Sophia University Institute of Comparative Culture Lecture Series 2018



Pheasants Over Raptors: Japanese Zoologists Rebuilding International Connections in Occupation-Era Japan



Annika A. Culver

July 19th, 2018
18:30-20:00
Room 301, 3F, Building 10, Sophia University



Imperial Japan's defeat in the Asia-Pacific War and dissolution of its empire led to stark redefinitions of the goals of Japanese scientists whose earlier endeavors supported the wartime state. I investigate zoologists, a subset of Japan's prewar scientific community, and examine how the study of ornithology became a linguistic paradigm and symbol of the postwar nation's new democratic ideals: birds brook no political or social borders as symbols of freedom and flight. Many of these zoologists were aristocrats and politicians in the former Imperial Diet, so their connections with Occupation officials like ornithologist Oliver L. Austin benefited broader relations between former enemies. I argue that both Japanese and American scientists enjoyed embedded networks of knowledge collaboration or competition pre-existing the conflict, whereby a postwar language of scientific research decoupled from empire aided Japan's rapid reintegration by re-establishing earlier paradigms of peaceful internationalism through global wildlife conservation, genetic research, and bird migration studies.



Annika A. Culver is Associate Professor of East Asian History at Florida State University (FSU). She also serves as a scholar in the US-Japan Network for the Future and is a Next Generation Fellow affiliated with the International House of Japan (IHJ). Her earlier research focused on cultural production in Japanese-occupied northeast China, resulting in two books: /Glorify the Empire: Japanese Avant-Garde Propaganda in Manchukuo/ (2013) and /Manchukuo Perspectives: Transnational Literary Approaches/ (forthcoming, co-edited with Norman Smith). In addition, she has written articles on advertising and propaganda in imperial Japan. Dr. Culver's latest project focuses on the trans-war connections between cosmopolitan Japanese scientists of empire and their Anglo-American counterparts.
http://icc.fla.sophia.ac.jp/html/events/2018-2019/180719_Culver.pdf



Language: English / No Prior registration necessary
This talk is organized by Professor Bettina Gramlich-Oka (FLA)



Institute of Comparative Culture (ICC) Sophia University: 7-1 Kioicho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-8554, JAPAN/ Web: http://icc.fla.sophia.ac.jp/