Child Welfare and Problems of Well-Being in Japan

The Yokosuka Council on Asia-Pacific Studies, in collaboration with TUJ Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies is proud to present our next collaboration event in Tokyo. This event will feature Kathryn Goldfarb who will speak on Child Welfare and Problems of Well-Being in Japan.

Child welfare systems do not always generate well-being. This is true across the world, as it is in Japan. Policymakers, caregivers, and people with experience in state care endeavor to imagine—and implement—child welfare systems that are genuinely supportive. Yet despite these efforts, social welfare systems too often produce people who are alone.

In Japan, there are culturally and historically specific challenges to the development of child welfare systems that support well-being. This presentation introduces central arguments of my recently published book, Fragile Kinships: Child Welfare and Well-Being in Japan. Based in ethnographic research in Japan between 2008 and 2023, this study is rooted in lived experiences and culturally contextualized narratives, and places relationality at the heart of our understanding of social forms of care. Most centrally, the book demonstrates why welfare systems must support relational well-being.

YCAPS is glad to partner with TUJ Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies and the University of Chicago Alumni Club of Japan to deliver this opportunity.

*This event will be a hybrid event. For those who are able, please join us on the day at TUJ's campus, for those who cannot, please join us for the online webinar version.

Please Bring a photo ID upon reception.

Please use this link to RSVP for in-person attendence or online attendence.

*Registration is mandatory

Location:

Temple University Japan Campus, Room 410

1-14-29 Taishido, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo

Map

Speaker:

Kathryn (Kate) Goldfarb is an Associate Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and is a cultural and medical anthropologist. She is author of Fragile Kinships: Child Welfare and Well-Being in Japan (Cornell University Press 2024) and co-editor of Difficult Attachments: Anxieties of Kinship and Care (Rutgers University Press 2024). Her research focuses on the ways social relationships and public policy impact well-being. She has conducted longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork with people connected to the Japanese child welfare system, examining the stakes of family disconnection in a country where the family is considered the basic social unit.

Cost: Free of charge

Moderators: Robert Dujarric, ICAS Co-Director and Jeff Mazziotta, YCAPS Activities Coodinator

Format: This event will be off-the-record. Questions are encouraged.

Registration: Required via this link

Co-Sponsors: TUJ Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies & The University of Chicago Alumni Club of Japan