Japanese Studies Mini Grants

Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning, The University of Sydney
Online Lecture
October 14 and 21, 2022

Friday Lectures:
Myths, Dreams, and Fairy Tales by Takeshi Hayatsu
Architectural Behaviorology by Momoyo Kaijima

The talk series invites two Japanese architects to discuss their design approach to an Australian audience. Takeshi Hayatsu and Momoyo Kaijima want to build well-crafted buildings for an open public good.

The Nature of Architecture: Material Anthropology explores that sort of fear, and darkness beyond our control that exists in the natural world which is something we have somehow forgotten following the modernist movement. Architects tend to become arrogant – we assume we control everything – so animism and symbolism in architecture are things Takeshi Hayatsu is interested in, in terms of finding ways to pay respect to nature, in a way that should really come back more now in the age of environmental crisis. In this sense, Hayatsu aims to create productive partnerships between our many different local material cultures. He explores the use of local, natural materials and vernacular building techniques to collaboratively build contemporary constructions.

Architectural Behviorology argues that the development of the modern technology and industry in the 20th century has constructed a barrier between our everyday life and local resources such as nature, human skills, and their knowledge. Architectural Behaviorology proposes an architectural design method that focuses on creating better accessibility to such resources. This lecture will explain the theory and case study of Architectural Behaviorology by Momoyo Kajima and her practice internationally recognized practice Atelier Bow-Wow.

Both practices reconceptualize what architecture is today.

Curtin University
In person and Online Symposium
December 9, 2022

Australia – Japan Tourism Symposium

This symposium aims to facilitate knowledge exchange and strengthen academic networks between Australia and Japan. The symposium will bring together participants from the tourism industry, academia, government and policy in Australia and Japan. It will discuss opportunities and challenges facing Australia-Japan tourism trade.

The symposium contains three sessions:

• Session 1: An overview of Australia-Japan tourism trade (history and present).
• Session 2: Key opportunities and challenges facing Australia-Japan tourism trade.
• Session 3: Strategies to tap into the tourism opportunities between Australia and Japan.

For further details, see symposium webpage.

Stretton Institute, The University of Adelaide
Online Symposium
July 15, 2021

Foreign Aid Policy and Health Diplomacy in a Covid World: Exploring Australia-Japan Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific Era

This project aims to highlight Japan’s Official Development Assistance policy in the 21st century and present a fair analysis of Japan’s aid policy with a focus on its health diplomacy, which has become more salient in the wake of the spread of the new coronavirus. While explaining the role of Japan, the project also considers how and whether Australia and Japan can cooperate in health diplomacy. To achieve these aims, the Stretton Institute of Public Policy at the University of Adelaide will organise an online symposium, inviting speakers from Japan and Australia from the field of development studies and international relations, including scholars and practitioners.

For further details, see symposium webpage.

Japanese Studies Association of Australia (JSAA), with University of Western Australia
Online Workshop
October 27-28, 2021

Preparing for a Post-COVID World: Japanese and Asian Higher Education Student Experiences in Australia

The project focuses on creating a collaborative platform for researchers and practitioners on Japanese international student mobility in Australia to generate new data and identify trends on Japanese student experience in Australia. This scholarship will be vital for assessing the state of Japanese higher education mobility, as well as for stimulating and accelerating the Japanese-Australian higher education mobility to Australia in the post-COVID era. The project aims to generate new conversations, exchange ideas and insights with researchers working on India and China, the two largest student-sending countries, globally, including Australia to identify the challenges and pitfalls for Japanese students and scholarship in Australia, and the potential pathways out. The project will result in a website which will be used to share knowledge on mobility among relevant stakeholders.

Go to website>>

The Australian Network for Japanese Law (ANJeL) & Japanese Studies Association of Australia (JSAA)
Online

Japanese Law in Context: Interviews and Podcasts

This project will produce and widely disseminate a series of 15-20 video-recorded interviews or podcasts involving Japanese Law experts across Australia, Japan, North America and other parts of Asia, to: (a) supplement courses in Japanese Law (and Japanese Studies more generally) in universities; (b) increase community awareness and engagement with Japanese law in socio-economic and comparative context; (c) create a snapshot and oral history of Japanese Law studies; all mainly for Australia but also Japan and beyond.

For more information, see this post by project director Professor Luke Nottage on The University of Sydney’s Japanese Law and the Asia Pacific blog site.

Outcomes:

• Japanese Law in Context podcast playlist (via Youtube)
• Report on the project (blogpost, Japanese Law and the Asia-Pacific)

International Centre for Ecotourism Research, Griffith University
Online

Mental Health Effects of Nature Deprivation during COVID-19 in Japan

This project will use the disruptions created by the COVID-19 pandemic, and associated social restrictions including deprivation of nature, to test the importance of access and experiences in nature to maintain individual mental health. We have similar research in progress in other countries, but since the concept of shinrin-yoku originated in Japan, we are keen to obtain data from Japan specifically.

