Happy Birthday, Emi!

Emi’s birthday will be in August - and I got messages to Emi from those who could attend the Celebrating Protest website meeting on Thursday. It’s posted in the Social Movements class blog, so please take a look!

And it would be great if you could write some messages to Emi using this class blog space, to celebrate her birthday!
(And actually, Norma’s birthday is very close to Emi’s, too!)

-Tomomi

In class, we talked about superflat theory and the superflat artist, Takashi Murakami.

Turns out he did the cover art for Kanye West’s new single, “Stronger”!

Check out the news link:

from pitchforkmedia.com

How cool is that cover?!

Sushi!

I remember in class we talked about the globalization/impact of sushi.

Here is a recent article on sushi from slate.com:

sushi!

Podcasts from Celebrating Protest series

Finally, all podcasts are on-line!

Noriaki Imai (Student, Environment and Peace Activist)
“Why I went to Iraq: Three Years Later”　

Tari Ito (Performance Artist) and MASA (Jazz Saxophonist)
“Rubber Tit”

Hitomi Kamanaka (Film Director)
“Q&A with Director Hitomi Kamanaka”　
- panel discussion on Director Kamanaka’s film, “Rokkashomura Rhapsody,” with Kamanaka, Judy Hoffman (Film Director,Cinema and Media Studies), Michael Raine (Cinema and Media Studies/ EALC) and Norma Field (EALC)

Michiko Nakajima (Lawyer)
“The Fifteen-Woman Lawsuit against Self-Defense Forces in Iraq”
Discussant: John Comaroff (Anthropology), Translation: Norma Field (EALC)

Emi Koyama
“Colonialism, Militarism, and the Political Economy of Transracial Adoption”　

Emi Koyama (Director, Intersex Initiative)
“Intersex at the Intersection of Queer Theory and Disability Theory”　

Yoshifumi Tawara（Sec. General of Children and Texbooks Network 21)
“Japanese Education and Society in Crisis”　
Translation: Norma Field (EALC)

Emi’s report on a NWSA panel on conservative backlash against feminism in Japan

There was a panel session, “Tangled Threads of Backlash against Feminism in Contemporary Japan” at the National Women’s Studies Assocation conference in St. Charles, IL, with Masami Saito, a feminist activist/scholar from Toyama, Japan, Emi Koyama, me and Norma as a moderator.

Tina asked me to write a report on this (and I am asking Lauren to report on it, too!), but Emi already posted a very detailed report of the session in her blog - so take a look!

http://eminism.org/archive/2007/07/03-22.html

Pokemon Airplane

I saw this airplane at Tokyo International Airport (Haneda) on my way to Kumamoto.

pokemon plane

Reunion with Nori in Kumamoto, Japan!

Sorry for the late posting - but I met Nori at a Mass Communication Studies conference held in Kumamoto in June 9-10.
I was a discussant to a panel on backlash against feminism and the role of the mass media and the internet, and Nori joined the panel as a guest speaker!

Nori was doing great - and he was so energetic! He told me that he enjoyed his experiences in Chicago so much, and he felt refreshed since then.
On Saturday night, we had a dinner/drinking gathering at a local restaurant, with lots of horse meat dishes, which is known as a local cuisine of Kumamoto.

The main speaker, Chiki (blogger), talked about his analysis of backlashers on the internet, and posed thoughts about feminism’s failure to communicate its thoughts efffectively to the general public. Nori then told his story on the bashing against him, and his own analysis and thoughts of the situation. Akihiro Kitada, a prof at the University of Tokyo, reported his work in progress on the survey he took with the internet users, especially the users of 2 Channel - and argued that it is wrong to simply assume that 2 Channelers are “right-wing.” I told about my own experience in creating websites and blogs for feminist organizations and of my own. Masami Saito, a feminist activist/scholar based in Toyama, who acted as a moderator also added her perspective as a feminist based in a rural Toyama prefecture.

If you are interested in reading the reports in Japanese, the panel participants posted the following reports and thoughts onto their own blogs.

Chiki Ogiue’s “Ogiue-shiki” (Doesn’t this name sound a bit familiar? Chiki is a big fan of Genshiken!)
Chiki’s presentation

Masami Saito’s “Gender and Media Blog”
Report and thoughts

Nori’s “Imai Noriaki no Kakera”
Academic Convention and Activism

Tomomi’s blog
Report

Nori and Tomomi in Kumamoto

local fish “sashimi” and raw horse meat

Beryl and Addie: An Unexpected Delight

Of course, I wasn’t dreading their visit or anything, but I definitely did not expect to sit through two hours of immensely entertaining storytelling. I was all ready to ask Beryl and Addie about their most unusual experience as staff members at the anime convention, but obviously, it would have been like asking a mother to pick her favorite child. It was very reassuring to hear Beryl confirm my theory of the power of “mega-subcultures” being derived from the nature of their various intersections, as well as from the celebration of the minority. As Beryl said, “if we learn about each other’s differences, we start seeing our similarities…and all of a sudden those guys don’t seem so strange anymore. A-Cen in itself is going to be about the celebration of a foreign culture that people find cool. Our facination with Japanese culture is a direct expression of American culture…we’re open to see what’s good about people outside our world. As Americans, we’re always looking for the next fresh thing.” Evidently, the anime culture has persistently leaked into the American mainstream. From my experience at the convention, it is apparent that, as with”the geek,” the otaku has unashamedly embraced its own creation, took back the power of their name, and declared their rightful foothold in the world of “the mundanes.”

Indeed, “art is in the hands of the people now.” We no longer have to be elitist and selectively chosen artists to create.

Xenophobia, cult culture cool, and global immigration of a foreign pop culture

Following my questions from last week about the relationship between mainstream and subcultures, I’d like to raise the question of the power of xenophobia. As the Chinpokomon episode accurately depicted, intense xenophobic anxiety usually surrounds the prevalence of an emerging foreign pop culture. Is it possible that xenophobia (not just of the nationally foreign, but also of that which is foreign to the mainstream) is a fueling force for cult followings to become the cool new mainstream trend? In other words, the very definition of various forms of “coolness” is that whatever is trendy is relatively obscure or inaccessible. So isn’t the existence of xenophobia something that could drive the popularity of a foreign conception of “cool”? (Case and point: the minute the South Park parents lost their xenophobic attitude toward Chinpokomon and seemingly embraced it, it stopped being cool.)

response to “From ‘Intersex’ to ‘DSD’”

For a lack of a better expression, Emi Koyama’s keynote speech at Translating Identity (“From ‘Intersex’ to ‘DSD’”) simply blew my mind. It is such an exquisitely rich entwinement of various topics of and related to the issue of the term “intersex.” As a gender studies major, I was ashamed by how fuzzy I was about the very definition of “intersex,” so Emi’s list of common misconceptions was definitely helpful. Along with that clarification, I am also glad to learn about other issues orbiting intersex studies, such as “public stripping,” “the impaired role,” and the power of “normalizing medicine.” Some questions that remains are: what are the social costs of intersex/DSD people not forming a political community? Why do so many people, intersex individuals included, feel indifferent to the urgency of solving social problems associated with our anxieties about bodily differences and sexuality? How can pop culture contribute to or inhibit such a solution?