TUFS Graduate Workshop for Social Science Lecture Series 2017

Title: Yasukuni Shrine and the Limits of 'Politics'

Speaker: Joshua Baxter, The University of Tokyo

Date: Thursday, October 26, 16:30-18:00

Location: Project Space, 3rd floor, Agora Global, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies

http://www.tufs.ac.jp/abouttufs/campusmap.html

Many people are now familiar with the Yasukuni Mondai either via an interest in postwar Japanese
studies or through its cyclical appearance on the front page of international news. We are aware of the ideological stakes, the problems regarding constitutional law, international diplomacy, religious
freedom, the official apologies, nationalism, issues of memory, and the list could go on. Whether one has entered the physical space of the shrine or not, Yasukuni seeps into our consciousness like the return of the repressed. But what is exactly being repressed and what does its return mean for building a politics? This lecture will discuss the limits of Yasukuni as a political space by short-circuiting the postwar problem and instead focusing on its emergence in the Meiji period. The strategy of producing a temporal distance from the Yasukuni Mondai discourse is meant to reveal how the shrine operated within the nexus of what Karatani Kojin calls the trinity of capital-nation- state. When read through thisS social formation, the reasons why the Yasukuni problem is cyclical becomes apparent as each component functions to smooth over the excesses of its counterparts. The aim of this lecture is thus to think of how Yasukuni Shrine could be utilized to open up a new space of politics that resists the suturing that capital-nation-state produces.

Joshua Baxter is a Project Assistant Professor at the University of Tokyo where he teaches courses on the History of Modern Japan & East Asia, Urban History, Critical Theory, and Japanese Imperialism. His research revolves around the relationship between political economy and the production of space mainly in terms of the built environment, land value, populations and ground rent. Currently he is working on a number of articles related to land value in Meiji Tokyo as well as the management of populations through universal conscription.

Language: English

No Prior registration required.

For more information, please contact:
tufsworkshop@gmail.com

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Khalil Dahbi, PhD. Candidate,
Graduate School of Global Studies,
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies