Event 2009

January 28th, 2009

6:00 - 7:30 PM
"Investments in Japanese 'Cultural Rule': The Politics of Assimilation at the 1929 Korea Exposition"
Todd Henry (Colorado State University)
Location: 403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Avenue)
* This event is co-sponsored by the Center for Korean Studies.

February 5th, 2009

6:00 - 7:30 PM
"The Uses of Disguise, Deception, and Deceit in the Plays of Mishima Yukio"
Larry Kominz (Portland State University)
Location: 403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
Mishima Yukio was Japan's foremost playwright in the two decades following WWII. He wrote in a multiplicity of genres: tragedy, melodrama, romantic comedy/shingeki, kabuki, and modern noh. Kominz focuses on four plays in his anthology of newly translated works, exploring how Mishima's characters use disguise, deception, and deceit as their strategy of choice to achieve every sort of end, overturning unequal power relationships between men and women, the fulfillment and betrayal of romantic love, thievery and the apprehension of criminal masterminds. The presentation will include video clips from plays in the anthology.
 

February 19th, 2009

6:00 - 7:30 PM
"Defining Manga Anew by Way of History"
Miriam Wattles (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Location: 403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Avenue)
It was only from the 1920s that "manga" came regularly to designate comics and cartoons in Japan. The term had been used from the nineteenth century to title artist collections (particularly sketches of the everyday), but its connotations were malleable enough to suit the objectives of those who began to call themselves manga-ka (manga artists). Retranslations of the past were integral to the redefinition of the word; early histories indiscriminately mislabeled all varieties of past Japanese visual humor manga. Okamoto Ippei (1886-1948), the avatar of the newly formed manga world, performed a delicate task in his book Shin manga no kakikata (How To Draw New Manga, 1928), differentiating past from present while prescribing guidelines for future manga. In proposing new meanings for "manga" at this particular historical moment, Ippei was responding to deep underlying tensions between elite and popular culture, individualism and collectivism, and nationalism and cosmopolitanism.

March 3rd, 2009

6:00 - 7:30 PM
"Fasting in Film and Literature"
A narrative by Masahiko Shimada, Novelist and Professor (Hosei University)
Location: 403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Avenue)
Shimada's novella, "A Diary of a Mummy," is based on a real-life account. In remote terrain, a hunter discovers the mummified corpse of a middle-aged man. He also discovers a diary, kept with macabre precision by the man as he starved himself to death. Shimada's work has since been made into a film by the acclaimed Swiss director, Peter Liechti. Clips from this film, "The Sound of Insects: Record of a Mummy," will be shown, along with Shimada's discussion of fasting, death, and its representation in literary and religious traditions (topics range from Moses and Christ to Buddha and Gandhi).
 

March 6th, 2009 (Friday) and March 7th, 2009 (Saturday)

Symposium: "Censorship, Media, and Literary Culture in Japan: From Edo to Postwar"
Location: 403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
This two-day international symposium takes both diachronic (historical) and synchronic (cross-media) approaches, seeking to bring recent research on early modern censorship into dialogue with studies of 19th and 20th century Japanese literary and visual culture. The symposium begins with Edo-period print culture and kabuki theatre, examines prewar literature, analyzes newsreels and popular visual materials from World War II through the Occupation period, as well as Occupation-period literature, film, and popular culture, and finally concludes with research on contemporary linguistic regulations in Japan.

See the complete schedule for this event.

* Reservations are required. RSVP by February 27th by email
( donald-keene-center@columbia.edu ) or by fax (212-854-4019).

 

March 12th, 2009

6:00 - 7:30 PM
"My Speech Politeness Toward My Emperor and Toward My Girlfriend"
Fourth Shirato Lecture on Japanese Language
Yoshikazu Kawaguchi (Waseda University)
Location: 403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Avenue)
Each language has its own system of showing politeness when speaking. Japanese is not an exception, as it has one of the most complicated systems of showing politeness among human languages. The speech style toward the Emperor and the Imperial family is breathtakingly formal, while the speech style toward one's boy/girlfriend is overwhelmingly informal and casual. There lies a deep gap between the two speech styles. However, there are several levels of politeness, more precisely four or even five, between the two extremes. In addition, there is a separate system of politeness even in informal speech, so that even very casual speech toward one's partner is full of devices to show politeness. This presentation reveals the system(s) of polite speech in Japanese, discusses its universality and specificity and shows you how to be polite in Japanese.
 

