The Twelfth International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS 12)

Andaman Islands, straddling the margin of South and Southeast Asia at the edge of India’s territory, is a geopolitically sensitive, hyper-masculine island-space where the mainland has inscribed its nationalist depictions of history. Post-colonial social engineering policies have resulted in the settlement of various mainland communities, including the Bengali Hindu refugees and migrants of India’s eastern Partition (1947), in the islands. The settler women’s participation in and contribution to the settlement, however, continue to remain peripheral in the statist narrative of rehabilitation. Focusing on the settler women’s oral histories, this paper brings out their agential role in negotiating with the state’s rehabilitation regime, participation in nation-building, and articulation of their subjectivity in the context of this imposed peripherality. The settler women’s oral history presents a gendered history of displacement, transportation, settlement, and the island-space itself. Forgotten by the mainland-centric Partition discourse on account of being settled at the frontier, the settler identity is shaped by the erasure of the memory of multiple displacements and a strong rooting in the islands, distanced from the mainland. Further, benefits associated with being ‘Islanders’, coupled with their claim as ‘settlers’, differentiates their experience from other refugees and migrants of the eastern Partition settled across the Indian mainland. An explication of the imposed peripherality, through the lens of location, gender and caste, reveals the island-mainland relationship in the settler women’s worldview, and highlights the context of rooting the ‘homeland’ in the islands.

This paper examines the broad dissemination of the East India Company’s rupee currency at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. It explains why the rupee became the dominant means of exchange in much of India and why, despite some promise, it failed to become a global currency. The paper uses Helenus Scott’s The Adventures of a Rupee wherein are interspersed various anecdotes Asiatic and European (1782) as an analytical focus to explain how the East India Company’s burgeoning military campaigns, trade networks, and land administration led to a rapid circulation of the Company’s currency within India and as far afield as Britain and Southern China. Scott’s so-called “novel of circulation” is written in the first-person and from the perspective of a rupee. The narrator takes the reader on a global journey of exchange, from his minting in northern India to the harem of an Indian Muslim king, to the pocket of a sailor traveling to China and, finally, to a pawn-broker’s shop in London. The novel illustrates the strengths and the limitations of the Company’s currency – its growing ubiquity in colonial military, trade, and revenue networks, but also its ultimate relegation, as a colonial currency, to regional prominence.

Contemporary Chinese urbanization is certainly a controversial and largely studied phenomenon, at least for what concerns the coastal areas. It is partly seen as a product of the semi-neoliberal politics introduced in the country, that have favoured the flow of economies and lifestyles modelled on capitalist patterns from the Global North. In the light of scholarships pointing out the relevance of local mechanisms of entrepreneurialism and new social manifestations for the promotion of capital production and circulation, this paper analyses the role of upscale real estate in terms of spatial-temporal fix within the analytical framework of China’s land beautification politics. In particular, it investigates the outcomes deriving from eco-capitalist logics in Chongqing area and their impact on the natural environment. By following political attitudes in Chongqing urban space that are imbued with the principle of integrated resource management, the aim is to unravel the problematics behind the implementation of such ideological constructs in the locale. The analysis of statistics, political statements, and controversial projects shows how the scopes and purposes of land use, construction, and administrative legitimacy are intertwined and channelled through the satisfaction of alleged consumerist needs. It argues that the projection and imaginary of green but artificial environments (“Beautiful China”) are planned to behave as a token, i.e. quasi-objects that enable the dismantling of the natural environment in the name of environmental protection and commodity-making practices.

India has been a key strategic player in the Indian Ocean where it sees itself as a net security provider in the region. However, engagement of other powers in its neighborhood, as well as their partnerships with other South Asian nations towards defense, economics, infrastructure development and technology, has posed a challenge for India's security and foreign policy. The study analyses how the change in South Asia's regional dynamics (especially Pakistan and Bangladesh) have impacted India’s neighborhood policy within its larger Indo-Pacific vision. The study also captures the changes and continuities brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic in India's bilateral and multilateral relationships in the region. The paper argues that while the bilateral relations between India and its South Asian neighbors have been contentious, New Delhi has constantly sought to balance the same through an engagement based on development partnership and new security arrangements. This has helped India in its balancing act in the changing relations of South Asian neighbors with other global powers like China and the US.

Western urban theory has traditionally viewed neighbourhoods as historical or administrative conveniences that functioned to organize civic life of communities in urban space. However, little attention has been paid to the diverse forms of sociability that emerge and thrive within these spaces. Even in the cities of the Global South, neighbourhood patterns have been sought to be explained predominantly through the twin lens of social inequality and spatial segregation. As such, the affective potential of the neighbourhood has remained relatively unexplored. By focusing on everyday life in the para-s (traditional neighbourhoods) of Kolkata, this paper draws attention to the ways in which these socio-spatial units display agency of their own, actively shaping urban identities and urban dwellers’ relationship to the city. The paper argues that institutions and practices characteristic of para-based socialities allows for such processes. The paper surmises that para life offers new insights towards understanding the everyday inhabitation of the urban in these contexts, processes which otherwise lie in the interstices of mainstream urban theory.

The transformation of Lijiang’s Old Town in Yunnan, China, into a major domestic and international tourist destination as a result of its 1997 designation as a World Heritage site, provides an exemplary case study into which tourism development model best explains its progress and predicts its trajectory. Mitchell hypothesized the twin poles of destruction and enhancement as the consequence of the creative powers of an economy heavily influenced by tourism. In this paper I scrutinize Lijiang’s case through Mitchell’s model of ‘creative destruction’ and assess the observations of other published researchers in light of my own observations. Most observers (myself included) see Lijiang hurtling toward the destruction pole, but there are some signs that such rapid touristic development has yielded some enhancements. The opportunity to observe Lijiang again after the Covid-19th pandemic’s hiatus will allow for a reassessment in light of the schema outlined here.

