Session: Session 3, 3:30 – 5:00 pm, Friday 9/29

Category: Organized Panel

Location: Quad

Chair: Roderick Wilson(University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)

Paper Presenters: David Wallace(University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Darius Barnes(University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Yingzhi Lu(University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)

Discussant: Scott O’Bryan (Indiana University Bloomington)

Abstract: The decades following the Second World War were a transformative time for Japan’s economic, political, and social landscapes. Meteoric economic growth and the democratization of the nation made way for significant social upheaval. As citizens reevaluated government structures, economic policies, and long-held social mores, many expressed their views through protest and active participation in the political process. Each paper on this panel explores sociopolitical change and the Japanese government’s policy responses in the latter half of the twentieth century, from the outbreak of violence in the Sanrizuka Struggle, to the establishment of Japan’s welfare state, to efforts to curb the detrimental effects of the asset price bubble.  David Wallace examines the Sanrizuka Struggle, which saw farming families unite with leftist student groups to protest against the construction of New Tokyo International Airport (now Narita Airport) from the mid-1960s to the 1980s and beyond. He analyzes the social, economic, environmental, and political factors that contributed to the outbreak of unprecedented levels of violence during the struggle, and works to fit the protests into a larger chronology of environmental and social movements in Japan and worldwide.  Yingzhi Lu uses Ariyoshi Sawako`s most celebrated work, The Twilight Years (1972), as a lens to investigate political discourses in late 1960s Japan that predate its official transition to the welfare state in 1973—namely, demographic modernity, the biomedical welfare system, and progressive feminism. By highlighting these, she argues that the social realism in Ariyoshi’s work uses the rhetorical power of horror against dementia to expose systemic issues veiled by political discourses that promise to bring happiness to one’s later life.  Darius Barnes explores the economic policies espoused by the Ministry of Finance, the independent Bank of Japan, and the Liberal Democratic Party in the aftermath of the collapse of the Japanese asset price bubble between December 1989 and April 2003. He examines the economic policies adopted during the period and concludes with the so-called “structural reforms” adopted by the PM Junichiro Koizumi and their lasting effects on the Japanese economy and society at large.

Decades of Resistance: Method and Motivation in the Struggle Against New Tokyo International Airport (1964-Present)

Speaker: David Wallace
Role: Paper Presenter
Institution/Affiliation: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Abstract: The Sanrizuka Struggle (1964 to Present) saw farming families unite with leftist student groups to protest against the construction of New Tokyo International Airport (now Narita Airport). I trace the project’s development, from its benign origins as a means of alleviating congestion at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport to its escalation into militant protest and violence between protesters, police and government workers. I analyze the myriad factors that contributed to the outbreak of unprecedented levels of violence during the struggle, and work to fit the protests into a larger chronology of environmental and social movements in Japan and worldwide.  I conclude that the Sanrizuka Struggle represents something groundbreaking in the realm of Japanese counterculture: a concerted effort by disparate factions to resist the LDP government’s policy of “progress at any cost.” The movement was multifaceted and complex, inspired not just by local concerns, but national issues. With time, it grew to include supporters from across Japan and around the world. Hantai Dōmei protestors sought to raise awareness of injustices they saw as a threat to their way of life. The construction of New Tokyo International Airport brought the Hantai Dōmei’s farmers and leftist students together out of economic, environmental, and political necessity.

Damming a Stream and Releasing a Flood: Japanese Political and Fiscal Policy 1989-2009

Speaker: Darius Barnes
Role: Paper Presenter
Institution/Affiliation: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Abstract: In the year 1989, Japan was riding on the crest of a wave economically. The Nikkei 225 stock average had grown from 7,000 in 1985 to near 39,000 by the end of 1989. Real estate prices enjoyed exponential growth, and land values—buoyed by the myth that land prices in Japan would never fall—appreciated in tandem. Japan Incorporated was primed to control the global financial scene and become the world’s economic hegemon, displacing the United States. However, when the calendar turned from December 1989 to January 1990, the wonder became a horror. My paper explores the economic policies espoused by the Ministry of Finance, the independent Bank of Japan, and the Liberal Democratic Party in the aftermath of the collapse of the Japanese asset price bubble between December 1989, when the Nikkei 225 reached its peak, and its April 2003 post-bubble nadir.  I incorporate an examination of the policies, adopted during the period such as the injection of public funds; introduction of a consumption tax; financial deregulation (the “big bang” of 1996);  the imposition of the zero-interest rate in 1998; and conclude with the so-called “structural reforms” adopted by the government of Junichiro Koizumi, paying attention to the controversial postal and highway privatizations, and their lasting effects on the Japanese economy and society at large. I also dissect the era’s fiscal policy and show how it did not address potential long-term consequences or the conditions that facilitated the inflation of the bubble.

Twilight Modernity: Demographic Modernity, Biomedical Welfare State, and Femininity in Ariyoshi Sawako’s The Twilight Years (1972)

Speaker: Yingzhi Lu
Role: Paper Presenter
Institution/Affiliation: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Abstract: Written amidst considerable social changes in 1970s Japan, Ariyoshi Sawako’s Twilight Years highlights the challenges that an aging population posed to Japanese society, especially to female caregivers. Grappling with these challenges was widely viewed by the Japanese government as part of a larger process of modernization, and culminated in the concept of the welfare state. Through the lens of Ariyoshi`s most celebrated work, Twilight Years (1972), I investigate the novel’s engagements with the nested political discourses in late 1960s Japan that predates its official transition to the welfare state in 1973—namely, demographic modernity, biomedical welfare system, and progressive feminism. By highlighting these discourses, I argue that the social realism in Ariyoshi’s work utilizes the rhetoric power of horror against dementia to expose systematic issues veiled within political discourses that all promise to bring happiness in one’s later life. Via a walk-through of fragmented and versatile intersubjectivities between the caretaker and the demented patient, Ariyoshi shows how all these discourses fail to provide a cohesive model for caring relationships in the face of prolonged longevity in Japan.