Two issues are essential to prevent catastrophic climate breakdown – keep fossil fuel in the ground and significantly reduce industrialised animal agriculture. My climate change research and youth activist project began in 2023 with a focus on meat consumption and engaged theory in the context of Japan. I argue that the question of the ‘animal’ is central to achieving sustainability. Carnivorism here presents an interconnected macro-micro level praxis that pivots around silencing its impact. As one of the wealthiest and most significant participants in globalised imports and world trade – in raw materials, meat and other food stuff – Japan’s biophysical metrics make it a major contributor to climate change. Climate discourses, however, far outstrip climate action, resulting in less attention being paid to the central contradiction of mainstream corporate and political culture that hail increasing GDP and consumer demand while also claiming support for the UN Sustainable Development Goals. As climate data focus primarily on effects rather than causes, narratives of inevitability dominate and in Japan little attention is paid to overconsumption as the major driver of climate change. Here the environmental problems of animal agriculture are framed as issues to be resolved by improved technology, avoiding critique of corporate and government drives that simultaneous increase meat production and consumption for capital growth.

This project investigates the sustainability contradictions of the growth paradigm that go largely unquestioned as particular discursive and embodied social practices normalise everyday consumption. Based on reviews of political discourses, policies, climate data, and fieldwork with youth groups in Tokyo and Okinawa, and ethnographic interviews with around 50 Japanese and 40 international youth interlocutors, as well as short surveys conducted after public lectures, this talk shows ‘carnivorism’ to be a multifaceted macro-micro level praxis underpinned by a ubiquitous ‘common sense’ of silencing the interdependent issues of global injustice, climate breakdown and the almost exclusive relations of exploitation involved in industrialised meat production. This talk explores how as interlocutors un-silence [for themselves and their peers] these strategically hidden consequences and begin to “not eat like everyone else,” they enter embodied social sensibilities of hitherto unquestioned Japanese identity structures that involve facing an embodied social discomfort when causing meiwaku, or trouble to others as social taboos surrounding meat are broken. The research illuminates how placing the ‘animal’ at the centre of critical pedagogy gives rise to a new cosmopolitan consciousness with implication for claims to global citizenship and new demands from interlocutors when they ‘awaken’ to how their everyday consumption creates the Capitalocene.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s12e01
Thursday 2026-03-19, 18:00~19:30 (CET, UTC +1h)

| Place | 

| Platform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s12/#e01.

In Japan wie anderenorts sind körperliche, sensorische, seelische und intellektuelle Behinderungen immer schon Gegenstand der Literatur. Und in jüngerer Zeit rücken sie sowohl im öffentlichen Leben als auch in literarischen und (populär-)kulturellen Artefakten Japans vermehrt in den Fokus – nicht zuletzt durch aktivistisches Engagement, neue gesetzliche Regelungen, gesellschaftliche Debatten und internationale Großereignisse. Gleichwohl wurden sie von Literaturwissenschaft und -kritik lange Zeit kaum wahrgenommen und thematisiert. 

Ausgehend von diesem Befund, den David Bolt (2017) in Anlehnung an Jacques Derrida als eine Form der „hauntology“ beschreibt – insofern Behinderung weder geleugnet noch anerkannt wird –, untersuche ich anhand exemplarischer Werklektüren die Tragfähigkeit von Behinderung als Gegenstand, theoretischem Zugang und methodischer Perspektive der literaturwissenschaftlichen Japanforschung. Unter Einbezug der jeweiligen zeitgenössischen (literaturweltlichen) Kontexte und intersektionaler Verschränkungen entwerfe ich eine kurze Genealogie der Repräsentationen von Behinderungen in der japanischen Literatur. 

So diskutiere ich etwa, inwiefern literarische Repräsentationen von Behinderung während der 1990er Jahre noch überwiegend von einer medizinisch-defizitorientierten Perspektive geprägt waren, die sich an den vornehmlich von Nichtbetroffenen formulierten Metanarrativen von Behinderung ausrichtete. Ich argumentiere, dass neuere literarische Werke Behinderung nicht nur darstellen oder narrativ funktionalisieren, sondern ihre soziokulturelle Gemachtheit analysieren und damit zu einer Neubestimmung von Behinderung beitragen. In meinem Vortrag möchte ich aufzeigen, wie sich Behinderung als kreatives Potenzial für die Literatur und ihre Analyse fruchtbar machen lässt und wie dadurch die zugrunde liegenden Mechanismen, Hierarchien und Normannahmen sichtbar werden.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s11e14
Thursday 2026-01-29, 18:00~19:30 (CET, UTC +1h)

| Place | 

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s11/#e14.

Wars often reshape economic structures through the destruction of physical capital and institutional change, yet less is known about how the loss of human capital affects postwar economic development. During the Second World War, Japan lost approximately two million soldiers, the vast majority of whom were young males. This constituted a sizable shock to the gender composition of local labor markets, as these losses amounted to nearly 10 percent of the working-age male population.

The Japanese Imperial Army adopted a hometown regiment system, under which military regiments were organized at the prefectural level, meaning that soldiers within the same regiment came from the same prefecture. U.S. counterattacks in the Pacific Islands—where most Japanese military deaths occurred—resulted in large differences in casualty rates across regiments. Consequently, wartime losses were highly uneven across prefectures. These institutional features generated substantial and persistent geographic variation in postwar gender ratios.

Exploiting changes in gender ratios across cohorts and prefectures, this study examines how the permanent loss of young males influenced postwar industrial structure. On the one hand, local economies may adjust to gender imbalances by reallocating labor toward sectors that rely more heavily on female workers. On the other hand, market forces such as technological adaptation and internal migration may act as restoring mechanisms, offsetting the initial shock over time. To assess these competing forces, we use newly digitized Population Census data covering the period from 1920 to 1980.

Our empirical results indicate that prefectures experiencing larger declines in the male population saw a reduction in the employment share of manufacturing, accompanied by increases in agriculture and services. Quantitatively, however, these effects were modest and largely dissipated within approximately 15 years after the war. This pattern suggests that changes in gender composition slowed the process of industrialization in the short run, but did not permanently alter the long-run industrial structure.

We further examine implications for women’s employment. Female labor supply increased significantly in response to male losses, and the share of female workers rose across all sectors. These findings are consistent with adjustments in production technology or factor intensity to accommodate a relatively more abundant labor factor. In contrast to the effects on industrial structure, we find that these changes persisted at least into the 1980s.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s11e13
Thursday 2026-01-22, 18:00~19:30 (CET, UTC +1h)

| Place | 

| Platform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s11/#e13.

Examining some of the ways color operates in anime allows for an exploration of place production in anime as it mediates Japan in a global context. Specific strategies of utilizing color to depict place will be revealed through a comparison of two anime: Bakemonogatari and Non Non Biyori. Employing large blocks of segmented solid colors, the former anime tends toward the production of what Marc Augé calls “non-places,” but ones that do not exist in the real world; the latter tends toward a painterly pastoral image, producing the impression of a locality in Japan through a textured merging of various colors. Both can be read as depicting places engaged with globalization in distinct ways. Bakemonogatari echoes the tensions of the breakdown of classically considered localities, presenting non-places of “passing through” (like airports) prevalent in contemporary globalization. Based on disparate parts of rural areas of Japan (but with some backgrounds painted in Vietnam), Non Non Biyori presents the sense of a local place, but one of hybridity and interlinking of dispersed places to produce that locality.

Through the specific strategies of coloration, both tendencies—segmented solid colors and non-place, and painterly pastoral imagery and place—are never fully subsumed by the other and appear in varying degrees in these and other anime. Such methods of analysis open a means to explore mediation, hybridity, and the various forms they may take to better navigate notions of place in relation to Japan and beyond.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s11e12
Thursday 2026-01-15, 18:00~19:30 (CET, UTC +1h)

| Place | 

| Platform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s11/#e12.

Als Reaktion auf die Klimakrise, mit der die Menschheit konfrontiert ist, versprach im Jahr 2020 der damalige japanische Premierminister der Welt offiziell, bis 2050 „Carbon Neutral (Net-Zero)“ zu erreichen. Im folgenden Jahr änderte das Parlament einstimmig das Gesetz zur Verhinderung der globalen Erwärmung und verankerte dieses Ziel gesetzlich.

Im Mittelpunkt der Politik zur Erreichung der CO₂-Neutralität steht „GX“, eine Abkürzung für Green Transformation. Diese Politik sieht Investitionen in die Dekarbonisierung in Höhe von insgesamt 150 Billionen Yen (ca. 900 Milliarden Euro) über einen Zeitraum von zehn Jahren vor, an denen sowohl der öffentliche als auch der private Sektor in allen Wirtschafts- und Industriezweigen beteiligt sind. Dieser Investitionsbetrag entspricht 2,6 % des jährlichen BIP. Der Grundplan der Regierung für den Strommix sieht vor, dass erneuerbare Energien im Jahr 2030 einen Anteil von 36 bis 38 % und im Jahr 2040 einen Anteil von 40 bis 50 % ausmachen sollen, während der Anteil der Kernenergie (trotz der Erfahrungen mit einem schweren Unfall) bei etwa 20 % liegen soll.

Wie ist die Klima- und Energiepolitik Japans im Kontext der globalen Bemühungen zur Verhinderung der Klimakrise zu bewerten? Wir werden die Stärken und Schwächen der japanischen Politik im Lichte der Green-New-Deal-Politikvorschläge, die um 2020 in Europa und den Vereinigten Staaten Aufmerksamkeit erregten, und der Ergebnisse des Berichts „Net Zero by 2050“ (2021) der Internationalen Energieagentur (IEA) untersuchen. Die Energiewende erfordert politische Entscheidungen, und es ist notwendig, dass politische Parteien, deren Grundpolitik der Ausstieg aus der Kernenergie und die Dekarbonisierung ist, an die Macht kommen (oder dass die Regierung solche Grundpolitiken übernimmt und fördert). Wie wahrscheinlich ist dies jedoch derzeit? Wir werden dies anhand der Zusammensetzung der Sitze im Parlament, der Zustimmungswerte der politischen Parteien und der öffentlichen Meinung klären.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s11e11
Thursday 2026-01-08, 18:00~19:30 (CET, UTC +1h)

| Place | 

| Platform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s11/#e11.

This presentation will examine how Japanese emotions are shaped in its cultural context, focusing on amae, anxiety, pride, and embarrassment, through the theoretical frameworks of Cultural Psychology and Psychological Constructionism.

To show that emotions could be different between cultures, as a good example, the Japanese emotion, amae will be shortly discussed at the beginning. According to Doi (2007), amae refers to an implicit expectation of indulgent acceptance within relationships. It contrasts with American norms of independence where amae often remains unrecognized. This difference reveals that emotional concepts are culturally constructed.

Why do people experience particular emotions differently between cultures? To explain this point, the presentation will introduce Cultural Psychology and Psychological Constructionism. Cultural Psychology claims that culture shapes people’s psychological process including their cognition and emotion. Psychological Constructionism suggests that emotions are not innate biological entities, but socially/culturally constructed through language.

As for more examples to show that emotions could be different between cultures, the presentation will discuss the studies on anxiety, pride and embarrassment in Japanese culture. A study on Japanese students reveals that returnees, who have lived in western cultures and internalized independent self-construals, tend to report lower state anxiety in face-to-face conversations than non-returnee students (Sasaki, 2023).

Finally, the presentation will discuss a cross-cultural study on pride and embarrassment between Japanese and Americans (Lewis et al., 2010). It reveals that American children tend to express pride more frequently than Japanese children who often exhibit embarrassment even upon success instead. It suggests early internalization of modesty and group-oriented self-concepts. In the U.S., pride is viewed positively and promotes self-esteem. The presentation discusses that these differences in their emotional experiences tend to shape different communication styles between two cultures; Japanese are likely to minimize personal success, whereas Americans are likely to talk openly about their achievements.

In conclusion, the Japanese emotional landscape illustrates how culture constructs emotional experiences and communication patterns. Within the frameworks of Cultural Psychology and Psychological Constructionism, these findings highlight that emotions are culturally emergent phenomena rather than universal psychological entities.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s11e10
Thursday 2025-12-12, 18:00~19:30 (CET, UTC +1h)

| Place | 

| Platform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s11/#e10.

At the center of this paper are the countless textiles depicting modern war scenes that have been produced in Japan beginning with the 1894-95 Sino-Japanese war and continuing during the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05 to the Shōwa period. Between 1931 and 1942 textiles depicting modern war technology, tanks, airplanes and (happy looking boy) soldiers were sold to the Japanese mass market. Most of these war motif textiles were everyday clothes worn by all age groups and genders; they were cut in the Japanese style (e.g. kimono or haori jackets) and (probably less frequently) Western styles. These garments are part of a larger world of war themed material culture; this paper locates them at the conjuncture of (social) aesthetics, fashion, commercial interests and politics.

In Western scholarship, these textiles are best known as “propaganda kimonos”; however, this name obscures many aspects and foregrounds visual appearances over the actual practices of embodiment related to these objects. Textiles not only serve to display the designs but shelter and affect their wearers in many more complex ways. For example, the war motif textiles facilitated a bodily experience of the (changing) national identity during war times. The Japanese cut made their wearers feel comfortable. At the same time, as the patterns often included maps, globes and even images of tourism, these textiles operated as a sensory medium through which their owners literally could feel their place in the world from the comforts of home. As another example, the war themed textiles worn by children were a way to express the role of women in the war effort and also could serve as a quasi “magical” protection of the beloved kids.

In addition, it can be argued that the symbolic depiction of strength on the textiles constitutes a way of dealing with fears about the war instead of showing unwavering support. By facilitating the actual embodiment of different meanings the textiles contributed to the agency of their owners. Ambiguous (and sometimes even contradictory) practices show how material culture is an integral part of social aesthetics through which war is normalized and included in everyday life.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s11e09
Thursday 2025-12-04, 18:00~19:30 (CET, UTC +1h)

| Place | 

| Platform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s11/#e09.

Amid the rapid diversification of contemporary urban Japan, new ways of understanding how people live together are becoming essential. Approaching Tokyo through the combined lenses of superdiversity and intersectionality offers a pathway into this emerging complexity. Drawing on the monograph Spatial Diversity in the Global City: Transnational Tokyo (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024), this talk reframes the city as a constellation of overlapping mobilities, identities, and spatial practices that exceed conventional narratives of homogeneity in the context of urban (super-)diversity.

Superdiversity, rather than referring only to an increase in migrant numbers or countries of origin, captures the diversification within migrant populations themselves. It highlights the growing complexity of individual characteristics—such as gender, language, ethnicity, and religion—as well as migration-related dimensions including legal status, migration type, and the channels through which people move. This expanded understanding provides a lens for recognizing the multilayered heterogeneity emerging across Tokyo’s urban landscape.

However, while superdiversity has often been invoked as a celebratory concept associated with conviviality and multicultural encounters, this talk moves a step further by examining how superdiversity and intersectionality intersect conceptually and spatially within specific contexts. This reveals not only sites of encounter but also the uneven power relations, institutional structures, and socio-spatial dynamics that shape everyday urban life.

By approaching superdiversity through an intersectional spatial lens, the talk uncovers how differences are simultaneously produced, negotiated, and contested in Tokyo’s neighborhoods. It shows that superdiversity in global cities is not merely a demographic trend but a lived, relational condition embedded in urban space. Taken together, superdiversity and intersectionality offer a nuanced framework for understanding how urban coexistence is being reconfigured within Tokyo and across the wider network of global cities.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s11e08
Thursday 2025-11-27, 18:00~19:30 (CET, UTC +1h)

| Place | 

| Platform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s11/#e08.

Nach dem Aufkommen der Psychiatrie, Neurologie und Hirnforschung in Japan im späten 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert verbreitete sich dieses neue Wissen rasch über das Netzwerk der japanischen Universitäten. Es griff auch auf das besetzte Korea über, wo es an der neu gegründeten Kaiserlichen Universität Keijō weiteren Aufschwung erlangte. Allerdings war die Medizin kein neutrales Wissensgebiet, sondern wurde auch als Mittel zur rassistischen Agitation innerhalb der kolonialen Machtverhältnisse eingesetzt. So beschuldigte der japanische Anatomieprofessor Kubo Takeshi im Jahr 1921 koreanische Studenten, aus seiner Schädelkollektion gestohlen zu haben, ohne dafür Beweise vorzulegen. Seine Anschuldigung basierte ausschließlich auf der Überzeugung, dass ihre „rassische Konstitution“ minderwertig und daher anfälliger für kriminelle Handlungen sei. Der sogenannte „Kubo-Vorfall” ist als aufsehenerregendes Beispiel für wissenschaftlich getarnte Diskriminierung in die Geschichte eingegangen. Hoi-eun Kim (2013) zeigte, dass sich rassistische Darstellungen in der Anatomie nicht nur in den Handlungen japanischer Wissenschaftler manifestierten, sondern sich auch in den Reaktionen koreanischer Wissenschaftler, Journalisten und Studenten verinnerlicht hatten.

Der Vortrag soll die Aufmerksamkeit dann auf eine weitere, subtilere Geschichte mit rassistischen Motiven in der Medizin lenken. Das Durchdringen des äußerlichen Erscheinungsbildes von Menschen bis hin zum im Kopf verborgenen Gehirn bot neue Möglichkeiten, „rassische“ Hierarchien innerhalb eines sich wandelnden Kolonialregimes aufrechtzuerhalten. Und zwar in einem Regime, das seine Macht zunehmend durch Assimilation statt durch Differenzierung festigte. Die historische Episode ist erneut mit dem Namen Kubo verbunden. Diesmal handelt es sich jedoch nicht um den Anatomen, sondern um den Neurologen Kubo Kiyoji.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s11e07
Thursday 2025-11-20, 18:00~19:30

| Place | 

| Platform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s11/#e07.

Studies of state governance have long excluded the family from their scope due to the conventional liberal understanding of the public-private divide. Feminist critiques, particularly those in the field of Feminist Political Economy, have challenged this view by highlighting that families play a vital role in reproducing a national economy and a nation-state by maintaining the current workforce/citizens and replenishing the future one. As Melinda Cooper has discussed, the spread of neoliberal financial capitalism, which emphasises individualisation as a normative value and operates transnationally, has not fundamentally transformed the functioning and understanding of the family as the backbone of everyday stability, happiness, and well-being. Or rather, according to Wendy Brown, its significance as a safe haven in the competitive socio-economic environment has been strengthened. In this way, the sound biological, economic, and socio-political reproduction based on gender roles within the family remains part of the state governance system, which maintains and further develops nation-states and national economies.

The trajectory of Japan’s governance system since the mid-19th century presents an intriguing case study for examining the political functions the family has played. By referring to the concept of governmentality, which operates through two distinct types of power—biopolitics and necropolitics — the lecture aims to illuminate the ways in which the family is situated within the modern and neoliberalized governance system in Japan, being mobilised for the governing of the nation-state and national economy. This enables us to grasp the crucial importance of gender when studying the Japanese governance system.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s11e06
Thursday 2025-11-13, 18:00~19:30

| Place | 

| Platform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s11/#e06.

War, defeat, and the collapse of empire in 1945 touched every aspect of postwar Japanese society, profoundly shaping how the Japanese would reconstruct national identity and reengage with the peoples of Asia. While “America” offered a vision of re-genesis after cataclysmic ruin, “Asia” exposed the trauma of perpetration and the torment of ethnic responsibility. Obscured in the shadows of a resurgent postwar Japan lurked a postimperial specter whose haunting presence both complicated and confounded the spiritual rehabilitation of the nation.

In this presentation Simon Avenell will discuss his book, Asia and Postwar Japan: Deimperialization, Civic Activism, and National Identity (Harvard Asia Center, 2022). The book examines processes of deimperialization in Japan from 1945 until the early twenty-first century. It focuses on the thought and activism of progressive activists and intellectuals as they struggled to overcome rigid preconceptions about “Asia,” as they grappled with the implications of postimperial responsibility, and as they forged new regional solidarities and Asian imaginaries. The book aims to reveal the critical importance of Asia in postwar Japanese thought, activism, and politics―Asia as a symbolic geography, Asia as a space for grassroots engagement, and ultimately, Asia as an aporia of identity and the source of a new politics of hope.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s11e05
Thursday 2025-11-06, 18:00~19:30

| Place | 

| Platform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s11/#e05.

