Temple ICAS Lectures in November

Robert Dujarric Announcement
Location
Japan
Subject Fields
Asian History / Studies, Asian American History / Studies, British History / Studies, Japanese History / Studies, Nationalism History / Studies

Greetings: 

We are pleased to share upcoming ICAS lectures at Temple University, Japan Campus in Tokyo. ICAS evening lectures are free and open to the public, and held in English unless otherwise specified. Please feel free to share, and join us with colleagues and friends. For those not familiar with ICAS, we invite you to visit the ICAS page on the TUJ website: http://www.tuj.ac.jp/icas

A Brexit Update Three Years After the Referendum

Date: Tuesday, November 12, 2019
Time: 7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. (doors open at 6:30 p.m.)
Venue: Temple University, Japan Campus, 1F Parliament
            1-14-29 Taishido, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo (see access map here.) 
Panelists: 
Robin Harding, Tokyo Bureau Chief for the Financial Times
David McNeill, Journalist with The Irish Times and The Economist
Marion Van Renterghem, Journalist with L’Express and The Guardian
Moderator:  Tina Burrett, Associate Professor of Political Science at the Faculty of Liberal Arts, Sophia University
RSVP: icas@tuj.temple.edu
* RSVP is encouraged, but not required.  

Overview:
For more than three years since the June 2016 referendum, UK politics have been engulfed 24/7 by Brexit. Our panel will take stock of recent events and explain the key issues to those who have an interest in Brexit and European affairs and wish to better understand the current situation.

Panelists:
Tina Burrett is ICAS Adjunct Fellow and Associate Professor of Political Science at the Faculty of Liberal Arts, Sophia University, Japan, where she teaches courses on European Politics, Propaganda and Political Leadership. She has worked in the British, European and Japanese parliaments. Her recent publications include “Russian State Television Coverage of the 2016 US Presidential Election”, Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization and Press Freedom in Contemporary Asia (Routledge 2019, with Jeff Kingston).

David McNeill writes for The Economist and The Irish Times and was formerly with The Chronicle of Higher Education and The Independent. He also teaches media literacy at Sophia and Hosei universities and in a previous life was a full-time academic in the United Kingdom. He has been an active member of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan for over 15 years and is currently co-chair of the club’s professional activities committee. He co-authored the 2012 collection of survivor’s stories, Strong in the Rain: Surviving Japan’s Earthquake, Tsunami and Fukushima Nuclear Disaster.

Robin Harding is Tokyo Bureau Chief for the Financial Times, covering the Japanese economy, politics and foreign relations. He was previously based in Washington DC, where he covered all aspects of the US and international economy, from the Federal Reserve to the IMF.
Robin was born in Durham, in the north of England, and has degrees in economics from the University of Cambridge and Hitotsubashi University. Before becoming a journalist he worked in banking, asset management and public policy research.

Marion Van Renterghem is a journalist and and writer. For 30 years, she worked for the French daily Le Monde, mainly as a reporter-at-large. She received numerous journalism awards, including the Prix Albert-Londres. Today, she writes for French and British newspapers (L’Express, Big Time, The New European, The Guardian) and is a regular guest on radio and TV news shows. She authored a biography of German Chancellor Angela Merkel (for which she was awarded the Prix Simone-Veil) in 2017 and a European autobiography: Mon Europe, Je t’aime moi non plus, in 2019. Her latest book, is a conversation with Valérie Pécresse, President of the Île-de-France region.
* She will join via a video conference.

The Politics of Religion, Nationalism, and Identity in Asia

Date: Tuesday, November 19, 2019
Time: 7:30 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. (doors open at 6:30 p.m.)
Venue: Temple University, Japan Campus, 1F Parliament
            1-14-29 Taishido, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo (see access map here.) 
Speaker: Jeff Kingston, Professor of History and Director of Asian Studies at Temple University Japan Campus
Moderator:  Robert Dujarric, ICAS Director
RSVP: icas@tuj.temple.edu
* RSVP is encouraged, but not required.  

Overview:
Please join us for a conversation between the author and Robert Dujarric with a Q&A session on The Politics of Religion, Nationalism, and Identity in Asia (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019).

This comprehensive book provides a comparative analysis of religious nationalism in contemporary, globalized Asia. Exploring the nexus of religion, identity, and nationalism, Jeff Kingston assesses similarities and differences across the region, focusing on how religious sentiments influence how people embrace nationalism and with what consequences.

Who could have imagined Buddhist monks inciting violence and intolerance or setting themselves on fire? Or pious vigilantes beheading atheist bloggers? Or clerics defeating and jailing powerful politicians on blasphemy allegations? And, what explains why one million Uighur Muslims are locked up in China? Examining the causes and consequences of these varied phenomena and what they portend, Kingston casts a sobering light on the prospects of the Asian Century.

