session C: Saturday, October 10, 2:00 p.m.-3:30 p.m.

C1 Intersections of Philosophy and Religion in East and South Asia | 203 Lawrence

Chair: JEFF LONG, Elizabethtown College

BINA GUPTA, University of Missouri

Social Implications of the Advaita Vedanta Metaphysical Conception of Reality as One

Advaita Vedanta, one of the nine schools of Indian philosophy, holds that the empirical world is false and one can reach the real only by transcending it. Since Advaita separates the real from the empirical, and since the social pertain to the empirical world, it is not clear how the empirical can be brought into harmony with the real. If the empirical is always the domain of the false, it will always remain so, and only by transcending it, one would be able to realize the real.

The question is: Can there be a possible access from within the empirical to the real?

The paper demonstrates that in order to found a social philosophy on the basis of Advaita, it is necessary to forge a link between the individualistic discourse of one's karma-rebirth, a path to moksa, and a collective discourse which brings in society as a participant in that role.

SOORAKKULA PEMARATHANA, University of Pittsburgh

Worshiping the Buddha in the Market Place: Preserving Buddhist Tradition and Identity in Contemporary Sri Lanka

Ritual worship of the Buddha has long been a common practice among Sri Lankan Buddhists. Yet how they worship the Buddha and why they do it has changed in recent years. Based on fieldwork in Sri Lanka in 2014, this paper shows how this practice has significantly grown at homes and secular places such as workplaces, public schools and street corners. Unlike just a generation ago, Buddhist statues are now mass -produced and enshrined in homes and public spaces. This change shows how the religious economy of Sri Lanka is changing.

This paper argues that the recent increase of worship of the Buddha is not just an expression of devotion but something that grew within the wider context of Buddhist modernism and nationalism. Worshiping the Buddha has become a way of resisting the processes of secularization and reaffirming the Buddhist identity which is seen under threat by other religions.

MOHAMMAD MOZUMDER, University of Pittsburgh

Preempting the Challenges to Legitimacy: Cooptation of the Heterodox Life-Practices of the Followers of Fakir Lalon Shah in Bangladesh

The "mystic minstrels"--the followers of Fakir Lalon Shah--in Bangladesh have been famous for their non-conformist, antinomian, and heterodox practices. To their dissatisfaction, Fakirs' life-practices have been gradually coopted by the public authorities (by partaking the management of sites and administering annual observances), commercial mass medias (by commodifying the musical performances), and civil society stakeholders (often by calling for preservation of the tradition as a local heritage). As a consequence, the popular image of the Fakirs have become almost synonymous with cultural performers, often at the cost of their adept dispositions. In this process, Fakirs are often made to act to legitimize rather than radically challenge both the dominant religious and secular powers. I argue that this gradual cooptation is an attempt to preempt the challenges to the legitimacy of the power of dominant state and non-state apparatus.

RACHEL MILLER, University of Pittsburgh

The Goan Tomb of St. Francis Xavier: From Defender of Portuguese India to Universal Saint

As the seventeenth century progressed and the Portuguese empire in Asia continued to diminish in terms of territory and political influence, Portuguese officials increasingly turned to St. Francis Xavier, the so-called Apostle of the Indies, to protect the Portuguese cause. The state rituals enacted at this time centered on his tomb in the Basilica of Bom Jesus in Goa. In this paper, I will discuss the tomb at two moments in its history: the creation of a silver sarcophagus cast by Goan silversmiths in 1636-1637 and the gift of a pedestal from Cosimo III de’ Medici in 1698. I will demonstrate that when the silver sarcophagus was unveiled in 1637, the reliefs on it could have been read as an atlas, documenting the territorial reach of Portuguese India and the sanctification of that land through the miracles of Xavier. The addition of the marble pedestal in 1698 transformed Xavier from a saint who sanctified the specific territory of Portuguese India into a more universal saint and the protagonist in the Church’s drive to become a global religion.