Illustrated manuscripts, collected and owned by shahs, sultans and emperors during the reigns of Ilkhanid, Timurid, Safavid and Mughal dynasties, were highly valued objects. Carefully produced by a team of accomplished artists, calligraphers, book binders and gilders, who created these magnificent objects in a system of shared work at imperial kitabkhānās (ateliers), illustrated manuscripts became symbols of status and connoisseurship among royal subjects. Being portable in nature, these books travelled long distances and remained in use over several centuries, increasing in fame and value upon being stamped with the prestige and power of subsequent owners. In the sixteenth century, owing to a dense traffic of images and ideas between Timurid Central Asia and Mughal India, several rare and valuable illustrated manuscripts arrived in the sub-continent and were maintained in the Mughal imperial library. A conversation between images created in earlier Ilkhanid and Timurid periods with images produced in Mughal ateliers, will not only enable an insight into historical conditions prevalent during their respective ages, but also provide a window into the cultural, social and political ideas and concerns of the times. Applying art historian Aby Warburg’s notion of social memory to analyse artworks as repositories of history, my paper will examine a few images, particularly “birth” images, contained in illustrated manuscripts to trace the cultural transfer from Central Asia to India, in an attempt to perceive the significance of particular events, episodes and genres which expressed a shared cultural heritage with Timurid ancestry, and were favoured by Mughals for shaping their dynastic identity.

In Indonesia, the regime New Order under General Suharto emerged in 1965 as an anti-communist act, who later organized a vast and diversified prison network all over the Archipelago to incarcerate those accused of being communists. Facing massive arrests, the Indonesian Cardinal and several clergymen of the Society of Jesus developed a humanitarian aid called “Cardinal’s Social Program” to support the political prisoners. While providing help to political prisoners, but on the other hand making compromises with the political power, the Catholic Hierarchy has given the impression of an ambiguous relationship with the dominant group. The ambiguity of their official standing, religious discourses and acts has led us to question the Catholic Church’s attitude: was it to support human rights as mentioned in the Vatican II or was it a way to gain political power? Moreover, this paper asks: what are, in the particular aspect, that composed the program? Additionally, this paper questions the extent to which the Cardinal’s Social Program was emblematic of the evolution of religio-political issues in Indonesia to understand its current debate. This study examines the Indonesian Catholic Church’s archives and documents found in Indonesia and Europe. At the same time, this study exploits oral sources from first-person testimony.

This paper focuses on the lived experiences of Japanese women in Singapore. Set in the context of research on gender and transnational migration, the phenomenon of Japanese women moving overseas justifies more attention as the feminization trend of Japanese overseas started since around 2000 has become a more definite trend today. In contrast with economic migration, Japanese women’s transnational mobility is perceived as lifestyle migration in the literature, where dissatisfaction with gender inequality at work and social pressure to get married were among the main factors pushing the women out of Japan. In this paper, we draw on qualitative data of 52 female respondents (aged 20s to 80s) to explore their lived experiences in Singapore. We examine how Japanese migrant women negotiate their identity and maintain their distinct emotional space through the creation of the so-called ‘my space’ within a foreign environment. We also discuss the ambivalence and liminality of ‘my space’ which could be endangered by external factors, such as changing state policy in host society and caregiving needs back home. We content that the symbolic maintenance of ‘my space’ plays a salient role in giving meaning and support to their daily life, enabling the women to negotiate and strategize their identity as a Japanese through the perception of their role in bridging Japan and Singapore. It also enables them to maintain their sense of Japanese-ness in the multi-cultural environment. This paper hopes to deepen our understanding of the lived experiences of Japanese migrants in Singapore and beyond as well as to further explore ‘my space’ as a viable framework.

Kunming is the capital of Yunnan Province which shares borders with Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar. The area of Yunnan province, accounts for only 4.1% of the area of the whole country, but within its boundaries can be found 50% of higher plants species found in China; the Province also hosts representatives of 25 different ethnic groups. Kunming is situated in a mountainous area so city development was constrained by topography but human endeavour was demonstrated to connect to the outside world. Many traditional trails and trading routes are connected to the ancient Southern Silk Road (or Tea and Horse Road) in the area of Yunnan province. The Yunnan-Vietnam Railway, built in 1910, promoted the vigorous development of trade in commodities and cultural exchanges with other countries, and had significant impacts on the transformation of Kunming city. In the contemporary era, the expansion and development of Kunming was promoted by the “New Silk Road Economic Belt” proposed in the region since 2013 and the United Nation’s 15th Biodiversity Conference was held in Kunming in October 2021. This links to the Government's 14th five-year plan for the region: to create a world-class ‘green energy brand’, taking advantage of existing green energy, green food, and large-scale health industries in the province. This project investigates historical and contemporary transformation of the urban form in Kunming city and explores how the current planning discourses such as green city and contemporary technology supported transportation and communication. These also combined with the reconstructed concepts of ‘Eternal Spring City’ and ‘Southern Silk Road’, in trying to address the needs of the development of the urban space.

Hedging is an attractive strategy for governments, especially in Southeast Asia, as well as a popular academic lens for analyzing the foreign policy strategies of small and middle powers. The Philippines and Vietnam are among the countries which apply a hedging strategy towards the rising China. Both countries seek gains from their close political-diplomatic and economic engagement with Beijing, conducted both bilaterally and multilaterally via the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. At the same time, they follow omnidirectional political-diplomatic, economic and security relations to insure themselves from negative impacts stemming from their relations with China. Despite these fundamental similarities, the hedging strategies of the Philippines and Vietnam also vary considerably: Hanoi’s hedging strategy has been in the last decade very consistent and much more robust due to strong China-critical perceptions of the leadership, whereas Manila responded under the initially China-friendly President Duterte in a less planned, more ad hoc manner to Beijing’s policies and actions. Since mid-2019, though, the Philippines apply more confrontational measures towards China. This was a reaction to the lower than expected returns from the collaboration under the frame of the Belt and Road Initiative and China’s assertive behaviour in the South China Sea. However, neither the more confrontational Vietnamese policies nor the initially more cooperative Philippine policies resulted in an improvement of the security in the South China Sea.

Purpose: The theoretical study aims to build a framework of writing non-fiction books on national culture for primary school children in the age of globalization so as to help children understand their identity and respect cultural differences as an educational solution to ensure cultural diversity and avoid cultural homogenization as a result of globalization. Methods: A literature review of related theories was carried out in order to build the theoretical framework. Findings: The framework includes the following components: contents, writing style, illustrations and length. Our findings point out that the contents of those books need to satisfy three requirements: (i) be able to create and construct “agency” and “identity”, (ii) integrate both global and local elements, (iii) and ensure cultural diversity. Regarding the writing style, the books need to have a logical structure with comprehensible language, accurate information, concrete examples that consider readers’ background with the tone that does not patronize children and brings the feeling that there is a real person behind the information. About illustrations, they need to be appealing and convey information related to the contents. The length should be suitable for the amount of vocabulary that children totally get the meaning. Moreover, it also depends on a specific with either opaque or transparent orthographies that can influence readers’ decoding fluency and the difficulty of the contents as well. Originality: The study contributes to building a theoretical framework as a suggestion for authors to follow to write non-fiction books on national culture for primary children in the age of globalization.

