We would like to invite you to our upcoming DIJ History & Humanities Study Groups on Thursday, 18 July 2013, and Thursday, 11 July 2013, 18:30.

INA HEIN, University of Vienna (Thursday 18 July 2013)

Media representations of Okinawa: a postcolonial perspective

In the mid-1990s, Japanese popular culture and mass media experienced a downright Okinawa boom. Japan’s southernmost and youngest prefecture has since been marketed as an exotic, peaceful island paradise. In mainland Japanese movies and television series in particular, Okinawa is commonly presented as a place promising “healing” (iyashi) from the presumably negative influences of Japanese modernity for mainland visitors. Needless to say, the construction of Okinawa as paradise on earth requires avoiding problems. Never mentioned in mainstream productions are the prefecture’s conflict-ridden relationship with mainland Japan which can be traced back to the traumatic Battle of Okinawa, the subsequent U.S.
occupation, and the continuing strong military presence on the islands.　By analyzing movies and TV productions made in Okinawa itself, using　postcolonial theory, my presentation will focus on decidedly more critical voices from a local perspective. Through surveying themes and topics　addressed in these productions and analyzing narrative modes, I will expose　the strategies Okinawan media producers develop to express their resistance against mainstream popular cultural images. In a final step, I will discuss the benefits and limitations of a postcolonial approach for dealing with media representations of Okinawa.

Ina Hein is professor for Japanese studies at the University of Vienna (Austria). Her PhD thesis on gender construction in the literature of popular Japanese women writers was granted the Best Dissertation Award of the University of Trier (Germany). Before moving to Vienna, she taught at the Institute for Studies on Modern Japan at Heinrich Heine University of Duesseldorf (Germany). Ina’s research interests are contemporary Japanese literature, cultural studies, and gender studies.

Jessamyn R. Abel, Pennsylvania State University (11 July 2013)

The Bullet Train and Techno-internationalism

The idea of a “bullet train”, which had emerged in the early 1940s in Japan, captured popular imaginations again after World War II. Echoing wartime efforts to display technological prowess while bolstering economic strength, the post-war quest to build faster trains moved to centre stage after the war as a key element of rebuilding the national economy. The introduction of the bullet train on the eve of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics broadcast a new vision of Japan as a world-class nation, coinciding with and reinforcing a shift in Japan’s status in organizations such as GATT, as well as in the eyes of other powers. This sleek high-speed train―at the time the world’s fastest, and packed with advanced high-tech features―helped redefine Japan’s position within the global community of nations. At the same time, the growing perception of Japanese technology as a formidable challenge to American dominance in trade and industry created a tension between U.S. diplomatic interests and domestic demands for protection of threatened industries. This talk will frame the bullet train as one of several new technologies that together helped build Japan’s soft power as a high-tech nation and transform its post-war foreign relations.

Jessamyn R. Abel is a historian of modern Japan at Pennsylvania State University. Since completing her Ph.
D. in History at Columbia University, she has held post-doctoral fellowships at Columbia’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute and Harvard University’s Program on U.S.-Japan Relations.
Her recent publications include articles on the 1940 and 1964 Tokyo Olympiads, wartime cultural exchange programs, and Japanese whaling culture. She recently completed a book manuscript on Japanese internationalism in the twentieth century. Her talk will relate to her new project, a cultural and international history of the bullet train in the context of the global development of high-speed rail.

The DIJ History & Humanities Study Group is a forum for young scholars and Ph.D. candidates in the field of history or the humanities organized by Kristina Iwata-Weickgenannt, Susanne Klien, and Torsten Weber.
All are welcome to attend, but registration (weber[at]dijtokyo.org or
iwata[at]dijtokyo.org) is appreciated.

German Institute for Japanese Studies DIJ Jochi Kioizaka Bldg. 2F
7-1 Kioicho, Chiyoda-ku
Tokyo 102-0094
Phone: 03-3222-5077

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