The Tokyo Olympics 2020 are history but two months after the closing ceremony it is far from clear what remains as their legacy: have they spread the virus or the Olympic message? Have they uplifted Japan and further aggravated Japan’s identity crisis? DIJ deputy director Barbara Holthus (“Tainted Love: Volunteering for the Pandemic Olympics”) and principal researcher Sonja Ganseforth (“From ‘No Olympics 2020’ to ‘NOlympics Anywhere’: Reflecting on the Anti-Olympic Movements in Japan before and after Tokyo 2020/1”) will share their insights into how Tokyo 2020 has transformed Japanese society at the online workshop Post-Olympics Japan: Renewal or Failure? Barbara will also be a panelist in the workshop’s closing panel discussion on “What Remains?”. Both are contributors to the DIJ’s special project on the Tokyo Olympics and the open access book publication Japan Through the Lens of the Tokyo Olympics. The workshop is organized by the German Institute for Global and Area Studies, the University of Zurich, and the German Association for Social Science Research on Japan. Details and registration here

Beyond the cases of Italy and Nazi Germany, a variety of patterns of fascism and authoritarianism took shape as responses to the unprecedented economic slump and social unrest during the interwar period. However, mainstream studies of fascism still have their focus on European cases. By shedding light on regions that remain underrepresented in studies of fascism, this three-day online workshop aims to trace the border-transcending circulation of ideas and concepts derived from fascism and to grasp its transnational character. With the case studies zooming in on regions such as China, Japan, India, Cambodia, Thailand, Brazil, and Romania, this workshop showcases the large-scale border-crossing movement of concepts and explores the multi-layered intellectual inspirations of agents from various backgrounds. The workshop is organized by the DIJ in cooperation with the School of Humanities, Kwansei Gakuin University. Details and registration here

The study of Japanese culture, the Japanese economy, and Japanese society by foreign scholars can be traced back as far as the Edo period. However, it was not until the early 21st century that such external perspectives began to attract significant academic attention and public interest inside Japan. Research institutes, faculties, and departments named “International Japanese Studies” or “Global Japanese Studies” have gradually emerged in Japanese higher education and opened up innovative areas of research. As a new field of study with an interdisciplinary and highly international nature, International/Global Japanese Studies is confronted by many challenges and uncertainties. On September 27, the DIJ, together with the Center for Japanese Studies of Fudan University (Shanghai) and the Global Japanese Studies Education and Research Incubator (GJS-ERI) of Osaka University will hold an online workshop to approach International/Global Japanese Studies from a variety of disciplinary perspectives and cultural backgrounds. Details and registration here