the Young Women’s Christian
Association (YWCA) into an organization that could be recognized by the World YWCA,
the first local association founded was in Tokyo. Over the next four decades, the Tokyo
Association built a physical plant as well as educational institutions and organizational
structures. In addition to organizing associations in women’s schools, the association
reached out to working women and international students. Dedicated to advancing thephysical, social, and intellectual and as well as the religious needs of young women, theYWCA required appropriate buildings and connections to the spaces and institutions of thecapital city. This paper will map the outreach of the Tokyo Association, beginning with theborrowed spaces—Christian schools and homes of supporters—that the fledglingorganization used until it had constructed its own facilities. Second, the paper will identify
the geographical spaces where the hostels, swimming pools, classrooms, and otherfacilities of the Tokyo YWCA were established, both before and after the devastating
Great Kantō Earthquake. What were their spatial relationships with respect to public
transportation routes, educational institutions, places of employment, and major churches?
The paper will also show the networks through which the YWCA “Secretaries” werelinked to other institutions in Tokyo, including the YMCA, Christian educational
institutions for women, and major churches.
Discussant: Noriko Ishii, Sophia University
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Session 30: Room X203
The “Korea Problem” in Imperial and Post-Imperial Japan: Reconsidering theRelationship between Metropole and Colony
Organizer: Max Ward, Middlebury College
Chair: Hiroaki Matsusaka, University of Michigan
This panel explores various ways the “Korea problem” (Chōsen mondai) was
articulated during the Japanese Empire and its aftermath. The “Korea problem” vexed
officials of the Japanese Empire, although as Andre Schmid (2000) has argued, “nationcentered” histories have failed to adequately explore the complex political, social andcultural interactions between the metropole and colony from which the “Korea problem”
emerged. This panel explores specific expressions of the “Korea problem” during theJapanese Empire and soon after its collapse. In so doing, we reexamine how colonial Korea
was central in the Japanese imperial (and anti-imperial) imaginary, and also question theconventional periodization of wartime and postwar Japan. Max Ward discusses how the“Korea problem” was articulated in the imperial state’s campaign to reform Koreanpolitical criminals in the late-1930s, revealing important aporias of Japanese imperial
ideology. Next, Hiroaki Matsusaka explores the ways in which anti-imperial activist andprogressive writer Ishigaki Ayako narrated her encounters with Koreans, symbolizing her
politics and Japanese womanhood. Lastly, Deokhyo Choi discusses how the postwar
Japanese state and society responded to the "Korean minority question" posed by theevents of defeat and decolonization.
1) Max Ward, Middlebury College
Ideological Conversion (Tenkō) and the “Korea Problem”: Japanese Anxieties of
Policing the Empire
Between 1925 and 1945, the Japanese state used the infamous Peace Preservation
Law (Chianijihō) to arrest over seventy thousand political dissidents in the Japanese
metropole and thousands more in colonial Korea. With an increasing population ofdetained political criminals, officials in the metropole began to experiment with urging
detainees to defect from the socialist movement and “ideologically convert” (tenkō) as
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loyal imperial subjects. Such experiments were hugely successful in Japan, and in 1936 thestate established a network of Protection and Supervision Centers throughout the empire tooversee the “ideological conversion” of political dissidents. Almost immediately, however,officials noted discrepancies between “ideological conversion” in the Japanese metropoleand colonial Korea. In a flurry of reports, officials expressed concern over the challengesof implementing the tenkō policy in colonial Korea, as well as the higher rate ofideological recidivism amongst paroled activists in the colony. This paper explores how
these reports articulated the “Korea problem” within the discourse of criminal justice, andargues that such anxieties reveal aporias at the foundation of the Japanese Empire and its
imperial ideology.
2) Hiroaki Matsusaka, University of Michigan
The “Korea Problem” for Ishigaki Ayako, a Feminist Internationalist Migrant
Publishing dozens of books and appearing on numerous TV shows, Ishigaki Ayako(1903–1996) was a highly popular and productive feminist intellectual in contemporary
Japan. Equally remarkable was her activity as a Japanese migrant activist and anti-fascist
progressive in the U.S. in the 1930s and 1940s. She was a member of the pro-China groupcalled American Friends of the Chinese People and wrote political and cultural articles fornewspapers, including The New Masses and Rafu Shinpo (LA News Daily), in New Yorkand Los Angeles. While Ishigaki developed personal and political relationships with her
Chinese and American colleagues and friends such as Agnes Smedley and Lao She, herrecords do not show that she had colleagues or close friends from Korea. Nevertheless, likeother Japanese progressives and leftists in the period of Japanese colonialism and onward,
Ishigaki occasionally referred to her contacts with Korea or Korean people in order tonarrate her own anti-imperial or antiracist politics in her writings. In my paper, I explore
how Ishigaki made such references to Korea in a symbolic manner and how, in suchgestures of coalition, she articulated her own vision for a Japanese progressive
womanhood. My project discusses the ways in which Ishigaki could and could not address
Japan’s colonization of Korea, shaping her politics and positionality at the intersection of
two colonial empires: as a woman of Japan’s racial and ethnic majority and an East Asian
migrant woman in the United States.
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ASCJ 2017 Abstracts3) Deokhyo Choi, Yonsei University
Looking through the Korean Minority’s “Liberation”: Decolonization in Early Postwar
Japan
At the end of World War II, the Japanese empire had a population of over two
million Koreans in its metropole (naichi), the majority of whom were both migrant andwartime conscripted workers. When the Allied forces occupied Japan after the war,
General Douglas MacArthur and the Japanese government tried to send as many Koreansback to Korea as possible in order to reduce the surplus population of the war-torn,
demobilized country. While nearly three-fourths of the Korean colonial migrants soon
returned to their liberated country, over half a million Koreans remained, forming thelargest ethnic minority in postwar Japan. As these Korean colonial migrants in Japanemerged as new political subjects invigorated by Japan’s defeat and the end of colonial
rule in Korea, their presence became a “problem” in occupied Japan. How did the Japanesestate and society respond to this “Korean minority question” posed by the events of defeat
and decolonization? This paper discusses how colonial labor forces that had once been
mobilized and brought from Korea to the empire’s home front quickly turned into a major
source of political anxiety in Japan after the war. This paper focuses particularly on how
decolonization was experienced in Japanese society when these Korean colonial migrant
workers emerged as new political subjects performing their “liberation” on Japanese soil. I
argue that the encounter with the self-empowered Korean minority had considerable
influence on the way that the newly implemented democracy and pacifism were practiced
by the Japanese state and society.
Discussant: Kyeong-Hee Choi, University of Chicago

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Session 31: Room X104
Satire in Chinese Literature: Satirical Text as Medium for Socio-Cultural
Engagement and Identity Negotiation
Organizer and Chair: Xi Tian, Bucknell University
In the history of satirical practice, while the discussion of satire as a literary genre
has been dominated by studies of Western literary tradition, satire (fengci in Chinese) as aliterary device has its own roots in Chinese culture and history. In this panel, we include
three papers that focus on three satirical texts from early Qing Dynasty, the Republican
Era, and contemporary Taiwan: Aina jushi’s Idle Talk under the Bean Arbor (1660), Xiao
Hong’s Tales of Hulan River (1940), and Chi Wei-ran’s novel Private Eyes (2011). We
look at how authors at different historical periods incorporate satirical elements to mediate
their critiques on contemporary socio-cultural issues, to guard the cultures and values they
deem ideal, and to renegotiate their own positions and identities in times of transition anduncertainty. By analyzing the change and transformation of the satirist’s self, the culture it
examines, and the negotiation between the satirical texts and their cultural contexts, we
also seek to rethink “satire” as a literary device that oftentimes transcends the narrowconcept of “genre” in the context of Chinese literature. We aim to unpack the complex“satiric-triangle” between satirist, satirized object, and the audience, and to further explore
how its similar/contrasting features with Western satirical tradition may shed new lights on
our understanding of “satire” as well as “Chinese literature” when it deals with different,
and quite often contradictory, cultures and social realities.
1) Xi Tian, Bucknell University
Food, Eating and Taste: The Hungry Body in Xiao Hong’s Tales of Hulan River
Born to a landlord family yet in a turmoil time of national salvation, Chinese female
writer Xiao Hong (1911–1942) is remembered by her humanistic writing profoundly
concerning with the future of China and its people. Similar to her mentor Lu Xun, she
resorts to satire to grapple with the social and national issues of her time, especially in her
semi-autobiographic novel Tales of Hulan River. This paper examines one of the recurrent
themes of Xiao Hong’s writing: hunger, food and eating. By comparing the characters’106ASCJ 2017 Abstracts
excessive obsession with food and eating in Tales of Hulan River (1940) and in her
unfinished satirical novel Ma Bole, I argue that Xiao Hong expresses humble passivity andempathy with the satirized peasants, as the satirical voice of Tales of Hulan River changes
from one with certainty to one with ambiguity. Moreover, acknowledging and sometimes
appreciating “the taste of necessity,” which favors the most “filling” and most economical
foods, the satirist-narrator who is from a landlord family deviates from the manner of
eating characterizing her class. Such deviation further transgresses the boundary of the
stance of the satirist and the lower class Chinese she satirizes, and shows Xiao Hong’s
reflection on the general psychological impact of hunger on human beings as well as thealienation she has suffered from her own class.
2) Fang-Yu Li, New College of Florida
Writing the Self as a Satirist: Ji Weiran’s Private Eyes
Ji Weiran is a contemporary playwright and a theater professor at National Taiwan
University. He is known for writing and directing modern plays that incorporate sarcasm,
dark humor, and comedic cynicism to expose the follies and pathologies of contemporary
Taiwan society. In his recent semi-autobiographical and quasi-detective novel Private
Eyes, Ji makes himself both the satirist and the satirical object, fictionalizing himself as a
middle-aged theater professor/playwright who quits his job to become a private detective
after being struck by a sudden revelation at a drinking party. Using the detective as asurrogate, Ji inserts his critique on various social issues, in particular his contempt for thelack of momentum and originality in local cultural and art productions, which he feels
partially responsible for. As an attempt to deal with his guilt, Ji personifies his “dark side”
as a serial killer, who appears as the detective’s “double” and kills random people in thename of saving the detective’s soul. In this paper, I discuss the ways in which Ji Weirancreates a fictional self as the satirized object to conduct a mediated critique of not only theself, but also the role of the satirist and the intellectual community in contemporary
Taiwan.