March 23rd, 2009

3:00 - 6:00 PM
"The Culture and Objects of the Japanese Tea Ceremony: A Demonstration"
Sen Sōoku (Tea Master and Fifteenth Generation Heir to the Mushakōji-Senke School of Tea and Special Advisor for Cultural Exchange 2008-2009)
Location: 403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Avenue)
 

April 9th, 2009

6:00 - 7:30 PM
"Pilgrimage for Pleasure: Reading the Ki Miidera Sanke Mandara"
Samuel Morse (Amherst College)
New location: 612 Schermerhorn, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Avenue)

April 15th, 2009

6:00 - 7:30 PM
"Comedy Can Be Deadly – or, The Story of How Mark Twain Killed Hara Hoitsuan"
Indra Levy (Stanford University)
403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Avenue)
In the April 6, 1903 edition of the Tokyo Asahi Shinbun, bestselling translator Hara Hoitsuan published "Shiiza sansatsu jiken," his rendition of a sketch by Mark Twain titled "The Killing of Julius Caesar 'Localized'." This minor translation of a minor text by a world-famous American author quickly sparked a knock-down, drag-out fight between Hara and another translator, Yamagata Iso'o. Increasingly incensed by Hara's failure to grasp Twain's subtle sense of humor, Yamagata delivered a final, devastating slam: an annotated retranslation of the same text, published in book form along with the original text itself and a blow-by-blow account of his altercation with Hara, replete with verbatim citations from both sides. By the end of the year, Hara had been committed to the Sugamo Tenkyoin psychiatric hospital, with rumors circulating about an attempted suicide. Hara met his final demise in that same hospital on August 23, 1904.

This sensational tale of one translator's demise has become the stuff of legend in the annals of Meiji literary history. While it is common knowledge that comedy is among the first things to get lost in translation, how is it that the (mis)translation of a piece of comic literature could meet with such dire consequences? This presentation will attempt to shed light on this question by considering the Hara-Twain episode as emblematic of the often tortured relationship between literary translation and the concept of literary humor – more broadly, between the rush to attain new knowledge and the propensity for literary laughter – in the Meiji era.

April 22nd, 2009

6:00 PM
2009 Annual Soshitsu Sen XV Distinguished Lecture on Japanese Culture
"The Honor of Translating the Tale of Genji"
Royall Tyler
Location: Miller Theater
The 2008-2009 academic year marks the one-thousandth anniversary of that remarkable classic of Japanese literature, Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji. In order to commemorate the occasion, the Keene Center has invited the renowned Genji scholar and most recent translator of that work into English, Dr. Royall Tyler, to deliver this year's Soshitsu Sen XV Distinguished Lecture on Japanese Culture.

* Reservations are required. RSVP by April 15th by email ( dcc2119@columbia.edu ) or by fax (212-854-4019).

See more about this event here.

 

April 24th, 2009

6:00 PM
Award Ceremony for the 2008-2009 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize & the Donald Keene Center Special Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature
Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize Winner: Dennis Washburn
Donald Keene Center Special Prize Winner: Peter McMillan
Location: C.V. Starr East Asian Library (300 Kent Hall)
Please join us for a special ceremony to honor the recipients of two translation prizes administered by the Donald Keene Center.

The recipient of the 2008-2009 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature is Dr. Dennis Washburn of Dartmouth College, who will be honored for his skilled translation of The Temple of the Wild Geese and Bamboo Dolls of Echizen, by Tsutomu Mizukami.

The recipient of the Donald Keene Center Special Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature is Dr. Peter McMillan of Kyorin University. Dr. McMillan is being honored for his superb translation of the classical poetry anthology One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each.

* Reservations are required. RSVP by April 17th by email ( dcc2119@columbia.edu ) or by fax (212-854-4019).

 

The Weatherhead East Asian Institute (WEAI), in conjunction with the Donald Keene Center presents a Japanese film series:

Out of the Ashes: Early Postwar Japanese Movies

Film still from PU-SAN 1953
with permission from Toho Co., Ltd.
All rights reserved.

