Graduate Student Forum

Under what conditions do mothers use kindergartens in the metropolitan area in Japan?

日時
Tuesday, 7 November 2023 | 16:00 - 16:45 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting  登録はこちら
言語
English
登壇者
  • Anju YAMADA Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo
司会
  • Rieko Kage Professor,Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

This study employs qualitative comparative analysis to investigate the factors influencing decisions to opt for kindergartens (幼稚園) over childcare facilities (保育所). While existing research suggests that childcare facilities are more commonly utilized in urban areas, in Japan, kindergartens are notably preferred in the urban regions surrounding metropolitan. The primary objective of this study is to ascertain whether mothers’ choices to withdraw from full-time employment and use kindergartens are driven by personal family-oriented preferences or their unsupportive work environment for families. Conducted in Kanagawa Prefecture, this study entailed interviews with seven parents using childcare facilities and ten parents whose children attend kindergartens. Preliminary findings indicate that both family orientation and non-family work environment are sufficient conditions for choosing a kindergarten, both conditions can almost be paraphrased. This is because those with family-oriented preferences often experienced workplaces that were not family-friendly. To gain a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding, further research is imperative for the future.

登壇者について

Anju Yamada studied political science at Keio University (BA) and public policy at the Graduate School of Public Policy, the University of Tokyo (Professional Degree, equivalent to MA) before starting her doctorate in pollitical science at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo. She started her doctorate in Political Science at the University of Tübingen as her second affiliation. Her doctoral research, diversity in the implementation of childcare policy at the regional level in Germany, was funded by The Center for German and European Studies (DESK). Her research interests lie in the Gender policy and family policy.

Graduate Student Forum

The contradictions of Japan’s pre-war economy and the problem of peasant reproduction

日時
Friday, 26 September 2023 | 9:00 - 9:45 a.m. (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting  登録はこちら
言語
English
登壇者
  • Joshua LINKOUS History and East Asian Language, Harvard University
司会
  • Sawak SHIRAHASE Director of TCJS
イベント概要

The enactment of the Meiji land and tax reforms, with its intent to push Japan’s peasants into capitalist commodity production, marked a historic watershed by which the sphere of peasant reproduction was substantially limited and forcefully reorganized. Though the reforms were nominally national, implementation was highly uneven, and as a consequence so too were the impacts. This talk tracks the long term effects of the reforms on the Northern Tohoku region, arguing that the deepening inequality both in the region and between regions was the product of the contradiction between the government policy of forced marketization and the slow development of widespread commodity production in agriculture. Recognizing this problem, government organizations tried to stimulate the region’s economy through various measures such as the promotion of by-employments. However, this only tended to exacerbate the problem. Change in the region’s economic structure had to wait until the post-war, when it was suddenly transformed into Japan’s center of migrant labor. I suggest that the “why” of pre-war failure, especially when contrasted with post-war developments, is useful for illustrating the limits of Japan’s pre-war economy as conditioned by its highly unevenly developed industrial structure.

登壇者について

Joshua Linkous is a PhD student in History and East Asian Languages, focusing on the economic, environmental, and social history of nineteenth and twentieth-century Japan. His primary region of interest is northern Tohoku (Aomori, Iwate, Akita). His broader research interests include agrarian history, political ecology, labor history, marginal groups, and empire.

Graduate Student Forum

Under Pressure & Voicing Up: Japanese Youth Tackling Gender Issues

日時
Tuesday, 12 September 2023 | 9:00-9:45 a.m. (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting  登録はこちら
言語
English
登壇者
  • Peyton Cherry University of Oxford/Waseda University
司会
  • Sawako Shirahase Director of TCJS
イベント概要

The category ‘gender issues’ (or gendaa mondai) encompasses many conversations Japanese youth are having now, particularly regarding changing gender roles and expectations in home, work, and school spaces. This presentation will examine youth community building around gender identity, sexuality, and relationships. In addition to my ongoing fieldwork, I will engage with existing literature on labour immobility (Allison 2013), precarity, intimate disconnections (Alexy 2020), and queer narratives in Japan. I will use these sources in combination with the personal experiences of my interlocuters to unpack how youth ‘voice up’ and become involved in groups focused on preventing sexual violence against women, LGBTQ+ awareness, and anti-discrimination. I suggest that ‘voicing up’ in Japan is defined not so much by ‘loud and proud’ or “post-closet discourses” (Ueno 2022, Seidman 2002), but by the creation of intimate community spaces. This project looks at how smaller-scale community involvement is both a byproduct and response to the “embodied meaning-making” of individuals (Wetherell 2012).

登壇者について

Peyton Cherry is a second-year student in the DPhil Anthropology programme, supervised by Professor Roger Goodman at the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies. Peyton is currently based in Tokyo, Japan at Waseda University as a visiting researcher for the 2022-2023 year to carry out their fieldwork on perspectives of sexual harassment and understandings of sexual consent in Japanese society. Their focus is on youth action and lived experiences as people navigate how to ‘voice up’ and encourage mutual respect in a climate which expects people to bear their troubles silently. The research deals with agency, anthropology of emotions and the body, as well as boundary crossing and rule (or taboo) breaking.

Graduate Student Forum

Childlessness in the U.S. and Japan

日時
Tuesday 11 July 2023 | 9:00-9:45 am
会場
Zoom  登録はこちら
言語
English
登壇者
  • Holly Hummer Harvard University Department of Sociology
司会
  • Sawako SHIRAHASE Director of TCJS
イベント概要

In this presentation, I will provide early findings from a comparative, interview-based study with childless women in the U.S. and Japan. The presentation will focus on how the lived experience of being childless is shaped by unique cultural and structural factors that differ in the U.S. and Japan.

登壇者について

Holly Hummer is a PhD candidate in Sociology at Harvard University. I study social and demographic trends using qualitative, cultural, and gender-informed lenses. Before starting graduate school, I taught English in Tokyo for a year under the JET program.

Graduate Student Forum

Making the Coast Capitalist: Seaweed and sea labor in the development of Japanese capitalism

日時
Tuesday 4 July 2023 | 9:00-9:45 (JST)
会場
ZoomMeeting  登録はこちら
言語
English
登壇者
  • Charlotte Ciavarella History & East Asian Languages, Harvard University
司会
  • Kenneth Mori McElwain Professor, Institute of Social Science, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

Despite its absence from historical accounts of Japanese industrialization, one of Japan’s earliest and most important export items were the chemical byproducts of the seaweeds that grow abundantly on its coasts. The centrality of these items to both global scientific research and daily life encouraged overseas companies to attempt to break Japan’s almost total monopoly on these products by mechanizing and rationalizing their production. In spite of this outside pressure Japan was able to hold onto their dominance in the trade of these goods, not by modernizing their production but by appropriating the traditional labor and community structures of formerly nomadic fishers in Japan and Jeju island in Korea. By examining the connection between these laborers and the trade in seaweed-based chemicals, this talk examines the ways in which diverse ecosystem cultures are integrated into global systems of exploitation in the process of capitalist development. Challenging the idea that technological advancement and modernization necessarily accompany industrial capitalist development, this talk argues that capitalist transformations rely on hybrid modes of production and exploitation as well as the appropriation of social structures that exist outside of the logic of capitalist production.

登壇者について

Charlotte Ciavarella is a PhD candidate in History and East Asian Languages (HEAL) at Harvard University, focusing on the social and environmental history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Japan and Jeju island. Her research interests include the history of capitalism, political economy, political ecology, gender and community structures, nomadic groups, and the history of rural lifeways.

Graduate Student Forum

Electoral Cooperation in Japanese Elections: The Role of Individual Legislator’s Policy Preferences

日時
Tuesday, 13 June 2023 | 9:00 - 9:45 (JST)
会場
Zoom  登録はこちら
言語
English
登壇者
  • Etienne Gagnon Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, The University of Tokyo
司会
  • Kenneth Mori McElwain Professor, Institute of Social Science, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

How do Individual Candidate Policy Preferences affect the formation of electoral alliances? While it is well known that parties who share similar ideologies are more likely to form electoral coalitions, we know little about how individual policy maker’s policy preferences can affect electoral cooperation. I analyze an electoral alliance formed during the 2021 Japanese lower house election. Using an elite survey of Japanese election candidates, I find that political parties prefer to support other party’s candidates that are proximate to them ideologically. I then use a survey experiment to see how voters react to a “compromise candidate”, a candidate of a party close to their alliance partner, compared to a more cynical counterfactual where parties support candidates they disagree with to maximize their seat count. I find that parties consider candidates’ policy preferences when choosing whether to support them or not as part of an alliance. However, voters do not exhibit a marked preference for compromise candidates. The implication is important. While political parties care about candidate ideology when supporting other parties’ candidates, it is unlikely to be motivated by electoral considerations but rather by the potential to obtain more influence over the post-election policy agenda.

登壇者について

Etienne Gagnon is a Master’s student at the Interdisciplinary initiative in Information science. He broadly studies conflictual dynamics within advanced democracies of East-Asia, with a focus on Japanese politics. His research explores topics such as center-periphery competition, political harassment and violent political protests.

Graduate Student Forum

Practice and dilemma in the support for “back to school” -Ethnography of a public educational facility for children of futôkô –

日時
Tuesday, 6 June 2023 | 9:00 - 9:45 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting  登録はこちら
言語
English
登壇者
  • Takayoshi Beppu The Graduate school of Education, the University of Tokyo
司会
  • Sawako Shirahase TCJS Director
イベント概要

Long-term absence is a high concern among the OECD countries because the phenomenon tends to lead to social exclusion later in life. Also in Japan, long-term absence, which usually means futôkô (that can be translated into school non-attendance) is the main category used in Japan to register children in the long-term absence and has been a high concern. However, the relationship between futôkô and social exclusion stays unclear there. It is partly because the research regarding futôkô has been inclined to the children who use private institutions placed outside of their schools such as “free schools” or “alternative schools” and there has been less focus on the children who do not use those institutions and are interpreted to have much more needs of support. In my presentation, the reality of futôkô such children’s experiences will be discussed through the ethnography of a public educational facility for children of futôkô.