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3) Yunjing Xu, Bucknell University
Satire in Chinese Literature: Satirical Text as Medium for Socio-Cultural Engagement
and Identity Negotiation
The tenth story of Aina’s Idle Talk under the Bean Arbor, titled “Jia’s Tiger Hill
Union of Freeloaders”, is a satirical story on the contemporary urban culture of Suzhou. By
setting up two layers of framework (the author-commentator and the storyteller-audience),
the story presents an ambiguous relationship between the satirist, the object of satire, andthe audience. On one level, the storyteller-satirist, presenting himself as an outsider ofSuzhou, satirizes the local freeloaders as a cautionary tale to the audience who are
outsiders like himself, so they can be on guard against the shallow and deceptive culture of
the marketplace when they travel there. However, on another layer, the authorcommentator persona reflects upon the symbiotic relationship between the marketplace andthe high culture of the literati, whose obsession with superfluous things makes themvulnerable to the schemes of the freeloaders. In addition, the author wrote the story in
Suzhou dialect, making Suzhou readers as the main target audience of the satire, contrary
to the storyteller persona’s self-identification as an outsider. I argue that this device reveals
the author’s own desire of reshaping Suzhou culture by making it the target of satire, as
well as calling upon the reader of this story to reflect upon their relationship with themarketplace. The author offers a final solution in the commentator persona, who suggests a
poetic restoration of the high culture, and escapism to the space of literature and aesthetics
as the final stronghold of the elite facing the challenges of the marketplace.
Discussants: Silvia Pozzi, University of Milano Bicocca; Chenshu Zhou, Stanford
University

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Session 32: Room X105
Japan’s Gender Equality in the Era of Abenomics
Panel Organizer/Chair: Machiko Osawa, Japan Women’s University
The past two decades have been fraught with ambivalence regarding progress toward
gender equality in Japan. The Basic Law for a Gender Equal Society was introduced in
1999 and gender equality ordinances soon followed at the municipal level throughout thecountry. However, the early 2000’s were marked by anti-feminist backlash led by politicalconservatives. In 2013, Prime Minister Shinzō Abe, who had been associated with thebacklash against feminism, surprised many by unveiling “womenomics,” his plan to enlist
women in the labor force to aid in Japan’s economic recovery. In this panel presentation,social scientists from diverse disciplinary perspectives examine the changing work andfamily lives of Japanese women in this context of ambivalence towards gender equality.
Custer’s presentation concentrates on the perceptions of feminism and gender equality
among young Japanese women. Her findings suggest that while these young women do
believe in gender equality, they are leery of feminism and somewhat skeptical about
whether they can expect to be treated equally once they enter the workplace. Kawaguchi’spresentation confirms their suspicions that equality in the workplace may be illusive. He
documents widespread maternity harassment and identifies several factors that exacerbate
it. The third presenter, Ma also examines challenges that women encounter in theworkplace. She identifies several workplace constraints, such as gender discrimination, that
limit women’s abilities to achieve their career goals and encourage high job turnover.
Lastly, Kamano analyzes changing attitudes towards the gender relationships and foundthat more educated women are more likely to have progressive gender ideology.
1) Lindsay Custer, Cascadia College
Perceptions of Feminism and Women’s Role in Society among Young Female JapaneseCollege Students
This small-scale study conducted at two different women’s universities located inTokyo uses both qualitative and quantitative methods to assess student perceptions offeminism and gender equality. A growing body of literature focusing on young college
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women in Western countries indicates that many repudiate feminism (Sharff 2012) and see
gender inequality as a problem that has been solved, viewing feminist movements as
obsolete (McRobbie 2009). Other research demonstrates that students who take genderstudies courses are more likely to identify as feminists (Zucker 2004), as these courses
typically encourage students to think about their relationship to feminist ideologies. Little
research has been published (in English) on attitudes towards feminism among young
college women from non-Western countries. One study found negative stereotypes of U.S.
feminists to be pervasive and to contribute to resistance to adopting a feminist identity
among a small group of female international students in London (Crossley 2010),
suggesting that feminism may be viewed as an undesirable U.S. import. Students in thecurrent study were enrolled in American Studies courses focused on gender roles in the
U.S. and were taught primarily in English by an American instructor. Additionally, thesestudents were attending women’s universities, where they were frequently encouraged tothink about their role as women in society. Thus, conditions for exploring perceptions offeminism were especially ripe for the participants of this study. The results of the study are
discussed in the context of recent public discourse on gender equality and feminism inJapan.
2) Akira Kawaguchi, Doshisha University
Maternity harassment and Japanese-style human resource management
The purpose of this study is to find out who is at a higher risk of experiencing
maternity harassment in the work place and what kind of human resource management has
to be introduced in order to reduce that risk. “Maternity harassment” is a Japanese wordthat is synonymous with “pregnancy discrimination” in English. Maternity harassment isdefined as being dismissed or having one’s contract terminated due to pregnancy as well as
harassment in the workplace due to pregnancy or giving birth. A labor Union (rengo)
survey in 2015 found that about 28.6% of working women experienced maternity
harassment in the past, so this is a widespread phenomenon in the Japanese workplace.
However, few studies have examined the relationship between human resource
management and the risk of this harassment. This study is based upon a sample of 1,901
women ages from 20 to 44 years old and who worked at firms with 11 or more employees
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in the private sector or at any size of workplaces in the public sector who have been
employed and pregnant in the last ten years. Results of this research indicate that those
workplaces where one’s job is vaguely defined, where wages are not based upon one’s job
performance, and where there is a corporate culture of long hour working hours have ahigh risk of maternity harassment. This suggests that those companies with a traditional
Japanese employment system are at higher risk for committing maternity harassment
toward their working women.
3) Ma Xin Xin, Hitotsubashi University
Women’s Career Aspirations and Job Turnover among Highly Educated Women in
Japan
Japanese women’s age specific labor force participation exhibits an M-shape curve
such that LFP rates decline at age 30 to 35 suggesting Japanese women are more likely toquit due to marriage and pregnancy. However the survey conducted by the ResearchInstitute of Women and Careers in 2011 found that job-related reasons, such as job
dissatisfaction or lack of career prospects in the company better explain why highlyeducated Japanese women quit their first job. This study investigates women’s career
aspirations at the time of graduation and career patterns thereafter, finding that the higher awoman’s career aspiration, the more likely she will change her job. Japanese corporations
have a two tier management system such that men and women are assigned different tasks
and as a result women are not given the same job training as men. This gender
discrimination discourages the most talented women workers and encourages them to leave
the firm. We also examined the impact of job change and found that if duration of job
interruption is less than a year, the probability of moving to a better job with betterworking conditions is higher. However, if the duration of the job interruption is longer thana year, changing the workplace is disadvantageous. This is because the external labormarket is not well developed in Japan.