LIANGHO LIU, University of Pittsburgh

To Uphold Buddhism in the Age of Turmoil: Modes of Engaging New Print Culture by Chinese Monks in Modern Era

C2 Messages in Public Performance and Public Monuments in Asia | 205 Lawrence

Chair: YUKI TERAZAWA, Hofstra University

CHARLES MUSGROVE, St. Mary’s College of Maryland

Taking Back Space’: Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall and the Emergence of Democracy in Taiwan

I investigate ritual, architecture, and protests in public spaces in Taiwan, particularly in the capital Taipei, as the Republic of China moved from single-party rule into liberal democracy. I will focus on the transformation of Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall from a 'sacred' symbol of KMT authority to a public space where dissent is tolerated and even expected. Key moments in this transformation took place in 1989, when demonstrators expressed sympathy for victims of the Tiananmen massacre, and in 1990 when it served as the focus of the Wild Lily Movement, when student protestors demanded direct election of the R.O.C. president. These events paved the way for the “Renaming Controversy” of 2007, when President Chen Shuibian tried to remake the site into an anti-Chiang memorial. While his larger effort failed to sway most Taipei residents, the square in front of the memorial indeed became known as “Liberty Square” due to its role in staging the public performance of democratic practice.

EUNYOUNG PARK, University of Kansas

Monumenta Me: Monument, Memorial, and the Public in Yiso Bahc’s Works

This presentation will investigate works of Yiso Bahc (1957-2004) focusing on the issues of monument, memorial, and the public. Bahc is a Korean-born artist who also studied and worked in the United States during the late 1980s and early 1990s. After he came back to Korea in the mid-1990s, Bahc created several installations and drawings based on his experience of social and urban spaces in Korea.

Among them, I will explore monument-like sculptures made of leftover building materials, installations made based on a fictional memorial, and public art created or designed by Bahc. Through this research, I will investigate how Bahc's works reflected the development of contemporary Korean society under rapid modernization and urbanization, goal-oriented value, and anti-communist ideology. I expect that this presentation will provide an opportunity to explore the construction of social structure and the notion of the public in contemporary Korean society.

LINDA DWYER, Salisbury University

Huangmei Opera in Anqing: Negotiation of Art and Identity

This paper is based on historical and ethnographic research conducted in Anqing City, Anhui, China in 2014. I analyze the Huangmei Opera as performed and understood in local and historical contexts: as local performing art that the Communist Party raised to national stature in the 1950s, attacked during the Cultural Revolution, then proclaimed a national treasure that is heavily subsidized and regulated. Anqing City, Anhui Province is the site of the opera's local development and one of two sites of government investment. I describe the negotiation of both art and identity in this city: the buskers in streets and parks; karaoke performances in restaurants; variety shows in tea houses; educational programs in specialized middle schools; development of college majors; lavish productions in concert halls; and the social landscape of the city itself. In doing so, I explore the challenges of rapid social transformation in globalization processes.

C3 Reassessing Classic Texts in China | 1500 Posvar

Chair: FRANCIS ALLARD, Indiana University of Pennsylvania

LEI YANG, University of Pennsylvania

Hidden Signs of Historian in Narratives - Shi ji as an Example

Much of our historical knowledge comes from historical writings that seem objective because of their authors have deliberately or unconsciously hidden their traces. However, signs of historians exist in many places in a text: in addition to those explicit evaluations often placed at the ends of many chapters, a great many implicit signs are veiled in narration. This paper aims to reveal them in Shi ji’s narratives. Close reading of examples shows that traces of the historian are disguised in causality of events, references to characters, evaluations in the form of descriptive language, and the comments of characters. Historians are never able to remove all such signs because they reconstruct the past through texts. The moment and space of events in the past have collapsed and no longer exist. Shi ji is Sima Qian’s past, not the past per se.

MAN SHUN YEUNG, The University of Hong Kong

Study of Benjamin Bowen Carter’s Copy of an Early Chinese Grammar Text Dated 1806

This paper is a continuation of the author’s study of Benjamin Bowen Carter (1771-1831), a native of Providence, Rhode Island, who was one of the few Americans to live in Canton (now Guangzhou) at the beginning of the nineteenth century and to feel the need to learn Chinese. Carter’s copy of the Chinese Grammar, dated 1806, now deposited in the US Library of Congress and containing his inscriptions in ink, is an abridged version of French scholar Étienne Fourmont’s (1683-1745) Meditationes Sinicae and Lingua Sinarum Mandarinicae Hieroglyphicae Grammatica Duplex. Also analyzing other manuscripts and documents owned by Carter, the current paper draws a fuller picture of his study of the Chinese language during his stay in Canton, as well as his communications with his contemporaries regarding his interest in China affairs.

