Political,
academic, and popular concerns in Japan have repeatedly
linked social and biological reproduction. From rhetoric
connecting strong babies with a strong nation-state to current
discourse about how delayed parenthood is "selfish,"
patterns of sexual reproduction have been used to describe
the state of Japanese society.
Reproduction
also thrives as a trope within discourses that are not reducible
to social or biological projects. Cultural production in
modern Japan involves numerous interrelated concepts concerning
reproduction including, but not restricted to, the institutional
reproduction of artistic competency within the iemoto system,
notions of presence within visual or literary representation,
and the widespread conception of Japanese people as adept
cultural copiers, who tweak and reproduce foreign ideas
and forms.
To
investigate how various theories and practices of 'reproduction'
converge in modern Japan, there will be a conference at
Yale in October 2004.
Sponsored by the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University
Organized by Allison Alexy, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Anthropology, Yale University
