Date: November 19 (Thursday) – 22 (Sunday), 2026
Hosted by: International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken)
Venues: International Research Center for Japanese Studies;
Campus Plaza Kyoto
Sponsored by: CIEE Kyoto
Supported by: University of Victoria, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (895-2021-1002)
Funding: Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) 23K25478 “Sites of Contestation or Connection? Japan's imperial heritage and borders of memory” (PI: Edward Boyle)
Event Format: In-person
Language: English, with several sessions in Japanese.
If you wish to attend the Global Samurai roundtables on Friday 20 November, please sign up through the link below (by 29 October, for details see below)
Objectives:
In our interconnected yet increasingly fractured world, questions of identity seem to loom ever larger. We are all encouraged to celebrate our status as individuals, even as personal, communal, and national identities are bound, categorized, and constrained. With communications more instant and more distant than ever, the importance of connection to our lives today is undeniable. Yet how we connect with the world is inseparable from how we relate to the past, both our own and that of others elsewhere.
Japan, long characterized as insular yet connected to the wider world, offers a revealing vantage point on such questions. This international symposium, Shared Heritage? Transcending Insularity in Japan and the World, draws on the strengths of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies and the Global Consortium for Japanese Studies to develop a platform for discussing issues of global significance, and how they converge in and connect with Japan.
Over four days, sessions on heritage and history, cultural symbols and legacies, memories and meaning, interconnectedness and insularity, and borders and bordering will offer fresh approaches to the study of Japan from a global standpoint and highlight Japan's role within these fields. Bringing together established and early-career researchers from a range of disciplines, the symposium will explore theoretical and practical frameworks for researching Japan anew, while considering what Japan means for the world today.
Day 1 - 19 November (Thursday)History and Heritage Beyond Borders
Location: Nichibunken Seminar Room 1
09:30–09:35 Welcome and Introductory Remarks
Director-General Inoue Shōichi (Nichibunken)
09:35–09:45 Thematic Introduction by Edward Boyle (Nichibunken)
Borders of Memory – Contesting, Connecting, Overcoming
PLENARY SESSION: Doing Heritage Beyond Borders
09:45–10:45 Lecture by David Harvey (Aarhus University)
“History and Heritage Beyond Borders: Reflections on the Processes, Uses and Misuses of Heritage-Border Relations”
CHAIR: Edward Boyle
10:45–11:00 BREAK
11:00–12:30 Panel: Insular and Indigenous Heritages
CHAIR: Paul Kreitman, Columbia University
■ Beyond the Postcard Coast: Swimming through Differences and Inter-islands Solidarities in the Pacifics (Shu-mei Huang, National Taiwan University)
■ The Multi-layered Structure of Colonialism Revealed through the Reconciliation Process surrounding the Mudan Incident: Intertwined Historical and Current Positionalities (Ako Tomoko, University of Tokyo)
■ Nervous Landscapes: Disrupting Settler-normative spaces through a Trans-Indigenous Dance (Roslynn Ang, Lasalle College of Arts, Singapore)
■ Performing Indigenous Agency: Yukara-za and the Emergence of a Modern Ainu Theatre (Yachita Mio, National Ainu Museum)
DISCUSSANTS: Yuko Nagasawa (Seoul National University)
Yayut Yi-Shiuan Chen (National Chengchi University)
12:30–14:00 LUNCH
Crossing Borders of Memory – Japan, Germany, World
HeKKSaGOn Sessions on “Displacement and Detention in History and Historical Memory: Germany and Japan in Comparative and Transcultural Perspectives”
14:00–15:30 Session 1: Transnational Histories
