2020

February 7th

The Role of the Private Collectors in the Founding of Japanese Public Kite Museums

Cecile Laly, Paris-Sorbonne University

The first kite museum of the world is the one which was opened by Modegi Shingo (1911-1978) in Nihonbashi, Tokyo in 1977. This private museum was founded to keep the private kite collection of Modegi and to support kite makers – such as his friend Hashimoto Teizō (1904-1991) – who saw their business declining in the second part of the 20th century. Motivated by international projects and the competition amongst the international kite community, other Japanese kite collectors wished to create more kite museums in Japan to display and conserve the beauty and particularities of the Japanese kites; they found the opportunity to do so at the end of the 1980s when the government of the Prime Minister Takeshita Noboru (1924-2000) launched the Revitalization of Furusato Program (furusato sōsei jigyō) and the Grant of 100 million yen for each municipality initiating a project. During this presentation, we will have a closer look at the founding of the kite museums located both in Shirone (Niigata Prefecture) and Ikazaki (Ehime Prefecture) and at the role the local private collectors and aficionados played in the founding of those museums.


March 13th (Cancelled due to policies re: COVID-19)

Bunten: The First Official Government-Sponsored Art Exhibition and the Significance of its Political Affiliation

Nicole Valentova, SOAS

After the Meiji Restoration, in an attempt to identify and generate objects worth representing Japan and creating a strong and attractive presence at the international expositions, the government organised an event similar in nature on a domestic scale; altogether five Domestic Industrial Expositions (J: naikoku kangyō hakurankai) between 1877 and 1903, and the Tōkyō Industrial Exposition (J: Tokyo kangyō hakurankai) organised by the magistrate in spring 1907. Fine art was an integral part of the fair, however, the emphasis on export and the trade enhancement was a considerably limiting factor. It was not until autumn 1907 that an exhibition liberated from this export-driven framework focusing on the contemporary art production, support and supply for domestic market was established by a political institution, the Ministry of Education. It was the Ministry of Education Art Exhibition (J: monbushō bijutsu tenrankai), commonly known as Bunten, that is widely credited for uniting the fragmented Japanese art scene while serving as a battlefield for the progressive faction shinpa and the conservative faction kyūha. During this presentation we shall have a look at what led to the establishment, what was the relationship between Bunten and the government, and if the exhibition’s political affiliation affected the selection of the exhibited art.


April 24th (Cancelled due to policies re: COVID-19)

Eve Loh Kazuhara, National University of Singapore, Department of Japanese Studies


May 22nd (Online Meeting)

Morimura Yasuma's Gift of Sea (2010): Reenacting The Raising the Flag in Iwo Jima, Between Gender, Nationalism and War Memory in Japan and the USA

Ayelet Zohar, Tel Aviv University, Department of Art History

In my presentation I shall discuss Morimura Yasumasa (森村泰昌b. 1951）single-channel video projection Gift of Sea (海の幸2012), a piece which is based on a reenactment of Joe Rosenthal’s iconic photograph of Raising the Flag on Iwojima. In my analysis of Morimura’s video I read through the multiple implications of reenactment in contemporary art, gender performance, the ideas of history and memory, victory and defeat and their relative position concerning the change of point of view and passage of time. In this vein, I look into various works of art that either share the title or the image with Morimura’s video: beginning with Rudyard Kipling’s The Gift of Sea (1890), Aoki Shigeru (青木繁 1882-1911) oil painting Gift of Sea (海の幸1904), Sakamoto Hanjirō (坂本繁二郎1882-1969) oil painting of the Three Human Bullets (肉弾三勇士, 1935), and the National Cemetery in Arlington Marine Corps War Memorial monument (1954) by Felix de Weldon (1907-2003). Finally, I read Morimura’s work also in the context of cinema, including John Wayne’s Sands of Iwojima (1936) and Clint Eastwood’s double feature Flags of Our Fathers (2006), and Letters from Iwojima (2006). All in all, my suggestion is to understand Morimura’s project as a complex signifier which destabilises accepted values of gender roles, victory and defeat, bravery and cowardice, nationalism and individuality. The lecture goes through a collection of visual signifiers that are used in an elaborated mode for understanding war memory in Japan today.


