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The Ainu collection in the Ethnographic Museum in Berlin This collaborative project focuses on analyzing the Ainu collection, comprising around 1,000 objects, in terms of origin, age, materiality, and functionality, as well as presenting the research findings in exhibitions in Japan and Berlin.

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Research and exhibition project: The Ainu collection in the Ethnographic Museum in Berlin

This collaborative project focuses on analyzing the entire Ainu collection, comprising around 1,000 objects from the Department of East and North Asia, in terms of origin, age, materiality, and functionality, as well as presenting the research findings in exhibitions in both Japan and Berlin.

The Ainu collection at the Ethnological Museum in Berlin is not only one of the largest of its kind, but also unique in its composition, as its diversity of objects provides a good overview of Ainu culture in Hokkaido and Sakhalin in the second half of the 19th century.

In 2024 a team of researchers from the National Ainu Museum came to Berlin to visit the Ethnological Museum and its collections. The primary task was to prepare the loan of the Berlin objects for the co-operative exhibition planned as part of the Japan World Expo 2025. The focus was on those objects that were exhibited at the 1873 World's Fair in Vienna in 1873, returning to Hokkaido for the first time in 150 years. The objects were displayed as the centerpiece of the exhibition “Ainu Collection at the Vienna World Exhibition 1873” in Hokkaido in 2025.

Research on other Ainu objects from the EM collection will continue in collaboration over the next few years. The initial focus will be on analyzing the materials and techniques used in the production of Ainu textiles and garments. The aim is to identify clues related to production dates, periods of use, and manufacturing locations. Research outcomes will be disseminated through academic publications. The report will include measurements, material types, patterns, and detailed images of each item. It will also feature garment illustrations and diagrams to enable contemporary reproduction, thereby supporting the continuation of traditional techniques.

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This presentation examines the propaganda strategy at nuclear power plant visitor centers in Japan, based on the 14-year fieldwork project. The author's surveys reveal how their model reactors function as propaganda machines while, simultaneously, the propaganda is negated, unintentionally.

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This presentation will report and examine the propaganda strategy at nuclear power plant visitor centers (NPP-VCs) in Japan, based on the author's fourteen-year-long fieldwork.

In Japan, the government has long promoted nuclear power generation as a national policy since the mid-twentieth century. Still, it keeps it despite the devastating nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi in 2011. One of the propaganda apparatuses used to promote nuclear national policy is an NPP-VC attached to each power plant, operated by the electric power industry. Since 2012, the author has visited and researched NPP-VCs not only in Japan but also in Taiwan, Europe, and the U.S., and some of the results have been reported at the EAJS in 2021 and 2023.

Every NPP-VC has a huge and luxurious building. Admission is free, and the venue is open almost every day of the year. The target visitor is the general public, meaning people undecided between pro-nuclear and anti-nuclear views.

Their propaganda strategy is clear and simple. The keys are: 1) nuclear power plants are necessary, 2) nuclear power generation is a great technology, and 3) you never need to worry about risks and accidents. The exhibit of NPP-VCs usually features model reactors, explanatory panels, and attractions for children within a "fun" atmosphere reminiscent of a theme park like Tokyo Disneyland.

The model reactor is the highlight of the exhibit. While the scale varies, nearly all NPP-VCs have a model reactor installed. The model reactors are likely to overwhelm visitors with their gigantic size, thereby fostering acceptance of nuclear promotion. However, this propaganda strategy may not be functioning as intended by the electric power industry. In this presentation, we will examine the true nature of model reactors in detail to reveal how this propaganda strategy paradoxically backfires.

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This presentation explores artistic practices that “become the dead” to carry forward memories of the Great East Japan Earthquake, including an audio drama of animals abandoned after the nuclear accident, a documentary tracing the dead’s gaze, and a workshop turning tsunami-lost mementos into art.

