Sarah BIJLSMA:
Hybrid Landscapes: Space, Identity, and the Natural World in the Context of
Miyakojima In-migration
Research project
The Miyako Islands (Miyako-rettō) consist of eight small islands located approximately 300 km.
southwest of Okinawa Main Island. The total population is a little over 55.000, of which most
live in the urbanized Hirara-district on Miyako Main Island. 1 Until 2015, Miyakojima was a fairly
unknown part of Okinawa Prefecture amongst those living in other areas of Japan. Yet, during
the past few years, the islands experience what became known as the ‘Miyako Bubble’; a sharp
increase in the number of tourists, Japanese emigrants, and buildings that were created inorder to accommodate the flow of newcomers.
Nowadays, the Miyako Islands are mostly known in Japan for their emerald-blue sea withalleged healing (iyashi) properties. Moreover, Miyako is officially labeled as ‘Eco Island’(ekoairando), and the municipal government supports initiatives that contribute to theenvironment. It is therefore perhaps not surprising that one of the main characteristics ofemigrants on Miyako is a shared love and concern for the natural world. Yet, throughout myresearch, it has become clear that between the local population and newcomers, as well as
within the community of migrants itself, different discourses exist about what nature is, howhuman beings (should) relate to it, what kind of nature is worth being protected, and more.
Against this background, my research project aims to provide insights into the ways how
narratives of nature shape migration trajectories and the daily lives of Japanese emigrants on
Miyakojima – and vice versa. Using ethnographic fieldwork methods, I approach this questionin two different ways. First, I am interested in the specific discourses regarding Miyakojima’s
environment that play out in Japanese migration experiences. Second, I question how the
migrant community realizes these narratives throughout their everyday life and how
environmental activities shape the social fabric of the island group.
Fieldwork in JapanThe fellowship of the Toshiba International Foundation (TIFO) provided me the possibility to
conduct fieldwork on Miyakojima for two months from late July to late September 2022. This
fieldwork stay allowed me to complement data previously derived via online interviews andmedia sources with face-to-face interviews and participant observation.
The importance of this research stay for my project turned out to be multilayered. First, humannature relations are difficult to put into wording, hence witnessing interactions between my
As per December 2020. Data derived via https://www.city.miyakojima.lg.jp/gyosei/toukei/files/R3_2.pdf(accessed on 30 August 2022).

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informants and Miyako’s natural world has enriched my data greatly. Second, spending timeon the Miyako islands allowed me to have informal conversations with numerous migrants,
something that deepened my insights into the dynamics of migrant life. Third, I also had thechance to talk to the local population and local officials to learn about their views towards
Miyako’s developmental path and the natural world. Fourth, being present proved to be vitalto gain access to informants I did not find or reach while conducting research online. Fifth, I
experienced that overall, the interviews I conducted face-to-face have a greater length, aremore personal, and go more into depth than the ones that I conducted online.
The migrant community on Miyakojima is diverse and as my time on the islands was limited, I
was aware that I needed to work in a structural manner. Moreover, one of my concerns upfront
was that this fieldwork period would open up new directions to my research, rather than adding
depth to existing ones. For this reason, I decided in advance to focus mainly on two groups:
organic farmers and those involved with animal shelters.
Miyakojima is an island with many stray cats and dogs and until recently, hundreds of themwere culled every year. With the emergence of three migrant-led NPO’s this number has been
reduced to zero. Shelters typically perform contraceptive surgeries and put the effort into
finding new foster parents for the cats and dogs. During my fieldwork stay, I visited the shelters
and learned about their understanding of care through conversations and interviews. At thevery end of my time in Japan, I decided to pay an extra visit to Osaka to interview the
representative of one of the shelters who had been away from Miyako for work reasons. Duringthat conversation, I gained some unique insights into the networked character of care on the
Miyako Islands and the ways how the different organizations relate to each other. This helped
me to understand how animal care in Miyako is fundamentally driven by people, finances, andideas that originate from other areas of Japan.
