Japan Studies Association 31st Annual Conference
January 8-10, 2025
(Wed. - Fri.)
The Hyatt Place Waikiki Beach Hotel
Honolulu, Hawai'i
Established in San Diego in the spring of 1994, the JSA has assisted its members – primarily teachers from American two- and four-year colleges and universities – to acquire first-hand knowledge about Japan and infuse it into the curriculum of their home institutions. Through workshops and study-tours, and the professional networking they enable, JSA’s members have been inspired to engage in curriculum development, design study-abroad programs, and initiate Japan-related or comparative research, an outlet for which they have found both in the organization’s Japan Studies Association Journal and its annual national conference.
In January 2025 we will meet in sunny Honolulu to share our continuous and new pedagogical and research interests in Japan’s literary and cultural traditions, historical and economic developments, sociopolitical and religious past and present. We invite proposals for individual presentations, discipline-specific or interdisciplinary panels, roundtables on pedagogy and teaching innovation and staged readings.
In January 2025 we will meet in sunny Honolulu to share our continuous and new pedagogical and research interests in Japan’s literary and cultural traditions, historical and economic developments, sociopolitical and religious past and present. We invite proposals for individual presentations, discipline-specific or interdisciplinary panels, roundtables on pedagogy and teaching innovation and staged readings.
Conference Theme: Identity in/of Reiwa Japan
2025 marks the 7th year of the Reiwa Era. Set to debut with the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games the Covid 19 pandemic gave the era a false start and it has taken time for a more or less normal Reiwa Japan to emerge. Many problems that loomed during the Heisei era, including the demographic challenge and an increasingly perilous international environment, remain. New challenges and opportunities have arisen. And while government appears determined to maintain the status quo, Japanese themselves appear to be making progress carving out a sense of identity for themselves. Young Japanese are carving out identities for themselves often at odds with what the mainstream establishment would prefer. We invite paper and panel proposals from scholars seeking to examine how Japanese are defining themselves, their places within Japanese society and Japan’s place in the world, but we welcome any proposals you might have regarding the history, politics, culture, society, philosophy, art or literature of Japan or pedagogy for introducing these things to students.
The deadline for submission will be November 1 and submissions will be accepted on a rolling basis. We especially encourage graduate students and faculty from Japan as well as Australia and New Zealand to submit individual paper or panel proposals.
Participants in the JSA Hokkaido workshop are also highly encouraged to submit paper or panel proposals based on their observations/experiences during the workshop May and June 2024.
For further information regarding the conference or submitting a proposal please feel free to contact the conference program co-chair Paul Dunscomb ([email protected]).
2025 marks the 7th year of the Reiwa Era. Set to debut with the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games the Covid 19 pandemic gave the era a false start and it has taken time for a more or less normal Reiwa Japan to emerge. Many problems that loomed during the Heisei era, including the demographic challenge and an increasingly perilous international environment, remain. New challenges and opportunities have arisen. And while government appears determined to maintain the status quo, Japanese themselves appear to be making progress carving out a sense of identity for themselves. Young Japanese are carving out identities for themselves often at odds with what the mainstream establishment would prefer. We invite paper and panel proposals from scholars seeking to examine how Japanese are defining themselves, their places within Japanese society and Japan’s place in the world, but we welcome any proposals you might have regarding the history, politics, culture, society, philosophy, art or literature of Japan or pedagogy for introducing these things to students.
The deadline for submission will be November 1 and submissions will be accepted on a rolling basis. We especially encourage graduate students and faculty from Japan as well as Australia and New Zealand to submit individual paper or panel proposals.
Participants in the JSA Hokkaido workshop are also highly encouraged to submit paper or panel proposals based on their observations/experiences during the workshop May and June 2024.
For further information regarding the conference or submitting a proposal please feel free to contact the conference program co-chair Paul Dunscomb ([email protected]).
Keynote Speakers
Prof. Nancy Stalker, University of Hawaii.
Rosanjin and Modern Japanese Gourmet Consciousness
Acclaimed films featuring Japanese food, such as Tampopo and Jiro Dreams of Sushi, highlight individuals with zealous and all-consuming attitudes toward food appreciation. Such bishokuka, or epicureans, significantly shape both Japan's own gastro-identity and Western conceptions of Japanese cuisine through their highly disciplined, aesthetically centered devotion to gastronomy, accentuating culinary values such as seasonality, simplicity, the highest quality ingredients and tasteful aesthetics. However, bishokuka represents a very minor aspect of Japanese foodways. How did seasonality, aesthetics, etc. become the quintessential values associated with Japanese cuisine when relatively few people eat with these qualities in mind?
