Description

In the face of economic decline, nagging un(der)employment, and increasing disparity and insecurity in daily survival, the Japanese have been hit by nationwide anxiety. Once proud of its high economic growth and “miracle” economy, the country is better known today for the precarity rather than productivity of its populace. Suicide has been precipitously high since 1998 and today is the leading cause of death for youth between the ages of 18 and 24. But middle aged Japanese have been hit too by the “de-regularization” of labor and life prospects: from lifelong jobs centered around family and home, Japan today has a flexible labor force and decentered intimate attachments. Yet in precarious times, new potentials for life, sociality, and horizons of expectation arise as well. In this talk, I look at attempts being made to address today’s “pain of life” (ikizurasa) by what I argue to be a politics of precariousness in 21st century Japan.

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Professor Anne Allison is the Robert O. Keohane Professor of Anthropology at Duke University and author of three books: Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination (University of California Press, 2006), Permitted and Prohibited Desires: Mothers, Comics, and Censorship in Japan (Westview-HarperCollins 1996, re-released by University of California Press 2000) and Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club (University of Chicago Press 1994). Her research specialties include Mass Culture, Neoliberalism, Gender and Sexuality, and Globalization. She is currently working on a book about precarity and emerging sociality in the context of 21st century Japan. She is also co-editor of the journal Cultural Anthropology.