Take a moment, and imagine urban Japan of the future. Did you picture corporate-branded smart cities, driverless cars zipping about high-rises and vertical farms, all against a backdrop of distant hills with drones hovering over rice fields, small green patches within the niches of yet another mega-solar power plant — a society apparently humming along...
The lecture will focus on the impact of the ongoing pandemic on international students in Japan and solutions offered by local civil society groups. As universities and governments are generally considered responsible for providing for international students’ wellbeing, there has been insufficient attention to alternative support providers, such as non-profit organisations (NPOs), peer support groups,...
As Tokyo readied itself to host the 2020 Summer Olympic Games, its most infamous postwar red-light district, Kabukicho, was surprisingly proactive in welcoming a growing number of international visitors. Boasting new large-scale hotels, capsule hotels created for salarymen now reinvented as low-cost options for tourists, and multi-language menus ubiquitous at local restaurants, enthusiastic efforts by...
Psychological theorem supposes that serious threats cause negative attitudes by ingroups to outgroups, i.e., outgroup bias. For example, the behavioral immune system theory claims a chain reaction from infectious threats to outgroup bias as the human defense against pathogens. However, what reduces outgroup bias from threats to health caused by a pandemic is unknown. This...
Foreign Nurses Working in Japan: Assessments of the EPA Program edited by Hirano and Yoneno-Reyes (2021) discusses the nurse migration from Indonesia, Philippines, and Vietnam to Japan under the EPAs’ framework, from multidisciplinary perspectives, including nursing. What makes this book unique from other similar books on migration of health professionals in contemporary Japan is that several...
Fantastical spaces, they are ubiquitous in contemporary Japanese literature, hidden, secluded, guarded, and with secretive and limited access, altogether reinforcing then ethereal and labyrinthe quality. A fantastical space resembles and yet varies from the everyday world we experience. This setting resonates with fantasy being the unseen culture, but also emphasizes on the boundaries and hence...
While nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiments have grown in many industrialized countries, Japan’s situation has been quite different. Although nationalism has been on the rise and the concerns for ethnic and cultural diversity still exist, the Japanese public has become much more open to migration than in the past. The number of migrants hit a record...
Research has revealed that migrants are incorporated differently in the care sector according to the intersection of migration-care regime nexus. Japan’s care sector went through significant structural change in 2000 due to the Long-Term Care Insurance (LTCI). The care market has expanded rapidly, resulting in a chronic shortage of care workers and migrant workers started...
The recent Olympics and Paralympics have thrust the issue of "accessibility" in Japan into the spotlight. Accessibility features promote inclusion, but they do not guarantee it. Accessibility is more than ensuring the “ability” of people with disabilities to access products, services, structures, and systems. This presentation focuses on the effect of various inclusion efforts on...
Despite labor shortages and rapidly shrinking working-age populations, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan shared restrictive immigration policies and exclusionary practices toward immigrants until the early 2000s. While Taiwan maintained this trajectory, Japan took incremental steps to expand immigrant services at the grassroots level, and South Korea enacted sweeping immigration reforms. How did convergent policies generate...
Natsume Sōsekis 夏目漱石 (1867-1916) Interesse an Kunst zeigt sich nicht nur in seiner literarischen Verarbeitung von Theorien und Kunstobjekten oder dem Evozieren von Bildern durch Sprache, sondern auch in seinem eigenen künstlerischen Ausdruck sowie den Beziehungen zu Künstlern, insbesondere zu Hashiguchi Goyō橋口五葉 (1881-1921), Nakamura Fusetsu 中村不折 (1866-1943) und Tsuda Seifū 津田青楓 (1880-1978), die allesamt Illustrationen...
Ten years after the Great East Japan Earthquake (Higashi Nihon Daishinsai) or 3.11, we look at how artists and survivors have dealt with the aftermath of the catastrophe focusing on processes of memorialization through art and voice. Presenters are: Fuyubi Nakamura (UBC) and LMU students with a commentary by Julia Gerster (Tohoku University). For more...
