Background and rationale

Over the past decades, increasing diversity has been discussed – and often celebrated – extensively in the research on Japan. Indeed, we see growing migration flows into Japan in the context of acute and projected labour shortages. We find urban migrants seeking alternative lifestyles in rural areas, and we know that career trajectories, relationships, and gender roles are diversifying especially in metropolitan centres. We also see growing recognition of ethnic and cultural diversity in Japan, as notions of nationally bounded “Japaneseness” and cultural nationalism represented in media and literature are challenged by narratives of ethnic and multi-racial minorities (e.g. by non-Japanese authors in the field of Japanese literature). 

At a closer look, however, increasing diversity is hardly a sufficient depiction of the multifaceted socio-economic, political, and cultural processes that have been and still are transforming Japan. The intensified movement across borders and boundaries – both literally and metaphorically – as well as the global entanglement of ideas, narratives and cultural objects challenges prevalent ideas of a homogenous culture and identity, but at the same time threatens cherished traditions and established worldviews, thus shifting, fragmenting, and polarising discourses of everyday life. While the term “increasing diversity” suggests a unidirectional movement, these processes are multi-layered, and often contradictory. The globalisation of Japan’s urban landscapes, for example, often brings not more diversity, but rather conformity in the shape of standardised aesthetic trends, business models, and certain patterns of biographies and lifestyles. Movements are also selective. While more people come to Japan for work or leisure, stagnating wages, inflation and precarious working conditions mean that young Japanese today are markedly less likely to leave Japan to study, work, or travel, thus confining their cultural knowledge and worldviews to Japan. Recent migration flows into rural areas unfold in the context of decades of rural outmigration, which in some ways has made rural peripheries decidedly less diverse. Moreover, migration also can produce new forms of segregation, be it between residents and “technical trainees” forced to live in isolation, or between rural communities and urban in-migrants connecting first and foremost with like-minded lifestyle migrants. And while the diversification of lifestyles and life courses creates new opportunities for some individuals, others face social isolation and loneliness – not least in the context of job- or education related movements – which potentially become the seed for extremist views against various facets of diversity (e.g., migration, gender, sexuality).

As a research agenda, “interversity” aims to extend and synthesize the previous research foci of Japanese Studies at the University of Vienna. We are drawing, for example, from previous and ongoing work on crisis and transition in rural Japan, representations of diversity in Japanese media, migration and the Japanese diaspora, and identity constructions by citizens and artists as well as the political struggles that occur across local, regional and national levels. “Interversity” is thus not a ready-made argument, but a conceptual framework to combine and foster the strengths of empirical interdisciplinary research in Japanese Studies at the University of Vienna. In line with this objective, we also build on ongoing efforts to integrate research and teaching. This includes regular research circles with staff members, PhD candidates, and advanced students (kenkyûkai), the organization of student excursions, designing research-based courses, and the integration of MA theses into our research agenda.