9 September, 2015 12 noon – 1:30 pm
RSVPs are not required but appreciated as we will have a light lunch afterwards.
Japanese Studies Centre Auditorium
Japanese Futures: Globalization and the Notion of a Heisei Restoration
By Professor Ross Mouer
Abstract
Although discussions about the nature of globalization have been occurring in Japan for two decades, it was only around 2010 that the media began to report Japan’s tardiness in addressing related issues as a kind of national crisis. Fearful that Japanese industry was losing its technological advantage and becoming somewhat isolated from the global discourse in science and technology, many of Japan’s leaders, especially those in the bureaucracy, government and business began to see a need for “global human capital” and higher levels of English proficiency as means of gaining a greater presence in international networks. To extent that globalization is seen as inevitable force that might “swallow up” Japan, the call for structural reform is more strident. One outcome is the Abe government’s push for altering significantly the “1955 system” and it is in that context that Japanese talk about restoration. This talk will consider the impact of the Abe government on Japan’s engagement with the rest of the world and consider the role of English in facilitating that engagement.
Date 10 September Time 12:00-1:30pm
Tourism Building Community of Compassion: Restoring spiritual connections with the land in the evacuated village of Fukushima, Japan
By Professor Kumi Kato – Wakayama University, Japan
Location Building HB.40 Caulfield campus
Abstract: Restoration of ‘wolf paintings’ in a shrine located in Fukushima that has been under prolonged evacuation over the last four years is at the centre this paper. The 3.11 East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami and subsequent meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station displaced nearly 150,000 people, including Iitate, a village of 6,000 people mostly engaged in farming. The possibility of returning home is still unclear.
This project, restoration of the lost paintings, has three intentions. First, it attempts to bring hope and justice to the evacuated communities, using the shrine’s ‘wolf’ as a symbol that reconnects the community’s stories, livelihoods and the land. Second, it invites participation of volunteers – art students, researchers and supporters with various skills, interests and motivations. Third, conceptualization and execution of this project is the researchers’ academic and social contribution building on moral, ethical or hopeful tourism research agenda (Mostafanezhad, 2013; Pritchard, Morgan and Ateljevic, 2011; Butcher, 2003).
Tourism here is a powerful agent to instigate the collective power of the community of compassion extending the idea of geography of compassion (Mostafanezhad, 2013): communities to regain their identity and resilience, and supporters to take a form of social activism. (Project blog: http://yamatsumi-jinja.tumblr.com)