登壇者について

Takayoshi Beppu is a Ph.D. student in the Graduate school of Education at the University of Tokyo. His research concern centers on the transition of students who used to be categorized as school non-attendance(futôkô). He tries to clarify when and how school non-attendance would connect to social exclusion in current Japan through ethnographic research on students themselves, their guardians, schools, or public sectors such as education boards or welfare sectors.

Graduate Student Forum

How do Firms Learn the Impact of Trade Liberalization?

日時
Tuesday, 21 February 2023 | 10:45 - 11:30 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Sayumi Miyano Department of Politics, Princeton University
司会
  • Kenneth Mori McElwain Professor, Institute of Social Science, the University of Tokyo
イベント概要

In contrast to the industry-level theories of domestic politics of trade, recent studies find that within-industry differences among firms divide winners and losers of globalization, particularly under today’s development in intra-firm trade and global value chains. Yet there is little empirical evidence on the actual perceptions of firm managers. Do firms actually perceive the firm-level divide? Are they willing to build political coalitions along the new globalization cleavage? We argue that given the complex nature of both the global value chains and trade agreements, firms rely less on the information of large firms within the industry and more on firms in the upstream and downstream of their production processes when assessing the impact of new trade policy on their business. We test this through a survey experiment on Japanese firm managers in the manufacturing industry.

登壇者について

Sayumi Miyano is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Politics at Princeton University. She studies the politics of global governance, foreign direct investment, and trade. Prior to the Ph.D. program, she received a B.A. and an M.A. in Law and Political Science from the University of Tokyo.

Graduate Student Forum

Will History Survive in the Digital Age?: The Challenges of Long-term Digital Preservation

日時
Tuesday, 07 February 2023 | 9:00 - 9:45 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Kim Boyoung Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, the University of Tokyo
司会
  • Sawako Shirahase TCJS Director
イベント概要

This presentation will discuss what challenges we face to preserve records of human activities in the digital age from the standpoint of archival science. In the digital age, records are created and used in digital format. However, their long-term preservation entails many challenges. For example, ensuring the authenticity of the data is not a simple matter because digital materials have the potential to be altered and damaged with ease. Many efforts are conducted around the world to solve these problems, but this hasn’t received so much attention in Japan. In this talk, I will describe the current situation in Japan and discuss some issues related to technologies, professions, education programs, and so on for archiving digital records.

登壇者について

Boyoung Kim is a Ph.D. student in the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies at the University of Tokyo, focusing on the long-term preservation of digital records. Her research interests include digital archives, record keeping, and digital humanities. She is currently working at the Shibusawa Memorial Foundation and has several years of experience in the archives management field.

Graduate Student Forum

Likable and Not So Much: How Japanese school values affect immigrant students

日時
Tuesday, 24 January 2023 | 9:00 - 9:45 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Nanaho Okuni Graduate School of Education, The University of Tokyo
司会
  • Misako Nukaga Professor, Graduate School of Education, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

Recently, big cities in Japan have seen more and more immigrant youths going into night-time high schools. However, most Japanese teachers have not received any academic training to manage or embrace diversity. Also, there are certain values that are said to be commonly held by teachers in Japanese schools including more “challenged” schools. How do teachers’ perspectives affect their interactions with students with different cultures and thus different attitudes? This presentation is based on an analysis of teachers’ interviews in a night-time high school where the students’ backgrounds are much more diverse than Japanese schools have traditionally been. This research reveals common standards held by teachers to evaluate immigrant students’ abilities and personalities, and stereotypes for students with different cultural backgrounds.

登壇者について

Nanaho Okuni is a Ph.D. student in Intercultural Education at the University of Tokyo. Currently researching Japanese school culture, school life, and life course prospects of Nepalese students in Japan, based on fieldwork in an NGO and a night-time high school where I work to support immigrant children.

Graduate Student Forum

Self-portrait of the Imperial Japanese Army: Focusing on the response to the Lytton Commission

日時
Tuesday, 10 January 2023 | 9:00 - 9:45 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Yuta Okubo Graduate School of Humanitites and Sociology, the Uiversity of Tokyo
司会
  • Sawako Shirahase TCJS Director
イベント概要

When the Manchurian Incident occurred in September 1931, the League of Nations dispatched the Litton Commission to East Asia in 1932 to deal with the situation. Although the significance and influence of the reports prepared by the Litton Commission have been extensively examined, the response of the Imperial Japanese Army, the mastermind of the Incident, to the Litton Commission has not necessarily been fully examined. This presentation views the dispatch of the Lytton Commission as an occasion when the Imperial Japanese Army needed to portray its international self-image, and clarifies its significance in diplomatic history, focusing on the activities of the Army leaders in Tokyo, Mukden, and Geneva (Sadao Araki, Shigeru Honjo, and Iwane Matsui). To do so, this presentation will introduce historical documents from the League of Nations Archives and examine them in combination with Japanese diplomatic documents.

登壇者について

Yuta Okubo is a Ph.D. candidate in the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology in the Faculty of Letters, the University of Tokyo, whose research focuses on the Japanese army in the interwar period. He is the author of ‘The Japanese Army and its policy towards the League of Nations’ Shigaku Zasshi [Journal of Historical Studies], Vol. 130, No.10, 2021.

Graduate Student Forum

Apologies for My Ese-Kansai Dialect: Language Ideologies and Language Ownership of the Kansai Dialect

日時
Tuesday, 13 December 2022 | 9:00 - 9:45 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Yao Sun University of Oxford
司会
  • Sawako Shirahase TCJS Director
イベント概要

With its national popularity, the Kansai Dialect is now the most present dialect on screens. Results of the Kansai Dialect’s linguistic influence could be found throughout Japan including the spread of Kansai expressions and lexica such as めっちゃ. Meanwhile, the notion of エセ関西弁(Ese-Kansai Dialect) is increasingly discussed in media and online in the recent decade. In previous studies, Ese-Kansai Dialect is said to “denote and criticise the Kansai Dialect used by non-natives with unnatural pronunciation” and is regarded as a sociolinguistic variation of the Kansai Dialect. However, other than “being incorrect”, no shared commonality has been acknowledged. In this talk, through analysis of discourse on social media, I will discuss how Ese-Kansai Dialect is not simply a variation with certain linguistic features but is an ideological notion formed as native speakers reclaim language ownership.

登壇者について

Yao Sun is a DPhil Candidate at the University of Oxford researching the Language Ideology of the Kansai Dialect. My research stands at the intersection of Perceptual Dialectology and Language Commodification. I focus on the Ideology of Japanese Kansai Dialect learners who attempt to learn the dialect in classroom settings for various purposes. For the past year, I have been conducting fieldwork in Osaka and was affiliated with the University of Osaka. I studied for an MSc at Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies, the University of Oxford in 2019. Before that, I studied Japanese and English at Beijing Language and Culture University.

Graduate Student Forum

How Gender Stereotypes Violate the Principle of Gender Equality in the Legal Context

日時
Tuesday, 22 November 2022 | 9:00 - 9:45 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Xiaoyuan Li Graduate School of Law and Politics, the University of Tokyo
司会
  • Masayuki Tamaruya Graduate Schools for Law and Politics, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

Stereotypes have long been the topic of social psychological research. In the past three decades, however, stereotypes, particularly gender stereotypes have gradually received attention in legal scholarship. Different from social psychological research which concerns more about the precise causes of stereotype formation, legal scholarship pays more attention to the role that stereotypes play in violating the principle of gender equality. Gender stereotypes not only violate and deny women’s individual rights but also reinforce women’s subordinate position in society and provide justification for further violations and denials of their rights. The presentation will then discuss the following three aspects: (1) what kind of women’s rights have been violated by gender stereotypes in legal practices; (2) particularly, how the United States Supreme Court and the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women deal with cases and communications involving gender stereotypes; and (3) what enlightenments can be concluded from current legal practices.

登壇者について

Xiaoyuan Li just obtained her Ph.D. degree at the University of Tokyo in this September and her research focuses on international human rights law, international law and gender studies. Her dissertation examines the relationship between gender stereotypes and its violation of women’s rights in the legal context and how such social psychosocial concept can be embraced into legal framework.

Graduate Student Forum

Paying It Forward: How a Non-Monetary System of Training Saved the World of Rakugo Storytelling in 21st Century Japan

日時
Tuesday, 27 September 2022 | 9:00 - 9:45 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Marco Di Francesco Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, University of Oxford
司会
  • Sawako Shirahase TCJS Director
イベント概要

Even before the covid-19 pandemic, so-called traditional performing arts in Japan had been struggling to attract enough new forces to replace increasingly aging performers. An exception, however, is rakugo, whose number of professional performers today is the largest ever recorded in its centuries-old history. How has this community of oral storytellers managed to thrive through the ups and downs of the art’s popularity?

登壇者について

Marco Di Francesco is a PhD Student in Area Studies (Japan) at the University of Oxford. He recently returned from one year of ethnographic fieldwork in Tokyo, where he conducted anthropological research on the world of rakugo storytelling as a visiting researcher at Sophia University’s Institute of Comparative Culture. He holds a BA from Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and an MSc from Oxford. He has performed rakugo as a member of Waseda University’s Rakugo Research Club.

Graduate Student Forum

Youth Welfare Policies in Korea and Japan: A Comparative Analysis of Changes in Higher Education Support Policies

日時
Tuesday, 6 September 2022 | 9:00 - 10:00 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Hyewon Park Department of Advanced Social and International Studies, University of Tokyo
  • Kosuke Sakai Research Associate, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the University of Tokyo
司会
  • Rieko Kage Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

Although attempts have been made to elucidate youth support policy within the paradigms of welfare and economics through international comparisons, there is a paucity of research on young people’s transition regimes in East Asian countries. In the Presentation, we analyze East Asian youth support policies by comparing the higher education support policies (HESP) in place in Korea and Japan from the perspective of the target group, the position of young adults, and the major aim. We also check the differences in major aims of the National Student Loan system’s restructuring process and the content of the discussions between the two countries despite a similar transformation in terms of policy targets and young adults’ position.

登壇者について

Hyewon Park is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Advanced Social and International Studies at the University of Tokyo. She is currently working on her dissertation that examines the relationship between social change in East Asia and youth policies.

