Beethoven’s legacy is still alive and well in present-day Japan, where his life and works continue to play a major part in Japan’s modern cultural landscape. The Western vision of the wild-haired, scowling genius is commonly recognized in Japan today, and it comes as no surprise that many agencies have tried to harness the power of his unmistakable image to attract Japanese consumers.

This presentation examines two examples of Beethoven as an anime character. The first is from the 2001 OVA Read or Die, in which Beethoven is a cyborg fated to destroy mankind with his “Suicide Symphony.” The second is “Beethes” from NHK’s 2016 comedy anime ClassicaLoid, a stylishly leather-clad android obsessed with cooking the perfect gyoza dumpling. In addition, we will hear how Beethoven’s symphonic masterpieces are transformed in the anime underscores to support the distinctly Japanese characterization of Beethoven found in these popular shows.

Speaker:
Heike Hoffer, The Ohio State University

Big data will be at the heart of the digital revolution. Social networks, factories, supply chains, digital market places, “shared economy” platforms, medical devices, wearables, smart homes, seismic instruments, weather stations and GPS satellites – in the digitalized and connected world data have become abundant. Rapidly developing tools to integrate and analyze large volumes of diverse datasets in ever faster and intelligent ways open up enormous potentials for research, private enterprises and public policy.

Our half-day workshop explores how Japan is building the infrastructures to efficiently and responsibly gather, integrate, analyze, use and trade data. The workshop is organized around three panels. Each panel will consist of four speakers. They will start with short presentations by Japanese speaker with backgrounds in research, business and policy followed by an international perspective or general comment. A moderator will introduce and guide the speakers and coordinate the discussions.

Hosting the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the greatest media spectacle of modernity, Tokyo will be at the center of the world’s attention in summer 2020. The nearly universal reach via television and internet broadcast provides the IOC with multi-billion dollar revenue streams and the host with opportunities for placing highly visible messages about the state of the nation and its future to the world.

With less than two years ahead of the Games, the DIJ roundtable features three leading experts on sport mega-events to discuss the political economy of hosting the Olympic Games, the difficulties of message control in the post-factual age, and the legacies of the Games for Japan in the 2020s.

Speakers:
Munehiko Harada, Waseda University
John D. Horne, Waseda University
Wolfram Manzenreiter, University of Vienna

Haiku is popular not only in Japan, but also in other countries. The works of Matsuo Basho in particular are highly regarded for their artistry, and his name is widely known throughout the world.

The International House of Japan Library, the Bibliothèque de la Maison franco-japonaise, and the Deutsches Institut für Japanstudien Bibliothek will be displaying translations of Basho’s works and other haiku, as well as critical studies.

On this occasion, please enjoy various haiku translated in English, French, and German editions.

This symposium aims to enhance the discussion of the “local” as unit of analysis – a discussion that is vital to avoid under-complex approaches to multilayered socio-economic and political phenomena. The focus is on contemporary Japan, which provides a particularly interesting case in this respect, not least due to the massive reorganization of the local administrative landscape in the mid-2000s. The symposium brings together researchers who link different conceptions of the “local” to concrete social, economic, and political problems. Analyzing the (re)configuration and interaction of formal and informal, spatial and social sub-national boundaries will advance the understanding of socio-economic and political organization in and beyond Japan.

Social scientists are frequently concerned with the “local”, including issues such as subnational elections, local governance, the formation of local identities and communities, or local economic “clusters”. However, the social and spatial boundaries of the “local” are often elusive, and subject to change. This seems particularly true in Japan, where local administrative boundaries were abruptly redrawn in a wave of municipal mergers in the mid-2000s, initiating an ongoing process of local socio-spatial readjustments. Beyond the Japanese case, refining our conception of what constitutes a subnational “locality” – its spatial, social, formal and informal boundaries – produces new questions, reveals different stakeholders, and uncovers the impact of social constellations that otherwise remain invisible.

The two speakers will address political and economic consequences implied by differing delineations of subnational spaces in Japan and China.

Speakers:
Carolyn Cartier, University of Technology, Sydney
Franz Waldenberger, German Institute for Japanese Studies

Navigating an international research career is a potentially hazardous journey, with many unforeseen challenges and pitfalls to be faced. Japanese Studies like all Area Studies necessarily invites such challenges, as scholars will almost certainly spend long periods on sojourn in radically different scholarly environments. One challenge is to know about and act on institutional expectations and norms with the intention of securing and improving employment opportunities. This is particularly important for early career researchers (ECRs) who may spend long periods on field work or in junior employment in Asia. Moreover, although academics generally insist on evidence based scholarship in their fields of interest, they may rely on personal experience, institutional norms, and hearsay as guides when making decisions in their own organizations. Naturally the decisions that both ECRs and employers make in their respective roles will, in the absence of systematic empirical evidence, be strongly subject to heuristic biases. This research will present quantitative and qualitative evidence from the UK and Japan to inform both ECRs of the potential pitfalls in navigating an international career in academia, and employers in making more informed decisions on hiring junior scholars. It will be followed by a short workshop for participants to support them in working on their own, evidence based, career development planning.

This is a special joint workshop session organized by the DIJ History and Humanities Study Group and the Social Science Study Group designed to encourage conversation among early career scholars.

Speaker:
Peter Matanle, University of Sheffield

This presentation focuses on the discourses in contemporary Japanese popular media and in the recent Japanese academic literature revolving around sexless (hetero-sexual) couple relationships and extra-marital affairs from 2000 to 2017. In addition, this presentation draws from an interview research conducted with 45 Japanese men and women in their 20s to 40s. The aim of this study is to clarify the transformation and the characteristics of the Japanese sexless phenomenon in conjunction with the rise of extra-marital affairs, by demonstrating how the meaning of sexuality (and its lived behavior) in extra-marital affairs diverges from the social expectations on sexuality within couple relationships.

Speaker:
Alice Pacher, Meiji University