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ASCJ 2017 Abstracts4) Saori Kamano, National Institute of Population and Social Security Research,
Attitudes toward Gender Relationships and Families: Overtime Changes andDeterminants
Gender division of labor is a prominent characteristic of Japanese society and thesocial system is designed based upon a couple’s division of labor such that husband is
responsible for family’s economic needs and the wife is the main caregiver for the family.
It is reported that since 2005 such attitudes remain resilient as the younger generation
supports this gender division of labor. Utilizing the National Fertility Survey and the
National Survey on Family in Japan data, both collected by the National Institute ofPopulation and Social Security Research, I analyzed this trend in the younger generationand found wider variation within the younger generation compared to earlier cohorts
regarding traditional values. In addition to attitudes towards the relationship between
husband and wife, there is a pronounced division of attitudes between men and women
toward cohabitation, staying single, getting divorced, mothers with young children working
outside the home, and the role of the father in the family. Widening income gap in recent
years has lead to a widening variation of gender attitudes towards relationships andfamilies. It is crucial to develop social and employment policies that are based on anunderstanding of such trends.
Discussant: Machiko Osawa, Japan Women’s University
Session 33: Room X106
The Kimono Kaleidoscope: A Multifaceted Discussion of the Kimono, from the
Kosode Hiinagatabon to Today’s Antique-Kimono Fad
Organizer/Chair: Michelle Kuhn, Nagoya University
The kimono has throughout history been one prominent symbol of Japan both athome and abroad. People the world over continue to value its cultural significance and theartistry of its manufacture. Yet academic research on the garment remains scarce. The
research that does exist has tended to focus on the types of kimonos worn by aristocrats
rather than on the everyday kimonos of ordinary people. Moreover, scholars have
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approached kimonos mainly as textiles, and have largely ignored aspects of production,marketing, and wearing. This panel aspires to redress this oversight, first by discussing
designs based on classical literature (Kuhn) and artifacts used by craftsmen (Kamo), thenby connecting past and present through examination of contemporary uses and meanings ofhistorical motifs and designs (Yoshida). Although the kimono ceased during the second
half of the twentieth century to function as everyday attire for the majority in Japan,
interest in the kimono has persisted. With a summary by a kimono ethnographer(Yoshimura), the panel aims to provide a holistic understanding of kimono culture, and toponder its future.
1) Michelle Kuhn, Nagoya University
Discussing the Non-Genji Patterns in the Genji Hiinakata
The Genji Hiinakata (1687) is a kimono pattern book that features designs inspiredby women. Despite its name, only one third of the female characters in the book are fromthe Tale of Genji. The rest are either fictional or historical women from the ninth–fourteenth centuries. The Genji Hiinakata combines both image and text, and blurs theboundaries between the genres of kimono pattern books, illustrated editions of classicalliterature, and seventeenth-century commentaries on classical literature for female
audiences. Though previous scholarship has discussed a few of the designs related tocharacters from the Tale of Genji, no studies have considered the other fictional andhistorical women that make up the two-thirds of the patterns. The Genji Hiinakata deserves
a comprehensive study of both the images and writing. Many of the female characters in
the Genji Hiinakata also appear in Noh plays inspired by their histories. This paper willcompare the female characters from Noh plays to other kimono depictions of the sameplays. To illustrate the narrative techniques in the Genji Hiinakata, this paper will focus onfour designs, inspired by women from the Nara, Heian, and Kamakura periods.
2) Mizuho Kamo, Ritsumeikan University
Examination from Dyeing and Weaving Historical Sources; Focus on Katagami and
Designs
The labor of kimono production is divided into different loci and kimono go through
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a series of processes before completion. For this reason there are many “tools” to createkimono, but they are no longer relevant once the kimono is finished. The fact that more ofthese tools remain than the kimono they were used to create is relatively unknown.
Moreover, these tools are the tangible aspect of craftsmanship and though they can serve as
essential objects of study, their importance is unrecognized. This presentation will focus on
the “zuan” designs used to envision kimono as well as the katagami, Japanese paper
stencils for textile dyeing, used when planning the dying process from the late nineteenth
century through the early- twentieth century. Katagami are made from Japanese paper withpersimmon juice used to create various patterns that are then transferred to the fabric. On
the other hand, during the nineteenth and early twentieth century Zuan were illustrated tocreate new designs and these novel, colorful designs remain to this day. Zuan and katagami
are invaluable materials for studying society’s fascination with “clothes” as well as
aesthetic sense, fashion, extent of education, and the height of skill held by the craftsmen.
Along with classifying the many extant materials, this presentation will introduce thedevelopment of design illustrated by these katagami and designs.
3) Mari Yoshida, Ritsumeikan University
When Supply Does Not Meet Demand: On Contemporary Kimono Culture
Notwithstanding a brief resurgence in the 1950s–60s, the kimono has not served as
everyday attire for the majority of Japanese since World War II. The post-war adoption ofWestern-style clothing among the Japanese forced the kimono industry to adjust its
business model to focus on the marketing of formal and special-occasion kimonos. Thus
people with an interest in wearing everyday kimonos have of necessity turned to vintage
kimonos from the early twentieth century. This suggests that there exists a demand forfashionable everyday kimonos that is not being met by the current kimono industry. In thispaper the author examines the ideological differences between the kimono industry(producers and wholesalers) and kimono wearers, and considers the future of kimono
culture.
Discussant: Ayako Yoshimura, University of Chicago

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Session 34: Room X107
Individual Papers VIII: Empire and After
Chair: Karl Friday, Saitama University1) Ágota Duró, Hiroshima City University
Establishing Japanese Medical Assistance for the Korean Atomic Bomb Survivors
The Atomic Bomb Survivors Medical Care Law that was enacted in Japan in 1957
guaranteed free medical treatment for the atomic bomb survivors (hibakusha) residing inJapan. In 1968, the Special Measures Law provided them a monthly healthcare allowance.
With these two measures, the Japanese government officially recognized the hibakusha
and provided them with medical and financial assistance. However, these relief measures
excluded the Korean hibakusha living in South Korea, who constituted 10% of the A-bomb
victims. Son Jin-doo was the first Korean hibakusha who filed a suit against the Japanese
government to claim these rights and in 1978 the Supreme Court ruled in his favor,
acknowledging the rights of all overseas hibakusha. While most studies of the Korean
hibakusha focus on the legal cases, there is little mention of the medical assistance theyreceived in Japan. Dr. Torataro Kawamura, a Hiroshima doctor renowned for treating Abomb patients, recognized that taking immediate action was more important than waiting
for the Japanese government to implement relief measures. In 1973 he began inviting
Korean hibakusha to his own hospital and providing them with medical treatment at his
own expense. In this paper, I discuss Dr. Kawamura’s work and the civil society-based
committee he set up to provide the Korean hibakusha with medical assistance. Due to his
long-term commitment to the medical treatment of the Korean hibakusha, he earned areputation both in Japan and South Korea, contributing to the postwar improvement of theJapanese-Korean relations.
2) Bjorn Koolen, Sophia University
The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere beyond the Propaganda: Japan´s Vision for
Regional Economic Interdependence
Attempts to define Japan´s “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,” always refers
to terms such as propaganda, imperialism and of course the notion of “Asia for Asians.”
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Scholars seem to have generally been taken in by the propaganda posters of the time,
ignoring arguably the most important part of the term: Co-Prosperity. This paper sets out tostudy the Co-Prosperity Sphere from an economic history point of view analysing the flowof goods, people and information connecting the various regions it encompassed. Regionsthat were previously underdeveloped saw the rise of specialised industries and resource
extraction responding to both civilian and military demands, while intellectuals became
increasingly mobile through a wide variety of regional exchanges. Japan’s long-term visionand commitment of both the state and companies for a flourishing East-Asian region has
however become shrouded by the veil of militarism and associated memories. While theSphere was far from benign and realities of exploitation cannot be ignored, Japan’s efforts
greatly contributed to the growth of East Asia’s economic interdependency and a relative
weakening of its ties with the West. This paper aims to challenge the common
preconceptions of the Co-Prosperity Sphere and discuss the question of whether theGreater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere could be considered the first modern attempt ofsystematic economic integration of the East Asian region.
3) Hanae Kurihara Kramer, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa
Man’ei (Manchuria Motion Picture Corporation), 1937–1945
Drug smuggling, murder, bribery, espionage, extortion, conspiracies, and unholy
alliances are staples of the film industry. For the Man’ei (Manchuria Motion Picture
Corporation) these had less to do with the onscreen action than what took place behind thecamera. “As I researched deeper and deeper,” Japanese film scholar Yamaguchi Takeshi
wrote, “Man’ei became incomprehensible. It did things that film companies just do notdo.” Historians are still at a loss to explain how the studio’s president Amakasu Masahikobecame one of the most powerful men in all of Manchuria. Three post-war biographies of
Amakasu forgo the details of his early life and begin with the 1923 strangulation ofJapanese leftist Ōsugi Sakae, a crime that seemingly served as a prerequisite for his
presidency of Man’ei. He employed a motley crew of artists, entertainers, and shadyindividuals. Perhaps the most colorful ex-convict of the bunch was Ōtsuka Yūshō, a once
devoted communist who lied, cheated, and stole for his political cause. He served nearlyten years in prison for bank robbery before joining the Man’ei family.
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ASCJ 2017 Abstracts4) Sookyeong Hong, Cornell University
Overcoming Modern Medicine: Sakurazawa Yukikazu’s “Natural Medicine,” 1929–
1945
The discourse on science and technology during the fifteen-year war period in Japan
has often been characterized as the search for the Japanese spirit, in other words, theuniqueness and superiority of Japan in service of wartime mobilization. One of theexamples of this trend can also be found in medical discourse from the 1930s onward,
particularly centering on the concept of Japanese Medicine (Ninon igaku). This Japanist
inflection of medical discourse was advanced by the supporters of the traditional medicine(Kampo) revival, dietary reform activists based on reformulated Shinto ideology as well as
physicians who expressed renewed interest in traditional materia medica and the history of
medicine in Japan and East Asia. Notwithstanding diverse approaches, one of the striking
commonalities was the tendency to critically appreciate modern biomedicine based on the
East-versus-West dichotomy. With this backdrop in mind, this paper discusses one of themost conspicuous advocates of Japanese Medicine, Sakurazawa Yukikazu (桜澤如一
1893–1966, aka George Ohsawa). Even though Sakurazawa was a high-profile figure in
the world of postwar health food movement called macrobiotics, little has been known
about his wartime activities as a key leader in the “eating right” (seishoku, or shokuyō)
movement. Resonating with the Kampo revivalists, Sakurazawa appropriated the yin-yang
theory (eki) to reformulate the seishoku tenet into “Oriental medicine” and ultimately into
what he called “Natural medicine.” In what ways did Sakurazawa deploy the notion of“nature” and the practice of “natural eating” as an antithesis of modern biomedicine? How
did he address the problematic of universality in science and medicine while relying on the
dichotomous framework of the Orient and Occident? This paper aims to explore thesequestions by unpacking Sakurazawa’s role as a cultural broker or translator between“Oriental medicine” and French medical holism in the 1930s.