As Japan emerged from the catastrophic wreckage of WWII, many film directors turned to the bleak realities of the postwar to inspire their movies, and audiences flocked to newly-built theaters, hungry for entertainment that spoke to their privations. Ironically, through these stories of poverty, orphaned children, political turmoil and corruption, filmmakers ushered in Japan's golden age of film. Working with a stylish palette of black humor, irony and compassion, Japanese postwar movies-some of the best of which are featured in this series-unflinchingly stared down a ruined nation and championed the unlikely heroes struggling to resurrect it.

Children of the Beehive (SHIMIZU Hiroshi, 1948)

Tuesday, February 26
6:00 - 8:00PM
Areldge Cinema, Lerner Hall
Alfred Lerner Hall is located at 2920 Broadway (at W. 115th St). Please go to http://www.columbia.edu/about_columbia/map/lerner.html for a concept map.
NO RSVP is necessary for Columbia ID holders. For guests to Columbia, please RSVP to outoftheashes_weai@hotmail.com by February 24 so that we may add your name to the front desk check-in list.

Battles Without Honor and Humanity (FUKASAKU Kinji, 1973)

Tuesday, March 11, 2008, 6-8 PM
Davis Auditorium, Schapiro Center, 530 W. 120th St. between Broadway and Columbus.
No RSVP necessary.

Doctor's Day Off (SHIBUYA Minoru, 1952)

Monday, March 31, 2008, 6-8 PM
Arledge Cinema, Lerner Hall, 2920 Broadway (at W. 115th St).
NO RSVP is necessary for Columbia ID holders. For guests to Columbia, please RSVP to outoftheashes_weai@hotmail.com

Pu San (ICHIKAWA Kon, 1953)

Tuesday, April 8, 2008, 6-8 PM
Arledge Cinema, Lerner Hall, 2920 Broadway (at W. 115th St).
NO RSVP is necessary for Columbia ID holders. For guests to Columbia, please RSVP to outoftheashes_weai@hotmail.com

Black River (KOBAYASHI Masaki, 1957)

Tuesday, April 15, 2008, 6-9 PM (to be followed by panel discussion)
Arledge Cinema, Lerner Hall, 2920 Broadway (at W. 115th St).
NO RSVP is necessary for Columbia ID holders. For guests to Columbia, please RSVP to outoftheashes_weai@hotmail.com .

 

Donald Keene Center participates in Weatherhead East Asian Institute's 60th Anniversary Event in Tokyo, Japan

On June 3, 2009, the Donald Keene Center was pleased to take part in a very special event in Tokyo. The day-long symposium, co-sponsored with other Columbia organizations, was entitled "Columbia and Japan: A Celebration of the 60th Anniversary of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute." The event drew approximately 200 participants from an array of backgrounds, including Columbia University alumni, politicians, students, and businesspersons. It highlighted the quality and depth of East Asian scholarship at Columbia University and its significant influence on the region and beyond. Similar events were also held in Beijing and Seoul.

At the Tokyo event, the Keene Center took charge of the morning program. One of the highlights was the presentation of the Third Annual Donald Keene Prize for the Promotion of Japanese Culture, which recognizes individuals and organizations that have made significant contributions toward expanding awareness of Japanese culture in the world at large. Mr. Seiji Tsutsumi accepted the award on behalf of one of Japan’s most innovative private-sector foundations, the Saison Foundation, which focuses on promoting the performance arts. Prof. Donald Keene sent a special video message to the Saison Foundation, congratulating it on decades of "bridging the gap between Japan and the rest of the world."

The award ceremony was followed by a panel entitled "Japan and Columbia: A Bridge to the Future." Audience members listened attentively as prominent cultural figures such as the novelist and critic Shimada Masahiko and Satô Takanobu, fourth-generation president of the historic publishing house Shinchôsha, debated the complexities of cultural production and intellectual exchange across geographic borders, linguistic boundaries, and difference of genre and medium. Another special guest was Dr. John Carpenter, Associate Professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), who flew in from London expressly to attend the panel. Dr. Carpenter was the first recipient of a Shinchô Graduate Fellowship.

Hosting the morning session gave the Donald Keene Center an opportunity to focus on achievements by notable individuals and organizations that have significantly contributed to the promotion of Japanese culture in areas such as literature and the arts. The session also provided a forum to reflect on the past and present of the Columbia-Japan relationship and explore new possibilities for future partnership.

