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Stories of Kimchi and Zainichi Koreans in Japan

by

Society for East Asian Anthropology
Yoko Demelius
December 20, 2019

This piece is part of a SEAA column series on “Cultural Consumption and Performance in Asia.” They examine issues such as cultural curation, the uses of the past, material culture, power and market, as well as the enactment of lived experience.

Kimchi—fermented vegetables considered to be Korea’s national dish—is now highly popular in Japan. As the consumption of traditional Japanese pickles declined during the 1990s, the sale of kimchi increased until it became, from the 2000s, the most popular preserved vegetables on the Japanese market (Sankei Shimbun 2017). Still, many Zainichi Koreans—the multigenerational Korean minority in Japan—recall that such a commodification of “Koreanness” was once impossible to imagine. 

How do Zainichi Koreans understand Japanese consumers’ open embrace of kimchi in light of Japan’s reluctant social acceptance of its Korean minority population? Despite market-driven consumption’s shortcomings, the commercialization of ethnically symbolic artifacts can raise the general public’s awareness of and reduce skepticism toward a minority population. Analyzing kimchi’s gradual penetration of Japanese mainstream society within the juncture of “materiality” and “symbolism” (Henare, Holbraad, and Wastell 2007), this article explores the influence of material consumption on a commodity’s meanings over time. This discussion emerges from ethnographic data on Zainichi Koreans’s conceptualization of their identity, which I gathered in Japan’s Osaka and Hyogo Prefectures from 2017 to 2018. 

For her, sharing food, recipes, and especially kimchi, brings the abstract idea of “the Korean minority” into real flesh, taste, and mutual exchange between Korean and Japanese residents in their communities.

Kimchi used to symbolize marginalization for Zainichi Koreans in Japan. Originally known as “Korean pickles” (chōsenzuke), it was almost exclusively consumed in Japan among Korean migrants until the 1980s and was perceived by the Japanese as a taboo food (Lee 2002). Koreans who grew up in ghettos, which gradually developed from communal kitchens near factories and construction sites, remember their omonis (mothers) making and selling kimchi to neighbors who operated Korean barbecue pubs from their shacks. Japanese customers secretly consumed kimchi there well before it appeared on the mainstream market. 

Pre-Pacific War Korean migrants who arrived in Japan from the 1910s to the 1930s, as well as their offspring, strongly identified kimchi as the food of their homeland. In contrast, up until the 1990s, Japanese people saw kimchi as a food belonging to the “incomprehensible,” “unsanitary,” and “vulgar” world of migrants (Mizuno and Mun 2015). “Odoriferous” kimchi (Ku 2014) defined Japanese people’s stereotypical impression of ethnic Koreans. Mr. B., a novelist and a second-generation Korean in his 60s, recalled, “…throughout my childhood I was careful to leave last from school when going home. You know why? So the other guys wouldn’t see where I lived. The ghetto, the simple shed… and the smell of kimchi, they would have figured out who we were…” Until he came to terms with his insecurity about his ethnicity, Mr. B. used a Japanese alias to “pass” as Japanese. Still today, many Zainichi Koreans feel more comfortable using Japanese aliases in their daily lives to avoid discrimination and awkward social situations (Kwon and Kojima 2015). 

Zainichi Koreans’ cultural identification with kimchi has been closely associated with preserving their Koreanness. During Japanese colonial rule in Korea from 1910 to 1945, many Koreans arrived in Japan as forced laborers and others as voluntary immigrants who had lost property under the Japanese occupation. Consuming their homeland’s cuisine, including kimchi, provided a hint of normalcy for those who lived in dreadful conditions as colonial subjects and laborers. Communal kitchens, where women continuously produced kimchi, offered gathering spots for migrant workers. 

The image of kimchi as Korea’s comfort food, its accessibility, and a taste that many find enjoyable have created a “shared zone” of savory cuisine that brings together consumers of different backgrounds in Japan.

Segregated living quarters, communal kitchens in ghettos, and poor living conditions continued in most areas until the 1970s and 1980s when municipal public housing projects commenced to dissolve the ghettos. Some ghettos remained untouched until well into the 2000s, when kimchi and segregated neighborhoods continued to mark ethnic boundaries between Korean communities and the Japanese mainstream population. To Zainichi Koreans, omonis’ surviving kimchi recipes now symbolize Korean dignity, the perseverance of older generations, and the prosperity of future generations during the adversarial environment of pre- and postwar Japan (Wender 2000).

With an eye on kimchi’s recent rise in popularity in contemporary Japan, Zainichi Koreans often contemplate their marginalized status in a society with an overwhelmingly monoethnic national ideology (Oguma 2002). They speak of derogatory expressions associated with odoriferous kimchi that they used to hear from Japanese people. Despite multigenerational residence in Japan, many Zainichi Koreans have chosen not to obtain Japanese citizenship. They continue to face discrimination in employment, education, housing, social welfare, elderly care, pension funds, and political representation (Chapman 2008). They also feel torn between the Koreanness and Japaneseness that reside within them. 

A photo of people gathering at food stands where Korean women sell Korean food at an intercultural event.
On a sunny day, people gather at food stands where Korean women sell Korean rice cakes (topokki) and pancakes (chijimi) at a local intercultural event. Yoko Demelius

Yet intercultural events, in which kimchi plays an iconic role, are now helping to change this long-term discrimination. Kimchi has stimulated the Japanese public’s curiosity about other Korean dishes and more recently, for South Korean media products. Mr. B. is the committee head for an annual intercultural event that his municipality began to sponsor in the spirit of mutual support among foreign and Japanese residents following the Great Hanshin Earthquake in 1995. He commented, “As usual, the food stands are one of our main exhibitions… Food, dance and music are the base of our cultural exchange.” He believes that appreciating other cultures’ artifacts and food fosters new perspectives in the minds of event-goers and is convinced that the intercultural event is a small step toward bringing people of different backgrounds closer. A steady stream of Japanese volunteers has also supported the intercultural event, which some Zainichi Koreans have interpreted as a sign of their social acceptance by the Japanese mainstream population. Mr. B. feels that, thanks to the event and its fans, ordinary Japanese citizens have become more aware of Japan’s minority populations, and xenophobic sentiments toward foreign residents have declined.

Mrs. C., a Zainichi Korean political activist in her 50s, also believes that kimchi and the stories behind it can help ease deep-rooted discrimination against her people by the Japanese. She reflected,

I used to bring little nibbles to my children’s school’s PTA [parent-teacher association] gatherings. I was upfront. I always said, “I am a Korean.” It always worked for me. Who knows, there might have been people who disliked me. But food did wonders. “Wow, it’s so tasty, Mrs. C! How did you make it?” they would say… People started to ask me about the recipes, and I told them stories about my mother… It’s not just about kimchi… there are stories behind it. There are real people behind what I make. 

She now provides Korean cuisine cooking classes to Japanese people at public community centers. For her, sharing food, recipes, and especially kimchi, brings the abstract idea of “the Korean minority” into real flesh, taste, and mutual exchange between Korean and Japanese residents in their communities.

A photo of two Korean schoolgirls in traditional Korean costumes singing on an open-air stage at an intercultural event.
Two Korean schoolgirls in traditional Korean costumes (chima jeogori), sing on an open-air stage at a local intercultural event. Yoko Demelius

Kimchi’s status as a staple food in contemporary Japan has eased the public’s hesitance and skepticism toward Koreanness and the Korean minority. Some of my informants commented that if no kimchi were available to average consumers in Japan, the level of tolerance toward Zainichi Koreans would be much lower. The image of kimchi as Korea’s comfort food, its accessibility, and a taste that many find enjoyable have created a “shared zone” of savory cuisine that brings together consumers of different backgrounds in Japan. Although kimchi does not evoke the perseverance of Korean ethnic pride in Japanese consumers’ minds, Zainichi Koreans believe that kimchi is no longer a symbol of sociopolitical demarcation and recognize this shift as a sign of Japanese society’s gradual acceptance of Koreanness. 

Contemporary kimchi consumption in Japan does not challenge the public stance on Japan’s occupation of Korea, the distinction between North and South Korea, and, most of all, why and how Koreans are living in Japan. However, such consumption can serve as an entry point into these historical and political questions. Novels and films by Zainichi Koreans (e.g. Chong 2008; Fukazawa 2019) that raise historical and sociopolitical questions are also gaining increasing attention from the Japanese public. The grievances of history are a fraction of the reality that Zainichi Koreans would like the world to remember. They hope that the Japanese public will reflect nationally on its postwar situation in the near future (for example, on the traumatic effects inflicted by  Japan’s colonization of Korea) and will fully accept the Korean minority into Japanese society—as more than the originators of kimchi.

