Sophia University Series in Cultural Responses to 3.11

SERIES ABSTRACT: Since March 11, 2011 artists, authors, musicians, filmmakers and complete amateurs have responded in various ways to the earthquake, tsunami, and meltdown. These have ranged from choreographic demos, live and recorded performance and a wide range of media interventions, to fashion, fiction and music.
Folk, pop or high culture, these have forced us to reexamine the role of cultural practices in the dynamic between the political and personal. In addition, there has been an enthusiastic revival of past cultural practices addressing related issues.

This series will feature small and informal workshops events over the course of the next year.
(Contact me off-list if you are interested in presenting and we will see if we can work up a suitable
event.)

Our first session will feature two presentations on manga, Japanese comics.

MEETING 1: ART AND CULTURE OF 3.11: MANGA

*Oishinbo: Between food contamination and food tourism Ryan Holmberg, Gakushuin

*Nuclear disasters and the possibilities of shōjo
(girls') manga: The case of Yamagishi Ryōko and Hagio Moto Verena Maser, DIJ

Friday, January 20th, 2012; 18:30 pm
Sophia University, Yotsuya Campus
Bldg. 10, room 301
http://www.fla.sophia.ac.jp/about/location

Free and open to all
Lectures in English; discussion in English and Japanese

ABSTRACTS

*Oishinbo: Between Food Contamination and Food Tourism Ryan Holmberg, Gakushuin

Otherwise known for its fit-for-kings menu, the foodie manga Oishinbo has, since its beginning in 1983, dealt with many issues concerning the political economy and health safety of food in Japan. The manga has treated, for example, the threat to Japanese farmers and fisherman posed by industry, construction, and pollution, including contamination from the Rokkasho nuclear reprocessing plant, as well as dangers posed to Japanese consumers by environmental toxins in their foodstuffs, including imports from Europe after Chernobyl. This past summer, the manga began a new series on post-3.11 Tōhoku and the damage done to local agriculture and food culture by the earthquake and tsunami. So far, it has been relatively circumspect about food contamination after the Fukushima meltdown, resembling more the various campaigns to support Tōhoku economically and spiritually via the grocery store and through tourism. This paper will assess the recent Oishinbo series through recent discourses about food contamination and food tourism in Japan, asking what is the relation between “food after the tsunami” and “food after Fukushima.”

*Ryan Holmberg is a JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow at Gakushuin University, Tokyo. He is currently working on a book about mystery and crime manga of the 1940s and 50s.

*Nuclear disasters and the possibilities of shōjo
(girls') manga: The case of Yamagishi Ryōko and Hagio Moto Verena Maser, DIJ

While shōjo (girls') manga is regularly attested a potential for changing gender roles, less has been said about its possibilities in other political fields. In my presentation I will take a look at two authors'
reactions to the nuclear disasters of Chernobyl and Fukushima. Yamagishi Ryōko in 1988 used her manga to alert readers to the dangers of nuclear energy and urged to end Japan's dependence on this power source.
Hagio Moto in 2011 on the other hand draws a connection between two girls, one from Fukushima and one from Chernobyl to give hope to her readers that the future might be brighter than it looks right now. While different in content, both stories received a lot of attention from media as well as readers all over Japan, attesting to the political possibilities of shōjo manga.

Verena Maser is a PhD student at the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ). She is currently working on her PhD thesis about love between girls in manga.

--
David H. Slater, Ph.D.
Faculty of Liberal Arts
Sophia University, Tokyo