The labour shortages experienced by Japan due to societal aging are a harbinger of challenges soon to face nations throughout the developed world. Immigration has long been considered one of the fastest ways to counter this problem, but Japanese governments have been notoriously cautious about adopting this strategy. This volume is the first to examine migration in Japan from the view of sustainable society and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, including ‘Good Health and Wellbeing’, ‘Decent Work’, and ‘Reduced Inequalities’. While migrants are frequently rendered policy tools or policy problems, the chapters contribute important empirical and historical insights into the human face of migration. The book addresses a broad range of issues, including migrants’ diverse contribution to urban society, minority aging, caregiving, and hate speech. How do Vietnamese villagers secure employment in Japan, and why do some disappear? Can the circular migration of Southeast Asian nurses under EPA agreements be sustained? With many of these groups and issues having rarely been addressed in English-language scholarship thus far, this book offers an invaluable bridge between scholars based in Japan and around the world. The voices, analyses and recommendations offered here will be of interest to scholars, policymakers, and third-sector actors supporting migrants.

In this talk, I give an overview of the key contributions from each chapter before focusing in on Chapter 6, which is about online ‘hate speech’. This chapter calls for attending to Japan’s unique techno-social context when studying this phenomenon, and for the centring of racism within this. With renewed academic and media attention to ‘anti-foreigner’ sentiment in the wake of Sanseito’s recent electoral breakthrough, now is an important moment to consider carefully the direction of scholarship on online hate and the implications of this for equality and social justice for migrants and ethnic minority groups in Japan.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s11e04
Thursday 2025-10-30, 18:00~19:30

| Place | 

| Platform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s11/#e04.

Does language impact social issues such as poverty, poor health, or wellbeing? Across the world, Indigenous language speakers are shifting from their ancestral languages to dominant regional or national languages. Originally, this language shift was seen as progress and successful integration into mainstream society, but abandoning ancestral languages is now viewed differently. The focus has shifted onto the utilities and advantages of maintaining, revitalizing, or reclaiming ancestral languages. In line with this epistemological shift, the study of language endangerment and wellbeing has emerged as a new subfield in sociolinguistics.

Research across various societies has identified key factors influencing wellbeing, such as health, education, housing, job satisfaction, and leisure. Until recently, language choices and practices were not included in this framework. My presentation is divided into three sections: first, I briefly review current research on language and wellbeing; second, I discuss how the suppression of ancestral languages has harmed the Ainu and Ryukyuans; and third, I explore whether maintaining Ainu and Ryukyuan languages correlates with higher wellbeing. To investigate this, I conducted two quantitative surveys in Amami and Okinawa. I analyze the link between Ryukyuan language proficiency and wellbeing measures (Subjective Happiness Scale, Cantril’s Ladder, Satisfaction with Life Scale), considering identity, social capital, and decolonization of the mind as moderating factors.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s11e03
Thursday 2025-10-23, 18:00~19:30

| Place | 

| Platform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s11/#e03.

The content of school education in Japan is determined by the Courses of Study issued by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology. Sexuality education is not a distinct subject in Japan, but it is incorporated into various subjects, including science, home economics, and health and physical education. However, the Course of Study for physical education in middle schools in Japan includes a regulation known as the “restriction clause,” which states, “From the perspective that maturation begins during puberty that enables pregnancy and childbirth, the subject of fertilization and pregnancy shall be addressed, but the progression of pregnancy shall not be addressed.” This restriction prevents students from receiving scientifically accurate sexuality education, and even today, teaching about “sexual intercourse” is still suppressed in elementary and middle schools.

Our research group has been conducting nationwide surveys since 1974 to understand the actual state of sexual behavior and attitudes among adolescents. This survey was initially commissioned by the Prime Minister’s Office at that time, due to concerns that sexual behavior was becoming increasingly disorganized as Japan experienced rapid economic growth and improved living standards. Since then, researchers have run surveys every six years, with the latest survey completed in 2023. To date, more than 100,000 people have participated, providing valuable insights into shifts in sexual behavior and attitudes across various generations.

In this presentation, we will examine trends in the sexual behavior of adolescents in Japan and issues in sexuality education through the analysis of nationwide survey data. Specifically, we will discuss recent changes in sexuality education in schools, which have been criticized as “passive,” and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the sexual behavior of adolescents.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s11e02
Thursday 2025-10-16, 18:00~19:30

| Place | 

| Platform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s11/#e02.

The countries of Austria and Japan have a rich history of appreciating the aesthetic qualities of their natural environments. It can thus be deduced that the probability of these two nations protecting their natural environment and finding nature-based solutions to problems of modern life in cities is high. Despite the potential endorsement of this perspective by marketing and tourism agencies, the prevailing reality often exhibits significant discrepancies. Human nature frequently stands in opposition to the requirements of nature, culminating in the implementation of greening strategies that, at best, serve as mere disguises rather than authentic solutions.

In this presentation, a critical perspective on nature-based solutions in the cities of Vienna and Tokyo will provide an empirical basis for a broader discussion about green gentrification, local climate action and sustainable urban development. This contribution will inform the ongoing social and environmental discussion of how we can create sustainable urban areas for a better future. 

The present study utilises extensive fieldwork data, integrating it with extant quantitative findings to demonstrate that we can derive insights from both successful and unsuccessful projects and examples in Tokyo and Vienna. This approach is informed by the notion that human nature and human needs are inherently universal. In order to be considered a suitable location for human habitation, a city must be ecologically sustainable. Consequently, there is a necessity to prioritise the pursuit of nature-based solutions.

| Bio |

Florian Purkarthofer is a researcher at the Department of East Asian Studies, Faculty of Philological and Cultural Studies, University of Vienna, Austria and interested in urban studies, hetero-/utopias as critique, and research on sensation and perception in contemporary societies. He is currently working on a project on urban space in Tokyo as a nexus of conflicting individual perceptions and social constructions, by employing experimental methods from multisensory anthropology. Further projects aim at delving into human and non-human co-creation of urban spaces and the social life of digital sensations.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lunch lecture | s11e01
Thursday 2025-10-09, 10:00~11:30

| Place | 

| Platform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s11/#e01.

Dank der tatkräftigen Unterstützung unserer Sponsoren, des unermüdlichen Engagements unserer Mitarbeiter*innen und ganz besonders der Bereitschaft der international gefragten Vortragenden nach Wien zu kommen, starten wir ab dem 9. Oktober 2025 in eine neue Saison der u:japan lectures.

Auch ein erster Programmüberblick darf hier schon präsentiert werden:

Termine und Vortragenden | Season 11 | Autumn 2025/26

ID              Date*               Mode**          Guest / Lecturer

s11e01     2025-10-09     hybrid (en)     Florian Purkarthofer
s11e02     2025-10-16     hybrid (en)     Yusuke Hayashi
s11e03     2025-10-23     hybrid (de)     Patrick Heinrich
s11e04     2025-10-30     hybrid (en)     Natalie-Anne Hall
s11e05     2025-11-06     hybrid (en)     Simon Avenell
s11e06     2025-11-13     hybrid (en)     Takeda Hiroko
s11e07     2025-11-20     hybrid (de)     Bernhard Leitner
s11e08     2025-11-27     hybrid (en)     Yamamura Sakura
s11e09     2025-12-04     hybrid (en)     Klaus Friese
s11e10     2025-12-11     hybrid (en)     Yumi Sasaki
s11e11     2026-01-08     hybrid (de)     Park Seong-Joon
s11e12     2025-01-15     hybrid (en)     Stevie Suan
s11e13     2025-01-22     hybrid (en)     Kentaro Asai
s11e14     2025-01-29     onsite (en)     Carolin Fleischer-Heininger

*Date & Time: Thursdays from 18:00 to 19:30, LL = Lunch Lectures are usally from 12:00 to 13:30
**Mode & Language:
onsite = Seminarraum 1 @ Department of East Asian Studies, Japanese Studies (University of Veinna Campus, Spitalgasse 2, Hof 2.4, 1090 Vienna)
online = via Zoom (no registration necessary)
hybrid = onsite and live stream via Zoom
en = English, jp = Japanese, de =German
Records: Only lecture conducted in online or hybrid mode will be recorded and available as view on demand lectures in the recorded lectures section.

Dank der tatkräftigen Unterstützung unserer Sponsoren, des unermüdlichen Engagements unserer Mitarbeiter*innen und ganz besonders der Bereitschaft der international gefragten Vortragenden nach Wien zu kommen, starten wir ab dem 13. März 2025 in eine neue Saison der u:japan lectures.

Auch ein erster Programmüberblick darf hier schon präsentiert werden:

Termine und Vortragenden | Season 10 | Spring 2025

ID              Date*               Mode**          Guest / Lecturer
s10e01     2025-03-13     hybrid (en)     Brigitte Pickl-Kolaczia
s10e02     2025-03-20     hybrid (en)    Toku Satoko
s10e03     2025-03-27     hybrid (de)     Sepp Linhart
s10e04     2025-04-03     hybrid (en)     Hitomi Koyama
s10e05     2025-04-10     hybrid (en)     Chigusa Yamaura

s10e06     2025-05-08     hybrid (en)     Marco Reggiani
s10e07     2025-05-15     hybrid (en)     Anna Viktoria Vittinghof
s10e08     2025-05-22     hybrid (de)     Dorothea Mladenova

s10e09     2025-06-05     hybrid (en)     Volker Elis
s10e10     2025-06-12     hybrid (en)     Andrew Littlejohn

s10e11     2025-06-26     online LL (en)     Sebastian Polak-Rottmann

*Date & Time: Thursdays from 18:00 to 19:30, LL = Lunch Lectures are usally from 12:00 to 13:30
**Mode & Language:
onsite = Seminarraum 1 @ Department of East Asian Studies, Japanese Studies (University of Veinna Campus, Spitalgasse 2, Hof 2.4, 1090 Vienna)
online = via Zoom (no registration necessary)
hybrid = onsite and live stream via Zoom
en = English, jp = Japanese, de =German
Records: Only lecture conducted in online or hybrid mode, will be recorded and available as view on demand lectures in the recorded lectures section.

Well-being and happiness are closely related to our everyday lives, have been addressed by policies and societal discourses and can be a stimulating subject for private conversations. In research, subjective well-being is often measured at an individual level, focusing on experiences and self-ratings of participants of larger cross-national studies. While such surveys have their merits, they can cover the (personal, local or societal) context of the complex experience of well-being only to a limited degree. This talk first introduces dominant discourses on well-being in Austria and Japan, illustrating differences and similarities across these societies. Second, I will depart from a comparison of statistics, taking a deeper look into the well-being of some residents in a rural region on Kyushu island in Japan. I will introduce an approach of well-being that is grounded in the natural environment of the area and the activities of everyday life in rural society. I will demonstrate how doing something to make someone happy, turns out to be a positive experience for oneself, too. This reciprocal and processual understanding of well-being encourages us to understand well-being and happiness to be something experienced together rather than being entirely restricted to the individual – not only in Japan, but also in Austria or any other society. 

| Bio |

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s10e11
Thursday 2025-06-26 | 15:30 ~ 17:00 JST | 8:30 ~ 10:00 CEST

| Place | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s10/#e11.

As oceans rise worldwide, many governments are intensifying efforts to defend the towns and cities bordering them. Within this context, advocates of coastal infrastructure often argue the only way to protect people is to separate the sea from society through complex new systems of seawalls, dikes, and canals. However, after Japan's triple disaster of 2011, many tsunami survivors resisted attempts to protect the northeastern coastline through new infrastructures. In this talk—based on a forthcoming book—I ask why people who had experienced disaster refused things that should prevent it from happening again. By examining conflicts between disaster survivors, tsunami scientists, and officials in northeastern Japan, I illustrate a core paradox of efforts to harden and manage coastal edges: how safety infrastructures can undermine the very objects—social worlds—they claim to protect. Drawing on alternatives proposed by survivors, I ask how we might “ecologize safety” instead and discuss a new project exploring this in the context of climate change.

The bulk of the talk draws on 18 months of ethnographic research on fukkō machizukuri in Minamisanriku: a town on northeastern Japan’s Sanriku Coast. 831 residents died during the tsunami, and afterward, many survivors attributed those deaths to seawalls built in the 1960s. They said that by dividing people and the sea, the walls created a false sense of security. Their establishment also prevented alternatives drawing on older, more entangled organizations of sea and society, some argued. However, tsunami scientists and civil engineers proposed hardening the edge further, advocating what Japanese scholars called a “total system” of protection. I ask why and how some survivors resisted this system and explore the alternatives they proposed, from planting protective forests to repurposing “animal trails” (kemonomichi) as evacuation routes. Theorizing those alternatives as attempts to “ecologize safety,” I describe how they have motivated my new research project on nature-based “climate infrastructure,” adaptation, and citizenship in Japan and beyond. 

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s10e10
Thursday 2025-06-12, 18:00~19:30

| Place | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s10/#e10.

Das schlanke Management hat japanische Wurzeln und wurde seit den achtziger Jahren von zahlreichen Unternehmen des globalen Nordens kopiert. Nachdem eine Studie diesem Modus der Arbeits- und Produktionsorganisation eine überlegene Wettbewerbsfähigkeit bescheinigt hatte, überschlugen sich damals die Ereignisse in den Konzernzentralen. Just-in-time, Total Quality Control, Kaizen und Gruppenarbeit japanischen Zuschnitts wurden so im Zuge eines weltweiten Hypes, der nicht zuletzt auch durch die „Japan-Panik“ befeuert wurde, zum fast selbstverständlichen Bestandteil des betriebswirtschaftlichen Repertoires. Nachdem die Umstrukturierung zunächst in der Fertigung des verarbeitenden Sektors Fuß gefasst hatte, wurden die Konzepte auch im Dienstleistungsbereich großflächig angewendet und um weitere Werkzeuge ergänzt, die Bereiche wie die Produktentwicklung mit einschlossen.

Auf der Grundlage einer Auswertung der vorliegenden Fallstudien aus japanischen Unternehmen, Transplants und Joint Ventures sowie Unternehmen ohne japanische Beteiligung zeige ich, wie sich durch die Anwendung der Standardtools das innerbetriebliche Machtverhältnis verschiebt und welche Vor- und Nachteile sich für die Beschäftigten ergeben. Daran anschließend zeige ich auf, warum man Lean Management als ideologisches Konstrukt bezeichnen kann, in dem sich die stereotype Sicht japanischer Arbeitsbeziehungen spiegelt. Dies hatte dazu geführt, dass Japan vom Management der Gewerkschaftsseite in strategischer Weise mal als Vor- und mal als Feindbild instrumentalisiert wurde. Ein diskursiv besonders umkämpftes Feld bildete dabei Lean Management als Mittel zur Humanisierung der Arbeitswelt.
Weiterhin gehe ich darauf ein, auf welche Weise der Wandel der Kontrollformen, der Subjektivierungsanforderungen und der Modi der Leistungsbewertung und Überwachung auf den Bereich der Büroarbeit übertragen wurde. Zum Abschluss meines Vortrags führe ich theoretische Ansätze aus der Regulationstheorie und den Cultural Studies zusammen, um zu erörtern, auf welche Weise das toyotistische Dispositiv aus der Arbeitswelt mit den Lebenswelten der Gegenwartsgesellschaft korrespondiert und welche Veränderungen sich bezüglich der herrschenden Rechtfertigungslogiken in- und außerhalb Japans ergeben. 

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s10e09
Thursday 2025-06-05, 18:00~19:30

| Place | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s10/#e09.

Discussions about Japan’s “super-aging society” (chō-kōrei shakai) often focus on elder care, pension and long-term care funding, the low birthrate, labor shortages, and rural depopulation. In my research, I explored this discourse through the lens of death and dying. As thanatologist Kotani Midori noted in 2014, “The flipside of a super-aged society is a society of many deaths (tashi shakai)”. From the perspective of governmentality studies, such labels frame social conditions as problems and prescribe ways of dealing with them.

One such response is shūkatsu (終活, end-of-life planning), a practice introduced by the funeral industry and briefly turned into a media buzzword. Here, responsibility is individualized: “We have entered an era in which everyone must think about their own death,” claimed the Shūkatsu Counselor Association in 2014. While making arrangements for one’s own death is not new, shūkatsu takes a specific form within neoliberal contexts—as a technology of the self aimed at optimizing outcomes and aligning personal responsibility with collective benefit.

In the first part of the lecture, I examine how the shūkatsu industry mobilizes demographic discourse to activate individuals to manage their own death. At its core, however, this content marketing strategy is a response to declining revenues in the funeral industry, triggered by changing consumer behavior and the emergence of online discount platforms, as well as an attempt to tap into the wealth of older urban residents.

In the second part, drawing on structured interviews, I explore how those targeted by the shūkatsu program respond—ranging from active engagement and pragmatic adaptation to hesitation and outright rejection. They share a common desire not to become a burden on their children or society, and to die as quietly and smoothly as possible (pin pin korori). 

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s10e08
Thursday 2025-05-22, 18:00~19:30

| Place | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s10/#e08.

The early 1970s saw a significant victory for the radical feminist movement ūman ribu in Japan, which successfully campaigned against a proposed revision of the Eugenics Protection Law (EPL; Yūsei hogohō) that threatened women's reproductive autonomy and expanded state intervention. However, without the leadership of ūman ribu which disbanded in 1977, new groups were needed to mobilise protest. First and foremost was the group that came to be known as SOSHIREN - From My Body, from Women's Bodies (Onna (watashi) no karada kara), founded in 1982, which spearheaded challenges to the intersection of reproductive politics and eugenics in Japan for the next three decades. Its diverse membership underscored a commitment to an intersectional analysis of reproductive rights and bodily autonomy.

This talk examines the pivotal role of ūman ribu and subsequent activism in challenging eugenic policies and advocating for reproductive justice in Japan from the 1970s to the mid-1990s. It analyzes how ūman ribu, sparked by the EPL revision debates, fostered an intersectional critique of state control and the devaluation of disabled lives, and won a key victory in the early 1970s. The paper then explores the continuation of this stance in the post-ūman ribu era, focusing on the emergence of SOSHIREN in 1982 in response to renewed attempts at revision. Building on the feminist critiques of the 1970s, SOSHIREN's diverse membership broadened the focus beyond access to abortion to formulate an inclusive, intersectional, and explicitly anti-eugenic reproductive politics. Through SOSHIREN's activism and the legacy of activist Yonezu Tomoko, this analysis argues that ūman ribu's intersectional ideas provided a crucial foundation for sustained grassroots challenges to eugenics and the dominant valuation of productivity, ultimately shaping reproductive justice activism in Japan until 1996 and involving the negotiation of different activist generations.

| Bio |

Dr. Anna-Viktoria Vittinghoff is a Lecturer in East Asian Studies at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the activism of Yonezu Tomoko, a significant figure in both the Japanese women's liberation (ūman ribu) and disability movements from the 1970s to 1996, as explored in her doctoral work. Her broader research interests include eugenic legacies in postwar Japan and East Asia, and social activism at the intersection of gender and disability.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s10e07
Thursday 2025-05-15, 18:00~19:30

| Place | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s10/#e07.

Japan’s severe population decline is seriously threatening many of the country’s municipalities, particularly those located in peripheral regions that are far from the economic core of the country. All levels of government have hurried to apply strategies aiming at stopping decay and the development of infrastructure is met with high expectations for new prosperity.

The talk focuses on the extension of the Tōhoku Shinkansen north of Morioka to explore outcomes of Japan’s approach to regional (re)vitalisation through large-scale infrastructure projects, highlighting the evidence and challenges that have emerged. The talk will first introduce the socio-economic and territorial impacts of high-speed rail, as well as planning challenges in shrinking cities and peripheral regions. It will then discuss whether the Shinkansen had a positive effect on the shrinking trajectories of Iwate, Ninohe, Hachinohe, Shichinohe, and Aomori—five medium and small-sized cities and towns that were connected to the Shinkansen network between 2002 and 2010. Finally, the talk will present insights from the Japan Foundation-funded project “Revitalizing Shrinking Cities in Japan: A Study on the Socio-Spatial Impact of the Shinkansen in Aomori Prefecture”, which investigated urban landscape transformation around Shinkansen stations. While focusing on the Tōhoku Shinkansen extension as a prominent example, the talk reflects on broader strategies aimed at addressing demographic and economic challenges in regional Japan, highlighting both the opportunities and limitations of such interventions.

| Bio |

Dr Marco Reggiani is an interdisciplinary researcher at the University of Strathclyde. His works address topics of urban and regional (re)vitalisation, peripherality, sustainability, as well as social justice, intersectionality, and inclusive education. Marco was the recipient of a Japan Foundation Fellowship for the “Revitalising Shrinking Cities in Japan” project, which focused on examining the impact of the Shinkansen on urban landscapes and shrinking trajectories of connected cities in Aomori Prefecture. His current research has focused on peripheral and depopulating regions to explore the role played by sustainable paradigms in reimagining the future of shrinking municipalities in rural Japan.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s10e06
Thursday 2025-05-08, 18:00~19:30

| Place | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s10/#e06.

