Japan
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The talk will explore postwar Nihonjinron writings as a way of translating prewar national ideologies into ideas that could be compatible with postwar democracy. The humanistic portrayals of community put forward by Nihonjinron writers drew on prewar notions of familiality and homogeneity, ideas closely associated fascism. The talk considers the importance of Nihonjinron in forging a language that could accommodate the past while at the same time offering ideas about community that could challenge Western liberalism, specifically its division between public exchange and private beliefs....
Forget The Last Samurai! Here’s the hard, brutal world of real samurai! Leading the New Wave in samurai cinema in the 1960s, Kudo Eiichi masterfully weaves together multiple tragedies sparked by political intrigue, culminating in a tour de force of mass action and anarchic violence. A ferocious and riveting condemnation of the feudal samurai state. The Great Duel (Daisatsujin)Directed by Eichi Kudo (1964, 35mm, English Subtitles)Prints Courtesy of the Japan Foundation
In this paper, I turn to an intense Japanese public debate about the nexus of neoliberal economic reforms and the loss of hope in society. In particular, I attempt an ethnographically inspired reading of the internationally acclaimed Japanese novelist Murakami Ryu’s 2000 novel,Kibo no kuni no ekuzodasu (Exodus from a country of hope) and other writings on hope, neoliberalism and financial globalization. I draw particular attention to Murakami’s distinctively ambivalent stance toward the condition of no hope. I juxtapose Murakami’s ambivalence toward this widely shared sense of loss with...
There are many countries that enjoy prosperity without political liberty in the non-Western world today. People who find this situation hard to accept must find ways, however difficult, to realize liberty in these countries. Through the analysis of Japanese experience, this presentation aims to think about some of these ways, other than simply denouncing the lack of human rights and forcing Western models on these countries. Japan enjoys liberal democracy although it does not have strong liberalism still today. If we analyze its history carefully, we can see an example of a dynamic public...
There have been many challenges against the assumption that humans indeed “communicate” with language and other symbols. Today’s talk is, first, to suggest that we often fail to notice that we do not communicate and, second, examine the negative power of no-communication, while exploring factors responsible for non-communication, including the “field of meaning” (beyond multivocality) and quotidian aesthetic assigned to some symbols. Objectified and non-objectified symbols will also be compared and contrasted in reference of political/religious power. The examples chosen are the roses...
Moderated by Elizabeth W. Son, Graduate Student in American Studies, Yale UniversityPyong Gap Min, Professor of Sociology, Queens College, City University of New York : The Emergence of the ‘Comfort Women’ Issue and Victims Breaking Silence in South KoreaDai Sil Kim-Gibson, Independent Filmmaker: Do You Hear Their Voices?Joshua Pilzer, Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellows in Music, Columbia University: Song and the Secret Histories of the Korean “Comfort Women”This panel is part “Prostitution and Sex Trafficking: Intersections and Divergences,” a speakers series organized through the Amy Rossborough...
By the 1970s, Hong Kong had become a truly global force in international cinema, not only solidifying a trans-Asian audience appeal, but breaking into the coveted Euro-American film market. By the 1990s, Hong Kong was recognized as one of the world’s premier film-producing sites. But there is a history to the efforts of Hong Kong to achieve international appeal and global prominence. This talk will outline the various strategies employed by the two major Mandarin-language film studios, MP&GI (Cathay) and Shaw Bros, to break out of the local and diasporic film circuits, culminating in...
Speakers Include: Michael Teitelbaum - Demographer, The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; Aaron Gerown - Assistant Professor of Film Studies & East Asian Languages and Literatures, Yale University; Karen Nakamura - Assistant Professor of Anthropology and East Asian Studies, Yale University; William LaFleur - E. Dale Saunders Professor in Japanese Studies, University of Pennsylvania; Ira Raja - Professor, Department of English, University of Delhi; Sarah Lamb - Associate Professor of Anthropology, Brandeis University To view a complete schedule of the symposium, please click below: For...
The Japanese experimental filmmaker, Iimura Takahiko, renowned for his pioneering work in film and video art and his collaborations with artists like Yoko Ono, will be visiting Yale University on September 21 and 22, 2007 to present three programs of his works. One will feature a collaborative performance with musician Michael Pestel, another a screening of his video works coupled with a discussion of his writings on video semiology, and a third presenting his film works. Discussions will be led by Jonathan Hall of the University of California, Irvine.9/21 FILM SCREENING (WHC Auditorium):...
A lecture and discussion focusing Asian Americans employed by the Office of Strategic Services— America’s first centralized intelligence agency—during World War II.
Come hear the testimony of Grandmother Mak Dal Lee, a survivor of the Japanese Military Sexual Slavery System. An estimated 200,000 young Asian women, euphemistically called “comfort women,” were coerced or deceived into sexually servicing the Japanese military between 1932 and 1945. Sixty years later, the Japanese government has not fully acknowledged this history and refuses to offer an official apology for state-sponsored military sexual slavery. In conjunction with the American Studies Program, Asian American Cultural Center, Initiative on Race, Gender and Globalization, KASY: Korean...
Forget Love For Now (Koi mo wasurete) Directed by Shimizu Hiroshi, 1937 (35mm, English Subtitles)The Urban Jungle: The Modern City in Japanese FilmLong favored by an urban audience, the Japanese cinema has continued to explore the city as part of a larger question of what constitutes Japanese modernity. These three films, rarely screened outside Japan, share narratives of urban streets filled with jazz and violence, love and hope, frustration and protest, but offer varied stances and programs for dealing with both the city and perhaps its artistic correlate, the cinema. All Screenings have...
In 1992 lesbian activist Kakefuda Hiroko published a book entitled “What it means to be a ‘lesbian’ ” – a scathing attack on Japan’s heteronormative mainstream culture. Kakefuda claimed that the category “rezubian” had become so closely aligned with male pornographic fantasy that it was impossible for her to reclaim the term to express her own female agency. Yet how and why did this male colonization of “lesbian” sexuality take place in Japanese popular culture? During the Edo period, scant attention was paid to women’s same-sex sexuality and Meiji and Taisho-period discourses tended to...
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