Yoko Demelius is a social anthropologist and a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Finland. She examines the tension between minorities’ ethnicity claims and the homogeneous national ideology in contemporary Japanese rhetoric, by exploring various forms of social platforms and cultural consumption. 

Please contact SEAA section news contributing editors Shuang Frost (shuanglu@fas.harvard.edu), Heidi Lam (heidi.lam@yale.edu), and Hanna Pickwell (hpickwell@uchicago.edu) with your essay ideas and comments.

Cite as: Demelius, Yoko. 2019. “Stories of Kimchi and Zainichi Koreans in Japan.” Anthropology News website, December 20, 2019. DOI: 10.1111/AN.1331

Copyright [2019] American Anthropological Association

Indigenous Survival Politics in the Promotion of a National Discourse

by

Society for East Asian Anthropology
Roslynn Ang
September 13, 2019

In January 2018, 10 members from an Ainu traditional performance group, Sapporo Upopo Hozonkai (Sapporo Upopo Preservation Society, hereafter SUH), traveled from Sapporo, the capital city of Hokkaido prefecture, to Honolulu in Hawai’i for a one-day performance at the Ala Moana Centerstage. This performance promoted Upopoy, a state-funded National Ainu Museum and Park (also known as Symbolic Space for Ethnic Harmony) due to open on April 24, 2020 in Hokkaido to coincide with the Tokyo Olympics. This performance in Hawai’i is an instance of the global tendencies of settler states occupying indigenous lands to appropriate native bodies and culture for its national discourse. It is also one among many utilized by SUH as a means for survival through a sustained platform for cultural praxis and for creating trans-indigenous ties with indigenous peoples experiencing similar forms of settler colonialism.

The Ainu lived in Hokkaido, the Kuril Islands, and Sakhalin before they were gradually colonized by the expanding Japanese empire from the nineteenth century onward. Post-1945 Japan had represented itself as a homogeneous nation with no ethnic minorities until 2008, when grassroots organizing with trans-indigenous movements compelled Japan to recognize the Ainu as indigenous. This was followed by a New Ainu Bill in 2019, which includes the planning and promotion of Upopoy. It seems that the Ainu are to play a large role in Japan’s shift to a multiethnic and global nation speaking the language of harmonious national coexistence as represented in the construction of Upopoy for global tourists.

Six women dressed in summer wear on a beach with trees, surfboards and other tourists in the background. Some are gazing at the sea while some are in various stages of taking photographs with their mobile phones. The setting sun lights up their faces.
SUH members enjoying a quick visit to Waikiki Beach on the day of their arrival. Roslynn Ang

During their two performances at the Ala Moana Centerstage, I noticed several moments of dissonance. During one such moment, Hatsumi, a member of SUH, tried to ask the audience how they felt about a particular performance, but the emcee paid her no heed. I learned that while he understood Japanese, he stuck to the script because he was only paid to promote Upopoy and not to translate for the performers.

The first session ended with aPoro Rimse (a round dance). I was surprised to find familiar faces among the audience members who volunteered to join in the dance. They belong to a separate Ainu contingent who are employed at Upopoy and were on a four-day tour to learn about Polynesian cultural performances and history at the Polynesian Cultural Center and the Bishop Museum. This participation with SUH was included as part of their itinerary. The second session’s Poro Rimse finale ended with a different set of volunteers: a group of Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) men from a Hula dance company. After the finale, they started an informal round of gift exchange and photo taking on the stage with SUH members, amid the gaze of lingering spectators. Finally, the SUH members and the Kānaka Maoli company concluded the day with dinner together at a nearby restaurant.

About thirteen men and women dressed in traditional embroidered dark blue robes form a circle on a wooden stage with the words "Ala Moana Centerstage" on the second floor overhang. The words are cut off and only "centerstage" can be seen. Some audience members are looking at the performance from the second floor of the mall.
SUH’s Poro Rimse dance with the volunteers from Upopoy. Roslynn Ang

Settler state appropriation and consumption

Settler states appropriate the indigenous into their national framework in order to extend a lack of precolonial history on indigenous territories, thus justifying its occupation. This appropriation sustains a consumption of harmony into the present and future without addressing historical violence and contemporary inequalities. In an analysis of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, Janice Forsyth calls the settler nation’s appropriation of indigenous culture for such global events an “illusion of inclusion”—a performative marketing move that does not redress unequal relations (2016).

Jennifer Adese (2016) connects this phenomenon to Jack D. Forbes’s “Wétiko psychosis” (2008), a psychological infection with symptoms that include the settler compulsion to consume all things indigenous. This cannibalistic compulsion seeks to absorb indigenous natives into settler nations in multifarious ways. For this specific ethnographic snippet, it eliminates the Ainu’s cultural sovereignty to communicate their performance. Their performance, in turn, was mediated by and incorporated into a settler-national narrative devoid of historical violence. Recall that Hatsumi had no control over her communications with the audience as the performance was mediated by an emcee who was not on SUH payroll. State institutions funded the performance to represent Japan’s multiethnic harmony for global consumption. This same performance of harmony and consumption of native culture is also discussed in Claudia Huang’s piece from this series.

Scholars’ and Ainu activists’ critique of the state-funded Upopoy echoes Forsyth’s critique— this is a settler nation’s marketing move that evades the issue of inequality (see Morris-Suzuki 2018). This was evident even in the project planning stage. Concentrated in the hands of state actors and a few powerful Ainu, there was limited feedback from the broader Ainu community.

Survival politics in/against the settler-national narrative

The histories of the Japanese settler state and the Ainu are complex. The Ainu survived more than a century of forced assimilation and discrimination. Foreign contagions, frontier violence, forced labor, and forced relocation decreased the indigenous population (Walker 2001). Consequently, a discourse of the Ainu as “dying natives” arose to align with the legitimacy of settler occupation on native lands and resonated with the manifest destiny so often used to validate the mantra of “Kill the Indian (or Ainu in this case) and save the man” across settler states. SUH’s performance, among others, is a statement of their refusal to disappear in spite of this history of settler colonial elimination.

In general, urban Ainu are occupied with primary professions such as office workers, laborers, homemakers, and school-goers. SUH members live in urban Sapporo and most of them do not perform full time as professionals. They are mostly middle-aged women freed from work and childcare, retired men, and school-aged children. Their performances are largely supported by state-funded institutions (for example, the Foundation for Ainu Culture), that create a space for them to practice their culture and sustain community relations.

The Japanese state had tried and is still trying to depoliticize the Ainu community’s movements with a perfunctory recognition of a valorized Ainu culture to pacify them (see Povinelli 2002 for parallels in Australia’s case). While SUH depends on state funding for performances, they simultaneously utilize the trans-indigenous spaces provided by the settler state for their own ends. I am not discounting the fact that Ainu performance groups remain severely hampered by the problematic concepts of authenticity, settler nationalism, and everyday racism. However, their continued survival, encapsulated in SUH’s performance at the Ala Moana Centerstage and in the recognition of their indigenous status in Japan, marks an ongoing process in undermining the boundaries of settler race and nationhood. Their survival politics depends on settler state benevolence, even as they create trans-indigenous ties beyond the narrative of the settler state. As such, with the Ainu gaining more global visibility, there is an increasing need to rethink the meaning of “Japan.”

The ten women from the performance group poses on the stage, in front of a poster with the words "Hokkaido Ainu Culture Fest." Words in smaller fonts, with parts blocked by the standing performers, read "Opening of Symbolic Space for Ethnic Harmony, Shiraoi Town, Hokkaido, April 24, 2020." The back row has four women standing and two kneeling on the right, and the front row has four women kneeling. They are dressed in dark blue robes embroidered in colorful threads and cloths.
SUH performers on the Ala Moana Centerstage, with the banner for Upopoy. Roslynn Ang

Trans-indigenous ties beyond the limits of national discourse

Settler colonialism may infect settlers with Forbes’s Wétiko psychosis to consume all things native, but it also connects indigenous peoples in a common experience of loss, including the loss of territorial sovereignty, cultural sovereignty, history, family, and life. The Ainu were involved in numerous trans-indigenous exchanges well before their visit to Hawai’i. During the 2008 G8 summit in Hokkaido, Ainu activists and their allies invited indigenous peoples from the G8 settler nations to draft a declaration pressuring Japan to recognize the Ainu as indigenous (Lewallen 2008). Kapi‘olani Community College in Honolulu hosted the 2014 World Indigenous Peoples’ Conference on Education (WIPCE), which was attended by Ainu from Hokkaido and Tokyo. This was followed by a WIPCE report in 2015, delivered by several Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) guests in Sapporo. Despite a settler nation discourse of harmonious multiethnicity and SUH’s dependence on state funding, SUH’s performance in Ala Moana Centerstage sustains a non-settler, trans-indigenous space for exchange with the Kānaka Maoli. This trans-indigenous network is also a potential space for future activism and critical discourse on settler states.