Shōshi kōreika (low birth rate and ageing population) is a phrase that has become ubiquitous in the everyday political and social landscape of Japan, acting as a shorthand for a whole range of anxieties and concerns. Much political, public and academic attention has been devoted to analysing the causes and possible solutions to the shrinking population. This lecture also addresses Japan's demographic crisis. However, rather than offering solutions or exploring the causes, I would like to offer a different approach. In this talk, I will ask how Japan's 'demographic crisis' functions as a cultural discourse, a set of narratives, and a form of governmentality that intersects with and shapes how people within Japanese society navigate their engagement as civil society actors, their sense of Japanese identity, and even their intimate lives and desires. 

The first part of the talk will address how the discourses of demographic crisis have become a hegemonic cultural narrative. The second part of the talk will focus on a specific issue - childcare provision - to analyse the changing rhetoric, meanings and experiences of working mothers against an evolving social, economic and demographic backdrop. I will show that while the idea of women's liberation was the starting point for expanding childcare provision, it is framed today as the liberation of women's (presumed) desire for motherhood in the context of the demographic crisis. Ultimately, the talk aims to rethink the role of the demographic crisis narrative in contemporary Japanese society.

| Bio |

Chigusa Yamaura is sociocultural anthropologist and currently a Departmental Lecturer at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, University of Oxford. She is the author of Marriage and Marriageability: The Practices of Matchmaking between Men from Japan and Women from Northeast China (Cornell University Press 2020). Her work addresses a broad array of topics, including gender, marriage, cross-border marriage, family, life course expectations, motherhood, reproduction, childcare, and fertility as well as migration, colonial memory, and transnationalism in East Asia. Her current research examines shifting conceptions of motherhood against the backdrop of demographic change in Japan. Her most recent publications are "The Cultural Politics of Childcare Provision in the Era of a Shrinking Japan" from Critical Asian Studies (2020) and “An Imagined Shrinking Community: Japanese Nationalism and the Chronology of the Future” from Japanese Studies (2024). 

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s10e05
Thursday 2025-04-10, 18:00~19:30

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s10/#e05.

When US President George W. Bush declared victory in Iraq in 2007, he addressed the veterans that bringing democracy to the Middle East will be feasible because Americans have already accomplished this before in Japan. In the narration of US-led liberal international order, Japan became the symbol of a successfully rehabilitated former enemy that is now a thriving liberal democracy. Little did Bush know that across the Pacific, while the United States was touting Japan as the success case, the Japanese were using an epithet against one another, that the Japanese people have become "pacifically demented [heiwa boke],"—that is, demented, because of peace brought under Pax Americana.

The epithet is ubiquitous. Explanation as to why one couldn't prevent the assassination of Shinzo Abe is "pacific dementia," youths standing in demonstration declare themselves as "pacifically demented," stump speeches on the street calls for the need to "awaken the Japanese people who have become pacifically demented"—while the phrase does not appear in polite Defense White Papers, the epithet can be found in comic books, in sensational magazine headlines, in heated National Diet Sessions, and in everyday references as a shorthand for the Japanese people's inability to realistically think about war, peace, and security. This raises a question, how does an epithet which pairs peace with dementia—a condition which is negative as it pertains to deterioration of thought—become ubiquitous in a pro-US state such as Japan? The fact that the epithet is always paired, instead of being used as "you are demented,"—calls for a historicized investigation.

In this talk, I argue that attending to this polymorphous epithet can reveal important features of contemporary Japanese politics. I ask what kind of work does the epithet do? How does the epithet work to constitute progressives as out of touch with reality? How has the figure of the "pacifically demented" worked as foil for the realist and the conservatives to normalize their political vision? How is the interpellation, that "you are pacifically demented" paralyzing, but also giving rise to a countering subject?

| Bio |

Hitomi Koyama (Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore) is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Humanities, Leiden University, the Netherlands. She is an international relations theorist working at the intersection of comparative political theory, global intellectual history, and Japanese international political thought. Her first book, "On the Persistence of the Japanese History Problem: Historicism and the International Politics of History" (Routledge, 2018) asks why postwar Japanese society remains caught in an impasse over atonement for its imperialist past. Her most recent publication is "Supposing the moral state: Japan and historical justice under liberal internationalism," International Affairs (2023). She is now currently working on her second monograph on Pacific Dementia, asking what the sudden proliferation of the epithet in post-Cold War Japan says about the reappraisal of Pax Americana in a state where more than eighty percent of the population feels affinity for the United States.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s10e04
Thursday 2025-04-03, 18:00~19:30

| Place | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s10/#e04.

Vom 2. September 1914 bis zum 7. November 1914 kämpfte Japan gegen Deutschland um das deutsche Pachtgebiet Tsingtau in Kiautschou auf der Shandong-Halbinsel in China. Auch Österreich war auf Seiten Deutschlands mit Teilen der Besatzung des Stationsschiffs Kaiserin Elisabeth an den Kampfhandlungen beteiligt. Nach der deutschen Kapitulation kamen etwa 5000 Soldaten in japanische Gefangenschaft, viele bis 1920. 

Trotz der kurzen, nur zehnwöchigen Dauer der Kämpfe erschienen hunderte Kriegspropagandabildpostkarten, die die Alliierten einschließlich Japans oder auch nur Japan zum Inhalt hatten. Viele dieser Bilder hatten auch Entsprechungen in deutschen und österreichischen satirischen Zeitschriften. Etwa 6 Millionen Postkarten, meist Bildpostkarten, wurden täglich an die Front bzw. in die Heimat verschickt, so dass die Rolle dieses Bildmediums gar nicht hoch genug eingeschätzt werden kann. 

In meinem Vortrag versuche ich, etwa 400 solcher Bildpostkarten aus meiner eigenen Sammlung, aus Publikationen oder aus dem Internet zu analysieren. Da Deutschland ab 1915 bereits eine Politik der Annäherung an Japan betrieb, wurden ab 1916 abfällige Publikationen und Illustrationen über Japan verboten. 

Auch wenn solcherart deutsche und österreichische Kriegspropagandakarten gegen Japan ein äußerst kurzlebiges Phänomen waren, dürften sie, da sie die bereits in der Bevölkerung vorhandenen antijapanischen Stereotypen bündelten und verstärkten, unser Japan-Bild maßgeblich beeinflusst haben. In diesem Vortrag versuche ich eine statistische Analyse der Inhalte dieser Karten vorzunehmen und die wesentlichen Inhalte dieser antijapanischen Propaganda herauszuarbeiten. Neben den beiden bereits hinlänglich bekannten Stereotypen von Japan als „Affen“ und als „Gelbe Gefahr“ werden auf etlichen Karten die Japaner auch als „Wilde“ und „Unzivilisierte“ gezeichnet, was meiner Meinung zum Teil auf den Hass auf England, dessen Verbündeter Japan seit 1902 war, zurückzuführen ist.    

| Bio |

Sepp LINHART habilitierte sich 1976 mit der Monographie Arbeit, Freizeit und Familie in Japan (Institut für Asienkunde, Hamburg) für das Fach Japanologie an der Universität Wien und war dann ab Februar 1978 bis zu seiner Emeritierung im September 2012 durch 69 Semester ordentlicher Professor für Japanologie. Während dieser Zeit nahm er Gastprofessuren an der University of Washington in Seattle, an der Universität Kyoto, am International Institute for Japanese Studies in Kyoto, an der Universität Tampere, an der Universität Paris VII und an der Momoyama Gakuin Universität in Osaka wahr, von der er auch ein Ehrendoktorat erhielt. Für sein auf Japanisch geschriebenes Buch Ken no bunka-shi (Kulturgeschichte des Ken-Spiels, Verlag Kadokawa, 1998) erhielt er 2005 den Yamagata  Bantō-Preis. Er verfasste acht Monographien und gab 34 Sammelbände heraus. Insgesamt ist er für über 200 wissenschaftliche Aufsätze verantwortlich, die auf Deutsch, Japanisch Englisch, Französisch, Italienisch, Litauisch, Ungarisch und Arabisch erschienen. Er betreute ca. 40 Dissertationen und 160 Magister- und Master-Arbeiten. Sein besonderes Interesse gilt der Erforschung von Arbeit und Freizeit, der Populärkultur und von Karikaturen in Japan vom 19. Jh. bis zur Gegenwart sowie dem Wandel des Japan-Bildes im Westen.  

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s10e03
Thursday 2025-03-27, 18:00~19:30

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s10/#e03.

Sanctions are a key diplomatic tool to address international security threats through economic and political restrictions. They are designed to deter aggression, enforce compliance with international norms, and safeguard global stability. As the UN Security Council Resolutions (UNSCRs) are binding measures adopted by UN Security Council, the sanctions provided by UNSCRs can take various forms, including trade restrictions, asset freezes, and travel bans, each tailored to curb illicit activities and pressure targeted entities into adherence with international regulations. Japan has been implementing the UNSCRs against North Korea since 2006 in response to its nuclear and missile programs, aligning with broader UN Security Council (UNSC) efforts to limit Pyongyang’s access to resources that could further its military ambitions. As a key player in the enforcement and monitoring of these sanctions, Japan works alongside international partners to ensure their effectiveness while navigating complex regional security dynamics.
This lecture provides an overview of UNSC sanctions on North Korea, analyzing their diplomatic significance and broader implications. It will focus on three key areas: first, the structure and function of UNSC sanctions, including their objectives and enforcement mechanisms; second, their impact on academic exchanges and research collaborations; and finally, recent developments and challenges, such as North Korea’s cyber activities and evolving sanction evasion tactics. By exploring these aspects, the lecture offers insight into Japan’s foreign policy and its role within the global security framework.

| Bio |

Ms TOKU Satoko (徳聡子) is a Japanese diplomat currently serving as the Deputy Chief of Mission (Minister-Counsellor) at the Embassy of Japan in Austria since September 2024. With over three decades of experience in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) of Japan, she has served in various roles in foreign policy, international trade, and multilateral diplomacy.
Her international postings include diplomatic assignments in the United Kingdom, Myanmar, Vienna, and Geneva. In the latter two, she represented Japan in major global organizations such as UNHCR, OCHA, and UNODC. In Japan, she held key positions related to international trade negotiations, including the negotiation of investment agreements and FTAs (e.g. the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Japan-EU, Japan-Canada, and RCEP).
Before being assigned to Austria, she was the Director of the United Nations Sanctions Division (2021-2024), overseeing Japan’s approach to global sanctions and international security and was thus involved in the UN Security Council and sanction discussions on North Korea.
Ms. Toku holds a degree from Sophia University in Tokyo as well as Emmanuel College, Cambridge University, and joined the MOFA in 1991.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s10e02
Thursday 2025-03-20, 18:00~19:30

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s10/#e02.

Tokugawa Mitsukuni’s religious policies in Mito domain during the 1660s are famous for their radical retrenchment of Buddhist institutions but were also designed to promote a system of one shrine per village. Mitsukuni aimed at a complete separation of Shinto shrines from Buddhism. As such, I regard his measures as a typical case of Domain Shinto (hanyrō shintō 藩領神道).
   Domain Shinto is an umbrella term that subsumes a cluster of religious policies and ideas beginning in the early Edo period that are related to Shinto. It is a terminus ex post that does not exist in any primary source and does not correspond to any of the Shinto schools in early modern Japan. Rather, Domain Shinto describes a set of policies that were based on an amalgamation of ideological thoughts. These include anti-Buddhist ideas, a neo-Confucian morality and historical interpretation, and the ideal of Japan as a divine country (shinkoku 神国) prior to the advent of Buddhism.
   In the case of Mito, Domain Shinto measures included a drastic reduction of Buddhist temples, a severe curtailing of the Hachiman faith (a deity with particularly strong Buddhist connotations) and the strengthening of Shinto shrines and shrine priests. After Mitsukuni stepped down as lord of Mito in 1690, his nephew and successor Tsunaeda adopted his uncle’s views and continued ‘shintoizing’ the domain. In the first half of the nineteenth century, Tokugawa Nariaki renewed Mitsukuni’s and Tsunaeda’s efforts. In contrast to his ancestors, his measures showed a stronger anti-Buddhist aspect and were implemented more aggressively.
   In my talk, I describe the measures by Mitsukuni and his successors Tsunaeda and Nariaki and their impact on the population through a case study of the village of Noguchi in northwestern Mito. I examine changes to the villagers’ religious practice as well as to their networks that were influenced by religious traditions.

| Bio |

Brigitte Pickl-Kolaczia studied Japanese studies at the University of Vienna with a focus on the history of religion. Her research interests include the dynamics and interactions between Buddhism and Shintō. While her master's thesis of 2015 examined the development of a state cult around the imperial family through the restoration of imperial tombs in the 19th century, the focus of her research has since shifted to questions regarding religious practice of Japan's populace during the early modern period. She has recently finished her PhD thesis on religious policies in early modern Mito and the impact of these policies on the domain’s population. She conducted her research for this thesis as part of two projects funded by the Austrian Science Fund at the Institute of the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia at the Austrian Academy of sciences. She is a co-editor of the 2021 volume Religion, Power, and the Rise of Shinto.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s10e01
Thursday 2025-03-13, 18:00~19:30

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s10/#e01.

Japans Außenhandel und Japans Handelspolitik haben sich von den 1950er Jahren bis heute in bemerkenswerter Weise gewandelt und sich flexibel situationsbedingt an die strukturellen Veränderungen und das globale wirtschaftliche Umfeld angepasst. Galt Japan einstmals als protektionistischer Trittbrettfahrer des multilateralen GATT-Welthandelssystems, so ist die gegenwärtige handelspolitische Ausrichtung Japans ausgesprochen liberal. International positioniert sich die Inselnation Japan als Multilateralist und Freihändler. Während im 20. Jahrhundert noch jeglicher handelspolitische Bilateralismus strikt abgelehnt wurde, entwickelte sich Japan im 21. Jahrhundert im Zuge der Vereinbarung wegweisender bilateraler und regionaler Freihandelsabkommen zur handelspolitischen Führungsnation. Erzielte Japan als globale Handelsmacht über mehrere Jahrzehnte lang hohe Außenhandelsüberschüsse, so waren sich seit Mitte der 1990er Jahre die Welthandelsanteile rückläufig und seit 2011 verzeichnet Japan Handelsdefizite. Über die Dekaden hat Japans Wirtschaft ein hochdifferenziertes Liefer- und Produktionsnetzwerk im Ausland aufgebaut und sich zunehmend in die internationale Arbeitsteilung integriert. Diese wirtschaftliche Verflechtung erhöhte auch die wirtschaftlichen Abhängigkeiten und politischen Anfälligkeiten.

Zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts schloss Japan zunächst bescheidene Wirtschaftspartnerschaftsabkommen, insbesondere mit den ASEAN-Ländern. In der zweiten Hälfte der 2010er Jahre schloss es umfassende Freihandelsabkommen im asiatisch-pazifischen Raum und mit der EU, wie CPTPP, JEEPA und RCEP, die erhebliche Marktöffnungen gewährten. Diese Abkommen liberalisierten den Außenhandel Japans mit großen Volkswirtschaften wie den USA, China, Korea und der EU. 2023 wurden 63,5 % des japanischen Außenhandels über bilaterale Handelsabkommen abgewickelt. Japans liberale handelspolitische Ausrichtung und Positionierung als Multilateralist und Freihändler folgt mehreren Motiven und Interessen Japans weltmarktorientierte Wirtschaft strebt einen besseren Marktzugang und günstige Investitions- und Produktionsbedingungen im Ausland an. Die Handelspolitik wird als Instrument zur Steigerung der Wettbewerbsfähigkeit, zur Förderung des Wachstums und als innenpolitisches Druckmittel für Strukturreformen gesehen. Außenpolitisch spiegeln die CPTPP- und RCEP-Abkommen die strategischen geopolitischen und wirtschaftlichen Interessen Japans wider, dem Einfluss Chinas entgegenzuwirken und die Beziehungen zu den USA zu stärken. Aufgrund der geopolitischen Lage konzentriert sich Japan zunehmend auf die wirtschaftliche Sicherheit, um Schwachstellen in internationalen Lieferketten und im Technologietransfer inmitten wachsender geopolitischer Spannungen zu beseitigen.

| Bio |

Dr. Hanns Günther Hilpert ist Senior Fellow in der Forschungsgruppe Asien am Deutschen Institut für Internationale Politik und Sicherheit der Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), Berlin. Ausbildung zum Industriekaufmann in der Aktiengesellschaft der Dillinger Hütte, Dillingen (1979-81), Studium der Volkswirtschaftslehre an der Universität des Saarlandes, Saarbrücken (1981-87), Teilnahme am DAAD-Stipendium Sprache und Praxis in Japan, Tokyo (1987-89), Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter an der Studienstelle Japan/Asien des ifo Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, München (1989-1999), Promotion an der Freien Universität Berlin (Thema: Wirtschaftliche Integration in Ostasien in raumwirtschaftlicher Analyse) (1997), Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Deutschen Institut für Japanstudien, Tokyo (1999-2001), Research Associate in der Forschungsgruppe Asien am Deutschen Institut für Internationale Politik und Sicherheit (SWP) (2001-2014), Forschungsgruppenleiter (2014-2022), Senior Fellow (seit 2022). Arbeitsschwerpunkte: Wirtschaft, Handel, Währung in Ostasien mit Relevanzbezug zur Deutschen Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s09e10
Thursday 2025-01-16, 18:00~19:30

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s09/#e10.

Is the future of democracy at stake? As population aging advances in many liberal democracies, intergenerational equity, societal sustainability, and the general capacity to implement reforms come under pressure. This paper focuses on the case of Japan, where the political participation and representation of the elderly seems to dominate the core democratic institutions of the nation. Many scholars even attest the young to be apathetic to politics. But is the story that simple? We take a closer look at how young people in Japan respond to and understand their role in the nation’s aging democracy. In this lecture, Gabriele Vogt addresses the following research questions: What are the attitudes of young Japanese towards political participation? Do they feel neglected and withdraw from politics or do they develop new strategies in informal politics to make their voices heard?

If so, how do they participate, and to what degree do they experience self-efficacy in the process? To answer these questions, in the fall of 2024, we conducted focus group interviews with Japanese university students. By basing the analysis on insights from group discussions among young Japanese and thus minimizing the researchers’ effect, we strive for an unfiltered view on generational attitudes towards political participation and dynamics in problem perception. We want to understand how young Japanese negotiate the future challenges for Japan’s political realm among their peers. This lecture is based on a joint research paper with Anne-Sophie L. König, Stefanie Schwarte and Antonia Vesting as part of the DFG-funded research project “Demography and Democracy: How Population Aging Alters Democracy – The Case of Japan” at LMU Munich.

| Bio |

Gabriele Vogt is Full Professor and Chair in Japanese Studies and serves as Director to the Department of Asian Studies at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU Munich). She is the author of “Population Aging and International Health-Caregiver Migration to Japan” (Springer International, 2018). She currently spearheads two DFG-funded research projects, one highlighting the interconnectedness of demography and democracy in Japan (DFG 510553228), which this presentation is based on, and the other focusing on Japan’s pandemic management amidst a culture of vigilance (part of CRC 1369 at LMU Munich). Her latest journal publication is a co-authored paper with Yosuke Buchmeier on: “The Aging Democracy: Demographic Effects, Political Legitimacy, and the Quest for Generational Pluralism” (Perspectives on Politics, 2024, 22:1, pp. 168-180, open access).

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s09e09
Thursday 2025-01-09, 18:00~19:30

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s09/#e09.

In the first decades after World War II, one of the most important questions in Japan was how to prevent Japanese society from being drawn back to totalitarian political phenomena. Asking this question implied the need to understand the reasons why fascism had taken over Japanese society in the 1930s and 1940s with relatively little internal resistance. Interpretations from different ideological spheres arose from the endeavor to address these key issues. Orthodox Marxism focused on the economic structure of Japan, characterized by capitalist relations of production marked by strong feudal remnants that facilitated the political manipulation of oligarchic elites with their own particular class interests. Liberal progressivism focused instead on the social-cultural superstructure, especially regarding the individual-collective relationship, which was regarded as underdeveloped in terms of modernity.

