9 July 2015
from: Yone Sugita (sugita@lang.osaka-u.ac.jp)
subject: Looking for discussants on 24 July in Osaka:

Dear Colleagues:

We are honored to have Professor Akiko Takenaka, associate professor at University of Kentucky and Specially-appointed associate professor at Osaka University as well as Mr. Koji Ito, Ph.D. student at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Osaka University.
We are lookig for discussants for both sessions. If you are interested, please contact Yone Sugita (sugita@lang.osaka-u.ac.jp).
We will cover the domestic transportation cost for appropriate discussants.


Osaka University Projects for Promoting International Joint Research Cultural and Humanities Joint Laboratory, Seminar
Date: 24 July 2015 (Friday)
Time: 14:00 – 18:00
Venue: Academic Exchange Seminar Room, 3rd floor, Building E, Osaka University Minoh Campus http://www.osaka-u.ac.jp/en/access/index.html#minoh
(Access map)
http://www.osaka-u.ac.jp/en/access/minoh/minoh.html
(#3: Building E)

14:00-14:05: opening remarks
14:05 – 15:15: session 1 (Professor Akiko Takenaka)
15:15 – 15:35: break
15:35 – 16:45: session 2 (Mr. Koji Ito)
17:00-18:00: reception (light supper)

Session 1:
Moderator: Mr. Koji Ito
Presenter: Professor Akiko Takenaka (associate professor at University of Kentucky and Specially-appointed associate professor at Osaka
University)
Discussant: TBA

“Gender and Postwar Relief: Support for War-Bereaved Single Mothers in Postwar Japan.”
This presentation analyzes the gender implications that emerged through welfare support for the war-bereaved in post-Asia-Pacific War Japan. It follows the foundation, activities, and dissolution of the Alliance of Families of War Victims (Sensō giseisha Izoku Dōmei), the first support group for the war-bereaved, which initially began as an organization for military widows. After its dissolution, members of the Alliance went on to create two separate groups: one dominated by fathers of the military dead, whose stated objective is to restore and maintain honor to the military dead (Nippon Izokukai), and another initiated primarily by widows that now offers multi-faceted support for single parents (Zenkoku Boshi Kafu Fukushi Dantai Kyōgikai). By examining the gender divide that comes into focus in the starkly different scope of these two postwar organizations, and by analyzing their early histories, this presentation explores the relationships among gender, military death and bereavement, and postwar relief. It places the break-up of the Alliance into its social and political contexts in order to analyze the incident in relation to the contemporaneous gender relations. In the process, the presentation examines women’s activism in the immediate postwar years both in the areas of suffrage and welfare.


Session 2:
Moderator: Professor Akiko Takenaka
Presenter: Mr. Koji Ito (Ph.D. student at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Osaka University)
Discussant: TBA

Saving Fur Seals: Japanese Poachers and the North Pacific FurSeal Treaty of 1911 This presentation examines how Japanese poachers in the North Pacific affected the development of U.S.-Japan relations at the turn of the century. The previous scholarship on U.S.-Japan relations has paid much attention to political, economic and military interactions between the two countries with an analytical framework of nation-state and also with a main focus on actors of those countries’ policymakers.
This presentation challenges such previous literature by emphasizing the roles played by Japanese poachers in the development of U.S.-Japan relations at the turn of the century. In short, this presentation is an attempt to reconsider U.S.-Japan relations from an ecological perspective with a transnational framework.