Description

The international order confronts significant challenges, including intensifying geopolitical tensions in Asia and Europe, new forms of geoeconomic competition and weaponized interdependence, and globalized problems necessitating unprecedented societal transformations. In this symposium, a distinguished group of speakers will offer their insights about global challenges and potential solutions in the domains of international security, economic relations, and societal transformation. The symposium will consider the role that Japan, Canada, and the United States can play along with other G7 partners in confronting global challenges, building on the progress of the Hiroshima G7 meeting in May 2023.

The event will be jointly hosted by the Centre for the Study of Global Japan, G7 Research Group, and Bill Graham Centre at the University of Toronto with generous support from the Consulate-General of Japan in Toronto.

Program:

1:00-1:15 Welcome and Opening Remarks

Phillip Lipscy, Director, Centre for the Study of Global Japan

Takuya Sasayama, Consul-General of Japan in Toronto

1:15-2:30 Session 1: Security

Nobumasa Akiyama, Professor, School of International and Public Policy and the Graduate School of Law, Hitotsubashi University

Ayumi Teraoka, Postdoctoral research scholar, Columbia University’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute

Daisaku Higashi, Professor, Center for Global Education and Discovery, Sophia University

Dani Nedal, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science and Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

2:30 – 2:45 – Break with Refreshments

2:45-4:00 Session 2: Economy

Glen S. Fukushima, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress

Deanna Horton, Distinguished Fellow, Centre for the Study of Global Japan, Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada

Louis Pauly, J. Stefan Distinguished Professor of Political Economy, University of Toronto

John Kirton, Director of the G7 Research Group, University of Toronto

4:00 – 4:15 – Break with Refreshments

4:15-5:30 Session 3: Societal Transformation

Jim Raymo, Professor of Sociology and the Henry Wendt III Professor of East Asian Studies at Princeton University

Carin Holroyd, Professor Political Studies, University of Saskatchewan

James Tiessen, Professor, Global Management Studies and Director, Master of Health Administration (Community Care), Toronto Metropolitan University

John Meehan, Director of the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History, University of Toronto

Description

Many studies have demonstrated that later and less marriage, in combination with negligibly low levels of non-marital childbearing, is the primary reason for Japan’s very low total fertility rate. One surprising omission from the large body of research on the relationship between marriage and fertility is explicit attention to the role of marital dissolution and remarriage. This is a critical limitation in light of the relatively high prevalence of both divorce and remarriage. In Japan, one-fourth to one-third of marriages end in divorce and one-fifth of all marriages involve at least one spouse who was formerly married. In this paper, we use data from the 2010 and 2015 rounds of the National Fertility Survey to quantify the contributions of marital dissolution and remarriage to period fertility rates. In the absence of non-marital fertility, we expect marital dissolution to contribute to lower fertility and remarriage to contribute to higher fertility. The relationship between remarriage and childbearing is a major research focus in Europe and the U.S., but to our knowledge, we are the first to examine this question with large nationally representative data in Japan. Preliminary analyses show that the total fertility rate in 2010-15 would have been roughly 5% higher than observed if first-married couples experienced no divorce and 5% lower if women who did exit first marriages via divorce were not exposed to the risk of fertility in the context of remarriage. In subsequent revisions, we will extend analyses to examine the contributions of divorce and remarriage to change over time in the total fertility rate. We will also supplement our simple synthetic cohort analyses with simulations of individual behavior under alternative assumptions about divorce rates, remarriage rates, and stepfamily fertility rates.

Lunch will be provided.

Speaker:

Jim Raymo is Professor of Sociology and the Henry Wendt III Professor of East Asian Studies at Princeton University. Raymo is a social demographer whose research focuses on documenting and understanding the causes and potential consequences of demographic changes associated with population aging in Japan. His published research includes analyses of marriage timing, divorce, recession and fertility, marriage and women’s health, single mothers’ well-being, living alone, family change and social inequality, employment and health at older ages, and regional differences in health at older ages. He is currently engaged in three projects: In the first, he uses newly-available survey data to examine the socioeconomic and family correlates of children’s academic performance, personal relationships, and emotional health. This is a collaborative project involving scholars addressing similar questions in China and Korea. In the second project, he is examining the social, cultural, economic, and policy factors underlying striking demographic similarities among countries in East Asia and Southern Europe, with a particular focus on the roles of gender inequality, family ties, and growing unpredictability of the life course. He is chairing a scientific panel on this subject sponsored by the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population. In the third project, he is working with colleagues in Japan to document the well-being of single mothers and their children and to understand the ways in which intergenerational coresidence and intrafamilial exchanges of support may (or may not) offset some of the disadvantages faced by unmarried mothers.

His research has been published in leading U.S. journals such as American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Demography, Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, and Journal of Marriage and Family as well as in Japanese journals. Raymo serves on the board of directors of the Population Association of America and is an associate editor of Journals of Gerontology: Social Sciences and Demography. He earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Michigan in 2000.