Speaker:
Jeff Kingston is Professor of History and Director of Asian Studies at Temple University Japan Campus. He is most recently the author of The Politics of Religion, Nationalism, and Identity in Asia (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019) and Japan (Polity Press 2019). He also edited Press Freedom in Contemporary Japan (Routledge 2017), Nationalisms in Asia Reconsidered (2016), Critical Issues in Contemporary Japan (2014) and Natural Disaster and Nuclear Crisis (2012), and authored Nationalism in Asia: A History Since 1945 (2017). 

Night in the American Village: Women in the Shadow of the U.S. Military Bases in Okinawa

Date: Monday, November 25, 2019
Time: 7:00 p.m. - 8:30 p.m. (doors open at 6:30 p.m.)
Venue: Temple University, Japan Campus, 1F Parliament
            1-14-29 Taishido, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo (see access map here.) 
Speaker: Akemi Johnson, Author of Night in the American Village: Women in the Shadow of the U.S. Military Bases in Okinawa
Moderator:  Mariko Nagai, Professor and Director of Research at Temple University, Japan Campus
RSVP: icas@tuj.temple.edu
* RSVP is encouraged, but not required.  

Overview:
The stories we hear from Okinawa are often about tragic crimes and anti-base protests. But what is it really like to live around the many U.S. military bases on this southern island?

Akemi Johnson will read from and discuss her new book, Night in the American Village: Women in the Shadow of the U.S. Military Bases in Okinawa, which explores the complex physical and cultural spaces surrounding the American bases in Okinawa. She’ll touch on the history since WWII and the many ways Okinawans interact with the U.S. military presence–including resistance, cultural exchange, and identity formation.

Speaker:
Akemi Johnson is the author of Night in the American Village: Women in the Shadow of the U.S. Military Bases in Okinawa. A former Fulbright scholar in Okinawa, she has written about the island for The Nation, Travel + Leisure, Anthony Bourdain’s Explore Parts Unknown, and other publications. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Brown University, she lives in Northern California.

“Invisible” Child Poverty in Japan

Date: Wednesday, November 27, 2019
Time: 7:00 p.m. - 8:30 p.m. (doors open at 6:30 p.m.)
Venue: Temple University, Japan Campus, 1F Parliament
            1-14-29 Taishido, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo (see access map here.) 
Speaker: Aya Abe, Professor, Social Policy, Tokyo Metropolitan University
RSVP: icas@tuj.temple.edu
* RSVP is encouraged, but not required.  

Overview:
Child poverty is a serious social problem in many developed nations, including Japan. Contrary to common perception, Japan’s child poverty rate is not low. It is 13.9% (2015 value, OECD Stat), indicating one out of seven children in Japan lives in poor households. This rate is higher than the U.K.(11.2%), Germany (11.2%), France (11.3%) and most of European countries, even though it is lower than Korea (16%), Canada (17.1%) and the U.S. (20.2%). However, for a long time since 1960s, Japanese government and the society in general was not aware of this problem and it is only after 2009 that “child poverty” became a recognized social issue. In 2013, the Law to Promote Measures against Child Poverty, the first law in Japan which has directly addressed child poverty.

The reason that Japanese society and the government was not aware of this social issue for decades not that there was not child poverty in Japan. In 1985, the child poverty rate was already higher than 10%. The problem was that, unlike in many countries, Japanese child poverty did not manifest visibly, such as in rising adolescent crime rate and undesirable behaviors. For this reason, Japan’s poverty is sometimes called “invisible poverty”.

Recently, the effects of this “invisible poverty” on children have increasingly become apparent with the use of social surveys. The talk will illustrate just how bad are child poverty problem in Japan and how it is affecting children, using recently conducted social surveys on children in Tokyo.

Speaker:
Aya Abe holds a Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. After working at a field office of the United Nations in India and a Japanese aid agency, she has turned her attention to domestic social policy in Japan and took a position in the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research in 1999, which is a research arm of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. She has participated and led many research projects on poverty and inequality in Japan and has published numerous books and articles on poverty issues in Japan. Her 2008 book entitled Child Poverty: Re-examining Japan’s Inequality is widely acclaimed to be the first book in Japan which focuses on child poverty in the country. She serves on numerous committees of national and local government on poverty and social assistance issues. In 2015, she left her previous position to take up a professorship at the Tokyo Metropolitan University. In the same year, she established the Center for Research on Child and Adolescent Poverty at the University.

Contact Information

Robert Dujarric
Director, Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies
Temple University Japan Campus

Contact Email
icas@tuj.temple.edu