January 25
Kevin Carr, "What Christian Art Tells Us About Buddhist Icons in the Edo Period"
Abstract: Christian art in Japan has generally been seen as part of a history of martyrdom and religious suppression, but this approach has largely ignored the relationship of Christian icons to other religious images. In addition, there has been little attention paid to the meanings and uses of late 16th and early 17th century Buddhist art following earlier iconoclastic campaigns coinciding with the attempted unification of the Japanese archipelago. This paper attempts to reconcile these two deficiencies, using evidence of early Christian art in Japan to provide insight into the status of icons at the start of the Edo Period.
Kevin Carr teaches Japanese art at the University of Michigan. His research interests include sacred cartography, iconoclasm, relics, and notions of living images. He is currently finishing a book manuscript on medieval personality cults entitled “Presenting the Prince: Envisioning of the Life of Shôtoku in Medieval Japanese History.”
February 1
Sadafumi Kawato, "Parliamentary Supremacy and the Parliamentary Cabinet System in Japan"
Abstract: This lecture addresses problems of two constitutional principles of Japan: parliamentary supremacy and parliamentary cabinet system. These two principles would have produced the fusion of powers like that in the United Kingdom. However, the separation of powers principle prevented it. The consequence of this has been that these two principles embody contradictory visions of how the Diet should operate. Postwar party politics can, I argue, be described as an ongoing contest over which of the two principles would prevail.
Sadafumi Kawato (2006-07 CJS Toyota Visiting Professor) is a Professor of Political Science in the School of Law at Tohoku University where he specializes in contemporary Japanese politics, elections and voting behavior, the Japanese Diet and party politics, and comparative studies of legislatures.
February 8
Joshua Fogel, "Prostitutes and Painters: Japanese Migrants to Shanghai from the 1860s"
Abstract:In the final years of the Tokugawa shogunate, the bakufu began to relax travel restrictions. By the mid-1860s, Japanese were beginning to travel to China and to settle in Shanghai, the first site of a Japanese consulate abroad (1871). Among the first Japanese sojourners and settlers in Shanghai were prostitutes and painters--for an assortment of reasons. They were joined in the 1870s and 1880s by businessmen, teachers, Buddhist missionaries, adventurers, and a wide assortment of others as the expatriate community of that immense metropolis slowly filled up.
Joshua Fogel received his BA at the University of Chicago and his MA and PhD at Columbia. He has worked largely in the field of Sino-Japanese cultural relations of the 19th and 20th centuries. He is the author of five books, editor of 15 more, and translator of an additional 13. At present, he is working on two overlapping studies of the first Japanese to set foot in Shanghai in the 1860s-1890s.
February 15
Denise Saint-Arnault, "Distress and Depression in Japanese Women Living in America"
Abstract: Asian immigrants, including Japanese international employees and their families, face social and psychological risks of family conflict, role changes, limited English language proficiency, and discrimination. Yet despite evidence that the prevalence and severity of psychological distress is high across groups, especially among women, there also is evidence that Asians underutilize mental health services. Underutilization of mental health services is related to somatic distress, cultural differences, and stigma. Previous research shows that many Asian groups combine primary-care, physically-oriented self-help sources (i.e., herbs, massage, exercise, and dietary changes) and social support in response to symptoms of emotional distress. This presentation focuses on illness experiences, cultural beliefs about the causes of illness, and how social structural factors interact to influence help-seeking for mental or emotional distress for 100 Japanese women living in the US. This study used qualitative and quantitative data that compares the demographics, distress symptom and help-seeking profiles of Japanese women recruited from primary-care. Our multidisciplinary research team hopes to identify cultural patterns of distress and help-seeking to improve precision of mental health assessments and facilitate culturally-appropriate program development.
Denise Saint Arnault has her Masters Degree in Psychiatric Nursing and her PhD in Medical Anthropology specializing in Japanese culture, Japanese culture and cross cultural psychology. She has studied Japanese women in the US and Japan since 1995, examining the impact of the self on perceptions of distress, as well as help seeking and social support. She is currently an Associate Professor at the College of Nursing at Michigan State University, and she is in the second year of a four-year federally-funded research study examining the experiences of distress and help seeking in Japanese women living in the US.