A second group I dedicated attention to includes migrants involved in organic farming. On
Miyako, sugarcane agriculture is a core industry that is protected by the municipality througha system of subsidies. Nowadays, sugarcane farmers are mainly elderly and use chemical
pesticides over excessively. This is an issue because Miyako is a coral island, and chemicals findtheir ways through the limestone layers into the groundwater that residents depend on. During
my fieldwork stay, I have visited and interviewed migrants who aim to find solutions for theseissues. I was surprised by the variety of initiatives that I encountered and that balanced
between an idealistic and more pragmatic approach. On one special occasion, I spent two dayson Tarama-jima, a small island ca. 60 km off the coast of Miyako Main Island that is only
accessible by ferry or a small airplane. I went there together with two informants, who aim toturn Tarama-jima fully into an organic island by popularizing the cultivation of getto (L. Alpinia
zerumbet; Eng. shell ginger), which is a local medicinal plant. During these days, we drove
around the island, talked to locals, and looked for houses and pesticide-free farming grounds.

Besides learning about the plans of these two Japanese women, it was very educative toobserve how Japanese urbanites try to find a way into the local community of a very remoteisland.
Doing ethnographic fieldwork is an exercise of flexibility, and my experiences have not been
any different. Being flexible led to many wonderful encounters and conversations, like thecelebration of the Obon festival with a local family, the cooking lesson I got from an elderly
woman, and the ride with a dragon fruit farmer when I had missed the bus. Flexibility wasespecially demanded when it came to Miyakojima’s subtropical climate. For the first weeks I
stayed at an accommodation in the south of the Island. Without a driving license and being
more than 6 months pregnant, I found myself crossing long distances on a daily basis by bicycle
and in the strong sun. On a few occasions, I was forced to change my plans and was not able toattend a particular workshop or voluntary activity. On many others, I was offered a ride by myinformants, which led to more conversations and the deepening of friendly relationships.
Furthermore, in the last two weeks of my stay, Japan experienced several typhoons, of which
one directly hit Miyakojima. Luckily, I could relocate the day before to the more urbanized partof the island to lower the chances of a long-term power cut. While some interviews werecanceled due to bad weather conditions, I unexpectedly spend time with a different group of
migrants that reside in the urbanized center of Miyako and learned about their daily lives.
Acknowledgments
As I began my project in the fall of 2019, my research has been heavily influenced by the COVID19 pandemic. Initially, I planned to be in the field for a total of nine months in 2020 and 2021.
However, entry restrictions remained in place and my fieldwork was first postponed and thenpartly canceled. When in the spring of 2022, sounds became stronger that Japan would
gradually start opening its borders again, I also found out that I was pregnant. Hence, while I
was still hoping to make it to Japan one day, there was not much time anymore for this tohappen. In this context, I am incredibly grateful to TIFO and the European Association forJapanese Studies (EAJS) for making a stay in Japan still possible for me. TIFO’s Ms. Mariko
Kuwayama and EAJS’s Mr. Lorenz Denninger have put all of their efforts to make the necessary
bureaucratic arrangements, so my husband and I could enter Japan within a few weeks after I
was granted the scholarship. I had a very pleasant conversation online with Ms. Kuwayama andthe TIFO’s president Mr. Keisuke Ōmori upon arrival and was happy to share thoughts on thecontemporary Japanese society. Furthermore, Ms. Kuwayama organized two online meetings
with other TIFO fellows residing in Japan at that time, which was a great opportunity to learn
about each other’s projects. I would like to thank all mentioned above for their genuine interest
and generous support. Without the fellowship, this trip would not have been possible.
Furthermore, I would like to sincerely thank my first supervisor, prof. dr. Cornelia Reiher forher guidance before, during, and after this fieldwork stay. Her good advice and positive energy

continue to be an important source of support to me. I am also grateful to prof. dr. Ofra
Goldstein-Gidoni with whom I had a fruitful conversation right before I left Berlin, in which sheshared some important insights on conducting ethnographic fieldwork.

Jelena KOŠINAGA:
Plasticity of Desire: Japanese Women's Desire for English and theDeconstruction of a 'Colonial' Female Subject
Project Outline
The past three decades have shown a great interest in researching Japanese women's desire
for English and the West, both romantically and professionally (Kelsky, 1996; 2001; Piller &Takahashi, 2006; Nonaka, 2018). However, it is necessary to revisit the existing research in thecurrent framework of gender studies and feminist philosophy of desire to explore whether thedominant conceptualizations of Japanese women as heterosexual self-colonizers consuming
Western products still prevails. Moreover, through the critical assessment of the fallacies ofthe existing scholarship, my project will also suggest some new analytical trajectories based on
the theoretical assumptions of desire as a philosophical concept to pursue a more profoundunderstanding of desire consistent with the 21st century transnational, non-binary, and nonphallocentric feminist thought.
