Sophia University Institute of Comparative Culture Lecture Series 2017

The Long Defeat: Cultural Trauma, Memory and Identity in Japan
(http://icc.fla.sophia.ac.jp/html/events/2017-2018/171026_Hashimoto.pdf)

Akiko Hashimoto

18:30-20:00, October 26, 2017
Room 301, 3F, Building 10, Sophia University

How do memories of national trauma remain relevant to culture and society long after the event? Why do the memories of difficult experiences endure, and even intensify, despite people’s impulse to avoid remembering dreadful pasts and to move on? Hashimoto explores these questions by examining the stakes of war memory after Japan’s defeat in World War II. Drawing from her book, The Long Defeat, she shows how and why defeat has become an indelible part of national collective life, especially in the recent decades. The talk probes into the heart of the war memories that lie at the root of the current disputes and escalating frictions in East Asia.

Akiko Hashimoto (橋本明子) grew up in Tokyo, London, and Hamburg. She received her B.Sc. from the London School of Economics and M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from Yale University. After working at the United Nations University in Tokyo, she taught Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh for 25 years. She is now Visiting Professor of Sociology and Asian Studies at Portland State University, and Faculty Fellow of Yale University’s Center for Cultural Sociology.
She is author and editor of volumes on cultural sociology and comparative sociology, focused on social constructions of reality in varied cultural settings. Her special interests are cultural trauma, war memory, national identity, culture and power, popular culture and media, family and aging. Her latest volume is The Long Defeat: Cultural Trauma, Memory and Identity in Japan (Oxford University Press, 2015) which won the 2016 Scholarly Achievement Award of the North Central Sociological Association. The book is now available in Japanese (Nihon no Nagai Sengo, Misuzu Shobō Publishers, 日本の長い戦後: 敗戦の記憶・トラウマはどう語り継がれているか. みすず書房, 2017) and will appear also in Chinese (Beijing Imaginist, 2018). She is also author of The Gift of Generations: Japanese and American Perspectives on Aging and the Social Contract (Cambridge University Press, 1996).

Language: English / No Prior registration necessary

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