February 22
Kenjiro Takemori, "Steps of a Postwar Liberation Movement and Current Buraku Discrimination"
Abstract:
After the conclusion of World War II in the Pacific, Japan was occupied by the Allied Powers. In the draft of postwar constitution of Japan, the GHQ wrote that discrimination based on “caste or country of origin” would be prohibited. This illustrated the GHQ’s understanding of Japan’s Buraku issue. Later, with the GHQ’s establishment of the new constitution that carried out land reform and other measures to democratize Japan, efforts toward resolving the Buraku issue were greatly affected.
In February 1946, the National Buraku Liberation Committee was established to carry out the postwar Buraku Liberation Movement. The National Buraku Liberation Committee was launched by bringing together those who were associated with prewar Suiheisha and Yūwa movements. By proclaiming “the complete abolition of all discrimination based on status and opposition to differential treatment based on race, ethnicity and nationality” the postwar movement started. The characteristics of the postwar Buraku Liberation Movement are:
1. A program was established to abolish discrimination against the Buraku.
2. A struggle unfolded that denounced regional governments.
3. A national movement to resolve the Buraku issue was established.
4. Collaboration in the political struggle began.
5. An educational struggle was heightened through activities such as the Dōwa Educational Movement.
Furthermore, in 1965, the Japanese government published an “Inquiry Commission’s Report on Dōwa Measures.” This report clearly stated that the Buraku issue was “an important social problem that involves people’s rights, equality, and basic human rights.” This report resulted in the establishment of the Special Measurement Law in 1969 which allowed for a special measure of Japan’s financial resources for the Buraku. This special measure continued until 2002.
Due to the Special Measurement Law, the condition surrounding the Buraku improved greatly and overt forms of discrimination against the Buraku decreased. Nevertheless, challenges remain for the Buraku as discrimination continues in cases such as marriage.
Kenjiro Takemori has been the Head Researcher at the Fukuoka Prefecture Human Rights Research Institute since 2003. Prior to that, he was the Director of Buraku History at the Institute of Fukuoka. Mr. Takemori is the author of several publications about the Buraku Liberation Movement.
*NOTE* This lecture will be in Japanese with English interpretation.
March 8
George Wilson, "Incidents of Change in Japan from Perry to the Meiji Restoration"
Abstract: In 1853 the U.S. Navy commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Japan with four “black ships” and set about pressuring the shogun’s government to begin international trade after a long period when Japan avoided world commerce. The process of opening the country did not occur overnight; it took more than a decade and eventually resulted in the Meiji Restoration of 1868, leading thereafter to the wholesale transformation of Japan.
How did the process of change actually take place? The key transition came in the years right after Perry, occurring in a series of discrete “incidents” that challenged the legitimacy of the existing feudal order. Collectively this cluster of incidents produced some of the fiercest political infighting in Japan’s long history, and this paper will look at the history of such incidents in an effort to illuminate the steps along the way to Japan’s modern nationhood.
George Wilson is a retired professor of history and East Asian languages & cultures at Indiana University. His research concerns the Meiji Restoration of 1868, and he is the author of Patriots and Redeemers in Japan: Motives in the Meiji Restoration (1992). In 2006 he was a visiting professor of Japanese history at the University of Michigan, where he taught courses on modern Japan and the Japanese Empire while continuing with research on the Ansei Purge (1858-60) and the role of the A-bomb in ending the Pacific War.
March 15
Beate Sirota Gordon, "Drafting the Women's Rights Clause for the New Japanese Constitution"
Abstract: This lecture will begin with Mrs. Gordon’s arrival in Japan accompanying her mother and father (the Viennese-Russian pianist) on the latter's world-wide concert tour. She will discuss settling in Tokyo with her family, attending school at the German and the American school, and integrating into Japanese society and culture through her friends. Mrs. Gordon will then relate her experiences at Mills College in Oakland, California, her work for various government agencies during World War II, and her time spent with Time magazine. She will discuss her search for her parents who were under village-arrest in Japan during the last three years of the war and how she became a staff member of the Government Section of GHQ (General Headquarters of General MacArthur), which in 1946 drafted the new Japanese Constitution. It was in that position that she was assigned to the Civil Rights Section of the Constitution, particularly the women's rights. In this talk, Mrs. Gordon will also speak about the effects of those rights on Japanese women in the last 60 years.
