Dr. Chris Perkins (University of Edinburgh): "Japan-Korea Relations and the Diary of Yunbogi" - Semestereröffnungsvortrag

What can the history of Japanese media engagements with Korea help us understand about representation and reconciliation today? How do audio-visual media establish aesthetic frameworks for intercultural engagement and how do they impact on (troubled) relations between nations? In order to explore these questions this paper goes back to the beginnings of 'normal' relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea. Specifically, I will discuss Japanese New Wave director Oshima Nagisa's 1966 documentary Diary of Yunbogi (Yunbogi no Nikki), which was based on a best-selling diary of a young boy struggling to survive on the streets of a small city in Korea.   Placing the book and film within the political context of Japan’s long 1960s, this paper analyses the impact of the original book, the aesthetic and affective strategies of the documentary, and traces the discourse produced by the book and film in the print media, which has continued into the contemporary period. Through this analysis I will show how the film negotiates feelings of guilt towards Japan's former colony, and discuss the ways in which the book and the film became integrated into Japan's own narrative of victimhood as Yunbogi's story came to represent what Japan had lost in the postwar period.

Dr. Chris Perkins completed a joint honours degree in Japanese Language and Contemporary Society with Education Studies at Oxford Brookes University in 2004, with one year spent at Kitakyushu University as an exchange student. After this he worked as a teacher at four schools in Gifu for two years before returning to complete an MSc (distinction) in International Relations at Royal Holloway University of London in 2007, where he went on to complete his PhD thesis entitled ‘National Thinking and the Politics of Belonging in Contemporary Japan’. He joined the University of Edinburgh as a lecturer in January 2011. His work has appeared in journals including The European Journal of Social Theory, Global Society, Television and New Media, The Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, and Asiatische Studien, as well as in numerous edited collections. His book on media and memory of the left in Japan, The United Red Army on Screen, was published by Palgrave in 2015.

Datum: 18. Oktober 2018, 18 Uhr c.t.
Ort: Campus Bockenheim, Gebäude Juridicum, Raum 717

Die Veranstaltung kann besucht werden von Studierenden aller Semester des Faches Japanologie. Die Teilnahme und das Verfassen eines Protokolls werden im Sinne der Studienordnung für den Erwerb von CP (Modul J9) angerechnet.