2021 Sections

Theme: Human mobilities, demographic change and post-growth societies
Section convenors: Adrian Favell and Susanne Klien
Keywords: Post-growth, sustainability, social-spatial polarization, political ecology, urban/rural inequalities, mobilities and migration, transnationalism

This section will offer as always a welcoming reception to a wide range of interdisciplinary and methodologically pluralist researchers in urban, regional and environmental studies focused on Japan in a regional, global and planetary context. We are particularly interested in theoretical and empirical innovations which address the connections between human mobilities, demographic change and spatial polarisation in post-growth Japan as one of the fastest ageing and shrinking societies in the world. Such rapid dwindling of the population and demographic shifts in a post-growth society have increasingly been perceived as something that could lead to a comprehensive paradigm shift in terms of lifestyle, work and social relations, while also leading to new inequalities and pressures towards internal migration and immigration.

We encourage scholars from a wide range of disciplines including anthropology, human geography, planning, architecture, sociology and demography to contextualize their research within these themes. We have a particular interest in work that addresses the ‘mobility turn’ and ‘new mobilities paradigm’ that emerged in the social sciences in the 2000s (Sheller and Urry 2006). How well do widespread debates about global ‘flows’ and ‘scapes’ (Appadurai 1996), ‘liquid modernity’ (Bauman 2007), deterritorialisation and transnationalism (Glick Schiller and Salazar 2013), or rethinking ‘scale’ amidst ‘total urbanisation’ (Brenner 2019), help us understand specific aspects of urban, rural and demographic change in contemporary Japan?

In our section call for the 2021 EAJS conference, we invite panels as well as paper submissions that address urban, regional and environmental topics in general, but particularly welcome papers that specifically explore any of the following themes:

• Dynamics of demographic, urban and rural change in a post-growth context
• Post-growth urbanisation and the built environment
• Transnationalism and the diversification of urban and rural environments
• Spatial negotiations typical of post-growth societies, such as new forms of living, working and leisure, including post-familial forms of life
• Social imaginaries of space and place, and the quest for subjective well-being
• Nomadic notions of sense of belonging and home in contemporary Japan
• Gender, age and mobility
• Neoliberalism, precarity and inequalities in post-growth urbanity/rurality

Please note, however, that proposals of panels and papers that fall outside of these themes are very welcome and will be considered fully and equally. Decisions about acceptance will be based on academic merit after a thorough review process.

Theme: Media: Extension, Contraction, Translation
Section convenors: Björn-Ole Kamm and Rachael Hutchinson
‘Japanese media’ is in flux: we see the extension of Japanese media into new parts of the world, while its hegemony in other areas shrinks. The extension and contraction of media necessitates multiple translations. While questioning how to translate Japanese language media and materials, we also grapple with systemic ‘translations’ (Callon and Latour 1992) between technologies, platforms, and markets.

Have we seen ‘the end of Japanese cinema’ (Zahlten 2017), and the rise of ‘the platform economy’ (Steinberg 2019)? These issues are increasingly approached not only through Anglo-European theoretical frameworks, but through the wealth of Japanese language media and film theory now being ‘rediscovered’ (Gerow and Nornes, 2018).

Intimately linked, the phenomena we study as well as the field of Japanese Media Studies appear to be expanding and contracting in new ways. We invite proposals for individual papers and organized panels related to media in Japan and Japanese media more broadly defined, which speak to the keywords: Extension, Contraction, and Translation.

However, proposals of panels and papers that fall outside of these themes are very welcome and will be considered fully and equally. Decisions about acceptance will be based on academic merit after a thorough review process.

Theme: The political and social economy of Japanese global production organizations in the 21st century
Section convenors: Karen Shire and Harald Conrad
The development of Japanese global production organizations over the past 25 years has proceeded in fits and starts, moving from the “hollowing out” of Japanese manufacturing in the 1980s, to retractions of investments during long 1990s economic downturn, through to “make where you buy” strategies in emerging regional markets, and the new post 3/11 awareness of geological risks to domestic production organizations. Relatively new developments involve how labor mobility, enabled by changes to immigration control addressing domestic labor shortages, and capital mobility, driven by economic partnership agreements, are increasingly shaping labor supply and more integrated human resource management strategies. Japan’s export-led economic growth is no longer thinkable without a strategy of global production.