June 12th (Online Meeting)

Conservatism and National Identity: Reactionary Historical Revisionism in Post-War Japan

Karin Narita, Queen Mary University of London, School of Politics and International Relations

Since the mid-1990s, the issue of war-time history has been a key trigger for international political disputes in East Asia. Taken up by various politicians, intellectuals, ideologues, and civil organizations, the denial of atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial Army throughout the region and simultaneous erasure from domestic memory has marked a qualitative ideological shift in Japanese conservatism. In the years since, this reactionary historical revisionism has settled as a central constituent theme in conservative culture and has spurred on various nationalist political projects as an end in itself. Tracing this turn to the emergence of the New Right in Japan in the late 1960s, we will explore the intellectual foundations upon which historical revisionism is based, with particular attention paid to the thought of the influential cultural critic Etō Jun. In so doing, this presentation will show that conservatives consider Japan to have lost its authentic cultural identity, through the foreign-originated and domestically implemented process of post-Second World War modernization. Severed from the historically real in this way, according to conservatives Japan has since been in a state of limbo – or “fraudulence” – both culturally and politically. We will untangle the various ways in which conservatives utilize nationalist history as a historiographical method to rectify this perceived state of affairs. In so doing, the presentation will demonstrate how reactionary historical revisionism has been an integral logic to bolster Japanese exceptionalism internationally and justify ethno-cultural majoritarianism domestically.


July 10th (Online Meeting; Video available here)

Assassination: The Reichstag Fire of Prewar Japan?

Brian Victoria, Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies

In the spring of 1932 two important figures, politician Inoue Junnosuke and business leader Dan Takuma, were assassinated in what became popularly known as the Blood Oath Corps Incident (Ketsumeidan Jiken). The sense of unease these two assassinations caused in Japanese society was only compounded when, on May 15, 1932, Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi was also assassinated in what became known as the May 15th Incident (Goichigo Jiken). While these two incidents are typically treated separately in the history of the period, it was civilian and military members of the same Zen-trained ultranationalist band who carried out all three assassinations. In the course of writing my recent book, Zen Terror in Prewar Japan: Portrait of an Assassin, I came across a set of circumstances (clues?) that suggested the existence of a conspiracy, possibly involving even the emperor, leading to these assassinations. While only three Japanese leaders were killed, the result was the demise of political party-based cabinets, effectively bringing Taisho democracy to an end. While exploring these incidents, I will ask how the historian should deal with the possibility of a conspiracy, especially in the face of a lack of definitive proof of its existence? Should the historian simply ignore it? Or merely suggest (or hint at) the possibility of its existence? Or ‘punt’ and ask future scholars to continue the search for proof? My presentation will address this dilemma in hopes that it may aid present and future scholars as they encounter similar questions in their own research.

Note: The author is currently seeking a reviewer for his book, Zen Terror in Prewar Japan, which will be discussed in part at the meeting. Interested parties should contact the author directly at brianvictoria1@yahoo.com.


August 21st (Online Meeting; Video available on request - please contact speaker at dttian23@connect.hku.hk)

Retrieving the Historical Roots of Japanese Newspapers' "in-house training" for Journalists

Tiantian Diao, University of Hong Kong

This study explores the historical origins of Japanese newspapers’ “in-house training” for their journalists (kisha no shanai kyoiku). That independent and high-quality journalism education was crucial for ensuring the media’s performance in serving public interests has been a consensus among media researchers. Despite fierce academic criticism against Japanese newspapers’ current “in-house training” system for journalists, the historical roots of such a system of educating the journalists, and the failure of the independent practical journalism education programs, have not been fully studied. This study addresses the peculiar social-political circumstances, which favored Japanese newspapers' “in-house training” for journalists, but hampered standalone journalism training programs outside of the newspaper companies, between the Meiji Era until the American occupation of Japan after World War II. This study utilizes the primary sources of Japanese journalists’ career memoirs, and the career guidance published for Japanese youngsters throughout the Meiji until the Taisho Era. It also integrates American newspaper men’s observations of Japanese newspapers’ flourishing in the early twentieth century. This study locates itself in both Japanese studies and journalism history research.

NOTE: This session will be recorded and subsequently distributed at the speaker's discretion. If you are interested in the video of the session, please contact the speaker directly at dttian23@connect.hku.hk.