The article looks into pre-modern Arabic descriptions of Sumatra and discusses the conceptions and ideas of the island they present. Sumatra, the westernmost island of the Malay Archipelago, was the first part of the region to become familiar to Middle Eastern sailors and traders. It was on their way to China and served as a source of fresh water and food supplies, as well as camphor, benzoin, and other jungle products. The coastal areas of Sumatra were visited by Middle Eastern ships as early as the first centuries of Islam, which is reflected in Arabic geographies and travel accounts. Before 1450, these texts appear to contain more information on Sumatra than on the other islands of the archipelago. There can be distinguished three major areas in the island known to pre-modern Arab writers: the northern coast of Sumatra, the western coast facing the island of Nias, and the eastern coast in the vicinity of present-day Jambi and Palembang. Each of the areas has Arabic place names associated with it, which appear in geographical texts from the ninth up to the fifteenth century and beyond. Besides topographical data, Arabic sources provide ethnographic descriptions of local populations. The article offers a brief review of the accounts of Sumatra found in these texts and their authors’ ideas of pre-modern Sumatran geography and cultures.

The literature on the international migration of Thai workers, particularly unskilled labour during the 1970s and 1980s, emphasised the networks of family, relatives, and friends that enabled Thai workers’ migration and adaptation to life in host countries. Thai migrant workers throughout those periods were predominantly from the lower class with limited social capital. As a result, social networks played a critical role in the migratory process. However, there is an emerging trend of the Thai new middle class migrating to industrialised host countries as unskilled labourers. I argue that the need for temporary foreign labourers in host countries, together with the social capital of the Thai new middle class, results in a migratory pattern characterised by the temporary downward mobility of migrants’ social strata. By examining a case study of Thai workers in Japan’s Technical Intern Training Program (TITP) who were employed temporarily by Japanese companies in 3D (dangerous, durable, dirty) jobs, this study illustrates the migratory pattern of young adults from rural Thailand who became unskilled workers in Japan. Social capital plays a critical role in this trend of migration for the new middle class. The role of social networks is lessened and partially replaced by an official migratory system organised by both sending and receiving countries. This study highlights the importance of transnationally considering migrants’ social strata to gain a better understanding of their migratory patterns.

This brief paper aims to give an overview of the most important changes the EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) brings to the wine and motor vehicles industry and why these changes have occurred. This paper analyses the most important changes to the wine and motor vehicles tariffs and regulations. The emphasis is on how regulatory cooperation between EU and Japan has reduced non-tariff barriers. By analysing the text of the EPA text and its annexes the paper aims to firstly, get an overview of the most important changes, and secondly, to understand why these changes could have occurred. After analysing the text of the EPA, the paper looks at the geo-political circumstances that could impact the level of regulatory cooperation between the EU and Japan. The main changes in both wine and motor vehicles are regarding tariffs, eradication of double-testing, recognition of certificates, accepting different processes, bottle size, and geographical indications. These are all forms in which regulatory cooperation can be manifested and show that the EU and Japan have developed a deep level of integration between their market regulations. This is partially the result of the benign relationship of trust that has been develop over the last decades between the two, but also the result of favourable geo-political and economic circumstances. Interviews with representatives on both sides have revealed that staying committed to trade liberalisation and taking a stance against protectionism formed important drivers. The US pulling out of the TPP and the TTIP caused the EU and Japan to put each other back on the priority list. The EU creating a free trade agreement with South Korea caused Japan to incentivise the negotiations due to risk of trade diversion.

Japan is proud of its ‘traditional crafts’. However, the future of its crafts is by no means secure. The makers lack successors, supply chains are aging, materials are no longer available, while the new generation of customers have new tastes and the high prices fail to convince them. The rigidity of tradition and the reluctance to engage globally are hindrances to both marketing and sympathetically motivated research. A radical shake-up and paradigm shift is required. This paper combines the collaborating perspectives of a scientist-artist and an art historian, to explore the sustainability of crafts from cultural, economic and scientific perspectives. The research will focus on the case study of Kanazawa, the UNESCO designated city of crafts and folk art, and the surrounding Ishikawa prefecture which boasts the second highest number of ‘Living National Treasure’ residents in Japan after Kyoto. Moreover, Ishikawa’s Noto peninsula is regarded as the model of satoyama and satoumi sustainable living and has been designated Japan’s first ‘Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System’ (GIAHS) by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). By engaging with the current global debate on what it means to make ‘crafts’, the fieldwork and interviews gathered locally will be analyzed from multiple perspectives, with a view to determining where a sustainable future might be found and what actions could be taken to help generate a shift in paradigm that could provide crafts with a more certain future.

This paper looks at female fans of male porn actors in Jôsei-muke Adult Videos (AV) in Japan. The genre of Jôsei-muke is a form of pornography aimed at heterosexual women that features good-looking male porn actors; Eromen and Lovemen. This new genre has emerged in reaction to the decline of mainstream porn studios due to the popularity of porn streaming websites and captures heterosexual women who had been neglected as audiences as a new market. Despite the media attention that the new genre has garnered as a female sexual emancipation, the phenomenon is supported by ‘fans’ of Eromen and Lovemen. Based on fieldwork at a series of Eromen and Lovemen fan events and on online communities as a part of my on-going doctoral research, I found that the women who self-identified as ‘fans’ of Eromen and Lovemen carefully designed their personas in the fan community. For instance, they used pseudonyms in order to conceal their public selves at work or home. Simultaneously, it has become apparent that female fans look for intimate interactions with male actors at these events in order to be recognized as feminine and have their confidence restored. The paper draws on conversations with female fans to elucidate the expectations fans have regarding their interactions with Eromen and Lovemen, and how this fan community influences their everyday lives.