YOU MIN JUNG, Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul, Republic of Korea

A New Tendency of Commentary Books of the Confucian Classics in the 18th to 19th Century : Focusing on a Rhetorical Interpretation of the Mengzi in East Asia

In the middle ages, East Asian intellectuals published their philosophical view on the Confucian Classics which they did not believe to be literature. East Asian intellectuals at this period thought that the Classics and literature were in an absolutely distinct region. They had thought the Classics to be works of philosophy.

However, during the 18th to 19th century, there were three commentary books, which had a new approach on the Mengzi 瀛瀛; the Mengzilunwen written by NiuYunzhen (1706 - 758, Chinese), the Maengchach'aui written by Wi Baekgyu (1727-798, Korean), and the DokuM�shi written by Hirose Tanso (1782-856, Japanese). Those books considered the Mengzi as literature, so they annotated the rhetoric, the grammar, and the wording.

This new way of annotation is meaningful, because during this period, it was said that crucial changes occurred in East Asian history. In addition, this new way of annotation shows that the individual's autonomy in the 18th to 19th century had been greater than before. This is because, if the intellectuals had no autonomy, they would not have been free with the ordinary way of annotation. It means that they would not have been able to think in different way, therefore they would not have regarded the Mengzi as literature.

C4 TPP and TTIP: Asia’s New Order? | 1501 Posvar

Chair: ARIEL ARMONY, University of Pittsburgh

ELENA SPITSOVA, Moscow Higher School of Economics

Asia Pacific Regionalism

The hot topic in Asia Pacific today is the economic regionalism initiatives. Asia Pacific countries are involved in regionalism and multilateralism. Open regionalism is the term that describes the Asian cooperation, trade liberalization and facilitation since 1989 when APEC was founded. What will be the results of regionalism? For now the negotiations on Trans-Pacific Partnership and Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership are still going. During APEC Summit in Beijing, China suggested to launch a study into FTAAP which is going to last for 2 years. What’re the prospects of moving forward the processes of Asian regionalism? Based on ideas of neofunctionalism - Haas Ernst “Beyond the Nation-state: Functionalism and International Organization”, “The uniting of Europe: political, social and economic forces 1950-1957”, “The Study of Regional Integration” and Leon Lindberg “The Political Dynamics of European Economic Integration” the author studied regional integration in Asia Pacific. The findings: connectivity discourse is a very important because lack of connectivity is a great obstacle for trade among countries. Here should be mentioned APEC Connectivity Blueprint for 2015-2025. “The Vision of APEC Connectivity in 2025: Through the Blueprint, we commit to strengthen physical, institutional, and people-to-people connectivity by taking agreed actions and meeting agreed targets by 2025, with the objective of achieving a seamless and comprehensively connected and integrated Asia Pacific.”

GEMMA MAROLDA, University of Pittsburgh

TPP vs. RCEP: Balancing Power in Asia’s Emerging New Order

America's pivot to Asia in recent years has unleashed an interesting power dynamic in the region. Balancing China’s rise and influence in Asia is a priority for many Asian and Pacific countries. From East Asia to South and Southeast Asia and the Pacific, a wide range of regional cooperative frameworks has been created in the last decade. Among these is the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), excluding China at this time. Currently debated in the U.S. Congress, TPP is being challenged in Asia by the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) bringing to the table 16 Asian countries, including China. Promoting RCEP is a reinvigorated Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as ASEAN 2015 advances at full speed. What role do TPP and RCEP play in shaping Asia’s emerging new order? What scenarios are likely to arise from the clash of these regional frameworks? Can ASEAN tip the balance toward a stronger pan-Asian framework? These questions are addressed in this paper through an investigation of norms and power dynamic steering these regional frameworks.

WILLIAM ADAMS, University of Pittsburgh

Can TPP and TTIP Prevent Regional Conflict in Asia?

