Europe Japan Research Centre Podcast
1) Anime is (Not) Cult: Gainax and the Limits of Cult Cinema
Japanese anime, a global phenomenon and a locally powerful industry, has a tendency to be viewed outside Japan in relation to its extreme content, lending it a ‘cult’ air. Through such discussions, it...Show More
2) Aesop’s Fables in Early Modern Japan
Aesop’s fables bookend early modern Japan’s image of a “closed country”. Their appearance in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, their disappearance and subsequent reappearance in the ...Show More
3) “Unhappy” and Isolated Youth: Representations and Experiences of Hikikomori in Contemporary Japan
Hikikimori is a category coined in the late 1990s to refer to 'youth social withdrawal,' and has been considered a social problem in Japan since the 2000s afflicting (mostly male) youth. Drawing on Ma...Show More
4) Empathy, Social Realism, or just Love Troubles? On Japanese “Little Songs”
The Edo-period Japan (1603–1868) saw the emergence of an art music genre called Jiuta-sōkyoku. Some of the song texts were taken from classical literature, some were descriptions of nature, some celeb...Show More
Empathy, Social Realism, or just Love Troubles? On Japanese “Little Songs”
2:03:58 | Oct 25th, 2017
5) The Men Who Came In from the Cold Japanese Captives in Siberia and the Making of Postwar Japan
On 15 August 1945, Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s defeat in the Second World War to millions of his subjects. “Enduring the unendurable”, the nation was now to start on the road of peace and rebui...Show More
6) The Mouth of the Cave and the Giant Voice
It is a strange and bitter irony that the US naval bombardment which launched the Battle of Okinawa in 1945 was called the ‘typhoon of steel’, invoking the turbulent winds that annually buffet this sm...Show More
7) Successful and Sorry: How high income Japanese women construct themselves in marriage agency ads
Japan is increasingly characterised by late age at marriage and rising rates of singlehood. Women’s growing educational attainment and labour market participation are often argued to be the key reason...Show More
8) How do the past, present and future interact in post-3.11 Japan: Examining the ‘future past’ in the SF manga Coppelion
This paper seeks to examine several manifestations of futurity in contemporary Japan through readings of a science fiction manga. It is interested in the relationship between historical time and subj...Show More
9) I never said it would last forever: On Contemporary Japanese Cinema
Between 1989 and 2004, over 40 Japanese directors were introduced to major festivals and distribution networks. In the last decade, barely a handful of young directors have managed to find an audience...Show More
10) Dowa Project Policies as unfinished human rights business – from Dotaishin to Ikengushin
My presentation will approach the issue of Dowa Project Policies (DPP) by trying to suggest answers to the following questions: Should we regard the introduction of DPP as the acceptance by the Japane...Show More