117ASCJ 2017 Abstracts5) Ryan Moran, Keio University
Producing the Responsible Population in Colonial Korea
In 1916, the Japanese post office created a new low-cost life insurance system thatwas geared towards laborers. Advocates believed that insurance could solve the “social
problem,” which had accompanied industrialization. According to supporters, insurancefunctioned as a universalizing technology; in the system of insurance, each individual life
is assigned a specific value while being simultaneously subsumed within the larger
aggregate of the population of the insured. Proponents of the new system contended thatlife insurance would stabilize the lives of laborers and transform them into thrifty,
responsible consuming subjects. Through insurance, state bureaucrats and social reformers
utilized the heteronormative and patriarchal family as a site for the instantiation of habitsof responsible conduct into the fabric of everyday life. Through the post office, this system
would also expand into Japan’s colonies. In this paper, I will focus on the introduction of
postal life insurance into Korea in 1929. Colonial officials hoped to use insurance to infuse
habits of responsible fiscal conduct into the everyday lives of Korean subjects. As part ofthis project, bureaucrats worked to convince Koreans to give up local mutual assistanceassociations and to become modern consumer-subjects of insurance. Moreover, the profits
gleaned from this insurance system also became an important source of funds for social
welfare projects in colonial Korea. This paper will thus interrogate how the colonial state,through the post office’ life insurance system, used discourses of security, responsibility,
and social welfare to stabilize the population in colonial Korea.

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Session 35: Room X201
Individual Papers IX: Japanese literature
Chair: Lisa Yinghong Li, J. F. Oberlin University
1) Yanfang Tang, College of William and MaryClassical Chinese Poetry and Modern Chinese Life
This paper examines the presence and presentation of classical Chinese poetry incontemporary Chinese life. It goes without saying that classical Chinese poetry,particularly the poetry of the Tang and Song periods, represents a significant core of theChinese literary legacy and a rich repertoire that reflects importantly Chinese history,
philosophy, and aesthetic ideas. For reasons that this article attempts to investigate, there
has been a resurgence of interest in classical Chinese poetry in China in the past two
decades, which manifests itself conspicuously in many aspects of Chinese everyday life.
Quotations of Tang poetry and Song lyrics are omnipresent, in popular music, in TV series,
in the headlines of newspapers, and even in the languages of advertisements. “Poetic
world” or yijing (意境) permeates contemporary films, and reciting poems has become avogue or shishang (时尚) for young people. This paper examines this omnipresence ofclassical poetry in contemporary China. Additionally, it inquires into the social and cultural
factors that contribute to this “poetic facet” of modern Chinese life.
2) Noriko T. Reider, Miami University
Devouring and Helping Yamauba in Folktales: Two Sides of the Same Coin
A yamauba is often portrayed as a mountain dwelling old woman with a taste forhuman flesh. The appellation of yamauba came into existence in the medieval period.
Yamauba’s predecessors are oni-like as well as mountain deity-like beings. A yamauba
herself is considered a type of an oni, and a yamauba and an oni-woman are often usedinterchangeably in various texts. Although malevolent yamauba in such folktales as“Kuwazu nyōbō” (The Wife Who Didn’t Eat), “Ushikata to yamauba” (Ox-cart Puller andMountain Witch), and “Sanmai no ofuda” (The Three Lucky Charms) are contrasted withthe benevolent yamauba that appear in “Ubakawa” (Old Woman’s Skin) and “Komebuku
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Awabuku” (Komebuku and Awabuku), and otogizōshi “Blossom Princess,” there is a
symbiotic relationship between the good and evil yamauba. Their stories possess acomplementary narrative format. The duality of the yamauba is simply two sides of thesame coin. The presentation further addresses how and why yamauba’s traits came into
being. While the Noh play Yamanba is an indispensable text in understanding the medieval
yamauba and beyond, I also consider the Noh play Kurozuka (Black Mound), a critical text
in the formation of yamauba’s image.
3) Otilia Clara Milutin, Knox College“Bathed in Perspiration”: Sexual Violence and the Female Body in Heian-Period
MonogatariThis paper examines textual representations of rape in Heian period (794—1185)
court tales (monogatari) written by aristocratic women serving at the imperial court andfocuses primarily on the use of sweat imagery found in these tales, from The Tale of Genji(Genji monogatari,1008) to Nezame at Night (Yoru no nezame, 11th century). Based on
extensive doctoral research on textual representations of sexual violence in the monogatariof the Heian and Kamakura (1185-1333) periods, this paper analyzes the only kind of
textual representation in which the violated female body becomes visible in its powerfulreaction to male aggression: profuse sweating. It argues that not only is the use of sweat
imagery unusual in a literature ruled by courtly decorum, but that it also serves as one of
the few means of visually revealing the Heian female body, which remains otherwise
mostly unseen. Frequently represented only metonymically, through hair or garments, thebodies of monogatari heroines gain a physical dimension that sweat reveals in a mannerboth visual - describing a body wet, disheveled and often exposed - and tactile - presenting
a body that is shivering and cold to the touch. Ultimately, by gaining a body, monogatari
heroines also gain agency, for sweat not only helps inscribe their sexual victimization at
the hands of men, but also their resistance, both physical and psychological, to maleaggression.

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4) Yuanfei Wang, University of Georgia
Narratives and Images of “Japanese” Pirates in Late Ming China
Current scholarship on “Japanese” piracy during the Jiajing reign of Ming dynasty(1521–1567) only focuses on the economic and military aspects of the maritime raids
carried on by multinational crewmen, including the Japanese, the Portuguese, and theChinese. This paper discusses the largely ignored aspect of rhetoric and language
employed by late Ming literati to approach the problem of imperial identity in the historical
discourse of “Japanese” piracy. The paper will concentrate on the ways various unofficial
histories and vernacular fiction construct different narratives of the campaigns against themaritime merchants/pirates Xu Hai and Wang Zhi. The texts to be discussed include Yan
Congjian’s Records of Surrounding Strange Realms (1574), Cai Jiude’s Survey ofJapanese Piracy (1558), and a few vernacular stories. The paper proposes that imperial
identity was a big concern in late Ming public discourse. Unofficial histories andvernacular fiction contested with official and imperialistic discourse on “Japanese” piracy,a cultural response to the flourishing transnational maritime trade in the late sixteenth
century.
5) Hitomi Yoshio, Waseda University
Translating the Classics: Modern Translation of Ichiyō and Kawakami Mieko’s Chichi
to ranIn 1996, the publishing house Kawade shobō embarked on a project where
contemporary writers of various styles and genres translated Higuchi Ichiyō’s works into
updated Japanese. These “contemporary translations” aimed for not only readability but
also a supposed reinvigoration of the classic works through the signature stamp of the
popular living authors. While translation is never merely a mimetic linguistic transfer, thisemphasis on the translator brings to light what is normally rendered invisible, subverting
the hierarchy between the original and translated texts. These translations furthermore
reveal an interesting phenomenon where certain experimental writers find creative
possibilities in Ichiyō’s writing style, which in her day was celebrated yet designated as"neo-classical" and "feminine.” In this paper, I will tie together the late 19th-century writerwith a contemporary writer Kawakami Mieko (b.1976), who was profoundly influenced by
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Ichiyō’s work when she was young, via translation, and who recently produced her own
updated translation of “Takekurabe.” I will examine how translations can indeed transport
meaning across centuries, metamorphosing the original to give birth to a kind of writingthat challenges and pushes the limits of language, and also give new interpretations andinvite a new, younger generation of readers. I will also examine the connection between
writing and gender – in that the neo-classical writing style that Ichiyō employed was
distinctly gendered feminine in the early 20th century, and this notion of gendered writing(écriture féminine) is questioned, explored, and performed by Kawakami in her most
famous novella, Chichi to ran (Breasts and Eggs, 2007).