The article discusses the research issues related to Tuva, the region with a unique Asian culture. It has been a Soviet-Russian territory since 1944. The “maternal” ethnic group of the Tuvans, the majority of the Republic’s population lives here. In Tuvan studies, the difference of research views and scholars’ affiliation to different traditions of the world’s schools of thought is very clearly noted. Researchers from different countries consider its legal status as a territory of Russia in different ways. One point of view is that the incorporation of Tuva into the USSR should be regarded as an annexation (it is a viewpoint shared by many researchers from Western Europe and the USA; after the 1990s some authors from the former territories of the USSR started to share it as well). The second point of view is common among Russian and Tuvan historians: the integration of Tuva was a natural result of the rapprochement of the Tuvan and Russian peoples. Researchers into the history of Asian countries, including China and Mongolia, express the third point of view: Tuva was a part of the Outer Mongolia and was taken away by Russia, but it must be returned. The geopolitical conundrum has identified the issue of different terminology used for designation of Tuva, as well as the assessment of the origin and idiosyncrasy of Tuvan culture. Today we can consider Tuva as a separate territory, an “unknown part” of Russia, and it is undiscovered even for many Russians. It is interesting as a limitrophe zone between civilizations. There is an issue of defining Tuva in the general zoning in Asian studies. But in any case, being a Russian region in a political sense and close to Mongolia in terms of culture and religion Tuva is an idiosyncratic local cultural world of Turkic-speaking nomads.

The Scarborough Shoal stand-off and the oil rig crisis hold symbolic value to the Chinese. During the crises, China’s sovereignty claims over the South China Sea have been recounted several times. As the way that the Chinese government has mobilized media tools to cover the crises and to shape its national image of their rival(s) via its narratives turned the territorial controversies into nationalist demonstrations, and deteriorated the bilateral relations, the demand to understand how the crises and media diplomacy could impact on the bilateral relations and the peace in the region has increased. Media diplomacy occurs when a government sends its diplomatic messages to its target audiences through speeches, press conferences, visits, or even leaks. To succeed, a government needs to have the ability to predict how different stakeholders will consume its message and how its target audiences are likely to respond. The paper uses the theoretical framework of media diplomacy to analyze media reports in China to understand how China deployed media tactics to fulfill its political goals in the crises and whether media diplomacy can be used as one of the ways to resolve the tensions.

This paper maps the Overseas Chinese affairs/Qiaowu-specific policies of both the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan in Sarawak State, Malaysia. These two governments are spreading their own versions of influence to win the hearts and minds of the local Chinese communities. The PRC’s aim is to encourage the local Chinese to accept the PRC’s cultural and diplomatic sovereignty; whereas Taiwan wishes to remain separate from the PRC as a sovereign state. The PRC’s United Front Work Department manages Overseas Chinese affairs globally through a mechanism known as the ‘five bridges.’ For Taiwan, its Overseas Community Affairs Council provides links to the Overseas Chinese communities. In Sarawak, the Overseas Chinese affairs in general are managed by the PRC’s Consulate-General Office. For education purposes, Sarawak’s China Alumni, the Sarawak Liuhua is contesting with Sarawak Taiwan Graduates Association to attract local students to pursue tertiary education in either the PRC or Taiwan. The latter also manages Overseas Chinese affairs in Sarawak, especially involving applications for social visits and student visas to Taiwan. At this stage, the two governments are engaging with the local Chinese in Sarawak primarily via Chinese voluntary associations, through education, political-economic projects, and also the latest initiatives regarding medical aid to combat the Covid pandemic.

This paper aims to stimulate discussion on the political architecture of centres of power in East Asia by focusing on the historical transformations of political structures and their architectural edifices in Japan and China. Parliaments as institutions materialise by strenuous, and sometimes sudden, degrees, during moments of critical juncture. The struggle for absolute power to succumb to shared power is extrapolated through the building designs. I describe how the coincidence of Prussian history and German architects intertwined with the intricacies of constructing new political institutions and their parliamentary architecture. How the architecture of the ruling dynasties was overlooked. How the initial grand designs were never completed, and provisional buildings improvised. And how, eventually, an alternative, but no less, grade design was accomplished. This is a step towards my wider research on parliament buildings in East and Southeast Asia and framed within a transnational history of architecture of political representation. Employing the physical buildings of the governmental structure of Tokyo and Beijing as a lens, I seek to frame a greater understanding of the journey taken from ruling court to peoples’ legislature, from the internal, hierarchical, often obscure, governing entity to an elected, meritocratic, theoretically open, governing body. The appropriation of political institutions and architecture, and the machinations of erecting suitable edifices, emerges in this tale of palace to parliament.

This essay has focused on the glass yurts used in the New Year ceremony during the Qianlong period and attempted to shed light on such ephemeral experience and performative effects of temporary architecture. Every New Year, in front of the Zhongzheng Dian (the Buddhist center in the Forbidden City), the Qianlong Emperor would command to erect the glass yurt pane-by-pane and hold the grandest of all imperial Buddhist ceremonies inside it. The emperor himself, on this occasion, resembled the statues of the Buddha in glass niches that were often given as presents to Tibetan lamas by the Qing emperors. Outside of the yurts was the cham ritual dance performed by high-ranking monks to empower and bless the audiences. In the Qing context, glass material was not only a precious material brought by the Europeans that was suitable for creating a spectacle in the court ceremony, but also related to Buddhist concepts “pure” and “empty” long been used in making offerings and devotional objects. The emperor distinguished himself from other audiences by using the asymmetric visibility in and out of the glass yurts combined with his parade to enter the yurts. This enhanced the performative nature of the emperor’s presence and integrated it with the imperial religious ritual.

This manuscript discusses the impact of global discourse on intangible cultural heritage, with a particular focus on the cultural manifestations and indigenous social groups. This is exemplified by the Hang Hau Hakka unicorn dance, a traditional socio-cultural practice that was from the Hakka community. This work illustrates how this cultural practice may impact on the anthropological approach to heritage. Since the late 19th century, the Hakka community in Hong Kong has been practising the unicorn dance, an auspicious cultural symbol, on celebratory occasions. The practice serves for sustaining Hakka community members. In 2013, the Hong Kong government identified the Hakka community’s unicorn dance as one of the heritage properties and proceeded the application of the fourth national list of Intangible Cultural Heritage in China under the auspices of UNESCO’s 2006 program. The application succeeded and eventually turned this practice into the cultural capital of the Hakka community in Hong Kong. Such cultural transmission has changed and re-created the socio-cultural meanings of those social traditions. By investigating how the Hakka community in Hong Kong today defines, preserves, transforms, and interprets the unicorn dance, this ethnographic research argues that emerging global discourse of intangible heritage has empowered non-dominant cultural groups like the Hakka community and preserved cultural diversity in local society.

