Seminar Abstracts from 2007-08

Sept. 22, 2007—Western Michigan University (Steve Covell)

"The Politics of Identity: Deciphering the Mercantile Anxiety of Jacobean England in the East India Company's Failure in Japan (1613-1623)"
Catherine Ryu, Michigan State University

The English East India Company's venture in Japan was an unmitigated disaster. This paper seeks to articulate the import of the deep-seated anxiety palpable in the official records, correspondence, and journals penned by the English factors in Japan. By delineating the connection between the anxiety generated by Jacobean England's emergent national ethos and identity as a mercantile state, and the anxiety the English factors themselves experienced in their own involvement in the politics of identity in Japan, I elucidate the nature of the mercantile anxiety of the Jacobean reign as it manifested itself in these two different geopolitical locations. The findings of this comparison, however, should not be hastily translated into an overdetermined postmodern reading that the notion of the Englishness was a site of indeterminacy.

What is more crucial to recognize is that the instability of English identity revealed here is not the result of theoretical speculation or of philosophical meditation on the nation's self-perception. Rather, it is an effect manifested by the marginal role England played in the international trade scene in Japan, which was connected to the vibrant China-centered economic system, the veritable engine behind the world economy from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. I contend that this knowledge can be most productively put to use as a much needed corrective for rewriting the assumed supremacy of the West vis-à-vis the East in the hegemonic epistemological framework that has naturalized the Eurocentric conceptualization of modernity and its attendant world order.

"Monsters and Misfits in Heike monogatari: Yorimasa and the Nue"
Elizabeth Oyler (eaoyler@uiuc.edu), University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign

Portentous signs, encounters with the strange, and uncanny events mark important moments in many early Japanese narratives. The Heike monogatari (Tales of the Heike), whose variant texts all explain the Genpei War (1180-85) and its aftermath as a disordering and reordering of the realm, is no exception. One bizarre apparition from the Heike that captured the cultural imagination well beyond the boundaries of that work is the nue, a creature described as having "a monkey's head, a tanuki's body, a snake's tail, and a tiger's legs, and which uttered a cry like that of the golden mountain thrush." The first appearance of this beast occurs in the "Nue" (The Thrush Monsters) episode, which the feats of the great Minamoto warrior Yorimasa (1106-1180), who twice shoots a nue out of the night sky over the royal palace in service to the sovereigns Konoe and Nijo. The episode is placed in the Heike narrative immediately following Yorimasa's failed coup d'etat against the arch-villain Kiyomori, which results in not only his own death but that of the prince he tried to place on the throne. This essay investigates the "Nue" episode as recounted in the Kakuichi-bon line of the Heike monogatari, the most famous recited-text variant of the war tale, drawing attention to the narrative role the monster plays within the context of the biography of Yorimasa. Why is it Yorimasa who confronts this monster, and why is the nue taiji (subjugation of the nue) the center of this elegaic episode about him?

Oct. 20, 2007—Washington University-St Louis

Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs/Midwest Japan Seminar

"Stakeholder Capitalism in 21st Century Japan: Communities, Human Capital and New Technology Industries"
Kathryn Ibata-Arens, Political Science, DePaul University

Why is it that Kyoto, ancient cultural capital of Japan, a conservative and traditional place in many ways, manages to produce Japan’s most innovative (and profitable) high technology entrepreneurial firms? Further, what causes regions such as Kyoto to create a self-sustaining critical mass, or cluster, of new venture start-ups in emerging sectors? Can this success in “clustering” entrepreneurial businesses be replicated elsewhere? For example, what are the most effective ways to encourage new start-ups and connect fledgling firms to critical resources? The findings herein are based primarily on original case study survey and interview data from 29 life science start-ups and the entrepreneurs at their helms, representing more than half of all life science start-ups in Kyoto. I identify best practices in firm-level strategy and entrepreneurship policy in what I call the Kyoto Model of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, highlighting entrepreneurial case studies of successful start-ups. I also analyze factors leading to successful new business clusterization through analysis of entrepreneurial social networks and resource environments. Situating the findings within national innovation and entrepreneurship policies in Japan—I present a new model for regional innovation systems and cluster emergence. I also include brief comparisons to life science clusters (and want-to-be clusters) in Japan and the United States, based on additional original survey and interview research in other regional clusters in each country.

