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- Convenor:
-
Takeshi Hamano
(University of Kitakyushu)
Send message to Convenor
- Format:
- Panel
- Section:
- Urban, Regional and Environmental Studies
- Location:
- Lokaal 6.60
- Sessions:
- Saturday 19 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Brussels
Short Abstract:
The "regionalization" of cultural creation and appreciation in regional Japan today must be critically questioned. It should not only be recognized as positive feedback of local autonomy or voluntary community building. Additionally, we must challenge the "methodological nationalism".
Long Abstract:
By mobilizing the local cultural heritage or the collective memory of the community, the urgent development of "creative culture" is imagined to be an alternative style of "regional revitalization" (chiho-sosei) in the Japanese policy term. While cultural policies have belonged to major global cities affluent in cultural diversity and alternative values, the recent national "regional revitalization" policy strongly encourages regional societies to create innovative cultures against the rapid decline of population and industries. Meanwhile, considering the differing socio-historical trajectories between urban (global) and regional cities within a nation with a highly centralized political structure, it is feasible to propose a new sociological approach to examine the political economy underlying the encouragement of "creative cultures" in regional Japan.
Our panel draws attention to the following points: first, alongside the rhetoric of cultural creation embedded in the neoliberal logic of "self-responsibility," it is imperative to understand how the centralized national polity significantly affects the process. The "regionalization" of active cultural creation and appreciation in regional societies must be critically questioned; it should not only be recognized as positive feedback of local autonomy or voluntary community building. Second, we must challenge the "methodological nationalism" in the study of contemporary Japan by emphasizing deterritorialization as the status quo. Local societies may, regardless of their preference, provide an opportunity for being directly translated and reconfigured by these trans-local networks. Each presentation with unique case studies will raise critical inquiries about the "creativity" of local cultures, based on case analyses of diverse cultural practices in local communities throughout Japan. They will include the following topics: suffering memory of industrial pollution and community redevelopment; national nuclear power plant policy and its mediation with the local community; community building with a local World Heritage site and its unanticipated outocmes; and the grass-rooted activism of community art projects in the regional tow. Finally, our panel proposes to focus on the "imagination" of culture emerging from the unique topology of regional societies rather than on the anticipated "creation", in an encounter with the tension between deterritorialization and reterritorialization across the nation.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Saturday 19 August, 2023, -Takeshi Hamano (University of Kitakyushu)
Paper short abstract:
Based on a long-term case study on a local industrial heritage, this presentation describes the process through which a local Word Heritage building was transformed into boundary object, and examines how various actors have participated in a social translation of the World Heritage site.
Paper long abstract:
Industrial heritages across regional Japan are often revitalized as a symbol of local community. In post-industrial Japan, those heritages are no more remains of the past, but a symbolic object of collective memories of the community that seeks “regional revitalization (chiho-sosei)” against rapid depopulation and socio-economic stagnation. The registration of “Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution: Iron and Steel, Shipbuilding and Coal Mining” as a site of World Heritage by UNESCO in 2015 was a groundbreaking moment. It allowed us to witness how local industrial heritages obtained an international reputation by virtue of their “universal outstanding value.” Since then, the heritage has been employed locally, nationally, and globally as a symbolic landmark to conduct actual procedures for regional revitalization: community and cultural development, regional history education, launches of local business and even tourism. However, this multifaceted social process should not be considered an ideological reproduction of its symbolic “authentic values” directly connected with the history of the modern nation. They are, in fact, a mode of existence of dynamic translation connecting multiple actors in different ways. The local industrial heritage, accordingly, turned out to be an object that generated alternative networks and (dis)connections in local society.
Based on a long-term case study on a local industrial heritage building (built in 1899) located in a regional city of the northern Kyushu island region and listed in “Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution”, this presentation describes the process through which a local Word Heritage building was transformed into “boundary object” (Star and Griesemer, 1989) beyond the national symbol. It discusses how various actors (including non-human objects and incidents) have participated in a social translation of the object, rather than strengthening its symbolic values as a national object, even though its recognition as a World Heritage building crucially affected this social process. Consequently, this presentation is not merely an inquiry about the deprivation of local memory by national or universal values, but rather seeks to highlight a new scale of recognition of cultural emergence of the object within Japanese local society.
Motohiro Koizumi (Rikkyo University)
Paper short abstract:
Since the 2000s, amid expectations for regional revitalisation, arts festivals have been frequently held in local communities in Japan. This study will highlight and categorise the issues surrounding the festivals and show the artists practices that try to form a new cultural scene in local society.
Paper long abstract:
Since the 2000s, amid expectations for regional revitalisation through the use of the arts against the backdrop of Japan's social situation of a rapidly declining birthrate, ageing population and shrinking society, arts festivals (art projects) have been frequently held in various local communities in Japan. Art festivals using old houses, abandoned schools and factories in mountainous regions, islands and depopulated areas are frequently organised by local authorities and — despite being temporarily suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic —, attract hundreds of thousands to millions of tourists from Japan and abroad every year.