Kosuke Sakai is a research associate in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Tokyo. He obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Tokyo in 2020. His research focuses on the applicability of the sociological theory of Niklas Luhmann to empirical research. His dissertation examines the historical re-description of the theory of functional differentiation as a semantic analysis with a case study of the development of social policy in the 19th century.

Graduate Student Forum

Time to Be a Child: Everyday Life in Japanese Foster Care

日時
Tuesday, 26 July 2022 | 9:00 - 9:45 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Christopher Chapman Waseda University (Anthropology, the University of Oxford)
司会
  • Sawako Shirahase TCJS Director
イベント概要

Children in Japan’s welfare system live at the margins of society. They have less access to educational opportunities and social resources and live separate from the expectation that parents care for their children. This paper centers on the Hasegawa family, a foster family in Tokyo. Through participant observation and narrative story work—chronicles invoked from the family through photography, drawing, and discussion—I explore the family’s everyday experiences. Importantly, the children share their own stories, which are often overlooked in social work. I trace the intersection of family, medicine, and state that shaped their lives. In contrast to the detached outlook of welfare workers, the children show an affectionate family. Although some children intimate a hidden sadness, they reclaim a space to enjoy their childhood. While I uncover inequalities in access to psychological care, I also find that the home and family remain the most impactful mediators of well-being.

登壇者について

Christopher Chapman is a DPhil Candidate in Anthropology at the University of Oxford. His doctoral research explores the intersection between family, child welfare, and health in Japan. Originally from the United States, he received a B.S. in Sociology from Rocky Mountain College and an M.A. in Anthropology from the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Graduate Student Forum

Eastern Europe Through the Eyes of Visiting Japanese Writers

日時
Tuesday, 19 July 2022 | 9:00 - 9:45 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Nina Habjan Villarreal Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, the University of Tokyo
司会
  • Sawako Shirahase TCJS Director
イベント概要

I will be presenting about two cases of Japanese writers, who had visited the countries located in Eastern Europe in the late 20th century and analyze the travelogues they published during and after their experience. I will be mostly discussing how they had described their experience of the region in their writing, how photography was used as another approach to the region, how the visit contradicted their expectations, and how it affected their creativity and their careers in the later years. The two writers I will be focusing on are Abe Kobo and Kaiko Takeshi, both of whom visited multiple countries in the region in the late 1950s and early 1960, however, their experience of which differed strongly.

登壇者について

Nina Habjan Villarreal is a Doctoral candidate at the Department of Contemporary Literature at the University of Tokyo. After finishing her Bachelor’s program in Japanese Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia, she continues her research on Abe Kobo and Franz Kafka at the University of Tokyo. She is currently researching different Japanese writers who had written about Eastern Europe in the second half of the 20th century.

Graduate Student Forum

Mobilisation of Nostalgia and Heritage-making in Tokyo and Singapore

日時
Tuesday, 12 July 2022 | 9:00 - 9:45 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • LEE Kah Hui Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, the University of Tokyo
司会
  • Sawako Shirahase TCJS Director
イベント概要

Nostalgia has been traditionally perceived as problematic within the field of heritage studies from its inception. Defined as homesick, emotional yearning for return in thought or in fact to some past or irrecoverable condition, nostalgia has emerged as a response to modernity and urbanisation, which involves constant change, discontinuity, and displacement. The prioritisation of urban and economic development over conservation has resulted in trends of nostalgia mobilisation, particularly in Asia. The past is collectively reminisced and idealised where attempts at rediscovering, restoring, and recreating sites and objects related to historic events for popular consumption have been witnessed in contemporary society. Moving beyond criticisms of nostalgia as inaccurate and sentimental, this presentation examines nostalgia as an important motivating emotion, the plurality of nostalgia, the interconnectedness of nostalgia and heritage as well as its implications for society through case studies in Tokyo and Singapore.

登壇者について

Lee Kah Hui is a doctoral student in Cultural Management at the University of Tokyo. Her research interests include critical heritage discourse, urban landscape studies, and case studies in Asia. Her current research explores how nostalgia – a yearning to return to a lost period and place – is closely intertwined with urban conservation and examines its relationship and dynamics with the everyday visible landscape in Tokyo and Singapore. Prior to her Ph.D. programme, Kah Hui received an M.A. from the same department and a B.A. in Architecture from the National University of Singapore.

Graduate Student Forum

How ensured land property affects marriage: Evidence from land reforms in postwar Japan

日時
Tuesday, 28 June 2022 | 9:00 - 9:45 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Erika Igarashi Graduate School of Economics, the University of Tokyo
司会
  • Sawako Shirahase TCJS Director
イベント概要

Although it is known that ensuring land ownership contributed to economic development by improving agricultural productivity, few studies have investigated whether or not guaranteed the land property rights affected demographic dynamics. The purpose of this study is to examine whether the increase of land-own farmers caused increases in marriage rates, depending on the increased economic value of getting married. In this study, we apply the difference-in-difference estimation strategy with the exogenous variations in the proportion of farmers’ own land from the 1946 postwar land reform. General Headquarters (GHQ) carried out this land reform without regard for Japanese customs, giving land rights to tenant farmers and making them own-land farmers. We found that the marriage rates increased significantly in areas where the GHQ implemented land reforms to a high degree. There was a possibility that the marriage rates increased in areas where the GHQ completed the land reform because people became land-own farmers and economically stable.

登壇者について

Mar 2020 M.A. in Economics, The University of Tokyo
Mar 2018 B.A. in Economics, Tohoku University

Graduate Student Forum

Where the Grass Is Greener: Social Infrastructure and Resilience to COVID-19

日時
Tuesday, 07 June 2022 | 9:00 - 9:45 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Timothy Fraser Department of Political Science, Northeastern University, Boston, MA
司会
  • Kenneth Mori McElwain Professor, Institute of Social Science, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

Recent studies have linked the strength and type of social ties in communities to abating the spread of COVID-19. However, less attention has gone to social infrastructure, the places in neighborhoods that foster social connectedness. This study highlights the role of social infrastructure in COVID-19 outcomes in Fukuoka, a major city in Southwestern Japan, drawing on mapping, modeling, and statistical simulations. I find that city blocks in Fukuoka with more social infrastructure see lower rates of COVID spread, even after controlling for social capital, vulnerability, and health care capacity. However, some kinds of social infrastructure are more beneficial than others; parks, libraries, and public educational sites are linked to lower rates of infection, where social distancing is easier, while public meeting spaces and community centers see rising infections, likely facilitating transmission through gatherings. Taking stock of social infrastructure in our neighborhoods could improve our communities’ resilience to the next variant.

登壇者について

Timothy (Tim) Fraser is mixed methods political scientist, studying the role of social networks in communities’ adaptation to climate change and crisis. He recently successfully defended his dissertation as a PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science at Northeastern University in Boston, advised by Dr. Daniel Aldrich. He has authored 30 peer-reviewed studies on urban resilience, energy policy, and disasters in Japan and the US, in journals including Global Environmental Change, Nature Scientific Reports, and PNAS Nexus. His research uses network statistics, GIS, and fieldwork, and has been funded by internal and external grants, including Fulbright.

Graduate Student Forum

Effect of Japanese local petition adoption to their realization

日時
Tuesday 24 May 2022 | 9:00 - 9:45 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Sumin Lee Department of Advanced Social and International Studies, The University of Tokyo
  • Minkyu Kim PhD student in Economics, Michigan State University
司会
  • Rieko Kage Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

A Petition system has been not only the most conventional repertories to deliver democratic citizens’ desires, but also the bridge between legislature and citizens. Despite the importance of petitions, they have been assumed to be a relatively weak measure, without consensus on quantitative studies regarding the short-term effect of petitions to the realization of citizens’ desires. This paper examined the direct effect of petitions to the implementation using extensive survey data. Exploiting the control function approach, this article identifies the effect of petition robust to the potential concerns on endogeneity. The estimation results show that the petitions can have significant effect on the implementation, not only for non-binding cases but also for the cases asking for administrative actions, and the results are robust to estimation strategies, variable definitions, and covariates controls.

登壇者について

Sumin Lee is a PhD candidate at the University of Tokyo and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science(JSPS) research fellow. Her research interests include Japanese local politics, political engagement, democratic responsiveness and the petition system.
Minkyu Kim is a PhD student in Economics at Michigan State University. His main research interest is econometric theory and applied econometrics. He is currently studying the causal inference of dynamic panel data models with endogenous policy assignment.

Graduate Student Forum

The Problem of Naturalization: Dilemmas of Taiwanese Citizenship in the Ryukyu Islands, 1945-1972

日時
Tuesday 17 May 2022 | 9:00 - 9:45 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting  登録はこちら
言語
English
登壇者
  • Catherine Tsai Department of East Asian Languages, Harvard University
司会
  • Sawako Shirahase TCJS Director
イベント概要

Do political parties update their welfare policy positions to address voters’ economic needs in times of financial crisis? While existing research on the political consequences of the 2008 Great Recession has shed light on governmental monetary policies and the resulting impact on voter turnout, there is insufficient evidence of party-level analysis on welfare policy transformation. This article shows that political parties put more weight on inclusive welfare economic policy immediately after the Lehman Shock. We drew on the quasi-experimental regression discontinuity in Time (RDiT) approach to test the argument. By looking at 2,608 parliamentary elections and 957 parties from 53 countries between 1990 and 2018, our study shows that left-wing parties were more supportive of welfare policy after the recession. The finding enhances our understanding of the party’s responsiveness to voters’ economic demands. Furthermore, it would contribute to broad political behavior and welfare economics research.

登壇者について

Catherine Tsai is a PhD candidate in the program of History and East Asian Languages. Her research focuses on how the movements of Taiwanese labor and goods created the economic and environmental landscape of the Yaeyama Islands from the 1920s to the 1970s as well as how the migrations across the ocean facilitated acts of local border-making and identity formation distinct from the national boundaries and citizenship status conceived by the Japanese imperial and then the American military governments. She received a BA from the University of California, Davis in 2014, majoring in history and international relations.

