Getting to Know Japan Webinar Series

Dr. Mike Bosack is joining the Getting to Know Japan Series to speak on the structure of Japan's government and the basics of its constitution. His presentation will help give you a lay of the land, and touch on how the current system came to fruition in the postwar period. Join us as we kick off another year of this weekly webinar series that introduces you to Japan's history, culture, and politics!
 

Registration for the Zoom session can be found here.

April will be election time in many towns, cities and prefectures in Japan. There will be sound trucks repeating the candidates’s names, thinly attended rallies at train stations entrances and boards going up in front of the local elementary school with posters of politicians displaying varying degrees of determination and friendliness. Michael Cucek will be joining us to help us make sense of all the ruckus – and explore some of the larger issues dividing Japan’s political classes: decreasing populations, relative decline in economic strength, an increased defense budget, marriage equality, and more.
 

Registration for the Zoom session can be found here.

In this talk, Dr. Levi McLaughlin will provide an overview of the numerous religious and religion-affiliated organizations that intersect with politics in Japan. He will discuss the Unification Church (and how it relates to Shinzo Abe's assassination), Shinto-affiliated nationalists (including Nippon Kaigi and its signatories), Buddhist activists (including Soka Gakkai and its affiliated party Komeito), and other actors in this sphere. Dr. McLaughlin is Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at North Carolina State University.

Registration for the Zoom session can be found here.

What do anti-communist sound trucks, anti-imperial anarchists, anti-war teenagers, and anti-racist countermovements have in common? In this talk, Professor Smith will discuss the post-WWII history and contemporary status of several activist movements in Japan, based in part on his fieldwork since 2005 into the Japanese far right. As activist movements engage each other, lay society, the Japanese government, US-Japan relations, and Japan’s relationship with Asian neighbors, they offer insight into the dynamism of political life in contemporary Japan.

Registration for the Zoom session can be found here.

In this discussion, Captain Keizo Kitagawa will give an introductory presentation on Commodore Matthew C. Perry and his US Navy expedition to Japan. This seminar will also address the impact of Perry's "Black Ships" on 19th century Japan, the conclusion of Japans' era of isolation and the subsequent Meiji Restoration and transition into a modern state.

Registration for the Zoom session can be found here.