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The Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 was a compound disaster involving an earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accident. While video cameras and mobile phones enabled extensive documentation, some experiences remain beyond visual recording—such as those of individuals swept away by the tsunami and animals that starved or were culled in nuclear evacuation zones. This presentation examines artistic practices of “becoming the dead” as a way to carry forward the memory of 3.11 across time and space.

Three cases are analyzed. The first is an audio drama produced in 2014 by high school students in Fukushima, who voiced animals left behind in the exclusion zone. Wearing radiation-measuring devices made them feel like experimental animals, and they created this work by seeing their own situation reflected in the predicament of cattle that died in barns without understanding why, in towns abandoned after the nuclear accident.

The second case is the 2019 documentary film If These Letters Reach Your Eyes, directed by Sonomi Sato, who lost her younger sister in the tsunami at Ishinomaki Municipal Okawa Elementary School. This work interweaves letters addressed to the dead with imagined footage from the perspective of the deceased. Viewers perceive the presence of “living dead” alongside the living, while sensing the difficulty posed by the growing separation of their respective life-times.

The third case is an experimental workshop by artist Fumie Chiba, who invites others to transform her grandmother’s belongings lost in the tsunami into artworks by passing them on. Chiba calls this practice “creative care,” through which time-frozen disaster objects undergo “regeneration.”

Reenactment—performing historical events or reconstructing ethnographic scenes—has gained attention in history and anthropology. Originating in contemporary art, this method is exemplified in Japan by Hikaru Fujii’s works, which include workshops reenacting imperialist education during World War II and reconstructing discriminatory structures surrounding the Fukushima nuclear accident. Expanding Fujii’s discussion of reenactment, this presentation explores how such practices share [partage] the memory of “invisible beings” as lived actuality and open possibilities for transmitting disaster experiences to future generations.

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This paper examines how local reggae songs about danjiri festivals in Senshu, Osaka, express affective ties of kinship and romance that draw youth into risky participation and reinforce Kishiwada’s central place in the wider danjiri cultural sphere.

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In contemporary Japan, many local festivals face depopulation and a shortage of successors, yet the danjiri float festivals of the Senshu region in southern Osaka continue to mobilize large numbers of young participants and retain remarkable intensity. Urban festival studies within Japanese cultural anthropology have clarified the institutional and organizational dimensions of such events. Notably, Wazaki’s work on Kyoto’s Hidari-Daimonji fire festival has examined festival organization, spatial configuration, and tourism as key to the anthropology of the city, while Yoneyama’s studies of the Gion festival treat it as a privileged lens on urban social life and civic order. Building on this anthropological tradition, this paper shifts the focus from institutional structure to the affective sensibilities that make risky, time-consuming participation in danjiri festivals experientially desirable for young people.

Specifically, this study analyzes two locally celebrated Japanese reggae tracks that explicitly reference danjiri festivals: BEAR MAN’s “Asekusai oretachi no machi” (“Our Sweaty Town,” 2013) and REKID’s “Matsuri no owari” (“The End of the Festival,” 2023). Treating these songs as narrative condensations of participants’ embodied experience, the paper combines a close reading of lyrics with attention to their circulation through YouTube videos, music videos, and danjiri-related events.

The analysis shows, first, that BEAR MAN’s song articulates a vertically oriented sensibility of kinship and intergenerational transmission, in which “sweaty,” physically exerted male bodies and the cherished danjiri float are embedded in a quasi-extended family spanning fathers and children. Second, REKID’s track foregrounds horizontally oriented affects of romance and intimate partnership, linking the “sportized” danjiri body (tanned skin, happi coats, styled hair) to heterosexual attraction and future family formation. Taken together, these songs reveal a shared “affective commons” that ties vertical (kinship/lineage) and horizontal (romance/peer) relations to the continued reproduction of the danjiri “cultural sphere,” while reinforcing the symbolic centrality of Kishiwada within that sphere. By foregrounding popular music as an ethnographic window onto festival participation, this paper expands anthropological debates on urban festivals, youth culture, and the sensory grounds of communal persistence.