Finally, the New Left tended to view the particularly rapid development of capitalist modernity in Japan as having abruptly separated individuals from their original communities, giving rise to an increasingly extreme collective attraction toward the substitute, abstract community embodied in the nation. On the other hand, the theoretical controversy over the origins of Japanese fascism hardly transcended the closed limits of intellectual circles. In this regard, cinema, as mass art par excellence in postwar Japan, sometimes became a mediating instrument between the theories of intellectuals and the consciousness of the masses through the critical representation of fascism in the big screen. This lecture will address the way in which postwar Japanese cinema, through the example of specific films, conveyed to the general public those debates on fascism thus taking them beyond the narrow world of the intelligentsia.

| Bio |

Ferran de Vargas (Barcelona, 1989) is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Asian Studies, University of Edinburgh. His main research interest is the study of political ideologies, democratic processes, and aesthetic movements in East Asia, with a special focus on transwar Japan. Dr. De Vargas has been researching left-wing movements, Marxist theory, and the intersection of politics with cultural productions such as cinema in Japan, publishing his research results in journals such as positions: asia critique, Modern Asian Studies, Japan Forum, Film-Philosophy, The Sixties and Arts. He is also the author of a book on the political history of postwar Japan. Dr. De Vargas is currently working on Japanese left-wing political theories and cultural representations of fascism, and on the conversion of left-wing intellectuals into right-wing ideologists in 1960s and 1970s Japan.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s09e08
Thursday 2024-12-12, 18:00~19:30

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s09/#e08.

Numerous countries around the world are interested in recruiting international skilled migrants to stay economically competitive in the region, including an emerging immigration regime like Japan. Skilled migrants have often been touted as mobile with few obstacles. However, they do not necessarily undergo smooth or linear upward socio-economic, social and career mobilities. Pressured by the severe labour shortage, Japan seeks to recruit foreign skilled professionals, while simultaneously maintaining strong resistance in introducing an officials migration policy. Despite the resistance, the number of foreign residents has continued to increase over the past decade, and Vietnamese-nationals, including those working as skilled migrants in the IT sector, are one of the growing groups of migrant workers in Japan. The current multi-year research project focuses on the socio-economic, career and transnational (im)mobilities of Vietnamese IT professionals in Japan.

The study is based on offline and online ethnographic fieldwork in Japan and Vietnam since 2021, including over 70 interviews. Despite differences in entry channels to the country and work contracts in the Japanese labour market, some of Vietnamese IT professionals are able to opt for job mobilities driven by the strong labour demand. Nevertheless, after several job changes, they cannot project further upward career mobility. Although their working life may not be necessarily fulfilling, their staying process in the host society is heavily shaped by social and family factors that often prevent and/or postpone their further mobility/return. The study presents the process of how Vietnamese IT professionals in Japan end up prologuing their stay-ing, not necessarily projecting a permanent settlement.

| Bio |

Aimi Muranaka is a post-doc researcher at the Institute of East Asian Studies in the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. She works for a collaborative research project “Qualification and Skill in the Migration Process of Foreign Workers in Asia (QuaMaFA)” funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in Germany. Her current research project sheds light on transnational and internal (im)mobility of Vietnamese IT professionals in Japan. Her research interest centres on skills/qualifications in international migration, marketisation of migration and brokerage in Asia. Her recent publications include “Perks or burdens? Being ‘nearly (Im)mobile’ as IT foreign professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan” in Contemporary Japan and “Immigration and Quality of Life in Ageing Societies” (co-edited with Aeneas Zi Wang and Florian Coulmas).

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s09e07
Thursday 2024-12-05, 18:00~19:30

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s09/#e07.

Since the late 2010s, sexual violence has increasingly gotten attention in Japan becoming a topic of discussion in media, politics, and society. In 2017, Ito Shiori went public accusing a senior journalist of raping her and in the same year the Penal Code’s articles on sex crimes were reformed for the first time in 110 years. In 2019 a series of non-guilty verdicts for rape cases sparked public outrage which was channelled by feminist activists into the Flower Demo movement. In 2023 the Penal Code was reformed once again and the BBC released a documentary exposing the sexual abuse of young boys perpetrated, since the 1970s, by Johnny Kitagawa, founder of one of the most famous talent agencies in Japan.

However, sexual violence is neither a new problem in Japan nor a new issue discussed by feminists. While it certainly has been, and still is to a degree, a taboo topic in Japanese society, women’s groups in Japan have been tackling the problem since the early 1980s. They established the first support services for victims filling in an institutional void, they spoke out about rape myths and deep-rooted sexism, and they engaged in social actions to raise awareness about the issue. This lecture will explore an often-forgot page of Japanese feminism retracing the history of anti-rape activism in Japan: the first grassroots women’s groups in the 1980s and 1990s, the first advocacy efforts for legal reforms in the 2010s, the emergence of the #MeToo movement and the Flower Demo in recent years, and the two reforms of the Penal Code.

| Bio |

Chiara Fusari is currently pursuing her PhD and serves as a teaching assistant at the Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies at the University of Zurich. She earned her Master’s degree at Leiden University, where she conducted research on the involvement of buraku women in the Buraku liberation movement. Recently, part of her findings was published as a peer-reviewed article titled “Buraku Women: Literacy as a Path to Empowerment.” Her research focuses on gender, minority issues and social movements in Japan. For her doctoral dissertation, she is investigating anti-sexual violence activism in Japan, conducting in-depth interviews with advocates and participant observation.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s09e06
Thursday 2024-12-28, 18:00~19:30

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s09/#e06.

The planetary crisis and the urgent need for sustainability demand a radical re-evaluation of the epistemologies underlying modern academic knowledge production. Within this context, intellectual history has traditionally revolved around human-centered narratives that compartmentalized ideas of the historical past into what Arthur Lovejoy termed "unit-ideas" such as ‘philosophy,’ ‘religion,’ ‘art,’ and ‘science.’ This talk argues that there are identifiable paradigms from the past that do not neatly fit into these established categories and that recognized nonhuman organisms as crucial ‘actors.’ One such case study is the Japanese independent naturalist and polymath Minakata Kumagusu (1867-1941).

In 1893-1894 London, Kumagusu created what Honda call cellular metaphysics: a study of metaphysics inspired by philosophical underpinnings of Daijō Buddhism and the ever-changing forms of slime moulds and other associated unicellular and multicellular organisms like amoebas and fungi. This historical research shows how epistemological binaries and hierarchies between humans and the nonhuman organisms evaporated as his ways of knowing came to resemble the nonhuman actors.

Building on this historical research, Honda discusses her experiments in creating a new field of study she calls multispecies intellectual history, driven by interdisciplinary thinking and collaborations. She will introduce an overview of the research agenda, its broader implications and significance, and examples of the approaches she employs in resolving the conundrums posed by conventional intellectual frameworks—without compromising the rigorous inductive analysis of primary sources.

| Bio |

Eiko Honda is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Global Studies, the Aarhus University, Denmark. She specialises in the intellectual history of modern Japan and the environmental humanities. Her historical research interrogates boundary-defying works and (inter-)actions of Japanese scientist-polymaths whose epistemologies do not conform to the model of ‘civilisational progress’ led by the vision of human domination over non-human ‘nature.’ She concurrently collaborates with scholars and practitioners of various fields to investigate shifting roles and methods of History and Area Studies in the time of climate crisis. She is the PI of Unearthing Multispecies Intellectual History: Earthing Trajectories of Area Studies (2023-2026) funded by the Aarhus University Research Foundation and the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society. Her recent publications include curatorial-editorial of ‘Multispecies Intellectual History’ Collection with the journal Arcadia: Explorations in Environmental History (2024-2025) and article “Minakata Kumagusu and the Emergence of Queer Nature: The Civilisation Theory, Buddhist Science and Microbes, 1887-1892” in Modern Asian Studies (2023).

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s09e05
Thursday 2024-11-21, 18:00~19:30

| Place & Preparations | 

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s09/#e05.

This lecture examines the complex role of digital platforms in constructing counter-hegemonic collective memory in Japan, focusing on audience reception of the documentary Shusenjo: The Main Battleground of the Comfort Women Issue. Produced by Japanese-American filmmaker Miki Dezaki, Shusenjo addresses the historical controversy surrounding the so-called “comfort women” (ianfu)—a euphemistic term for Asian women forced into providing sexual services to Japanese soldiers before and during WWII. The film captures the sociopolitical tensions surrounding Japan’s wartime and colonial responsibility, presenting both traditional and revisionist-nationalist perspectives on Japanese war memory.

The Shusenjo case study forms part of a broader research program on the critical intersections of media, technology, and suppression/liberation, specifically examining the contemporary institutionalization of nationalism entangled with racism, xenophobia, historical revisionism (e.g., denial of wartime atrocities), and misogyny. This research addresses the politics of war memory surrounding cultural products and their implications for the (re)construction of national identity—specifically how everyday people actively problematize, make sense of, and narrow or expand the meaning of the nation.

By analyzing audience review comments through critical discourse analysis, this study offers nuanced insights into ongoing public discourse and sentiment surrounding this controversy. The documentary creates a space for the (re)construction of perspectives on collective war memory, adding layers of complexity to this process. The research demonstrates how digital spaces—such as discussion boards, user comments, and film reviews—become enmeshed into a gestalt that both stirs and structures the memory production process. This participatory and evolving construction of memory not only influences interpretations of Japan’s wartime history but also reflects contemporary debates over Japan’s role in regional relations, gender equality, and migration. The analysis finds the prominence of “shame”-based nationalism within a dialectic of memory production, wherein contemporary visions of Japan’s future inform retrospective understandings of its past, with war memory serving as a rationale for national identity and future/prospective goals.

| Bio |

Junki Nakahara is a postdoctoral fellow at the Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab (SNAPL, aparc.fsi.stanford.edu/snapl ), housed within the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. Her research interests include nationalism and xenophobia, critical and cultural studies, feminist media studies, and postcolonial/decolonial international relations. She studies the contemporary dominance and institutionalization of nationalism, entangled with racism, xenophobia, historical revisionism (e.g., denial of wartime atrocities), and misogyny, primarily focusing on East Asia. She earned her PhD in Communication (2023) and MA in Intercultural and International Communication (2019), both from American University. Her publications include contributions to New Media & Society, Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, and Discourse Approaches to an Emerging Age of Populism (edited by I. Íñigo-Mora & Lastres-López). As an inaugural member of SNAPL, she leads the "Nationalism and Racism" research team, investigating how nationalism and racism intertwine to create various forms of suppression and intolerance across the Asia-Pacific region, where entanglements among race, ethnicity, nation, and postcoloniality add complexity to these debates.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s09e04
Thursday 2024-11-07, 18:00~19:30

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s09/#e04.

For more than half a century, research on rural Japan has been casted by the doomsday discourse on the devastating regional effects of outmigration, infrastructure decay and population aging (kaso chiiki). The negative assessment has been aggravated by newer key notions of ‘marginal settlements’ (genkai shūraku) and the ‘extinction of communities’ (chiiki shōmetsu). Cities, by contrast, are said to be better prepared for the future due to the spatial concentration of institutions and resources that enable urban places to excel over the countryside in terms of labor and employment opportunities, social welfare, health care, education and entertainment. But there is no evidence that the general trend toward urbanization is paralleled by an overall increase in happiness: “There are many benefits of big-city living; high levels of happiness are not among them” (Berry and Okulicz-Kozaryn 2011: 872).

Wolfram Manzenreiter‘s research on rural life in Japan challenges the master-narrative of rural decline by engaging in ethnographic fashion with local notions of happiness and the significance of social relatedness for making life worth-living to those who stayed (behind) or moved into the countryside. His approach is situated in the tradition of the Vienna School of Japanese Studies, evidently by revisiting the same research site in southwestern Japan that Josef Kreiner and other researchers from Vienna chose in the late 1960s for the first time-ever field research project in Japan by a European research team. Drawing back on lessons from the first and the current project, he adopts a long-term perspective to explore the notions of rural happiness in the light of changing family and social relations, new mobilities and shifting moralities.

| Bio |

Wolfram Manzenreiter is Professor of Japanese Studies at the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Vienna and Head of the Japan research unit. His research is concerned with social and anthropological aspects of sports, emotions, work and migration in a globalising world. He is author of several books and numerous articles and book chapters on cultural globalization, body culture, transnationalism and well-being. His most recent publications include Japan through the lens of the Tokyo Olympics (2020; co-editors I. Gagne, B. Holthus, F. Waldenberger); Life course, happiness and well-being in Japan and Happiness and the good life in Japan (both 2017 and coedited with B. Holthus). Currently he is working on community happiness in Japan’s rural peripheries.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s09e03
Thursday 2024-10-31, 18:00~19:30

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s09/#e03.

Some single Japanese women go abroad to places such as London, Los Angeles, and Southeast Asia for a variety of reasons, and work as hostesses entertaining Japanese (and other Asian) men in nightclubs. These women – transnational Japanese hostesses – are a subject from the North largely overlooked in surveys of global intimate labour.

This talk focuses on Japanese hostesses working in London. These women, typically in their 20s and 30s, are often working holidaymakers or students. Their personal narratives reveal that they try to compensate for their lack of social and linguistic capital by selling femininity, Japaneseness and communication. Moreover, their stories disclose some structural factors, such as the diversification of intimate work on a global scale, that influence their decision to pursue this line of work, which eventually led them to gendered migration.

First, Nanase Shirota will present these hostesses’ personal narratives and explain the structural elements that influence their work choices and career paths. Second, based on these analyses, she argues that they use hostess work as a stepping-stone for their own goals, whilst these jobs and strategies eventually draw them back to ‘their own place’, which they had initially decided to leave. Finally, she will share some findings from her most recent fieldwork in Amsterdam, Ho Chi Minh City, and Kuala Lumpur.

| Bio |

Nanase Shirota is an affiliated lecturer in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge, where she earned her PhD. She holds an MA from Keio University, studying Arabic and Islamic studies, and a second MA in Sociology from the University of Glasgow. Her research focuses on communication (particularly listening), work, and gender in contemporary Japan, with a specific current focus on transnational Japanese hostesses working abroad. She is also methodologically interested in ethnography, interviews, and oral history.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s09e02
Thursday 2024-10-24, 18:00~19:30

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s09/#e02.

Dank der tatkräftigen Unterstützung unserer Sponsoren, des unermüdlichen Engagements unserer Mitarbeiter*innen und ganz besonders der Bereitschaft der international gefragten Vortragenden nach Wien zu kommen, starten wir ab dem 17. Oktober 2024 in eine neue Saison der u:japan lectures.

Auch ein erster Programmüberblick darf hier schon präsentiert werden:

Termine und Vortragenden | Season 9 | Fall-Winter 2024/25

ID             Date*             Mode**         Guest / Lecturer
s09e01     2024-10-17     hybrid (de)     Florentine Koppenburg
s09e02     2024-10-24     hybrid (en)     Nanase Shirota
s09e03     2024-10-31     hybrid (en)     Wolfram Manzenreiter
s09e04     2024-11-07     on-site (en)    Junki Nakahara
s09e05     2024-11-21     hybrid (en)     Eiko Honda
s09e06     2024-11-28     hybrid (en)     Chiara Fusari
s09e07     2024-12-05     hybrid (en)     Aimi Muranaka
s09e08     2025-12-12     hybrid (en)     Ferran de Vargas

s09e09     2025-01-09     hybrid (en)     Gabriele Vogt
s09e10     2025-01-16     hybrid (de)     Hanns-Günther Hilpert

*Date & Time: Thursdays from 18:00 to 19:30
**Mode & Language:
onsite = Seminarraum 1 @ Department of East Asian Studies, Japanese Studies (University of Veinna Campus, Spitalgasse 2, Hof 2.4, 1090 Vienna)
online = via Zoom (no registration necessary)
hybrid = onsite and live stream via Zoom
en = English, jp = Japanese, de =German
Records: Only lecture conducted in online or hybrid mode, will be recorded and available as view on demand lectures in the recorded lectures section.

The Fukushima nuclear accident eroded trust in the safety of nuclear power plants and prompted anti-nuclear protests. Instead of the nuclear phase out many observers expected, the nuclear safety agency was reorganised and nuclear power goals were adjusted to reduce Japan's reliance on nuclear power to 20-22 per cent by 2030. But why is Japan still not on track to achieving these targets? In this lecture, Florentine Koppenborg argues that the regulatory reforms taken up in the wake of the Fukushima disaster on March 11, 2011, directly and indirectly raised the costs of nuclear power in Japan. The new Nuclear Regulation Authority resisted capture by the nuclear industry and fundamentally altered the environment for nuclear policy implementation. Independent safety regulation changed state-business relations in the nuclear power domain from regulatory capture to top-down safety regulation, which raised technical safety costs for electric utilities. Furthermore, the safety agency's extended emergency preparedness regulations expanded the allegorical backyard of NIMBY demonstrations. Antinuclear protests, - mainly lawsuits challenging restarts - incurred additional social acceptance costs. Increasing costs undermined pro-nuclear actors' ability to implement nuclear power policy and caused a rift inside Japan's "nuclear village." Small nuclear safety administration reforms were, in fact, game changers for nuclear power politics in Japan.

| Bio |

Florentine Koppenborg is a Senior Research Fellow at the Chair of Environmental and Climate Policy at the Technical University of Munich. Her research interests address energy and climate policy, particularly energy transitions ("Energiewende") and interactions with climate policy. She has authored several peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on Japan's nuclear energy and climate policy. She has been the principal investigator of a research project on "Governing Sustainability Transitions: Technology Phase-outs in Germany and Japan." In 2023, she published her book on "Japan's Nuclear Disaster and the Politics of Safety Governance" (Cornell University Press).

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s09e01
Thursday 2024-10-17, 18:00~19:30

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s09/#e01.

Attributes of the weak, fragile, and vulnerable are an important characteristic of the appeal of Japanese popular culture and new technologies. Take, for instance, moe and kawaii kyara, which openly display their clumsiness, helplessness, shame, confusion, drowsiness, coordination difficulties or their lack of physical strength and speed. Yowai has also found its way into the public sphere, including advertising, even in areas where one would not expect it at first glance, for example in the deliberately “soft” advertising campaigns of the Japanese army or the police. Currently, the concept of the non-perfect has also been incorporated into the realization of so-called yowai robotto. In contrast to conventional concepts that focus on strength, perfection, and dexterity, the yowai robotto developed by Okada Michio is popular and useful precisely because of its “weakness”. A wastebasket robot, for example, that is not even able to pick up garbage from the floor, or a narrator robot that constantly forgets the plot of the story and stutters trigger the same reaction in adults and children: they support the weak object without being asked and thereby form a strong affective bond with it. The idea of hōgan biiki (sympathy for the weak), which is still popular today, goes back to the antihero Minamoto no Yoshitsune, who found himself in a hopeless situation but became one of the most popular characters in Japanese theater for this very reason. Ivan Morris’ study The Nobility of Failure (1975), which examines a series of vulnerable figures in Japanese literary and cultural history, was published almost half a century ago, but underdogs have lost none of their topicality, quite the contrary. What constitutes vulnerability and why does it trigger such a strong affective reaction? Does yowai have a greater identifying and stabilizing potential than strongness and perfection? The lecture will present the implications of yowai, how exactly it manifests itself in individual forms of representation and why the concept of yowai is so irresistible. Furthermore, the online encyclopedia “Yowai Japan – The Encyclopedia of Vulnerability,” which is currently being created, will also be presented.

| Bio |

Elena Giannoulis is Professor of Japanese Literature at the Department of History and Cultural Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin. Furthermore, she is the Principal Investigator of the European Research Council (ERC) research group “Emotional Machines: The Technological Transformation of Intimacy in Japan”. She studied Japanese Studies and Literary Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin and Keiō University. In September 2009, she received her PhD in Japanese Studies. Her fields of interest include modern and contemporary Japanese literature and culture, affects and emotions, digital communication and new technologies as well as forms of attachment and detachment in present-day Japanese society. Her first book, published in 2010, deals with the notion of “authenticity” in contemporary Japanese literary self-narratives. Giannoulis is the co-editor of the Routledge volume Emoticons, Kaomoji and Emoji: The Transformation of Communication in the Digital Age (2020). In addition, she is a translator of Japanese literature.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s08e13
Thursday 2024-06-27, 18:00~19:30

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s08/#e13.