Our research pre-COVID showed that the economic value of nature via the mental health of visitors is at least US$6 trillion per annum worldwide (Nature Communications 10:5005, 2019), and we are continuing that research to determine how per-capita values differ between population segments and depend on the details of the experience, and how outdoor tourism and recreation can be adapted to create nature therapies as part of mainstream healthcare.

For this project, we will conduct a qualitative ethnographic analysis of online sources (‘netnography’) addressing the questions above. We will identify Japanese-language social media posts and blogs, focussing on subject-specific groups such as Facebook® Groups, where members discuss topics such as mental health, visiting parks, outdoor hiking, camping, birdwatching, wildlife photography, and adventure activities such as climbing, skiing, kayaking, etc. We have already used this approach to address this topic in other countries, and we have a smaller scale international comparison of COVID-19 lockdown effects in 17 nations, but it is all in English. Neither ourselves, nor any other research groups that we know of, have yet carried out a comparable analysis of Japanese language posts, by citizens of Japan, using Japanese social media.

The project will address this research gap, and the research and analysis from this project will be collated into teaching materials which will be made freely available for use on online teaching at tertiary level.

School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne
Online

‘Research at a Distance: Japanese Studies in an Age of Covid-19’ Online Workshop (January 21-22, 2021)

The Covid-19 pandemic and related restrictions present a serious challenge to Australia-based scholars wanting to conduct data collection and/or archival research in Japan. This workshop will help scholars to respond meaningfully to the pandemic, its impact on Japanese society, and on scholarship about Japan. The first day of the workshop is open to the public and will include presentations from three scholars—David Slater (Sophia), Rebecca Corbett (USC) and Paula Curtis (Yale)—speaking from diverse perspectives on the emerging implications of Covid-19 for Japan and for the practice of Japan Studies. The second day consists of intensive mentoring sessions and collaborative workshopping for scholars looking to adapt their research plans to digital scholarship and limited/remote ethnographic methods.

Go to workshop website>>

Outcomes:

• Resource: Japanese at a Distance website (via University of Melbourne)

College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Flinders University
Online

Loveday Lives: Japanese Internees in the Loveday Internment Camp in World War II

The objective of this research project is to investigate the experiences of Japanese internees held in the Loveday internment camp at Loveday in South Australia’s Riverland during the Second World War. The primary point focus is the question of how the internees dealt with their prolonged period of detention through creative activity. The experiences of Japanese internees, and their creative responses to internment at Loveday, will be captured in a dedicated website. That website will feature the biographies and creative outputs–especially the artworks–of Japanese internees, thus providing an important educational resources for History and Social Studies students at secondary and tertiary level in South Australia, in other parts of Australia, and internationally. This outcome will be of special benefit for the town of Barmera, located very close to the Loveday site, which will commemorate the 80th anniversary of the arrival of the first internees at Loveday in 2021.

This project is timely due to the new impetus around the relationship between Japan and Australia, ongoing public debate around detention, and the project’s emphasis on how people deal with prolonged detention or confinement, which has great relevance currently in Japan and in Australia in the age of Covid-19. In this way, as the project acknowledges the Loveday anniversary, it also offers a historical perspective on some of the problems we confront today.

Outcomes:

• Website: Loveday Lives

Japanese Studies Centre
Monash University
November 4, 2019

Gender, Media and Japan’s Imperial Succession
International Symposium

In line with the beginning of the new Reiwa era in Japan, This event examines what kinds of possibilities the new era brings for change in the role of the Emperor, change within Japanese society, and change for Japan’s international relations. It also brings into focus the gendered nature of succession, bypassing the only child of the Emperor, Princess Aiko.

The symposium aims to explore:

1. the nature of the Japanese and international media coverage of the reign change and accompanying rituals
2. changing Japanese attitudes to the Emperor system
3. the significance of the rituals surrounding the accession and enthronement and how that significance has changed in this fifth enthronement in the modern era
4. the recent law excluding female succession and the impact of this exclusion on the status and morale of Japanese women, and how it reflects the status quo of Japanese women’s position
5. the reactions of other countries to this momentous changeover, particularly those of China and Korea
6. the extent to which the imperial succession provides a chance to reassess Australia-Japan relations

(September 2019)

School of Architecture
University of Technology, Sydney (UTS)
August 29, 2019

Japan Lecture Series (Architecture)
Erika Nakagawa: The Possibility of Large Models
Yuji Harada: Ode to the Time
Public Lecture and Review Session

The UTS School of Architecture’s Japan Lecture Series is a 3-semester program of lectures by some of the most relevant figures in contemporary Japanese architecture, as part of an ongoing project of relocating the School within the Indo-Pacific area and establishing further architectural relationships with Japan. Onishimaki+Hyakudayuki and Go Hasegawa participated in 2018. Junya Ishigami and Sou Fujimoto architects are among the proposed speakers for the remainder of the series. In addition to their practice, the candidates for this series also hold important academic positions.

