Description

Based on a true story, “Kano” traces how an underdog baseball team in southern Taiwan made it to the finals of the 1931 Koshien, Japan’s national high-school baseball championship.

For the boys at Kagi Agriculture and Forestry Public School in southern Taiwan, playing at the finals of the Japanese Empire’s greatest youth sports event, Koshien, would have been a dream beyond reach. But under the leadership of coach Kondo, the team slowly starts making progress toward transforming the impossible into reality. In just one year, the seemingly “ragtag” team from southern Taiwan goes from a losing record to unprecedented honour.

Scripted by Ruby Chen and Te-Sheng Wei, and directed by Taiwanese actor Umin Boya, “Kano” revisits Taiwan’s colonial past within the Japanese Empire and explores the intricate relations between colonialism, sports, race, and ethnicity.

An academic panel composed of Dr. Takashi Fujitani (University of Toronto) and Dr. Andrew Morris (California Polytechnic State University) will help us unravel the history behind the film.

Dr. Takashi Fujitani is the Dr. David Chu Professor and Director in Asia Pacific Studies. His research focuses especially on modern and contemporary Japanese history, East Asian history, Asian American history, and transnational history (primarily U.S./Japan and Asia Pacific). He is the author of Splendid Monarchy (UC Press, 1996) and Race for Empire: Koreans as Japanese and Japanese as Koreans in WWII (UC Press, 2011); co-editor of Perilous Memories: The Asia Pacific War(s) (Duke U. Press, 2001); and editor of the series Asia Pacific Modern (UC Press).

Dr. Andrew Morris is Professor of Modern Chinese and Taiwanese history at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. He is author of ‘Colonial Project, National Game: A History of Baseball in Taiwan’ (University of California Press, 2010) and Marrow of the Nation: A History of Sport and Physical Culture in Republican China (University of California Press, 2004; and editor of ‘Japanese Taiwan: Colonial Rule and Its Contested Legacy’ (Bloomsbury Publishing, forthcoming).

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Description

This talk introduces Born Out of Place: Migrant Mothers and the Politics of International Labor (University of California Press and Hong Kong University Press). The book, based on over fifteen months of ethnographic research among Filipino and Indonesian migrant workers who become pregnant while working in Hong Kong, makes three main arguments: (1) that temporary workers must be considered people, not just workers; (2) that policies often create the situations they aim to avoid; and (3) that the stigma of single motherhood often causes migrant mothers to re-enter what is called the “migratory cycle of atonement.” Professor Constable will also discuss the current socio-political climate of Hong Kong today, in relation to the book’s recent reception, including attitudes towards outsiders, economic and class anxieties, and relations with mainland China. Questions will also be raised about the role of “public anthropology” and how this book relates to migratory contexts beyond Hong Kong.

Nicole Constable is Director of the Asian Studies Center in the University Center for International Studies, and professor of anthropology in the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh. She is author or editor of seven books, including: Christian Souls and Chinese Spirits: A Hakka Community in Hong Kong; Maid to Order in Hong Kong: Stories of Migrant Workers; and Romance on a Global Stage: Pen Pals, Virtual Ethnography, and “Mail-Order’ Marriages.