In the mid-1970s, many Americans took a new interest in Japan, sparked by its "miraculous" economic growth. This attention was especially prominent among an influential and prominent group of writers and thinkers known as neoconservatives, who worried that the capitalist stagnation of the 1970s was leading the United States into nihilism and cultural chaos. Writers with little prior Japan expertise, such as sociologist Nathan Glazer and futurist Herman Kahn, took it upon themselves to become "interpreters" of Japan, explaining to Americans why Japan had accomplished such economic success. They claimed that Japanese growth was due to Japanese culture, arguing that Japan demonstrated a successful marriage between tradition and modernity. Yet where did they get these ideas? Glazer, Kahn and others were heavily dependent on Japanese thinking. Among other source, they drew on nihonjinron, a literature that sought to explain the "essence" of Japanese-ness and often heralded Japan's allegedly unique social, cultural, and racial homogeneity as the source of Japan's success. Charting how Americans utilized the translations of nihonjinron writers Nakane Chie and Doi Takeo, this talk will trace how Japanese thinking about its own success shaped American understandings of economic growth, capitalist possibility, and globalization at the dawn of the 1980s. In particular, it will examine how these Americans used nihonjinron to build a broader argument about the importance of "culture" and a return to "tradition" as the solution to the United States' economic ills. By tracing this process of intellectual transmission, this talk will show Japan's role in undergirding broader conservative visions of economic growth, which emphasized on cultural values and traditions and sought to legitimize both domestic and global inequality.

| Bio |

Jennifer M. Miller is an associate professor of history at Dartmouth College. Her first book, Cold War Democracy: The United States and Japan (Harvard University Press, 2019), examined the convergence and clash of American and Japanese understandings of democracy between 1945 and 1963. She is currently working on a book that explores the lessons that Americans drew from Japanese economic growth from the 1970s to the 1990s and traces ways in which these lessons shaped capitalism and neoliberalism in United States. Her research has also been published in the Modern Intellectual History, Diplomatic History, Journal of American-East Asian Relations, and Journal of Contemporary History.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s08e12
Thursday 2024-06-20, 18:00~19:30

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s08/#e12.

Feminisms in Japan are still largely ignored in public or academic debate internationally. Also, feminism is often termed as ‘Western’ and framed as a contradiction or threat to ‘traditional’ domestic values as in present antifeminism worldwide. Thus, feminisms in Japan have a singular and crucial meaning in international perspective: They developed as an autonomous force selecting international impulses (for example equality, participation and female eros) and locating them in their context. And they were confronted with Japan’s singular development which was threatened by Western colonialism and transformed into a colonizing imperialist nation. They raise the issues of feminist autonomy in diverse cultural contexts and postcolonial critical memory. This lecture will look at the diverse currents and transformations of feminisms in Japan in transnational longterm perspective aiming to overcome hegemonic eurocentric and nipponcentric views. They have developed over 140 years in a continual line which is different from the Western model of the first, second and third wave. But they have proceeded with radical self-reflexive transformations reacting to fundamental challenges. From their start in the 1880ies, they were confronted with defining new concepts of women and gender, with intersectional inequality and with locating themselves in the nation and world society. In this changing context, they developed different discourses and practices between establishing new legitimate gender terms or deconstructing feminity / gender or between cooptation to nationalism or radical critiques of imperialism. Following a short summary until the 1970ies, I will focus on the trajectories of new feminisms after the lib movement. This will be concretised by looking at the debates around gender and women, intersectionality and the postcolonial critique of Japan’s international responsibility and feminist exchange in East Asia as in the comfort women issue.

| Bio |

Ilse Lenz is professor emerita for social structure /gender at the Faculty of Social Science, Ruhr University in Bochum. Her doctoral thesis 1983 at the Free University of Berlin analyzed women's work in Japanese industrialization from a development sociology perspective. In her habilitation in 1989 at the University of Münster, she did empirical research on the gendering of computerization in Japanese industry. She has published on intersectionality in work, social movements and feminism in comparative perspective. She has a singular profile comparing Western and East Asian societies, especially German and Japan. She published standard works on feminism in Germany (2010) and in Japan (2023). Her new research focusses the present transformation of the intersectional and gender orders in welfare states including the change of gender, capitalism and work. Together with Michiko Mae, chair of the Institute for Modern Japan at the University of Düsseldorf, she coordinated an annual workshop on gender research on Japan (now held by Andera Germer and Annette Schad-Seifert). Ilse Lenz is a co-editor of the book series Gender & Society (Springer publications) and was spokesperson for the gender section in the German Society for Sociology.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s08e11
Thursday 2024-06-13, 18:00~19:30

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s08/#e11.

More than other markets, art markets are often shrouded in mystery. How art is traded, valued, and exhibited is frequently shaped by complex cultural, social, and economic arrangements. Trading arrangements are, among other factors, shaped by market actors trying to address various sources of uncertainty: How should they value the objects of their trade, how can they shield themselves from the competition, and with whom and how do they cooperate? This lecture investigates how Japanese antique art dealers confront such issues. While offering a rich description and analysis of a rather secretive Japanese market, this lecture will advance our understanding of how actors can actively shape market arrangements and find solutions to address the specific challenges of their domain. In the case of the Japanese antique art market such challenges include a high risk of fakes, a limited quantity of high-quality material, “wonnabe” dealers and market outsiders, as well as dealers with “too much” money. Offering interview-based insights into the social world and beliefs of Japanese antique art dealers, the lecture will also discuss a globally unique and ingenious market device that combines auctions with lottery draws to manage “fair” dealers’ auctions.

| Bio |

Harald Conrad holds the Chair of Modern Japanese Studies II at Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf, Germany. Prior appointments were at the School of Asian Studies at the University of Sheffield (England), the Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (Japan), and the German Institute for Japanese Studies (Japan). Harald has a PhD in Economics from Cologne University and has primarily published on the Japanese employment system, Japanese human resource management, and Japanese social policy. In recent years, he has developed a particular interest in the field of economic sociology which is also at the heart of his new DFG-funded research project on “Traditional Craft Industries and Their Markets in 21st Century Japan – Social and Economic (Re-)Organisation”. His research has, among others, been published in Work, Employment and Society, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Asian Business & Management, Contemporary Japan, International Migration, Journal of Social Policy, Japanese Studies, Social Science Japan Journal, Japan Forum, and The Japanese Economy.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s08e10
Thursday 2024-06-06, 18:00~19:30

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s08/#e10.

Die gestiegene Anzahl universitärer Abschlussarbeiten und zu begutachtender Zeitschriftenartikel über Manga (als mit Japan assoziierten grafischen Erzählungen) fordert dazu heraus, die disziplinäre Positionierung dieser Medienform und die damit verbundenen methodologischen Neigungen zu rekapitulieren. Auf Deutsch begann die wissenschaftliche Auseinandersetzung mit Manga, als sich die Japanologie von der traditionellen Philologie zugunsten einer gegenwartsbezogenen Sozialwissenschaft abwandte. Drei frühe Magisterarbeiten antizipierten die späteren Hauptströmungen: Studien zum story-manga als Repräsentant japanischer Populärkultur (Maderdonner, Wien 1986); kritische Untersuchungen aus dem Blickwinkel der Geschlechterforschung (Bachmayer, Wien 1986); und Forschungen zur Jugend- und Fankultur (Kawai, Siegen 1986).

Kulturell, und nicht medial, definierte Zugriffe standen seither im Zentrum japanwissenschaftlicher Bemühungen, während sich die entstehende Comicforschung zunehmend medienwissenschaftlich ausrichtete. Letzterer fehlt allerdings meist die Expertise, die es erlaubt zu verstehen, wie Manga konkret situiert ist. Als Beispiel für das Potential eines Zusammenspiels beider Disziplinen soll die problematische Kategorisierung von Manga als japanischer „Populärkultur“ dienen.

| Bio |

Jaqueline Berndt ist Professorin für Japanologie an der Universität Stockholm. Ihr primäres Arbeitsgebiet sind Mangastudien und Animeforschung aus medienästhetischer Sicht, auf Deutsch repräsentiert durch die neueren Aufsätze „Anime in Japan“ (in Handbuch Animation Studies, Springer VS, 2022) und „Mangaforschung“ (in Handbuch Comicforschung, de Gruyter, 2025). Sie ist Herausgeberin des Cambridge Companion to Manga and Anime (2024) und der Open-Access-Reihe Stockholm Studies in Media Arts Japan (Stockholm University Press) sowie Mitherausgeberin der Buchreihe Comics Studies: Aesthetics, Histories, Practices (de Gruyter). Für die Japan Foundation konzipierte sie die internationale Wanderausstellung Manga Hokusai Manga: Approaching the Master’s Compendium from the Perspective of Contemporary Comics (seit 2016), für das Museum Rietberg, Zürich, Flow: Erzählen im Manga (2021). www.su.se/english/profiles/jbern-1.259043

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s08e09
Thursday 2024-05-23, 18:00~19:30

| Place & Preparations | 

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s08/#e09.

An hour-long film documents the life of two Indian women migrants who moved to Japan more than a decade ago as trailing spouses. The women were excited to move to a foreign country and to be with their husbands, but they had no prior knowledge of Japan. Having witnessed at a distance the lives of their relatives settled in the US, UK, and Canada, they had similar expectations for their own future lives in Japan. But the reality was to prove different from the expectation. Through personal narratives told by the women, we examine past, present and future expectations and see how these affect their roles as Indian women, wives, mothers, and workers in a foreign country, as well as the challenges they faced in ‘Finding their Niche’.

TRAILER: vimeo.com/743482060.

| Bio |

Dr. Megha Wadhwa is a migration researcher and Japanese and Indian studies Scholar. She is a Research Associate at Free University of Berlin, and a visiting fellow at Sophia University, Tokyo, which is also her alma mater. Originally from New Delhi and she was a resident of Tokyo for about 15 years before she moved to Berlin in 2021. She is the author of the book ‘Indian Migrants in Tokyo: A Study of Socio-Cultural, Religious and Working Worlds’ (Routledge:2021). She has also written several articles on the Indian community in Japan and other topics for The Japan Times and journals. Currently she is working on ‘Indian Professionals in Japan and Singapore: Migration Trends, Labor Market Integration and Challenges’ and is a part of the research project – ‘Qualifications and Skill in the Migration Process of Foreign Workers in Asia’ (QuaMaFA), supported by Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Germany (BMBF).

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s08e08
Thursday 2024-16-02, 17:30~19:00

| Place & Preparations | 

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s08/#e08.

The Scandinavian Modern Breakthrough, with authors such as Strindberg and Ibsen departed from the motto of the Danish literary critic Georg Brandes who in the 1870s urged writers to leave behind romanticism and depict the social problems in the world around them. The only literature worthy of writing was that which created debate. Ibsen and Strindberg would be the leading figures in bringing naturalism and realism to the Japanese stage in the beginning of the 20th century.

This presentation will focus on the early reception of Strindberg at a time when the so called New Woman, later succeeded by the Modern Girl in the late 1920s, emerged in the major cities of Japan in what might seem to be a rebellion to the norm of being a “Good Wife and Wise Mother” promoted by the Government. The naturalistic plays by Strindberg are famous for their depictions of the battle between the sexes. Exposing the crisis of masculinity in the writings of Strindberg is a perspective recently being examined by numerous scholars. What happens to the power struggle between man and woman when the texts are translated and performed in theaters in Japan? As the setting of the naturalistic drama often is the bourgeois home with the ideal model of family in its center, home and family will also be important concepts in examining the reception of Strindberg in Japan.

| Bio |

Martin Nordeborg is a senior lecturer of Japanese at the Department of Literatures and Languages at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. His PhD thesis dealt with the first Japanese primary school reader, published in 1873, which was in fact a translation of an American primer. In the framework of the nation-building process it was interesting to see the role of this book and especially how religious concepts were translated at a time when freedom of religion had just been announced that same year. After his dissertation, he continued to examine the Japanese translation of the Bible. Gender and language in Japan is also part of his research and he has combined this with his interest in translation studies, recently the role of translated drama in the modernization of Japanese theater. Finally, originally a junior high school teacher, his research spans literary texts used in Japanese schools as well as fiction consumed by young people in their free time, such as the cell-phone novels.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s08e07
Thursday 2024-05-02, 18:00~19:30

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s08/#e07.

Japan has long been known for its commitment to a pacifist foreign policy as stipulated in Article 9 of the post-World War II constitution. Despite some opposition, for much of Japan’s postwar history there has been a mainstream foreign policy consensus to maintain a security treaty with the United States and limit rearmament. In the years since the end of the Cold War, however, there has been a concerted movement urging constitutional revision in order to legalize militarisation. This project has been driven by younger, more radical conservatives at odds with the moderate conservative establishment.

This talk examines the rise of a hawkish foreign policy ideology in post-World War II Japan and trace the intellectual underpinnings of this movement. These ideas can be traced to the (re)emergence of a reactionary and culturally traditionalist conservatism which styled itself as the ‘New Right’ (Shin-Uyoku) at the height of Japan’s postwar economic power. This intellectual movement located the source of social malaise in Japan’s political and cultural reliance on the US. What ensued was a hawkish position regarding the role of the Japanese state in international politics, vis-à-vis the pacifist consensus.

First, drawing on the discourse of conservative political commentators and ideologues, I demonstrate that the arguments for state power, sovereignty, and rearmament are entrenched in a culturally particularistic logic. Second, I show the alliances and divergence among varying ideological factions and their interlocutors that make up the politics of rearmament on the Japanese Right.

| Bio |

Karin Narita is a postdoctoral Research Associate in Japanese Politics and International Relations at the School of East Asian Studies, University of Sheffield. Her main research focus is the intellectual history of the Global Right and she is particularly interested in right-wing ideologies in the Asia-Pacific. She previously taught political theory and international relations at Queen Mary University of London, where she received her PhD, and at King’s College London. Her research has appeared in Millennium, International Political Sociology and elsewhere, and her co-authored monograph Globalizing the Right is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s08e06
Thursday 2024-04-25, 18:00~19:30

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s08/#e06.

In spring 2020, the sudden appearance of a poem, rendered in large, white characters on the ground near Ōmiya station, sparked a buzz on Twitter and stirred irritation among local residents. Only a few months later, poet Saihate Tahi revealed that she was responsible for the poem, stating that it was a site-specific commissioned work for the 2020 Saitama Triennale entitled Shi no kasoku (‘The Acceleration of poetry’). However, with the Triennale postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the installation emerged without its institutional context, transforming the everyday space of a regular street into something Edward Soja calls a ‘Thirdspace’ or ‘an-Other.’

Drawing on spatial theories by Soja, Henri Lefebvre, Maeda Ai, and others, alongside insights from cognitive literary studies, this presentation examines the implications of encountering poetry within real and virtual urban spaces. Focusing on the reader reception and considering how readers must physically (or virtually) navigate these spaces to engage with the poetry, this presentation seeks to understand the dynamic relationship between readers, poetry, and space, arguing that these encounters not only shape our interpretation of the poems but also influence our perception of the surrounding spaces.

| Bio |

Sarah Puetzer is a DPhil candidate at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on contemporary Japanese literature and poetry, with a particular interest in exploring the concept of 'poetic spaces' in the works of poets Saihate Tahi, Mizusawa Nao, and Fuzuki Yumi among others. She has pursued her studies in Oxford, Berlin, and Tsukuba, Japan. From May to September 2023, she was granted a scholarship by the German Institute of Japanese Studies in Tokyo to conduct fieldwork on Saihate Tahi’s poetry exhibition Shi wo ippuku.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s08e04
Thursday 2024-04-18, 18:00~19:30

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s08/#e05.

Es gibt einen Witz auf Englisch:

„Heaven is to have an American salary,
a Chinese cook, an English house and
a Japanese wife”.

Tatsache ist, dass die Japanerinnen generell bei ausländischen Männern gut ankommen. Andererseits hört man auch sehr oft Kritik, besonders bei „gender-bewussten“ amerikanischen und europäischen Frauen, dass die Japanerinnen nach wie vor in der Gesellschaft benachteiligt seien und sich auch selbst zu wenig für die Gleichberechtigung einsetzen würden. Die Beobachtungen, die die Ausländer*innen über Japan und Japaner*innen machen, sind wohl nicht unbedingt unkorrekt, sie stellen jedoch nur Teilwahrheiten dar.

Dieser Vortrag dient dazu, nicht nur die Vorurteile über japanische Frauen zu korrigieren, sondern auch zu einem besseren Verständnis der Kulturunterschiede beizutragen.

| Bio |

Dr. Mizuuchi Akemi geboren 1960 in Tokyo, aufgewachsen in Düsseldorf. Studium der Internationalen Beziehungen und Geschichte in Tokyo, Wien und Bologna. Promotion an der Universität Wien. Tätigkeit als Lektorin für japanische Geschichte und interkulturelles Lernen an den Universitäten Tel Aviv (2006-07), Wien (2007-09) und Berlin (20011-12). Gemeinsam mit ihrem Ehemann, der als japanischer Diplomat wirkt, längere Aufenthalte in Österreich, Thailand, Israel, Deutschland und Sambia.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s08e04
Thursday 2024-04-11, 18:00~19:30

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s08/#e04.

In recent years, the phenomenon of sexual inactivity, so called sexlessness among (married) couples has become a central issue in Japan. Psychiatrist Teruo Abe (1991) initially defined ‘sexless couples’ as following: “without any special circumstances, do not engage in consensual sexual intercourse or sexual contact for more than a month, with an even longer period expected”. Previous research indicates a significant increase of sexlessness among married couples, rising from 31.9% in 2004 to 51.9% in 2020 and 64.2% in 2024 (JEX Sex Survey 2020, 2024). The reasons for being in a sexless relationship are multicausal, with common factors including childbirth, overtiredness from work, and the perception of sex as something bothersome. Although sexlessness among (married) couples has been increased in these recent years, there is a lack of research on this topic.

Therefore, this lecture will focus on interview research from the recent publication “(NO) Sex in Japan”. The book examines the causes of sexlessness in Japanese couple relationships, emphasizing: 1) the meaning of sexuality for individuals, 2) the meaning of sexuality within the partnership, 3) how sexual consciousness and behaviors can change through certain life events (e.g., before and after being in a relationship, marriage, and childbirth), as well as their chronological processes, considering past experiences in (sexual) relationships. Overall, this study seeks to obtain a deep understanding of the concepts of sexuality, love, intimacy and relationships both within and beyond Japan.

| Bio |

Alice Pacher is a lecturer at Meiji University, Musashi University and a visiting research scholar at Sigmund Freud University, Vienna. She obtained her Ph.D. degree in sociology from Meiji University in 2020, with a dissertation on the Japanese sexless phenomenon. Her doctoral thesis was published as monographs ‚(No) Sex in Japan‘ (Springer) and ‚Shitaikedo Mendokusai‘ (Koyobosho)

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s08e03
Thursday 2024-03-14, 18:00~19:30

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s08/#e03.

Japanese ama (professional free-diving women) are well-known from various documentaries and movies, most prominently from James Bond: You Only Live Twice (1967), or also from the NHK Morning Drama Series Amachan (2013). While their popular image as exoticized “pseudo-mermaids” is still spread in the media, ama divers are, in reality, hard-working and often remotely living people from the Japanese countryside, facing themselves with the profound impacts of a modern world and trying to arrange their lives in a steady negotiation of old and new, local and global, human and environment.

This lecture will reflect on Timo Thelen‘s fieldwork on the ama diving community of Hegura Island / Wajima City spanning from 2014 to 2023. During this period, the ama community, on the one hand, struggled with an aging population, unsteady prices for their catches, and declining resources. But, on the other hand, they also experienced attempts of revitalization and support from the regional government and researchers, such as the designation of their fishery practices as immaterial cultural heritage or the establishment of the abalone festival – a commercial event centered on their catches. Yet, even under the inevitable menace of environmental changes caused by the global warming and international crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic, the ama community always managed to cope with diverse obstacles and preserved their fishery practices in a sustainable manner. The Noto Peninsula Earthquake of New Year’s Day 2024, however, caused a yet incomparable disaster to the community, whose aftermath will affect them for many years to come. Beyond the popular mystifications, this lecture aims to present a more accurate and nuanced portrayal of the ama community, how they experienced substantial changes and how they reacted to them.

| Bio |

Timo Thelen is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of International Studies in Kanazawa University. He has received his PhD in Modern Japan Studies from Dusseldorf University. His research focusses on media, tourism, and rural culture. His monograph Revitalization and Internal Colonialism in Rural Japan was released in the Japan Anthropology Workshop Series at Routledge in 2022.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s08e02
Thursday 2024-03-14, 18:00~19:30

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s08/#e02.

Karate erreichte vor etwa hundert Jahren die japanischen Hauptinseln. Es kam aus Okinawa, wo es seit wohl fünfhundert Jahren als Kunst des Selbstschutzes in hermetischer Weitergabe gepflegt worden war. Die dort autochthone Faustkampfkunst hieß pars pro toto te („Hand“) oder di im lokalem Idiom. Seit dem 18. Jh. erfuhr sie zunehmend starke chinesische Einflüsse, sodass sie fortan als Tôdi („China-Hand“; auch „Karate“ lesbar) bezeichnet wurde. Auf dem Festland (China/Indien) konnten diverse Faustkampfsysteme auf womöglich tausende Jahre Geschichte zurückblicken.