Melancholy and Nostalgia are not only two connected types of emotion, but also the irresistible motifs frequently appearing in Chinese North American diasporic literature. As two important Chinese North American writers, Bai Xianyong’s melancholy and Chen He’s nostalgia are themes in the former’s short story “Winter Nights” and the latter’s novella “Two Tales of the City in That Black-and-White Movie” “Winter Nights” is set against the backdrop of 1950s Taibei, but through employment of literary montage, readers may feel overwhelmed by reminiscences of the old days in mainland China when the protagonists were radical intellectuals with their youthful idealism. “Two Tales of the City in That Black-and-White Movie” tells its story mixing the present with the past. The main character realizes that the city he comes to visit is exactly the same one appearing in a touching, old black-and-white movie. Although black-and-white movies are no longer in the mainstream, they always remind us of the good old days and become the unique accompaniment to travel back to the time of our youth and “the slower rhythms” of our fantasy and imagination – whether with melancholy or nostalgia. This paper will exam how black-and-white movies and literary montage play essential roles to present Bai’s melancholy and Chen’s nostalgia in their stories.

The contracts of indenture signed by Chinese workers in the Australian mandated territory of Nauru after 1920 may have been permitted by the League of Nations and approved by Hong Kong officials, but they remained part of an inherently fraught colonial labour system. The act of signing up to work for a single colonial employer, in this case the British Phosphate Commission, for a period of three years, while accepting that the employer would the provide food, clothing and communal housing, meant that these men gave up many personal liberties, such as family life. Indentured contracts had been subject to important revisions during the first decades of the twentieth century in response to criticisms from Chinese officials over flogging and penal sanctions. They now made provisions for reasonable wages, working hours and holidays. But despite this, the Australian administrators and the British Phosphate Commission maintained a racialized worldview, still referring to Chinese workers as "coolies". In this paper I draw upon the annual reports produced for the League of Nations, as well as written accounts by officials, Chinese representatives and workers, in order to paint a picture of everyday life for Chinese workers. I pay attention to the constraints imposed by the system of racial segregation, and aim to understand how Chinese men on Nauru sought to improve their quality of life through more varied food, entertainment and sport.

Republican China’s struggle for unity and sovereignty coincided with the country’s unprecedented internationalization. In addition to the looming presence of powerful and privileged foreigners, the Nanjing Government faced the challenge of administering destitute refugees from Europe. The history of Russian and Jewish communities in modern China has come to the fore in recent years. Home to such destitute groups, Shanghai’s status as an international city in the Republican Era is well known. By covering the history of the Shanghai Hungarian Relief Fund and the individuals involved in its operations, this paper aims to shed light on the organizational and personal links that connect the assistance offered to two waves of refugees from Habsburg Central Europe to Republican China. The author argues that the humanitarian experience accumulated over the 1920s’ relief for the ex-Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war prepared Shanghai’s Central European community leaders for the more massive Jewish refugee crisis in the 1930s. In particular, the Hungarian Relief Fund, created by Hungarians of the interwoven post-Habsburg diasporas, explored the avenues of assistance and protection for stateless persons and non-treaty nationals in Republican China. A truly transnational history of the Central European refugee relief is presented here, focusing on Paul Komor and his fellows’ philanthropic involvement before the Jewish refugee relief efforts. By exploring this intersection of Jewish, Hungarian, and Chinese histories, listeners will gain insight into the prehistory of the Shanghai Jewish refugee relief, Hungarian diaspora politics, and the administration of foreign communities in Republican Era-China.

This paper investigates three grassroots craft-related enterprises in rural Japan that take advantage of natural and cultural resources, local identity, and infrastructure, as well as transnational flows of people and knowledge, to energize their communities faced with depopulation and economic decline: an international cultural exchange program for young makers in an individual potter's studio in Misato, Shimane; a biannual international ceramic art festival that holds lectures, demonstrations, and exhibitions in Sasama, Shizuoka; and a 200-year old lodge and hobby pottery school that receives volunteers from abroad in exchange for accommodation in Mashiko, Tochigi prefecture. Based on preliminary field research consisting of participant observation and interviews with creators, coordinators, and participants of these programs, I will consider their background, goals, and possible role in triggering human social transformation and local development. Aiming at rural revitalization and community invigoration through the selling and exchange of knowledge and experiences on-site, these enterprises constitute a sustainable alternative to predatory tourism by drawing on a "relationship population" (kankei jinkô) in between one-time visitors and permanent settlers. By encouraging the establishment of ties between locals and international artists, as well as amateur and veteran craft makers, such enterprises have not only led to the transmission of traditional craft skills beyond national borders but can also lead to the creation of cosmopolitan transnational communities in rural areas. Through the three case studies, I aim to bring a new perspective on the role of art, crafts, and creativity in a more sustainable, integrated, and humane concept of development.

Implemented since 2008, the Japan-Indonesian Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) for the Nurse Trainee Scheme has been beset by two main problems a below 10% success rate in the national nursing exam which trainees have to sit for after some 3 to 4 years of training; and ii) an increasing number of trainees who choose to return home despite having passed the exam. The difficulties surrounding this scheme has thus seen only about 150 qualified Indonesian nurses in Japan today. Yet, little is known about the actual experiences and aspirations of this minority group of qualified Indonesian nurses. In this paper, using an in–depth case study of the work and life history of a qualified Indonesian male nurse who has worked in Japan for over ten years, I explore how lived experiences can help throw light on needed interventions in both Indonesia and Japan to improve on the placement, support and integration of Indonesian nurse trainees in Japan. Discussions will focus on social conditions, personal motivations and social-cultural networking patterns that facilitate the entry and success of a nurse trainee in Japan. Income and social status disparities between Indonesian and Japanese societies will be highlighted as important factors shaping the nature of return migration as well as longer residency in Japan. While closed immigration policy continues to undermine long-term residency for foreign workers, a vista of hope has opened up with a relaxation that allows an EPA worker to bring in dependents to live and study in Japan.

