This talk in the DIJ Environmental Humanities in East Asia lecture series considers the role of non-humans in the intellectual history of modern Japan through the case study of the Buddhist naturalist-polymath Minakata Kumagusu. Building on Kumagusu’s fascination over the microbe slime mold, Eiko Honda delineates the ways in which a parallel paradigm of interdisciplinary knowledge production emerges when the historian places microbes as the basis for the historical actor’s truths (‘queer nature’). The paper reveals a novel account of civilization theory and evolutionism that eventually formulated what she calls the ‘microbial paradigm’ that existed in history, but not in historiography. The talk reflects on what’s at stake when one does or does not decentre the focal point of knowledge production in history, and what kind of implications it may have on present-day research and teaching in area studies. Details and registration here

The future of work has emerged as a prominent topic for research and policy debate. In this session of the DIJ Method Talk series, Lulu Shi and Nobuko Nagase will discuss and present results from their Delphi survey to predict how technology may transform unpaid domestic work. On average, 65 AI experts from the UK and Japan predicted that 39 percent of the time spent on 17 housework and care work tasks will be automatable within ten years. The survey provides the first quantitative estimates concerning the future of unpaid work and demonstrates how such predictions are socially contingent, with implications to forecasting methodology. It also investigates how willingness to use smart technologies varies across gender, household income, time pressure, type of domestic work, and its price. Details and registration here

Firms in many advanced economies practice flexible retrenchment strategies to react to a crisis or to adjust to organisational decline in order to lower labour costs. Building on signalling theory and the neo-institutional and resource-based view, this presentation analyses two research questions: (1) What are the effects of “flexible retrenchment strategies” (such as wage-based and functional flexibility) on investor reactions as compared to “rigid strategies” (such as pure downsizing)? (2) How do a firm’s knowledge assets shape the relationship between investor reactions to flexible strategies as compared to rigid strategies? Using a novel data set of 242 retrenchment announcements by Japanese firms, the study finds that flexible strategies are significantly and positively associated with a higher likelihood that the firm value of retrenchers increases. This suggests that investors perceive flexible strategies as a capability signal, rewarding innovative firms depending heavily on the knowledge of their employees. Details and registration here

The signature designs featured on Amami Ōshima tsumugi textiles today are so intricate that they can resemble shimmering pixels on a computer screen. Even though designers have been confined to the geometry of squares, the patterns appearing on these textiles have changed remarkably over time. Why? This talk reflects upon recent fieldwork conducted in Amami Ōshima driven by this simple question. Study of the dynamic process of textile production illuminates the complicated archipelagic location between Kagoshima and Okinawa that has informed Ōshima tsumugi production and trade. Tracing how weavers themselves scrutinized the notion of Amami Ōshima tsumugi enables critical contextualization of the postwar consumption of Amami Ōshima tsumugi by the „mainland“ relative to the preservation of archipelagic knowledge and livelihood. Details and registration here