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SUNDAY AFTERNOON SESSIONS II: 3:40 P.M. – 5:40 P.M.
Session 36: Room X201
New Perspectives on Late Colonial Korea: Collaboration, Comfort Women, andNational Identity
Organizer/Chair: Chizuko T. Allen, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa
Challenges that arose in Korea in the last decade of Japanese colonial rule (1910–
1945), the time of global crises and Korean hardship, still haunt the Korean people andtheir standing in East Asia today. This panel throws new light on Korea’s contested issues
from this important period by introducing little known facts and fresh perspectives.
Tackling with the question of collaboration, AhRan Ellie Bae takes a close look at Yi
Kwang-su, a Korean literature pioneer, known for collaboration with the Japanese in thelate colonial era. Bae questions the validity of the currently prevalent denunciation of Yi,
particularly in comparison with the fame of An Ch’ang-ho as an independence fighter.
Questions concerning patriotism and national identity are also asked by Vladimir
Tikhonov, who studies Kim Sa-ryang, a Korean intellectual and bilingual writer whojoined the anti-Japanese Chinese forces months before the end of WWII. Tikhonov’s
analysis of Kim’s diary reveals the process of identity development for new Korea that
contributed to post-liberation North Korea’s Socialist subjectivity. Gabriel Jonsson focuseson the account of Korean “comfort women” survivors, who, as victims of colonial rule,war, and patriarchal structural violence, represent South Koreans who continue to hold thenation of Japan accountable today. In contrast to Jonsson’s standard discussion, Chizuko
Allen cross-examines the paradigmatic story of Korean comfort women and explores its
origins in conflicting wartime memories that coalesced in post-liberation Korea. The panel
reassesses late colonial Korea’s gestation for self-transformation that shaped and continues
to affect the two Koreas.

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1) AhRan Ellie Bae, Rikkyo University
The Collaboration Issue in the Case of Yi Kwang-su
The issue of collaboration, specifically regarding chin’il’pa (or pro-Japanese), hasbeen an ongoing issue that causes a charged reaction in Korean society. Even an academic
pursuit regarding this issue has been more focused on proving or disproving whether or notthese chin’il’pa figures have committed treason. This moralistic approach have a tendency
to blind us from examining the gray areas that surround their alleged traitorous acts—theintentions and circumstances that resulted in such “traitorous” actions. Yi Kwang-su and
An Cha’angho gives us a rare glimpse into two intellectuals who crossed paths in many
ways, but are remembered completely differently by the Korean public. Although Yi
Kwang-su was hailed as a first modern writer, his reputation is now tarnished by his socalled pro-Japanese acts. An Cha’angho on the other hand, has maintained a morefavorable reputation since he is viewed as an independence fighter who fought forChosŏn’s independence. By comparing and contrasting these seemingly polar-opposite
intellectuals, this paper raises questions regarding the notion that resistance andcollaboration as complete opposite reactions to colonial subjugation. By challenging thismyth, it hopes to shed light on competing nationalisms and their transformations
throughout the colonial era. Through their story, I hope to develop a more nuanced
approach to the much-contested era in Korean history.
2) Vladimir Tikhonov, University of Oslo
Kim Saryang’s Ten Thousand Li of a Dull-Witted Horse – Remembering the AntiColonial Struggle
Kim Saryang (real name: Kim Sich’ang, 1914–1950) was among the Korean authorsof the 1930s and 1940s who wrote abundantly on the issues related to the Korean ethnonational identity, both in Korean and in Japanese. When dispatched on a lecture tour to
the Japanese army units stationed in North China, he used this opportunity to escape andjoin the Chinese Communist Eight Route Army guerrillas in the Taihang Mountains in
May 1945. His China diary, Ten Thousand Li of a Dull-Witted Horse (Nomamalli,serialized in Seoul-based journal Minsŏng in 1946–47 and published in book form inPyongyang in 1947), written in his new status as a North Korean writer, will be the main
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object of analysis in my presentation. The diary was an attempt to systemize theremembrances about the joint Sino-Korean anti-Japanese struggle, with the continuous
process of building of the new, Socialist subjectivities in Communist-controlled parts ofChina and Korea in mind. This presentation will deal with the ways in which the new,post-colonial and Socialist Korean identity-in-making is being both reflected in Kim’s
rendering of his battlefield observations and remembrances and further given form throughthe act of writing on the armed anti-Japanese resistance – in broad meaning, the sacredformative background of what further was to become North Korean history. At the sametime, the presentation will emphasize the role Socialist international ideology played inarticulating Kim’s narrative.
3) Gabriel Jonsson, Stockholm University
Can the Japan-Korea Dispute on Comfort Women be Resolved?
About 80 percent of the estimated 70.000–200.000 comfort women Japan took by
coercion from 1932–1945 were Korean. The Japanese government claims that the 1965
Japan-Republic of Korea (ROK) Normalization Treaty is the authority to support its
argument that the comfort women do not have a claim at international law but they were
not even mentioned in it. The issue was long neglected for pragmatic reasons. When
Korean women raised the issue around 1990 and former comfort woman Kim Hak-sun
came out in 1991, it emerged as a point of dispute. Japan has given no official apology to
the victims. Museums in Seoul and Tokyo focus on victims’ sufferings enhance
understanding. The feeling of guilt regarding an unresolved issue should be enhanced
among visitors. Might the 70th anniversary of World War II and the 50th anniversary of
the Normalization Treaty in 2015 will become an opportunity to resolve the issue?
4) Chizuko T. Allen, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa
Assembled Memories about Korean “Comfort Women”
Korean “comfort women,” young sex workers at Japanese military brothels before
and during WWII, had been called and regarded as chongsindae, or the Women’s
Volunteer Labor Corps, in South Korea until recent years. The Women’s Volunteer Labor
Corps was commissioned by the Japanese imperial government to address the wartime
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labor shortage in 1944, and its Korean units consisted of Korean school girls who weresent to Japan to work at war-related factories. How did the conflation of “comfort women”
with the Women’s Volunteer Labor Corps, which had little to do with military brothels,
take place and endure for decades? And how did it impact on the Korean people’s
perception of the mobilization of “comfort women”? To answer these questions, this paper
examines the writings and speeches of Prof. Yun Chŏng-ok (1925–), the co-founder of the
Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, theorganization, since its 1990 inception, has led the “comfort women” redress movement. A
close look at Yun’s trajectory as well as the “comfort women” survivors’ testimonials
reveals that the “comfort women” narrative that she helped popularize did not emerge on
the basis of their memories. The narrative, instead, drew on Yun’s memory about the
Women’s Volunteer Labor Corps recruitment as well as the memories expressed by
Korean men who had identified the Korean “comfort women” as Volunteer Labor Corps
members upon their encounters abroad. This conflation sustained the Korean assertion that
Korean “comfort women” had been forcibly mobilized by Japanese authorities.
Discussant: Jung-Sun Han, Korea University
Session 37: Room X202
Technologies of (In)Visibility in Japanese Science Fiction
Organizer/Chair: Baryon Tensor Posadas, University of Minnesota
Given that science fiction engages with what might be termed a technologicalimaginary, it is no coincidence that the technologies of mediation have often been an
important object of interest within the genre. Yet accounts of the history of science fiction
typically revolve around the genre’s literary origins, often occluding the recognition of thesignificant role played by other media in its development. Such a recognition is especiallycritical in the Japanese context in light of the impact of visual culture in the science fiction
genre’s global circulations into and out of Japan. Our papers take up science fiction as atransmedia cultural formation in two ways: first, the texts we examine cover a range ofvisual media ranging from cinema and television to manga and animation; second, and126

