How have intersecting legacies of colonialism and militarization combined with recent forces of globalization to produce new kinds of social identities and movements for political change? How do activists in these social movements contest hegemonic national identities in favor of a multicultural Japan or a global human rights discourse? How do legacies of Japanese colonialism animate current systems of globalization?

The first round table, entitled "Identity Politics and its Social Movements" will bring together a group of scholars examining current identity politics of "ethnic minorities" such as Ainu, Burakumin, Okinawans, and Zainichi (resident Koreans), many of whom are affected by the legacies of colonialism.

The second round table, "Gender, Colonialism, and Militarism in Japan and Okinawa" will focus on groups affected by continuing militarism and globalization such as sex workers, children born of military personnel and those organizing against military occupation and its attendant gendered violence. The invited speakers for this round table are the Okinawan writer, journalist and anti-military activist--Chinin Ushii, Margo Okazawa-Rey, co-founder of the US-East Asian-Puerto Rico Women's Net Work Against US Militarism, and Ueno Chizuko, the renown and highly influential feminist scholar. Japanese Studies Postdoctoral Fellows Michele Mason and Setsu Shigematsu will participate and act as facilitators for this round table.

Symposium Schedule:

9:00 am ~ Opening Comments by Workshop Organizers

9:30 - 11:00 ~ Roundtable One:

Global Human Rights, Identity Politics and Social Movements

Aiuchi, Toshikazu (Otaru University of Commerce)

Befu, Harumi (Stanford University)

Davis, John (Michigan State University)

Mushanokoji, Kinhide (Osaka University of Economics and Law)

Tsutsui, Kiyoteru (facilitator)(Stanford University/Stony Brook University)

15 minute Break

12:30~ Open discussion with all workshop participants facilitated by Kiyo Tsutsui

12:30 - 2:00 ~ Lunch break (buffet lunch)

2:00 - 3:30 ~ Roundtable Two:

Gender, Colonialism and Militarism in Okinawa and Japan

Chinin, Ushii (Okinawan public intellectual, writer and journalist)

Miho Kim (to be confirmed)

Okazawa-Rey, Margo (Professor Emerita, San Francisco State University and

co-founder East Asia-US-Puerto Rico - Women's Network Against Militarism)

Ueno, Chizuko (Tokyo University)

Mason, Michele (Facilitator)(Stanford University)

Shigematsu, Setsu (Facilitator)(Stanford University)

15 minute Break

3:45 - 5:00 ~ Open discussion with all workshop participants facilitated by Michele Mason and Setsu Shigematsu

5:00 pm ~ Closing Comments by workshop organizers

Co-Sponsored by the Stanford Society of Fellows in Japanese Studies and the Center

for East Asian Studies

This talk addresses a set of intimately intertwined contradictions that characterize military-societal relations in present-day Japan: the contradiction between Article 9 of Japan's constitution, which forbids a standing army and the existence of its armed forces; the contradiction between the civilian prohibition of violence and the military's training for and potential demand of violent acts; and the dilemma of representing a profession that must negotiate between societal mores and the demands associated with military service. More specifically, Professor Frühstück will untangle the Self-Defense Forces' public relations strategies, ranging from comics to live firing exercises. She argues that these strategies are deeply embedded in Japanese culture and affecy various segments of the Japanese public in radically different ways.

Sabine Frühstück focuses her research on the study of modern and contemporary Japanese culture and society include problems of power and knowledge, sexualities and genders, and military-societal relations. Frühstück is currently completing a book on military-societal relations in modern and present-day Japan, Avant-garde: The Army of the Future. Her book, Colonizing Sex: Sexology and Social Control in Modern Japan, is a history of sexual knowledge in Japan and the different uses made of that knowledge. Based on a wide variety of sources including military data on soldiers' health, sex education treatises for youth, and pronatalist and expansionist propaganda that fought frigidity in women and impotence in men, the book analyzes the techniques at work in conflicts and negotiations that aimed at the creation of a normative sexuality. Frühstück has co-edited Neue Geschichten der Sexualität: Beispiele aus Ostasien and Zentraleuropa 1700-2000 and The Culture of Japan as Seen Through Its Leisure.

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.

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."

Michele Mason will discuss her work that examines competing portrayals of "manliness" and "manhood" set in or associated with Hokkaido during the Meiji period. Focusing on representations of the tondenhei farming militia, nature and the colonial project and the shûjikan prison system in Hokkaido, she argues that powerful rhetorical modes deployed in the appropriation of the island played a crucial role in the construction of imperial ideology, the modern military, Japanese subjects and national identity. Her project reconsiders Hokkaido's ambivalent colonial status and its naturalized yet marginal position in the nation, as well as highlights the significance of gender, and specifically masculinity, in shaping modern Japan.

Michele Mason is a postdoctoral fellow in Japanese studies at FSI. Currently she is investigating little known stories about Hokkaido by Kôda Rohan, Hoshino Tenchi, Tayama Katai in addition to canonized works such as Kunikida Doppo's Meat and Potatoes. She received a B.A. in Linguistics and Japanese from the University of Oregon (Eugene), an M.A. in modern Japanese literature from the University of California, Los Angeles and a Ph.D. in modern Japanese literature with an emphasis on cultural studies from the University of California, Irvine.

Japan Brown Bag Series

Co-hosted with the Center for East Asian Studies and the Stanford Society of Fellows in Japanese Studies. A light lunch will be served.