Graduate Student Forum

“Peaceful Coexistence, or Peace Offense?” Sino-Japanese Competition and the Making of Economic Landscape in Southeast Asia, 1950-1959

日時
Tuesday, 26 April 2022 | 9:00 - 9:45 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting  登録はこちら
言語
English
登壇者
  • Bohao Wu A Ph.D. candidate in the History Department, Harvard University
司会
  • Sawako Shirahase TCJS Director
イベント概要

This presentation covers the first three chapters of my dissertation, covering Beijing and Tokyo’s trade policies with Southeast Asia during the 1950s. I intend to demonstrate how this process shaped the trade practices in the region. China was able to build a complex trading network in Southeast Asia through soliciting help from overseas Chinese communities, trade organizations, and local entrepreneurs, while Japan was able to use diplomatic maneuvers between China, Britain, and the United States to aggrandize its economic interest in the region. During this process, Beijing and her competitors in Tokyo invented respective mechanisms to mobilize the regional trading network to their advantage, and shaped it in the due process. By breaking down the often-intricate processes of bargaining and negotiating that governments, their front companies, and compradors engaged in during this period, the chapters attest to the multilateral, transnational nature of economic life in Asia under the shadow of the Cold War.

登壇者について

Bohao Wu is a Ph.D. Candidate in history at Harvard University. He began his training at Harvard in the fall of 2017, after graduating magna cum laude from Brown University. In addition to Chinese, Bohao also speaks Japanese, Russian, and Korean. Bohao currently works on his dissertation “Uneasy Friends and Convenient Enemies: Sino-Japanese Coordination and Competition in Southeast Asia, 1950-1972.” His paper “Keep Your Friends Close, and Enemies Closer Sino-Soviet Competition in the Occupied Dalian, 1945 – 1949” is forthcoming in the Journal of Cold War Studies.

Graduate Student Forum

Disseminating Western Thought and Reexamining Japan: The Role of Chinese Students Who Studied in Modern Japan

日時
Tuesday, 15 March 2022 | 9:00 - 9:45 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Toshihide Takayanagi Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo
司会
  • Rieko Kage Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, Asian nations that wished to adopt Western thought and technology, including Japan, sent many students to Europe and the United States. Japan was so successful in this endeavor that, after the Russo-Japanese War, many Asian nations that admired its rapid modernization sent students to Japan. Of these, China was the nation that sent the largest number of students (thought to total tens of thousands by 1945). What did Chinese students learn in Japan, and what impact did they have on their home country? This presentation will examine the role played by these students once they returned to China, focusing on their legacy that remains today. Specifically, it will focus on how Western thought such as communism was brought back to China via Japan, creating the new academic field of Japan Studies along the way.

登壇者について

Toshihide Takayanagi is a Ph.D. candidate at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Tokyo, specializing in modern Chinese history and Sino-Japanese relations. His research interests include Japan Studies in modern China, as well as differences in how Japan and China perceive history.

Events

Democratizing AI for End Users: Designing Machine Learning Models Using Interactive Applications

日時
Tuesday, 8 March 2022 | 9:00am - 9:45am (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Wataru Kawabe Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo
司会
  • Yusuke Sugano Associate Professor, Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

Recent advances in machine learning (ML), especially deep neural networks, have greatly expanded the opportunities for various real-world applications in our daily lives. However, while ML has great potential, it is still difficult for novice users to design a model for their own purpose since building an ML model requires programming skills and mathematical knowledge. Interactive machine learning (IML) aims at providing a method for them to interact with ML algorithms and prototype their own models. There have been many research attempts to create interactive image/sound/text recognition systems, and this time I show you some examples I found worth checking. I also introduce my own work attempting to provide a generic image recognition model with text as output, and how novice users responded to the prototype system and solved various image recognition tasks with it.

登壇者について

Wataru Kawabe is a master’s student in the Graduate School of Information Science and Technology at the University of Tokyo, specializing in computer science. His research interests include applied machine learning and human-computer interaction, and his current research focuses on understanding end-users through interaction with image/sound/text recognition applications.

Graduate Student Forum

Precarious Work, Gender, and Marriage in Contemporary Japan

日時
Tuesday, 22 February 2022 | 16:00 - 16:45 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • See Pok Loa Department of Sociology, University of Oxford
司会
  • Daiji Kawaguchi Professor, Graduate School of Public Policy, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

Previous studies on global capitalism and gender argue that the expansion of labor precarity and underemployment have brought about a “crisis of masculinity”. Less attention is paid to how the construction of masculinity adapts to shifting economic contexts. Using data from interviews with young men working on non-regular jobs, this study looks into the experiences of precarious workers in Japan, a place where job stability, gender norms, and family formation are tightly coupled. Specifically, it shows how precarious work redefines the ways workers understand masculinity and the way they imagine marriage in the future when they have failed to achieve the dominant form of the breadwinner model and the economic foundations required by marriage, given the growing structural uncertainties in the economy.

登壇者について

See Pok Loa is a doctoral student in Sociology at the University of Oxford. His research interests include the sociology of gender, work, economic sociology, personal life and families, globalization, and inequality. Overall, his research seeks to understand how global economic processes and broader inequalities reshape personal life.

Graduate Student Forum

The Incompatible Incentives of Opposition Coordination in Mixed-Member Majoritarian Systems: Evidence from Japan

日時
Tuesday, 8 February 2022 | 9:00 - 9:45 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Hikaru Yamagishi Department of Political Science, Yale University
司会
  • Kenneth Mori MCELWAIN Professor, Institute of Social Science, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

I will start with an overview of the literature on electoral systems, mobilization, and persuasion. The theories of turnout and preference have been developed in “pure” electoral system contexts (i.e. single-seat districts or proportional representation systems). Next, I will introduce my theory, which extends the theory to mixed-member electoral systems, and specifically mixed-member majoritarian. From there, I identify the testable implications of the theory, which is about heterogeneous effects of voter engagement with democratic elections. I introduce the research design for the survey conducted in Japan and show the results. Finally, I discuss and conclude.

登壇者について

Hikaru Yamagishi is a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at Yale University studying comparative politics and comparative political economy. She has a special interest in Japan, where she examines various instances of economic and political market inefficiency and failure. Her dissertation explores the causes and consequences of one such example in the context of political party competition: problems of opposition coordination. Her research is multi-method. Yamagishi’s work is supported by the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership, the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University,

Graduate Student Forum

Preparation for Business Requirement on Prior User Rights in Patent Law

日時
Tuesday, 18 January 2022 | 9:00 - 9:45 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • YE Peng Graduate School for Law and Politics, the University of Tokyo
司会
  • TAMARUYA Masayuki Professor, Graduate Schools for Law and Politics, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

As established by Article 79 of Patent Law, “A person who…has been working the invention or preparing for the working of the invention in Japan at the time of the filing of the patent application” could have prior user rights. Regarding this “preparation for business” requirement, Walking Beam Furnace, Supreme Court, Oct. 3, 1986, 40-6 Minshu 1068, held that, although it had not yet been worked at the stages of business; there had been the “intent to work the invention immediately,” and such intent had been “indicated in a manner and to the extent that it could be objectively recognized.” However, it is not an explicit rule to apply to lower instance courts. Addressing this problem, I would like to introduce some cases, especially Air-conditioned Clothes, IP High Court, Feb. 17, 2021, R2(NE)10038, and make an analysis thereof.

登壇者について

Ye Peng is a doctoral student of the Graduate School for Law and Politics at the University of Tokyo. He received a B.S. from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China, an LL.M. from Hokkaido University.

Graduate Student Forum

Risk Management of General Trading Company: Lessons from History

日時
Tuesday, 14 December 2021 | 9:00 - 9:45 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Eiji Unakami Graduate School of Economics, The University of Tokyo
司会
  • Sawako Shirahase TCJS Director
イベント概要

General Trading Company(GTC) is a Japanese diversified business group evolving in Meiji Japan Economic growth and preserving significance in the Reiwa Japan Economic scene. The researcher’s interest is to find indications for its future by researching its history. This case study compares the risk management of Mitsui Bussan, the first and biggest GTC before WWII, and Furukawa Shoji which was collapsed soon after its foundation. Value at Risk, a contemporary risk management tool is used for quantitative comparison in addition to a qualitative one. This research suggests that the superiority/inferiority of risk management shown in their value at risk draws the line between survivor and failure.

登壇者について

Eiji Unakami is a Ph.D. student in Economic History, at the University of Tokyo, focusing on risk management, business model, and social impact of Japanese General Trading Company(GTC). He is concurrently working at Mitsubishi Corporation (MC), a GTC, and has decades of experience in the risk management area, including the secretary of the investment committee.

Graduate Student Forum

Loneliness at Older Ages in Japan: Variation in Lonely Life Expectancy and the Role of Social Isolation

日時
Tuesday, 7 December 2021 | 9:00 - 9:45 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Shiro Furuya Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
司会
  • Sawako Shirahase TCJS Director
イベント概要

Despite growing media, policy, and research attention to loneliness, it remains an understudied dimension of social inequality. Additionally, research on loneliness often fails to distinguish loneliness from social isolation. This is an important limitation given the positive correlation between measures of these two distinct concepts, a relationship that may be particularly salient in collectivistic societies, like Japan. Combining life tables from the Human Mortality Database with individual data from the National Survey of Japanese Elderly, we calculated isolation-adjusted lonely life expectancies (LLE) by sex and educational attainment. Results showed notable differences in LLE before and after adjusting for social isolation; however, accounting for social isolation did little to alter our general understanding of trends and differentials in LLE. We also found that LLE is short among older Japanese and has not increased over time. Additionally, we found no clear educational differences in isolation-adjusted LLE.

登壇者について

Shiro Furuya is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an affiliate of the Center for Demography and Ecology and the Center for Demography of Health and Aging. His research interests broadly lie in health, demography, and social genomics. Before attending the Ph.D. program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he worked for three years as a software engineer specialized in the medical industry at Fujitsu Ltd. He is a recipient of the Fulbright Fellowship.

