Japan
2022 is expected to be a watershed year in Japanese strategy. North Korean missile launches and China’s expanding military power have intensified Japanese concerns about their security. But it is tension across the Taiwan Strait that may be the most compelling reason for Japanese decision makers to double their defense spending and invest in offensive capability. In this talk I hope to discuss my findings from a recent trip to Tokyo. Sheila A. Smith is John E. Merow senior fellow for Asia-Pacific studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). An expert on Japanese politics and foreign...
Although the need for the U.S. to work with Japan during a future crisis is ever increasing, we do not yet have a sufficient understanding of what Japanese citizens think about security policies and possible military actions. We leveraged on an extremely rare opportunity in which the Japanese government decided to dispatch its de facto military, the Self-Defense Forces (SDFs), overseas for a high-risk operation, the evacuation from Afghanistan in August 2021. Specifically, we conducted “real-time” survey experiments in this context to test some hypotheses relevant to the theoretical...
Registration: Please register for the talk at this link Shinzo Abe, the slain politician who served as prime minister longer than any other Japanese leader, often talked about creating a society in which “women can shine.” One of his signature economic pillars, dubbed “womenomics,” was built on a promise of promoting women in the workforce to address dire demographic problems like a declining and aging population. But many of his pledges, including an original target of placing women in 30 percent of corporate...
This talk will introduce some novelists around 1930 as Showa modan literature to examine the historical meaning of Japanese modernism. What was Japanese modernism? I have been thinking about this question. In 2005, I published my doctoral dissertation on Japanese avant-garde as a monograph. Around the same time, several monographs on Japanese modernism were published in the United States. Their analyses from the perspective of gender, mass culture, and colonialism still show me the way to the future of research on modernist literature. What does a researcher from Japan think about Japanese...
By comparative standards, the dominance of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is highly unusual. The party has formed the government for all but four of the past 67 years. In the majority of Lower House elections held since 1955, the LDP’s seat tally was more than double that of any other party. Its string of election victories is especially surprising in light of an electoral system shift in the 1990s that was predicted to make single-party dominance less likely. A policy-based explanation is similarly implausible: the LDP’s positions are at odds with large segments of Japan’s...
Why are young people underrepresented in most political institutions? And does this shortage of young politicians matter for the extent to which young people’s interests are reflected in policy outcomes? Understanding the answer to these questions is especially important in advanced democracies such as Japan that confront the challenges of declining birth rates and aging populations. In these countries, politicians face soaring welfare costs and tough decisions about how to allocate scarce resources between the needs of younger working families and elderly retirees. Without the presence of...
Interested in becoming an East Asian Languages & Literatures or East Asian Studies Major? Come for an informal get-together with the Chairs and DUSs for EALL and EAST! Please RSVP to eastasian.studies@yale.edu. For more information, please contact...
麗猫伝説 Reibyo Densetsu / The Legend of the Beautiful Ghost Cat Directed by Obayashi Nobuhiko Japan, 1983 In Japanese with very rough English subtitles Screened on Blu-ray courtesy of Tsuburaya Productions Free and open to the public Obayashi Nobuhiko, famed director of House and Hanagatami, directed this homage to the history of Japanese cinema as a mix of Sunset Boulevard and ghost cat movies. Featuring Irie Takako (star of Mizoguchi’s The Water Magician), the story revolves around a young scriptwriter entranced by a reclusive old movie star who might not be what she seems. This rarely...
Since the advent of Buddhism in ancient India, Buddhist relics have been used to confer religious legitimacy and the right to rulership. In premodern Japan, relic worship took on its own subtleties, which can be read through extant visual, textual, and musical culture from this period. Using interdisciplinary methods and a wide range of sources, this conference seeks to illuminate how the bones of the Buddhist dead were worshipped, enshrined, and written about by lay and monastic communities in premodern Japan. The papers presented will address relic worship in relation to Shakyamuni worship...
This course introduces students to contemporary Japan, examining how its defeat in the Second World War and loss of empire in 1945 continue to shape Japanese culture and society. Looking especially at the sphere of cultural production, it focuses on the question of what it means to be modern as expressed through the tension between resurgent neonationalism and the aspiration to internationalize. The course charts how the legacy of Japan’s imperial failure plays a significant role in its search for renewal and identity since 1945. How, it asks, does the experience of catastrophic failure—and...
Since the advent of Buddhism in ancient India, Buddhist relics have been used to confer religious legitimacy and the right to rulership. In premodern Japan, relic worship took on its own subtleties, which can be read through extant visual, textual, and musical culture from this period. Using interdisciplinary methods and a wide range of sources, this conference seeks to illuminate how the bones of the Buddhist dead were worshipped, enshrined, and written about by lay and monastic communities in premodern Japan. The papers presented will address relic worship in relation to Shakyamuni worship...
