Dr. Mario Oshima will argue that Tokugawa social status should be understood as a two-line system comprised by occupational statuses such as warriors (bushi) and nobles (kuge), and regional ones such as farmers (hyakusho) and merchants (chonin), rather than single line system of warrior-peasant-artisan-merchant. He will explain why the typical four story single line conception has prevailed. Finally, he will address how this two-line conception sheds light on some comparisons between the US and Japan in terms of the relation between the individual and the organization in society.

Co-sponsored by CEAS.

The profile of foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong has changed in significant ways since Hong Kong's reunification with the People's Republic of China in 1997, the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, and the SARS outbreak of 2003. Several changes have also appears, the most striking of which is the influx of about 90,000 Indonesian domestic workers and the relative decrease in the number of Filipinas. Another change is the tenor and scope of the workers' activism.

Drawing from recent migrant worker protests (including the anti-WTO protests of December 2005,) Dr. Constable considers the increasingly global and transnational aspects of foreign domestic worker activism and the increased breadth of their networks and affiliations, as well as the implications of such activism in relation to newly generated and displaced meanings of citizenship and human rights within and beyond the context of the self-ascribed "Asian World City" of Hong Kong.

Nicole Constable received her MA and PhD degrees from the University of California at Berkeley in 1989. She is a sociocultural anthropologist whose interests include the anthropology of work; ethnicity, nationalism, and history; gender, migration, and transnationalism; folklore; and ethnographic writing and power.

Her geographical areas of specialization are Hong Kong, China and the Philippines. She has conducted fieldwork in Hong Kong on constructions of Hakka Chinese Christian identity and on resistance and discipline among Filipina domestic workers.

Her current research involves Chinese and Filipino immigrants to the U.S. and U.S.-Asian correspondence marriages.

One of Japan's most effective leaders, Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto has guided some of the most important developments in modern Japanese history, from improving trade and security relations with the United States to implementing crucial deregulation policies and administrative reforms. The regulatory reforms enacted during his term as prime minister - in the areas of administration, fiscal and economic structure, social security, and education - remain the most important items on the current Japanese political agenda.

In his first-ever Stanford address, Prime Minister Hashimoto will consider the changes under way in Japan with the candor and insight that only a former head of state can offer. The return to prominence of Hashimoto's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) - after a September 2005 landslide victory - only increases the timeliness of his perspective.

Ryutaro Hashimoto is an experienced policy expert. He served two years as prime minister of Japan and thirteen terms in the House of Representatives. He has held a number of important cabinet posts, including minister of finance and minister of international trade and industry. As prime minister, Hashimoto tackled such pressing domestic issues as administrative reform and deregulation. He also made significant gains on the diplomatic front, and through summit meetings with U.S. President Bill Clinton, reinforced the bilateral security arrangements on which the post-Cold War Japan-U.S. alliance is founded. Since leaving office in 1998, Prime Minister Hashimoto has served as senior adviser to Prime Minister Koizumi, senior advisor for Administrative Reform Promotion at the LDP headquarters, and Minister of State for Administrative Reform.

Between 1870 and 1945, France and Germany fought each other in three bloody wars, each of which left bitter memories and lingering antagonisms in its wake. Bitter memories in turn fed the respective histories of the two neighboring nations, and these became integral features of French and German national identities throughout the first half of the twentieth century. How and when did this begin to change? Siegel will discuss the efforts of twentieth-century French and German historians and teachers to break the intractable cycle of warfare and memory, nationalism and history. Professor Siegel will explore the links between collective memory, scholastic history, and nationalism as well as the complexities of turning history into a tool of international reconciliation. She will explore whether the sequence of events towards reconciliation in France and Germany might be replicable in other environments, notably Asia, in the context of recent events that suggest a rising nationalism in Asia.

Dr. Mona Siegel joined the CSU - Sacramento history faculty in 2003. Her teaching and research interests include modern French history, the history of women and gender, history and memory, peace history, and the history of the world wars. Her current research projects include "The Disarmament of Hatred: History, Truth, and Franco-German Reconciliation from World War I to the Cold War."