Graduate Student Forum

“Katakana is a Commodity”: An Economic History of Japanese Script Reform Movements, 1920–45

日時
Tuesday, 12 October 2021 | 9:00 - 9:45 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Toshiki Kawashima PhD Candidate, Department of History, University of Pennsylvania
司会
  • Sawako Shirahase TCJS Director
イベント概要

This presentation offers an economic historical analysis of a script reform in interwar Japan. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, some Japanese believed their complex kana-kanji writing system to be a major hindrance to economic development and proposed various simplified scripts. While the literature has mainly focused on nationalistic reform programs led by the Tokyo government, it has neglected the role of other movements including those led by businesspeople. This presentation focuses on the history of script reform campaigns of the Kana Script Society (Kana moji kai), a pro-katakana and anti-kanji group founded by Taylorism-influenced wealthy entrepreneurs from Osaka in the 1920s. The relationship between script reform, economic ideas, and international economic policies will be discussed. First, the proto-economic model used in the discourse of the Kana Script Society anticipated economic theories of standardization including Paul David’s work on QWERTY keyboards in the 1980s. To market a new script, the businesspeople used an economic model of the dynamics of script users through an analogy with the existing economic systems such as railways. It anticipated concepts such as path dependence, network effect, and switching costs. Second, their reform plans should be understood in the broader context of macroeconomic policy in the late 1920s and the early 1930s. Directors of the society had strong ties with the Minseitō party and supported their macroeconomic policies such as austerity measures, the return to the gold standard, and the so-called industrial rationalization. For them, simplified writing systems would lead to the achievement of their policies by helping to reduce educational and administrative costs. Through the analysis of these aspects, this presentation proposes the possibility and importance of interpreting linguistic reforms through the lens of economic history and history of economic thought.

登壇者について

Toshiki Kawashima is a PhD candidate in History, working on the economic history of modern East Asia, especially interwar Japan. While methodologically based on the history of economic ideas, his dissertation analyzes a topic unconventional in the field: it explains the emergence of economic ideas in the unlikely context of language reform movements. Specifically, it demonstrates how a proto-economic model was used to help Japanese businesspeople—who were also script (writing system/alphabet) reformers—analyze the dynamics of script users and market a new script. His analysis shows that their model anticipated concepts popular in modern economic theory of standardization.

Graduate Student Forum

Identity and Ambition in the Drafting of Japan’s Deep Sea Geographies

日時
Tuesday, 28 September 2021 | 17:00 - 17:45 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Jonas Rüegg PhD Candidate in History and East Asian Languages, Harvard University
司会
  • Rieko Kage Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

Japan’s oceanic expansion since the mid-nineteenth century pushed the archipelago’s boundaries to newly charted islands and vaguely defined oceanic borderlands in all directions. Redefining a formerly secluded island nation as an expansive pelagic empire shifted the focus of Meiji period geographers to the underwater landscapes that tied the islands together. This project discusses the way identity and imperial ambition became engraved in the virtual environs of a steadily developing deep-sea topography that keeps serving national interests in the age of deep-sea resource exploitation.

登壇者について

Jonas Rüegg is a PhD Candidate in History and East Asian Languages at Harvard University. His research focuses on the maritime history of early modern and modern East Asia. His dissertation “The Kuroshio Frontier: Business, State, and Environment in the Making of Japan’s Pacific,” explores the role Japanese oceanic environments, as well as exploration and colonization played in the formation of the modern international order in the Asia-Pacific region. Originally from Switzelrand, Jonas holds a B.A. from the University of Zürich and an M.A. in “Regional Studies – East Asia” from Harvard University. In the context of his dissertation, he has conducted research at the University of Tokyo and Academia Sinica in Taipei.

Graduate Student Forum

The History of Theological Education in the Japanese Orthodox Church

日時
Tuesday, 21 September 2021 | 9:00am - 9:45am (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Kaho Osaki Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, The University of Tokyo
司会
  • Sawako Shirahase TCJS Director
イベント概要

Orthodox Christianity was introduced in Japan from Russia in the latter half of the 19th century. Then Orthodox seminaries were established in Japan in the Meiji era. The seminarians studied Russian language, Japanese and Chinese classics, history, geography as well as theology. In this presentation, first we outline the history of theological education in the Japanese Orthodox Church, then compare the curriculum and the textbooks used in the Tokyo Theological Seminary with those of the Russian seminaries. The purpose of this study is to clarify the problems they faced and their solutions to teach Orthodox Christianity brought from Russia in Japan through comparison of theological education between the Japanese Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church.

登壇者について

Kaho Osaki is a PhD Student in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, the University of Tokyo, JSPS research fellow.

Graduate Student Forum

Why Do Few Women Apply to Selective Colleges in Japan?: Explaining Horizontal Gender Stratification in Higher Education

日時
Tuesday, 7 September 2021 | 9:00 - 9:45 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Fumiya Uchikoshi Princeton University
司会
  • Kenneth McElwain Professor, Institute of Social Science, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

Gender gap in higher education has reduced or reversed in many countries, while women are still underrepresented in selective institutions, and importantly, it varies by countries. This paper provides an institutional explanation that helps us to understand the cross-national variation in the gender gap in elite education by focusing on the Japanese case, an extreme outlier where women only account for one in five undergraduate students at top universities. Specifically, I hypothesize that, by reinforcing women’s risk-aversion, admission system characterized by high-stakes exams amplifies gender gap in elite education driven by women’s lower expected return to elite education. I test the hypothesis by examining the transition to post-secondary education among Japanese high-schoolers, an ideal case where application opportunities for selective institutions (national universities) are considerably limited compared to non-selective ones (private universities) and thus a number of high schoolers fail to pass the entrance exam and prepare for the exam next year (Ronin). Using longitudinal data that track high school students until graduation, I investigate whether and how male and female students, even if they have similar academic ability, choose their post-secondary education differently. Results show a significant gender gap in preparing for the exam next year. Since a majority of Ronin students aim to enter national universities, the gender gap in Ronin experience plays a critical role in explaining women’s underrepresentation in selective institutions. I also found that, among students who aim to enter national universities in their 1st to 2nd year in high school, women are more likely to choose risk-averting behaviors, like lowering the goal (aiming for junior colleges in their final year of high school) or applying to private universities via admission not based on the high-stakes exam. After describing the “leaky pipeline” of women in elite education, I conduct between/within gender analysis to explore potential factors that explain gender differences in college application behaviors.

登壇者について

Fumiya Uchikoshi is a PhD student in Sociology at Princeton University. His research interests include family demography, social stratification, and East Asia. His current research examines diverging family behaviors and their impact on social inequality and the consequences of newly emerging behaviors on future life course outcomes in familistic societies.

Graduate Student Forum

How to Reconstruct Historical Weather by Old Diary?

日時
Tuesday, 24 August 2021 | 9:00 - 9:45 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Xiaoxing Wang Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo
司会
  • Kei Yoshimura Professor, Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

Climate change greatly affects human society. Learning about past climate helps to predict future changes more accurately. Before modern instrumental measurements became available, old diaries provide valuable information about historical weather. Especially in Japan, there are over 50 diaries recording daily weather information at more than 18 locations during the mid-Edo period to the early Meiji period. These descriptive records are valuable; for example, cloud cover information converted from old diaries can be combined with the latest high-technology of numerical weather prediction. However, there are still some challenges to this fusion approach. This presentation will introduce some disadvantages in an existing method and explain how he/she will improve it. He/She will present whether this new method improves the reconstruction results. In general, this presentation will introduce the potential of diary-based information for weather reconstruction in Japan.

登壇者について

Xiaoxing Wang is a PhD student at Doctoral Course in Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo. Received Master Degree in Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Nagoya University and Bachelor Degree in College of Resources Science & Technology, Beijing Normal University, China.

Graduate Student Forum

Risk Management of General Trading Company, the Case of Survivor & Failure in World War I and Aftermath

日時
Friday, 20 August 2021 | 9:00 - 9:45 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Eiji Unakami Graduate School of Economics, The University of Tokyo
司会
  • Sawako Shirahase TCJS Director
イベント概要

General Trading Company(GTC) is Japanese diversified business group evolving in Meiji Japan Economic growth and preserving a significance in Reiwa Japan Economic scene.
Researcher’s interest is finding indications for its future by researching its history.
This case study compares risk management of Mitsui Bussan, the first and biggest GTC before WWII, and Furukawa Shoji which was collapsed soon after its foundation.
Value at Risk, a cotemporary risk management tool are used for quantitative comparison in addition to qualitative one. This research suggests that the superiority/inferiority of risk management shown in their value at risk draw the line between survivor and failure.

登壇者について

Eiji Unakami is a Deputy GM, Internal Audit Dept, Mitsubishi Corporation (Present) and an MSc Economic History London School of Economics.

Graduate Student Forum

TCJS-HMC Joint Seminar Series 台湾における天皇機関説排撃運動

日時
2021年8月17日(火) | 9:00 - 9:45 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
日本語
登壇者
  • 斉崇硯 東京大学大学院総合文化研究科
司会
  • 鹿毛利枝子 東京大学大学院総合文化研究科 教授
イベント概要

1935年2月から日本内地において天皇機関説排撃運動が起こっていた。この運動は外地台湾においてどのように展開されていたのか、また当時内地日本と外地台湾の諸国体論者の関係と連動性はどのようものであったのかについて本稿は解明したい。

登壇者について

台湾出身。2013年国立台湾大学文学部歴史学科卒業。2016年香港中文大学大学院修士課程修了。現在、東京大学大学院総合文化研究科国際社会科学専攻博士課程在籍。博士論文のテーマは「国体論から見る台湾統治の理念と実践:戦間期から戦争期にかけての憲法論議と台湾の治安法制をめぐって」。政治思想、法学及び政治外交史のアプローチから、日本近代史、近代日台関係の解明を研究テーマとしている。

Graduate Student Forum

The School Life and Future Prospect of Kurdish Female Migrant Youth from Turkey: Role of Night-Time High School during Their Asylum Seeking

日時
Tuesday, 3 August 2021 | 9:00 - 9:45 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Naoko Uehara Graduate School of Education, The University of Tokyo
司会
  • Misako Nukaga Associate Professor, Graduate School of Education, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

Currently, movement across nation-states has been a common phenomenon for more people in the era of globalization. Thus, the difference between “immigrant” and “refugee” has been arbitrarily politicized. From this point, the refugee determination process has been heavily affected by political interest rather than humanitarian aspect. In Japan, refugee acceptance has been very limited based on the narrowed interpretation of the Refugee Convention of 1951. Among asylum seekers, although no accurate number is known, Kurdish people from Turkey who or whose parents flee to Japan as asylum seekers constitute one main ethnic group who remain undocumented or “quasi-legal or liminal legal status”.

