[KineJapan] question about the CFP Conference Visualization of Japanese History

[BERRY Paul]

Dear Dick,
I really like the ideas you put forth concerning the your upcoming conference and I have a question about it. 
Although the timing of the conference is a bit awkward for my teaching schedule I am considering sending in a proposal dealing with Aida Makoto's video and calligraphy installation that heavily critiqued the Abe administration this year. I don't know if you heard about it but he was invited to present anything he wanted at a large exhibition directed towards children at the huge Tokyo Gendai Bijutsukan. Aida submitted these very political critiques of Abe and the museum asked him to voluntarily withdraw them as they could not be easily understood by children, but he held his ground and they were shown. There was considerable press coverage about the attempt to suppress it and his resistance. Although dealing with contemporary "history" the issues about media influence and meaning seem relevant to the questions you raise. Nonetheless, I would appreciate your take on it. If you see a talk on this material as potentially within the range of the call, I may go ahead and write one
  up. There was no catalogue but I was able to photograph all the exhibits and related texts. In April at the AAS in Seattle I will be discussing Aida's new sensoga and its relation to Fujita's work. I would like to give Aida's Abe critique more visibility as he is one of the very few contemporary artists to openly take a stance about the current political situation here.


On another slightly related note, I included Eien no zero as the last film this term in my recent Japanese film course and was disconcerted that a mixture of Japanese and foreign students found the film to be the best or one of the best films they saw in the course despite a critique of the film on the ground of historical inaccuracy and contemporary propaganda films. The most analytical students saw through the film after being prompted for a closer examination by my discussion. Nonetheless for many of the them "seeing was believing" regardless of potential problems...
This experience underlines the importance of the questions you raised in the call for papers.

Best regards,
Paul Berry

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dick Stegewerns" <dick.stegewerns at xs4all.nl>
To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
Sent: Monday, December 14, 2015 12:53:59 AM
Subject: [KineJapan] CFP Conference Visualization of Japanese History, Oslo,	March 10-11

Dear colleagues,

Please find below the call for papers for a conference on the 
visualization of Japanese history in popular media. I hope to be able to 
welcome some KineJapan 'members' as well.

And please forward to others potentially interested.

Best regards,

Dick Stegewerns



*Call for Papers*

**

*Conference, University of Oslo, 10-11 March 2016*

**

*Every Picture Tells a Story: The Visualization of Japanese History*

**

In modern and contemporary Japan we have seen how mass media such as 
historic novels, film and television, but nowadays increasingly manga 
and anime, have become a major influence in the shaping of views on 
national history. Film and television directors and manga and anime 
makers occupy an increasing share in the distribution of historical 
knowledge and it is no exaggeration that in this sense they have become 
the most prominent group of ‘historians’. It is no longer an exception 
that some directors and artists are rather evaluated on the basis of 
their credentials as a historian rather than as a creator. Are we as 
professional historians at ease with the fact that the voice of 
non-professionals overshadows and maybe even distorts our careful and 
painstaking labour in retracing, structuring, analyzing and conveying 
history to a present day audience? As history writers, can we approve of 
those who rather ‘make history’, i.e. convey ‘history’ on a completely 
different basis than that of ‘historical reality’? Can we be sure that 
the various artists and directors are autonomous and do not have to 
adjust their product to the agendas and mores of the state and 
commercial institutions? And if we cannot, what should we do? Pressure 
filmmakers and manga writers to use academic advisers? Make an effort to 
have our research findings visualized on television and in manga? Should 
we counter the influence of for instance Kobayashi Yoshinori by the mere 
means of the orthodox ‘book’ or should we counter him with equal means, 
i.e. manga?

The aim of this collective international research project is to conduct 
a comparative analysis of how the images and interpretations of the most 
outstanding periods and personages in Japanese history have changed over 
time, and to scrutinize which products of mass media were most 
instrumental in bringing about these changes. A related aim is to 
reflect upon the question what the increasing influence of the mass 
media on the 'making' of history implies for the academic trade of 
historical research. We will try to describe long-term structures, 
characteristics and recent developments in the field of the relations 
between the media, popular culture, academia, and collective historical 
memory. This is a field that both I and our keynote speakers Professors 
Fukuma (tbc), Gluck, and Otmazgin have focused on lately, largely 
related to questions of images and memories of the Second World War in 
Japan, and we will build on previous academic meetings on this topic. By 
bringing together scholars on history, media studies, and popular 
culture, we expect to stimulate new approaches to the study of Japanese 
‘history-writing’ and to provide fresh insights into long-term 
structures and defining moments, characteristics and universal nature, 
changes and continuities, roots and future of the links between mass 
media and historical consciousness.

The results of the conference will be published, if possible in separate 
English and Japanese publications, in order to serve the global academic 
- and hopefully wider - community.


Place:University of Oslo

Time:Thurs-Fri 10-11 March 2016

Keynote speakers: Prof. Dr. Fukuma Yoshiaki (tbc), Prof. Dr. Carol 
Gluck, Prof. Dr. Nissim Otmazgin

Please send a 300 word abstract of your proposal by 31 December 2015 to 
<mailto:dick.stegewerns at ikos.uio.no>dick.stegewerns at ikos.uio.no

For more information, please send an email to the same address.

Best regards,

Dick Stegewerns

Associate Professor

Modern & Contemporary Japanese Studies

University of Oslo





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