October 8th, 2009

6:00 - 7:30 PM
"Music as Anamorphic Spot: The Radio Broadcast in Tengoku to Jigoku ('High and Low,' dir. A. Kurosawa, 1963)"
Giorgio Biancorosso (University of Hong Kong)
Location: 403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Avenue)
Tengoku to Jigoku (High and Low) is a crime thriller in which a wealthy, conscientious, hard-working shoe manufacturer (Mifune Toshiro) is the victim of a hideous crime: his chauffeur's son is kidnapped in mistake for his own. The kidnapper (Yamazaki Tsutomu) acknowledges the mistake but wants the money nevertheless, thus forcing the entire family – including, of course, the chauffeur himself -- into a moral dilemma. The time is the early sixties, as Japan prepares for the Olympic Games, ready to showcase its economic miracle and technological successes. The setting, significantly, is Yokohama, near Tokyo, then still a troubled industrial city struggling to emerge from a ruinous recent past.

This lecture will examine the role of sound and music in the film's representation of the urban fabric of Yokohama and the resulting use of cinema as a means of historical preservation of sounds (or sonic environments). As my analysis draws to a close, I will pay special attention to the radio broadcast of Schubert's music that marks the appearance of the film's anti-hero (the kidnapper). Far from being merely a static pointer, a cerebral, gratuitous musical reference, the broadcast is inextricably tied to the presentation of the character. While paving the way for a different interpretation of the film, my analysis of this crucial passage will also indicate in what ways the study of music and sound as an element of setting may contribute to a new understanding of the role of symbols in the context of narratives.

Lecturer information: Giorgio Biancorosso grew up in Italy and was educated in the UK and the US. After obtaining a Ph.D. in Musicology at Princeton University, in 2001-2003 he was a Mellon Fellow at the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at Columbia University. He is now an Assistant Professor in Music and a Member of the Film Culture Project at The University of Hong Kong, where he teaches courses in Music History, Aesthetics, and Film Theory and Criticism. Recent publications include: "Ludwig's Wagner and Visconti's Ludwig," in Wagner and Cinema, (Indiana University Press); "The Harpist in the Closet: Film Music as Epistemological Joke," in Music and the Moving Image 2 (3); and the essay "Sound" in The Routledge Companion to Film and Philosophy. Biancorosso is completing a book called Musical Aesthetics through Cinema, to be published by Oxford University Press in 2010. He is also active as a journalist and writes monthly columns on the arts in China and the Asia Pacific for the Hong Kong Magazine Muse. In the Spring of 2010, Biancorosso will be Visiting Professor in Music and Film Studies at National Taiwan University (NTU), Taipei.

Co-Sponsored by the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Department of Music.

October 14th, 2009

5:30 - 7:00 PM
"Translation and its Postcolonial Discontents: Controversy over Toma Seita's Reading of Kim Soun's Japanese Translation of Korean Poetry in Postwar Japan"
Serk-bae Suh (University of California-Irvine)
Location: 403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Avenue)
This talk, "Translation and its Postcolonial Discontents," examines the postcolonial controversy over Japanese leftist historian Toma Seita's interpretations of Korean poetry, which Korean writer Kim Soun translated into Japanese during the colonial period. In his 1954 essays, Toma read into the poems an allegory of the Korean nation's suffering under Japanese rule. However, Kim denounced Toma's politicization of the lyrical poems because, in Kim's view, Toma misrepresented the poems and Korean culture by relying on Kim's own Japanese translations. By contextualizing the controversy in the torrent of early 1950s debates among Japanese leftist intellectuals about what constitutes progressive national literature, intent on challenging both rightwing nationalism and American dominance in Japan, the lecturer explores the controversy's potential for encouraging a just relationship between the former colonized and colonizers.

Lecturer information: Serk-Bae Suh is currently an Assistant Professor in the East Asian Languages and Literature Department at the University of California, Irvine. His research interests include modern Korean and Japanese literature, modern Korean and Japanese intellectual history, and colonial and postcolonial studies. His current research examines the role of translation in shaping attitudes toward nationalism and colonialism in Korean and Japanese intellectual discourse from the 1910s through the 1960s.

