The lecture is jointly organised by GEAS and the Institute of Japanese Studies (Urs matthias Zachmann)
About the Talk
In 1967, social scientist Katō Hidetoshi and bureaucrat Hayashi Yūjiro attended the Committee for Mankind 2000 conference in Oslo, a gathering of futurologists concerned about the global implications of rapid industrial, technological and economic global development. At the conference, Katō and Hayashi causally mentioned that they were part of a nascent futurology movement in Japan and that perhaps the next conference should be held there. Much to their surprise, and horror, this suggestion was met with enthusiasm by the international audience. Katō and Hayashi's casual remark had been taken at face value: the 1970 Committee for Mankind 2000 conference would be held in Japan.
Why did this group of conservative intellectuals and technocrats see the need for a Japanese Future Studies? How did they conceptualise the field as a counterweight to left-wing theories of social development, and how did their vision develop? What sort of futures did they imagine and how were their activities entangled with the politics of the late 1960s and 1970s? And how were their technocratic visions for Japan's future inflected by Japan's historical experience? By answering these questions, this paper will shed light on a host of hitherto under studied individuals, networks, and initiatives which were fundamental to Japan's transition from what Hayashi termed a 'hard to soft society' in the 1970s.
About the Speaker
Chris Perkins completed a joint honours degree in Japanese Language and Contemporary Society with Education Studies at Oxford Brookes University in 2004, with one year spent at Kitakyushu University as an exchange student. After this he worked as a teacher at four schools in Gifu for two years before returning to complete an MSc (distinction) in International Relations at Royal Holloway University of London in 2007, where he went on to complete his PhD thesis entitled ‘National Thinking and the Politics of Belonging in Contemporary Japan’. He joined the University of Edinburgh as a lecturer in January 2011. His work has appeared in journals including Japan Forum, The European Journal of Social Theory, Global Society, Television and New Media, The Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, and Asiatische Studien, as well as in numerous edited collections. His book on media and memory of the left in Japan, The United Red Army on Screen, was published by Palgrave in 2015.Time & Location
Jun 03, 2026 | 04:00 PM s.t. - 06:00 PM
Conference Room 010
Arnimallee 10 (Japanese Studies Institute)
14195 Berlin
Further Information
events[at]geas.fu-berlin.de