CHAIR: Steven Ivings, Kyoto University
■ ‘Rolling home across the sea’: The ship newspaper Die Heimfahrt and the repatriation of German Prisoners of War from Japan in January/February 1920 (Takuma Melber, Heidelberg University)
■ German Business in Japan during WW1 (1914–1918) (Marie Grosseschallau, Kyoto University)
■ Extending the Sinews of Empire: Japanese Shipping and the First World War (Mahon Murphy, Kyoto University)
■ Addressing the Negative Legacy in the Military Organisations of Post-World War II Germany and Japan: Focusing on Private Sanctions (Fukunaga Koto, Osaka University)
DISCUSSANT: Tristan Grunow, Nagoya University
15:30–15:45 BREAK
15:45–17:30 Session 2: Displaced Memories
CHAIR: Zhou Yufei, Nichibunken
■ In the Shadow of the A-Bomb: Repatriates in Hiroshima (Nishii Marina, Nagoya Institute of Technology)
■ Guides as Memory Mediators: Insights from War Heritage Tourism in Berlin’s Underground Shelters (Ochi Ikuno, Tohoku University)
■ Absent Enemies: The Divergent Post-War Legacies of German and Japanese Captives of World War Two in Rural Australia (Daniel Milne, Kyoto University)
■ Constrained Mobility: An Anthropological Perspective on GDR Vehicles in Regional Museums in Present-Day Eastern Germany (Nakano Haruko, Kyoto University)
■ Karafuto repatriates and the transmission of post-memory: an analysis through three films (Jonathan Bull, Hokkaido University)
DISCUSSANT: Julia Gerster, Tohoku University
17:30–17:35 Wrapping- and Opening-up:
Heritage, History, and Crossing Borders of Memory
Day 2 - 20 November (Friday morning)Shared Heritage
Location: Nichibunken Seminar Room 1
Shared Heritage: Methods, Modes, Means, and Materials
10:00–11:00 Keynote Lecture by Kono Toshiyuki (Kyushu University)
“Beyond Objects and Sites: Samurai, Serial World Heritage and the Heritage Ecosystem”
CHAIR: Ellen Van Goethem (Kyushu University)
11:10–12:00 Shaped and Snapped: Samurai Photography and its Legacies
CHAIR: Chihiro Saka (Nichibunken)
■ TBA, (Luke Gartlan, St. Andrews University)
■ Eyes of the Samurai: Photographs Taken by Daimyo and Their Retainers in Nineteenth-Century Japan (Chihoko Ando, Nichibunken)
12:00–13:30 LUNCH
Location: Nichibunken Auditorium
FACILITATORS: Kataoka Mai and Oliver White, Nichibunken
13:30–13:45 Introductory Remarks: Director-General Inoue Shōichi and Guests
13:50–14:35 Historical and Memorialized Samurai [in Japanese]
CHAIR: Liu Yang, Nichibunken
PARTICIPANTS: Oleg Benesch, University of York
Nam-lin Hur, University of British Columbia
Bettina Gramlich-Oka, Sophia University
INTERLOCUTOR: Isoda Michifumi, Nichibunken
14:40–15:25 Samurai after Samurai [in Japanese]
CHAIR: Gwon Minhyeok, Nichibunken
PARTICIPANTS: Rosina Buckland, British Museum
Hiromu Nagahara, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Sven Saaler, Sophia University
INTERLOCUTOR: Takii Kazuhiro, Nichibunken
15:25–15:45 BREAK
15:45–16:30 Samurai (as) Culture [in English]
CHAIR: Nanako Ōta, Nichibunken
PARTICIPANTS: Alisa Freedman, University of Oregon
Mark Ravina, University of Texas Austin
Rosina Buckland
INTERLOCUTOR: Timon Screech, Nichibunken
16:35–17:20 Transcultural Samurai [in English]
CHAIR: Zahra Moharramipour, Nichibunken
PARTICIPANTS: Clemens Büttner, Heidelberg University
Ignacio López-Calvo, University of California, Merced
Oleg Benesch
INTERLOCUTOR: Frederick Cryns, Nichibunken
17:20–17:30 Closing Ceremony
Day 3 - 21 November(Saturday)Insular Heritage
Location: Nichibunken Seminar Room 1
Japan’s Borders in Globalization
10:00–11:00 Keynote Lecture by Paul Kreitman (Columbia University)
“Guarding the Exits: Emigration Control and the Making of Japan's Borders, 1583–1981”
CHAIR: Hasan Topaçoğlu, Üsküdar University
11:00–11:15 BREAK
11:15–12:30 Border Heritage Session 1, supported by the Borders in Globalization_Research Laboratory
CHAIR: Edward Boyle