The co-option of an indigenous minority for a national project may be problematic. However, the process sometimes aligns with the aims of the Ainu performance groups to reinforce their existence in contemporary Japan while strengthening trans-indigenous ties with other indigenous peoples, including the Kānaka Maoli in this case. The objectives of the Japanese settler state and the Ainu may not be entirely antagonistic, with the former desiring a performance of national harmony and the latter emphasizing cultural survival, communal relations, and trans-indigenous ties. As part of the larger process of cultural survival and communal continuity, SUH’s performances nevertheless exhibit the potential to reconfigure settler legitimacy as the Ainu gain more global traction in trans-indigenous networks.

Roslynn Ang works with the Sapporo Upopo Hozonkai, an Ainu performance group registered under UNESCO Intangible Heritage of Japan. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow in global perspectives in society at New York University Shanghai. Her research interests include performance, decolonization, settler colonial studies, representations of race and nation, and Japan’s colonial history with East Asia and the West.

Please contact Shuang Frost (shuanglu@fas.harvard.edu) and Heidi Lam (heidi.lam@yale.edu) with your essay ideas and comments for the SEAA section news column.

Cite as: Ang, Roslynn. 2019. “Indigenous Survival Politics in the Promotion of a National Discourse.” Anthropology News website, September 13, 2019. DOI: 10.1111/AN.1260

Copyright [2019] American Anthropological Association

Performance, Sign Language, and Deaf Identity in Japan

by

Society of East Asian Anthropology
Steven C. Fedorowicz
June 5, 2019


Editors’ Note: This piece is part of a SEAA column themed series “Cultural Consumption and Performance in Asia.” The articles highlight different aspects of consumption and performance in a range of Asian regions. They examine issues such as cultural curation, the uses of the past, material culture, power and market, as well as the enactment of lived experience.

Early in my research, Deaf people told me repeatedly that Japanese Sign Language (JSL) is the most valued aspect of Deaf culture and the most reliable means of communication and information-sharing. Performance genres using JSL, such as film, theater, comedy, dance, pantomime and puppet shows, are important components of Deaf culture that illustrate Deaf social issues and provide enjoyable and understandable entertainment. Through 20 years of research experience in Japan, I realized that JSL itself can also be viewed as a performance genre found in the everyday lives of Deaf people, considering the relationship between their presentations of JSL and shared Deaf identity through the consumption of information and values. Elaborating on the ideas discussed in Erving Goffman’s Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Bohannan (1992) writes of how people accept, create, renew and reject culture through performance. I discuss in this essay these performances involving JSL, based on fieldwork conducted at workshops held by the Japanese Sign Language Atelier in Hirakata city, Osaka prefecture—a sign language circle (or club) that use storytelling techniques to teach JSL and ultimately Deaf identity. I show how culturally Deaf people are consumed with rejecting the “small-d deaf” orientations placed on them by society and striving to adapt their social roles to match their ideal “capital-D Deaf” identity.

Not all deaf people are Deaf

The deaf/Deaf terms and differentiation have been used within deaf and sign language studies in the United States since the 1980s, if not earlier. Deaf activists in Japan recently began using these English terms to describe their situation. “Small-d deaf” refers to hearing loss; deafness is seen as a disability requiring medical assistance and social welfare support to aid and/or rehabilitate the individual. In this context, oral teaching methods are stressed to help deaf individuals better communicate within the hegemonic hearing society. Such methods originated from the Second International Congress on Education of the Deaf in Milan, Italy in 1880, where a resolution was passed banning the use of sign language in deaf schools. These policies were quickly adopted by the United States and many European countries, and later by Japan in 1920. The ban on sign language in the classroom, mandated by the Japanese Ministry of Education, remained in effect until 1993.


Members of Japanese Sign Language Atelier practice to improve their performance of JSL and create greater Deaf identity. Steven C. Fedorowicz

“Capital-D Deaf,” in contrast, refers to a certain cultural belonging rather than hearing loss or absence. The term Deaf was created in defiance of the deficit laden “deaf and dumb” expression, with the capital “D” serving as an empowering device that emphasizes the group identity. Culturally Deaf people view themselves as a linguistic minority that uses a visually based language. Often working together in social movements (Honna and Kato 1995), Deaf people fight against discrimination and prejudice, spread awareness of JSL, and empower themselves to make their own decisions about education, language and economic issues. Such movements can be seen as promoting an ideology of cultural independence from hearing society, an example of Benedict Anderson’s (1983) “imagined community” based on a shared identity.

Sign language in Japan

Two forms of sign language are currently used in Japan: JSL and Signed Japanese. Deaf people describe JSL as their mother tongue and the language they use among themselves. Recently codified by Japanese Deaf linguists, it is different from spoken Japanese with regard to modality, grammar, word order, and worldview. Facial expressions and classifiers are used as key grammatical elements. JSL classifiers, akin to counters in spoken Japanese that are used to quantify nouns depending on size and shape, become handshapes that substitute for standardized signs. Within this form of visual communication, signers can move and manipulate a classifier like the object it represents.

As Signed Japanese lacks the all-important facial expressions and classifiers found in JSL, Deaf people often find it confusing. For them, the meaning, nuances and the relationships between imagery and reality are absent in Signed Japanese.

Deaf people describe Signed Japanese as an artificial sign language that was created, used and promulgated by hearing educators, social welfare workers, and most sign language interpreters. While Signed Japanese borrows some handshapes from JSL, it forces them into the same grammatical order as spoken Japanese. As Signed Japanese lacks the all-important facial expressions and classifiers found in JSL, Deaf people often find it confusing. For them, the meaning, nuances and the relationships between imagery and reality are absent in Signed Japanese. Furthermore, Deaf people resent that hearing people enforce the use of Signed Japanese rather than the more natural JSL.

Schools for the deaf worldwide, especially in Japan, primarily endeavor to teach students to speak. Instructions in pronunciation and lip reading take up so much time that deaf children are often three years behind their hearing counterparts in academic subjects. Also, not all deaf children can acquire adequate and understandable speech. Those who can pick up some speech are considered brighter than their classmates and are often mainstreamed into hearing schools. If any sign language is used in deaf schools, it is Signed Japanese, a by-product of oral education. These conditions lead to small-d “deaf” orientations, as well as “hearing disabled” and/or “hard of hearing” identities. Culturally Deaf people are critical of these conditions and outcomes; they often lament the limitations of oral education and Signed Japanese in regular academic classes and the lack of effective communication which ultimately block the realization of any shared Deaf identity.

Activism and workshops to create Deaf identity

While the national organization Japanese Federation of the Deaf has been instrumental in the recent legal recognition of JSL in some municipalities and prefectures, the most dynamic efforts in promoting JSL and resolving everyday deaf-related issues for the benefit of deaf people have been made by local grassroots groups. Although hundreds of sign language circles exist in Japan, most teach Signed Japanese to hearing people. The Japanese Sign Language Atelier in Hirakata city, however, was founded in 1997 by Deaf people as a sign language circle for the benefit of Deaf people. Atelier’s early goals were to promote JSL and Deaf culture by spreading awareness, to fight discrimination in communication and education, and to create Deaf identity in local communities.

Atelier hosts and conducts regular workshops with Deaf teachers, researchers and entertainers, with the aim of benefiting Deaf people who use JSL. A few years ago, the group started a series of workshops called the Atelier Project that was intended to be a “clinic” for teaching participants a “pure JSL” unpolluted by Signed Japanese. Except for a few hearing people, most participants in these clinics were deaf. Their previous deaf identity was based upon being raised in a hearing world, being subjected to oral methods of language acquisition at deaf schools, or being mainstreamed into hearing schools.

One Atelier Project workshop I attended used storytelling to practice image training and interpretation from Japanese (in written form with some emoji) to JSL. Storytelling is an important tool in JSL training. Components that appear to be pantomime, theatrics or embellishments are important for the effective performance of JSL and should be viewed, respectively, as classifiers, intonation, and description. Good Deaf storytellers are admired for their communication skills and their ability to transmit Deaf cultural traits and values of the Deaf.