The contemporary debate of the two major global trade pacts currently spearheaded by the United States, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), centers on potential trade-offs between economic efficiency and environmental, health, and social costs. This debate overlooks a more fundamental effect of trade agreements: Promoting peace among participating states. The 20th century history of free trade illustrates this potential: The free trade system created after World War II removed the incentives for participating states to compete for the control of economic spheres of influence, and played a crucial role in ending the chronic military conflicts between major capitalist powers. 21st century trade agreements should be judged by their potential to consolidate and extend the peace between major economic and political powers created by the 20th century free trade system, in addition to more conventional economic criteria.

ARIEL ARMONY, University of Pittsburgh

Latin American Perspectives on the Pacific Alliance and the Trans-Pacific Partnership

C5 Best Served Cold? Revenge and Resentment as Political Tools in Early Medieval Japan | 1700 Posvar

Chair: ETHAN SEGAL, Michigan State University

Discussant: VINCENT LEUNG, University of Pittsburgh

SARA SUMPTER, University of Pittsburgh

The Politics of Revenge: Vengeful Spirits as Propaganda in the Jōkyū Version of the Kitano Tenjin Engi Emaki

The Jōkyū Version of the Kitano Tenjin engi emaki (Illustrated Legends of the Kitano Tenjin Shrine), produced in the early-thirteenth century and dated 1219, is the earliest extant narrative handscroll to depict the life, death, and posthumous revenge of the ninth-century courtier Sugawara no Michizane (845-903). The handscroll set tells the story of how Michizane, betrayed into exile and death by a group of conspirators who framed him as a traitor in order to usurp his power, returned to the capital as a vengeful spirit to avenge himself on his enemies. Through a close analysis of the Kitano Tenjin engi emaki, this paper will explore how belief in vengeful spirits (goryō shinkō) functioned as political propaganda in the Heian and early Kamakura periods, arguing that vengeance—rather than aiding the wronged—often served as a political tool for those who had wronged them.

ETHAN SEGAL, Michigan State University

A Family Affair: Cooperation and Manipulation in the Assassination of a Shogun

When the monk Kugyō murdered his own uncle, Shogun Minamoto no Sanetomo, in 1219, he believed that he was exacting revenge for the death of his own father some fifteen years earlier. But his actions had much more profound consequences for Japan’s first warrior government, the Kamakura bakufu. The assassination brought an end to the direct line of Minamoto shoguns and created a crisis in leadership that solidified the Hōjō family’s hold on power and encouraged the imperial court to declare war on the bakufu in the Jōkyū Disturbance of 1221. Was Sanetomo’s murder a simple case of revenge, or was his nephew manipulated by those seeking a shift in the balance of power? Drawing upon a wide range of primary and secondary sources, this paper reassesses the motivations of key figures and highlights the fragility of warrior government as it searched for legitimacy in its first few decades.

MICHAEL McCARTY, University of Pittsburgh/Rice University

(Un)burying a Grudge: The Role of Resentment in the Jōkyū Disturbance of 1221

The Hōjō family consolidated its hold over the Kamakura bakufu by suppressing a series of internal rebellions against their rule in the early thirteenth century. Although the Hōjō successfully squelched these threats, their extermination of enemy warrior houses left relatives and former allies of the defeated feeling bitter and resentful. This paper will unpack some of the seemingly obscure references to "longstanding resentments" in thirteenth-century sources to explore the role of revenge in motivating warriors to join retired emperor Go-Toba's army against the Hōjō-dominated Kamakura Bakufu in the Jōkyū Disturbance of 1221. A close look at literary as well as documentary evidence makes these motivations more explicable within the context of pre-modern Japanese politics and social networks.

C6 Examining Economics and International Relations in East and Southeast Asia | 5130 Posvar

Chair: CECELIA CHEN, West Chester University of Pennsylvania

NAN LI, California University of Pennsylvania

Commodities, Crisis, and Economic and Political Leverage: China-Latin American Commodities, 1980-2010

China's increased demand for commodities to fuel its economic expansion has resulted in rising prices for those commodities, indirectly benefiting Latin American economies both by increasing the value and volume of Latin American commodity exports and improving the terms of trade. This, in turn, has political implications. Economically, China and Latin America’s ability to weather the recent recession has led many Latin American countries—especially Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela—to move away from the Washington Consensus in favor of the mixed-state economic Beijing Consensus.