These characteristics are associated with Rosanjin Kitaoji (1883-1959). Primarily known as a ceramicist in the West he was one of Japan's best-known 20th century epicureans. As a restaurateur in the 1920s and 30s, he developed a reputation for punctilious insistence on the finest and freshest ingredients, exquisite ambience and crafting his own tableware to complement his food. The West embraced Japanese cuisine in the late 1980s, during Japan's "gurume boom" (gourmet boom), and especially after Michelin rankings began including Japan at the turn of the 21st century. This led to the rediscovery of Rosanjin’s epicurean and culturally nationalist views on Japanese culinary arts and became a kind of canon shaping essentialist views of Japanese cuisine, subsequently transmitted to the West. This paper provides a window into the culinary life of Rosanjin, considering his influences and musings on cuisine and national identity.
Prof. Fred Dickinson, University of Pennsylvania
Reiwa in the Making of a 21st Century World
Since Herodotus, Western observers have used “Asia” as code for barbarism, juxtaposed against Western “civilization.” Contemporaries in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe and the United States described Japan as “late developing,” “nationalist,” and “fascist” to accentuate Western “industrialization,” “democracy,” and “peace.” Discussions of Japanese national identity have highlighted a unique “Asian” core, ensuring that while twenty-first century Japan resembles advanced Western states in form, it remains fundamentally distinct in substance. What if we jettison our Euro-American-centric lens to think of Japanese national identity NOT as an elixir of exceptionalism but as a reflection of fundamental global processes? We might recognize developments in Japan as not only integral to modern life but, in fact, instrumental in shaping our twenty-first century world!
Prof. Nancy Stalker, University of Hawaii.
Rosanjin and Modern Japanese Gourmet Consciousness
Acclaimed films featuring Japanese food, such as Tampopo and Jiro Dreams of Sushi, highlight individuals with zealous and all-consuming attitudes toward food appreciation. Such bishokuka, or epicureans, significantly shape both Japan's own gastro-identity and Western conceptions of Japanese cuisine through their highly disciplined, aesthetically centered devotion to gastronomy, accentuating culinary values such as seasonality, simplicity, the highest quality ingredients and tasteful aesthetics. However, bishokuka represents a very minor aspect of Japanese foodways. How did seasonality, aesthetics, etc. become the quintessential values associated with Japanese cuisine when relatively few people eat with these qualities in mind?
These characteristics are associated with Rosanjin Kitaoji (1883-1959). Primarily known as a ceramicist in the West he was one of Japan's best-known 20th century epicureans. As a restaurateur in the 1920s and 30s, he developed a reputation for punctilious insistence on the finest and freshest ingredients, exquisite ambience and crafting his own tableware to complement his food. The West embraced Japanese cuisine in the late 1980s, during Japan's "gurume boom" (gourmet boom), and especially after Michelin rankings began including Japan at the turn of the 21st century. This led to the rediscovery of Rosanjin’s epicurean and culturally nationalist views on Japanese culinary arts and became a kind of canon shaping essentialist views of Japanese cuisine, subsequently transmitted to the West. This paper provides a window into the culinary life of Rosanjin, considering his influences and musings on cuisine and national identity.
Prof. Fred Dickinson, University of Pennsylvania
Reiwa in the Making of a 21st Century World
Since Herodotus, Western observers have used “Asia” as code for barbarism, juxtaposed against Western “civilization.” Contemporaries in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe and the United States described Japan as “late developing,” “nationalist,” and “fascist” to accentuate Western “industrialization,” “democracy,” and “peace.” Discussions of Japanese national identity have highlighted a unique “Asian” core, ensuring that while twenty-first century Japan resembles advanced Western states in form, it remains fundamentally distinct in substance. What if we jettison our Euro-American-centric lens to think of Japanese national identity NOT as an elixir of exceptionalism but as a reflection of fundamental global processes? We might recognize developments in Japan as not only integral to modern life but, in fact, instrumental in shaping our twenty-first century world!
HOTEL REGISTRATION AND RATE INFORMATION
Conference rate: $234 per night (+tax)/no destination fee
Call the Hyatt Place: 1.808.931.4323
To make a reservation, click here.