Considering these backgrounds, this presentation examines how the liminal legal status of Kurdish students during asylum seeking affects their life at a night-time high school and their future prospects. Based on participant observation at a night-time high school and life story interviews with four Kurdish female students, her research focuses on their academic aspiration, disclosure of their legal status, and the ways in which the night-time high school includes/ excludes the needs of the Kurdish asylum seeking students.

登壇者について

東京大学大学院 博士課程1年/ 日本学術振興会 特別研究員 DC1

Graduate Student Forum

Becoming a Farmer in Contemporary Japan: Pro-Rural Migration and New Entry in Agriculture

日時
Friday, 30 July 2021 | 12:15 - 13:00 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Niccolo Lollini DPhil in Anthropology, Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies, University of Oxford
司会
  • Sawako Shirahase TCJS Director
イベント概要

Based on extended fieldwork conducted in Japan, this presentation discusses widespread difficulties faced by new entry farmers from a non-farming background in securing livelihood from agriculture. He considers the five key hurdles involved in the establishment of a farming business: access to land, housing, farming know-how, capital, and market outlets.

登壇者について

Niccolo Lollini completed a bachelor degree in International Relations at Bologna University and a master degree in International Relations at Waseda University. After working for three years in a farm in Italy, he decided to returned to academia and completed a master degree in Modern Japanese studies at Oxford University. he is now a candidate for a PhD in Social Anthropology at Oxford University.

Graduate Student Forum

Do Firms Benefit from the Revolving Door? Evidence from Japan

日時
Tuesday, 27 July 2021 | 9:00 - 9:45 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Trevor Incerti DPhil Student, Department of Political Science, Yale University, and Institute of Social Science, The University of Tokyo
司会
  • Kenneth McElwain Professor, Institute of Social Science, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

A growing literature finds high returns to firms connected to legislative office. Less attention has been paid to benefits from bureaucratic connections, despite well-documented bureaucratic revolving door hiring practices. Leveraging a 2009 law requiring Japanese bureaucratic agencies to report private sector hires of former civil servants, we construct a comprehensive dataset of all revolving door hires in Japan. Using this dataset and data on Japanese government contracts and loans, we test for systematic benefits that accrue to firms who hire former bureaucrats. Specifically, we hypothesize that bureaucratic rehiring will be associated with an increased likelihood of receipt of government contracts, government loans, and reputation boosts.

登壇者について

Trevor Incerti is a PhD Candidate at Yale University studying comparative political economy. Currently, he is a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Tokyo Institute of Social Science and a Research Associate at the Waseda University Institute of Political Economy.

His research focuses on the ways individuals, businesses, and interest groups use politics for private gain. Examples include corruption and regulatory capture. He is also interested in the use of data science tools and methods of causal inference in political economy research. His research has been published in the American Political Science Review and British Journal of Political Science, among other outlets.

Prior to Yale, he worked as a Data Scientist for TrueCar, Inc., where he developed forecasting models to predict automotive residual values and sales volumes in the US and Canada. Before that, he analyzed regulatory matters that raised risks of antitrust violations as an economic consultant at Compass Lexecon.

Graduate Student Forum

Colonial Conservation in the Japanese Empire

日時
Tuesday, 20 July 2021 | 9:00 - 9:45 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • John Hayashi History Department, Harvard University
司会
  • Rieko Kage Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

His presentation looks at the history of the Japanese Empire in order to ask questions that lie at the heart of environmental management, colonialism, and the place of indigenous peoples in modern states. Resource extraction has often been understood as central to imperialism, but in the early 20th century Japanese officials were often equally interested in protecting resources such as timber and water to ensure sustained use. In a colonial context, this amounted to conservation through exclusion–defining indigenous environmental practice as ecologically harmful and seeking to eliminate it. Drawing from his research on Taiwan, he traces the development and consequences of what he calls colonial conservation, the idea of saving land from the people who live on it. Finally, he suggests ways in which this history can speak to contemporary issues, both in Japan and across the globe.

登壇者について

John Hayashi is a PhD candidate in the History Department at Harvard University specializing in environmental history in modern Japan and Taiwan. Additional interests include migration, diaspora, and the history of science. He holds a B.A. from Yale College and has been a research associate at Kyoto University’s Institute for Research in Humanities.

Graduate Student Forum

Leader Preferences and Alliance Formation

日時
Tuesday, 13 July 2021 | 9:00 - 9:45 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Mina Pollmann Visiting Research Fellow at ISS, The University of Tokyo/PhD Candidate at Department of Political Science, MIT
司会
  • Kenneth McElwain Professor, Institute of Social Science, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

Existing theories of alliance formation explain alliances as being caused by a changing balance of power, balance of threat, or balance of interests. These structural theories do not account for the role of leaders’ agency in alliance formation. By contrast, she analyzes the causal role of leaders in alliance formation. She develops a new method—probabilistic counterfactual analysis—to identify alliances in which a leader caused the alliance, and alliances in which leaders did not cause the alliance. Her primary cases are Japan in the Anglo-Japanese Alliance (1902), in the Tripartite Pact (1940), and in the renewal of the US-Japan Alliance (1960). In her presentation, she will introduce probabilistic counterfactual analysis as a method, demonstrate the application of this method in the case of Japan in the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, and provide a summary of her preliminary conclusions from additional cases.

登壇者について

Mina Pollmann is a fourth-year PhD candidate in the Political Science Department at MIT, currently a Visiting Research Fellow at ISS, University of Tokyo. Her research interests focus on Japan’s security and diplomacy, US foreign policy in East Asia, and international relations in the Asia-Pacific. After graduating Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service summa cum laude with a BS in Foreign Service, she worked for TV Tokyo-America and a DC-based risk consulting start up. She is a recipient of the Walter A. Rosenblith Presidential Graduate Fellowship and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

Graduate Student Forum

Tokyo’s Startup Village: Carnivalism, Paternalism, and Bureaucracy

日時
Tuesday, 6 July 2021 | 16:15 - 17:00 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Bjol Frenkenberger DPhil in Anthropology, University of Oxford
司会
  • Sawako Shirahase TCJS Director
イベント概要

His research focuses on how founders in Tokyo’s start-up ecosystem try to retain key stakeholders. He is interested in how trustworthy behaviour becomes defined differently by various groups (founders, VCs, employees) throughout the early stages of the startup lifecycle (seed stage, early stage, growth stage) and how this appears to underlie conflicts within startups and the startup ecosystem. Tokyo’s startup ecosystem, the village or mura, seems characterized by the negotiation of past ideals such as the strong social ties of the ‘ba’, new policy-driven demands for neoliberal meritocratic struggle, and a future-focused, anti-bureaucratic strain which defines itself in opposition to the corporatism and conservatism of the large corporate. He argues that the ‘traditional’ focus on paternalistic models demanding loyalty and commitment still appears valid in the mura but runs into problems related to different socio-economic structures that fail to provide incentive structures matching such demands. At the same time the appeal of such models is now explained beyond tradition alone and becomes related to expectations of ‘speed’ (or the experience of immediacy) which is enjoyable in itself and intertwined. These and other ideological claims are driven by time pressure and various ‘what-ifs’ (threats, temptations, hopes etc.) often posed by the demands of modern ‘audit cultures’. Tokyo’s startup space appears in this sense as one instance of Japan in ‘flux’, where traditional and new concepts collide, where hope comes into being and subsides.

登壇者について

Bjol Frenkenberger is in his last year of DPhil Anthropology at the University of Oxford under the supervision of Prof Roger Goodman and Prof D Hugh Whittaker. Before his DPhil, he has worked full time in Fuller, a Tokyo-based startup. He has further studied Musicology and Ethnomusicology at King’s College London (M.Mus., Distinction), and Music (Piano) at the University Mozarteum Salzburg (B.A., Distinction). His research interests relate to the study of contemporary Japan, in particular organizations, time, inter-subjectivity, and music.

Graduate Student Forum

Diverging Destinies in Japan: Educational Differences in the Long-term Effects of Maternal Employment on Development of Japanese Children

日時
Tuesday, 29 June 2021 | 9:00 - 9:45 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Jia Wang Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
司会
  • Rieko Kage Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

Maternal employment is an important determinant of child development and a key family behavior in “diverging destinies” research. Existing studies pays insufficient attention to educational differences in the relationships between maternal employment and children’s well-being, and how such educational gradients may depend on different types of maternal employment. This study focuses on Japan, an East Asian society where educational disparities in maternal employment are limited compared to the west, and a large proportion of mothers are working in nonstandard jobs. Results demonstrate overall negative effects of cumulative exposure to maternal work on Japanese children’s well-being, particularly for cognitive scores. Such detrimental effects, however, are almost exclusively limited to children with less-educated mothers without a college degree. In particular, less-educated mothers’ longer hours and regular jobs have substantial adverse impacts on children’s cognitive outcomes, whereas negative influences of nonstandard jobs are less pronounced. Our study reveals diverging destinies of Japanese children primarily due to educational differences in “returns” rather than compositional differences of family behaviors, and highlight the importance of considering types of maternal employment under changing economic environment and specific contexts.

登壇者について

Jia Wang is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her general interests include social stratification, inequality, and family demography. She is particularly interested in the consequences of nonstandard employment and work schedules on life chances of individuals and their children, and how such stratifying role of nonstandard work varies across education groups.

Graduate Student Forum

Description Requirements in Patent Law Especially in Biopharmaceutical Industry

日時
Tuesday, 22 June 2021 | 9:00 - 9:45 (JST)
会場
Zoom Webinar
言語
English
登壇者
  • Liu Yifan Graduate Schools for Law and Politics, The University of Tokyo
司会
  • Masayuki Tamaruya Professor, Graduate Schools for Law and Politics, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

Biotechnology-related inventions are inventions in the technical field where it is difficult to predict the effect based on the structure or characteristics of an object, and the standard of the description requirements is often unobvious.