Gesundheitlich-hygienische Methoden der Lenkung innerer Energien, Atemübungen, Visualisationen, Massagemethoden, Heilverfahren, Meditation im Stehen und im Sitzen und mehr waren integrierte Teile der chinesischen Kampfkünste. Sie sind weitgehend auf der Strecke geblieben. In Okinawa lag das pragmatische Augenmerk auf höchstmöglicher Effizienz (= Letalität). Respektive gefährliche Techniken wurden in der Vermittlung nach Japan, nach Einführung von Gruppenunterricht nach militärischem Drill in den Schulen Anfang des 20. Jhs, eliminiert. Dafür wurde Karate in Japan mit dem fiktiven Kodex des bushidô befrachtet, zu einer Zeit, als die Kriegerkaste der bushi abgeschafft und verschwunden war. Auch die Japanisierung und Assimilation an die „alten“ ehrwürdigen martialischen Wegkünste des budô, namentlich Kyudo, Kendo und Judo geschah besonders seit den 1930er Jahren. Mit der internationalen Verbreitung des Karate wurde es dem Zeitgeist der späten 1960er Jahre entsprechend mit dem Zen-Buddhismus in Verbindung gebracht. Mit der extremen Versportlichung (Olympische Disziplin) scheinen Aspekte des traditionellen Budô und der beanspruchte Zen-Geist in den Hintergrund zu treten.

Aufgrund dieser Dynamiken wurden laufend konstitutive Elemente über Bord geworfen oder aus anderen Bereichen dem Karate hinzuaddiert. Heute existieren nicht nur viele verschiedene Stilarten nebeneinander, sondern auch Karate-Formen mit distinktiver Ausrichtung: z.B. Sport, praktische Anwendung, Selbstverteidigung, Fitnessprogram, Kinderunterhaltung oder Budô im Sinne einer Lebensschule und Selbstkultivierung.

Der Referent möchte anhand der historischen Entwicklung auf entbehrliche ideologische Konstrukte, pathologische soziale Strukturen und technisch extreme Vereinseitigungen hinweisen, die das Karate aus Japan in den Westen mitgebracht hat und die dort lange unhinterfragt übernommen wurden. Es gilt auf dem Weg verloren gegangene wertvolle Traditionen zu re-integrieren und unheilsame erfundene Traditionen zu entsorgen. Der Vortrag soll vor allem kritische Reflexion provozieren, die im autoritären Klima japanischer Kampfkünste ein eher kümmerliches Dasein fristet.

| Bio |

Dr. Wolfgang Herbert, Studium der Japanologie (Promotion 1993), Philosophie und Religionswissenschaften an der Universität Wien, Professor für Vergleichende Kulturwissenschaften an der Universität Tokushima, Karate-dô 6. Dan.

Autor des Buches: Von Shaolin bis Shôtôkan. Beiträge zur integralen Praxis des Karate-dô. Distelhausen: schlatt-books 2023

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s08e01
Thursday 2024-03-07, 18:00~19:30

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s08/#e01.

In diesem Vortrag wird die Souvenirphotographie aus dem Yokohama der 1890er Jahre, die in dieser Zeit den Gipfel ihrer Popularität erreichte, aus dem Blickwinkel des modernen „Sehens“ untersucht. Im 19. Jahrhundert, einer Epoche, in der eine Vielzahl neuer gesellschaftlicher Phänomene auftraten, wurden neue Sehgewohnheiten zu einem festen Bestandteil des modernen Lebens, in dem u.a. das künstliche Licht und neue Fortbewegungsmittel die Wahrnehmung der Welt entscheidend transformierten. In verschiedenen Feldern wie visuelle Kultur, Unterhaltungsindustrie, Kulturpolitik und Ausstellungswesen veränderte sich darüber hinaus der Prozess des Sehens, das teils ideologisch aufgeladen wurde. Die visuellen Souvenire aus dem Meiji-zeitlichem Japan, die in diesem Umfeld entstanden sind, stellen daher ein besonderes Format interkultureller Begegnung dar, bei denen Machtverhältnisse durch Fotografien zu Tage treten und spezielle Blickregime sichtbar werden.

Der Vortrag beleuchtet die Zentralität des Phänomens des (modernen) Sehens für die Meiji-zeitliche Souvenirphotographie, und geht auf die enge Verbindung zwischen der Souvenirphotographie-Industrie, dem Globetrotter-Tourismus, der Unterhaltungsindustrie, den Völkerschauen, dem Ausstellungswesen und der Rationalisierung des Sehens ein. Mit diesem Ansatz zeigt der Vortrag eine neue Perspektive für die Analyse der kommerziellen Photographie der späten Meiji-Zeit auf.

| Bio |

Dr. Mio Wakita-Elis ist Leiterin der Sammlung Asien und Kuratorin am Museum für angewandte Kunst in Wien (MAK). Nach ihrem Studium der Politikwissenschaft an der Keiō-Universität in Tokyo schloss sie das Studium der Europäische und Orientalische Kunstgeschichte sowie Japanologie an der Universität Köln und Universität Bonn ab. An der Universität Heidelberg hat sie in Japanischer Kunstgeschichte promoviert. Nach Forschungsaufenthalt am German Historical Institute in Washington D.C. und London sowie Forschungstätigkeit am Exzellenzcluster der Universität Heidelberg lehrte sie bis 2019 Japanische Kunstgeschichte am Institut für Kunstgeschichte Ostasiens in Heidelberg. Die von ihr kuratierten Sonderausstellungen mit Bezug zu Ostasien-relevanten Themen sind u.a. „Kuniyoshi+: Design und Entertainment im japanischen Farbholzschnitt“ (2019, zusammen mit J. Wieninger), „UKIYOENOW“ (2019, zusammen mit J. Wieninger), „FALTEN / FOLDS“ (2023) und „Wiener Weltausstellung 1873 Revisited: Ägypten und Japan als Europas <orient>“ (2023, mit J. Wieninger als wissenschaftlicher Berater). Die Schwerpunkte ihrer Forschung sind Kunst- und Designgeschichte Japans und Asiens im globalen Kontext, postkoloniale Geschichten asiatischer Kunst in Mitteleuropa, Provenienzforschung chinesischer und japanischer Sammlungen in Österreich, feministisch-postkoloniale Repräsentationskritik und visuelle und materielle Kultur Japans des 19., 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts </orient>

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s07e11
Thursday 2024-01-25, 18:00~19:30

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s07/#e11.

The two rocks of the famous Shinto monument Meoto Iwa, a symbol of divine marriage, have inspired many Japanese and foreign visitors. One of those so inspired was Austrian art collector Adolf Fischer, who developed a strong interest in Japanese art after visiting the Weltausstellung 1873 in Vienna. In his book "Bilder aus Japan", Fischer offers an arresting description of Meoto Iwa, accompanied by a small illustration. Gustav Klimt, who had a close and productive relationship with Fischer, not only knew his book but also—and not without Fischer’s help—assembled his own collection of Japanese art. This paper argues that Fischer’s engaging account of Meoto Iwa in the book (as well as undoubtedly in his private conversations with the artist) inspired a series of Klimt’s key paintings. At first, the modified version of the two rocks of Meoto Iwa appeared in the second Portrait of Emilie Flöge (1902), Klimt’s life-long friend and companion.

A few years later, Klimt, an ardent adherent of Symbolism, return to the gripping symbolism of Meoto Iwa in his key work The Kiss (1908), placing an embraced coupled on top of a large rock. This research illuminates stylistic, iconographic, symbolic, and even thematic parallels between the two paintings. Klimt’s interest in Shinto symbolism continued until the end of his life. The highly synthesized rock-like ‘construction’ that encapsulates human bodies—similar to kami that occupy rocks—reappears in his subsequent paintings The Virgin (1913), Death and Life (1910-11), The Bride (1918), etc. Offering an analytical approach and, accordingly, critically reevaluating and reexamining prevailing concepts, this lecture illuminates not only Klimt’s interest in Shinto and its symbolism but also elucidates that without taking in account the role of Japonisme in Klimt’s oeuvre it is impossible to fully understand the intricacy of his complex art.

| Bio |

Svitlana Shiells, a former professor of art history, has taught at a number of universities in Ukraine, America, and Austria (among them University of Maryland, College Park, American University, Washington, D.C., George Mason University (GMU), Fairfax, VA, Webster University, and Vienna). She completed her studies, including a Ph. D. in art history, in Ukraine. Dr. Shiells has also worked as a Research Associate at the National Museum of Asian Art, Washington, D.C, where she was Director of the Washington Cultural Fund. The focus of her research is Japonisme in Eastern and Central European modern art. Dr. Shiells has published widely and presented her research at numerous lectures and seminars, for instance, at Harvard University, Tokyo University of the Arts, the College Art Association, the Library of Congress, the Salzburg Seminar, and other art museums, as well as at conferences in London, Tokyo, Paris, Barcelona, Chicago, Montreal, Baltimore, Salzburg, Washington, D.C., Kharkiv, Budapest, Lviv, etc. Dr. Shiells is a recipient of fellowships in the field of art in the U.S., Ukraine, and Japan. Currently, as an affiliated faculty of GMU, she is living in Vienna, Austria and working on a monograph on Japonisme in Gustav Klimt’s art.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s07e10
Thursday 2024-01-18, 18:00~19:30

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s07/#e10.

This talk is an exploration of media scandals in contemporary Japanese society. In shedding new light on the study of scandal in Japan, the talk offers a novel view of scandal as a highly mediatized “ritual” which manifests and manages revealed transgressions throughout Japanese history.

The first part of the talk focuses on Japanese scandal as “media product”, and it delves into the media's role in constructing, shaping, and distributing scandals in Japan. Here, Igor Prusa explicates the role of Japanese media organizations in a symbolic process of transforming leaked gossip into a full-fledged scandal.

The second part of the talk approaches Japanese scandal as “social ritual”. It explores the performative nature of scandal, highlighting how the scandal actors become characters in a larger social drama. Further, it demonstrates how the social drama of confession, exclusion and reintegration is turned into a spectacular media event with a high degree of ritualization.

| Bio |

Mgr. Igor Prusa, Ph.D. et Ph.D. is a Czech scholar in Japanese studies and media studies, currently affiliated with Ambis University, Prague. He worked at the Czech Academy of Sciences. Prusa received his first PhD in media studies at Prague’s Charles University in 2010. In 2017 he defended his second doctoral thesis at the University of Tokyo. His research interests include contemporary Japanese society, media scandals, and anti-heroism in popular fiction. His research has appeared in a wide range of publications, including Media, Culture & Society and Japan Forum. Apart from his academic activities, Igor Prusa is a music composer in a Japan-themed band, Nantokanaru.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s07e09
Thursday 2024-01-11, 18:00~19:30

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s07/#e09.

In the face of socio-economic shifts—a high aging/low childbirth population, decline in marriage and co-residence, irregularization of labor —the family model of mortuary care that once prevailed in Japan is coming undone. As more and more Japanese live and die alone, they face the prospect of becoming “disconnected dead:” stranded without a grave nor social others to be tended by once there. Given the specter of such a bad death, new designs and trends are emerging for both necro-habitation and care-giving the dead.

Prominent here is making mortuary arrangements for and by oneself while still alive (seizen seiri). Such anticipatory death-planning is the issue taken up in this talk. Based on fieldwork with new initiatives and services catering to a clientele of aging singles in Japanese, it is asked: What kind of grievability is this when the sociality of being cared for by others is handled by the self in anticipation of death? Mortuary presentism; a new ontology of the dead?

| Bio |

Anne Allison is Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University, United States. A specialist in contemporary Japan, her books include Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club (1994), Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination (2006), and Precarious Japan (2013). Published this year is Being Dead Otherwise on new Japanese practices regarding the dead, and the relations between self and other in caregiving them.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s07e08
Thursday 2023-12-07, 18:00~19:30

| Place & Preparations |

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s07/#e08.

After the peak of the ski boom in Japan during the 1990s, many ski resorts either retrenched or ceased operations. However, Niseko, one of the ski resorts in Hokkaido, was an exception. Since 2001, Niseko has been attracting international tourists, particularly from Australia, and has even been referred to as “Little Australia.” As a result, the area has taken on a more Western atmosphere, complete with English signage, Western-style restaurants, and cafes.

The influx of international tourists to Niseko has also created a demand for foreign workers to accommodate guests. During the ski season, a large number of temporary workers come to Niseko to work in the tourism sector. While this is temporary mobility, as they are employed seasonally, there are also people who migrate to Niseko, attracted by the lifestyle. This lecture examines the flow of people to Niseko and its impact on the community, highlighting the voices of local residents.

| Bio |

Atsushi Takeda is a Professor at Ritsumeikan University’s College of Social Sciences in Japan. His research interests include international mobility, migration, tourism, transnationalism, and popular culture. He has published book chapters and peer-reviewed articles on these topics in various journals, including Sociology Compass, International Journal of Social Research Methodology, Asian Anthropology, Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, and International Journal of Intercultural Relations. Additionally, he serves as an editorial board member for Qualitative Research and the Romanian Journal of Sociological Studies.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s07e07
Thursday 2023-11-30, 18:00~19:30

| Place & Preparations | 

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s07/#e07.

In Matsuda Aoko‘s creations, she weaves together traditional feminist themes like gender roles, women in the workplace, marriage, and maternity with more modern discussions on gender identity, sex, and sexuality. Her works often unfold against the backdrop of contemporary Japan, particularly in work settings, shedding light on stories involving gender-based violence and inequalities like sexual harassment, sexism, and abuses of power. 

This lecture focuses on some of the most representative works by the author and their theoretical impact. We examine to what extent they challenge gender normativity and reflect on the preponderant use of devices like metamorphosis, irony and repetition and their different outcomes. We also see how her works, which are generally focused on women‘s characters, in reality reveal an urge for men too to set themselves free from established roles.

| Bio |

Daniela Moro received her Master's Degree from Waseda University in Tokyo and her Ph.D. from Ca' Foscari University of Venice, with a thesis on the works of Enchi Fumiko that was later published as a monograph. She is currently Associate Professor in Japanese Studies in the Department of Humanities at the University of Turin. She is interested in the relationship between Japanese literature and feminist, gender and queer studies. In particular, she focuses on female writers working between the 1960s and the 1980s, but she also looks at contemporary writers. Recently she has published an article on Matsuda Aoko's work (2023): "A silent fight to challenge the norm in Matsuda Aoko's 'Sutakkingu Kanō' (2012)", Japan Forum, 35:4, 410-43. DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2023.2248156

You can reach her at daniela.moro@unito.it

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s07e06
Thursday 2023-11-23, 18:00~19:30

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

As the final decade of pre-online mediated street culture came to an end in the early 2000s, curated interest in girls' fashions, culture and postures of defiance vanished along with street fashion and public subculture in its last stand. What arose and has taken attention in the twenty first century have been various animation, ero ge-mu, and boys' screen and bedroom cultures which have picked up and run the theme of defiance from schoolgirl actors in the media gaze of the 1990s to early 2000s.

In this lecture we will explore the combatative girl character in cross-dressed male parody of real girls, cross-dressed play and virtual shōjo avatar livestreaming. This paper will explore the transfer of bombastic girls' street style into boys parodic cross-dressing, and the re-assemblage of girls' cute aesthetics as a form of masculine virtual style and some of the underlying context for these riveting performances in social class and gender rearrangements in the late recessionary period of the 2000s.

| Bio |

Sharon Kinsella's earlier work looked at cuteness and infantilism as rebellion; the educational and class factors behind the institutional and commercial transformation of manga for adults in the 1990s; otaku subculture and Lolita complex subcultures. Sharon's second full-length book, Schoolgirls, Money and Rebellion in Japan (2014) incorporates research on girls' street styles and male journalism and an examination of the 'cult of girls' in the late 1990s to the 2010s. Sharon's most recent research focus has been on the rise of female cross dress amongst younger men in the 2010s. In this research phase she has written 3 articles and made a collaborative film, Josō, exploring the political-economic and social class factors surrounding cross-dress fashion and cuteness for men (otoko no ko) in Tokyo.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s07e05
Thursday 2023-11-16, 18:00~19:30
max. 50 participants (on site) + max. 300 participants (online) 

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s07/#e05.

Wohl eher unerwartet war das Jahr 2023 von breiten öffentlichen Debatten geprägt, die alte Fragen von Gender und Sexualität neu in den Blick nahmen. Unter anderem haben sich AktivistInnen, das Rechtssystem, und die Politik mit transgender Operationen als Voraussetzung für einen rechtlichen Geschlechtswechsel, der Zustimmung des Partners für eine sichere Abtreibung, der Legalisierung der gleichgeschlechtlichen Ehe, und der Anerkennung der Vergewaltigung ohne Gewaltanwendungsnachweis auseinandergesetzt.

Der Vortrag nimmt diese Debatten zum Anlass, die Geschichte der Geschlechter und Sexualitäten im modernen Japan zu reflektieren.

| Bio |

Sabine Frühstück ist Professorin und der Koichi Takashima Chair für japanische Kulturwissenschaften an der University of California Santa Barbara. Sie interessiert sich für Japans Moderne und Gegenwart im globalen Kontext, schreibt manchmal über die Konventionen wissenschaftlicher Arbeit und stellt gerne die Grenzen nationaler, kultureller und disziplinärer Ordnung in Frage. Im vergangenen Jahr erschienen u.a. ihr Buch Gender and Sexuality in Modern Japan (Cambridge UP) sowie die russische Übersetzung ihres Buches Uneasy Warriors: Gender, Memory, and Popular Culture in the Japanese Army [Тревожные воины. Гендер, память и поп-культура в японской армии]und die japanische Übersetzung ihres Buches Playing War: Children and the Paradoxes of Militarism in Modern Japan [『「戦争ごっこ」の近現代史—児童文化と軍事思想』].

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s07e04
Wednesday 2023-11-08, 18:30~20:00
max. 50 participants (on site) + max. 300 participants (online) 

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s07/#e04.

This lecture discusses immigrant integration in Japan. It focuses on economic and psychological integration. We also explore social and cultural integrations as predictors for economic and psychological integrations. Hence, we investigate integration from different angles and what hinders the integration of immigrants in Japan. We discuss the characteristics of the contexts under which immigrants are received in Japan. This discussion includes immigration control policies, labor market structures, and ethnic communities.

To examine immigrant integration in Japan, we use the statistical data derived from the nationally representative survey targeting immigrants in 2018. To consider economic integration, we focus on the role of education and labor market segmentation in shaping logged hourly wages. For the study of psychological integration, we observe mental health and intentions to settle or return.

| Bio |

Hirohisa Takenoshita is a professor of sociology and stratification research at the Department of Political Science, Keio University. Before joining Keio University, he worked at Shizuoka University and Sophia University. He published several journal articles and book chapters. These articles were published in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, International Migration, Journal of International Migration and Integration, Comparative Social Research, Japanese Journal of Sociology, and Sociological Theory and Methods. Book chapters were published in Routledge, Springer, Palgrave Macmillan, and Trans Pacific Press.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s07e03
Thursday 2023-11-02, 17:00~18:30
max. 50 participants (on site) + max. 300 participants (online) 

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s07/#e03.

KI-gesteuerte Waffensysteme ([Lethal] Autonomous Weapons, [L]AWS), werden oft als "dritte Revolution in der Kriegstechnologie" bezeichnet. Doch während Forscher*innen und Intellektuelle mahnen, dass das Urteil über ein Menschenleben niemals einem Roboter überlassen werden dürfe und im Rahmen der UN-Waffenkonvention bisher ohne viel Erfolg über Regulierungen oder Verbote von LAWS verhandelt wird, verschwimmen zunehmend auch die Grenzen zwischen militärischer und ziviler Technik angesichts selbstfahrender Autos, breit zugänglicher KI-Assistenten und ziviler Drohnen.