Sponsored by the Center for Korean Research.

October 15th, 2009

6:30 - 8:00 PM
"Art and Environment in Kyoto in the Time of Supernova 1006"
Mimi Hall Yiengpruksawan (Yale University)
Location: 612 Schermerhorn Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Avenue)
In the spring of the year 1006 a spectacular new star appeared in the skies over Kyoto. People said it was as bright as the sun. For the next 18 months it lit up the night sky and could be seen during the day as well. Ongoing rituals were held at the palace and at temples and shrines to placate this bright new visitor. The star is known today as SN 1006, a spectacular supernova whose remnants can still be seen as the double star κ Lupi in the constellation Lupus. It is believed to have been the largest supernova recorded in human history. This event—exogenous and unpredicted—was but one of a series of environmental and biological interventions that struck Kyoto circa 1000. What this means for our understanding of the complex of art practices that emerged during the same period—a complex profoundly bound up with what we now identify as “traditional” or “native” Japanese culture—is the theme of my talk. I proceed on the premise that the rapid transformation of Kyoto art and culture circa 1000 was a function of a threshold phenomenon in which a series of exogenous—and stochastic—environmental factors triggered a geometric progression, or phase shift, in which an array of small causes and coincidences produced maximum effects in the cultural domain whose summed result was paradigm shift.

Lecturer information: Mimi Hall Yiengpruksawan received her Ph.D. in Japanese Art from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1988. She has taught at Yale University since 1990. In her work Yiengpruksawan focuses on Buddhist art and iconography with an emphasis on political and social perspectives in the analysis of imagery and ritual. She is currently completing a series of books that examine the Buddhist cultural productions of early Kyoto from a revisionist perspective grounded in primary records and material evidence. Since the early 1990s Yiengpruksawan has also maintained a research and teaching commitment to modern Asian art.

October 22nd, 2009

6:00 - 7:30 PM
"Sex, Nuns, and Motherhood in Kamakura-Era Women's Diaries"
Christina Laffin (University of British Columbia)
Location: 403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Avenue)
In a letter composed in 1264, the poet known as Nun Abutsu (1222-1283) advises her fourteen-year-old daughter on the vagaries of court life and what to do when all else fails: "If things do not proceed as you had hoped, distance yourself from this cycle of birth and death and dedicate yourself to the Buddhist realm. Calm your heart, take the tonsure, and enter the true path." Abutsu embodied these teachings herself by oscillating between secular and religious life. This presentation will take up her writings to consider the intertwined issues of sexuality, motherhood, and nunhood and how tonsure could be both strategic and empowering in the literature of Kamakura-era (1185-1333) women.

Lecturer information: Christina Laffin is an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia whose research focuses on medieval travel diaries and the contexts for their production. She is presently completing a manuscript tentatively entitled "Rewriting Medieval Women: Politics, Personality, and Literary Production in the Life of Nun Abutsu." Past contributions include The Noh Ominameshi: A Flower Viewed from Many Directions (Co-editor, 2003), and Gender and Japanese History (Managing Editor, 2 vols.). She is a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Fellow at the University of Tokyo Historiographical Institute through June 2011.

Sponsored by the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures.
Supported by the Japan Foundation.

November 5th, 2009 (Thursday) 4:00-5:30 PM

"What Will Be Almost Permanently Lost in Translation? A Cognitive Linguistic View"
Seiichi Makino (Princeton University)
Location: Satow Conference Room, Lerner Hall 5F, Columbia University (114th St. and Broadway)
In translating Language X to Language Y we lose a lot, but translation has survived the centuries, primarily because not everybody can easily learn the Japanese language, and gain is larger than loss. The structures of Japanese and English are quite different on the surface, so we first lose sounds and orthography. Even so, crucially phonetic poetry like tanka, haiku, and modern poetry has been frequently translated into English. Surface morphological and syntactic structures are lost, too. There is no end to the long list of loss of forms due to translation. This lecture focuses on something cognitively lost in translation of written Japanese, and especially literary work, into English – loss of deep cognitive meaning expressed explicitly in the original Japanese language. There are many of layers to the phenomenon, but the present talk will focus narrowly on shift phenomena such as number shift, case marker shift, tense shift, formality shift, and voice shift, that which are almost permanently lost in translation even though they convey a significant cognitive shift on the part of the author.

