This workshop investigates recent themes and issues in contemporary Japanese theatre. Themes that will be discussed include regional theatre, theatre and community, the role of the avantgarde and contemporary challenges. We consider some of the urgent issues that Japanese theatre is addressing today. Featuring a mix of presentations by senior scholars and new voices in the field, this workshop is open to everyone interested in theatre in the contemporary world. Presentations are in English.

Organizer:
Barbara Geilhorn

During two days an interdisciplinary group of renowned scholars from Australia, Europe, Singapore and the US will discuss new trends, opportunities and challenges that have changed the conduct of research on Japan. Starting out with a general discussion of research methods in area studies as well as social science research on Japan, the conference will discuss practices of collecting, analyzing and presenting data and findings individually, and the role and function of these practices within the whole research process. The conference focuses mainly on the methodological opportunities and challenges brought about by transnationalization as well as by technological innovations and digital transformation, with attention being paid to good research practice and ethics.

The conference is organized by Cornelia Reiher (Freie Universität Berlin) and Nora Kottmann (German Institute for Japanese Studies Tokyo) and jointly funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ), the Freie Universität Berlin and the Ernst-Reuter-Gesellschaft.

Japan is part of a global trend in which enrollment in schools for the deaf is in decline due to a pedagogical shift: first towards ‘integration’ and later towards ‘inclusion’. As a result, it is rapidly becoming the norm for deaf and hard-of-hearing students in Japan to be educated alongside hearing peers rather than among deaf and hard-of-hearing ones. Comparative research suggests that these mainstreamed students face social neglect and isolation. Yet, as studies have shown, Japanese youth are not passive actors. They can work to actively interpret and transform their situation.

This presentation focuses on the results of a 15-month ethnographic study on young (18 to 24 year-old) Japanese self-identified ‘inte’ (a shortened version of the loanword for integration) who were educated in ‘hearing schools’.

Speaker:
Jennifer M. McGuire, Doshisha University

How the current Chinese leadership views Japan is not just a question concerning both major countries in East Asia. It is also interwoven with a series of Chinese domestic troubles and crises: how to deal with Japan both as a major contributor to the industrial upgrading of the Chinese economy and as an essential competitor in Asia and beyond; how to handle Tokyo in the light of its ever closer alliance with the United States which aims at containing China’s rise; how to fulfill, in the light of these constraints, the superpower promise that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has given to the Chinese people.

This presentation will outline Beijing’s internal predicaments and its changing perspectives on Japan. It will also address Chinese concerns about Japanese efforts to involve a growing number of European countries into the geopolitical competition with China, for example in the South China Sea.

Speaker:
Shi Ming, Berlin