October 9th (Online Meeting)

Discourses of normality, the demarcated life path, and contemporary Japanese fiction: Kawakami Hiromi, Motoya Yukiko and Murata Sayaka

Laura Clark, The University of Queensland, School of Languages and Cultures; Showa Women's University, Institute of Women's Culture

What does a ‘normal’ and ‘successful’ life look like in contemporary Japan? This paper explores some answers to this question by looking at the fictional works of three contemporary authors: Kawakami Hiromi, Motoya Yukiko and Murata Sayaka. Spanning across the 'lost decades’ these works demonstrate unresolved tensions in contemporary Japanese society in the face of ‘common sense’ discourses of work, marriage, and adulthood, which factor in neither individual contexts nor barriers to access. Yet, these characters seek to carve out a liveable life within their fictional worlds, and employ these same discourses to both construct and understand their paths and the options available to them, often to their own disadvantage. Taking a discourse analysis approach this paper explores how these characters engage with the heteronormative demarcated life path, encountering labour precarity, and tensions over marriage timing, and marital dissatisfaction. These works produce a range of portraits which both embrace and contest a shared understanding of what a ‘successful’ life can look like from the outside, and yet how complex it is to enact from within. In the worlds of fiction we see social norms and values spring to life, and so by placing these works within context we can broaden our understanding of these works as well as the cultural landscape from which they emerge.


November 13th (Online Meeting)

家路 (The Way Home): Dvořák’s New World Symphony in Animated Visions of the Japanese Furusato

Heike Hoffer, The Ohio State University

In every country, certain musical works engrain themselves in the aural and cultural landscape, forming an integral part of daily life. For modern Japan, one such piece is the evocative Largo movement of Antonín Dvořák’s New World Symphony, a work composed in 1893 when Dvořák was Director of the National Conservatory in New York. The symphony was inspired by Dvořák’s fascination with American Indian and African American songs, but was equally a reflection of his deep longing for his homeland of Bohemia, sentiments that were magnified when the Largo melody became the basis for the popular song “Goin’ Home” in 1922. The Largo found its way to Japan in school songbooks as the stylized folk tune “Ieji” (The Way Home) with a text by Horiuchi Keizō glorifying the Japanese furusato, an idealized hometown embodying a spiritual location of compassion, comfort, and security. “Ieji” contained what scholar David Hughes terms the “rural resonances” of the furusato, prompting many municipal governments to select the tune to be played during the daily evening chime sounded through their community’s emergency response loudspeakers. Anime often include this sonic representation of hearth and home in their narratives, with “Ieji” playing during idyllic scenes of students heading home at the end of the school day. Simultaneously, anime series such as Cross Ange, Mawaru Penguindrum, and Shin Sekai Yori subvert this aural image to highlight negative narrative events including discrimination, violence, and the end of innocence, drawing attention to these damaging circumstances through their stark contrast to music symbolizing warmth and unconditional acceptance.


December 4th (Online meeting; Video available - please contact the organizer)

Looking for signs of ‘Mediatization’ of the Interwar Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs: On MOFA’s ‘Department of Information’

Lieven Sommen, KU Leuven, Department of Japanese Studies

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the growth of the Meiji State coincided with significant technological advancements in telecommunications technology that connected countries around the globe, and caused ever more popular participation and interest in domestic and international politics. The Japanese State fully revealed itself as a new imperial power through its victories in the First Sino-Japanese (1894-1895) and Russo-Japanese (1904-1905) wars, as well as its annexation of Korea (1910). In this context, from the 1890s on a consciousness was formed within the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs that Japan’s fledgling empire needed to be supported by effective propaganda strategies. The MOFA’s propaganda activities started out as very scattershot attempts at controlling individual newspapers and foreign journalists, but from the 1910s on became larger in scope and unified as the understanding of good propaganda techniques grew within the Ministry, and it gained more resources through a network of news agencies and diplomatic missions abroad.

This presentation will discuss the MOFA’s Department of Information (外務省情報部), a department for news propaganda and foreign intelligence gathering that was officially created in 1921, and represents a watershed moment for the evolution of MOFA’s propaganda activities. This presentation will attempt to trace the lead-up towards the creation of the department from the Russo-Japanese War on, as well as discuss its significance as a centralizing institution for the MOFA’s propaganda tactics. It will do so from the perspective of ‘mediatization.’ In contexts of political studies, mediatization refers to a process in which actors or institutions see their policies influenced by the presence of ‘media logic’, meaning that policy-making decisions are altered because of the need to account for media and the importance of (international) public opinion. This presentation is therefore an attempt to apply the idea of ‘mediatization’ to the growing consciousness towards media and their importance as tools for diplomacy, as it grew in the early twentieth century within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Previous Talks