The Twelfth Asian Studies Conference Japan (ASCJ) Rikkyo University, Tokyo June 21–22, 2008
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The Twelfth Asian Studies Conference Japan (ASCJ) Rikkyo University, Tokyo June 21–22, 2008 ABSTRACTS The abstracts given here are based on versions sent to ASCJ. When participants did not provide revised files of their abstracts, the original proposal abstracts have been used, with minimal changes in formatting. Italics and macrons may be missing. Changes and corrections should be sent in Word format by attachment to <[email protected]> as soon as possible. Information correct as of June 15, 2008. Please check the website for any late changes: www.meijigakuin.ac.jp/~ascj SATURDAY JUNE 21 SATURDAY MORNING SESSIONS: 10:00 A.M. – 12:00 NOON Session 1: Room 5125 Technologies of Alterity and the Production of Cultural Bodies in Contemporary Japan Chair/Organizer: Baryon Tensor Posadas, University of Toronto/Hokkaido University Discussant: Toshiya Ueno, Wako University This panel is organized around the understanding that in the contemporary moment of global capitalist modernity, it is in the constellation of various bodily and material practices constituted in relation to different affective technologies that discourses of alterity are encountered. Manifestations of this appear in several ways. Take, for instance, the cinematic apparatus. Not only are the boundaries between interior and exterior drawn upon bodies in gendered and racialized terms (re)produced in the machine-mediated gaze vis-à-vis the screen, but the spectrality of cinematic images also have the effect of producing different temporalities as Other. With this as our point of departure, our papers will articulate various symptoms and strategies that engage this context by examining a range of technê—film, performance, visual art, digital media—in contemporary Japan. Baryon Posadas will discuss Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s film Retribution (2007) in terms of the temporality of dead bodies and the trope of haunting they foreground, and through this, sketch out the implications of the spectral Otherness of the past constituted by the cinematic apparatus. Sara Osenton’s paper tackles the image of the cyborg in the art of Yamaguchi Akira as a practice that opens a nuanced understanding of the techno-Orientalist gaze. Finally, Awatani Yoshiji will discuss representations of techno(logy) culture in Japan, with a particular focus on the discourse of techno-Orientalism, digital media, and pop culture. 1) Baryon Tensor Posadas, University of Toronto/Hokkaido University Dead Bodies: Serial Killers, Specters, Spectators in Kurosawa Kiyoshi What is immediately striking about Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s film Retribution (Sakebi, 2007) is the extent to which it is haunted by the spectres of previous films from his body of work. With resemblances to the decrepit landscapes in Cure (Kyuā, 1997) or the apocalyptic finale of Pulse (Kairo, 2001), it appears that, at least at first glance, Kurosawa is repeating himself. Haunting, however, is not a simple repetition, but the reappearance of the dead or disavowed to trouble the temporality of the present. That such a haunting manifests on the formal level of the film is only appropriate given that its narrative revolves around the persistent haunting of the detective protagonist by the ghost of a victim of a crime. This ASCJ abstracts 2008, p. 2 paper will discuss this haunting by examining it in relation with other key motifs and formal strategies that foreground questions of repetition such as serial killing (the crime of repetition) and doppelgangers (the repetition of the subject). Through these, I will argue that the film articulates the limits of conceptions of crime in the detective genre, and by implication, modern narrative forms as such including film, literature, or history. I will then attempt to sketch out the stakes and implications of my reading of the film by way of an engagement with the practices of spectatorship constituted in relation to the technology of the cinematic apparatus, particularly in terms of the spectrality and temporality of its labour within the context of the repetition compulsion of global capitalist modernity. 2) Sara Osenton, University of Toronto Cyborgs and the Embodiment of Technology: Rethinking the Cyborg Body in Japanese Art Contemporary artist Yamaguchi Akira blends together past and future, tradition and technology̶often directly onto the body̶to create elaborate cyborg humans, animals and environments. Why is the cyborg̶the half human, half-mechanical technological body̶ such a prevalent theme within Japanese visual culture? This paper considers the cyborg as one way in which the Japanese imagination struggled to move beyond defeat. The cyborg thus works as a mechanism in which to reconfigure identity through the recovery the imagined and metaphoric whole body from the defeated and mutilated real and national body. The cyborg body as metaphor opens a nuanced understanding of Techno-Orientalism and enables us to see how both Japan and the West have been complicit in the creation of competing constructions of power and to understand why images of cyborgs in Japanese visual culture are so prevalent, and so powerful. While the West has used the technological- gaze to dehumanize, I contend that the cyborg body is used in Japanese images as a site for re-imagining an equalised power relationship as a process of recovery. By taking a close look at Yamaguchi Akira’s use of the body and technology, this paper will elucidate the potential meanings of the cyborg in art production. 