2025
Hyogo University, April 4th–6th (joint JAWS/AJJ conference)
Celia Spoden
(German Institute of Japanese Studies)
Avatar Robots as an Alter Ego: New Opportunities for Work or Technological Fixes?
Abstract: In the DAWN Avatar Robot Café, located in Tokyo’s Nihonbashi district, people who have difficulties leaving their homes – the majority with disabilities – remotely control an avatar robot called OriHime. The robot acts as their alter ego, enabling them to serve customers at the café from their homes or sometimes from a hospital room. Approximately 70 individuals scattered throughout Japan work remotely in the cafe. Drawing on fieldwork in the café and interviews with the avatar pilots, I explore what it means when avatar robots become a second body in the physical world and mediate social interaction. By presenting my interlocutor’s perceptions of social participation, work, and disability, I show how the avatar opens up new opportunities, leads to a feeling of independence and belonging, helps to regain or adopt a positive attitude towards the future, and challenges common understandings of “disability.” Moreover, I contextualize these avatar technologies within the Japanese government’s science and technology research and development strategy – such as the concept of a super smart society (Society 5.0) and the “Moonshot Research and Development Program” – and ask what it means when these technologies become technological fixes to social problems, which remain untouched by welfare policies.
2024
Tōhoku University, Aoba Campus, November 30th–December 1st
Arriana Saunders
(Temple University Japan, undergraduate)
Collaboration in Action: Interviews with Survivors of the AIDS Crisis in Japan
Abstract: It has now been more than four decades since the start of the global AIDS crisis. Much has changed in that time: the disease has been all but cured, and proper management of its spread has become commonplace. Japan has, as well, seen much in the way of positive change. Previous research on the policies during this era is extensive, and it covers the major factors behind the abject mismanagement of the AIDS crisis in Japan and the hemophiliacs who paid for this negligence with their lives. Less common, however, are firsthand accounts of those affected who for the most part remain statistics as opposed to individuals with their own histories. When one is only tangentially aware of the goings-on of the world through second-hand sources, it becomes easy to forget that at their core these are all the lives of human beings. This separation of subject from researcher is what I have sought to address in my research; in order to breathe life into the stories of survivors, I have spoken directly to a number of men from different backgrounds who lived through the Japanese AIDS crisis, including a licensed clinical therapist, an office worker, NGO Staff, and an accomplished anthropologist. Without these testimonies, their stories would remain untold among a sea of numbers that lose their personal meaning. Even the world’s most faraway data is born from the human experience, a fact any researcher must always remember.
Highly commended:
Yuhei Hashizume (Meiji Gakuin University, Masters student), Grave Matters: Local Responses to Islamic Cemeteries in Japan
2023
Meiji Gakuin University, Shirokane Campus
Esben Petersen
(Ritsumeikan University, Instructor)
Supporting Individuals with Autism in Japan: A Personal Insight
Abstract: Since my arrival in Japan in 2015, I have had the chance to be actively engaged with two distinct organizations dedicated to working with individuals on the autism spectrum. The first, KISWEC (Kyoto International Social Welfare Exchange Center), is a well-established private institution with financial backing from the Kyoto City government. The second, Team Lenny, is a grassroots family initiative led by parents of a child on the autism spectrum, and supported by a team of students, mothers, and company volunteers. These two organizations offer divergent philosophies regarding the provision of services for individuals with autism. In this presentation, I delve into an exploration of the distinctive approaches taken by these organizations in treating and accommodating individuals with autism. The aim of this paper is from an anthropological approach to reflect on each of the valuable experiences I have made from working at each organization and consider their implications for improving support systems for individuals with autism in Japan.
Special jury prize:
Mark Frisina (Temple University Japan, Undergraduate), Building community in care homes: Shizen Camp’s 10-year mission to empower those in the child welfare system in Japan
Highly Commended:
Yoshiko Taniguchi (International Christian University, Masters student), Structural Violence as Experienced by Street-involved Youth. An Intersectional Analysis of Tōyoko Kids in Kabukichō, Tokyo, Japa
for more about the Mark Bookman Prize, click HERE.