DIJ Business & Economics Study Group, 14 February 2011

We would like to invite you to the next meeting of the DIJ Business & Economics Study Group of the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ).

It will take place on

Monday, February 14th, 2011, 6.30 PM

at the German Institute for Japanese Studies.
(For a map refer to http://www.dijtokyo.org/access).

Our speaker will be
Takeshi Matsui, Hitotsubashi University

He will offer a presentation on:

"How was"iyashi" (healing) commercialized and institutionalized in Japan?:
The dynamic interaction of media discourse and marketing behaviors"

Since the late 1990s, many firms in different industries have launched a large number of "iyashi"
(healing) products and services. Although such a product category had not existed in Japan until this boom, it had been socially constructed through the self-enforcing interaction between media discourse that reported the boom and the imitative behavior of firms, which was triggered by the reports. This presentation examines the so-called healing boom through the analysis of media coverage and marketing behaviors.

Takeshi Matsui (PhD in commerce and management) is an Associate Professor of Marketing in the Graduate School of Commerce and Management, Hitotsubashi University. He is interested in popular cultures such as the "healing boom" in Japan and the manga (Japanese comics) industry in the US from a sociological standpoint. He was a Abe Fellow (2007-2008) and a Visiting Fellow at Princeton University (2007-2009).

The presentation will be given in English. Our study group is intended as a forum for young scholars and Ph.D. candidates in the field of Business and Economics Studies.

Everybody is welcome to attend, but kindly asked to register by February 10th with Florian Kohlbacher (kohlbacher@dijtokyo.org).