winter 2006 Schedule

January 12
William Malm, "The Logic and Beauty of Japanese Noh Drama Taiko Music"

Professor Willliam Malm will give a lecture demonstration comparing the logic of noh drama taiko drum music with that of Western music.

William Malm is a Professor Emeritus of Music and Ethnomusicology at The University of Michigan. His interests are in East Asian music, ethnomusicology, instruments, Japanese music and drama, and Japanese socialist music.

January 19
Mad Amano, "Little Boy and Fat Man: The Myth of Dropping the Atomic Bombs. Who is the real devil?"

"Mad" Amano is Japan's leading parodist. Born in Tokyo, his name, "Mad," comes from the U.S. parody magazine. After graduating from the Faculty of Fine Arts Department of Graphic Design at Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, Mr. Amano worked for an advertising department of a consumer-electronics marketing company. He spent ten years in Los Angeles with his family. Mr. Amano is a regular contributor of parody works to well-known Japanese newspapers and magazines, is President of BIGBANG, Inc., and his work has been exhibited at the Vancouver Art Gallery. He has written several books, including his parody picture book, "Little Boy and Fat Man," which brings the U.S. to account for the atomic bombings (an English version is planned). The book became a hot topic in Japan. Mr. Amano also made Japanese headlines in 2004 when he responded negatively to a Liberal Democratic Party cease-and-desist order pertaining to a parody of his that skewered LDP/Koiziumi Administration policy.

Please see his "The Parody Times" website at http://www.parody-times.com.

January 26
Priscilla Lambert, "The Political Economy of Family Policy in Japan"

Japan has been labeled a “welfare state laggard” and a “breadwinner welfare state;” that is, spending on social welfare is relatively low and its policies reinforce a gendered division of labor. Surprisingly, Japanese family policy since the 1990s has become decidedly more “women-friendly” and seeks to help women balance work and family. The common explanatory variables in the welfare state and feminist literatures—the strength of labor, left parties, and women’s movements—can not explain this change in family policy. I argue that changes in family policy are a function of electoral politics and the aggregation and representation of business interests in the policy-making process.

Priscilla Lambert is an assistant professor in political science at Western Michigan University. She has spent over 5 years living and studying in Japan and has a MA in economics from Keio University. Her research interests include Japanese employment and family policy, the policy-making process, and comparative social policy.

February 2
Ofra Goldstein-Gidoni, "From sengyō shufu to karisuma shufu: Continuity and Change in the Lives of Japanese Housewives,"

Middle class Japanese women often depict their social role in life and their identity as “professional housewives” (sengyō shufu), a term encompassing the total devotion of a woman to the care of children and the household. In my presentation I will offer an alternative view to the growing literature which emphasizes the changes in female or gender roles as related to current trends including women postponing marriage, Japanese men increasingly becoming undesirable husbands, the declining fertility rate and so forth. Based on an anthropological research I have been conducting since 2003, I will argue that while we cannot ignore the significance of these trends, it may be too early to declare the professional housewife as a "dying breed."

Ofra Goldstein-Gidoni is the 2005-06 Toyota Visiting Professor at the Center for Japanese Studies. She is an anthropologist and teaches at the departments of East Asian studies and Sociology and Anthropology at Tel Aviv University. Her main research interests are related to gender, globalization, and contemporary Japanese society.

February 9
Ted Mack, "Binding the Field: Publishing History and Modern Japanese Literature"

The intellectual historian Maruyama Masao described a sea change in the status of modern Japanese literature in the national consciousness at the end of the Taishô period (1912-26), when someone “who spent all his time reading novels was doing one of two things: avoiding his studies or corrupting his morals.” Following the one-yen book boom that began in 1926, “everyone... had to at least know the names of famous Japanese... authors and their works, whether you had read them or not.  After these one-yen series appeared, this sort of information became ‘common knowledge.’”  This talk looks at the impact publishing had on modern Japanese literature, changing the way people thought about Japanese-language literary production in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Ted Mack teaches at the University of Washington, Seattle. His work focuses on the material history of modern Japanese  literature. He recently completed a manuscript entitled Manufacturing  Modern Japanese Literature: Publishing and the Creation of a National  Culture.

February 16
George Wilson, "The 1860 Murder at the Shogun's Gate"

In early 1860 Japan was only a few months into the new world of international trade. Yokohama had recently opened for business, and the Bakufu had just dispatched a large mission to the United States. Suddenly in the midst of a spring snow squall the prime minister and Shogun’s regent, Ii Naosuke, was cut down by a squad of assassins while on his way to work at Edo Castle.

Foreign as well as domestic observers were left in shock, and Japan descended into an era of disorder occasioned by its entry into the global market network. The prime minister’s assassination in the heart of the Shogun’s capital did not result from opposition on his part to international trade, for he had pushed the trade treaties through, knowing that the Western nations left him little choice. Rather, it was feudal rivals who murdered Ii Naosuke. But his death removed a powerful voice for political stability and launched Japan on a decade of terror, directed against Japanese targets as well as foreigners.

It appears that a covert commercial motive may also have factored into Ii’s demise, as merchants jockeyed for position to profit from Japan’s new overseas trade. Even the Meiji Restoration did not spell an end to the disorder. The Meiji institutions put in place after 1868 were imposed with rigor to reduce and shut off the incidence of terror, whose influence on the outcome of late Tokugawa history cannot be overestimated. The return of terrorism to Japanese affairs in the early decades of the 20th century signaled a shift from internationalism to a more aggressive policy that led to Japan’s war in China and World War II in the Pacific.

In 2006 George Wilson will be Visiting Professor of Japanese History at the University of Michigan, teaching courses on recent Japan. His research centers on ideology in the Meiji Restoration. Wilson is a retired professor of history and East Asian languages & cultures at Indiana University.

February 23
Maribeth Graybill, "Rethinking the Asian Art Galleries at UMMA"