BRIAN CHAO, University of Pennsylvania

This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land: Territorial Disputes and the Meanings of China

My paper analyzes how the PRC-ROC sovereignty dispute affects Beijing’s and Taipei’s policies and actions with regard to the East and South China Seas territorial disputes, and how these territorial claims play into both Chinese and Taiwanese conceptions of their political states. Through historical analysis, I show that the competition over who represents “China” sheds light on why the PRC and ROC pursued specific policies when China Seas territorial disputes escalated into crises: Beijing and Taipei took actions that escalated or tamped down tensions based not only on third-party actions, but also on how its cross-Taiwan Strait counterpart had acted or was expected to act. I also examine how the PRC’s and ROC’s continued claims on the East and South China Seas islands play into their respective imagined geographies; in particular, I argue that those islands—holdovers from the ROC’s mainland era—ironically undergird the Taiwanese independence movement’s attempt at forging a uniquely “Taiwanese” identity as a “maritime nation.”

TINA CLEMENTE, University of the Philippines-Diliman

Understanding China’s Economic Diplomacy with the Philippines

Economic diplomacy serves to further a state’s national interests such as securing a constant supply of critical resources, opening new markets for exports and maximizing investments. However, economic diplomacy also covers the use of coercive levers in advancing foreign policy objectives. The use of such levers is an issue that is often raised in relation to the Philippines-China maritime tensions in the West Philippine Sea/South China Sea. Owing to deteriorating diplomatic relations between the Philippines and China, concerns have arisen in regard to the vulnerability of the Philippine economy to China’s economic sanctions. The study enlarges the analytical scope by focusing on China’s economic diplomacy program with the Philippines, situating sanctions within this program. Furthermore, considering the nature of China’s “relational” approach in foreign policy, sanctions are difficult to pin down officially. This adds to the utility of investigating the larger context of economic diplomacy.

C7 Representations of Medicine and Imaginings of the Body in Twentieth-Century China | 5200 Posvar

Chair: TINA PHILLIPS JOHNSON, Saint Vincent College

Discussant: HELEN SCHNEIDER, Virginia Tech

DAVID LEUSINK, University of Pittsburgh

The Anatomy of Race, Gender, and Class

By the twentieth century, a growing acceptance of the anatomical view of the body brought changes to the lives of Chinese women and men of all classes. At a time when China was considered the “Sick Man of Asia,” anthropological theories of the origin of the races of humans were based on the measurement and quantification of bodies, both the bodies of the living and the bones of the dead. A new technology of making anatomy visible, Roentgen rays, transformed women’s feet from a thing of cultured beauty to a deformity. Graphic images and dissection practice transformed women’s medicine from a tacit knowledge of women’s anatomy to explicit portrayals of genitalia and reproductive organs available to experts and non-experts. At the same time anatomical knowledge also began to be deployed to discipline the bodies of school children in physical education classes and the bodies of workers in factories.

WENDY JIA-CHEN FU, Case Western Reserve University

The Physical Examination: Child Bodies and the Material Experience of Chinese Modernity

This paper explores the historical emergence of the physical examination as a child-focused, public health intervention in Republican China. It argues that the increasing priority placed on the physical examination as an essential methodology for assessing the health of the child was closely linked to the emergence of the school as a key locus for the carrying out of public health initiatives. By tracing the various iterations of the physical examination implemented at missionary schools, conducted at local, municipal, and provincial child health competitions, and debated in the pages of popular magazines and newspapers, this paper seeks to enrich current understandings of the links between health, politics, and modernization in China.

TINA PHILLIPS JOHNSON, Saint Vincent College

‘Mother of 10,000 Babies’: Lin Qiaozhi and Women’s Health in the early PRC

In this paper, I use the biographical history of physician Lin Qiaozhi (林巧稚, Khat’i Lim) to examine the trajectory of women’s health care in relation to the social and political upheavals of 20th-century China. Although Lin attended Peking Union Medical College in the 1920s, she was most active after the founding of the PRC with clinical practice and research in obstetrics and gynecology. Throughout her career in the 1950s-1970s, she was a role model for women’s health and professionalization. Lin was iconoclastic in some ways, never marrying and devoting her life to a medical career that was just opening to women. In other ways, she remains firmly within the bounds of appropriate womanly behavior, heralded as a self-sacrificing individual devoted to the improving the health of the nation and working as caregiver of women and children.