During the workshop, participants were given a Japanese text—a script with a simple story. They were asked to memorize it and interpret it into JSL. Performances were videotaped so they could be re-watched and carefully scrutinized. The few hearing participants were asked to go first. Most of them treated the exercise as a literal translation from a written form of Japanese to a signed form; in other words, their performances were heavily influenced by Signed Japanese. The Deaf teacher told them that their signing was incorrect. Next, deaf and Deaf people were asked to show their versions of the text. Many deaf participants were chided for signing in a “hearing” manner and encouraged to become “more Deaf,” to change their performance so as to become culturally Deaf.

Finally, the Deaf teacher demonstrated his version in JSL. He often uses classifiers rather than standard signs. He also stressed the use of imagery and everyday experience, for example the actual experience of walking a dog that both hearing and deaf participants did not consider. Most importantly, his rich facial expression served as a crucial grammatical component for conveying thoughts and feelings.

The Atelier Project workshops’ goals are to eradicate Signed Japanese,  replace it with JSL, and transform deaf orientations into Deaf identity. Most times, such transformations are achieved. Small-d deaf people often discover their deafness as adults and resent the fact that they were denied effective communication, the use of JSL, and group identity, because the mainstream society emphasized their so-called disability and enforced oral education policies. They now have the chance to associate with Deaf people and groups to improve JSL competence and gain a greater understanding of Deaf culture. Through such endeavors, deaf people can become Deaf.

Steven C. Fedorowicz is a cultural anthropologist, visual anthropologist, and associate professor of anthropology in the Asian Studies Program at Kansai Gaidai University. His interests include deaf communities, sign language, performance, globalization and ethnographic photography.  See more of his work athttp://visualanthropologyofjapan.blogspot.com/.

Please contact Shuang Frost (shuanglu@fas.harvard.edu) and Heidi Lam (heidi.lam@yale.edu) with your essay ideas and comments.

Cite as: Fedorowicz, Steven C. 2019.  “Performance, Sign Language, and Deaf Identity in Japan.” Anthropology Newswebsite, June 5, 2019. DOI: 10.1111/AN.1182

Copyright [2019] American Anthropological Association

Stuff Matters, Especially When You Risk “Everything” for It

by

Society for East Asian Anthropology
Anna Vainio
March 11, 2019

Editor’s note: This piece is part of a SEAA column themed series “Cultural Consumption and Performance in Asia.” The articles highlight different aspects of consumption and performance in a range of Asian regions. They examine issues such as cultural curation, the uses of the past, material culture, power and market, as well as the enactment of lived experience.

Mrs. M. realized she had made a miscalculation by staying in her property on the afternoon of March 11, 2011, when water started bulging in through her floor. She had heard the official warning of the oncoming tsunami and knew that the evacuation order was serious. She had every intention of running to higher ground once she collected some belongings—and more importantly, once she found her cat.

She was ultimately caught in the tsunami. Unable to run anymore, her only option was to climb onto the roof and hope for the best. Her house was eventually lifted up by the tsunami and crashed into the roof of the neighboring concrete building. There, she spent the night listening to the waves coming and going. She never found her cat, but she managed to salvage some items, including her wedding dress, from the wreckage of her house the next day.

The more I listened to people’s experiences, the more I became aware of the underlying multilayered relationship they had with the things they tried to salvage despite the oncoming danger.

Mrs. M.’s story was only one of many I heard in the Northeast (Tōhoku) region of Japan in 2015 and 2016, several years after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. I conducted fieldwork in the coastal towns of Miyagi Prefecture, the region hardest hit by the disasters in terms of human and material losses (Kazama and Noda 2012). I met local residents with first-hand experience of the disaster, new arrivals who had moved into these towns after the disaster, civil society leaders, and local government workers. My aim was to understand how these local communities perceived recovery in the Tōhoku region and how their experiences can help elucidate the gap between theory and practice in decentralized community-based approaches to recovery (Sou 2018, Davidson et. al. 2006).

My purpose was not to focus on what exactly happened on March 11, 2011, but I soon realized that hearing stories about survival was inevitable. At the beginning, the actions of those who ran towards danger seemed irrational and even crazy to me. But the more I listened to people’s experiences, the more I became aware of the underlying multilayered relationship they had with the things they tried to salvage despite the oncoming danger. Though anecdotal in character, these stories revealed how people’s relationship to their material possessions had informed, and to a degree controlled, their actions in the face of danger.

Personal belongings found in the foundations of houses that were washed into the sea, Ishinomaki 2016. Anna Vainio

The rationality of emergency preparedness often pits material life as irrelevant and replaceable in comparison to biological life. Consider any fire or emergency training you may have taken part in the past. The most common instruction is to leave the building without collecting your belongings. Yet how many of us fully heed this advice?  Although we are told to discard stuff in emergencies, Mrs. M.’s experience shows that material life presents complications to the protection of biological life. The survivors’ actions went against the narrow understanding of risk that is presented to us on the premise for rational behavior: protect your biological life above everything else.

In post-disaster recovery, the material world gains intensified importance. Our attention is drawn almost exclusively to the physical rebuilding of habitats. Despite the Japanese government’s commitment to community-based recovery and social revitalization, their expenditure and progress reports focus on material recovery. This was also apparent on the local level, where public displays in community meetings and reconstruction documents (e.g., Minamisanriku Reconstruction Plan) heavily emphasize material reconstruction. While rebuilding homes and livelihoods is vital, people’s dissatisfaction toward its speed, direction, and the motivations of reconstruction are consistently present in most post-disaster contexts. The Tōhoku region was no exception. This was also apparent in my own research, where I witnessed the majority of conflicts and debates between the authorities and the locals to revolve around physical rebuilding.

Overlooking Minamisanriku in 2015, image of the town from the same location taken in 2007 in the foreground. Anna Vainio

As a post-disaster ethnographer, it is easy to point to the excessive attention paid to physical rebuilding by planners, politicians, NGOs, and other experts in post-disaster contexts, and criticize their lack of consideration toward social relationships and the lived experience of victims as the foundation for recovery. Anthropologists tend to regard objects through human motivations and the meanings we apply to them (Appadurai 1986), but we often forget that people and their identities are constructed as much by the material world as the material world reflects the identities we hold (Miller 2010).

While the functionality and safety of parks, buildings, and roads in a recovering space are important issues, we need to accept that social relationships between people are born and transformed through interactions with and attachments to space and things. Just like one’s life is more than the physical body in an emergency, a home is not merely a roof over one’s head but also the feeling of being at home underneath it. Spaces, buildings, and personal belongings (ranging from mundane everyday objects to cherished mementos) gain and shape meanings through the interactions we have with them on multiple levels. Attention to either the biological or the material world is therefore irrelevant unless we understand the meaning of such interactions.

Disasters can provide unique opportunities for re-examining this connection between material and biological life that appears to be underestimated by the modern disaster preparedness and post-disaster recovery processes. The neoliberalization of disaster recovery has given rise to a reductive understanding of the relationship between the material and biological worlds (Klein 2007; Barrios 2017), in which the aesthetics, styles, functions, and sociality of a space is often designed to facilitate the circulation of capital (Barrios 2017). But the connection between the material and biological worlds is much broader. When I spoke with the residents of the Tōhoku region, it became clear that they felt suspended in the recovery period, neither being in the past nor in the expected future. In this state of waiting, their salvaged personal belongings, natural landscapes, survived buildings, and neighborhoods provided contact points for articulating hope, anticipation, memories, belonging, and identities within an environment of uncertainty.

They were looking for a sense of ochitsuku—“to settle into place”—in an environment that was constantly changing.

They were looking for a sense of ochitsuku—“to settle into place”—in an environment that was constantly changing. For Mrs. M., the wedding dress that “continues to survive with her” gave her a sense of place, belonging, and connection with a past is now lost. Another local resident, when reflecting on the need to persevere (gaman) in temporary housing for another year or two, dreamed of the moment when he can finally stretch his legs in a full-sized bathtub (furō) in his new house. Yet another resident looked forward to the day when she could return to her small fishing community, nestled between the cliffs and feel the wind from the sea on her skin again. In this context, interactions with the material world, whether real or imagined, provided people with contact points that helped them weave their past, present, and future together. The disaster would become a more fluid part of their personal and communal history, rather than an abrupt traumatic moment that wiped away everything they knew and put their lives on hold.

Yet, many residents saw the reconstruction process as removed from their daily existence and something that was “done to them.” They felt that the authorities could not “understand how we feel.” Official recovery measures did not offer them a chance to connect with their new material environments and the habitats that were emerging from the wreckage, leaving them unable to “settle into place” within the new townscape.