Her presentation addresses this problem by introducing what are description requirements(enablement requirement,support requirement, and clarity requirement) in japan and previous studies in this area, and explaining why it is hard to decide whether inventions meet the requirements or not in biopharmaceutical industry.

By giving examples of biotechnology related cases in japan, especially one of recent cases in 2018 that has sparked a lot of discussion, she will be making an analysis of these cases and giving a short conclusion.

登壇者について

LIU Yifan is a Ph.D student in Intellectual Property Law at The University of Tokyo(Japan). She holds LL.B degree from Wuhan University of China, LL.M degree from Hokkaido University.

Her doctoral research revolves mostly around the areas of patent law (in particular patent description requirements) in Japan and United States.

Graduate Student Forum

Gender Inequality among Japan’s Elderly as Seen through Household Labor Division in Elderly Married Households

日時
Thursday, 6 May 2021 | 12:15 - 13:00 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Taeeun Kim Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, The University of Tokyo
司会
  • Kenneth McElwain Professor, Institute of Social Science, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

As women’s participation in economic activities increased, discussions on the share of housework were actively carried out, but many previous studies showed that men’s share of household chores is still much lower than that of women’s participation in economic activities, and that women are placed under the double burden of work and housework (Hochshild and Machung, 2012). However, most of the previous studies on the distribution of housework have focused on the distribution of housework in the active generation. Housework for the elderly has not received much attention than the current generation, but it can be seen as a very important topic from the perspective of the recent progression of aging and inequality. The purpose of this study is to confirm the wife’s share of housework in the household share of elderly couples, and to examine what factors affect the wife’s share of housework from the perspective of a relative resource.

Graduate Student Forum

The Secret to Making Japanese Food More Delicious: Japan’s National Mold, Koji Kin

日時
Tuesday, 27 April 2021 | 12:15 - 13:00 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Chan Lu Graduate Student, Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo
司会
  • Sawako Shirahase TCJS Director
イベント概要

Japan’s national mold—Aspergillus oryzae, generally called Koji Kin, is the mold traditionally used in Japanese food fermentation industries for centuries, including sake, soy sauce and miso. Hence, its breeding is significantly important for Japanese food culture. In nature, Koji Kin has not been found to be able via male and female mating for breeding, just like animals or plants. However, recent research has revealed that Koji Kin actually has two types of sex, and it may become possible to carry out cross breeding. For mating, cells need to survive after fusion. We have found that there are various affinity preference combinations among different pairs of Koji Kin strains, some of which can be compatible with each other and others cannot. In order to create further industrially useful strains, it is necessary to solve the problem of incompatibility between strains. Therefore, here she is investigating the cause of compatibility by searching and analyzing genes related incompatibility among Koji Kin strains. If we clarify the critical genes causing incompatibility and then break the cell fusion barrier, it is expected to produce new Koji Kin with more taste and flavor, which can make Japanese food more delicious than before, and meet the appetite of more people in the whole world.

Graduate Student Forum

How Do Hobbies Connect People? Focusing on Homophily

日時
Tuesday, 13 April 2021 | 12:15 - 13:00 (JST)
会場
Zoom Webinar
言語
English
登壇者
  • Naoki Maejima Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, The University of Tokyo
司会
  • Sawako Shirahase TCJS Director
イベント概要

In this presentation, he will discuss the possibility that online media and hobbies can connect heterogeneous people. As the proverb says, “birds of a feather flock together.” People who have similar social attributes tend to become friends naturally, without any help. In sociology, this tendency is called “homophily.” homophily is a universally observed and strongly robust tendency in social network formation. However, under what conditions can the mechanism of homophily be weakened? He will introduce two research findings. First, from fieldwork in a high-school classroom, it was revealed that the online social network was less homophilous than the offline. Second, ongoing research shows that the intermarriage rate is higher among couples who meet through their hobbies than couples who meet through other opportunities.

Graduate Student Forum

Indirect Patent Infringement in China and Japan

日時
Tuesday, 6 April 2021 | 12:15 - 13:00 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Ziyin Zhu Doctoral Student,Graduate Schools for Law and Politics, The University of Tokyo
司会
  • Masayuki Tamaruya Professor, Graduate Schools for Law and Politics, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

The so-called indirect patent infringement can be generally understood as manufacturing or selling parts of the patent. In most countries, it is set as a principle that unless an assumed product contains all the technical elements described in the patent claim, it should not be deemed as an infringement. However, with the indirect infringement rule, even if some elements are unfulfilled, the manufacturing or selling such product is still prohibited. The difficulty is under which situation can and should the principle be broken, or to say how should the requirements of indirect infringement be designed in law. This study would like to point out the questions remained unclear in China based on the current situation and then take the Japanese law as a comparison to try to find the answers.

Graduate Student Forum

Religious Spaces and the Development of Tama New Town

日時
Tuesday, 30 March 2021 | 12:15 - 13:00 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Yu Takahara Graduate Student, Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo
司会
  • Koichi Kato Professor, Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

After WW2, urban areas in Japan have experienced many developments caused by the growth of population. What such developments have almost always encountered in their construction site are religious spaces such as shrines, temples and Jizos because they are everywhere in human’s habitat. They are still so important for our continuous living environment that the relationship between urban development and religious spaces should be discussed.Nevertheless, such discussion seldom conducted so far in Japan.

This study examines how and why religious spaces changed by Tama New Town project (1965-2005), a typical of huge public urban developments in the post-war Japan. Through fieldwork, interviews and investigating related documents, she analyzes how the Japanese urban development valued and designed religious spaces and what is the effect of their renewal on the new town. This study will contribute to realizing multi-cultural city which is needed in contemporary diverse society by giving consideration on collaboration of two different features, modernity of urban development and premodernity of religious spaces.

Graduate Student Forum

The Empowerment of 2nd Gen Zainichi Brazilian Immigrants through Non-Formal Learning

日時
Tuesday, 23 March 2021 | 12:15 - 13:00 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Rafaela Yoshiy Olivares Graduate Schhol of Education, The University of Tokyo
司会
  • Misako Nukaga Associate Professor, Graduate School of Education, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

As Brazilian community celebrates thirty years of immigration in Japan, the integration of young migrants to Japanese society has become a matter that requires more and more attention. Research data indicates that compared to students from Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese background, Brazilian students have the lowest educational achievement reaching only 60% of high school enrolment and 10% of Japanese university enrolment, not to mention the high dropout rate.

While Japanese government is reluctant to introduce a social integration policy to promote educational and occupational achievement of young migrants, a movement of resilience has emerged within the Brazilian community in recent years. That is to organize non-formal education activities aiming to provide a second chance for those who lost educational opportunities due to linguistic, cultural and institutional barriers.

In this research, she conducted semi-constructed interview with students and educators of three different types of ethnic non-formal education (ENFE) – distance higher-education, job training and language learning – to identify their role in the empowerment of migrant youth as well as their limitations.

Graduate Student Forum

Theorizing Social Inclusion of Immigrants and Persons with Disabilities through Urban/Peri-urban Agriculture: Implications from Canada and Japan

日時
Tuesday, 16 March 2021 | 12:15 - 13:00 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Akane Bessho Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo
司会
  • Kenneth McElwain Professor, Institute of Social Science, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

Stated as the underlining keyword of the Sustainable Development Goals, “social inclusion” has been increasingly recognized as a significant indicator for building socially just and sustainable cities today. While the definition and scope of social inclusion widely vary across nations, the concept emphasizes active participation of various marginalized populations into various arenas of society. Among them, there are two key groups that face multiple barriers for inclusion, particularly in workspace: immigrants and persons with disabilities. While the two groups traditionally were studied under separate disciplines, both are often positioned as permanent “recipients” of services and welfare by the receiving society, despite their skills and interests. In order to foster an inclusive society, there is an urgent need to develop spaces that ensure opportunities for individuals to play roles not only as “recipients,” but ones to contribute and support other members of the society.

In this study, we focus on urban/peri-urban agriculture as potential space for social inclusion of immigrants and persons with disabilities. For the first part of the presentation, she will discuss a multiethnic community farm in Toronto, Canada as a case study to explore the process of immigrants’ “role shift.” For the second part, she will present preliminary findings of the nationwide survey on organizations engaging in agricultural activities with persons with disabilities, identifying their motivations, scales, and current challenges.

Graduate Student Forum

Ruikatsu Activities in Tokyo: Exploring the Link between Crying and Mental Health

日時
Tuesday, 9 March 2021 | 12:15 - 13:00 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Carlota Solà Marsiñach School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford
司会
  • Sawako Shirahase TCJS Director
イベント概要

Originating in 2013, the number of ruikatsu activities in Tokyo has slowly but steadily proliferated during the past years, catering to companies and other institutions such as schools, clinics and community centres. Drawing from her yearlong fieldwork in Japan (2018-2019), my presentation will try two answer two main questions: what is ruikatsu? How and to what end is it used by individuals and institutions?

While ruikatsu is presented as an activity aiming to improve mental health by relieving stress through crying, she will argue that ruikatsu is in fact understood and used in two different ways. On the one hand, ruikatsu is used as a tool to relieve stress and thus be able to control oneself and endure in ‘normal daily life.’ On the other, ruikatsu is used to facilitate the expression of one’s honne in order to strengthen bonds with others and improve communication, be it in the personal sphere or in the workplace. In this way, in her presentation she will show how these two understandings and uses of ruikatsu reveal two competing views regarding emotional expression in Japan, and how these views are tied to broader medical and socio-political stances.

Graduate Student Forum

Baby Boom in Post-War Japan: Analysis with Individual Data

日時
Tuesday, 2 March 2021 | 12:15 - 13:00 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Erika Igarashi Graduate School of Economics, The University of Tokyo
司会
  • Kenneth McElwain Professor, Institute of Social Science, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

Between 1947 and 1949, Japan experienced a high fertility crude birth rate of over 32‰. This period is well known as the baby boom. There has been little empirical research on the conventional theory regarding the baby boom period in Japan due to a lack of data on the characteristics of pregnant women. Her study examines the high fertility in the postwar period using individual documents to identify the characteristics of the pregnant women. And she measures the relationship between pregnant women in the baby boom period and demobilized soldiers. She can verify the effectiveness of other factors contributing to the birth rate because the documents contain information about household income, land area, and family composition.

