DIJ research fellows Susanne Brucksch and Markus Heckel will participate in the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE). This year’s meeting will be held online from July 18-21.
Susanne will participate as a discussant in the Roundtable “Economy, Society, Polity: Global and National Health(care) Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic”. She will also present her paper “Innovation Activities through Medtech Partnerships in Japan?” which highlights current efforts to increase medtech partnerships, cluster policies and matching-hubs to cross disciplinary and organizational boundaries and to encourage innovation activities in the field of medical devices in Japan.
Markus will present two papers: “Deflation – Lessons from the Japanese Experience”, co-authored with DIJ director Franz Waldenberger, applies the quantity theory of money and international arbitrage conditions. It suggests that expansionary monetary policies are very limited in fighting deflation in Japan. Markus‘ paper “Central Bank Communication under Unconventional Monetary Policy: The Bank of Japan during Times of Crisis” analyzes the monetary policy and central bank communication of the Bank of Japan during 2003-2019 with a focus on the global financial crises and the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Results show that the complexity of monetary policy can be reduced to forms of “general” monetary policy with quantitative easing and short-term liquidity emergency measures used in crisis times.

Originally scheduled to begin on July 24, 2020, the Tokyo Olympics have been postponed to July 2021. This is a dilemma: The Olympics were supposed to present a brand-new Japan to the world, a leader in sustainability, diversity, inclusion, and a slew of other admirable goals. But almost overnight, Tokyo’s buzz of Olympic logos, countdown clocks and construction hustle have come to an eerie standstill: What now? Join sociologist and DIJ deputy director Barbara Holthus, editor of Japan Through the Lens of the Tokyo Olympics and Ulrike Schaede, former member of the DIJ’s advisory board, on July 15, 8:30 a.m. (JST) in this UC San Diego Japan Forum Webinar for a discussion of how the postponement has affected the various stakeholders in society: athletes with crushed aspirations, para-Olympians with broken dreams, disappointed volunteers, empty-handed ticket holders, devastated inn- and shopkeepers, jubilant anti-Olympic movement participants, among Tokyoites and in the periphery.
Please download the event flyer for information on how to register for this event.

With the pandemic since early 2020, the use of online platforms has increased in most societies. Consequently, providers of digital platforms have gained substantial influence on how people inform themselves, for example about the novel coronavirus or political topics. However, many posts and publications include falsified or unproven data (better known as “fake news”), also in Japan. In the course of our research we raise the question how the status quo and the future of the aforementioned digital platforms can be explored collectively with regards to issues like fake news, democratic values or privacy. We argue that the resulting scenarios, which arise from the subjective experiences of their speculators and, hence, reveal individual hopes and fears, allow us to explore and discuss utopian and dystopian visions of technological futures and alternative realities. Details

Speakers:
Michel Hohendanner, Munich University of Applied Sciences
Chiara Ullstein, Technical University of Munich

Lecture Series ‘Gender and Sexuality in East Asia’ (3/5)
A convenience store is a reflection of Japan’s society. The way people behave, act, react, and interact is a display of contemporary Japan’s common sense. It reveals how social life is organized in terms of interpersonal relations, habits, norms, values, etc. What, however, happens when someone does not fit Japan’s common sense? This presentation will elaborate on how Murata addresses the fundamental question of an individual’s place within society by focusing on how the novel deals with social conventions, gender constructions, and work. The analysis of these issues shows how Murata deconstructs Japan’s common sense and reveals its naturalized, unspoken, and taken-for-granted rules that organize contemporary Japanese society. Details

Speaker:
Ronald Saladin, Trier University