For decades, many of Japan’s communities have seen exodus of the young in search of education and employment opportunities in the major cities. During 2010-2015, 1,419 (82.5%) municipalities out of 1,719 in Japan experienced population decline. The responses to and impacts of such depopulation, mainly but not exclusively in rural areas, have been widely documented...
Im Oktober 2018 sprach der Oberste Gerichtshof Südkoreas das Urteil, dass das japanische Unternehmen Shin‘nittetsu Sumikin新日鉄住金 (heute Nippon Seitetsu日本製鉄) Reparationszahlungen an ehemalige koreanische Zwangsarbeiter im Zweiten Weltkrieg leisten solle. Im Juni 2019 präsentierte Südkoreas Außenministerium der japanischen Regierung den Plan, dass japanische und koreanische Unternehmen Reparationen zahlen sollten. Unter Verweis auf Reparationszahlungen von 1965 lehnte...
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...
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...
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...
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...
A leading figure in world cinema, director Kore-eda Hirokazu (b. 1962) is particularly well known for his fine-grained portrayals of families. Actress Kiki Kirin (1943-2018) played significant roles in six of his family-focused films—beginning with Still Walking (Aruite mo aruite mo, 2008) and ending ten years later with Shoplifters (Manbiki kazoku, 2018). Tapping into widespread anxieties in Japan that...
In Ihrer Kurzgeschichte Satsujin Shussan (2014) beleuchtet Murata Sayaka wie Gesellschaft und Staat mit Themen wie Liebe und Sexualität in Verbindung stehen. Sie wählt diese Themen jedoch lediglich als Rahmen, um das Spannungsgefüge zwischen Individuum und Gesellschaft anhand von Sexualität und Fortpflanzung zu thematisieren und zu fokussieren. In diesem Vortrag werde ich die Kurzgeschichte Satsujin Shussan mit...
As the world urges energy transition towards decarbonisation, it is expected that the cities and regions dependent on fossil-fuel related industries will be greatly affected by the transition. In particular, coal phase-out gives tremendous impacts on the coal industries, workers, and local communities in the coal-producing regions. How can those regions and communities overcome the...