This interdisciplinary project deals with rethinking the concept of desire in the context offeminist philosophical thought to argue that it is more complex than the existing theory
suggests. Also, by bringing the concept of desire to the philosophical discussion, this study willargue that the cultural setting of Japan and the specific cultural group of young and urban
Japanese women is a significant pointer to how this desire can be understood in aninterdisciplinary framework. By developing a new approach to understanding desire per sethrough non-phallic feminist philosophy, Japan appears as an interesting example because it
represents an intersectional axis around which the multiple categories of gender, race,
sexuality, and language meet. Around this arrangement, it would be impossible to opt for asingle methodological approach. Thus, in terms of methodology, this study will be addressed
as multifocal, i.e., desire in this research will be discussed across three dimensions: feminist
philosophy of desire, denouncing the phallic interpretations of desire; ethnography of desirethat will apply the theory in question to the actual data from gained through interviews withJapanese women; and post-COVID-19 articulations of desire in Japan, primarily reflecting on
the impact of the pandemic on the workings of the desire of the designated Japanese women.
The Fieldwork
As this study is designed to address the question of English-speaking Japanese women's desire
as formative of their subjectivities, the theoretical framework of the feminist philosophy ofdesire is taken as a point of reference. However, to get a more profound understanding of thematter, the data was collected from interviews with Japanese women and fieldwork conductedin Japan. The fieldwork was organized in two phases, (1) focusing on the main research topic
and discussing matters of desire with English-speaking Japanese women, and (2) getting more

insight into the Western presence in Japan, i.e., visiting the relevant locations of the emergent
Western thought.
After a two-year delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I was able to complete my fieldwork inJapan in August and September 2022. I had already made another brief field trip to the country
in November 2019; however, when the pandemic struck, it was necessary to revisit the dataand personally look at developments regarding the topic. The lengthy fieldwork of two months
was only possible because I successfully applied for a Toshiba International Foundation
Fellowship in 2022. Thanks to this grant, I was able to achieve my designated goals, reach out
to existing and new participants, learn about the conditions of English language learning in an
all-Japan environment (not only through literature), and see for myself the severity of theregulatory measures against COVID-19 that prevented the continuation of "normal" life.
First, as for exploring the workings of desire to learn English in an all-Japanese environment, I
consider myself fortunate, because the family I was staying with showed a great proclivity
towards learning English. For instance, one of the recent developments in the family history
was one of the daughter's marriage to a British man, which triggered a series of changes among
the family members who had previously shown no interest in the English language. As of lastyear, the mother of the family (age 60) began to actively work on her English with the help of
the application called Duolingo. Also, during occasional visits by another British man, it became
apparent that other family members, such as another daughter, were also showing interest in
native English. For example, they asked the man to read an all-English children's book to their
two-year-old daughter. Interestingly, this form of behavior and adoration of native-speakerism
seemed to occur more frequently among those Japanese who did not speak English, while
those who could speak English did not display this kind of a trend, which in turn helped me tocorroborate my assertions about the slightly different subjectivities of English-speaking
Japanese women and the meanings of their desire.
In this regard, the second aspect of my fieldwork was to approach these women and discuss at
length the meaning of English learning English to them. However, in order to get a clearer
picture, I discussed the desire for English with my participants and also approached female
native English teachers to find out whether the discourse of akogare or longing (omnipresent
in the previous studies) was still active and how it transpired in a different setting. Based onthese women's narratives, it appears that Japan places a lot of emphasis on the white English
speaker because, according to one of them, "with this face, I can only be an English teacher inJapan." This shows that Japan did not really move beyond the initial glorification of the whiteWestern teacher; however, as a second teacher was from Bosnia, it shows that despite theimmanent insistence on whiteness, the West is no longer the only desirable place for Japanese;
Eastern Europe is also proving to be a significant point of departure.