■ Comic Print Culture and the Making of Ezo as a Northern Borderland in Late Eighteenth-Century Edo Japan (Andrea Csendom, University of Osaka)
■ ‘If you don’t like it here, just go to the neighbors’: the impact of the modern Japanese nation-state and its sovereignty on Sino-Japanese relations in the Dutch East-Indies, 1899-1929 (Edwin Pietersma, University of Wisconsin-Madison)
■ From the Philippines to Osaka: Body, Marginality, and Bordering in Oda Sakunosuke’s “My Town” (Waga machi, 1942) (Ran Wei, Tohoku University)
DISCUSSANT: Maria Cynthia Barriga, Hitotsubashi University
12:30–13:45 LUNCH
13:45–15:00 Border Heritage Session 2, supported by the Borders in Globalization_Research Laboratory
CHAIR: Tian Yunchen, Kyoto University
■ South of the Empire: Singapore, Seikyōsha and the Limits of Japanese Nationalism in Nihon Oyobi Nihonjin, 1907-1937 (Mariam Talibi, Waseda University)
■ Crossing the Borders of the Nation and of the Secular: the Role of Buddhism in the Memorialization of Japanese Migrant Sex Workers to Southeast Asia (Paride Stortini, Ghent University)
■ Empires Beyond Land: Imperial Whaling and the Long-run Reshaping of East Asian Fisheries (Chenyang Sun, Freie Universität Berlin)
DISCUSSANT: Nathaniel Smith, Ritsumeikan University
15:00–15:15 BREAK
Borders, Islands, and Global Risk
15:15–16:30 ROUNDTABLE
CHAIR: Naomi Chi, Hokkaido University
■ Territorial States and Japan's Borderlands in the Context of Security and Crisis (Kawakubo Fuminori, Chuo Gakuin University)
■ Island Borders and Linguistic Diversity: Rethinking Language Revitalization in the Ryukyus (Yokoyama Akiko, National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics)
■ Geo-politics of 'Island Japan': Borders, Security, and Global Risk (Iwashita Akihiro, Nagasaki University and Hokkaido University)
DISCUSSANT: Alexander Bukh, Waseda University
Heritage, flows, and transcending boundaries
16:30–17:30 General Discussion
CHAIR: Edward Boyle
PARTICIPANTS: Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly, University of Victoria
Rosina Buckland, British Museum
Ellen Van Goethem, Kyushu University
David Harvey, Aarhus University
Shu-mei Huang, National Taiwan University
Ayako Kusunoki, Nichibunken
Hasan Topaçoğlu, Üsküdar University
17:30 Close
Day 4 - 22 November(Sunday)Japan’s Island Borderlands
場所: キャンパスプラザ京都 第4講義室
(〒600-8216 京都市下京区西洞院通塩小路下る東塩小路町939)
https://www.consortium.or.jp/about-cp-kyoto/access
助成: 科学研究費助成事業 挑戦的研究(萌芽)24K21395 (研究代表者:中京大学教授 古川浩司)
10:00–13:00 ポストコロナ時代の日本のボーダーランド:隣国との関係再構築に向けて
Japan’s Borderlands in the Post-COVID-19 Era: Toward Rebuilding Relations with Neighboring Countries
第1セッション 総論 / General Themes
CHAIR: Edward Boyle
1.日本のボーダーランズ研究の展開:北西太平洋地域への拡充を目指して (古川浩司)
The Evolution of Borderland Studies in Japan: Expanding to the Northwest Pacific (Furukawa Koji)
2.訪日外国人旅行者数の推移-コロナ以前と以後の比較 ( 高木彰彦)
Trends in the Number of Inbound Foreign Visitors to Japan: A Comparative Analysis of the Pre- and Post-COVID-19 Eras (Takagi Akihiko)
3.国境に関する中央地方間の関心ギャップ: 国会、道県議会、市議会議事録の分析から (奥薗淳二)
Central–Local Gaps in Attention to Border Issues: An Analysis of the Proceedings of the National Diet, Prefectural Assemblies, and Municipal Councils (Okuzono Junji)
4.境界なき海を描く:太平洋諸島に残る国界線の歴史 (加々美康彦)
Mapping a Borderless Ocean: Historical Legacies of Cartographic Boundaries in the Pacific Islands (Kagami Yasuhiko)
第2セッション 各論 / Specific Issues
CHAIR: Tian Yunchen
1.稚内・根室調査報告:ロシア・ウクライナ戦争の影響を受ける北海道の小都市 (黒岩幸子)
Research Report on Wakkanai and Nemuro: Small Cities in Hokkaido Affected by the Russia-Ukraine War (Kuroiwa Yukiko)
2.コロナ禍を経た対馬のボーダーランド:再境界化と国境離島の変容 (花松泰倫)
Tsushima Borderland after COVID-19: Re-bordering and the Transformation of a Border Island (Hanamatsu Yasunori)
3.国境に生きる人々の安全保障:「南西シフト」下のボーダー・ツーリズム (星野英一)
Human Security in Borderlands: Border Tourism Under the “Southwest Shift” (Hoshino Eiichi)
4.韓国・欝陵島調査報告 (福原裕二)
Research Report on Ulleungdo in the Republic of Korea (Fukuhara Yuji)