Moderator:

Ito Peng, Director, Centre for Global Social Policy , Professor, Department of Sociology and Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Ito Peng is a Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at the Department of Sociology, and the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy. She is also the Director of the Centre for Global Social Policy, University of Toronto. She teaches political sociology, specializing in family, gender, and demographic issues, migration and comparative social policy. She has written extensively on family and gender policies, labour market changes, and social and political economy of care in East Asia. Professor Peng is the Principal Investigator of a SSHRC funded partnership research project called Gender, Migration and the Work of Care: International Comparisons, that examines how the reorganization of care influences the global migration of care workers, and how this migration in turn impact family and gender relations, gender equality, government policies, and global governance. Professor Peng has held a variety of senior leadership positions at the University of Toronto. Prior to being the Director of the Centre for Global Social Policy, Professor Peng was the Associate Dean, Interdisciplinary & International Affairs at the Faculty of Arts and Science. She has also served as the Chair and Director of Dr. David Chu Program in Asia Pacific Studies and the Director of Centre for the Studies of Korea, both at the Asian Institute. Professor Peng is a senior fellow of Massey College and Trinity College, University of Toronto; and a senior fellow of Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. She has been an associate researcher with the UNRISD since 1996. Dr. Peng received her Ph.D. from London School of Economics.

Organized by the Centre for the Study of Global Japan and co-sponsored by the Centre for Global Social Policy, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto.

Description

Breaking Barriers and Building Bridges (BBBB) is the capstone knowledge-sharing conference of the Engendering Success in STEM (ESS) Research Consortium. ESS brings together leaders from academia, industry, and government to generate new ideas and deepen existing collaborations for evidence-based interventions to promote gender inclusion in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM).

As part of the conference, the Initiative for Education Policy and Innovation, Centre for the Study of Global Japan, is pleased to co-sponsor the "Engendering Success in STEM: International Perspectives" panel.

Time : 11:15 am -12:30 pm

Panel Title: Engendering Success in STEM: International Perspectives

Speakers: Glenn Adams, University of Kansas, Takako Hashimoto, Chiba University of Commerce, Japan, Toni Schmader, University of British Columbia

Moderator: Dr. Steven Spencer, Ohio State University

About the Speakers:

Glenn Adams is a professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Kansas and currently acting as Interim Director of the Kansas African Studies Center. He served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Sierra Leone before completing his Ph.D. in Social Psychology at Stanford University. His graduate training included two years of field research in Ghana, which provided the empirical foundation for his research on cultural-psychological foundations of relationship. His current work builds on this foundation to investigate the coloniality of knowledge in psychological science and to articulate models of human development and ways of living that promote sustainable well-being for broader humanity.

Dr. Takako Hashimoto is a Professor at the Chiba University of Commerce (CUC). Her research uses advanced data mining techniques for large-scale social media analysis, such as investigating a dataset of over 200 million tweets sent during the 21 days following the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011. She holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Tsukuba and was a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Hashimoto has also worked as the technical lead for over 24 years at the Research & Development Center of the multinational imaging and electronics company Ricoh Co. Ltd. She has also held numerous influential leadership positions including Board Member of The Database Society of Japan and Chair of IEEE Women in Engineering, a global organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity.

Dr. Toni Schmader, is the Director of Engendering Success in STEM, and the Social Identity Laboratory at the University of British Columbia in Canada. She has over 25 years of experience and over 100 peer-reviewed publications, book chapters, and published books. Her research examines how stereotypes and bias constrain people’s performance, preferences, and self-views, with a particular focus on gender stereotypes and implicit bias. Dr. Schmader has given frequent public lectures on the topic of implicit gender bias including talks to the National Academies of Science in the United States, as part of Harvard’s Women in Work Series, and at the International Gender Summit. She was the recipient of a Killam Research Prize in 2013, and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology Daniel M. Wegner Theoretical Innovation Prize in 2018, as well as the European Association of Social Psychology Theory-Innovation Award for 2020-2021. She held a Canada Research Chair position from 2010-2020 and was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University in 2022-2023.

Moderator:

Dr. Steven Spencer is a Professor and the Robert K. and Dale J. Weary Chair in Social Psychology at Ohio State University. His research focuses on motivation and the self, particularly on how these factors affect stereotyping and prejudice. Along with how implicit processes that are outside of people’s awareness affect people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, he studies how threats to the self-concept can lead to stereotyping and prejudice. In addition to publishing in top academic journals, including the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and Psychological Science, he has served as an associate editor for the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, as the chair of the executive committee of the Society for Experimental Social Psychology, and won the Gordon Allport Prize for his paper with Greg Walton on Latent Ability. He is also a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.