Lastly, as an outside researcher, I made sure to observe on a daily basis the interaction andattitude of Japanese people in the street, on the train, in the shops, etc., towards foreigners. I
assumed that due to the strict measures brought by the pandemic, such as the travel ban andban of entry into Japan, there would be a certain fear among the country's citizens, i.e., thefear that foreigners would bring in the virus. It was turned out that this was not a far-off
possibility, because I experienced again and again that Japanese people would not sit next tome on the train even though the seat was free, or that they would clean their hands after an
accidental touch, and so on. This insight contributed a lot to the Post-COVID-19 understandingof desire and argumentation of its changeability.
In sum, all three perspectives enabled me to see clearly how the desire for English is stillprevalent in Japan, but that much has changed since the earlier discussions on Japanesewomen's desire. The only problem I see here is the impact of the pandemic on the possibly
slowing of this progress, especially through the ideological constitution of the reality of Japanas the safe haven and the outside world as the threat.
Fieldwork Gains
So, the fieldwork served a double purpose, to get better insight into the workings of the desireof English-speaking Japanese women and learn about the background of the Westernization ofJapan. In this sense, regarding the latter issue, the fieldwork notes also served as a relevant
point in challenging the Japanese ideologies of uniqueness (Nihonjinron) and the impossibilityof foreigners coping with anyone from Japan (Befu 1992; Kubota 1998; Sugimoto 2010). As theentire discourse is foregrounded on the idea that Japan is a group-oriented society, somescholars decided to challenge it and propose novel ways to address the country and its English
ideology.
As mentioned earlier, there were several relevant Western settlements in Japan, but their role
was more profound because they were not only projects made for the people from the West;they also stood as hybrid settlements, challenging homogeneity. Even though these places canstill be seen as projects of Occidental desire, they inspired cohabitation and equal exchange ofideas, which is far from the initial binary. Kobe, Nagasaki, and Yokohama were taken as
representative examples. These cities were selected for being among the first ports to open forWestern trade, as well as the loci gathering a significant number of Westerners in Japan.
Moreover, these cities and their designated (now tourist) areas attest to a rich history and thegreat influence the West had in Japan, both physically and ideologically.
Acknowledgments
I would like to extend my sincere gratitude and appreciation to Toshiba International
Foundation for awarding me with Toshiba Fellowship in 2022. It enabled me to finalize myfieldwork in Japan after two years of break, which resulted in completing my doctoraldissertation. This fellowship provided me with resources to stay, live, and conduct my researchin Japan in August and September 2022 without any hindrance. During the stay, I could easily
access the places otherwise deemed impossible for the financial struggle, hence the relevanceof including the historical aspects to my research. Moreover, I am also grateful to the Toshiba
Foundation staff, who warmly welcomed and guided us throughout the stay. For the pandemic
situation, the meetings were organized online but were of great help to get to know more about
the other fellows as well as the state of contemporary research on Japan.
References
Befu, Harumi. 1992. "Symbols of nationalism and Nihonjinron." In Ideology and practice inmodern Japan, by Roger Goodman and Kirsten Refsing, 26-46. London and New York:
Routledge.
Kelsky, Karen. 1996. "Flirting with the Foreign: Interracial Sex in Japan's "International" Age."In Global/Local: Cultural Production and the Transnational Imaginary, by Rob Wilson
and Wimal Dissanayake, 173-192. Duke University Press. doi:10.1215/9780822381990008.
—. 2001. Women on the Verge: Japanese Women, Western Dreams. Kindle Edition. Durham,
NC: Duke University Press. Kindle Edition.
Kubota, Ryuko. 1998. "Ideologies of English in Japan." World Englishes 295-306.
Nonaka, Chisato. 2018. Transcending Self and Other Through Akogare [Desire]: The English
Language and the Internationalization of Higher Education in Japan. Bristol: Multilingual
Matters. doi:10.21832/NONAKA1701.
Piller, Ingrid, and Kimie Takahashi. 2006. "A Passion for English: desire and the language
market." In Bilingual minds, by Aneta Pavlenko, 59-83. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual
Matters.
