General Public

Commemoration through Collaboration: Memory making in late medieval muzhiming墓誌銘 (entombed epitaphs)

A recent turn in the study of late medieval Chinese muzhiming has been to consider not simply what information they communicate but also how, why, and to whom, and how answers to these questions can inform our understanding of that period’s commemorative practices. In this talk, I analyze muzhiming as textual and material objects produced through processes of “collaborative remembrance,” as coming into being due to the shared efforts and remembrances of multiple parties.

Making Population and Making the State: a Comparative Study of Communist China and North Korea

How to group and categorize population involves choice. This choice not only reflects the political promises of a regime but also ruling elites’ perceptions about the role of the state vis-à-vis the society. As such, making population is a constitutive process of state making. This point is particularly relevant for post-revolutionary regimes that aim to break from the past and venture into a new future.

Online Rakugo Workshop

Rakugo is an art of traditional comic storytelling from Japan for over 400 years. It is performed by one person who remains seated on a stage, with a fan and a tenugui (washcloth), for the entire performance as he tells funny stories. The performer changes his voice or subtle movement to play different characters in each story. Rakugo has been popular and enjoyed by people of all ages.

‘An important secret teaching’: Gender-based approaches to topic in Eikyū hyakushu

This paper will present the results of a preliminary investigation into gender-based differences in treatment of poetic topics (dai) in the waka poetry anthology, Eikyū yo nen hyakushu (‘The Eikyū 4 Hundred Poem Sequences’; 1117). This collection contains 701 poems on one hundred topics by seven poets, five men and two women. By this point in waka history, topic was a significant category which provided strictures for poets on suitable diction (kotoba) and conception (kokoro) to be used in the production of their poems.

Gender Inequality in Politics in Japan

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 Poetry Demon and Other Passions in Medieval Chinese Monks’ Literature

Chinese Buddhist monks depicted the pleasures of poetry as vexations of the demon Māra, or as karmic habits that distract from focused religious activity and the Buddhist path. Monks produced copious quantities of poetry nonetheless. In this three-part talk, I first explore this tension between Chinese poetry and the Buddhist path, and aim to demonstrate how Song-era religious rhetoric and poetic practices were connected.

Transformation and Upgrading of China’s Manufacturing Sectors: The Divergent Paths of Jinjiang’s and Putian’s Footwear Industries

Jinjiang and Putian are two prosperous industrial powerhouses in Fujian province in China with footwear industry being a pillar industry in both cities. While Jinjiang is known as the “the Footwear Capital of China” with domestic brands like Anta featured prominently in Olympic games, Putian gains the international notoriety as “the Capital of Footwear Knockoffs”. Built on a multifaceted framework of globalization, institutions, and path dependence, this talk examines the processes and reasons why the footwear industries of the two cities have taken such divergent paths.

Japanese “World Map” Folding Screens: Repositioning Japan and Europe in the Global Baroque Landscape

One relevant consequence of the arrival and presence of the nanban-jin in Japan and of the complex interactions that developed in the context of the challenging encounter with the Japanese political, religious, and military elites, was an unprecedented repositioning of Japan and Europe in both European and Japanese world views, through the integration of knowledge originally developed over many centuries in European, Japanese, Korean and Chinese cartographic and cosmological traditions.

Public Perceptions of Citizenship and Migration in Japan

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.

Why Risk an Alliance? Evidence from Japan (1901-1960)

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.

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