January 27th
The Strategic Significance of the Japan-India Corridor in a Shifting Global Order
Harsh Mahaseth (Jindal Global Law School, O.P. Jindal Global University)
In the evolving Indo-Pacific landscape, India has emerged as a key global player, driven by economic growth, strategic location, and its positioning as an alternative to China. Concurrently, Japan has expanded its global partnerships to advance economic and geopolitical objectives. Under Prime Minister Modi’s leadership, India-Japan collaboration has flourished in sectors such as robotics, renewable energy, and artificial intelligence, positioning the Corridor as a catalyst for regional stability and sustainable growth. The Japan-India Corridor represents a strategic alignment, fostering cooperation in technology, innovation, and economic development.
A critical aspect of this partnership is its third-country initiatives, which extend their influence to nations like Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka, enhancing regional connectivity and development. This model holds significant geopolitical relevance in South Asia and the Bay of Bengal, aligning with frameworks like BIMSTEC and leveraging Japan’s infrastructure expertise through JICA to strengthen India’s Act East policy and counterbalance China’s influence. This talk will explore the strategic importance of the Japan-India Corridor, highlighting its impact on bilateral relations, regional development, and global geopolitics.
February 3rd (Online Meeting)
PFLP, Out of Place, Ghada, Nakba, and Tokyo Reels: The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict in Japanese Documentary Films
Ayelet Zohar (Tel Aviv University)
The Israeli Palestinian conflict is not a foreign resident in the Japanese discourse. It is dwelling in numerous films since the 1970s, embarking during the post 1970s ANPO demonstrations and the escape of Shigenobu Fusako (重信房子b. 1945) to Beirut on that year. Since then, numerous films have deleved into the conflict, the tragedy, the drama, the trauma, the resilience and persistence of the Palestinian people, from multiple points of view.
In my presentation, I will review several documentary films, trying to answer the question: what makes this conflict so significant and magnetizing to Japanese artists and the public? I will attempt to draw lines between Japanese self-criticism towards attitudes of Embracing Defeat in the immediate postwar era; Indicating the romantic attraction and admiration of the Japanese Red Army to radical Left intellectuals; pointing at the sense of the underdog (hōgan biiki 判官贔屓), in reference to Yoshitsune.
The presentation will look into Adachi Masao’s classic PFLP (1971) filmed in Beirut; Horikawa Ryūichi’s Nakba (2006), created over a period of 26 years, following two Palestinian villages that had become refuges in 1948; Sato Makoto’s Out of place (2004), that looks into the life of Edward Said, along conversations with Palestinian- Israelis; Furui Mizue’s Ghada: Song of Palestine (2005), a film that engages with life and struggle in Gaza under the occupation of Israeli military in the 1990s; and finally, a collection of short documentary films assembled and presented for the first time in Documenta 15 (Kassel, Germany), under the title Tokyo Reels (2022).
March 31st (Online Meeting; Video available here)
A noisy engagement: Analysis of the cultural engagement in Japanese noise music
Luca Proietti (SOAS)
Since its experiments in post-war Japan, Japanese noise music has served as a unique conduit for cultural engagement, connecting avant-garde experimentation with deep-rooted traditions and contemporary subcultures. From the early experiments of Group Ongaku to the radical performances of artists like Akita Masami (Merzbow), Sachiko M, and Toshimaru Nakamura, noise music has functioned as both a medium of artistic exploration and a space for reinterpreting Japanese cultural narratives. This engagement manifests through diverse stylistic approaches—some artists evoke the energy of traditional festival culture (matsuri), as seen in the work of Ōtomo Yoshihide and Pika, where ritualistic intensity and sonic chaos mirror communal celebrations. Others integrate noise into contemporary pop culture, such as Hijokaidan’s collaborations with idol groups like BiS and Vocaloid Hatsune Miku, bridging underground experimentalism with the mainstream and expanding the audience for noise. By embracing the dynamic interplay between tradition and modernity, Japanese noise music challenges aesthetic conventions while fostering new cultural dialogues. Through its ability to navigate and reinterpret Japan’s artistic, historical, and social landscapes, it emerges as a form of engagement that transcends musical boundaries. This paper explores how noise music functions as an evolving cultural force, engaging listeners with sound in ways that are immersive, provocative, and deeply embedded in the Japanese artistic experience.