Lecturer information: Seiichi Makino is a Professor of Japanese and Linguistics and serves as the Director of the Japanese Language Program at Princeton University, as well as the Director of the Japanese Language Program at Princeton University. He is also the Academic Director of the Summer M.A. Program in Japanese Language Pedagogy at Columbia University. Professor Makino is the author or co-author of numerous books, dictionaries, and articles, including Aspects of Linguistics: In Honor of Noriko Akatsuka (edited with S. Kuno and S. Strauss, 2007) and A Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar (with M. Tsutsui, 2008). His current research interests include the cognitive linguistics inquiry intoof metaphors, and shift phenomena of tense, formality, numbers, and grammatical persons (i.e., the 1st person "I", the 2nd person "you", and the 3rd person "he"). He is the former President of the Association of Teachers of Japanese.

This lecture is offered as the Fifth Shirato Lecture on Japanese Language.
Supported by the Japan Foundation.

 

November 19th, 2009

6:00 - 7:30 PM
"The Pursuit of Harmony: Poetry and Power in Early Heian Japan."
A Book Talk with Gustav Heldt
Gustav Heldt (University of Virginia)
Location: 403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Avenue)
The speaker's recent book The Pursuit of Harmony: Poetry and Power in Early Heian Japan concerns the creation of new forms of poetry in the 9th and early 10th centuries – such as poetry matches, screen poetry, and imperial anthologies – which that helped define Japanese court culture for centuries afterwards. Its aim is to demonstrate how aspects of poetic praxis, and particularly that of "harmonization" in verse, can offer new understandings of Heian poetry's textual, ritual, cosmological, social, and political dimensions.

 
Lecturer information: Gustav Heldt is Associate Professor of Japanese Literature at the University of Virginia, specializing in the poetry and cultural history of early and medieval Japan. He received his Ph.D. in Japanese Literature from Columbia University in 2000. His recent publications include "Writing Like a Man: Poetic Literacy, Textual Property, and Gender in the Tosa Diary," Journal of Asian Studies (2005), and "Between Followers and Friends: Male Homosocial Desire in Heian Court Poetry," forthcoming in the U.S.-Japan Women's Journal.

Supported by the Japan Foundation.

 

November 23rd, 2009 (Monday) 12:00-1:30 PM

**Brown Bag Lunch**
"The New Sensibility of Recession in Japan"
Andrea Arai (University of Washington)
Location: 918 International Affairs Building, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Avenue)

For much of the latter half of the twentieth century, Japan's economic superpowerdom and stable social order made it a case study in seemingly incomparable success. Best-selling international titles touting how to "learn from Japan" appeared to tell it all, as enviable GNP and international test scores displaced the social burdens and historical onus of this success. With the dramatic decline of economic fortunes and failure to revive throughout the 1990s came a new "how not to follow Japan" literature and a swift transformation of Japan’s international image and position. This talk examines the effects of this writing on and writing off Japan on the first recessionary generation. Having come of age amidst economic decline ("fukeiki"), discourses of national collapse, neoliberal reforms, and new demands for success, this generation embodies a new sensibility of recession and nation. Dr. Arai's ethnographic engagement locates this sensibility as an effect of transformations in structures of capital and historical representation within the shifting sociocultural and economic landscapes of recessionary Japan.

Lecturer information: Andrea Arai teaches in the Jackson School of International Studies Japan Studies Program at the University of Washington. She is completing an edited volume, entitled Global Futures in East Asia, with Ann Anagnost, and is the author of one of its chapters, "Notes to the Heart: Learning to 'Love Your Country' in Neoliberal Japan." Professor Arai is also finishing a book manuscript, provisionally titled Recessionary Sensibilities, on the new effects of time and value in the economic downturn from the 1990s and the reshaping of realities and representations of Japan and its youth amid restructurings of education and labor. Her recent publications include "The Neoliberal Subject of Lack and Potential: Developing the 'Frontier Within' and Creating a Reserve Army of Labor in Japan" (2005), and "The 'Wild Child' of 1990s Japan," in the book Japan After Japan: Social and Cultural Life from the Recessionary 1990s to the Present (2006).

Co-Sponsored by the

Supported by the Japan Foundation.

 

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