Indicators include Japan’s current status as the nation with the largest FDI outflows, both overall and in equity capital among OECD countries (also greater than China). The Japanese economy, still the third largest in the world, has silently become one of the most internationalized economies in the world. Recent changes to immigration controls, which for the first-time open avenues for settlement migration of low wage workers, suggest that the changes are unfolding at home, as well as in the overseas investment activities of Japanese multinational corporations.

Yet a number of factors point to Japan’s reluctance to embrace its global production role. Japanese remains the language of many overseas affiliates, most migrants are still expected to return home after labour contracts expire, slow progress in promoting women’s economic leadership and the diversity of top managerial positions depict Japan as a rather unmodern economic power, while economic globalization is seen as a necessary evil, rather than a brilliant business opportunity by many of its leading executives, who view rotations abroad mainly as a career step back home rather than in an international business arena. The Japanese economy has certainly internationalized, if capital and labour mobility are considered, but not transnationalized, in the sense of developing a less nationalistic and more cosmopolitan business ethos.

Japan’s reluctant path into the global economy raises a number of questions about its ability to establish stable global production networks. None of these developments are new. Already in the 1980s, Japan emerged as the largest foreign investor in the world. And at least since the triple disaster in 2011, the internationalization of the Japanese economy has become irreversible. Internationalization is driven by economic concerns, but non-economic factors also play a strong role, such as the impact demographic transformations on declining labour supply at home, the failure to modernize gender relations limiting the expansion of its international executive class, and by xenophobia at home, which continues to view even skilled migrant labour as guest workers rather than as industrial citizens. A review of current policies and practices raises a number of important questions. What role are economic partnership agreements playing in establishing more stable global production organizations? With Chinese and South Korean capital investing in many of the same locations, how is intra-regional competition over global production networks affecting Japan? What are the regional dimensions of global production organizations? What is the future of Japanese investments in China? How may we assess recent trade policies with South and Southeast Asian countries? Will changes in immigration controls diversify the executive ranks of Japanese transnational corporations? Is the Japanese corporate and financial elite part of the emerging global capitalist class? In broader historical terms, how is the progressive internationalization of the Japanese economy since the 1980s tied to longer-term policies of development aid, or even earlier histories of international economic relations and Japanese imperialism?

As part of the Economics, Business and Political Economy Section, we particularly welcome papers which address these and similar issues on the internationalization and transnationalization of the Japanese economy and business organizations. We welcome a diversity of views, depending on disciplinary specializations and methodological approaches. The following topics would be particularly welcome:

• Japanese global production organizations and value chains
• Corporate social responsibility in relation to global production organizations
• Impacts of economic partnership agreements on the internationalization and regionalization of the Japanese political economy
• Social consequences of capital mobility on countries of investment
• Integration and experiences of labour migrants in Japan, and impact of migration on migrant’s countries of origin
• Intra-regional competition over models and investment strategies, including China’s “one belt, one road” initiative, and ongoing ASEAN integration

While we hope to attract both panels and individual papers covering these and other aspects of the internationalization of the Japanese economy at home and abroad, proposals of papers and panels that fall outside of the theme are very welcome and will be considered fully and equally. Decisions about acceptance will be based on academic merit after a thorough review process.

Post-conference publication: We hope to publish selected papers and are already in contact with publishers and editors of refereed journals. This would mean that a revised version of the conference paper must be submitted soon after the conference for the double-blind review process. Those wishing to be considered for the post-conference publication should please submit not only an abstract by January 21, 2020 but also a full manuscript by July 31, 2020.

Theme: Re-defining Japan: Transnational, Comparative, and Regional Approaches to the History of the Archipelago
Section convenors: Aaron Moore and Noémi Godefroy
Throughout Japanese history the country’s borders have been shifting and porous, to the extent that they were meaningful to the people living within them at all. As knowledge of Ryukyuan, Ainu, Korean, Russian, and Chinese history has expanded within the long history of the archipelago, it has significantly destabilised methodological and theoretical approaches to the study of Japan that were once dominant. Furthermore, close studies of regional areas in East Asia remove major cities as areas of necessary examination, putting local history of Japan in closer conversation with local histories in other countries rather than Tokyo or Osaka. From the establishment of the ritsuryōsei to the expansion of the modern empire, it has become difficult to discuss Japan as a place separated from its internal marginalised communities and the people immediately outside of its borders.