"Radical Women and Male Dominant Unions in Postwar Japan"
Christopher Gerteis, Creighton University

This essay examines the political voice of women active in the postwar Japanese labor movement, and demonstrates that union militancy did not itself alienate a significant minority of women who directly engaged the highly-centralized union politics of the 1950s. Despite the assertions of many labor leaders, the Japanese labor movement was home to a radical base of women union activists who did not desire to subordinate their identities as wage-earners in order to play the role of wives and daughters of union men. Indeed, I argue that women union activists such as those of the militant Coal Wives of the Tanfukyô and the radical women of the JNR railway workers’ union Kokurô were crucial to the success of the political agenda advocated by Japan’s largest, male dominant labor unions.

Dec. 1, 2007—DePaul University (Kathryn Ibata-Arens)

"Hōjō Masako and the Politics of Gender in Early Medieval Japan"
Ethan Segal, History, Michigan State University

Upon Yoritomo’s death in 1199, the fate of the Kamakura "bakufu" rested largely in the hands of his widow, Hōjō Masako. She proved to be a very capable leader, helping to establish the Hōjō regency, mediating disputes between key warriors and the shogun, and mobilizing troops when the bakufu came under attack. Masako was so influential that the bakufu’s official chronicle, the "Azuma kagami," refers to her as the “Nun Shogun.” Yet Masako’s success did not produce any followers. She stands out as the only woman to have held a position of political importance in the Kamakura government. As the medieval period is generally thought of as an age of declining rights for women, Masako’s prominence seems all the more remarkable.

Through a careful examination of Hōjō Masako’s life, this paper analyzes gender and politics in medieval warrior society. Drawing upon a range of primary and secondary sources, the paper questions the role of familial and marital ties in Masako’s political career. How did she assume a leadership role in the bakufu? Why did no other women follow her? Did her status as a nun enable her to participate in politics in ways that ordinary women could not? The paper explores the possibility that medieval gender was not binary but rather that her status as a nun put her in a “third category” that exempted Masako from restrictions otherwise placed on women.

"Social Citizenship in Japan"
Larry Neumann, Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

This paper is a draft chapter from a book on changing Japanese identity and civil society. It looks at social citizenship in Japan. In contrast to a formal, legal-rights juridical notion of citizenship, social citizenship is more de facto, in-practice citizenship. It represents the ideals of democratic social inclusion and state-guaranteed protection from economic hardship while guaranteeing all citizens, as citizens, a minimal living standard. In the early postwar years, the Japanese government constructed a social citizenship regime out of the remnants of the pre-war social welfare system. Social programs were not a top priority for the dominant conservative party that advanced policies to foster rapid export-led growth by large corporations. A powerful corporate-state coalition constructed a social citizenship regime with narrowly targeted and meager benefits and strong local self-reliance that it justified based on traditional Japanese values. Debates over whether Japan’s is a “normal country” with regard to social citizenship are fruitless. A Japanese-specific context has profoundly influenced but not totally determined the social citizenship regime. Two features make Japan’s social citizenship regime distinctive in a comparative context: (1) Reliance on the logic of social capitalism and a CMC production regime in the absence of labor-left pressure; (2) a decentralized system that greatly depends on local volunteers and unpaid female labor. Japan’s social citizenship regime was the outcome of a prewar institutional legacy, specific national power relations, an unusually active local civil society, and entrenched gender inequality. The sustainability of the Japan’s social citizenship regime in the face of demographic pressures (i.e., a fast aging population, declining birth rate), shifting gender expectations, structural changes in the economy due to globalization, and significant labor market realignments is an open question.

Feb. 23, 2008—Indiana University (Yasuko Watt)

"Japan’s Number One” Goes to War: Baseball, Mobilization, and Memory"
Dennis Frost, History, Xavier University, Cincinnati

In 1938, Sawamura Eiji, one of Japan’s most celebrated baseball players, left the professional league to enter the military and was soon dispatched to the front in China. This paper examines popular interest in Sawamura’s military experiences, revealing that the relationship between baseball and the wartime state was far less antagonistic than most accounts of the sport’s history suggest. Sawamura, who was drafted three times and killed in action in 1944, regularly commented on his wartime experiences in both mainstream and sports-related media outlets, making him a particularly effective, though unofficial, spokesperson for the war effort, and especially baseball’s role in the conflict.