Despite today’s “best practice” of post-disaster recovery that uses the language of empowerment, localism, and agency for affected populations, this largely ignores the fundamental ways in which people develop meaning in their lives and for the future of their communities. Tim Ingold (2000) has critiqued the separation of cultural and natural lives in our understanding of how human societies relate to their material surroundings. In recovery practice too, understanding the interaction between the biological and material is paramount. Only then can a process for recovery be developed, one that responds to the social, cultural, and economic meanings fostering specific lifestyles through interactions between people and their material surroundings.

Anna Vainio is an anthropologist and doctoral researcher at the School of East Asian Studies at the University of Sheffield. She explores the gap between theory and practice in community-based approaches to disaster recovery, by focusing on the affective, social, and political experiences of recovery in the aftermath of 3/11.

Please contact Shuang Frost (shuanglu@fas.harvard.edu) and Heidi Lam (heidi.lam@yale.edu) with your essay ideas and comments.

Cite as: Vainio, Anna. 2019. “Stuff Matters, Especially When You Risk ‘Everything’ for It.” Anthropology News website, March 11, 2019. DOI: 10.1111/AN.1114

Copyright [2019] American Anthropological Association

Exploring the Aesthetics of Nostalgia in Contemporary Hong Kong

by

Society of East Asian Anthropology

Sonia Lam-Knott

February 15, 2019

Editor’s note: This piece is part of a SEAA column themed series “Cultural Consumption and Performance in Asia.” The articles highlight different aspects of consumption and performance in a range of Asian regions. They examine issues such as cultural curation, the uses of the past, material culture, power and market, as well as the enactment of lived experience.

Undeterred by the Hong Kong summer temperatures, large numbers of visitors entered the former colonial police force quarters now known as the PMQ (short for Police Married Quarters) heritage space, keen on catching a glimpse of the displays. As part of the government-initiated Heritage Vogue street carnival celebrating Hong Kong’s past, PMQ sought to transport visitors back in time to the mid-twentieth century. PMQ erected stalls resembling sidou, old-fashioned corner shops decorated with Chinese banners and European tiles, painted a shade of “grassroots green” that was introduced to the city during the colonial era. Stalls sold street foods such as curry fishballs and ice lollies, along with White Rabbit candies, Coca-Cola and Vitasoy beverages in glass bottles, staples in the city since the post-war years. Cantonese opera was broadcasted over the PMQ courtyard where wooden tables and plastic chairs were provided for visitors, making the space resemble daipaidong, traditional street eateries. Visitors enthusiastically interacted and took photos with the displays, claiming to remember such sights from their childhood, with some parents telling their young children that what they saw at the PMQ that day is what Hong Kong’s past looks like.

Since Hong Kong ceased to be a British colony (1841–1997) and became a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the People’s Republic of China, the city has been engulfed by nostalgia, broadly defined as a yearning for a past that is absent in the present. Hoping to study this phenomenon in 2017 and 2018, I visited a number of heritage sites in the city, and interviewed individuals from community organizations addressing heritage concerns, those producing and managing heritage sites, and those interested in heritage issues but not involved in the running of heritage spaces. This essay features the opinions and views from the third category of informants, whom are mostly in their 20s and 30s, to portray general Hong Kong public sentiments towards heritage.

Many of these informants celebrated—and many of the heritage spaces I visited sought to embody—representations of what is colloquially termed gauhoenggong (Old Hong Kong). This “Old Hong Kong” aesthetic references the period from after World War II until the mid-1980s, a time when the city experienced rapid demographic and economic growth, infrastructural redevelopment, and the emergence of a local Hong Kong identity and culture among ordinary inhabitants of the city. It is an aesthetic that informants believe to be disappearing due to urban redevelopment schemes and infrastructural projects in the city, thus exacerbating nostalgic attachments among the populace.

A crowd of people move through what seems to be the courtyard of a mall, with families sitting at tables in the foreground and throngs of people going in and out of stores in the background.
‘Old Hong Kong’ aesthetic on display at PMQ, part of the 2017 Heritage Vogue – Hollywood Road street carnival. Sonia Lam-Knott

 

The “Old Hong Kong” aesthetic

Although the “Old Hong Kong” aesthetic is situated within the colonial era, this nostalgia cannot be conflated with a yearning for the colonial. Colonial presence permeated multiple facets of post-war life, through government regulation of housing, business, healthcare, and schooling. Yet colonial institutions and figures have a marginal presence in the imaginings of “Old Hong Kong” espoused by most informants. In their narratives of “Old Hong Kong,” the “colonial” is rendered as little more than what one individual describes as “quirky” western stylistic and cultural elements leading to the production of syncretic practices and landscapes, fixtures that have since come to define the city. Examples include shop houses sporting a combination of Asian and European architectural features (such as Chinese-style tenements with French windows and balconies), English and Cantonese code-mixing in colloquial speech (now termed as Hong Kong English), and Hong Kong-style Western cuisine (such as macaroni served in broth with fried eggs).

Discourses of “Old Hong Kong” are presented as the heritage of the vernacular; certainly, the majority of informants accept this aesthetic as a reflection of their past.

Rather, informant understandings of “Old Hong Kong” emphasize neighborhood networks and conviviality among ordinary people that informats believe to have been prevalent in the post-war years. Informants reminisce about the grassroots resilience, adaptability, and industriousness that are components of the sizisan zingsan (Lion Rock Spirit), a set of values that have come to define the Hong Kong person. Discourses of “Old Hong Kong”are presented as the heritage of the vernacular; certainly, the majority of informants accept this aesthetic as a reflection of their past.

The “Old Hong Kong” aesthetic has become popular throughout society, as seen from the proliferation of literature and digital platforms exploring this period of the city’s history. Images and objects reflecting the syncretism of “Old Hong Kong” are now in-demand consumerist goods, with local and international businesses capitalizing on this by designing their premises and selling products adorned with mid-twentieth century motifs (see Starbucks HK 2018; TenTen 2017).

There are several reasons behind the popular appeal of the “Old Hong Kong” aesthetic. First, it reframes colonial presence in the city as an aesthetic category, obfuscating the problematic politics associated with colonialism. This accompanies an emphasis on positive emotions evoked through heart-warming narratives of community cooperation and care, dispelling negative feelings that conversely “suspend any aesthetic appreciation” within the individual (Ranciѐre 2007: 26). Lastly, the “Old Hong Kong” aesthetic is not so temporally distanced as to be alienated from present-day urban experiences. It is a period still within the living memory of the older generations, with relateability and verity. More importantly, its evident disappearance from the social and physical landscape as a result of urban development, enhances the societal urgency to value, embrace, and protect it.

The inside of a restaurant, with tall, round tables, an accletic set of stools, and a row of plates, each painted with different flowers hanging on the wall.
The Stone Houses café, styled as a traditional diner from the “Old Hong Kong” era. The Stone Houses were used as residential units throughout history, and never had a café on the premises. The sense of historicity embodied by the café has been deliberately constructed and imposed on this space. Sonia Lam-Knott

 

Nostalgia for “Old Hong Kong” in heritage

The popularity of the “Old Hong Kong” aesthetic has ramifications for heritage spaces, defined here as landmarks and sites that have been present on the urban landscape since the mid-twentieth century rather than museums constructed  to house historical artifacts in glass cases. Heritage in Hong Kong is a contested domain, with the government and civil society (comprising neighborhood community organizations and activists) diverging on what constitutes the city’s heritage. It is a city that desires to remember the past, yet what constitutes the city’s memory remains elusive. The question is not simply a matter of how to remember, but what to remember. There is no singular nostalgic narrative that prevails in Hong Kong, and heritage sites are where differing interpretations of the past are currently curated, produced, and presented to the public. Heritage spaces in Hong Kong strive to inculcate and reinforce their imaginings of the past—informed by their nationalist or localist agendas—within their visitors. Their ability to do so depends on whether they are able to reach out and engage with the public in the first place.

 The question is not simply a matter of how to remember, but what to remember.

Attuned to the current trends regarding societal consumption of the past, heritage spaces seek to attract potential visitors by incorporating the “Old Hong Kong” aesthetic, what visitors want to see in spaces representative of the past. Mei Ho House in Sham Shui Po, a remnant of an early public housing project managed by the Youth Hostel Association, established a store and a café infused with “old-time” elements for visitors to have “nostalgic fun”. Similarly, the Stone Houses in Kowloon City, historically a residential unit, opened a “themed café” resembling a bingsat (traditional diner). As mentioned earlier, PMQ erected temporary stalls styled as sidou selling retro goods and foods and filled the courtyard with old-fashioned games and furniture that proved popular with visitors.