Diese vielschichtige Debatte, die von technischen Möglichkeiten, ethischen Bedenken und pragmatischen Abwägungen geprägt ist, wird auch in Japan geführt. In der Tat ist Japan ein spannendes Beispiel für einen Diskurs über solche neuen militärische Technologien: Wie schließlich geht ein Land mit dieser "dritten Revolution" um, dessen in der Verfassung verankerter Verzicht auf das Recht, Krieg zu führen und reguläre Streitkräfte zu unterhalten, integraler Bestandteil seiner pazifistisch geprägten Sicherheitsidentität ist? Und inwiefern spielt die Roboter- und Technikaffinität, die sich häufig in Japanbildern findet, eine Rolle? In Annäherung an eine Antwort auf diese Fragen werden im Vortrag mehrere Diskursebenen (Politik, Forschung, NGOs, Tagespresse) betrachtet und ihre Verflechtungen auf inhaltlicher, sprachlich-symbolischer und auch personeller Ebene erörtert.

| Bio |

Dr. Bernhard Seidl ist Senior Lecturer am Institut für Ostasienwissenschaften der Universität Wien. Er interessiert sich insbesondere für die Dynamik gesellschaftlicher Diskurse im gegenwärtigen Japan, deren Struktur, Akteure und sprachliche Handlungsmuster er über korpuslinguistische Methodik zu erschließen versucht.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s07e02
Thursday 2023-10-19, 18:00~19:30
max. 50 participants (on site) + max. 300 participants (online) 

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s07/#e02.

During the Edo period (1600-1868), several great festivals honoring the Tokugawa bakufu were staged in Edo in an annual rotation. These were the Sannō Festival, the Kanda Festival, and in 1714 the Nezu Festival. Each event was accompanied by an enormous parade, in which the three sponsoring shrines and supporting city wards presented portable shrines, huge floats, colorful exhibits, exuberant performances of music and dance, and much else. For the bakufu, the shrines, and ward residents the meaning of these festivals changed in conjunction with the social, economic, political, and religious contexts in which the celebrations were embedded. This talk will trace some of these changes in order better to understand what the great festivals of the city signified to sponsors, participants, and spectators alike.

| Bio |

Gerald Grömer, geboren in 1957 in den USA, studierte Klavier an der Peabody Institute of Music in Baltimore und Musikwissenschaft an der Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music. Von 1998 bis 2023 war er Professor an der University of Yamanshi in Kōfu (Japan), seit Sommer 2023 wohnt er in Wien. Viele seiner Zahlreichen Bücher und anderen Veröffentlichungen beschäftigen sich mit japanischen Strassenkünstlern und blinde Musikerinnen der Frühmoderne. Seit 2016 erschienen auch drei Bände von Übersetzungen von japanischen Essays (zuihitsu) der Edo Zeit (1600-1868).

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s07e01
Thursday 2023-10-12, 18:00~19:30
max. 50 participants (on site) + max. 300 participants (online) 

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s07/#e01.

Was hat das Zen, verwurzelt in einer Religion, deren höchstes Gebot das Nicht-Töten, ja Nicht-Verletzen lebender Wesen ist, mit den Kriegskünsten zu schaffen? „Mind Fitness Training“ basierend auf mindfulness (urbuddhistisches Achtsamkeitstraining) wird vom US-Militär praktiziert, um mit erhöhter Aufmerksamkeit Drohnen zu steuern oder Feuerwaffen zu bedienen. Hat das mit der Lehre des Buddha noch irgendetwas zu tun? Kann es analog aus christlicher Sicht einen heiligen oder auch nur gerechten Krieg geben, wenn man die fundamental pazifistische Bergpredigt ernst nimmt? Am Beispiel des Zen-Buddhismus möchte der Referent diesen Ambivalenzen nachgehen. 
Schon der erste Patriarch des Zen in China, Bodhidharma, wird der Legende nach mit der Entwicklung einer Faustkampfmethode in Verbindung gebracht. Als Zen im frühen Mittelalter nach Japan kam, geriet es unter die Patronanz der zu politischer Macht aufgestiegenen Kriegerkaste (der bushi, vulgo Samurai). Das rigorose Geistestraining und Detachment des Zen wurde in die Kunst des ungerührten Tötens integriert. Auf die Schriften berühmter Schwertkämpfer beriefen sich auch Zen-Priester, die in den von Japan im 20. Jh. geführten Kriegen ideologische Beihilfe geleistet haben. Ihre verkorksten Legitimationen des Tötens in der Schlacht sollen analysiert werden. Handelt es sich um perverse Verdrehungen der Lehre oder sind Zweckentfremdungen dieser Art dem Zen inhärent, wenn es auf eine reine Psychotechnik reduziert und seiner ethischen Grundlagen beraubt wird? Anhand historischer und gegenwärtiger Beispiele sollen diesbezügliche Sondierungen vorgetragen werden.   
Die Anrufung höherer Mächte oder der Einsatz spiritueller Fähigkeiten bei der Mobilisierung zum Krieg dürften seit Anbeginn der Geschichte der Menschheit eine Rolle gespielt haben und können starke emotionale und motivationale Kräfte wecken. Den möglichen Tod vor Augen habend, eröffnet sich ein Nexus zur Transzendenz wie von selbst. Da kann dann (jede) Religion umstandslos für martialische Ziele instrumentalisiert werden und wird es auch – quod erat demonstrandum.   

| Bio |

Dr. Wolfgang Herbert, Studium der Japanologie, Philosophie und Religionswissenschaften an der Universität Wien, Professor für Vergleichende Kulturwissenschaften an der Universität Tokushima, 6. Dan Shotokan Karate-dô; Autor des Buches: Buddha, Zen und Achtsamkeit. Eine kurze Geschichte des Buddhismus im deutschen Sprachraum. Essen: Oldib 2012, und des Artikels „Was hat Bodhidharma im Karate-dōjō verloren?“ in OAG Notizen 2019/05 (https://oag.jp/img/2019/05/Notizen-1905_Bodhidharma.korr_.pdf).

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s06e14
Thursday 2023-06-29, 18:30~20:00
max. 50 participants (on site) + max. 300 participants (online) 

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s06/#e14.

The social media industry, despite its vast membership, has experienced a significant decline in advertisement revenue since 2022, leading to mass layoffs. These cutbacks have also affected content moderators responsible for regulating hateful content. In this situation, user engagement becomes an indispensable part of content moderation, particularly in addressing online hate speech. This guest lecture focuses on Japanese internet users who have taken on the challenging task of systematically reporting online hate speech and other forms of hateful content to social media companies. It addresses two questions: (1) What types of users participate in such user engagement? (2) What motivates and sustains Twitter users in their engagement?
   To address these questions, the #Internet Rightists Ban Festival (Netto-uyo Ban Matsuri) is selected as the Japanese case study. Launched in May 2018, this collective action has continued to the present day, resulting in the removal of over 990,800 videos and 4,000 channels from YouTube, as well as the deletion of more than 270 million tweets and 11,000 accounts from Twitter.
   The lecture will begin by providing background information on the Japanese case study, including the Japanese internet culture, which is marked by cynicism and gamification, and the analytical framework offered by the German case study since 2016 (#ichbinhier). In the main part, the lecture will present the results of a qualitative content analysis of 3,821 tweets posted in 2018 and 2020, examining three determinants of user engagement against hateful content proposed by scholars specializing in the German case study.
   The lecture argues that Japanese user engagement has been driven particularly by the perception of personal abilities, including gaming and comment-writing skills, as well as the perception of personal benefits, especially derived from gamification and irony.   

| Bio |

Ayaka Löschke (ayaka.loeschke@fau.de) is a Junior Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg since 2019. She holds an MA in Philosophy from Sophia University in Tokyo (2008), a second MA in Philosophy from the University of Bonn (2012). In 2013, she changed her major from philosophy to social scientific Japanese studies. She obtained a PhD in Japanese Studies from the University of Zurich in 2018. Her research fields encompass Japanese politics, civil society, and social movements, with a specific focus on the regulation of hate speech in Japan (ongoing project) and the legacies of post-Fukushima activism aimed at protecting people from radiation (dissertation project).

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s06e13
Thursday 2023-06-22, 18:30~20:00
max. 50 participants (on site) + max. 300 participants (online) 

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s06/#e13.

S.E. MIZUUCHI Ryuta, außerordentlicher und bevollmächtigter Botschafter von Japan in Österreich wird zunächst einen kurzen Überblick über den Hintergrund der Judenpolitik der japanischen Regierung vor dem zweiten Weltkrieg und die Fakten zur Rolle Higuchi Kiichiros geben, bevor es zum Vortrag von Prof. Higuchi übergeht.

| Abstract |

Am 11. Oktober 2022 wurde eine Statue meines Großvaters Kiichiro Higuchi im Izanagi Schrein (伊弉諾神宮) auf der Insel Awajishima (淡路島) enthüllt. In jüngster Zeit wird er in Japan als Retter der jüdischen Flüchtlinge in der Mandschurei vor dem letzten Krieg und als Verteidiger von Hokkaido gegen die ungerechtfertigte Invasion der Sowjetischen Armee nach dem Kriegsende 1945 verehrt. 
Kiichiro Higuchi wurde 1888 auf der Insel Awajishima geboren. Nach den beiden Kriegen gegen China (1894-96) und Russland (1904-05) entschied er sich spontan, eine militärische Laufbahn einzuschlagen. Nach dem Abschluss der Kriegsschule und Militärakademie wurde er zum Offizier für Nachrichtenwesen. Im Zuge der Sibirischen Intervention (1918-22) wurde er nach Wladiwostok entsandt und wohnte bei einer jüdischen Familie, durch die er die tragische Geschichte der Juden kennenlernte. 1925-28 war er als Militärattaché in Warschau tätig, wo er seine Kenntnisse nicht nur über die politische Lage innerhalb Europas, sondern auch die damalige Situation der jüdischen Bevölkerung vertiefte.  
1937 entsandte ihn der Generalstab für kurze Zeit nach Berlin, um die Politik des Dritten Reichs kritisch zu untersuchen. Infolge des Ausbruchs des japanisch-chinesischen Krieges wurde er nach Tokio abberufen und anschließend als Leiter der “Spezialeinheiten” (Anm: des Nachrichtendienstes) nach Harbin in der damaligen Mandschurei geschickt, das als Zentrum der jüdischen Gemeinde im Fernen Osten galt. Es war vermutlich die Freundschaft mit deren Vorsitzenden, Dr. Abraham Kaufman, die ihn veranlasste, in Folge eine judenfreundliche Politik vorerst in der Mandschurei und dann innerhalb der japanischen Regierung zu etablieren. Einem heftigen Protest Deutschlands gegen das japanische Außenministerium und den Generalstab wegen seiner pro-jüdischen Ansprache beim ersten jüdischen Kongress im Fernen Osten 1937 folgte seine Abberufung nach Tokio, wo er zum Leiter der 2. Sektion des Generalstabs befördert wurde. In dieser Funktion gelang es ihm im Hintergrund, den “Fünf-Minister-Beschluss“, Grundprinzipien der damaligen Judenpolitik Japans, Ende 1938 unter dem Heeresminister Seishiro Itagaki zugunsten der Juden zu verfassen und infolgedessen mehreren tausenden aus dem Dritten Reich fliehenden jüdischen Flüchtlingen den Weg in die Freiheit zu verschaffen. Prof. Meron Medzini der Hebrew Universität schreibt in seinem Buch, „Under the Shadow of the Rising Sun. Japan and the Jews during the Holocaust Era”, Boston 2016: “ in the empire the Japanese created beginning in 1931 (Anm: Kaiserreich Mandschukuo), numbering a total of some thirty-five to forty thousand Jews who were lucky compared to their brethren who were extermised in Europe”.    

| Bio |

Prof. Dr. Ryuichi HIGUCHI
Higuchi Ryuichi (geb. 1946) ist ein renommierter Bach-Forscher und Dirigent in Japan und aktuell Professor Emeritus für Musikwissenschaft an der Meiji Gakuin Universität. Er ist auch bekannt als Enkel von Generalleutnant Kiichiro Higuchi, der sich für den freizügigen Transit jüdischer Flüchtlinge in Ostasien 1937-1941, einschließlich nach Mandschukuo, einsetzte. Sein Großvater gilt als Verteidiger von Hokkaido gegen die russische Aggression unter Stalin nach der Akzeptanz der Potsdamer Deklaration durch Japan im August 1945.  
Ryuichi Higuchi studierte an der Keio Universität in Tokio und besuchte 1972 das Bach-Archiv Leipzig, wo er die Grundlage für seine Bachforschung bei Werner Neumann schuf. 1974-79 studierte er als Stipendiat des DAADs bei Georg von Dadelsen in Tübingen und edierte im Rahmen seiner Dissertation sieben Kirchenkantaten J. S. Bachs (Neue Bach-Ausgabe I-34). Das Dirigieren erlernte er bei Alexander Sumski und wurde Chorleiter an der Marienkirche in Stuttgart. Seit seiner Rückkehr nach Japan ist er vielseitig tätig als Musikwissenschaftler, Dirigent und Kritiker für die Bach-Forschung in Japan. Im Jahr 2000 begründete er unter der Schirmherrschaft Helmut Rillings die Konzert-Vereinigung "Bach Akademie Meiji Gakuin Tokyo" mit eigenem Chor und Orchester auf Originalinstrumenten. In seiner Funktion als künstlerischer Leiter gab er viele Konzerte und verantwortete deren CD- Aufnahmen.
Von 1985-1992 war er Generalsekretär der Alban Berg Gesellschaft Japan und seit 2022 ist er als deren Präsident tätig. 1998 war er Gastforscher des Musikwissenschaftlichen Instituts der Universität Wien und hielt u.a. den Vortrag „Die Japanischen Blätter Op.15 – Gottfried von Einems Beschäftigung mit Japan“ im Rahmen des Internationalen Einem-Kongresses der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien. 2006 war er Gastforscher des Arnold Schönberg Centers Wien. 2012-17 war er als Vizepräsident der Internationalen Gesellschaft der Musikforschung, mit Sitz in Basel, tätig und realisierte deren Weltkongress 2017 in Tokio. 2015 wurde ihm vom Deutschen Akademischen Austauschdienst der Theodor-Berchem-Preis verliehen. Im Jahr 1988 erhielt er den Kioto-Musikpreis und wurde 2002 mit dem Österreichischen Ehrenkreuz für Kunst und Wissenschaft ausgezeichnet.
Nachdem er 2018 Gastvorträge über seinen Großvater in Jerusalem und Tel Aviv auf Einladung der dortigen Japanischen Botschaft gehalten hatte, wurde er wiederholt zu Vorträgen in verschiedenen Städten Japans eingeladen. Außerdem publizierte er die beiden Bücher Kiichiro Higuchis Nachlässe – ein General, der die jüdischen Flüchtlinge und Hokkaido rettete （陸軍中将樋口季一郎の遺訓　ユダヤ難民と北海道を救った将軍), 532 Seiten, Bensei Shuppan, 2020 und Kiichiro Higuchis Memoir（陸軍中将樋口季一郎回想録), revidierte Neuausgabe, Japanisch, 723 Seiten, Keibunsha Shobo, 2022.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s06e12
Thursday 2023-06-15, 18:30~20:00
max. 50 participants (on site) + max. 300 participants (online) 

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s06/#e12.

In their recently published 6th Assessment Report in March 2023, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has painted a bleak climate future, stating that “continued greenhouse gas emissions will lead to increasing global warming, with the best estimate of reaching 1.5°C in the near term” (IPCC 2023:p12), further highlighting that climate change remains a crucial global issue that requires urgent attention and action from all countries. To address these issues, the international community has been developing several policies, mechanisms and multilateral agreements, such as The Paris Agreement, signed in 2015. However, achieving these goals requires significant efforts from all countries - particularly those with high levels of carbon emissions - while simultaneously having to balance the energy needs of developing and developed countries alike. Japan, as member of the international community, has been internationally committed to combat climate change, playing an active role in various international forums and initiatives and working to reconcile its national energy needs with international climate change needs.
   As former Director of Climate Change Division (2020-2022) at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Japan, Otaka Junichiro gives unique insights on Japan’s engagement in international climate change cooperation and the country’s position on climate change policies while discussing current trends and examining the development of several multilateral climate change initiatives in this short lecture.

| Bio |

Mr. OTAKA Junichiro (大髙準一郎) is Minister (Deputy Chief of Mission) at the Embassy of Japan in Austria since August 2022. He joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan (MOFA) in 1995. Working in the foreign service for 28 years, his career has focused on the area of the development of multilateral rule-making in international fora, including those relating to the international environment, human rights, disarmament, chemical and biological weapons, conventional weapons, and non-proliferation. He has taken part in coordinating and negotiating processes in these sectors during his appointments in relevant departments in Tokyo and abroad. Most recently, Mr. Otaka was directly involved in the foreign policy concerning climate change as the Director of Climate Change Division in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2020 to 2022. During this time, he attended the COP26 held in Glasgow as a core member of the Japanese Delegation.
    Mr. Otaka holds a BA in International Relations from the University of Tokyo as well as a MSc in European and International Politics from the University of Edinburgh and a Master of Laws from the University of Cambridge, respectively.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s06e10
Thursday 2023-05-25, 18:30~20:00
max. 50 participants (on site) + max. 300 participants (online) 

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s06/#e10.

Care is commonly regarded as an ethical attitude and practice regarding others. What is often overlooked is the indispensable role aesthetics plays in facilitating care. At the same time, the notion of care provides a foundation for our aesthetic life. This presentation takes our engagement with everyday objects, not a usual arena in which care is discussed, to explore the aesthetically-guided practice of care and the ethically-grounded nature of our aesthetic life.

| Bio |

Yuriko Saito (斉藤 百合子, Saitō Yuriko) ist Philosophieprofessorin an der Rhode Island School of Design, RISD (USA). Sie hat in Tokyo und Wisconsin studiert und wurde 1999 mit dem RISD Frazier Award for Excellence in Teaching ausgezeichnet. Sie ist Chefredakteurin der online-Zeitschrift Contemporary Aesthetics, Redaktionsmitglied von Environmental Aesthetics, Beiratsmitglied von The British Journal of Aesthetics und war Kuratoriumsmitglied der American Society for Aesthetics. 

| Date & Time |

Thursday 2023-05-16, 11:30~13:00

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Information |

Die Veranstaltung findet im Rahmen von wigip (Wiener Gesellschaft für interkulturelle Philosophie), Arbeitskreis: Interkulturelles Philosophieren: Theorie und Praxis, Sommersemester 2023 und das IWK – Institut für Wissenschaft und Kunst, in Kooperation mit der Universität Linz, Abteilung für künstlerische Wissenspraktiken statt.
https://wigip.org/arbeitskreis 
https://www.iwk.ac.at/

This lecture will focus on the ethnographic work and key arguments from Dr Kate Sylvester’s recent publication, Women and Martial Art in Japan.  The book, based on extensive original research, examines the practice by women in a university sport setting of kendo, the Japanese martial art which, using bamboo swords as well as protective armour, and descended from traditional swordsmanship, instils in its practitioners, besides physical skills, societal values of etiquette and resilience as well connecting them to a “traditional” outlook, which includes a gendered cultural identity.
   The book therefore illustrates an unexplored example of identity construction in Japan, one which legitimises women’s sport experiences within a male-centric physical culture, unpacks the notion of “tradition” in kendo and unravels its stultifying control over women’s kendo participation, and discusses the androgenicity of women’s participation to highlight its subversive potential to develop women as leaders in sport, politics, and other fields which continue to be very male dominated in Japan. 

| Bio |

Dr Kate Sylvester is a research affiliate of The Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences (GIH). Her work intersects school club sport (bukatsudō), gender identity politics, and cross-cultural transformations of body culture with a special focus on Japanese martial arts (budō). Kate has trained and competed in kendo for 31-years across multiple (cultural, international) settings. She is the head coach of the Swedish Women’s National Kendo Team.  

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s06e09
Thursday 2023-05-11, 18:30~20:00
max. 50 participants (on site) + max. 300 participants (online) 

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s06/#e09.

