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September 22
Mark McLelland, New Title - "The Rise of the Gei Boi in Postwar Japan"
The Second World War has been identified as a pivotal period for the development of lesbian and gay identities in the west. Not only did the mass mobilisation of young men and women facilitate same-sex intimacy but the US military’s official policy of identifying and expelling ‘inverts’ from its ranks promoted the visibility of homosexuals, many of whom migrated to large cities in search of community. But what of Japan? Did Japan’s Pacific War produce similar effects in Japanese society that led to the establishment of analogous categories to the west’s ‘lesbian’ and ‘gay’? This presentation looks at the development of the Japanese category ‘gei boi’ in the early postwar period.
Mark McLelland is a research fellow in the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland. His publications include Male Homosexuality in Modern Japan (2000), Queer Japan from the Pacific War to the Internet Age (2005), and the edited volumes Japanese Cybercultures (2003) and Genders, Transgenders and Sexualities in Japan (2005). He is also co-founder and convenor of the AsiaPacifiQueer network: http://apq.anu.edu.au which co-organized the 1st International Conference of Asian Queer Studies in Bangkok in July 2005.
September 29
Harry Harootunian, "Unmooring the Present: Overcoming Modernity and the Question of the Historical Unconscious"
"Unmooring the Present" seeks to show how a conception of an endless present was central in discussions which sought to explain how Japan would 'overcome the modern' during the 1930s. What the talk seeks to show is how the privileging of the present, literally set adrift from both a known past and an unforeseeable future, was at the heart of both the symposium on overcoming and the matching conference on Japan and world history, both of which took place in 1942.
Harry Harootunian has been a Professor of East Asian Studies and History at New York University, where he chaired the Department of East Asian Studies until last year. Before that time he was the Max Palevsky Professor of History and Civilizations at the University of Chicago.
October 6
Elise Edwards, "Fin de Millennium Football in Japan: A Sport and an Age for 'Individuals'"
The focus of this talk will be sporting spaces and their use as sites of cultural debate, as well as national re-fashioning. In the early 1990s, in the final heady days of Japan’s “bubble economy,” soccer acquired unprecedented popularity, which continued over the course of Japan’s debilitating recession. Commentators have rendered soccer as the sport that most aptly replicates the flows, machinations, and dynamics of globalization and a new world economy—an economy for which “older” and more “traditional” Japanese business styles have been woefully inadequate. Everyone from government officials to men’s and women’s professional coaches have imagined and practically figured soccer as an ideal site for cultivating qualities such as “flexibility,” “individuality,” “creativity,” and transcultural fluency—skills deemed necessary for Japan to succeed in the 21st century.
Elise Edwards is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the Department of History and Anthropology at Butler University in Indiana. She received her doctorate in Anthropology at the University of Michigan. In addition to her interest in sports in Japan throughout the modern period, Elise’s research also engages with issues of gender and sexuality and popular culture in Japan.
October 13
Catherine Ryu, "Beyond Language: Yi Yang Ji's Yuhi and Spirit Possession à la Lacan"
This presentation focuses on the novel Yuhi (1988) by Yi Yang-Ji (1955-92), a second-generation zainichi Korean author. By using the Lacanian notion of “the real,” this talk attempts to articulate the significance of the narrator’s visceral experience of the absent Other Yuhi, the second-generation zainichi Korean woman, who abruptly returned to Japan. The speaker ultimately argues that the novel Yuhi offers spirit possession—a phenomenon beyond the realm of Language and the divide between Self and Other—as an alternate paradigm of identity with which we can rethink the linguistic, cultural, and political identity categories that are currently in place.
Catherine Ryu received her PhD in Japanese literature from the University of Michigan. She is currently an assistant professor of Japanese language and culture at Michigan State University. While her primary field is classical Japanese literature (Heian women’s narratives), her new research interest includes zainichi bungaku, a burgeoning field of Japanese literary studies in the U.S.
October 20
Toshiya Ueno, "The Genealogy of the Concepts of 'A-Nationality' and 'Suit' in Japanese Anime/Cinema"
"A-national movies" (Mukokuseki Eiga) created a sensational boom in Japan during the late 50’s and 60’s. Since then, this style of film, which is marked by its culturally eclectic or fictionally cosmopolitan flavor, has from time to time emerged on the Japanese cinema scene, including anime. This talk critically grapples with, and questions the idea of the singularity of modernity and the sub/pop cultures in Japan by invoking the conception of “suit,” taken from recent Japanese anime and “a-nationality” (mukokuseki) in some “B” movies.
