DIJ historian David M. Malitz and social scientist Nora Kottmann will present results from their latest research at the upcoming annual conference of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) in Boston. David will give his paper “Written out of History: Japanese-Siamese (Thai) Relations Prior to the 1932 Revolution” in the panel Hedging Towards Hegemony: Deconstructing the Myth of the “Bamboo Diplomacy” in Thailand. Nora is organizer and chair of the panel Privileged transnational families in and from East Asia: Gendered practices, gendered spaces? Her paper “(Un)Voluntarily trapped in heteronormativity: Familial decision making of transnational professionals in Tokyo” analyzes how and where transnational corporate professionals and their families ‘do family’ from a gender perspective.

DIJ director Franz Waldenberger will chair the panel ‘Digital and green transformation’ at the two-day conference Reforming Capitalism, Going Digital and Going Green: Does Japan Hold Answers? organized by Oxford University’s Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies. Its goals are to go behind the international headlines on inflation, cost of living crises, and interest rates to ask what can we learn from the Japanese experience of our shared challenges. Topics include productivity and investment, ‘leveling up’, digital and green transformation, and the common quest to reform capitalism and build a new ‘growth model’. The conference brings together sixteen experts from Japan and Europe, across the academic, business, and political spectrum to help develop shared solutions to our shared problems. It takes place on February 17-18, 2023 at Saïd Business School in Oxford. Details and programme here

In December 2022, the Japanese government announced major changes to its defense policies, including a new National Security Strategy. As a founding member of ASEAN enjoying long and close relations with Japan, Thailand offers an interesting case study of Japan’s defense diplomacy in the region. Since 2005, Japan has been participating in annual US-Thai hosted multinational military exercises. At the same time, Thailand has also strengthened its defense relationship with China. Nevertheless, a bilateral defense agreement was signed in May 2022 during Prime Minister Kishida’s visit to Thailand. This online roundtable will explore Japanese-Thai defense relations in the light of Japan’s new National Security Strategy, of the Japanese-Thai bilateral defense agreement, and of the closer relations between Thailand and China from Japanese and Thai perspectives. Moderated by DIJ’s David M. Malitz, it features Saya Kiba (Kobe City University of Foreign Studies/National Defense Academy of Japan) and Kitti Prasirtsuk (Thammasat University, Bangkok). Details here