Dear SSJ Forum,

 

I hope this email find you well.

 

I would like to notify you on behalf of the Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies (ICAS) two of our upcoming events. The event details including registration links are shared below. Thank you.

 

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How the Japanese Restaurants Spread Around the World and Created a Global Japanese Cuisine

Date: Wed, Jan 22, 2025

Venue: Temple University Japan, room 408

Overview:

With more than 170,000 Japanese restaurants around the world, Japanese cuisine has become truly global. This talk summarizes the research process and principal results of The Global Japanese Restaurant: Mobilities, Imaginaries, and Politics (University of Hawaii Press, 2023). Drawing heavily on untapped primary sources in multiple languages, this book centers on the stories of Japanese migrants in the first half of the twentieth century, and then on non-Japanese chefs and restaurateurs from Asia, Africa, Europe, Australasia, and the Americas whose mobilities, since the mid-1900s, have been reshaping and spreading Japanese cuisine. This expansion is also entangled in culinary politics, ranging from authenticity claims and status competition among restaurateurs and consumers to societal racism, immigration policies, and soft power politics that have shaped the transmission and transformation of Japanese cuisine. Such politics involves appropriation and oppression, as well as cooperation across ethnic lines. Ultimately, the restaurant is a continually reinvented imaginary of Japan produced by restaurateurs, cooks, and servers of various nationalities and ethnicities acting as cultural intermediaries and interpreters of a new globalized Japanese cuisine.

Speaker:

James Farrer is Professor of Sociology and Global Studies at Sophia University in Tokyo. His research focuses on the contact zones of global cities, including ethnographic studies of sexuality, nightlife, expatriate communities, and urban food cultures. Recent publications include The Global Japanese Restaurant: Mobilities, Imaginaries and Politics (with David Wank eds.), International Migrants in China's Global City: The New Shanghailanders, Shanghai Nightscapes: A Nocturnal Biography of a Global City (with Andrew Field), and Globalization and Asian Cuisines: Transnational Networks and Contact Zones (ed.). He is a frequent contributor to media programming on urban life in Asia, including NHK World's "Tokyo Eye 2020" and "Matsuko's Unknown World" (Matsuko no Shiranai Sekai).

Moderator:

Kyle Cleveland is the co-director of ICAS and associate professor of Sociology at Temple University, Japan Campus. His expertise ranges from political and theoretical sociology to race and ethnicity, popular culture and ideology.

Registration: ICAS: How the Japanese Restaurants Spread Around the World and Created a Global Japanese Cuisine - LibCal - Temple University Japan Campus

 

 

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Marriage equality in Japan: LGBT couples on the verge of full(er) equality?

Date: Mon, Feb 10, 2025

Venue: Temple University Japan Room 609

 

Overview:

In 2024, three High Courts in Japan came to agreement and ruled Japan's ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. These landmark decisions constitute a pivotal moment in Japan's ongoing journey toward marriage equality and broader LGBTQ+ rights. Although Japan does not criminalize homosexuality and allows same-sex couples to love freely, its refusal to legally recognize same-sex marriages raises pressing issues and concerns. These include parental rights, hospital visitation, and residency for foreign partners--critical areas of inequality and alienation of same-sex couples in Japan.

Join us on February 10 to discuss Japan's legal and social battles for same-sex marriage and LGBTQ+ equality. Explore whether the nation is truly on the verge of achieving full(er) equality, and what challenges remain on this complicated path forward.

 

Speakers:

Makiko Terahara is the representative director of "Marriage For All Japan" (2019-), co-representative of Tokyo litigation attorney for marriage equality (2019-), co-representative of Tokyo Omotesando Law and Accounting LPC (2010-), in-house lawyer of Merrill Lynch Japan Securities Co., Ltd. (2008-2010), qualified as attorney in New York (2008), graduated from LL.M of New York University (2007), associate of domestic law firms (2000-2005), qualified as attorney in Japan (2000), graduated from Tokyo University (1997). She has devoted herself to the protection of women's and sexual minorities' human rights on a pro bono basis. 

https://www.marriageforall.jp/en/marriage-equality/

Alexander Dmitrenko is the Office Managing Partner of Ashurst Tokyo office focusing on compliance issues (sanctions, anti-bribery-corruption, cyber, ESG), investigations and dispute resolution matters. He is a Co-Chair and one of the co-founders of LLAN, Lawyers for LGBTQ & Allies Network. LLAN is a prominent Japanese NPO with the mission of promoting equality, diversity and inclusion. LLAN has been particularly instrumental in assembling corporate support for marriage equality, which has been recognized by recent court cases in Japan supporting marriage equality. Alexander began his legal career in Toronto and NYC, working for major international law firm and on the Ontario same-sex marriage case over 20 years ago. Alexander is qualified to practice law in New York State and England & Wales and is gaiben in Japan. He is also the Chair of the Asia Advisory Committee of Temple Law School's Center for Compliance and Ethics, and Friendship Hometown Ambassador for the beautiful island of Hachijojima.

Alexander Dmitrenko (ashurst.com)

Moderator: 

Robert Dujarric, Co-director of the Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies (ICAS) at Temple University, Japan Campus 

Robert Dujarric | Temple University, Japan Campus

Registration: ICAS: Marriage equality in Japan: LGBT couples on the verge of full(er) equality? - LibCal - Temple University Japan Campus

 

Best,

Evelyn

 

 

Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies (ICAS)

Temple University, Japan Campus

Email: icas@tuj.temple.edu

Phone: +(81)-3-5441-9800