Heritage sites must mediate between their role as the curators and educators of history, whilst meeting visitors’ preconceived expectations of what the city’s past looks like based on their exposure to aestheticized imaginings of “Old Hong Kong.” The “Old Hong Kong” aesthetic, however, is not immune from criticism. Several younger informants lament that the use of such nostalgic styles by heritage sites to attract and generate amusement among visitors, offers little more than visual gratification. Such “feel-good” displays omit the complex realities of the city’s historical experience. By incorporating the “Old Hong Kong” aesthetic, heritage sites become complicit in propagating overly-simplistic and sanitized visions of the past to the public. Conversely, by desiring and unquestioningly consuming these selective representations of history, the public has similarly become complicit in this process, denying heritage spaces the opportunity to espouse visions of history that deviates from this idealization of ‘Old Hong Kong.’

Sonia Lam-Knott is a postdoctoral fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. Her research examines vernacular experiences of socio-political and economic change in contemporary Asian cities. Of particular interest is the relationship between nostalgia and aesthetics, grassroots subjectivities and mobilizations, along with urban contestations and aspirations.

Please contact Shuang Frost (shuanglu@fas.harvard.edu) and Heidi Lam (heidi.lam@yale.edu) with your essay ideas and comments.

Cite as: Lam-Knott, Sonia. 2019. “Exploring the Aesthetics of Nostalgia in Contemporary Hong Kong.” Anthropology News website, February 15, 2019. DOI: 10.1111/AN.1093

Copyright [2019] American Anthropological Association

SEAA Highlights at the 2018 AAA Meeting

by

Society of East Asian Anthropology
Shuang L. Frost and Heidi K. Lam
January 4, 2018

The SEAA section hosted a diverse range of activities, presentations, and events at the 2018 Annual Meeting. Highlights: 25 panels (including four co-sponsored invited sessions); a Business Meeting, featuring a special speaker; and a lunch-time mentoring workshop on “Teaching East Asian Anthropology.”

SEAA panels

The SEAA program consisted of 25 panels, including invited sessions, volunteered sessions, and sessions built from individual papers, and posters. Of these, 12 were sessions with papers featuring research on different regions of East Asia. The panels explored a range of topics including politics, affective labor, gender, activism, demographic transitions, popular culture, and intimacy.

This year, the section featured four invited sessions that were co-sponsored with other AAA sections:

  • Queer Asia Ethnographies of Change in a Transnational World (with AQA–Association for Queer Anthropology)
  • Indexing Indigeneity in Taiwan: Resistance and Adaptation in Taiwanese Visual Culture (with SVA—Society for Visual Anthropology)
  • Cyberwars, Street Politics, and the Problem of Populism in Korea and Japan (with SUNTA—Society for Urban, National and Transnational/Global Anthropology)
  • Urban Futures and Expropriated Natures II: Rearticulating Relationalities of Scale (with SUNTA)

Business Meeting

SEAA members gathered for the annual Business Meeting, where the Board reviewed this year’s section activities and announced this year’s prize recipients. Priscilla Song was awarded the Francis L.K. Hsu Book Prize for Biomedical Odysseys: Fetal Cell Experiments from Cyberspace to China. Graduate student Jieun Cho was recognized for her paper “Affordances of Care,” with honorable mentions for Bram Colijn’s “Pluriprax Households in Modern China: Contested Family Rituals in a Shifting Religious Landscape” and Tomonori Sugimoto’s “Refusing to Leave: The Indigenous Pangcah/Amis Politics of Claiming Land in Urban Taiwan.” One Day We Arrived in Japan (2017), directed by Aaron Litvin and Ana Paula Kojima Hirano, received the David Plath Media Award this year. An honorable mention was also given to Together Apart (2017), a film directed by Maren Wickwire. The award committee citation read for each award is posted under the website’s SEAA Past Awards page.

Francis L.K. Hsu Book Prize winner Priscilla Song (left) with SEAA President Glenda Roberts (center) and incoming Secretary Satsuki Kawano (right). Jing Wang.

 

Graduate student Jieun Cho (left) was recognized for her paper “Affordances of Care” at the SEAA Business Meeting, pictured with SEAA President Glenda Roberts (right). Jing Wang.

Attendees also recognized outgoing SEAA Board Members Carolyn Stevens and Priscilla Song for their service to the section. Stevens completed her current term as Secretary, while Song served as Councilor and Program Chair. As this year’s Hsu winner, Song will chair the Francis L.K. Hsu Book Prize committee for the next year.

Jeffrey Wasserstrom speaks at the SEAA Business Meeting on “Reflections on writing and editing in the borderlands between disciplines and genres.” Jing Wang.

SEAA welcomed Jeffrey Wasserstrom (University of California, Irvine) as special speaker. His talk, titled “Reflections on writing and editing in the borderlands between disciplines and genres,” drew on his insights from the field of history and his previous experience as editor of the Journal of Asian Studies. Wasserstrom called for a crossing of genres where academic writing would engage the public. In the latter part of his talk, he proposed several writing practices. He spoke about writing for a “one over” type of audience, such as those specializing in one discipline, one part of Asia, or one time period “over.” Furthermore, he noted the potential in story-telling, collaborative writing across disciplines, experimentation with writing forms different from the standard book-length monograph.

“Teaching East Asian Anthropology” lunch-time mentoring workshop 

Following concerns about preparing for academic positions, this year’s SEAA lunch-time mentoring workshop  centered on the theme of “Teaching East Asian Anthropology.” To cover a diversity of teaching contexts, including public universities, private universities, liberal arts colleges, and non-anthropology departments, the workshop organizers and student councilors Jing Wang and Yukun Zeng, invited four professors to serve as mentors: Satsuki Kawano, Nicholas Harkness, Jennifer Heung, and Gareth Fisher. Workshop attendees included 12 graduate students and two recent PhD graduates.

The faculty mentors spoke with attendees on topics such as designing syllabi,  forming “teaching units,” preparing teaching materials according current student interests, curating East Asia in teaching, using East Asia as “theory-generator” in anthropological scholarship, and applying the critical conversation involving  “#MeToo” in teaching.

According to feedback solicited after the workshop, the attendees benefited from the faculty mentors’ diverse teaching experience. They also appreciated the “cozy and quiet room set-up, size, and the conversation-style interaction.” Mattias van Ommen, one of the participants, reflected, “I  received a lot of practical advice on how to teach courses that might not always be in my comfort zone, while keeping in mind the demands and complexities of the current job market. A big bonus was the institutional diversity of the faculty present.” For the next year, the organizers hope to innovate the workshop format to attract more early-career scholars while maintaining graduate students as the main body of participants.

Informal student dinner

For the past several years, SEAA’s student committee has been organizing a social gathering of students whose research interests fall under the broad category of East Asian anthropology. It offers an opportunity for graduate students to socialize with other young scholars from various institutions and to share research interests over food and drink. As one participant Adrienne Lagman commented,

Our shared interests and experiences make this a welcoming little home within the larger AAAs. It’s easy to become consumed by my own research, so it’s great to connect with other folks casually over a margarita and explore what brings us all together as anthropologists. I came away from the event appreciating not only being able to talk shop with engaging and insightful interlocutors, but getting to know my colleagues on a more personal level.

Heidi K. Lam is a contributing editor of the SEAA section column and a PhD candidate in anthropology at Yale University. She is writing her dissertation on the use of experience within the culture industry in Japan and its impact on tourism, the performing arts, and affective labor.

Shuang L. Frost is a contributing editor of the SEAA section column. She is a Ph.D. candidate in social anthropology and STS at Harvard University. Her research interests include platform ethics, digital economy, social policymaking, and urban studies.

Please contact Shuang Frost (shuanglu@fas.harvard.edu) and Heidi Lam (heidi.lam@yale.edu) with your essay ideas and comments.

Cite as: Frost, Shuang L., and Heidi K. Lam. 2019. “SEAA Highlights at the 2018 AAA Meeting.” Anthropology News website, January 4, 2019. DOI: 10.1111/AN.1063

Copyright [2019] American Anthropological Association

Curating Peninsular Destruction

by

Society for East Asian Anthropology
Timothy Gitzen
November 28, 2018

Editor’s Note: This piece opens a SEAA column themed series on “Cultural Consumption and Performance in Asia.” The articles highlight different aspects of consumption and performance in a range of Asian regions. They examine issues such as cultural curation, the uses of the past, material culture, power and market, as well as the enactment of lived experience.

While assisting with a campus tour of Seoul’s Yonsei University in the summer of 2008 for a group of American social studies teachers, the Korean-graduate-student-turned-tour-guide stopped in front of the famed statue of Yonsei’s founder, Horace Underwood. The graduate student explained that the statue, first erected in 1916, was destroyed during the Korean War (1950–1953) when North Korea took Seoul and used Yonsei’s campus as a base of operations. The only part of the statue that remained was the base, he said, pointing to it and the discoloring that indicated soot and ash. Fervently, the teachers began taking pictures of the statue’s base and discoloring, as if to photograph a site of “history.”