Toshiya Ueno is a sociologist and a critic and media theorist. He teaches in the Department of Expressive Cultures at Wako University, Tokyo. His main research area is the theory and politics within subcultural scenes, such as: techno, anime, and manga.
October 27
Katsunobu Izutsu, "Shift to Revitalization: Language Policies toward the Ainu Language"
The purpose of this lecture is to give an overview of Japanese language policies toward the Ainu language for the last hundred years and to propose an effective measure for its revival and revitalization. Ainu is an indigenous language in Japan, almost extinct rather than endangered. Despite this, many researchers have not provided a comprehensive framework for the revival and revitalization. This lecture introduces the audience to the position that the Welsh language policies and practices are effective to this end. The speaker reports what his five-year project has been doing for revitalizing one of the Ainu dialects, the Asahikawa dialect.
Katsunobu Izutsu is an associate professor in the Department of English at Hokkaido University of Education at Asahikawa. As a linguist, he specializes in descriptive and theoretical studies of European and East Asian languages. He is also engaged in language revival and revitalization.
November 3
Jonathan Hall, "Isomorphic Maps: The Abandoned Geography of Mid-Century Japanese Left Cinema"
Diverse independent and experimental film directors in the late 1960s and early 1970s such as Matsumoto Toshio, Kanai Katsu, Higashi Yoichi, and Adachi Masao relied increasingly upon perverse and irrational conceptualizations of space to mark a shifting mode of resistance to global economic and neo-imperial projects. Korea, Okinawa, Cuba, and the non-descript space of economic unification all become unstable, even inauthentic sites for critique. In other words, I map a world of unconvincing latitude.
Jonathan M. Hall teaches in the Departments of Comparative Literature and Film & Media Studies at the University of California Irvine. His research addresses Japanese film studies, social histories of perversion, and psychoanalytic and queer criticism. Last year, he co-curated the nationally touring series JPEX: Japanese Experimental Film & Video, 1955-now.
November 10
Ulrich Straus, "A Participant's Take of the Tokyo Trial"
The lecture reviews Ulrich Straus’ part in the Tokyo Trial and offers comparisons to the Nuremberg Trial. It will look at the judges, the prosecution and defense staffs, as well as the defendants and the charges against them. It will also delve into the difficulty of assigning personal responsibility for Japanese government crimes. It will also explore the verdicts and the conflicting viewpoints of the Trial today with respect to its educational value and utility for subsequent international trials vs. Victor's Justice.
Ulrich (Rick) Straus did his undergraduate and graduate work at the University of Michigan. His 30 year career in the Foreign Service included 15 years on the U.S.-Japan relationship. His last three assignments were Consul General on Okinawa, Director of Philippine Affairs, and Professor at the National War College. Following his retirement, Mr. Straus taught adult education courses on Japan at Washington D.C. area universities. He now lives on Michigan’s Leelanau Peninsula where he wrote the book The Anguish of Surrender: Japanese POWs of World War Two.
November 17
Ted Heid, "Yakyu vs. Baseball"
At first glance, it appears to be the same game. Upon closer examination, the game is as different as the countries and their respective cultures and languages. The Japanese have taken "America's Game" and adopted - adapted - "adepted" it to fit the needs of the Japanese corporation. Why would a "superstar" in his native country, take a pay cut and come to the United States to play baseball if they play the same game in both countries? It is this difference of yakyu and baseball that has led to an exodus of the best professional players from Japan to jump into the world of major league baseball in the United States.
Edward (Ted) William Heid received his degree in Asian Studies and Japanese Language from Brigham Young University. From 1976 to 1978, he served on a two-year religious mission in Japan for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Hokkaido, Japan. In 1994, he began working with the Seattle Mariners as a part-time area scout in Arizona and was later made a full time area scout over Japan in 1999. In 2001, he was promoted to Director of the Pacific Rim Operations. Mr. Heid is married and has four children and one grandchild.
December 1
Christine Marran, "Imamura Shohei and Eco-Film Criticism"
Recent theories of humanism argue that humanity has typically been defined in opposition to the animal. The entire oeuvre of Imamura Shohei would appear to be a cinema that defies this logic. This presentation will explore this apparent paradox by tracing what emerges for film and thought out of Imamura’s refusal to oppose the human to the animal.
Christine Marran, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota, teaches and has published articles on Japanese literature, gender, and Japanese and Asian film. Her first book on portraits of the transgressive woman in literature and film, She Had It Coming: The Poison Woman in Japanese Modernity, is forthcoming from the University of Minnesota press.
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