Violence, Justice, & Honor in Japan’s Literary Cultures
Oberlin College
February 16 - 17, 2018
Friday, February 16, 2018Registration open from 30 minutes before the first event each dayFRIDAY VENUE: StudiOC (adjacent to the Hotel at Oberlin, 2nd Floor) Friday 11:00 am - 12:45 pm SESSION 1 Violence in Contemporary Japanese Literature Davinder Bhowmik, University of Washington“Circuitous Driving in Pursuit of Medoruma Shun’s Rainbow Bird” Phillip Kaffan, University of North Carolina, Charlotte“Revolution and Literature: Writing Against Violence” Yukiko Shigeto, Whittier College “Smashing the Buddha: Tsushima Yûko’s Nara Report” Christopher Lowy, University of Washington“History, Memory, and Violence in Tagame Gengoroh’s Daruma kenpei” Friday 1:00 - 2:45 pm SESSION 2 Copycat Violence and the Media/Reality Continuum Paul Roquet, MIT“Mixed Realism and Composited Violence in the Light Novel/LitRPG” Kirsten Cather, University of Texas, Austin“Remembering Werther: Copycat Suicide in Aokigahara Forest” Jonathan Abel, Pennsylvania State University“True Crime / Copycat Crime: The Mediations of Representation and Reverse Mimesis” J. Keith Vincent, Boston University, Discussant Friday 2:45 - 3:00 pm Coffee time Friday 3:00 - 5:00 pm SESSION 3A Resisting and Remembering the Slow Violence of Radiation in Japan Yuki Miyamoto, DePaul University“The Presence of Absence: Toward an Ethics of Exile as Resistance to Violence after Fukushima” Linda Flores, Oxford University“Remembering and Forgetting in Kōno Fumiyo's Hi no tori Series” Rachel DiNitto, University of Oregon“The New Normal: Radiation, Futurity, and Slow Violence in Fukushima Fiction and Manga” Friday 3:00 - 5:00 pm SESSION 3B Aestheticization of Violence Monika Dix, Saginaw State University“Compassionate Violence? The Aestheticization of Violence in the Taima-dera jikkai-zu byōbu” Stephen M.Forrest, University of Massachusetts, Amherst“The brutal and scandalous illustrations" of kusazōshi 草双紙: regulating the market for graphic violence in Edo popular fiction” Kendra Strand, University of Iowa“When Elegance Becomes Inconvenient: Violence in Word and Deed in Nijô Yoshimoto’s Solace of Words at Ojima” Friday 5:00 - 6:15 pm Buffet dinner Friday 6:15 - 8:00 pm SESSION 4: Bodily Violence in Japanese Literature & Visual Arts Faye Kleeman, University of Colorado, Boulder“Bodily Violence & Shôjo in Contemporary Japan” Jeffrey Angles, Western Michigan University“Slow Violence Across Nations and Bodies: The Scars of Ishiuchi Miyako” Higuchi Yoshizumi, Tokyo“The Body and War: Violence in the Work of Playwright and Novelist Juro Kara” Christina Yi, University of British Columbia“Escape to Nowhere: The Postwar Writings of Chang Hyŏkchu” Friday 8:00 pm Free time: Concert at Finney Chapel or Art Museum reception Saturday, February 17, 2018Registration open from 30 minutes before the first event each day.SATURDAY VENUE: AJ Lewis Center Saturday 8:30 - 9:45 am SESSION 5A: New Research in Literary Studies Quillon Arkenstone, University of Hawai’I at Manoa“Violence and Literature in Kim Nae-sŏng’s “The Oval Mirror” Andrew Harding, Cornell University“Memory of violence as a possibility for community in Ri Kaisei’s Shōnin no inai kōkei” Victoria Oana Lupascu, Pennsylvania State University“When Disaster Strikes: Hideo Furukawa’s Violent Circles and Their Immateriality” Saturday 8:30 - 9:45 am SESSION 6A: New Research in Literary Studies Shih-Wei Sun, UCLA“Violence against Monks in Shabby Stoles: Justice and Punishment in Nihon Ryōiki” Pier Carlo Tommasi, University of Venice“The Bunbu Paradigm Reconsidered: Warrior Literacy and Symbolic Violence in Late Medieval Japan” &TBA Saturday 9:45 - 10:00 am Coffee break Saturday 10:00 am - 12:00 pm SESSION 5B Family Disrupted Sharalyn Orbaugh, University of British Columbia“’Destroy the Family, Save the Empire’: the bizarre rhetoric of mobilization propaganda, 1937-45” Chiara Ghidini, University of Naples “L’Orientale”“’Who's there?’ Disruption, revulsion and transformation in the portrayal of senile dementia within post-war Japanese literature and cinema” Paola Scrolavezza, University of Bologna“Translating Family Violence in Contemporary Japanese Literature: Dynamics of (Cruel) Affectivity in Zangyakuki by Kirino Natsuo” Hiroma Tsuchiya Dollase, Vassar College“Daughter’s Search for “Mother” in Ai o kou hito (A Person Begging for Love)” Eiji Sekine, Purdue University, Discussant Saturday 10:00 am - 12:00 pm SESSION 6B Violence in Traditional Japanese Literary Contexts Richard Torrance, Ohio State “Mythic Representations of the Violent Vanquishing of Izumo” Noriko Reider, Miami University“Legends of Yasaburō Basa” Naomi Fukumori, Ohio State University“Kenreimon’in Ukyō no Daibu shū: The Experience of the Genpei War and the Work’s Reception during WWII” Shelley Fenno Quinn, Ohio State “Critical Treatments of War in Two ‘New’ Kyōgen Plays” Saturday 12:00 - 1:00 pm Buffett Lunch Saturday 1:00 - 2:30 pm SESSION 7 Proletarian Responses to Class Violence Mika Endo, Bard College“Proletarian Protest and Protections against Violence in Lower-class Childhood” Norma Field, University of Chicago“Defying Environmental Harm, Sexism, Poverty, and War in Tokyo, 1932” Heather Bowen-Struyk, DePaul University“Colonial Violence in Proletarian Literature” Nathan Shockey, Bard College, Discussant Saturday 2:30 - 3:00 pm Coffee Break Saturday 3:00 - 5:00 pm SESSION 8 Keynote Panel: Atomic Art & Violence Okamura Yukinori, Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels, Saitama, Japan Notohara Yumi, Osaka College of Music Charlotte Eubanks, Pennsylvania State University Saturday 5:30 - 6:00 pm Reception & Dinner Location: Hotel at Oberlin, Ballroom, 2nd Floor Saturday 7:00 - 8:30 pm Session 9 The Violence of Empire: Revisiting Colonial Narratives of Massacres, Insurrection, and Dislocation Andre Haag, University of Hawai’I at Manoa“Mediated Memories of the 1923 Kantō Earthquake Massacres: A History of Violence in Korean Diasporic Literature” Robert Tierney, University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign“Bodies and Violence in the Musha Incident” Kimberly Kono, Smith College“Violence, Assimilation and the Colonial Other in Manchuria” Michiko Suzuki, University of California,Davis“Speaking Violence Through Things: Miyao Tomiko’s Shuka” Ken K. Ito, University of Hawai’I, Discussant Saturday 8:30 - 10:00 pm Reception and Exhibition, “Go for Broke”