The paper examines how the memories of the anti-Chinese riots in May 1998 are transmitted from one generation to the second generation of Chinese Indonesians in Jakarta. We consider the first generation to be those who experienced the violent episode themselves, while the second generation consists of those who were either at a very young age or were yet to be born in 1998. In our study, these two generations are not necessarily part of the same family. In so doing, we are interested in how the autobiographical memories of May 1998 are transmitted by the first generation to the second generation and become part of the collective memory that structures the collective identity of Chinese-Indonesians. The research is based on in-depth interviews and focus-group discussions. We focus on narratives that are being told and re-told in Chinese-Indonesian families, at the imprints of the traumatic experiences on the behavioral schemes of the first and second generations, and at the meaningful silences. We found that the legacy of May 98 is not only in the form of stories of what the first generation experienced in May 98 but in the form of “life lessons” on how to navigate the social world as a member of the minority group. Inadvertently, these parental lessons reproduce the social distance between Chinese Indonesians and the non-Chinese, and the weak presence of the Chinese-Indonesians in politics.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the US-Japanese encounters in occupied “private” spaces in post-WWII Japan through a case study of a military family housing, or Dependents Housing, area, particularly Grant Heights in western suburb of Tokyo, now the site of one of the largest residential and park complexes in Japan, Hikarigaoka. After briefly reviewing the existing literature on US-Japanese encounters in occupied Japan, including a brief chronology of Allied Occupation, starting in August 1945 and ending in April 1952, it will present an overview of Dependents Housing, starting with a 1946 order from Occupation forces, requesting dependent housings to be constructed, followed by the construction between 1946 and the end of the occupation period. This paper will analyze how the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers ordered 20,000, but later reduced to 10,000, housing units to be built in 1946, along with 950,000 household items such as refrigerators and washing machines. Then, it describes how and where units were built and forgotten, including Grant Heights among others in Japan. It discusses some legacies of these transnational encounters, including the architectural design of housing floor plan after the independence of Japan in 1952. And it will end with some remaining questions. The historiography of occupation studies is interdisciplinary and mainly covers areas such as national “rebuilding,” policy-making, legal issues, media/censorship, education “reform” and literature and film topics. Most of the studies are placed in a national framework generally ignoring the housing situation and daily experiences of the military/ civilian personnel and their families in occupied Japan. Exploring the history and cultural experiences of dependent housings should generate discussion between occupation studies, cold war cultural studies, gender studies, transpacific studies, and postcolonial studies.

Traditional Hindu ascetic orders have been, historically, upper-caste, male dominated formations. Inclusion of women during the medieval period of Bhakti Movement has been indirect, nominal and exceptional. There was no place for transgenders in these orders. The Hindu scriptures recognize the the concept of “third nature” and the religious rights of this community but in practice, no evidence of exercise of these rights are present in the history. Influence of global movements for gender rights on these orders has given rise to new processes of negotiation of cultural space. These negotiations have transformed the old norms and made the religious leaders more sensitive towards the demands of women and transgenders. This paper presents the case study of three recent gendered movements struggling for religious space. Two of them--Pari Akhada and Sarveshwari Akhada are exclusively female formations while the third one—Kinnar Akhada, is a transgender group. While the women leaders are still struggling for recognition, the transgenders have been successful in negotiating the space. It has been found that the agency and narratives adopted by the gendered formations play a crucial role in mobilization of followers and resources. The success of these movements further reflects in the change of structure of the traditional orders that have started recruiting more women and transgenders in their own fold and sharing power and authority even as they decline to recognize an all-women new order.

From luxury brands to electronics, China has a reputation for copying products from the Western world and beyond. This characteristic of reproducing identically was taken to its climax by building, from the 2000s, copies of European cities. Real estate developers have sensed the profit and have undertaken gigantic construction works to satisfy a new Chinese clientele who have traveled extensively in Europe. However, these achievements as residential projects did not find their audience, probably due to an urban atmosphere far removed from Chinese cultural codes. Visiting an exotic city for a day is one thing, staying there and living for years is another. While the Coronavirus pandemic was catastrophic for many tourist sites around the world, these reproductions of European cities could take advantage of this situation thanks to Chinese visitors who can no longer travel to Europe due to the closed borders. The health crisis could even revitalize the unattractive housing sector. This text, following our communication at ICAS 12 relates our research project which began in December 2019 but which never succeeded due to a pandemic hampering travel to China. Two years later, because we have never been able to investigate our subject in China, we are unable to give concrete results but only hypotheses and research orientations. The first part of our text evokes our initial project which concerns the tourist reconversion of these cities with architecture from elsewhere, a subject in correlation with our previous works about simulacrum and tourist imaginaries. The second part focuses on the direction our project has taken through the health crisis: the new hypotheses, the difficulties encountered, and the methodologies envisaged.

This paper seeks to explain the resilience of EU-China strategic partnership despite growing salience of a systemic rivalry between both actors. The framing of China as a systemic rival to EU tends to be considered as a shift of paradigms in EU policy. Such a standpoint offer poor explanatory force for the remaining dialogue dynamics and its late outcome such as Comprehensive Agreement on Investment. This paper aims to reach an explanation by considering Eu-China socialization process. It relies on desk research and a diachronic discourse analysis of the socialization process; data collection encompasses EU policy paper and EU-China Annual Summit (EC-AS) joint statement. Findings of the analysis permit to consider systemic rivalry and strategic partnership as similar outputs of the same socialization framework. Furthermore, this research delivers a new analytical framework to comprehend systemic rivalry and its impact. This paper opens the floor for a research agenda focusing on normative power, instead of great power relations, to understand EU's foreign policy. Finally, it emphasizes that socialization processes precede materials realities in the building of foreign policy.

This study examines the ongoing disputes among Indonesian Muslim schools and communities. Previously, the long-lasting contest occurred offline but is currently being expressed through digital medium such as the social media. In the Indonesian context, the popularity of digital technology used for religious purposes was initially utilized by modern communities. While modernist feels "at home" in the digital realm for religious purposes, their traditionalist counterpart are not yet fully prepared for the advent of this technology. Some traditional elites still reject secular technology because it can undermine religious purity. Therefore, the religious populism trend is the new face of the country's cyber-Islamic environment. With newer dynamics where development is inevitable, traditionalists are more open to experiencing technology exposure. The santri community, a segment of Indonesian traditionalist Muslims, are among those making noticeable efforts to respond to the populism wave by taking benefit of the digital media to proselytize their religious arguments and identity. As a continuation phase of the ongoing offline competition, the cyber contest is also a forum for santri community to build a moderate understanding of Islam.

Inserted in its strategy of Belt and Road Initiative, People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been implementing some actions and programmes in health sector, leading to what is known as the Health Silk Road. Starting from internal healthcare reforms in the last three decades – aiming to achieve universal health coverage and a good network of primary care services – PRC is defining its strategy in order to be a relevant player in global health governance. Methodologically based on a literature review and a content analysis, this paper intends to shed light on several topics, such as: (i) the purposes of Health Silk Road – is it a way of reinforcing Chinese position in global order through health governance? (ii) PRC’s management of the crisis caused by pandemic due to SARS-CoV-2 – can the Chinese approach to fight the virus be applied as a role model worldwide? These parameters will be framed in the context of geopolitics, soft power and global governance looking at provisional trends for medium-term future.

