International Symposium
October 20-22, 2017
Kyoto University, Japan

This international symposium explores the impacts of cinema on social change, and vice versa. Taking Japan’s cinema-going culture as case study, we can trace how social change has been imagined, negotiated, or refuted through cinema texts. At the same time, everyday manifestations of social change may be influenced by cinematic imagery, narrative, or characterization. Encompassing new research on both Japanese cinema and imported cinema screened in Japan, as well as new or divergent platforms for film exhibition, this symposium brings together research from a variety of disciplines and time periods to compose a fuller picture of the intersections of cinema and social change in Japan.

Place: Science Seminar House, Building 10, Kyoto University North Campus, Kitashirakawa Oiwakecho 3-7-1, Sakyo ku, Kyoto, Japan, 606-8224

Organizer: Jennifer Coates, Hakubi Center for Advanced Research, Kyoto University

Contact: coates.jennifer.2u@kyoto-u.ac.jp

Sponsors: Hakubi Center for Advanced Research, Japan Society for the Promotion of Sciences

Program:

October 20th 17:00-18:30                  Short film screening and reception

When Cinema Was King (documentary short, Jennifer Coates, 2017), Japanese with English subtitles.

October 21st

9:30-10:00                                          Welcome Remarks
10:00-12:00                                         Panel 1
12:00-13:00                                         Lunch
13:00-15:00                                         Panel 2
15:00-15:30                                         Tea Break
15:30-17:30                                         Panel 3

October 22nd

10:00-12:00                                         Panel 4
12:00-13:00                                         Lunch
13:00-15:00                                         Panel 5
15:00-15:30                                         Tea Break
15:30-16:00                                         Discussion
16:30-17:30                                         Closing Roundtable

Panel Schedule

October 21st

10:00-12:00     Panel 1: Season of Change: 1950-1970

Isolde Standish (SOAS, University of London), ‘A Question of Form: Dissent and the Nouvelle Vague’

Katsuyuki Hidetaka (Ritsumeikan University), ‘Collective Remorse for the Past: Transformation of Japanese Film and TV Representations of ‘the 300-Million Yen Robbery’ of 1968’

Chika Kinoshita (Kyoto University), ‘The Emergence of Teen Pregnancy Narratives in Post-Occupation Japanese Cinema’

13:00-15:00     Panel 2: War, Conflict, and Cinema

Eyal Ben-Ari (Kinneret Academic College) and Atsuko Fukuura (Shiga University), ‘The Japanese Self-Defense Forces and Cinematic Productions: Resonance and Reverberation in the Cultural Normalization of Organized State Violence’

Iris Haukamp (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies), ‘The Four Lives of Matsugorō the Lawless’

Jennifer Coates (Kyoto University), ‘The Cinema Audience Under Occupation’

15:30-17:30     Panel 3: Race, Class, and Mixed Media

Ayami Ushida (Kyoto University of Art and Design), ‘Japan and Korea in Manga and Film’

Deanna Nardy (Kyoto University), ‘Tarzan In Japan: The Impact of Tarzan on Japanese Self-Representation in Comics and Film’

Alisa Freedman (University of Oregon), ‘Down in the Dumps: Tokyo Wastelands and Marginalized Groups in Japanese Film and Anime’

October 22nd

10:00-12:00     Panel 4: At the Margins: Others, Outsiders, and the Non-Human

Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano (Carleton University), ‘Learning From Animals’

Lindsay Nelson (Meiji Gakuin University), ‘Cinema at the Edge of the World: Visions of Precarity in the films of Kazuyoshi Kumakiri’

Ma Ran (Nagoya University), ‘Border-Crossing Japan: Kuzoku’s Politics of (Dis)location’

13:00-15:00     Panel 5: Queer Cinemas

Yuka Kanno (Doshisha University), ‘Community Building and Queer Activism through Film Festivals’

SPF Dale (Hitotsubashi University), ‘Trans Representation in Japanese Film’

Yutaka Kubo (Kyoto University), ‘Cinematic Responses to Queer Aging’