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more importantly, our discussions highlight the ways in which these texts employ imagesof technologies of (in)visibility as cognitively estranging devices for conceptualizing thepolitics of the non-human. Yusung Kim’s paper sets the stage by addressing theremediation of television in the tokusatsu eiga of the 1960s. Denis Taillandier thendiscusses the visual representations of nanotechnologically modified cyborgs in theJapanese science fiction manga of Kishiro Yukito. In turn, Kazue Harada considers thepolitics of visibility and invisibility foregrounded through the visualization of atomic
radiation in the manga of Kobayashi Erika. Finally, Baryon Posadas examines the figure of
the zombie in recent adaptations of the work of Project Itoh as a media-allegorical
meditation on the animated image of the human.
1) Yusung Kim, Harvard University
How is an Event Invented?: Television in Tokusatsu Eiga in the Late 1950s and Early
60s
This paper explores the way in which television as a new medium became one of therecurring images in tokusatsu eiga in the late 1950s and early 60s. Tokusatsu eiga, special
effects films of Japan, depicted various kinds of imaginary events, such as the emergenceof monsters (Kaijū), space exploration, fatal disasters, alien invasion, and the like. Such
events in these film digests were mostly covered on television as live news reports to evoke
a sense of liveliness. What is intriguing here is that the verisimilar quality of an event isenhanced through two different forms of windows: a big silver screen and a small
television monitor. Tokusatsu eiga was usually shown in widescreen format, which wasused in an attempt to expand the cinematic experience to make audiences feel as if they
directly faced what was happening in the film, giving rise to a sense of immersion that
could not be experienced through a tiny display of television. However, tokusatsu eiga’s
big screen, Tohoscope, passionately took the images of television in it to highlight theevents described in film. Audiences in theaters, thus, could experience it through multiply
layered windows. I argue that tokusatsu film not merely represented events in film but also
re-mediated the new medium’s attributes, namely how an event is invented on television. I
delve into the way in which tokusatsu film re-invented a televisual event in a cinematicway, rendering itself as a liminal place where old and new media encountered each other.
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ASCJ 2017 Abstracts2) Denis Taillandier, Ritsumeikan University
The Nanotech Cyborgs from Ganmu to Ganmu Last Order
Elaborating on the cybernetic imagination, the nanopunk movement has drawn
attention to the philosophical and ethical issues raised by the potential rebuilding of theworld – including the human body – by nanotechnological means. Early illustrations of thesubgenre in Japanese SF, the manga Ganmu (Battle Angel Alita) and its sequel, Ganmu:
Last Order (Battle Angel Alita: Last Order), by Kishiro Yukito, stage nanotechnologicalachievements that gradually call into question the modern epistemological divide between
the natural (as a safe ontological ground) and the artefactual (as a man-made counterfeit ofnature). Through the description of cyborg hybrids, Kishiro reconsiders the definition of
the Human: where does the essence of humanhood lie if a bio-chip can act as a humanbrain and mechanical prosthesis replace the body, if an AI computer can display the
behavior of a human being? To deal with this question, the manga is based on anapparently unique dichotomy between organic life and the machine. However, entwined
around it, is a much more complex network of shifting relations. Drawing from examples
of its use in narrative theory, this paper uses the semiotic square as an analytical means of
unraveling those relations. It concludes that humanhood is not so much defined byphysiology (even though embodiment is central in the narrative, it may take many shapes),
nor by self-consciousness (which can be assumed by a bio-chip); but rather by will andemotions, perfectibility. However, this perfectibility is not seen as an individual abilityenhancement but as a moral struggle where some mediation is established between
technological achievement and society.
3) Kazue Harada, Miami University
Perceivable Radiation in the Post-Fukushima Japan in Kobayashi Erika’s The
Luminous“My beautiful radium,” as the first female physicist Marie Curie called it in the
discovery of radium in 1898. When the radium decays, it emits fluorescent chemicals andproduces radioluminescence. It was a beautiful glow. In our contemporary society, we areaware that Radium is highly radioactive and harmful to human and nonhuman life forms.
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We can understand the irony between the beauty of radioluminescence and the danger ofradiation. However, radioactive isotopes are usually invisible to us, and therefore we often
tend to neglect their existence. Japanese science fiction manga artist/novelist Kobayashi
Erika (b. 1978) reconnects this irony of Marie Curie’s life and the post-Fukushimaenvironment. In particular, the invisibility of radioactive isotopes is presented in parallel tothat of women and nonhuman lives. Kobayashi’s works illustrate radioactive isotopes
becoming more visible through the senses in order to reconnect our lives with the ubiquityof radioactive materials. Her manga shows an alternative way of perceiving the invisible
nonliving materials to rethink our coexistence with radioactive materials in theenvironment. This alternative can offer another critical view on the use of the nuclear
energy. This paper will primarily explore the ways in which Kobayashi’s two manga
Hikari no Kodomo 1 and 2 [The Luminous 1, 2013, The Luminous 2, 2016] demonstrateradioactive materials’ impact on human and nonhuman lives beyond time and space, andshow how the humans can react differently if radioactive isotopes become perceivable.
4) Baryon Tensor Posadas, University of Minnesota
Animated Bodies: On the Adaptations of Project Itoh’s Zombies
Often understood as an allegory of dehumanization, be it as an effect of the capitalist
production process or colonial governmentality, the figure of the zombie has madecountless appearances in works classified under the genres of horror, fantasy, or
speculative fiction. My paper builds upon this existing work by examining the
manifestations of the figure of the zombie in the work of Project Itoh [Itō Keikaku],
focusing especially on his posthumously published Empire of Corpses (Shisha no teikoku,2012) and its recent anime adaptation (2015). Set in a meta-science-fictional steampunkworld wherein Dr. Frankenstein’s successful experiments with re-animating corpses have
led to the widespread use of zombie workers and soldiers, Empire of Corpses extends
Itoh’s earlier employments of the zombie as a vehicle for the exploration of the nature ofhuman consciousness by confronting a world populated by mass-produced animated bodies
without human subjectivity. Moreover, the anime adaptation of the novel takes the issue
further, staging a meta-commentary on the problem of animation itself as generative ofimages that can simulate human affect and intelligence in a manner akin to the zombie. In
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doing so, it opens up a space to consider the question of how to apprehend the figure of thezombie not only as a representational object of inquiry within the texts under examination,
but as a critical prism for articulating the stakes of visualizing the non-human by raising
the issue our own practices of spectatorship, our own visual pleasure in seeing the massproduced images of Japanese animation.
Discussant: Takayuki Tatsumi, Keio University
Session 38: Room X104
Diversity and the Diversification of Work and the Workplace in Japan
Organizer and Chair: Phoebe Stella Holdgrün, German Institute for JapaneseStudies
Diversity has become a buzzword in recent years in Japan and also a central concern
for the current government as is visible in the prominence of Womenomics on the political
agenda, aiming at promoting and supporting women in the employment sector. However,
diversity touches on issues of gender as well as categories such as age, sexual orientation,
health, mental and physical ability. Processes of diversification also imply fundamental
changes to work environments and employment more generally. Therefore, diversity has
become part of various discourses in Japan, at the levels of politics, business and social
relations. There seems to be a consensus that Japan experiences diversification on multiple
levels and that more diversity is both desirable and unavoidable. However, what diversity
means or ought to mean remains rather undefined. This interdisciplinary panel addresses
the issue of diversity at work and the workplace from the different analytic angles ofpolitical science, psychology and media analysis. It looks both at discourse and on theimplications diversity and processes of diversification have on employment, workers andthe organization of work. In addition, the discussant will connect the case studies and relatethem to more general diversity discourses in Japan. In so doing, the panel aims at providing
insights into diversity at the workplace and in the work environment as well as into themultifaceted implications of diversification. It thus contributes to the discussion how
diversity should be defined and how it can be used as an analytic category in research.
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ASCJ 2017 Abstracts1) Tobias Söldner, German Institute for Japanese Studies
Interrelations Between Sexism, Gender Role ideals, Gender Specific Work Competency
Perceptions, and Career Aspirations of Japanese University Students
Interrelations between gender role ideals, hostile/benevolent sexism, perceived
gender specific work competencies, and career aspirations of Japanese university students
were examined in a three stage online study. Stage 1 focused on the differential effects of aparticipant’s pre-existing levels of benevolent and hostile sexism on the perception ofwork-related competencies of women in general, family role ideals, and the career
ambitions of female participants. In stage 2, participants were introduced to a crisis
scenario that called for the selection of the most competent candidates to fill vacantleadership and assistant positions in a company. Despite the fact that the task-relevant
competencies of females and males in the candidate pool were exactly matched, theparameters measured in stage 1 had a prominent influence on the relative likelihood of aparticipant assigning male or female candidates to leadership positions. In stage 3,
participants were randomly presented a number of fictitious job descriptions that contained
either openly hostile, benevolent, or no sexist passages at all. The presence and type ofsexism displayed had differential effects on the perceived attractiveness of the job offer for
females, perceived employer sexism, perceived employer goodwill, and the well-being andcompetency self-perceptions of female participants that underscore the unique andinsidious dangers of benevolent sexism.
2) Steffen Heinrich, German Institute for Japanese Studies
The Diversification of Employment Forms and its Implications for Japan’s Welfare
Politics
Over the years it has become commonly accepted in Japan that “employment form
diversification” (koyō keitai no tayōka) can have problematic consequences for workers.
For example, regular and non-regular workers differ considerably with regard to theiraccess to social security, seniority pay and career prospects. Some studies on European
countries that are experiencing a similar process of labor market dualisation, argue thatsuch differences gradually lead to a polarization of interests of workers. This makes it not
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only difficult for labor parties to mobilize their former core constituency in elections, but
may make it difficult for any government to achieve consensus on issues related to laborand social security. Even though non-regular employees make up nearly 40% of alldependent employment in Japan, the political consequences of this development havereceived little attention in research so far. This paper analyses how different groups ofworkers are affected by current welfare state arrangements and it asks how this shapes
preferences with regard to social policy. The paper argues that employment diversity has
not led to strong political polarization of voters with different employment backgrounds, a
noticeable contrast to European countries. On the contrary, “insider” and “outsider”
workers’ interests seem to converge on a range of issues. Polarization, however, becomesvisible when the impact of employment diversification is analyzed in conjunction with tax
and welfare arrangements.
3) Ronald Saladin, German Institute for Japanese Studies
Hanzawa Naoki: The Utopia of Changing Workplace Structures in the MediaDiversity at the workplace is usually associated with categories such as gender, age
or sexual orientation and with the aim of making the workplace more inclusive. This paper
suggests one more dimension of diversity: the way work is structured at the workplace andhow this translates into routines of work processes and interpersonal relations. The TV
drama Hanzawa Naoki (TBS 2013) was the most successful Japanese TV series of the past
30 years. It is about a banker who does not bow down to his superiors and does not support
them in doing their dirty business. Hanzawa clearly has a different idea of how bankers
should act. He fights the odds at his workplace in order to live up to his ideals and to reachhis goals. He personifies a new archetype of a white collar worker who differs significantly
from the hegemonic idea of the Japanese salaryman with regards to his performance at theworkplace and interactions with superiors, colleagues and clients. This paper argues thatthe success of the TV show is partially due to the fact that it depicts a utopia that expresses
what the majority of Japanese people is wishing for: a re-definition of the salaryman and arenewal of workplace organization. The drama, thus, promotes diversity at the workplacein terms of supporting more personal freedom and the ability to actively participate inreshaping work processes of the Japanese business world.
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Discussant: Glenda Roberts, Waseda University
Session 39: Room X105
United Nation Peacekeeping: Japanese experience and global perspectives
Organizers: Kyoko Hatakeyama, Kansai Gaidai University/Andreas Hilger, German
Historical Institute, Moscow
Chair: Swapna Kona Nayudu, LSE, London
UN peacekeeping operations (UNPKO) constitute an integral part of the international
history since 1945. Nevertheless, a modern global history of UNPKO is still missing. The
panel brings together perspectives of different contributing countries—Japan, Germany,
Finland, and India—that allow for in-depth analysis of national approaches to different
crises under changing international conditions. To conceptualize a global history of
UNPKO, by using Japanese debates and experiences as reference point, the panel definesimportant aspects of national decision-making processes, and it weighs the impact of both
relevant international (or regional) constellations as well as specific crisis patterns. In thiscontext, the cases of Germany and Finland present post-war approaches of other defeatedpowers of World War II. Given different immediate consequences of World War II,
varying post-war international positions as well as and long-term strategies to „come toterms with the past“ the Japanese-German-Finnish triangle allows for insights into theimpact of national cultures as well as of general international political—and moral—classification or standing on decision-making-processes concerning UNPKO. The exampleof India with its specific posture as non-aligned, Asian country expands these dimensions.
In particular, it discusses the influence of ideas about new world orders on a global
undertaking like UNPKO. In addition, the contrast between Indian and Japanese (non)activities underlines important interdependencies between different, basically unrelated,crises. In general, the panel contributes to a more precise understanding of the interplay
between most relevant factors of international relations, national understandings, andregional crises in the history of UNPKO.