Marginalization of the mountain regions is manifold – environmental, political and financial. These get exacerbated by the geographical distance from administrative and development centers. Marginalization can be categorized as societal and spatial. For Darjeeling, West Bengal, the marginalization is as much economic as much as it is ethnic. Darjeeling lies in the Eastern Himalayan Region, one of the highest rainfall receiving regions in India. But the communities here have been facing water scarcity for decades. Amid marginalization, water injustice manifested as water scarcity gets obscured. Water scarcity, however, is a lived reality that is normalized along with the experiences of marginalization. In this paper, using the case of Darjeeling Municipal town, I examine the marginalization of the region through the informal nature of domestic water provisioning. The extensive presence and prevalence of informal systems and their intertwining with the formal, the pseudo municipality systems, and the over-dependence on the community organizations spell out the inability or unwillingness of the state towards alleviating the water scarcity. Through this paper, I explore the relationship between informality and marginality through a case of domestic water scarcity in Darjeeling. I carried out preliminary studies in 2014-15 and 2016 followed by year-long fieldwork from April 2018 to April 2019. I conducted key informant and water supplier interviews, transect walks, and review of public records and secondary literature followed by household questionnaires across the town. If we focus only on the state supplies, then we miss out a lot on how the informal supplies which are the majority of water suppliers. There is a reification of the formal initiatives. Despite the prevalence of informal water providers which have helped in providing water to households, the state needs to play a crucial role to address the public interest in urban development as a regulator.

This paper examines the attempts to adopt ‘native’ institution, baojia system in this case, to the practices of village police administration in early colonial Hong Kong. Adoption of baojia in the post-cessation situation in Hong Kong was premised on the proposition of ‘preservation’ of Chinese institutions and by extension an embodiment of British imperial ‘good governance’ and ‘non-intervention’. In contrast, the paper by situating adoption of baojia within the larger concern of asserting British jurisdiction views it as a colonial institutional strategy that was informed by anxiety about China and need to bring Chinese inhabitants under direct scope of colonial administration.

At a cursory glance, the first decade of the mutual Polish-Vietnamese relations seems very straightforward. Two communist countries, tied not only by the same ideology but also a common history of struggle against foreign occupation, in a cordial relationship of supporting each other. However, a much more nuanced relationship lay behind the official facade of smiles and handshakes. The initially amiable relations soured quickly in 1956 when the events of Polish October were decried in Vietnam as “bourgeois counterrevolution”. From that point both countries started to drift apart: Warsaw firmly backed the “peaceful coexistence” policy formulated in Moscow, while Hanoi moved into Beijing’s camp of revolutionary warfare. At the same time, both Poland and Vietnam desperately tried to maintain the unity of the communist camp threatened by the growing rift between the two red powers. Economic cooperation also did not satisfy either side. Warsaw was disappointed with Vietnam's low export opportunities, while Hanoi pressed for more and more material support, which Poland, struggling with its own problems, could not and did not want to provide. Besides typical political, cultural, and economic contacts, communist Poland played an additional important role in Indochina, by participating in the work of the International Commission for Supervision and Control (ICSC), which was established in 1954 with the task of overseeing the implementation of Geneva Agreements of that year. While Warsaw proved to be a steadfast ally of Hanoi, the mutual relation was not always easy. Poles favored engagement and flexibility in relations with their ICSC partners, in comparison to the usually ideologically rigid Vietnamese position, and refused to compromise its own international prestige and credentials to satisfy some Vietnamese demands. This paper is based on research in various Polish archives and the latest literature on the subject.

A beginning of the nineteenth-century musical migration in southern Asia, an oceanic space encompassing the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, came with the connected maritime journeys of migrant artists of Western opera from Italy, South America and France. These itinerant operatic performers intermittently presented the current works of Italian and French opera in Macau in 1833, Calcutta in 1833-1844, and Batavia in 1835-1843. This article argues that the transregional operatic passages to southern Asia were a product of the region-wide transition in the structure of international trade and urban culture that had been unfolding since the second half of the eighteenth century and accelerated in the 1830s. Macau, Calcutta and Batavia developed connections through their strategic involvement in the Indo-China trade, especially the trafficking of opium, and the vital roles they played in the transregional network of maritime transport. By the turn of the 1830s, the three trading outposts established themselves as the nodes of commercial and cultural contacts. The circulation of Western operatic troupes and their repertoires between the three port cities illuminates a hitherto overlooked undercurrent of maritime connections and trade networks in southern Asia in which the journeys of Western opera and its artists and the merchandise of the Indo-China trade coincided.

In the Upper Mekong region of Southeast Asia, border territories not only delineate the extent of the governing authorities’ resources and investments, but also function as mobility resources for the people who approach, dwell within, transit, and flee them, and for whom such territories provide platforms for migration and re-settlements. In the Myanmar crisis, these transboundary areas continue to be used in particular ways by political and economic elites and in different ways by those dwelling, working, and moving or fleeing within them. On the mega-level, this border fluidity has followed the geographical adjustments of trade zones and connectivity projects, but also the political fortunes of the authorities and elites who attempt to capture them. Thus while national and internal border territories from Kunming to Mandalay, Chiang Mai and Oudomxay have long moved with the economic, political, and quasi-political authority of national and supranational investors, they also overlap with and diverge from the spheres of activity of local populations moving within them who provide not only labor and local markets, but now political resistance. The less-known cross-border territories encompassing their micro-economies and socio-ecological livelihood alternatives are similarly fluid and eventually more significant, as will be shown here. In addition to the negative impacts on the region’s financial and communications sectors, the major factor affecting the Upper Mekong in 2021 is the outflux of people fleeing Myanmar. This paper looks at both investors’ and local populations’ post-crisis spheres of mobility within the region, and the regional adjustments that are resulting.