Beate Sirota Gordon was born in Vienna and moved to Japan in 1929 as a young girl, when her father, the world-renowned pianist Leo Sirota, accepted an invitation to become a professor at the Imperial Academy of Music in Tokyo. On the eve of World War II, while her parents remained in Japan under secret service surveillance, she came to the United States to attend Mills College in California. Mrs. Gordon went on to work for the US government, monitoring Tokyo Radio in five languages and later writing radio propaganda.
Returning to Japan immediately after the war, she worked at General MacArthur's headquarters on a team charged with writing a new constitution for the defeated country. In this capacity she persuaded both the Americans and the Japanese to include a clause on women's rights and helped to draft it, becoming a heroine to Japan's women.
Mrs. Gordon has lived in the United States since 1947. In 1993, the Asahi Broadcasting Corporation produced a 90-minutes documentary of her life, which was broadcast in May of that year. A Japanese-language biography, "Christmas 1945--The Biography of the Woman Who Wrote the Equal Rights Clause of the Japanese Constitution" was published in October 1995; an English-language version, "The Only Woman in the Room," appeared in March 1998. A play by James Miki, "A String of Pearls," based on the book, is performed periodically in Japan. In February 1999, a documentary about her work in drafting the equal rights clause of the Japanese constitution was broadcast on Ted Koppel's Nightline (ABC).
(This lecture is co-sponsored by U-M's Law School and the Consulate General of Japan in Detroit.)
March 22
Masahito Jimbo, "Perspectives of Japanese Adults on Cancer
Screening: What Do We Know?"
Abstract: Cancer has been the top cause of mortality in Japan since 1981. Evidence shows that screening the general Japanese population for the cancers of breast, cervix, stomach, and colon is effective in reducing morbidity and mortality from these cancers. However, cancer screening in Japan remains low – less than one out of every five Japanese adults undergo the recommended screening tests. Few studies have explored why cancer screening is low among the Japanese. This lecture will explore the social and behavioral determinants in cancer screening among the Japanese and review the qualitative data from the interviews of 40 adult Japanese men and women about their experiences, knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and values regarding cancer screening.
Masahito Jimbo is Assistant Professor of Family Medicine at the University of Michigan. He received his MD and PhD from Keio University in Tokyo, Japan and MPH from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research interests include the role of culture in determining health behavior, particularly cancer screening.
March 29
Samuel Morse, "Nyohô and the Tôshôdaiji Atelier"
Abstract: Late in 753 a young Central Asian Buddhist novitiate arrived in Japan with the Chinese vinaya master Jianzhen (J. Ganjin). Known as Nyohô he was ordained in Japan, and after his master’s death, was entrusted with supervising the construction of Tôshôdai-ji and furbishing its halls with Buddhist imagery. The momentous transformations of Buddhist sculpture in Japan in the late eight and early ninth centuries are most often attributed to the decline in the authority of the great Nara temples and the resulting gain in influence of the newly established Shingon and Tendai sects. In fact it was the sculptural atelier at Tôshôdai-ji under the direction of Nyohô that revolutionized the production of Buddhist imagery in Japan at a time when the Buddhist faith was extending its reach further into the provinces and breaking free from strict governmental controls.
Samuel C. Morse received his AB from Harvard College and PhD from Harvard University where he worked under the direction of John Rosenfield. A specialist on Buddhist art and its ritual context, he is presently completing a manuscript on the religious culture of the early Heian period and preparing an exhibition on the art of Japanese esoteric Buddhism for The Japan Society in New York.
April 5
Michael Zielenziger, "Hikikomori and Other Pathologies: A New Way for Understanding Japan's 'Lost Decade'"
The collapse of Japan's economic "miracle" was hardly predicted in the late 1980s, but far more surprising has been the great difficulty that an industrious nation has encountered as it has tried to rebound from its economic crisis of the early 1990s. Even today Japan has the weakest economic growth among nations of the OECD.
Conventional economics are insufficient to explain the slow nature of Japan's rebound, but an investigation into the social psychology of modern Japan yields some important insights. This talk will investigate the importance of "social isolation" or hikikomori, the collapse of Japan's birth rate, and the rising incidence of suicide and depression to offer some new analysis of Japan's structural decline. Comparisons to modern Korea will also be offered.
Michael Zielenziger, former Tokyo bureau chief for Knight Ridder Newspapers, is the author of Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created its own Lost Generation (Nan A Talese/ Doubleday 2006).
(This lecture is co-sponsored by U-M's Culture and Cognition Program.)