The base of the original statue of Horace Underwood. Horim Yi

Why is the base of the statue so fascinating for these American teachers, and why did the graduate student find this story interesting enough to share in the first place? Echoes of the Korean War adorn the landscapes of Seoul and South Korea. Some are more spectacular, like the De-Militarized Zone; but most are just ordinary sites akin to the statue’s base. These historical markers, however, represent not only a finite period of active war between 1950 and 1953, but the long durée of Cold War militarization on the peninsula. Sites like the statue’s base are temporal markers of past destruction that simultaneously remind us of the possibility of future catastrophe. Yet these temporal markers rely on active recognition as a site of war, incursion, or security. Curating these sites thus calls forth their past, but the interest and fascination lie not only in what happened in that place at that time, but in the proximity and potentiality of future peninsular destruction. The fascination and interest in the sites—and indeed, the curation itself—are part and parcel of the banality of militarization borne of Cold War insecurities of national destruction. At a time when it seems that North-South relations are substantially improving, it is crucial to recognize the power and pervasiveness of militarization that encourages Koreans to tell stories of sites like the statue’s base and the audience’s fascination is violently etched and burned into the physical landscape of the peninsula.

The unending

This is the unending not only of a war or permanent confrontation, but also of spaces and objects that simultaneously remind us of disaster while compelling us to forget, only to be repeated infinitely.

The banality of continued militarization depends first on what some call the “unending Korean war” (Hong 2015). While the 1953 Korean Armistice Agreement ceased active combat, North and South Korea are still officially at war. This permanent confrontation provides the South Korean state with justification for continued military conscription of all able-bodied men and the violent and undemocratic policies and actions of former authoritarian leaders Park Chung-hee (1961–1979) and Chun Doo-hwan (1980–1987). The constant fear of yet another North Korean incursion or attack, evidenced by, for instance, North Korea’s artillery shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in November 2010, naturalized the on-going confrontation and made banal South Korean responses and precautions. That banality of militarization seeps into the built environment, in part because the state built safeguards for a potential North Korean invasion into urban infrastructure, including overpasses that could fall onto roads to prevent tanks from rolling into Seoul.

Fear and the banality of militarization are also  well-adapted to  the art of forgetting or even misdirection. While taking Korean language at Sogang University, we read and discussed the Bugak Mountain Fortress Path. Bugak Mountain sits in the northern part of Seoul and the Fortress Path is a popular walking or hiking trail for Koreans and tourists alike. The description in Sogang’s textbook includes the many sites to see along the path, including a more than 200-year-old pine tree with several bullet holes. The textbook explains that on January 21, 1968, several North Korean spies infiltrated South Korea with the intent of making it to the Blue House, the presidential resident, before they were killed by South Korean soldiers (known as the Blue House Raid). The military limited public access to this area for more than 40 years, but now it is part of the popular hiking trail. Yet the tree still acts as a temporal marker, a reminder of past incursion and the possibility for future attack. This is the unending not only of a war or permanent confrontation, but also of spaces and objects that simultaneously remind us of disaster while compelling us to forget, only to be repeated infinitely.

On curation 

These sites of peninsular destruction are not limited to sites from the Korean War or North Korean incursions. In 2005, construction workers uncovered an underground bunker in the Yeouido neighborhood of Seoul. There were no records of a bunker in the Seoul Metropolitan Government archives, but experts were able to determine that the bunker was built between late 1976 and early 1977 when inter-Korean tensions were high. Furthermore, given the placement of the bunker, the city government believes that former president Park Chung-hee and his government built the bunker should armed conflict reignite. On October 1, 2015, the city government opened the bunker to the media for the first time, and from October 10 to November 1, public visitors were able to schedule tours of the bunker (Eum 2015). On October 19, 2017, the bunker reopened under control of the Seoul Museum of Art as the SeMA Bunker, showcasing exhibitions that speak to the space’s history and significance (Yoon 2017).

This bunker was a preparatory space, one that never saw its intended use fulfilled, but now acts as a curated reminder of that preparation. Each space and object are historical markers, but are only made so upon curation. In each case—the statue’s base, bullet-laden pine, bunker—curators, broadly conceived, asked audiences to remember a period of war, North-South tension, and security protocols indexed by the object or space. Silently, though, we also remember the possibility of future North Korean belligerence, thus imbuing these historical markers with a future-looking temporality that make them even more fascinating. In that fascination, though, the sleight-of-hand of militarization’s banality takes hold, as we forget that militarization orients people towards violence.

Timothy Gitzen is an anthropologist and Korea Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in the Institute for Korean Studies at Indiana University. His research focuses on national security, militarization, and queer activism in South Korea. His work has appeared in TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly and the forthcoming Duke University Press volume Queer Korea.

Cite as: Gitzen, Timothy. 2018. “Curating Peninsular Destruction.” Anthropology News website, November 28, 2018. DOI: 10.1111/AN.1045

If you want to submit your essay ideas to us, please contact Shuang Frost (shuanglu@fas.harvard.edu) and Heidi Lam (heidi.lam@yale.edu).

Looking Ahead by Going Back

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Looking Ahead by Going Back

The Sections Edition: Society for East Asian Anthropology

Jennifer RobertsonJuly 18, 2018

Japanese robotics is imagineering a future dominated by nostalgia and nationalism.

“Chair of the Future.” Seventy years ago, Margaret Mead confirmed her futurist leanings by proposing that universities should promote the study of profound social transformations by appointing Chairs of the Future. Research on historical cultures and societies—“the Middles Ages and Classical Greece”—was already well established, she argued. The acceleration of social change together with the lengthening of the human life span meant that “no one will live in the world into which [they were] born, and no one will die in the world in which [they] worked in [their] maturity” (Mead in Cornish [1977]1983, 128–129). In her numerous writings about human futures, Mead (2005) aimed at a broad readership; her work remains relevant and demonstrates why anthropologists especially are well positioned to engage “future futures.”

A collage that illustrates Prime Minister Abe’s vision of a future extended family with human and robot members. Jennifer Robertson.

Mead contrasted “prefigurative” (new) culture with “postfigurative” (traditional) culture. The former refers to societies in which the elders learn from youngers; the latter to one in which the youngers learn from elders. Current culture is “cofigurative” in that young and old alike learn from their contemporaries or peers (Mead 1972, 31). What Mead did not grok was the extent to which future technology, as I have argued in the case of Japanese robotics, would be deployed to salvage a traditional status quo—an agenda I characterize as retro-tech and retro-robotics.

Robots are associated with the future and/or the imagination of a future. But industrial robots, Roombas, humanoids, and animaloids are now very much part of the present. Not a day goes by without media coverage about robots and artificial intelligence (AI). The fictional robots populating anime and manga have a decades-old subjecthood in cultural studies. As I elaborate in Robo Sapiens Japanicus: Robots, Gender, Family, and the Japanese Nation (2018), a major task I faced was to call attention to the disconnect between actual robots and the robots that populate comics, novels, and movies. Although technologically complex, actual robots are clumsy, slow, and underwhelming compared to their fictional counterparts. Video PR footage of actual robots moving is typically speeded up significantly, sometimes ten to thirty times their original speed, and is heavily edited to create the illusion of smooth, coordinated movement. Robo-hype needs to be tempered by robo-reality checks.

I also had to deal with the fact that the field of robotics and related technologies is evolving so quickly and in so many directions that research focused solely on highlighting the newest gee-whiz models is quickly outdated. How to keep my book relevant even after the robots featured in it were obsolete was a major concern. In addition, while seeking to analyze cross-cultural differences in attitudes toward robot-human interactions, I was careful to avoid fueling the stereotype of “the Japanese” as gadget obsessed and culturally prone to desiring robot companions over human ones.

The impression “out there” that commuters in Tokyo share sidewalk and office space with humanoids requires a concerted effort to dispel. Most robots are still in the prototype stage and interact with humans only under limited, controlled conditions, mainly in settings such as laboratories, corporate showrooms, shopping malls and department stores, science museums, and in closely monitored test situations within select schools, nursing homes, and hospitals. My solution to these quandaries was to explore and interrogate the type of national-cultural, social-institutional, and family structures within which roboticists, manufacturers, and politicians alike assume that humans and robots will coexist. I also excavated substantive historical backstories in order to help contextualize the imagineering of human-robot relationships since the mid-1920s when the newly coined “robot” (robotto) became a household word.