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ASCJ 2017 Abstracts1) Kyoko Hatakeyama, Kansai Gaidai University
Trajectory of Japan’s Experience and Perspectives in Peacekeeping Operations
Japan had been reluctant to play a substantial role in a security field throughout theCold War period. The low-posture towards military affairs remained unchanged even in theframework of the UN, namely, peacekeeping operations. After a short discussion of theCold War era, this paper examines what impact the end of the Cold War brought about on
Japanese thinking about UN peacekeeping operations. By focusing on debates on the
dispatch of the Self Defence Forces and external factors, it aims to clarify the factors
precipitated a policy change, namely, the adoption of the peacekeeping cooperation law. In
explaining Japan’s shift, existing works tend to emphasize domestic ideational factors suchas norms and ideas, or the impact of the Gulf War on 1991. However, this paper pays more
attention to external factors such as the international structure and the relationship withother countries throughout a longer period. Analysis of Japan’s experience gives a starting
point for comparison with German, Finnish, and Indian cases since it identifies a set ofimportant factors for a comprehensive discussion: apart from security and peace, it
introduces components like hierarchy in international relations, power, political culture,and historical background. Then the comparison helps to clarify what is a decisive factor
for a policy change on UN peacekeeping operations and what is an idiosyncratic factor.
2) Andreas Hilger, German Historical Institute, Moscow
India and UN Peacekeeping in the Cold War and After
India’s approach to UNPKO reflects an ambivalent balance between strict, anticolonial informed insistence on national self-determination on the one hand and principles
of international co-operation, détente, and peace policy on the other hand. The inherent
contradiction between allegedly “Asian” peaceful approaches to international relations andconcerns about possible interference in Indian affairs and interests influences Delhi’s
approaches down to the present day. In this general context, the paper focuses on thecontrast between India’s active and comparatively massive contribution to UNPKOs sincethe 1950s and her increasingly vehement reluctance to accept UN-activities in both the
Kashmir crisis and during general Indo-Pakistan conflicts until the 1970s. Indian decisionmakers justified their contribution to UN-endeavours in, among others, the Near East or in
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Congo as a way to isolate regional conflicts from superpower competition and to resolveinternational problems by specific “non-European” methods. At the same time, they
assumed, that possible UN-actions in the claimed Indian sphere of influence above allwould serve traditional big—colonial—power aims against new countries. While in Indianeyes this complex argumentation appeared to be coherent, the differentiation neverthelessundermined credibility and limited international possibilities of conflict resolution. In thisrespect, the Indian relation with UNPKO underlines problems of allegedly universal
approaches and instruments. At the same time, it provides insights into the complex
interplay of immediate security concerns and chances of international co-operation in
concrete UNPKO.
3) Agilolf Keßelring, University of Helsinki,
UN Peacekeeping by Germany and Finland
The paper examines the different approaches towards UN Peacekeeping, comparing
German and Finish policy and practical engagement from 1955 until today. We focus on
historical factors using the methodological framework of “strategic identity”. How did it
come, that Finland and Germany—after all two countries with cultural affinity, entangled
history and hence sharing a broad set of values—developed differing practices inpeacekeeping? Historical “lessons learned” concerning state sovereignty made thedifference. Both countries were defeated in World War II. The World War II victors
became permanent UN Security Council members. Both Finland and West Germany
perceived a Soviet threat, but chose different strategies in dealing with it: Finland
remembered the condemnation (4.12.1939) of the Soviet aggression by the League of
Nations. This experience materialized in Finland’s own post-war participation inpeacekeeping missions. Finland’s sovereignty and neutrality could only be guaranteed byinternational influence and strong domestic military forces. Since 1955 UN Peacekeeping
served both: Keeping up with the military state of the art and international visibility. For
the FRG’s sovereignty was based—curtailed—on a trade, dealing sovereignty for troopcontribution under NATO-command (since1955). Under circumstances of the Cold War,the “Hallstein Doctrine” of not recognizing East Germany, did not allow to join the UN.
Both German states joined the UN in 1973, following the “new Ostpolitik.” Until 1994
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ASCJ 2017 Abstracts(Russian retreat from Central Europe and Finland’s decision to give up neutrality)
Germany stuck on the position, that its constitution would not allow for armed UNPeacekeeping.
Discussant: Yuji Uesugi, Waseda University
Session 40: Room X106
Individual Papers X: Japanese Literature
Chair: Noriko Murai, Sophia University
1) Michiko Suzuki, University of California, DavisA Firefly in the Sleeve: Reading the Tale of Genji in The Makioka Sisters
Tanizaki Jun’ichirō famously began writing Sasameyuki (The Makioka Sisters,
1943–1948) after publishing his first modern Japanese translation of Genji monogatari(Tale of Genji) in 1939–1941. Although he obfuscates the influence of this Heian-period
text on his novel about merchant-class sisters from Osaka, he does admit that the work wason his mind while writing. The Makioka Sisters, set during the years leading up to the
Pacific War, has often been compared to the Tale of Genji for its extensive emaki-likeaesthetic, unique shifting narrative viewpoint, and appreciation of seasons, rituals andpoetry. My talk examines the “firefly viewing” (hotarugari) episode in the last volume of
The Makioka Sisters, in which the characters participate in this traditional summer practice.
Critics have noted that this episode echoes the “Hotaru: Fireflies” chapter in the Tale ofGenji due to its focus on these insects, but no in-depth exploration of the intertextuality has
been conducted, presumably due to the lack of commonality in the plots. Particularly byfocusing on garments and fireflies in this section of The Makioka Sisters, I illuminate
critical allusions to the Tale of Genji and other classical texts. And by rereading thesequence in this way, I show how such classical references contribute to the broader
significance of the central plotline in the novel, the search for a suitable husband for theenigmatic third sister Yukiko.