The (First) Prince is gorgeous He controls the earth from the heaven His face looks bright and rosy with elegantly thin eyebrows His skin is as white as snow and his hair is more beautiful than a cloud He wears a brightly yellow costume with a pink scarf … The First Prince is one of queer deities of Dao Mau - a Vietnamese indigenous religion. These deities have been worshipped in public and private temples in Vietnam when they are honoured as the country’s protectors. Certain male deities are portrayed with feminine appearance and characters like the First Prince and the Ninth Prince. Some female deities, including the Eighth Holy Lady and the Tenth Holy Lady, tend to be masculine when they are praised to conquer invaders as well as create new livelihoods. Some female mediums are described as vi nam vi nu – being able to turn themselves into men and women in ritual songs to praise their merits. Queer deities get respect of practitioners. To ask for fortune and health, male and female mediums organise luxurious ritual practises len dong that help male and female deities to incarnate into the bodies of mediums. Queer deities only exist in legends and mediums’ imagination. This fact creates space for mediums telling different versions about gender and sexuality of queer deities. Based on the theory of gender performativity, I argue that the existence of queer deities in Dao Mau represents religious tolerance toward queerness and gender diversity through analyzing legends and songs about queer deities as well as stories of mediums.

Environmental change issues have been the signifying elements of the global change agenda. International and regional/local processes of development have also taken towards a rather comprehensive form, including various aspects of environmental change and human-environment interaction. Japan has always been one of the development aid-friendly countries and has been contributing to the international development aid platforms via bilateral and multilateral/organizational linkages. At the same time, both Japan and its aid partners, especially in Southeast Asia, have been suffering from catastrophic impacts of natural-environmental disasters. Challenges coming with these natural and man-made disasters and the changing economic conditions have forced Japan to redefine its development aid strategies in recent years. This short paper is an attempt to understand how environment and environmental change issues have been included within Japan-involved Southeast Asian development aid agenda in the recent years. The first part of the paper looks at the changing direction of development and development aid frameworks with environmental emphasis in the 21st century. Then the paper focuses on Japan`s ODA policies and economic as well as environmental forces that transformed the ODA strategies in recent years. The last part examines critical points and potentials of Japan`s development aid agenda to reconfigure the country’s contribution to the global development aid programs under the impact of environmental changes issues.

Since the early 20th century, discourses of “Young China” which boast a linear progression and thorough rejuvenation stayed central in China’s social cultures. Under this sway, social groups “New Youth” accordingly became vital targeted audience/writing subjects of that era’s literature. The studentship, therefore, was closely correlated with grand issues like political reforms and nationality amid the mainstream fiction writing, which explains why today’s most research takes the “student” identity as their entry point to examine the last century’s Chinese modernity. This sheds adequate light on the masculine/nationality-oriented aspect of modernity, but yet leaves its feminine aspect which is often represented by female works of the same period underestimated. In this essay, Xiao Hong’s “The Spring in a Small Town” and Mei Niang’s “Crabs” which seemingly portray their (currently) unschooled female characters as “onlookers of modernity” but further display the subtle interplay between knowledge anxiety and consuming behaviors are mainly analyzed. Their consumption of (material/ cultural) fashion and imagination of modernity not only manifest potential ways of deconstructing the classic narrative mode “becoming students,” but also unfold the ignored femininity of modernity which mostly lies in daily, trivial and consistent living experiences. And by referring to the contemporaneous Shanghai-style literature, this essay reflects on the characterization that assumes female consumers as shopaholics, typical interpretations of women in traditional and domestic space as well as dynamics between gender, modernity and consumption.

A decorative knot, known as hanamusubi (a flower knot in English) is shaped like a flower or tiny insect placed on a small bag. These creations were used in tea and incense practices in Japan during the Edo period (1603–1868). While scholars have studied tea and incense utensils in the context of Japanese art and design, hanamusubi remains thoroughly unexamined. This exclusion may be the result of the ephemeral knotting practice. In most cases, once the thread is knotted on top of small bags used in tea and incense practice, the knots are untied after the practice. Therefore, this paper aims to explore the ways in which historical accounts narrate practices of hanamusubi as part of the culture in the Edo period and examine its subsequent values. Hanamusubi has had a role in expressing social and cultural values in the context of decoration. The visual documentation of the use of hanamusubi started to be observed during the middle of the Edo period. Hanamusubi, often employed in tea and incense practices, can stand as both an imagined flower and a codified language, which has been constructed over generations. Intriguingly, a hanamusubi is simply an assembly of lines; however, it can carry specific images and function as a language. This paper analyzes how hanamusubi use developed in tea and incense practices. Through the course of the investigation, this paper will focus on the visual documentation of hanamusubi in tea and incense practices and the development of its use during the Edo period.

This paper argues against Kymlicka's claim that immigrants’ cultural rights only pertain to certain kinds of polyethnic rights. Using the concrete examples of Asian immigrants living in Canada, the USA, and Britain, where they constitute a large proportion of the population, Kymlicka identifies their lower sense of attachment to their societal culture of origin than national minority groups. Based on the argument of choice luck, Kymlicka further justifies polyethnic rights by outlining the aspects of immigrants’ lives that are chosen and unchosen. However, Kymlicka’s understanding of immigrants and of their cultural rights raises four fundamental questions: Is migration ever really a fully voluntary choice? And, if so, would this justify a less extensive set of polyethnic rights for those who choose to migrate? If immigrants overcome disadvantages they suffer, why should they still benefit from polyethnic rights? And finally, does it make any sense in a liberal society for immigrants to not have access to their original societal culture and its institutional embodiments, since they intend to integrate into the receiving society? I contend that Kymlicka does not have convincing responses to these questions.

While studies on Japanese migration to the non-European, English-speaking West abound, there have been none on Japanese choosing Continental, non-English-speaking Europe so far. The current research aims to address this gap. Based on in-depth qualitative interviews with Japanese lifestyle migrants in Austria and Bulgaria, as well as several experts, this paper investigates how and why gender affects engagement with the social imaginary about Europe. The research argues that gender inequality and gendered socialization provide an additional layer of motivation for Japanese women to engage with the social imaginary about Western destinations and to actually act on their imaginings much more freely than men do, especially when it comes to Western Europe. The paper demonstrates that Western Europe is perceived by Japanese (upper-)middle-class women as even more attractive than the non-European West because it is imagined as offering not only Western social norms and opportunities unavailable in Japan, but also “high culture” which they are socialized to value. This helps explain why Japanese lifestyle migration to Western Europe is skewed more heavily in favor of women than in the rest of the West. The research also shows that Western Europe is imagined as a place to experience a type of lifestyle migration that has not been examined so far: the combination of bourgeois bohemian and experiencing the West.