While wartime accounts portrayed Sawamura as willing and noble, in postwar retellings his story was recast as a tragic narrative of wartime loss, transforming Sawamura into an innocent and unwilling victim of the militarists, and thereby obscuring his—and by extension baseball’s—complicity in the war. While focusing on Sawamura and Japan, this paper exposes the often-overlooked role of sports and sports celebrities worldwide in fostering wartime mobilization and mediating postwar efforts to come to terms with wartime experiences at home and on the front.

"Ghost Writing: Kim Sok-pom and the Specter of Japanese Colonialism"
Christopher D. Scott, Literature, Macalester College

 “A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of communism.” So begins Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ 1848 "The Manifesto of the Communist Party." Little could they have known that, exactly one hundred years later, a violent anti-communist purge would erupt on Cheju Island, South Korea, leaving more than 30,000 people dead, many of them in mass, unmarked graves. Now known as the Cheju Island April Third Incident (or 4.3 Incident for short), this massacre has largely been swept under the rug of history, suppressed from public memory in both South Korea and the United States until only recently.

In Japan, however, the 4.3 Incident has been spoken and written about for decades, mostly by Korean residents of Japan (so-called "zainichi" Koreans), many of whom were originally from Cheju. One of the first persons to address this incident was the zainichi Korean writer Kim Sok-pom (1925-), who fictionalized it in his 1957 story “Karasu no shi” (a murder of crows). This paper examines Kim’s 1970 novel "Mandogi yūrei kitan" (the amazing ghost story of Mandogi). In particular, I focus on the figure of Mandogi, who may or may not be a ghost. Mandogi’s ghostliness, I argue, reflects an image of the zainichi Korean male writer in postwar Japan as a kind of ghostwriter, an invisible and threatening presence. By rereading this text in terms of zainichi Korean male subjectivity, this paper shows how the 4.3 Incident and Japanese (post) colonial discourse are deeply intertwined.

April 26, 2008—St. Xavier University

"Casting Imperialism as Regional Cooperation: The 1943 Greater East Asian Conference"
Jessamyn Abel, Bowling Green State University

At the Greater East Asian Conference, a meeting of Asian leaders held in Tokyo in 1943, Japanese aggression in Asia was presented as international cooperation on a regional basis. In organizing and holding the conference, the Japanese government used the rhetoric of co-prosperity, independence, equality, and Asian brotherhood in an effort to unify the nations of Asia behind Japan in the war effort. At the same time, they incorporated Wilsonian ideals and rhetoric into the Joint Declaration adopted at the conference in order to present their war aims in terms that would evoke sympathy among the Allied powers, as defeat had begun to appear inevitable. Other Asian leaders sought to use the conference to promote their own visions of regional and global order. Although the imperialist rhetoric of co-prosperity strikes a hollow chord today, it was useful to the Japanese government precisely because it included elements with broad appeal for all Asians.

"Yasukuni: Nation, Violence, Memory"
Akiko Takenaka, University of Michigan

Yasukuni Shrine, a memorial in central Tokyo dedicated to all military dead of modern Japan, has remained a political focal point both domestically and internationally for over sixty years after Japan’s last engagement in a military conflict. Its supporters defend the shrine in honor of those memorialized for giving up their lives for their country; the opponents condemn its presence for not only justifying, but also encouraging death and violence at war. While both sides vehemently disagree over the future of this monument, the basis of their arguments is similar—that Yasukuni’s presence transformed the Japanese into people who fanatically and uniformly believed that the best deed a man could commit in life was to fight at war and die for the emperor so that he may be enshrined there. This belief, which had certainly been the official narrative of wartime Japan, has come to function as the collective memory of postwar Japan that Yasukuni now symbolizes.

With the recent proliferation of memory studies, however, we have come to understand that memory is not object but process, enmeshed within and transformed by the ever-changing present. I will explore the imbrication of social space and collective memory through the lens of Yasukuni Shrine. Maurice Halbwachs, one of the early theorists of collective memory, argued that transformations in that memory were delimited by its location in unchanging space: "space alone is stable enough to endure without growing older or losing any of its parts." For Halbwachs, space was material; to control its form was to control its meanings and effects. But critical theorists of space and cultural geography have argued that space, like memory, is a cultural product, constructed not just materially, but also through representations and social practices. Focusing on representations and practices diverging from the hegemonic memory of Yasukuni, I will pose Yasukuni as a space not only of power and authority, but also resistance and counter-memory.