Sugimoto, Yoshio. 2010. "The Japan Phenomenon and the Social Sciences." In An Introduction
to Japanese Society, by Yoshio Sugimoto, 1-36. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Jorinde WELSThe Future of the Invisible and its Mediatization – ‘Deadly Germs’ in the
Imagination of Infectious Disease Experts, the State, and Popular Culture in
Japan, 1918-1958
My Research Project
The aim of my research is to understand how the pathogens of infectious diseases wereimagined and visualized in Japan between 1918 and 1958. I look at three different aspects: (1)how the diseases were understood by infectious disease experts, (2) how the state
communicated about the germs in health campaigns, and lastly, (3) how these expert and state
discourses came to live their own life in popular culture. Through analysis of visual and textual
primary sources, I aim to uncover the discourses about infectious diseases that were prevalentand to see how these changed throughout time. How did people cope with something that wasinvisible to the naked eye and even to microscopes until 1933? And how were future visions
connected to the scientific progress that was made in the medical field?
Essential to answer these questions are primary sources preserved at Japanese archives.
Therefore, I was incredibly grateful to be granted the Toshiba International Foundation
Fellowship for a short-term research stay in Japan. It is invaluable to my research project tohave had the chance to explore archives in Japan in this early stage, namely in the two months
before my four-year PhD scholarship in Belgium would start.
Because I was in such an early stage of my research, my stay in Japan was explorative in nature.
I had set myself the goal to visit the various relevant archives I looked into beforehand, in orderto get a grasp of the kind of documents they preserved. Besides this, I wanted to connect withJapanese researchers to hear their opinions on my research and to establish some contacts for
my future stay in Japan (Sept 2023- Aug 2024). I believe my research stay was a success. I met
many researchers with whom I had inspiring conversations, and I saw an abundance ofhistorical material.
My Research Stay
When I received the news that my application for the TIFO Fellowship had been successful, I
almost could not believe it. I had been waiting for an opportunity to go to Japan for more than
two years, as the study exchange to Kyūshū University I planned during my master’s program
had been cancelled due to COVID-19. However, the COVID-19 regulations that were in place inthe summer of 2022 still caused some challenges. In order to enter Japan, a visa was required,also for short-term stays. Mr. Lorenz Denninger from the EAJS Office advised me to apply for abusiness visa through a Japanese University. With help of Professor Jan Schmidt, my supervisor,
I received the support of Professor Masayuki Manabe, a historian at Waseda University. This
enabled me to apply for a visa as a visiting research fellow at Waseda University. However, I
was quite late with my application and because of the summer break the administrative process
took more time than expected. Therefore, I only had my visa a week before I left for Japan.

Some consequences of this last-minute visa were that I could only book my flight a week before
leaving, and that the dormitories of Waseda University were already full. However, I have founda good alternative for housing. I ended up booking an Airbnb in Sugamo, Tokyo. It was a small
apartment with kitchen, washing machine, bathroom and all facilities I needed. Additionally,
the connections to both Waseda University and the National Diet Library were very good. Afterthese few challenges before I departed, the stay itself went smoothly.
Within my first days after arrival in Japan on the 1 October 2022, I was warmly welcomed by
TIFO Senior Program Officer Ms. Mariko Kuwayama and President of the Toshida International
Foundation, Mr. Keisuke Ōmori. They gave me the courage to start my research, and at thesame time also recommended me wonderful places around Nippori to explore in my free time.
Next, I met Professor Manabe and received a full tour of the impressive libraries of Waseda
University. This proved to be very helpful for the hours I would spend there in the next months,
reading and looking for books, magazines, and microfilms. I was also invited to be part of theresearch seminar on history of modern Japan. Even though I could only participate for twomonths, it enabled me to establish connections with other students whom I could ask for advice
on practical matters such as where to scan certain materials.
Another benefit of being affiliated with Waseda University was that their library provided mewith introduction letters to visit archives and libraries of other universities. I immediately madeuse of this in order to visit the Kanagawa University Research Center for Nonwritten Cultural
Materials, where I examined some health campaign kamishibai (paper theater) plays publishedduring the Second World War. I visited the Kanagawa University Library two times to have athorough look at the material and to copy relevant parts to study closer after my return toBelgium. Currently, I am planning to use these materials for a presentation at the European
Association of the History of Medicine and Health in Oslo in September 2023.