Organized by Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto

Description

ABOUT THE TALK

"There is a nuclear ghost in Minamisōma." This is how one resident describes a mysterious experience following the 2011 nuclear fallout in coastal Fukushima. Investigating the nuclear ghost among the graying population, Morimoto encounters radiation’s shapeshifting effects. What happens if state authorities, scientific experts, and the public disagree about the extent and nature of the harm caused by the accident? In one of the first in-depth ethnographic accounts of coastal Fukushima written in English, Nuclear Ghost tells the stories of a diverse group of residents who aspire to live and die well in their now irradiated homes. Their determination to recover their land, cultures, and histories for future generations provides a compelling case study for reimagining relationality and accountability in the ever-atomizing world.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Ryo Morimoto is a first-generation college graduate and scholar from Japan and an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. His scholarly work addresses the planetary impacts of our past and present engagements with nuclear things. His second book project explores the U.S-Japan transnational history of disaster robots and an ethnography of decommissioning robots in coastal Fukushima. Ryo is a facilitator of the Native undergraduate students-led project Nuclear Princeton.

Discussant: Shiho Satsuka is interested in the politics of knowledge, environment, nature, science, and capitalism. She examines how divergent understandings of nature are produced, circulated, encountered, contested, and transformed in relation to the global expansion of capitalism. She is currently working on her second book project, tentatively entitled The Charisma of Mushrooms: Undoing the Long Twentieth Century.The project explores the possibilities of mushroom science to realize interspecies entanglements, dissolve the twentieth-century style state-science-industrial complex, and explore the possibility of co-habitation of various human and nonhuman beings on the earth. In particular, the project traces interspecies encounters in satoyama forest revitalization movements inspired by the charisma of matsutake, the politics of translation between various scientific and other forms of knowledge, as well as the emergence of “new commons.” This research is funded by a SSHRC Insight Grant and is a part of the collaborative, multi-sited ethnographic project, “Matsutake Worlds.” Satsuka was a Carson Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Germany in 2012.

Chair: Tong Lam is an Associate Professor in the Department of Historical Studies and the Graduate Department of History and Director of the Dr. David Chu Program in Asia-Pacific Studies at the Asian Institute. His current book-length study employs lenses of media studies, environmentalism, and science and technology studies (STS) to examine the politics and poetics of mobilization in China’s special zones in the socialist and postsocialist eras. As a visual artist, Lam has utilized his lens-based work to uncover hidden evidence of state- and capital-precipitated violence—both fast and slow—across various contexts. At present, his research-based visual projects particularly delve into the intersection between technology and military violence, as well as the landscapes of industrial and postindustrial ruination.  

Description

How should we understand the opportunities and risks presented by nuclear energy in the 21st century? Japan responded to the 1970s oil shocks with a robust program of nuclear energy development, successfully mitigating the country’s dependence on fossil fuels. However, the Fukushima nuclear disaster – triggered by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami – raised serious questions about nuclear safety and regulatory practices across the world. Akira Tokuhiro discussed how nuclear energy and energy systems more generally fit into broader socio-economic and political challenges confronting the international order. His analysis drew on probabilities and scenarios per energy system analyses to consider the post “3.11” (Fukushima Daiichi) transition to 2030 as well as the longer-term transformation to 2050. Furthermore, he discussed how the geopolitics of nuclear issues impacts Japan’s role as a G7 country in the Asia-Pacific region.

The speaker is an engineering professor who specializes in nuclear reactor safety-in-design via a system engineering mindset, investigating the analytical complexities of many connected sub-systems – predominantly technical but also socio-technical. His methods are mainly probabilistic – Oppenheimer-like in consideration of events with small probabilities but large consequences – drawing on computational simulations among other approaches. These are typically problems with large number of scenarios, calling for optimization and a concurrent (societal) need for willing (and unwilling) decision-making, often necessitating the use of heuristics.

Lunch will be provided.

Akira Tokuhiro is a Professor in the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science, Ontario Institute of Technology (“Ontario Tech”) in Oshawa, Ontario in February 2017. He completed his Dean appointment in September 2021. He holds a large interest in climate change, energy, nuclear energy and complex issues and problems based on data science.  He joined Ontario Tech from NuScale Power LLC (US), a startup that received Design Certification Application approval of its SMR (small modular reactor) design. Earlier he served as Director and Professor, Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering at the University of Idaho. He has also held appointments at Pacific Northwest (PNNL), Idaho and Argonne National Laboratories in the U.S. At PNNL, he served on the US-DOE team during the US-Japan bilateral meetings on nuclear energy R&D. He holds a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering (Purdue University), M.S. in Mechanical Engineering (University of Rochester), B.S.E. in Engineering-Physics (Purdue University) and 10 years of international R&D experience at the Paul Scherrer Institute (Switzerland) and Japan Atomic Energy Agency. Notably, he served on the American Nuclear Society President’s Committee on the Fukushima Accident and served as technical editor on a book on the accident, “On the Brink: The Inside Story of Fukushima Daiichi”. A movie (Fukushima 50) and Netflix-Japan series (The Days) were based on this book and the original Japanese best-seller.