Graduate Student Forum

Transition to Broader-Based Politics: The Role of Suffrage Extension in Early 20th Century Japan

日時
Tuesday, 25 February 2021 | 12:15 - 13:00 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Shuhei Kainuma Graduate of School of Economics, The University of Tokyo
司会
  • Rieko Kage Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

Modern industrialisation typically coincides with gradual democratisation through enfranchisement and intra-elite competition between traditional landlords and emerging capitalists. Does the redistribution of the de jure political power through suffrage extension provoke the transition in intra-elite power structures reflected in political representation? This study exploits suffrage extension, induced by the wartime tax increase during the mid-1900s Japan, and its regional heterogeneity to estimate its impact on the occupational composition of the House of Representatives. Using a difference-in-differences framework, he shows that the expansion of electorate representation resulted in a significant decline in the seat share of farmers and landlords, originally a dominant occupational group in the House. By contrast, no other major occupational groups exhibit systematic compensational increases in their shares. In the historical context, the results suggest that suffrage expansion likely contributed to the diversification of House politics from the landlord-centred system.

Graduate Student Forum

Civic Groups and Japanese Local Assemblies’ Foreign Policies: A Panel Data Analysis of Resolutions Regarding North Korea (1993~2018)

日時
Tuesday, 16 February 2021 | 12:15 - 13:00 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Sohyung Lee Graduate School of xxx, The University of Tokyo
司会
  • Kenneth McElwain Professor, Institute of Social Science, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

Over the last few years, Japanese prefectural assemblies have issued a considerable number of resolutions concerning North Korea. However, those numbers vary throughout the whole Japanese 47 prefectural assemblies. What accounts for such variation in the number of resolutions concerning North Korea that each legislative body adopts? What are the main factors influencing the local assemblies to adopt bills concerning North Korea? In order to explain the varying numbers of written opinion and resolution adoption across prefectures, this research empirically studies the impact of civic groups on local government using original panel data on the whole Japanese 47 prefectures from 1993 to 2018.

The findings from this research suggest that grassroots activism does affect and facilitate the adoption of bills by local legislative bodies. Local civic groups can exert influence in policy-making. Although it is too soon to generalize this study’s findings beyond this specific area, it can still contribute to a better understanding of the influence of grassroots activism concerning Japan’s North Korean policy more broadly. Also, it demonstrates that in order to understand Japan’s North Korean policy, it is necessary to pay attention to local politics as well.

Graduate Student Forum

Dynamic Mechanisms and Heterogeneity of Urban Land Ownership

日時
Tuesday, 9 February 2021 | 12:15 - 13:00 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Risa Kobayashi Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo
司会
  • Daiji Kawaguchi Professor, Graduate School of Economics, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

She assumed that landowners’ land ownership behaviors were at the edge of urban development and changes in urban space and that modeling their behavioral norms could provide insights into urban planning.

She constructed a model of landowner preferences for land ownership patterns that take into account landowner heterogeneity and time preference. The model is validated using the old land registers used in modern times in Japan.

Graduate Student Forum

The Market and the Red Carpet: Value Transforming Platforms Social Networks, and the Transnational Film Industry Circuit in Asia and Beyond

日時
Tuesday, 2 February 2021 | 12:15 - 13:00 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Sten-Kristian Saluveer Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, The University of Tokyo
司会
  • Sawako Shirahase TCJS Director
イベント概要

The past decade has witnessed a dramatic transformation from national to transnational mode of how cinema is being produced, exhibited and consumed globally. This exponentially escalating process can be witnessed most clearly at three levels: the transnationalization and proliferation of the international film festival spectacle globally and in Asia, the increase in the number and prevalence of film markets and professional trade events, and lastly the flourishing of film co-productions pooling talent, finance and audiences across borders. Accompanying and driving the former three has been the growth of the size and the importance of the “international film industry circuit” of global film professionals that blends “local and the global, the city and the nation, and the space of the media with the place of the event in a network configuration” (DeValck 2007).

The PhD thesis draws by the the recent emergence of the discipline film festival studies, by providing a pioneering look behind the scenes of the international film festival circuit and the inner mechanics between the red carpet spectacle of the film festival, and the forces of capital and practice within the film and content markets that supply the festival with talent, content and finance. Specifically the work examines the historical, technological and cultural forces behind the transnationalization of the film festival and the market, the actors, networks and practices of the film industry circuit, the dichotomous relationship in transforming cultural capital to fiscal capital between the red carpet and the market, as well as cosmopolitan identity building activities in the global film community through the technology of assemblage of international co-productions.

Graduate Student Forum

Establishment Dynamics in Post-War Japan: Disappearing Startups and Shrinking Size

日時
Tuesday, 26 January 2021 | 12:15 - 13:00 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Zhu Xuanli Graduate School of Economics, The University of Tokyo
司会
  • Daiji Kawaguchi Professor, Graduate School of Economics, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

This paper documents three important but largely undocumented facts on the evolution of the establishment dynamism in post-war Japan. First, the entry rate continues to decrease since the late 1950s, along with a declined and stagnated exit rate. As a result, the population of business units keeps growing older. Second, the average size of establishments fall substantially in the 1960s and 1970s, especially in manufacturing and construction sectors. Third, the average life cycle growth of the establishments that enter in a typical year is low, and correlated with the cohort’s average size at birth. These facts indicates that the underlying reason for the low market dynamism in Japan is largely historical, and that understanding the changes in life cycle growth profile of establishments in early historical episodes are important for understanding the market dynamism today. We then use the canonical firm dynamics model to study the potential drivers behind these observed trends. We find that while the decline in labor force growth rate can account for most of the decline in entry rate, labor friction costs, either distorted or not, fail to explain the declined average establishment size and the retarded life cycle growth. Finally we argue that the evolution of the subcontracting in post-war Japan may contribute to the patterns in average establishment size and average life cycle growth that we observed.

Graduate Student Forum

Japan’s Path to Multiculturalism: What We Can See from Early Childhood Education and Care Centers

日時
Tuesday, 19 January 2021 | 12:15 - 13:00 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Yuki Nagae Graduate School of Education, The University of Tokyo
司会
  • Kenneth McElwain Professor, Institute of Social Science, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

This study looks at one Japanese preschool in an area that has historically been home to people from diverse socio-cultural backgrounds. Using children’s names as a key point of inquiry, it examines how people interpret “culture” and attempt “co-exis-tence” in their daily lives. There are two reasons I consider preschools. First, preschools are community centers that build relationships with local residents through child-raising. Second, preschools are institutions which provide early-childhood educa-tion and childcare to develop children’s social skills.

Graduate Student Forum

Quiet Acquisition: The Politics of Justification in Japan’s Military Capability Trajectory

日時
Tuesday, 12 January 2021 | 12:15 - 13:00 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Deirdre Martin The University of California, Berkeley
司会
  • Rieko Kage Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

What explains variation in acquisition strategies advanced industrialized states adopt when attempting to develop their security capacity? States’ defense programs vary widely; patterns of acquisition often vary and rarely exclusively reflect pressing security threats. Furthermore, most developed industrial democracies face significant political and budgetary constraints when attempting to build up their defense capabilities; while they are usually able to develop anything they want, they are unlikely to be able to develop everything that they want. States’ security policy development patterns, therefore, represent the result of strategic choices, have important implications for states’ international interactions and relationships, and provide clues regarding domestic priorities, constraints, and intent.

Her dissertation addresses these strategic choices, asking why and under what conditions states like Japan with reliable security assurances from the United States sometimes purchase high-tech military capabilities from allies, sometimes eschew purchase in favor of domestic development, and sometimes pursue other strategies. In contrast with traditional explanations which tend to focus on either state actors motivated by security concerns or business actors seeking entry into profitable markets, she argues that Japanese acquisition decisions are the result of domestic political balancing between state and business actors. When these interests are aligned, acquisition trends tend to be relatively stable over time; however, some strategies, particularly development under license, indicate initially mismatched interests. Decision-makers are aware of and concerned about perceptions of indigenous development and will choose to postpone indigenization until capabilities become “justifiable” to the general public, either through changes in public understanding of the technology or through the introduction of a clear strategic threat. She tests these claims through close examination of Japanese acquisition of intelligence-gathering satellites, Patriot missile defense, radar technologies for Aegis Ashore, and maritime patrol aircraft.

Graduate Student Forum

Intrahousehold Property Ownership & Women’s Labor Market Behavior

日時
Tuesday, 1 December 2020 | 12:15 - 13:00 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Xinwei Dong Graduate School of Economics, The University of Tokyo
司会
  • Daiji Kawaguchi Professor, Graduate School of Economics, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

This study investigates the effect of intrahousehold property ownership change on married women’s labor market behaviors, using an exogenous institutional change in the marriage law in China.

Graduate Student Forum

Effect of Minimum Wages on Formal and Informal Employment in Japan & Thailand

日時
Tuesday, 17 November 2020 | 12:15 - 13:00 (JST)
会場
Zoom Meeting
言語
English
登壇者
  • Saisawat Samutpradit Graduate School of Economics, The University of Tokyo
司会
  • Daiji Kawaguchi Professor, Graduate School of Economics, The University of Tokyo
イベント概要

When there is a sector not covered by the minimum wage law, the two-sector model predicts that minimum wage increase pushes workers from formal to informal employment. Using Thai data from 2010 to 2015, during which the country experienced an irregular increase in minimum wages of about 60 percent, I found no impact on overall employment but an employment reduction in the sector covered by the minimum wage legislation and an increase in the size of the uncovered sector. Estimates on wage showed minimum wages increased wage in the covered sector but not in the uncovered sector. The results can be generalized to other countries. Although Japan had a much smaller uncovered sector of approximately 10 percent of total employment, an increase in minimum wages could displace workers from regular employment to self-employment or family business.