The Inobes represent the ideal household—and more specifically, the traditional stem nuclear family (ie)—in which a married couple lives with their children and parents.

Aptly described as wary of immigrants and refugees, Japan has one of the fastest aging populations and shrinking labor forces among postindustrial nation-states. Young women and men increasingly eschew marriage, and, for the past decade, the birthrate continues to remain below the rate of mortality. In his first term in office (2006–2007), Prime Minister Abe Shinzō debuted Innovation 25, a visionary blueprint for the robotization of Japan by 2025. Reelected in 2012, Abe has renamed the proposal Innovation Japan, without an end date, and most recently, Society 5.0—the latter is described as an “ultra-smart” society in which all things will be connected through the Internet of Things. Abe is also planning to use the 2020 Tokyo Olympics to showcase robots in a separate “robot Olympics.” Although the robots displayed will be those made for the civilian market, the Japanese state, like its US counterpart, is also keen on parlaying robotics and associated spin-off industries in the lucrative weapons economy.The byword “innovation” in Innovation 25 is misleading; renovation is a more accurate term, for the proposal reifies the conformist values represented by the male-headed household as a microcosm of Japanese society. Innovation 25includes an illustrated fictional ethnography of the Inobe Family of 2025 that was also published separately as a graphic book in 2007. Their name is an abbreviation of inobēshon (innovation). The Inobes represent the ideal household—and more specifically, the traditional stem nuclear family (ie)—in which a married couple lives with their children and parents. The household’s many robots, from the humanoid housekeeper to robotic appliances, relieves the home-based wife of housework and child and elder care tasks that Japanese women today are not interested in giving up their careers and independence to assume. Abe and his ministers argue that a robot-dependent society and lifestyle insures safety, comfort, and convenience. Implicit in the rhetoric of robotization is the assumption that a woman will be more willing to marry, have more than 1.3 children, and live with her elderly parents and in-laws if she can rely on robot maids, nannies, and caregivers (Robertson 2018: 50–79). Moreover, she could remain at home andretain her career by telecommuting to work. Abe’s vision of future society is but a nostalgic dream of the traditional extended family system—with the addition of robot members (see accompanying image).

In Japan, the family or household (ie) is the site where robots will be domesticated and even granted citizenship, irrefutable proof of which is a household register (koseki), possession of which is limited to Japanese nationals. The therapy robot, Paro, modeled after a baby harp seal, received a koseki in 2010 in which the inventor was listed as “father.” Although gimmicky, that Paro could have a koseki demonstrates that the sociodynamics of human-robot coexistence is determined not by their species difference, but by the manner of their bonding, which is informed by the ie system.

Only in the past few years have roboticists in the United States imagined their robots as family members. In 2014, a US robotics team based at MIT introduced Jibo, shaped like a Unidyne microphone, as “the first family robot.” Mother, a six-and-a-half-inch, one-pound robot shaped like a matryoshka doll, was introduced in 2016 by Sen.se (now incorporated into SoftBank, sponsor of the humanoid, Pepper). When activated by “motion cookies,” Mother monitors multiple events and behaviors in keeping with the stereotyped gender role after which she is named. Advertisements for both robots place them in upper middle-class homes inhabited by white, heteronormative nuclear families. In Japan and the United States alike, robots mirror and embody the conservative, status-quo ideologies endorsed by the state and corporations, from whom funding for research and development is crucial. The takeaway futures forecast for both societies is that, to circle back to Mead, “cofigurative” culture is transmuting into a robo-technologically enhanced version of “prefigurative” culture, in which the future is dominated by tradition.

Jennifer Robertson is professor in the Departments of Anthropology and the History of Art at the University of Michigan. Her books include Robo Sapiens Japanicus: Robots, Gender, Family and the Japanese Nation (2018); Native and Newcomer: Making and Remaking a Japanese City; and Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan. Robertson is the Japan editor of Critical Asian Studies and was president of the Society for East Asian Anthropology, 2009–2011.

Cite as: Robertson, Jennifer. 2018. “Looking Ahead by Going Back.” Anthropology News website, July 18, 2018. DOI: 10.1111/AN.921

Letter from SEAA President Glenda Roberts

by

Society for East Asian Anthropology
Glenda S. Roberts
May 7, 2018

Glenda S. Roberts

Greetings from Paris!

The theme of the summer issue of AN, Anthropological Futures, has been much on my mind as I took up residence in this historic city far from my home in Tokyo. So why does an anthropologist who has spent nearly her entire career in Japan decide to take her sabbatical in France? By way of self-introduction as your new SEAA President, let me try to provide some food for thought on the future of East-Asian anthropologists through my answer to that question.

I strongly believe that our future as anthropologists, and the future of anthropology as a discipline, rests in our ability to carry out fine-grained, complex and transnational studies.

As an anthropologist, I’ve focused on gender, work, and family as they are constructed in urban Japan. From the mid-1990s, I added migration and migration policy to my interests, as these became more important to the workforce as Japan entered the age of rapid demographic decline. These two areas have kept me occupied ever since I moved to Tokyo from Hawaii in 1996. I spent two years at the University of Tokyo Institute of Social Science (ISS) helping launch the Social Science Japan Journal while finishing up research on NPO support for foreign workers. Then Waseda University hired me as one of two anthropologists on the inaugural faculty of twenty of its first independent graduate school, the Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies. The GSAPS multi-disciplinary faculty teaches a diverse body of students from all over Asia, Europe, North and South America, and Africa.

Spending most of my career in multidisciplinary social science departments has given me tools to “talk across” disciplines, as Caroline Brettell and James Hollifield (2008) put it. I strongly believe that our future as anthropologists, and the future of anthropology as a discipline, rests in our ability to carry out fine-grained, complex and transnational qualitative studies that address pressing issues of common concern that cannot be sufficiently answered by experts in other fields, but requires maintaining a dialogue with them. Furthermore, we need to reach across borders to others whose societies face similar social problems yet who deal with these problems differently. So, that’s what brought me to Paris—well, that and the food and a museum or two!

In Japan, government rhetoric urges women to “shine” as executives, yet the social norm of intense, hands-on mothering is still quite strong, and government support for families, beyond rhetoric, is less than fulsome. I wanted to see how families in France, known for its quite strong government policies for family support, and relatively short working hours, manage their work and family lives.

Since January 2018, with funding provided by Waseda, I have been doing an interview-based study with Hiroko Umegaki-Costantini on this topic. This research has enhanced our perspectives greatly, giving us a window on how people in this city confront and negotiate some similar constraints, while bringing to the table often quite different attitudes from Japanese dual earner families. I feel like a kid in a patisserie, having this opportunity at this point in my career to learn from an environment that is at once incredibly stimulating and one which I hope will also yield fruitful comparisons.

In this globalized world, we face so many of the same problems—time famine, aging societies, economic decline, care demands for the young and for the elderly, precarity in employment, mental health and its governance, social inequality, homelessness, nationalism, populism and migration, food security. . . the list is endless, yet all these are problems we see nearly everywhere. The future of anthropology to me is one that recognizes these common problems and engages in comparative study that will point to outcomes that lead to a better world.

I hope that our anthropological future will be one of increasing SEAA interaction and engagement with French scholars, as well as with scholars all over Europe who are researching East Asia.

I can’t end this letter without mentioning another aspect of my engagement with Paris that has enriched my outlook. That is, a (gradually, I admit) increasing understanding of some of the French scholarship on East Asia. France, like Japan, has a population that is big enough to foster its own publication industry and its own global francophone intellectual universe, from which Anglophones have profited greatly—courtesy of English translations. French social science giants such as Marcel Mauss, Pierre Bourdieu, and Michel Foucault have influenced our discipline immensely. Being here in Paris under the auspices of the Fondation France-Japon of the EHESS has introduced me to the thriving scene of East Asian Studies in France.

While learning French is a longue durée project for me, many French researchers are also engaging actively in intellectual production in English. Increasingly, they are sponsoring Asian Studies conferences and symposia where both English and French, and East-Asian languages as well, are the mediums of communication. The interest in East Asia here is strong, and my colleagues who teach East Asian language courses tell me their classrooms are full. I hope that our anthropological future will be one of increasing SEAA interaction and engagement with French scholars, as well as with scholars all over Europe who are researching East Asia.

I will be spending the last three months of my sabbatical leave courtesy of the University of Hawaii’s Center for Japanese Studies and the Population and Health program at the East-West Center, then it’s back in the saddle at GSAPS in September. I’m very much looking forward to meeting you all at the SEAA meeting in San José. And, please think of joining us at Waseda in early August of 2019 for the regional conference of the S