C8 Conflicted Evolution: The Development of Story and System in Videogames| 5400 Posvar

Chair: JEREMY SATHER, Middle Tennessee State University

RACHAEL HUTCHINSON, University of Delaware

Nucleus of Dread: Bioethics and Atomic Crisis in Japanese Videogames

This paper examines the conjunction of bioethics and nuclear fears in Japanese videogames of the mid-1990s. The cloning of Dolly the Sheep in 1996 combined with a rash of nuclear accidents in Japan to create much anxiety about scientific use of the nucleus. Genetic manipulation and the responsible use of nuclear energy are explored in various game genres, from the role-playing games of Final Fantasy to the stealth action Metal Gear Solid and the fighting game franchise Tekken. I will examine four games in which main characters are subjected to genetic manipulation, increasing their strength to superhuman capabilities but bringing adverse effects. Scientific experiments in genetics and nuclear weaponry are performed by corrupt corporations with government backing, and the characters have no previous knowledge of the process. The player discovers the truth at the same time as the character, enhancing their immersion in the ethical worldview of the text.

JOHN GALE, Consulate-General of Nashville

Juvenilization of the JRPG: Character Age Believability in the Eyes of American Gamers

Japanese popular culture such as anime, manga, and video games are often targeted at adolescents and young people in Japan. Therefore, their stories feature many teenage characters as the protagonists. Regarding video games, the quality of the graphics, game play mechanics, stories, and characters of Japanese Role-Playing Games (JRPGs) led the genre to reign for a time over Western-developed games. However, video game critics recognize a global demise of the JRPG genre both in terms of reputation and revenue over the past decade or longer. A number of factors are discussed as to why this downfall has occurred. However, the believability of characters regarding age is not a commonly discussed factor. A stark contrast can be seen between the teenage hero/heroine of the JRPG and the usual male soldier of the Western first-person shooter. This study analyzes the age trend of JRPG characters in the genre’s recent decline.

DANIEL GUIMARÃES, Meiji University

Flux-Narratives in Post-Apocalypse Japanese Media

This paper proposes the notion of “flux-narrative” as a semiotic continuity across different media formats. The flux-narrative is based on the Japanese expression “Shoujiruten” 「生死流転」, meaning: 1.“All things being in flux through the endless circle of birth, death, and rebirth; 2. The circle of transmigration.” Additionally, I contemplate Kevin Kelly’s concept of “natural flux” from Out of Control (1994), Charles Sanders Peirce’s idea of “semiosis” (1839-1914) and Richard Dawkins’s meme from The Selfish Gene (1976) among others. The analysis of Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950) shows similarities in content and form occurring in digital media like videogames such as The Compilation of Final Fantasy VII (SquareEnix, 1997-2009). These videogames would be “spiritual successors” of the “transmigration” and the unreliable narrator elaborations seen in Rashomon. This inter-disciplinary study analyzes post-apocalypse representations and their narrativity in these media and why they matter in a postmodern cultural context.

JEREMY SATHER, Middle Tennessee State University

A Turn for the Worse? Immersion and Presence in Turn-Based and Real Time Battle Systems

In this paper I discuss the evolution of battle systems from Turn Based (TB) to Real Time (RT) in role-playing games, most notably in SquareEnix’s Final Fantasy series. The recent prevalence of and seeming preference for RT battle systems reflects a shift toward a desire for amore realistic—read immersive—experience. The shift from TBBS to RTBS can be seen quite clearly in the transformation of the Final Fantasy series. Accordingly, in this paper I will examine the shift away from TB toward RT battle systems through an analysis of the evolution of the Final Fantasy series’ battle systems, whose evolution reflects the trend toward a more immediately immersive experience in video games that reflects a desire to partake in game worlds whose internal logic comes as close as possible to mimicking reality.

