DIJ director Franz Waldenberger shared his views on Japanese and German society in an interview series with Oguro Kazumi, the host of Lohas Talk on J-Wave radio. Franz introduced the institute, its research, and his own interests in Japanese society and economy. He revealed that he had a “positive culture shock” when he first came to Japan and that he was impressed with the unique “atmosphere”, importance of “human relations”, and “politeness”. The talk also touched upon women in politics, work-style, and work-life-balance. “In Germany, above all result matters but in Japan people are praised for their efforts”, he observed. On energy politics, Franz criticized that calculations of the costs of nuclear energy in Japan usually omit the costs for the disposal of nuclear waste. He praised the appeal of Japanese culture which, however, the Japanese themselves did not promote enough due to their attitude of “sophistication with understatement”. An audio file of the talk (in Japanese) is available here.

Several international media have interviewed DIJ deputy director Barbara Holthus about Olympic volunteering and the risks of holding the Tokyo Olympics amidst the ongoing pandemic. Barbara appeared on the Canadian broadcaster CBC’s News Morning Show (video), the Australian news programme Ticker News (video), and CNN’s news show The Lead (video). Barbara criticized the lack of vaccination opportunities for volunteers and said that it was too dangerous to hold the Olympics this year. Barbara was also interviewed by German news agency DPA and her statements appeared in several German news outlets, including Zeit online and FAZ online (in German). For more information on research related to the Olympics, see the DIJ’s special project on the Tokyo Olympics and the open access book publication Japan Through the Lens of the Tokyo Olympics. 

DIJ deputy director Barbara Holthus and principal researcher Torsten Weber will participate in this year’s online INEAST East Asia Day at Duisburg-Essen University on June 11. The event “NOlympia? The Tokyo Games and what remains of them” will discuss the fate of the world’s biggest sports festival in times of a pandemic. Other participants are Katharina Bauernschmidt (Paracanoeist, Team Germany Paralympics) and Martin Fritz (Japan-based journalist and author). The event will be moderated by DIJ alumnus Axel Klein (Professor for Social Sciences of East Asia/Japanese Politics, Duisburg-Essen University). Details and registration here

What are broader theoretical implications of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)? Members of the Max Weber Foundation Research Group on Borders, Mobility and New Infrastructures convened the Roundtable Discussion ‘BRI as Method: Forging Theoretical Agendas’ to discuss the significance of China’s controversial project for the geography of knowledge production. A video of the event is now available on the DIJ’s YouTube channel, including links to the abstracts of the papers by the panelists Tim Bunnell, Yang Yang (both ARI), Darren Byler, Tim Oakes (both University of Colorado Boulder), Chong Ja Ian, and Woon Chih Yuan (both NUS). The panel was convened by Shaun Lin, Naoko Shimazu, and James D Sidaway. The research group, located at the NUS in Singapore, was founded in 2017 and is supported by the DIJ and the Max Weber Foundation. More information here.