3) Yoshiji Awatani, Kansai University Images of Techno(logy) Culture in Japan: Representation of Techno Orientalism, Digital Media, and Pop Culture This paper discusses representation of techno(logy) culture in Japan. Specifically, I will focus on the discourse of techno-orientalism in connection with digital media, and pop culture. Recent images of Japanese pop culture are infused with “technology.” These images, such as the otaku, or Akihabara, emerged in the 1990’s, marking the era of post-industrial information society side by side with the introduction of the broadband system that has advanced the electronic environment of Japan and the peculiar developments in Mobile phone culture in Japan. This prominence of techno culture, at the same time, involves various discourses and cultural expressions on technology. To begin with, a significant part of post war Japanese thought is already concerned with such discourses. This is seen, for example, in “Japan that can say No,” which later developed into a form of Techno-Orientalism. These problems around technology also find representation in popular culture. Anno Hideaki’s Neon Genesis Evangelion or Oshii Mamoru’s (director of Ghost In The Shell) works regularly explore the man-machine relationship, as well as images of war and battle. Although images and representations of war have changed since 1945, these representations do not necessarily result in the glorification of the war. Rather, I would argue that such animations’ representation of war became possible because it is a virtual war. Along with this, I will also take up the image of “Tokyo” as it plays a symbolic role in the story of Eva and Oshii’s works. This convergence of thought, pop culture and technology represents images of Japan (Tokyo) as techno(logy) culture. Session 2: Room 5222 Roundtable: Risk in Japan ASCJ abstracts 2008, p. 3 Chair/Organizer: Glenn Hook, University of Sheffield 1) Mark Caprio, Rikkyo University 2) Andrew Dewit, Rikkyo University 3) Yukiko Yamazaki, Tokyo University 4) Harukiyo Hasegawa, Doshisha University 5) Glenn Hook, University of Sheffield The work of Ulrich Beck has alerted us to the need to examine risk within the new paradigm of Risk Society (1991), where the individual is increasingly charged with the duty of responding to a wide range of risks created by the nature of modern life. True, a substantial amount of scholarly effort has been directed into how to manage risk and how to explain the transition to preemptive rather than evidentially based political, economic and social mechanisms of utility in reducing the potential for risk to give rise to harm. But this work is overwhelming focussed on the advanced industrial states of North America and Europe. I The literature on risk in Japan remains sparse, despite the Japanese preoccupation with all kinds of hazards and insecurities (both external and internal). The purpose of this panel is to move forward the debate on risk in two respects. First, in terms of geographic focus, the panel will examine the case of Japan, a neglected area of study. Second, in terms of approach, the panel will direct attention to how risk is manifested in three domains: the state, market and society. It will focus on international relations, with a particular interest in Japan`s relations with the United States, as seen through the manifestation of risk in Okinawa (Hook), and Japan’s relations with North Korea (Caprio); on energy and fiscal policy, to demonstrate how risks are being manifest in terms of energy policy (DeWit) and in terms of fiscal crisis (Yamazaki); and on the corporation and labour, to elucidate how risks are mediated by the company and labour (Hasegawa). The panel is therefore interdisciplinary in conception and approach. Session 3: Room 5223 Magic, Mythical, and Mundane in The Extensive Records of the Taiping Period Organizer/Chair: Xiaohuan Zhao, University of Otago Discussant: Hidemi Tokura, University of Tokyo The Taiping guangji (Extensive Records of the Taiping Period, hereafter TPGJ) in 500 fascicles was compiled during the Period of Taiping Xingguo (976-983) under the reign of Emperor Taizong of the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127). With nearly 7,000 entries included in this multi-volume anthology, TPGJ boasts the largest collection ever seen of classical Chinese narratives known as “xiaoshuo,”and has long been held in high regard as “the treasure house of xiaoshuo.” Entries in it cover an extreme wide range of subject matter from gods, ghosts, and spirits to birds, beasts and flowers.