The lecture will be a free event open to the public at UTS. Nakagawa and Harada will lead the audience through practice projects and explain some of their renowned completed projects, followed by conversation with a UTS faculty member.

The Review Session is a day-long event where international experts evaluate work by Master students. Selected students will present their work, and the speakers will establish a conversation with the students though their projects in a traditional architectural reviews session. The speakers will be part of a team of 3-4 external reviewers who will engage in conversation about the projects based on their own experience and practice, with 5-10 faculty and 60-120 students in attendance throughout the day.

(August 2019)

Asia Institute
The University of Melbourne
March 12, 2019

Public Lecture 
Reinventing Fukushima: Post-Disaster Recovery and the Japanese Energy Transition

Speaker: Professor Miranda Schreurs, Freie Universität Berlin

This talk examines how Fukushima’s disaster recovery is becoming a driver for a prefectural energy revolution. The region is becoming a leader in the introduction of renewable energy and the building of smart energy communities. It has set an ambitious 100 per cent renewable energy goal and has massively expanded its renewable energy installations. Yet many challenges remain to the realisation of a new beginning and new ones are emerging (such as opposition to mega solar projects).

Speaker Miranda Schreurs’ main research areas are in international and comparative climate policy, environmental politics, and lowcarbon energy transitions. She is involved in projects examining the energy transitions in Germany and Japan; climate policies of Europe, the United States, and China; and the politics of high-level radioactive waste disposal. In 2011 Schreurs was appointed by Chancellor Angela Merkel as a member of the German Ethics Commission on a Safe Energy Supply in the wake of the Fukushima catastrophe. From 2008 until 2016 she served as member of the German Advisory Council on the Environment and is vice chair of the European Environment and Sustainable Development Advisory Councils.

She researched and taught at various universities in Japan and the U.S. before becoming director of the Environmental Policy Research Center and Professor of Comparative Politics at the Freie Universität Berlin in 2007.

About the event

(March 2019)

School of Architecture
University of Technology, Sydney (UTS)
August 30-31, 2018

Japan Lecture Series: OnishiMaki + HyakudaYuki architects
Public Lecture and Review Session

The UTS School of Architecture’s Japan Lecture Series is a 3-semester program of lectures by some of the most relevant figures in contemporary Japanese architecture, as part of an ongoing project of relocating the School within the Indo-Pacific area and establishing further architectural relationships with Japan. Onishimaki+Hyakudayuki, Junya Ishigami, Go Hasegawa, Ryue Nishizawa and Tezuka architects are among the proposed speakers for the series. In addition to their practice, the candidates also hold important academic positions.

The lecture will be a free event open to the public at UTS. Onishi and Hyakuda will lead the audience through practice projects and explain some of their renowned completed projects, followed by conversation with a UTS faculty member.

The Review Session is a day-long event where international experts evaluate work by Master students. Selected students will present their work, and the speakers will establish a conversation with the students though their projects in a traditional architectural reviews session. The speakers will be part of a team of 3-4 external reviewers who will engage in conversation about the projects based on their own experience and practice, with 5-10 faculty and 60-120 students in attendance throughout the day.

Japan Lecture Series: OnishiMaki + HyakudaYuki Create Spaces with Diversity

(August 2018)

Macquarie University (NSW)
March 2018

Collaborative Robotics: Communication and Social Acceptance
This project aims to lay the foundation for interdisciplinary collaborative opportunities between Macquarie University and Kyoto Institute of Technology in the area of communicative robots with AI capabilities. The project’s focus is to identify cross-cultural differences in how robots’ communicative performances are received in society, particularly in Japanese and Australian contexts, and to conceptualise strategies for developing AI for use in communicative robots in cross-cultural situations.

(March 2018)

School of Languages and Cultures
University of Queensland
February 6-7, 2018

Unlocking the International Possibilities of Shōjo Studies
This project comprises a small symposium consisting of a public panel discussion, masterclass and informal networking sessions. These events aim to foster intellectual exchange in the field of Japanese shōjo (girl) studies, with a particular focus on Japanese texts that depict the world outside Japan, as well as on the position of shōjotexts, theory, and practices beyond Japan’s borders. This project will bring together Japanese Studies scholars with connections to the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, and aim to share knowledge and experience across three ‘generations’ of researchers in the field: established experts; emerging specialists; and both undergraduate and postgraduate students.

Listen to the podcast

(March 2018)