Why are Japan and China perpetually at odds?  In this talk, Christian Collet will discuss the growing role of public opinion in bilateral tensions and the conflicting images that are held by Chinese and Japanese of one another.  While there has long been a mixture of affection, anger and rivalry at the diplomatic level, Collet will explain that the roots of contemporary discontent lie, in part, in contradistinctive citizen impressions: in China, perceptions of threat borne of history and new media; in Japan, discontent manifest in domestic political culture, including eroding trust and right-wing ideology.  Collet will examine the potential of soft power for ameliorating the relationship, providing some evidence to suggest that pop cultural exchanges may have a desired impact on segments of both publics.  But soft power can only go so far to soften a negative image; concerted efforts, Collet will argue, also need to be made by opinion leaders to reassure citizens and restore trust in governmental decision-making.

Christian Collet (PhD, University of California, Irvine) joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) during the 2012–13 academic year from International Christian University, Tokyo, where he serves as senior associate professor of American politics and international relations.

His research interests focus on public opinion in Asian Pacific/American contexts and the influence of race, ethnicity and nationalism on political mobilization. During his time at Shorenstein APARC, he is working on a project that uses comparative survey data to examine the dynamics of Japanese opinion toward domestic politics, China and Southeast Asia. He is also finishing up a project concerning the role of Vietnam in the political incorporation of first generation Vietnamese Americans. In 2004–05, he held a visiting appointment at Viet Nam National University, Ho Chi Minh City, under the U.S. Fulbright Program.

Collet's work has appeared in Perspectives on Politics, The Journal of Politics, Public Opinion Quarterly, Japanese Journal of Political Science, PS, Amerasia Journal and Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts. He is the co-editor, with Pei-te Lien, of The Transnational Politics of Asian Americans (Temple University Press, 2009).

Over a year and a half has passed since the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster that began with the earthquake and tsunami disaster that hit Japan’s Tohoku region on March 11, 2011. Much has been written about the Fukushima nuclear disaster, but a cohesive, objective, readable English language narrative of what exactly transpired as the disaster unfolded has yet to widely circulated. An understanding of how events unfolded in the Fukushima disaster is critical to deriving valuable lessons about nuclear power governance, politics, and societal preparedness. As countries such as China, India, and Brazil move to build new nuclear reactors to serve the energy needs of ever increasing numbers of ever-wealthier populations, lessons from Japan’s experience will only increase in significance.

The talk focuses on a narrative of the chaotic political and corporate responses as events developed rapidly at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant. It also puts the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant in comparative perspective among the three other nuclear power plants hit by the tsunami. Many of the details are likely to come as a surprise even to a well-informed audience: the absence of the power operator’s president and chairman for almost a full day as the crisis unfolded; chaos magnified by the emergency nuclear response headquarters set up in the Prime Minister’s office initially unable to receive cell phone signals or faxes; the dozens of emergency backup battery trucks arriving at the plant only to discover they could not connect to the reactors in crisis, and the like. The talk is based on the following report:  “Japan’s Fukushima Nuclear Disaster: Narrative, Analysis, and Recommendations".

Kenji Kushida is the Takahashi Research Associate in Japanese Studies at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. He holds a PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, and was a graduate research associate at the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy. Kushida has an MA in East Asian studies and BAs in economics and East Asian studies, all from Stanford University.

Kushida’s research interests are in the fields of comparative politics, political economy, and information technology. He focuses mainly on Japan with comparisons to Korea, China, and the United States. He has four streams of academic research and publication: institutional and governance structures of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster; political economy issues surrounding information technology; political strategies of foreign multinational corporations in Japan; and Japan’s political economic transformation since the 1990s.

The talk , based on a recent paper, will describe and examine the social understanding of selling sex for a visa among migrant Filipina hostesses in Tokyo. The paper examines the different constitutions of love in Japan and the Philippines to understand the making of love in the marriages of Filipina hostesses and their Japanese customers. The paper will attempt to argue why the act of selling sex for a visa does not necessarily reduce marriage to prostitution while at the same time questioning the assumption that marriage is ever free of rational motivation.

Rhacel Salazar Parreñas is Professor and Chair of the Sociology Department at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include the sociology of gender and labor, the family, and globalization. Her latest book Illicit Flirtations: Labor, Migration and Sex Trafficking in Tokyo received the 2012 Distinguished Book Award in the Labor and Labor Movements Section of the American Sociological Association.