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2) Hsin-Chin Hsieh, National Taipei University of Education, Taiwan
A Window to Japan: Arai Hifumi’s Sinophone Writing in Taiwan
This paper aims to examine contemporary Japanese writer Arai Hifumi’s Sinophone
writing in Taiwan, and investigate how she introduces Japan and its culture to readers
through writing in Mandarin. Arai is a Tokyo-born Japanese writer who had studied andworked in China, Hong Kong and Canada, and masters Japanese, Mandarin and English.
Most interestingly, she has written in Mandarin and published prose and reportage in Hong
Kong and Taiwan for more than twenty years, and her writing is regarded as an important
medium for readers to understand Japan and its culture, particularly everyday life in Tokyo
from a local perspective. Since Arai has been cultivated with multiple cultures, her
representation of Japan is manifold in comparison with other cultures from a cosmopolitan
viewpoint. By textual analysis of her books published in Taiwan, this paper explores how
Arai Hifumi constructs the image of Japan and (re-)presents its culture to Sinophone
readers. It argues that cultural hybridity and authenticity play important roles in Arai’s
writing that contributes to its popularity and enables transnational conversations between
Japan and the Sinophone world.
3) Marta Fanasca, The University of Manchester
Walk Like a Man, Talk Like a Man: Ethnographic Research in a Dansō Escort
Company in Akihabara
The aim of this paper is to examine the findings of my nine months’ ethnographic
fieldwork at a dansō (female to male crossdresser) escort company in Akihabara, Tokyo.
From September 2015 to July 2016 I was admitted into the company, and I had theopportunity to observe on a daily basis dansō in their working duties and in their free time,
and to meet customers in the framework of paid dates while presenting myself as a dansō
too. Studies regarding leisure and sexual entertainment in Japan have mainly focused until
now on hostess bars and, more recently, on host. It is well known in Japan that genderinterpretations and behaviours which are not completely in line with heterosexual norms
are still considered bearers of subversive potential against the codified norms of society.
Adopting as methodological tools face to face interviews, participant and non-participant
observation and auto-ethnography, the phenomenon of dansō escorting will be described
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and analysed, with a focus on the issues of personal identity, gender expression, and crossdress escorting as emotional labour, with the final purpose of understanding whether dansō
can be considered as a new gender category spreading in contemporary Japan.
4) Yanfei Yin, The Ohio State University
Female Literacy in Chinese Painting of the 1950s: Teaching Mama to Read
Female virtue has been an important theme in Chinese art history. Despite the goodscholarships on pre-modern visual representations of female virtue, there exist few studies
on paintings of this theme that were created after the establishment of the People’s
Republic of China (1949 onwards). This paper concentrates on Lu Yanshao’s (1909–1993)
painting Teaching Mama to Read (1956) and suggests that female literacy became the mostimportant part of female virtue in visual representations of the 1950s China. Historicallyconsidered, in 1949 and 1951, the Chinese government issued winter study program andlaunched a nation-wide literacy movement. Lu Yanshao’s painting responded to thesefemale literacy movements and became the official advertisement for female literacy after
it was exhibited at the Second National Guohua Exhibition in 1956. Thematically, thisstudy explores two layers of meanings of Teaching Mama to Read in Chinese art history.
On the one hand, Teaching Mama to Read is distantly related to paintings of beautiful
women. On the other hand, Teaching Mama to Read is one of the many figure paintings
that address mother-child relationship. By comparing Lu’s painting with existing paintingsof similar subjects from pre-modern and modern Chinese art history, this paper argues that
Teaching Mama to Read demonstrates a phenomenon that in the 1950s the rising
importance of female literacy changed the understanding of female virtue. Visually thesechanges happened in the representations of women and her relationship with her child.
5) Kyoko Omori, Hamilton College
Soseki versus Holmes: The Literary Battle Royale
This paper analyzes “The Yellow Lodger” (1953) by mystery and fantasy writer,
Yamada Futaro (1922–2001), as an effort to chart a new literary terrain defined by theintersection between governmentally sanctioned pure literature as emphasized in school
textbooks and the popular idiom of detective fiction during the years immediately
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following WWII. Set in London around the turn of the twentieth century, the story brings
together in an amusing pastiche the figures of Dr. Watson as the narrator, Sherlock Holmes
the renowned detective, and the eponymous “yellow lodger” character. Yamada quickly
turns the familiar Holmes type of detective story into a philosophical contemplation about
the defining features of Japanese literature in the immediate post-Occupation era. The
suspicious “Oriental” turns out to be none other than a young Japanese writer and literary
theorist, Natsume Soseki, who outwits Holmes through an in-depth reading of theindividuals involved in the case.
Session 41: Room X107
Individual Papers XI: Political Science and Economy
Chair: Kim Minkyu, Northeast Asian History Foundation
1) Jan Sýkora, Charles University/Osaka University“Consuming Places: Consumption and Consumerism in Modern Japan”
There is almost no dispute over the basic economic theorem that consumption can
generate the economic growth and that the rise of modern state has been closely related to
the growing tendency towards mass consumption. In pre-modern Japan, however,consumption was not appreciated as a source of prosperity but rather as a manifestation of
personal greed and immoral behavior. Thus, the modernization of the country brought theurgent need for rearticulating a new concept of consumption in order to incorporate it into
the generally accepted policy of catching-up. However, it was not until the Taishō periodthat the personal consumption became one of the embedded aspects of modern Japanesesociety. In my paper I am going to analyze the problem of how the consumption patterns
reflected the democratization of Japanese society in the interwar period. I will focus
particularly on three intertwined topics: 1) how the modern, rational and consumptionoriented subject, i.e. consumer (shōhisha), emerged in Japan, 2) how places ofconsumption shōhi no kúkan/basho) were formed and conceptualized, and 3) how places
themselves were in a sense consumed (kúkan/basho no shōhi). The spatio-temporal axes of
my talk will be anchored in Hanshin (Ōsaka-Kōbe) region from late Meiji to early Shōwa
period.
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ASCJ 2017 Abstracts2) Matthew Brummer, The University of Tokyo
Alliances, Threats, and Institutional Development in Japan’s National Innovation
SystemNational Innovation Systems (NIS) research holds that it is a state's domestic
institutions that determine the rate and direction of technological growth. As aconsequence, the international security environment is considered largely exogenous toexplanations of variance in long-run technological growth or to changes in the networked
relationships of intrastate institutions and policies. And yet, the genesis and developmentof "the system" is fundamentally political in nature; the domestic debates, bargaining, andchoices that ultimately determine institutional structure and policy design are compelled byactors making political calculations, upon which the international security environment andinter-state relations come to bear. In order to examine more closely this observation—thatInternational Relations represents an omitted variable bias in the study of NIS— this article
surveys Japan's historical record of international security calculi and NIS characteristics
from the post-WWII period forward. What emerges from this process tracing and political
discourse analysis is a story of "waves of institutional change" that are beholden to
influential external security variables - threats and alliances. That is, this study
demonstrates that by examining the case of Japan, we come to know that nationalinnovation stories may be less about particular institutional structures and finding the"right" policy mix, as the orthodoxy goes, and more about the geopolitical environment
and external security stimuli facing nations in an uncertain and contested international
system.
3) Ng Hoi Yu, University of Hong Kong
Decentralization as a Tool for Electoral Authoritarianism: The Case of Town Councils
in Singapore
Decentralization, a policy which devolves political, administrative, and fiscal powerfrom the central government to subnational authorities, has been implemented by many
democracies across the developed and developing worlds since the 1980s. The literature,
however, clearly shows that decentralization does not necessarily enhance democracy and140

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improve governance and electoral consideration is an important factor explaining whysome central governments chose to decentralize. This paper attempts to extend thediscussion to hybrid and electoral authoritarian regimes through the case of Singapore’s
town councils, a sub-national institution created in 1988 to empower elected Members of
Parliament to manage and maintain public housing estates in their constituencies
previously under direct control of the central authority (Housing Development Board).
This paper explores the ruling party’s motives of establishing the town councils and therole of town council in Singapore’s electoral authoritarianism. Based on archival researchand document studies, this paper argues that electoral consideration is an important motive
behind the ruling party’s decision to create the town councils. It also argues that town
councils were used by the ruling party to tame the opposition by shifting the focus ofelectoral campaigns to local issues and creating an extra hurdle for the opposition parties.
This paper shows that town council is one of many tools of the Singapore’s dominant
ruling party to consolidate its rule. It also shows that decentralization can be used as anelectoral strategy of ruling parties not only in democracies but also in hybrid regimes.
4) Belinda Q. He, University of Washington
Ways of Exposing: Cinema as Struggle Session in Maoist China
This paper examines two co-existing and interrelated modes of spectatorial practicein 1970s China. One is struggle session (pidouhui) —a type of political congregation thatincorporated theatrical elements and seemingly judicial procedures, such as accusations,trials, and punishments, in front of a witnessing public. The other is an alternative struggle
session in the form of a film screening usually consisting of a pre-screening lantern slides
lecture and/or a post-screening discussion, during which people watch and criticize films
condemned as “poisonous weeds”. In reconstructing the little examined history of public
screenings of condemned films within the larger context of class antagonism and the Coldwar scapegoating culture, this paper draws attention to the complex entanglement between
cinema and struggle session. What I would call “cinema as struggle session” contains
different levels: 1) struggle session as profilmic event, 2) scenes of struggle sessions infiction films, 3) filmgoing in the struggle-session setting that puts films and filmmakers“on trial”. Historicizing the cinematic (re-)encounters with Furious Waves (1963), this141

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paper examines the cultural work that struggle sessions performed through cinema, both on
and off the screen, within and beyond the screening space. While much of previous
research considers cinema as a means of socialist state mobilization, this paper uses abottom-up approach to discussing how cinema as everyday life engages social dynamics
that defy binary power relations. This paper would argue that exposure, as the scopic
regime shared by cinema and struggle session, is at the core of the postwar moral
imagination.
5) Lindsay Nelson, Tokyo University
From Scary to Scary-Cute: The Evolution of Japanese Horror Marketing
Hideo Nakata’s Ringu (The Ring, 1999) and Takashi Shimizu’s Ju-on (The Grudge,
2002) are two of the most famous films in the Japanese horror genre, inspiring multiple
sequels and English- and Korean-language remakes. In the years since J-horror’s peak,
however, Japanese horror films have shifted from a focus on genuine scares to serving
more as promotional vehicles for pop stars or mixing mild chills with melodrama. This isespecially evident in the recent Sadako vs. Kayako, which mixes the stories of Ringu andJu-on, and the very aggressive marketing campaign that surrounded its release in 2016.
Essentially, the promotion of the film emphasized the idea that the characters of Sadako,
Kayako, and Toshio, once seen as terrifying, were now kowakawaii, or “scary-cute.” This
paper will examine the evolution of these two film franchises and the shifting nature of themarketing campaigns surrounding them to illustrate an overall shift in Japanese horror
media. Via box office data, audience surveys, and analysis of media and promotional
materials surrounding the Ringu and Ju-on films over the last fifteen years, I argue that thisshift reveals a larger trend in Japanese cinema away from genuinely frightening or
disturbing films (which generally have limited audiences) toward lighter, more superficial
narratives that can simultaneously serve as promotional vehicles for models and pop stars.

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