The aim of this lecture is to present the widely discussed concept of yakuwarigo 役割語 ‘role language’ from two perspectives: fictionalized speech (using examples of characteristic lines and dialogue taken from popular anime, manga and drama series), as well as real Japanese language used in private and public spheres. This discussion promises to reach interesting conclusions concerning the impact of Japanese language and culture on role and character languages, and the ways and reasons for which role languages are occasionally and intentionally implemented in real speech as a communicative strategy.
   The first part of the lecture discusses major terms (yakuwari and yakuwarigo, kyarakutā and kyarakutā gengo, kyara, rashisa, sutereotaipu, rejisutā, etc.) from the perspective of linguistic stylization and Japanese sociolinguistics. In this part, standard language (hyōjungo), Japanese standard honorifics (keigo), but also non-standard honorifics (e.g. -ssu form) will be introduced as examples of role languages that play a significant part in portraying appropriate (demanded) or inappropriate (undemanded) behaviours. The topic of yakuwarigo’s potential impact on the language and behaviours of contemporary people and their speech will also be briefly discussed. 
   In the second part, selected examples of role languages and character languages that occur in real Japanese communication will be introduced. Two communicative spheres: private (e.g. teacher’s speech, parent’s speech), as well as public (e.g. posters, announcements, commercials, blogs, celebrity speech) will be distinguished in order to discover major tendencies and also explain motivations for using stylized speech. Finally, the occurrence of role language in language education (based on examples from textbooks) will be briefly presented to indicate the impact of role language and stylized language on young people’s linguistic competencies.
   The lecture is based on selected published sources referring to the discussed subjects, as well as the outcomes of the individual research conducted by the author in recent years. 

| Bio |

Patrycja Duc-Harada is an assistant professor at the Department of Japanese and Chinese Studies of Jagiellonian University in Cracow, Poland. She obtained her Ph.D. degree in linguistics in 2017, with a dissertation on Japanese youth sociolect. Her doctoral thesis was published as a monograph entitled Japoński socjolekt młodzieżowy jako manifestacja świadomości językowej młodego pokolenia (Eng. Japanese Youth Sociolect as a Manifestation of Linguistic Awareness of the Young Generation) in 2020. Her research focuses on various aspects of Japanese sociolinguistics, ethnolinguistics, pragmatics, as well as Japanese language education. She has conducted qualitative research on Japanese language during several fieldwork stays in Japan. Her recent research interest focuses on changes and transformations occurring within the category of Japanese honorifics.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s06e08
Thursday 2023-05-04, 18:30~20:00
max. 50 participants (on site) + max. 300 participants (online) 

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s06/#e08.

Looking at young Europeans who migrated to Tokyo and Singapore in the 2010s, this book sheds light on early-career migration and on socio-cultural change in Japan and Singapore. We see how migration to Asian business centres has become a way of distinction and an alternative way of middle-class reproduction for young Europeans. The book also reveals how perceived insecurities in the crisis-ridden EU result in these migrants’ migration or prolonged stays in Asia. This pioneering work makes the case for EU citizens’ aspired lifestyles and professional employment that is no longer only attainable in Europe or the West. Tokyo and Singapore have become their temporary homes. Having spent the crucial first life stage of ‘full’ adulthood and economic independence in Asia, the migrants have established grounds for a middle-class lifestyle that they might not be able to replicate back home. Japan’s and Singapore’s changing migration regimes, however, pose different barriers to the migrants, which results in ambiguous feelings towards their host societies. The analysis reveals a diametrical change in both country's migration policies and offers a nuanced portrayal of the way continous ethnic diversification and globalization affect the daily lives of foreign professionals in Tokyo and Singapore.

| Bio |

Helena Hof is Senior Research and Teaching Fellow in Social Science of Japan at the University of Zurich and a Research Fellow at the Socio-Cultural Department of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. Her work focuses on Japan and lies at the nexus of migration studies, the sociology of work, gender, ethnicity and race, and global cities and entrepreneurship. She is currently part of a German government-funded collaborative project on the role of skills in labor migration processes in Asia, within which Helena examines foreign entrepreneurs in Tokyo’s and Singapore knowledge-intensive startup scene. Helena holds guest researcher affiliations with Waseda's Institute of Asian Migrations in Tokyo and the Asia Research Institute’s Migration Cluster at the National University of Singapore and has published widely in academic journals such as Social Science Japan Journal, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Asia Pacific Migration Journal, and Mobilities.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s06e06
Thursday 2023-04-20, 18:30~20:00
max. 50 participants (on site) + max. 300 participants (online) 

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s06/#e06.

Research on international student mobility (ISM) represents a growing field of study and contributes to the understanding of mobility decisions, how they are embedded in institutional, social and national contexts, and how participation in mobility programs contributes to the reproduction of class status. Yet previous studies largely fail to acknowledge the increasing diversity in patterns and directions behind the complex motivations leading to study abroad decisions. Using a mixed methods data set on students of East Asian Studies from Austria, Czech and Slovakia, we question the validity of neoliberal explanations that often “reduce mobility goals to pure economics” (Lipura and Collins 2020). Our results, by contrast, demonstrate that study abroad in the fields of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Studies is perceived as essential part of studies and expectations on the outcome of studying abroad are less oriented on the career. Rather, it is a combination of non-material and cultural dimensions that emerge from our questionnaire and interview data as crucial in prompting students’ motivation. We discuss differences in relation to institutional arrangements, national contexts and wider social changes that contribute to shaping motivations of study abroad across our sample. Finally, we discuss the possible theoretical implications of our findings for furthering research on international student mobility.

| Bio |

Miloš Debnar is Associate Professor of Sociology at Ryūkoku University and currently Visiting Scholar at the Department of East Asian Studies. His research focus lies on international migration.

Wolfram Manzenreiter is Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Vienna. His research interest is concerned with globalization issues and the question of happiness in contemporary Japan.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s06e05
Thursday 2023-03-30, 12:30~14:00
max. 300 participants (online) 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s06/#e05.

This lecture is a brief overview of one of Japan’s three greatest festivals, Tenjin Matsuri, from the perspective of the first scholar/ non-Japanese national/ female who was allowed to attend all the annual events (from organizational meetings and formal shrine visits to budget reviews and drinking parties) of Otori Mikoshi Group. Tenjin Matsuri is supported by 24 active groups (kô), but the most significant ones are exclusively male: Gohoren Kô, Otori Mikoshi Kô, Taiko Naka Kô. Tenjin Kô is one of the six groups who make the major decisions related to the festival, they do have numerous female members, but those members, however, do not become kômoto (group leaders). This presentation will focus on the role each traditional gender plays in the management and performance of the festival, in an attempt to provide a better understanding of the social and sacred mechanisms at play, as well as the changes (if any) that have occurred in contemporary society. 

| Bio |

Carmen Sapunaru Tămaș is a professor and the coordinator of the Japanese language and culture program at the University of Hyogo. Her most recent publications include: “Ritual Practices and Daily Rituals. Glimpses into the World of Matsuri” (Pro Universitaria 2018), “Beliefs, Ritual Practices and Celebrations in Kansai” (Pro Universitaria 2019, 2022, 2023), “Forms of the Body in Contemporary Japanese Society, Literature, and Culture” (edited with Irina Holca, Lexington Books 2020), and “Epidemics and Ritual Practices in Japan” (edited with Kathryn M. Tanaka, Pro Universitaria 2022). 

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s06e04
Thursday 2023-03-23, 18:30~20:00
max. 50 participants (on site) + max. 300 participants (online) 

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s06/#e04.

In der einschlägigen Fachliteratur zur deutschen Filmgeschichte sucht man vergebens nach dem Namen der jüdischen Regisseurin Gertrud Wolffsohn, die nach ihrer Flucht vor den Nazis in Shanghai mit Unterstützung der von Kawakita Nagamasa geleiteten China Film Company einen Dokumentarfilm über die nach Shanghai emigrierten Juden drehte, der in der deutschsprachigen Filmgeschichtsschreibung und in der jüdischen Exilforschung im besten Fall als Fußnote Erwähnung findet. In japanischen Quellen zur Geschichte der China Film Company findet der Film zwar gelegentlich Erwähnung, man erfährt aus ihnen aber über die Regisseurin nicht viel mehr als ihren Namen und wenig Konkretes über den Film, der als Fundraising-Projekt für die jüdische Flüchtlingshilfe geplant war, dessen Produktion laut Quellen aber auf Befehl des japanischen Militärs eingestellt werden musste, weshalb er als unvollendet und verschollen gilt. 
 Eine kritische Überprüfung der bisher bekannten japanischen Quellen sowie bislang unveröffentlichte neue Quellen stellen obige Darstellung jedoch in Frage. In dem Vortrag werde ich zunächst die Regisseurin des Films, Gertrud Wolffsohn, und dessen Produzenten Kawakita Nagamasa, kurz vorstellen, das Zustandekommen des Films und dessen Inhalt betrachten und schließlich eine Neubewertung des vermeintlich unvollendeten Films anstellen. 

| Bio |

Dr. Roland Domenig, Associate Professor für japanische Filmgeschichte an der Meiji Gakuin Universität in Tokyo, hat an der Universität Wien im Fach Japanologie promoviert, und ist Vize-Präsitent des Akademischen Arbeitskreises Japan (AAJ). Sein hauptsächliches Forschungsgebiet ist die Geschichte des japanischen Films, insbesondere die des frühen Films und die des unabhängigen Kinos der 60er Jahre (u.a. ATG). Domenig ist auch als Kurator Japan-spezifischer Filmprogramme (u.a. für BFI, MoMA, Cinematheque Francaise sowie zahlreiche internationale Filmfestivals), Berater von Filmfestivals sowie als Untertitelübersetzer tätig. 

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s06e03
Thursday 2023-03-16, 18:30~20:00
max. 50 participants (on site) + max. 300 participants (online) 

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s06/#e03.

Der altgediente Kriminaljournalist Mizoguchi Atsushi spricht von „tektonischen Verschiebungen“ in Japans Unterwelt. Er hat auch den Begriff für neue kriminelle Cliquen geprägt: Hangure. Nicht rechtstreue Bürger, nicht Yakuza, beides zur „Hälfte“ (han) und „heruntergekommen“ (von „gureru“), aber eben auch nur auf halber Strecke. „Gure“ kann auch für „grau“ in Grauzone stehen. Anhand exemplarischer (Auto)Biographien wird der Referent versuchen, das Milieu und die Lebenswelt der hangure zu schildern.  
Es  handelt sich bei ihnen um lose, netzwerkartige, kurzfristige, deliktzentrierte Zweckverbindungen, die Polizei spricht auch von „amöbenhafter“ Struktur. Meist handelt es sich um kleine Zellen, aber manche hangure imitieren die Yakuza-Organisationen in ihrem pyramidenhaften Aufbau und es sind Banden mit mehreren hundert Mitgliedern aufgeflogen. Ihre Haupteinnahmequelle sind Betrugsverbrechen, wobei betuchten Betagten mit diversen Schwindeleien die Ersparnisse abgeluchst werden (sog. furikomesagi = Betrügereien via Banküberweisung). Dazu gehört auch Investitionsbetrug. 
Daneben gibt es massiv gewaltbereite hangure, die zunehmend Yakuza-Domänen wie das Kredithaiwesen, Schuldeneintreiben, Schutzgelderpressung und die Sexindustrie übernehmen. Im Nachtleben sind sie heute dominant, betreiben „Girl Bars“ und Host-Clubs, in denen exorbitant überhöhte Preise abgepresst werden. Auch das Glücksspiel (Internet) und der Drogenhandel gehen in ihre Hände über. Es bilden sich hybride Formierungen aus: Yakuza und Ex-Yakuza fungieren als Auftraggeber oder Consiglieri oder werden gar Mitglieder. Es kommt zu Geldfluss zu den Yakuza, die für Protektion und Logistik sorgen. 
   Die landesweite Mannstärke der Yakuza weist in den letzten Jahren einen beträchtlichen Schwund auf. Der Nachwuchsmangel ist eklatant. Ökonomisch haben die Yakuza eine Modernisierung und Adaption an die Informationsgesellschaft verpasst. Sie stehen unter fatalem Druck der Strafverfolgungsbehörden. Unter deren Radar bleiben hingegen die neuen kriminellen Gruppen, die nicht Objekt der rigorosen Anti-Yakuza-Gesetze und Ausschlussverordnungen sind. Auf dem kriminellen Markt geschieht ein Verdrängungswettbewerb und Generationswechsel, der die Yakuza mehr und mehr zum Verschwinden bringt. Dafür erleben sie eine filmische Auferstehung auf Netflix, worauf der Referent auch kurz verweisen wird.  

| Bio |

Dr. Wolfgang Herbert, Promotion in Japanologie (Nebenfach: Religionswissenschaften) an der Universität Wien 1993, Professor für Vergleichende Kulturwissenschaften an der Universität Tokushima. Hauptautor (mit Dirk Dabrunz) des Buches: Japans Unterwelt. Reisen in das Reich der Yakuza. 2. aktualisierte Aufl. Berlin: Reimer 2022. Ein aktueller Artikel zum Thema erschien in den OAG Notizen 2022 (11) unter dem Titel „Saraba Yakuza – Aufstieg der Hangure“

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s06e02
Thursday 2023-03-09, 18:30~20:00
max. 50 participants (on site) + max. 300 participants (online) 

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s06/#e02.

In his lecture, held in Japanese, the renown literary scholar Tsuboi Hideto analyses the post war production of Japanese literature in the former colony Manchuria and soviet Siberia and develops the concept of キャンプ文学 „camp-literature“.
   Besides stories from his fieldtrip where he visited the remains of historic sites (now in Russia and China) his talk features besides others the following works of literature: 蛙昇天 Kaeru shōten [The Ascension of a Frog], 1951 by 木下順二 Kinoshita Junji, シベリヤ詩集 Shiberia shishū [Siberian Poetry], 1952 by 長尾辰夫 Nagao Tatsuo, 俘虜記 Furyoki [Taken Captive], 1948 by 大岡昇平 Ōoka Shōhei and サンチョ・パンサの帰郷 Sancho Pansa no kikyō [Homecoming of Sancho Panza], 1963 by 石原吉郎 Ishihara Yoshirō.

| Bio |

Tsuboi Hideto (坪井秀人) is professor of Waseda University, Tokyo and professor emeritus of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Kyoto and of Nagoya University. He has written on the issues of body politics, sense representation and the other in modern Japanese literature. His publications include Koe no Shukusai: Nihon Kindaishi to Sensō (Fest of Voices: Modern Japanese Poetry and War), University of Nagoya Press, 1997, Kankaku no Kindai: Koe, Shintai, Hyōshō (Sensibilities in the Modern Age: Voice, Body and Representation), University of Nagoya Press, 2006, Sei ga kataru: 20 Seiki Nihon Bungaku no Sei to Shintai (Sexuality Speaks: Sex/Gender and Body in the Literature in Twentieth-Century Japan ), University of Nagoya Press, 2012, Nijûseiki Nihongo shi o omoidasu (Remembering the Twenty Century Japanese Language Poetry), Shichôsha, 2020. and Sengo Hyôgen: Japanese Literature after 1945 (Postwar Expression: Japanese Literature after 1945), University of Nagoya Press, 2023.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s06e01
Thursday 2023-03-02, 18:30~20:00
max. 50 participants (on site) + max. 300 participants (online) 

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s06/#e01.

The expansion of international student mobility (ISM) has become a central issue in educational policy. Governments around the world have implemented programs to internationalize higher education and promote ISM among future workers. However, existing research amply demonstrates that students’ socioeconomic status (SES) strongly influences study abroad intent and participation. Students whose parents have a higher education degree, abundant financial resources and/or high occupational status (higher-SES students) are generally more likely to (intend to) study abroad than lower-SES students.
   Previous research explained this pattern as the result of individual choices related either to SES-specific endowment with economic, social and cultural capital or cost-benefit assessments and probabilities of successfully completing stays abroad. Only recently have scholars directed their attention to the role of institutional contexts for students’ (SES-specific) chances of studying abroad. While this research did not empirically examine the relevance of actual ISM opportunity structures for (SES-specific) SA intent and participation, it remains unclear whether opportunity structures installed to foster ISM benefit all students, help reduce socioeconomic inequality, or exacerbate it.
   We address this research gap focusing on Japan. We intend to narrow the outlined research gaps by integrating context effects into a framework that combines rational choice theory (RCT) and the life course perspective (LCP). We test the resulting hypotheses using a multi-level approach (MLA). MLA allows us to determine the relative importance of SES and other individual factors relative to contextual factors, and thus to assess the importance of ISM opportunity structures for SA intent and participation, and corresponding social inequalities. Unlike earlier studies, we examine the effects of ISM opportunity structures at the university level on SA intent and participation under control of various individual-level factors. Using a nationwide and largely unexploited dataset from Japan, which we supplement with university-level data, we address the politically charged question about the role of universities’ ISM opportunity structures for (social inequalities in) SA intent and participation: Has Japan’s recent push towards internationalization of higher education created more opportunities for social distinction of the affluent, resulting in increasing horizontal inequalities, or rather narrowed corresponding SES gaps?

| Bio |

Steve R. Entrich is interim Professor for Inclusion and Organizational Development at the Department of Education, the University of Potsdam, Germany. His research focuses on comparative, social science and empirical-quantitative educational research as well as educational policy analyzes on Japan, Germany, the USA and in international comparison with special emphasis on social inequality. Recent research examines implications of transnational, supplementary, and inclusive education in Japan and in cross-national comparison. 

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s05e13
Thursday 2022-01-26, 18:30~20:00
max. 50 participants (on site) + max. 300 participants (online) 

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s05/#e13.

The theoretical introduction, the nō drama, including its farce companion kyōgen, is analysed from the broader anthropoligical perspective. Its various aspects are characterised according to biological, social, cultural and linguistic anthropology.
   The second part focuses on embodiment and performativity as observed in amateur nō training and in the practice of using the nō mask.  

| Bio |

Ivan Rumánek is a Japanologist and linguist coming from Slovakia. He deals predominantly with premodern Japan, classical literature of the Heian period, and classical Japanese theatre. His translation publications include poetry, prose and drama. His research output includes his major Slovak monograph Japanese Noh Drama – an Evolving Genre (2010) and other studies on the evolution of classical theatre (Nō Sumidagawa and jōruri Futago Sumidagawa: genesis of a story and of a genre, 2017) and prehistory of the Japanese language (Where did the principal Japanese Ama tsu kami (“celestial deities”) come from? – an analysis of the Nihon Shoki with ethnic and etymological Japanese-Okinawan-Ainu implications, 2021 and On some parallels in the verbal systems of Manchu-Tungusic and Old Japanese, with possible genealogical implications, 2016).
   He has done research at Slovak Academy of Sciences (Bratislava), Hōsei University (Tokyo), Waseda University (Tokyo) and University of London. He has been lecturing for Masaryk University (Brno, Moravia) since 2010.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s05e12
Thursday 2022-01-19, 18:30~20:00
max. 50 participants (on site) + max. 300 participants (online) 

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s05/#e12.

Seit Beginn der 2000er Jahre ist die Förderung der Entwicklung von Service-Robotern für das Alltagsleben in den Fokus staatlicher Planungen in Japan gerückt. Der demographische Wandel mache eine Roboter-gestützte Mechanisierung des Alltagslebens allgemein und der Pflege im besonderen unabdingbar, aufgrund eines positiven Images von Robotern seien diese der japanischen Bevölkerung leicht vermittelbar, ein prosperierender neuer Markt für Pflegeroboter habe das Potential, sich zu einer wichtigen Zukunftsindustrie zu entwickeln – lauten häufig genannte Argumente. 

Der Vortrag kontrastiert die staatlichen Pflegerobotik-„technology push“-Strategien mit den Ergebnissen einer Feldstudie vom Januar 2020 (Leitung: Prof. Dr. Patrick Grüneberg, Universität Kanazawa, Japan), in der die Referentin mit einem interdisziplinären Forschungsteam bei (potentiellen) Nutzer*innen von Pflegerobotik-Technologie nachgefragt und „genba kara no koe“ (Stimmen von vor Ort) im Krankenhaus, Pflegeheim, Pflegegeräte-Sanitätshaus eingefangen hat. Aus der Sicht einer Forschungsbibliothekarin werden dabei auch methodische Fragen der interdisziplinären Projektzusammenarbeit sowie des Forschungsdatenmanagements in den Blick genommen.

| Bio |

Dr. Cosima Wagner: Studium der Japanologie und Geschichte in Marbug, Kyōto und an der Freien Universität Berlin. 2008 Promotion an der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt im Fach Japanologie mit einer Dissertation zu „Robotopia Nipponica – Recherchen zur Akzeptanz von Robotern in Japan“ (erschienen bei Tectum/Nomos 2013).  Seit 2014 gemeinsam mit Dr. Susanne Brucksch (Teikyo University, Japan) Technikstudien-Initiative in der Japanologie und Gründung einer Fachgruppe „Technik“ in der Vereinigung für Sozialwissenschaftliche Japanforschung (VSJF) e.V.
2017-2019 Fernmaster-Studiengang Bibliotheks- & Informationswissenschaften und Bibliotheksreferendariat an der Universitätsbibliothek der Freien Universität Berlin; 2019 Masterarbeit zu „Digitale Transformation und Forschungsinfrastrukturen“ mit Fokus auf Ostasienwissenschaften.
Seit 2019 Forschungsbibliothekarin für Ostasienwissenschaften mit einem besonderen Schwerpunkt auf den Themen Digital Humanities, Forschungsdatenmanagement und Open Scholarship an der Universitätsbibliothek der Freien Universität Berlin.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s05e11
Thursday 2022-01-12, 18:30~20:00
max. 50 participants (on site) + max. 300 participants (online) 

| Place & Preparations | 

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s05/#e11.