However, such arts festivals faced criticism in the late 2010s. The critics stated that the critical nature of the arts was being lost sight of in the national policy of regional revitalisation (e.g. Fujita et al. 2016). It has also been noted that such projects, with the goal of local revitalisation, have produced the result that artists have become "dispensable 'casual workers'" and furthermore, "local and regional cities have become subordinate to capital cities" (Sadakane 2016). In other words, art projects — and art — in local cities are reduced to objects to be 'consumed' by the 'centre'.
In this social situation surrounding art projects, which is entering a new phase after a temporary frenzy of promotion, this study aims to (i) highlight and categorise the issues surrounding art festivals in recent society through empirical research based on participant observation and interviews, and theoretical research based on the findings of sociological and cultural studies. In addition, the study focuses on (ii) the practices of artists who are not only "consumed" but also try to form a new cultural scene in the local community. Through these arguments, the aim of this research is to present a new socio-political perspective on considerations related to cultural production in Japanese local society.
Akimasa Suganuma (Kyushu Sangyo University)
Paper short abstract:
This presentation will discuss how community-based tourism development has succeeded in creating new cultural resources from local resources by looking at the recent case of regional redevelopment by the local community in Minamata City, Kumamoto Prefecture.
Paper long abstract:
It has been almost two decades since tourism was highlighted in a new public policy in regional Japan after the decline of post-war national economy in the 1990s. In post-war Japan, a planned economy was adopted through the National Land Development Plan. Certain regions have been intensively developed according to this policy. In return, subsidised public investment has been made in areas not covered by the labour supply in those specific regions. However, such economic policies have reached their limits. Thus, instead of large-scale public investment by the state government, regional societies were encouraged to become economically self-reliant by attracting domestic and foreign tourists. For example, the government has expanded the existing system of cultural heritage protection, creating new categories such as ‘National Modernization Heritage’ and ‘Japan Heritage’ and transforming various local cultural resources into tourism resources. This has created a mechanism to transform various local cultural resources into tourism resources. The policy involves a limited distribution of government subsidies to local communities. Various regions are campaigning to have their sites inscribed on the World Heritage List, with the aim of obtaining continuous subsidies. However, the promotion of tourism has not been successful. Decades of dependence on government public investment have alienated local communities from the means and awareness to create their own societies by their own initiative. Furthermore, rapid ageing have become more serious and an increasing number of local communities experience obstacles to local development. Looking at a recent case of regional redevelopment by local communities in Minamata City, Kumamoto Prefecture, which has experienced the most serious pollution and fragmentation of local communities in post-war Japan, this presentation discusses how community based-tourism development has succeeded in producing new cultural resources from local resources. It also conducts a critical investigation into their voluntary practices by pointing out two key social factors of regional development in post-war Japan: dependence on the state by local governments and rapid depopulation of the community.
Hajime Hasegawa (Meiji Gakuin University)
Paper short abstract:
This presentation will focus on the nuclear-related information centers that have emerged in Hamadori-Fukushima after the so-called 3.11 tragedy. The author's exhaustive surveys will reveal their actual conditions and the significant points of exhibition narratives without the essential question.
Paper long abstract:
It has been almost 12 years since the devastating earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant on March 11, 2011. During the same period, I have continued fieldwork at nuclear-related information centers in Japan, European countries, and the United States, some of the results of which were reported at the EAJS in 2021.
This presentation will focus on the nuclear information centers that have emerged in Hamadori-Fukushima, one of the severe disaster areas, in recent years. The six main ones among them are as follows:
- The Great East Japan Earthquake and Nuclear Disaster Memorial Museum (Futaba Town)
- Commutan Fukushima (Miharu Town)
- Reprun Fukushima (Tomioka Town)
- Interim Storage Facility Information Center (Okuma Town)
- TEPCO Decommissioning Museum (Tomioka Town)
- The Tomioka Archive Museum (Tomioka Town)
Some of the above six centers aim to remember and transmit the experience of the disaster. In contrast, others say to promote understanding the need for radiation-contaminated waste disposal. Some of them are operated by local governments. In contrast, others are run by the national government or the electric power company. However, they all share an economic foundation directly or indirectly supported by the government budget.
Through my research on the exhibits at the six centers, I revealed two significant points in common. First, they also share a similar composition of the exhibition with the sentimental-tone narrative, such as the progress of the disaster, the harsh evacuation behavior, the difficult evacuation life, and the reconstruction that overcomes these hardships. Second, a question on the nuclear accident --- why has Fukushima had to suffer from such tragedy? --- is absent.
This question should be about essential. Nevertheless, the exhibit narratives portray the experience of the disaster as if it was a natural disaster or no such question existed. The absence of the question would obscure the responsibility. Therefore, we need to pay attention to it because it would suggest the mode of the national-local relationship in the post-Fukushima era.