RASHOMON Japan, 1950 Directed by Akira Kurosawa Cinematography by Kazuo Miyagawa Starring Toshirō Mifune, Machiko Kyō, Masayuki Mori, Takashi Shimura Based on Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s short story In a Grove NEW 35mm print from the Yale Film Archive. Approx. 88 min. Introduction by Aaron Gerow, A. Whitney Griswold Professor of East Asian Languages & Literatures and Film & Media Studies Rape and murder in 12th-century Kyoto, as seen by four conflicting witnesses. Adapted from two stories by the great Ryunosuke Akutagawa, its worldwide acclaim (Venice Grand Prize, Best Foreign Film Oscar...
THE IDIOT Japan, 1951 Directed by Akira Kurosawa Starring Toshirō Mifune, Setsuko Hara, Masayuki Mori 35mm print courtesy of The Japan Foundation. Approx. 146 min. Introduction by Aaron Gerow, A. Whitney Griswold Professor of East Asian Languages & Literatures and Film & Media Studies AK’s powerful adaptation of favorite author Dostoevsky. The triangle: Masayuki Mori the holy innocent “Myshkin;” Mifune the homicidal “Rogozin;” and Ozu’s loveable Setsuko Hara as the vicious “Natasha.” When the producers asked him to cut his 4½ hour original, Kurosawa famously replied “If you want to...
A WIFE’S HEART Japan, 1956 Directed by Mikio Naruse Starring Toshirō Mifune, Hideko Takamine, Keiju Kobayashi 35mm print courtesy Japan Foundation. Approx. 98 min. Introduction by Aaron Gerow, A. Whitney Griswold Professor of East Asian Languages & Literatures and Film & Media Studies Mifune as romantic lead? Every time hard-working wife Hideko Takamine (Floating Clouds, When A Woman Ascends the Stairs) raises enough yen for that coffee shop, her family scarfs it; but visiting bank loan officer Toshirō, here sharply dressed, may have the answer. The intensity of the chemistry...
Recent studies find that Japanese voters do not hold outright bias towards female politicians. The talk will discuss the potential existence of gender bias that previous studies might fail to capture. Drawing on interdisciplinary work, I will zero in on two mechanisms of gender bias: 1) implicit gender stereotype with a focus on politicians’ voices, and 2) weak prior about female politicians. More concretely, the first part asks whether Japanese voters are affected by female politicians’ physical traits. The second part examines how a dearth of female politicians in Japan leads to voters’...
Lecture is in Japanese only. Online Registration https://yale.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0vdOytqDIpG9GrNncvtoIF3TDc5voSW30v After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
Is migration a plausible option in combating aging and shrinking populations in countries with a strong emphasis on ethnic homogeneity? What kind of policies would be ideal to realize a multicultural society in such countries? To answer these questions, this presentation explores Japanese people’s views on citizenship (their views on naturalization) and migration (factors impacting their views on migrants). Based on several survey experiments, it aims to provide evidence to influence policy discussions in regard to the future direction of these policies under the new Cabinet....
In the early 1980s, office automation (OA) swept the Japanese business world. A variety of new data processing and telecommunications technologies seemed likely to transform women’s employment, for OA was expected to reduce clerical drudgework and therefore potentially eliminate the need for “office ladies” or OL. However, facing critical shortages of programmers, systems engineers, and other technical specialists, companies heavily recruited women and even created all-women work groups and subsidiary companies. In the popular cultural imagination, women brought “feminine” aptitudes and...
Two thirds of the way through the Tale of Genji, the eponymous hero dies, an event that the reader can only imagine since it does not form part of the tale. Instead, the chapter that follows Genji’s final appearance opens with a shocking announcement: “Now that his light was gone, among the many descendants who had basked in his glow there, not one could take his place.” In the millenium since Genji’s unnarrated death, many famous frustrated scholars and fans have attempted to supply a clearer sense of an ending to Genji’s life story. Writing in the early 1930s, the French novelist Marguerite...
All alliances pose some risk to their signatories – the risk of provoking the mutual adversary and the risk of being entrapped in a war between the ally and the mutual adversary. States try to secure alliance terms that minimize such risks. Given this preference, when, how, and why do states agree to risky alliance terms? I test levels of threat, ally dependency, and militarism as potential explanatory variables of variation in alliance risk by examining all six of Japan’s alliances with Western great powers. I find the strongest relationship between threat and alliance risk, and the weakest...
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