The other extremely useful resources of Waseda Library were the inter-library system whichallowed me to order copies of articles from other libraries and the access to databases such asŌya Sōichi Bunko and Zassaku plus. Searching these databases with relevant keywords, I
created lists of materials to find in the Waseda Library, in Ōya Sōichi Bunko, and in the National
Diet Library (NDL). I registered at the NDL within the first two weeks after my arrival and spenta large amount of my time there, looking at materials that were only available at the NDL. I
used microfilm for the first time and made hundreds of copies of articles on bacteria andinfectious diseases in popular magazines.
Visits to bookstores in Jimbōchō also turned out to be a valuable source for inspiration andinexpensive children’s books from the 1920s. I visited the neighborhood for the first time during
the Kanda furuhon matsuri, which was a pleasant experience and an easy way to discover thevarious bookstores and the books, records, and posters they offered.
Another place I visited multiple times during my stay in Tokyo was the Kitasato Shibasaburō
Memorial Museum. I had already contacted the museum in preparation for my research visitand asked for information about the documents in its archives. After a few months ofcorrespondence, I was able to arrange a first visit to the museum. I was welcomed by both theoffice manager Mr. Nobutaka Matsuda, and the manager Ms. Kae Fukazawa, after which thecurator Ms. Rumi Endo gave me a list with possibly interesting materials and assisted me inconsulting those. Because there seemed to be few other researchers looking into the archival
materials of the memorial museum, every of my visits was very personal and warm. I built up
a relationship with Ms. Endo during our shared lunch times and now that I have returned to
Belgium, we are still in contact and she kindly helps me with further questions I have about thematerials that I saw in the memorial museum. The materials I gathered at the museum areessential for the understanding of the network of experts of infectious diseases in the interwar
period, as many of them studied under Kitasato Shibasaburō at his private research institute. I
collected the correspondence of some of the researchers with their home institute in the formof postcards and letters, but also reports about research stays and international conferences.
While I still have to study the documents in more detail, browsing through them already gaveme an insight into the network of experts that I will further explore from this starting point
onwards. I also had opportunity to speak with Dr. Takayuki Mori, who is a researcher at the
memorial museum and recently published a book on Kitasato’s life. He knows a great deal
about the network of experts that I intend to study, and our talks were very enlightening forme.
At the beginning of the second half of my stay, I took the Shinkansen and stayed in Fukuoka forone week. There I met Professor Tomonori Akashi. He is part of my supervisory committee, andfrom September 2023 I will stay at Kyūshū University under his guidance for one semester. The
week I spent at Kyushu University was dedicated to exploring the university archives, where
many medical records from the university hospital are preserved, to visit the Fukuoka
Communal Archives, and to get to know the graduate students of Japanese history. After mystay at Fukuoka, I feel well prepared for the longer research stay I will spend there. I know whoto contact and where to find sources for my research. One of my main focuses at Kyūshū
University will be reading handwritten historical sources in Japanese. This will require a lot oftime, so it is good that I will come back for longer. But I already know that I will be able to counton support of the professors in the courses and fellow students in the study groups.
After two months in Tokyo, with a short trip to Fukuoka, I returned to Belgium, with an extra
suitcase full of copies and books and a mind that was inspired and ready to start delving into
all the gathered material. This research stay was an amazing start to my PhD, leaving me witha treasure of sources to read and analyze, enough to fill my coming months.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the Toshiba International Foundation for providing me with thisopportunity of a two-month research stay in Japan. I am grateful for the efforts of President
Mr. Keisuke Ōmori and Ms. Mariko Kuwayama, whom I met during my stay and who put me incontact with another TIFO fellow, Alexandra Baranyi. I hope we will meet at the EAJS
conference in Ghent this year. I would also like to thank the EAJS for this chance and theirsupport in the preparation of my research stay. Especially Lorenz Denninger, who patiently
found an answer to every question I had and made sure everything went smoothly. In addition,
I would like to thank the two professors who provided me guidance and who warmly welcomed
me in Japan, Prof. Masayuki Manabe and Prof. Tomonori Akashi. They gave me insight inpossibly interesting sources and their suggestions to my research were invaluable. Lastly, I
would like to express my gratitude towards my supervisor Professor Jan Schmidt, who
supported me during the whole process, from writing my application, to preparing my visa, andfinding the best archives and coffee bars in Tokyo.