C9 Gendering U.S.–Japan Relations, 1880s to 1950s: International Marriage, Women’s Education, and Humanitarian Relief | 209 Lawrence

Chair and Discussant: ELEANOR KERKHAM, University of Maryland

SHARLIE USHIODA, Merion School District (retired)

Mary Elkinton Nitobe: International Marriage in Modern Japan

Much has been written about Nitobe Inazo (1862-1933), a prominent scholar, educator, and international statesman in Meiji/Taisho Japan. despite his fame, few know about his American wife, Mary Patterson Elkinton (1857-1937), daughter of a prominent Philadelphia Quaker family. Inazo, already a Christian, joined the Quakers after meeting Mary at a social gathering in Baltimore. Both faced opposition from their families, but their international marriage (kokusai kekkon), one of the first of a Western woman to a Japanese man, lasted 42 years. this paper will use Mary's extensive correspondence to illustrate her experience as an accomplished woman in her in her own right: her acculturation to Japanese at a time of good wife/wise mother ideology; the testing of her pacifist Quaker values as Japan became an imperialist aggressor; her role as hostess in the international setting of the League of Nations; and her assistance in editing and organizing her husband's publications.

MASAKO HAMADA, Villanova University

Kawai Michi: Japanese Educator, Christian Activist, and Internationalist

Kawai Michi (1877-1953) was a Japanese educator, Christian activist, and proponent of Japan-U.S. ties before, during, and after World War II. On a scholarship,she went to America at the age of twenty-one and enrolled in a Philadelphia preparatory school. She subsequently entered Bryn Mawr College in 1900. She went on to devote her life to girls' education and founded Keisen Jogakuen, a Christian school for young women in Tokyo. She served as the first National Secretary of the YWCA of Japan to improve women's lives through the promotion of social and economic change. In 1946, Kawai was the only female member of a committee (run by the Ministry of Education) to establish a new educational philosophy for Japan. Kawai's comments about the Emperor's role during World War II influenced General Douglas MacArthur to allow the Emperor to continue to serve as a symbol of the nation of Japan.

MARLENE MAYO, University of Pittsburgh

Friends in Need: Esther Rhoads, Quakers, and Humanitarian Relief in Occupied Japan, 1946-1952

This paper will examine food and relief policies in Occupied Japan with a focus on the humanitarian efforts of the American Society of Friends (Quakers) to bring voluntary aid to Japan, 1946-1952, in the aftermath of wartime physical and spiritual devastation. Central to these efforts was Esther Biddle Rhoads (1896-1979), an American Quaker who first arrived in Tokyo as a visitor in 1917 and returned in 1921 as a missionary and teacher at the Friends Girls School. Denied a visa in 1940 after a furlough, she worked with interned Japanese Americans during the Pacific War. In June 1946, she was allowed back in Japan as one of only two representatives authorized by General Douglas MacArthur of LARA, Licensed Agencies for Relief in Asia, an umbrella organization of thirteen Christian denominations. LARA was hugely popular in Japan and highly appreciated. Much of its success was a result of collaboration between American relief workers and Japanese welfare officials. Rhoads helped to designate needy institutions, to give priority to milk for children, and to transform relief into reconstruction. She also helped to restore the Friends School and Friends Center in Tokyo, and followed Elizabeth Vining, also a Quaker, as English tutor to the Crown Prince. Against the backdrop of the Cold War, Rhoads, together with the Friends and LARA, played a significant role in early postwar U.S.-Japan reconciliation.

C10 Following the Paper Trail: Pulp, Power, and Pixals | 4217 Posvar Hall

(Teaching Asia Workshop, open to conference participants)

Chairs: ANGIE STOKES, Wayne Trace Jr/Sr High School

MICHAEL-ANN CERNIGLIA, Sewickley Academy

MATTHEW ROBERTS, Pine Richland Public Schools

Psychology of Map-Making

MARY-JO SHINE, Sewickley Academy

Environmental Impact of Paper Production

ANGIE STOKES, Wayne Trace Jr/Sr High School

Artistic Communication of Print Culture

MATTHEW SUDNICK, Central Catholic

Paper as Power