April 14th
“National” Culture as Power: Travel, Internationalism, and Development of State-led Cultural Relations for the Japanese Empire and Nation, 1910s-1930s
Jason Butters (Columbia University)
This paper examines how foreign tourism to Japan and state-led efforts to promote it shaped the use of culture and cultural relations for state power. It represents an extract from the first half of the author’s ongoing dissertation project. In it, the author demonstrates his reexamination of the Imperial Japanese Government’s Japan Tourist Bureau (est. 1912; JTB) as an early experiment in the use of state-led cultural relations with significant ramifications for the more widely remembered and well-studied cultural diplomacy and propaganda institutions of the 1930s and after such as the Kokusai Bunka Shinkōkai (1938 Showa Kenkyūkai, (1933-‘40), Imperial Rule Assistance Association (1940-’45). It shows how Japanese government officials working on tourism drew from contributors and audiences across cultural, national, and imperial boundaries, using a multinational network of non-state groups and individuals while appropriating the methods and aims of cultural internationalism and transnational cultural relations for nationalist and imperialist aims. Its findings relate to recent scholarship on internationalism, cultural relations, and state power in the global twentieth century, to the history of cultural diplomacy and of foreign political thought in this period, as well as to the international history of Japanese cultural nationalism and state-led uses of culture for power across the twentieth century.
May 12th (Online Meeting)
Beyond the Landscape: Transcending the Present Condition (In the Thought of Adachi Masao, Nagayama Norio, and Terayama Shūji)
Tatiana Sulovska (UCLA)
Following the assassination of Abe Shinzō in the summer of 2022, Adachi Masao, a filmmaker whose history is deeply intertwined with the 1960s protest, as exemplified in his relationship with the Japanese Red Army, set out to make a film about Yamagami Tetsuya, the shooter. Revolution + 1 was screened as an incomplete 50-minute version on the day of Abe Shinzō’s funeral. The explicit goal of the screening was to preempt efforts to pathologize Yamagami, and thus to expand the discussion of his actions beyond issues of criminality and mental health. Adachi previously centered a social outcast in his 1968 film “A.K.A. Serial Killer,” completed while its subject, the 19-year-old Nagayama Norio, was facing a trial for shooting four people in four different Japanese cities, with a gun taken from a U.S. military base. While in prison, before his execution, Nagayama became an award-winning writer. So, when in 1976 Terayama Shūji, a cult underground playwright, filmmaker, and poet, condemned Nagayama in a brief article, Nagayama responded in book-length form. I triangulate the conversation between Nagayama, Terayama, and Adachi with respect to state violence and criminality as I consider their ideas with a view to transcend the immediate situation.
June 2nd
Exploring the Roles of Mizunoe Takiko and Kasagi Shizuko in Shaping a Female-Driven Post-War Popular Culture
Michael Furmanovsky (Ryukoku University)
Mizunoe Takiko (1915-2009) and Kasagi Shizuko (1914-1985), born within 6 months of each other in the third year of the Taishō era, both experienced a period of around 2-3 years in which they were arguably the most well-known woman in Japan. Despite being members of the same entertainment organization, the Shochiku Girls Opera Company and occasionally working together, the two women’s careers took quite different trajectories. Today Mizunoe, raised in Tokyo, is generally accepted as the inventor of the otokoyaku (cross-dressing male) role in Japanese musical theater history while Kasagi, from Osaka, is the known for being the first Japanese swing jazz vocalist as well as the woman whose Boogie Woogie songs and comedy roles in movies, “cheered up” Japan in the immediate post-war years. While Kasagi’s life and impact on Japanese popular culture recently received an enormous boost from NHK’s 2023 Asadora (Morning Drama) fictionalizing her life, Mizunoe is today less well known despite an extrordinary career as one of the first female film producers in Japan and the woman who brought Ishihara Shintaro Ishihara's two pioneering new wave movies Taiyō no Kisetsu (Season of the Sun) and Kurutta kajitsu (Crazed Fruit) to a mass audience in the mid-1950s. This presentation will examine their careers as part of the presenter's larger study of the role of women in Japanese pre- and post-war music, film and fashion.