Improvements in language training have resulted in scholars who no longer work solely in Japanese, but draw from a variety of languages and archives in order to do their work. Japanese historiography is no longer a product of bilateral knowledge production, between Japan and a scholar’s country of residence, but multinational communities engaging in synergistic work supported by large research councils. From science and technology studies to the examination of maritime history, the landscape of Japanese history has changed significantly when the boundaries of Japan were removed. We believe the internationalism in Japanese historiography is a unique part of the research landscape in Europe, but the consequences of the turn toward transnational, comparative, and regional studies of Japan have yet to be assessed.

However, proposals of panels and papers that fall outside of this theme are very welcome and will be considered fully and equally. Decisions about acceptance will be based on academic merit after a thorough review process.

We welcome proposals for panels and individual papers for the 16th Conference of the European Association for Japanese Studies.
Section convenors: Mark Teeuwen and Monika Schrimpf

Most of the section will be open for panels and papers on any aspect of religion in Japan, or Japanese religion in other contexts. In particular we welcome papers presenting new perspectives on established fields of research, or new historical sources and empirical data.

Part of the proceedings will be reserved for papers that address issues of the natural environment and/or climate as they are addressed by or have affected religious ideas and practices in Japan. We welcome papers on historical, modern, and contemporary aspects of this broad theme.

However, proposals of panels and papers that fall outside of these themes are very welcome and will be considered fully and equally. Decisions about acceptance will be based on academic merit after a thorough review process.

Theme: Nature.
Section convenors: Roman Paşca and Jan Gerrit Strala
This section covers all of Japan’s diverse intellectual landscape broadly, ranging from Shintoism, Confucianism, and Buddhist philosophy, through Rangaku and Kokukagu, to Meiji thought, the Kyoto school, modern academic philosophy and the history of knowledge.

As a theme for this section, we propose the subject of nature, which can be considered from many perspectives and approaches: Ontology of nature and of the human being, our relationship with the environment, the relationship between human beings and non-sentient beings, taxonomies of natural elements, translations of concepts of nature, responses to the current environmental crisis, environmental ethics, etc.

Please note that all proposals, including those that fall outside of the theme, are welcome and shall be considered fully and equally. It is not necessary to adjust your presentation to the theme in a very strict manner. We want to use the topic in a thought-provoking rather than a restrictive way. Please feel free to interpret the theme creatively. It is more important that you can give your presentation on a topic you are interested in than adjusting it to the general theme. All proposals will primarily be considered on the grounds of their originality, their relevance within the field, and methodological consistency. Papers that connect their topic to larger issues of intellectual history will be given priority. All papers must have a solid basis in the original Japanese sources. Decisions about acceptance will be based on academic merit after a thorough review process. We will consider both individual abstracts and panel proposals but will vet each paper in panels individually. A failure to be accepted as a panel may lead to proposals to present individually to some participants.

Japan under Abe: Legacy and opposition
Section convenors: Gregory Noble and Sebastian Maslow
Since recapturing power in 2012, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) under Shinzo Abe has won five consecutive national elections. With the increase in perceived security threats from China and North Korea, the decline of opposition parties and ‘progressive intellectuals,’ and the rise of new generations unconstrained by painful memories of World War II, the Abe government has systematically chipped away at the pillars of postwar pacifism, including restraints on collective security and exports of military technologies. A hegemonic LDP, it appears, has set Japan on track to becoming a ‘normal country’. Yet LDP support is thin: most Japanese say that they vote for the LDP only because the other parties are so unimpressive. Signs of opposition to LDP rule bubble up in areas ranging from constitutional revision and military bases in Okinawa to agricultural liberalization and quotas for female political representation.

The politics and international relations section encourages submissions assessing the Abe Kantei’s legacy in domestic politics and foreign relations, and exploring the extent to which opposition provides citizens opportunities for democratic choice and accountability. We encourage submissions focusing not only on acquisition of spy satellites or dispatch of troops abroad, but also examinations of the new policymaking process for national security, and shifting conceptions of alliance dynamics, international society, and the role of middle powers. We are particularly interested in panel proposals, but also welcome individual submissions on these and related subjects.

Proposals of panels and papers that fall outside of these two themes are also very welcome and will be considered fully and equally. Decisions about acceptance will be based on academic merit after a thorough review process.