Eurasia Unit for Border Research (Japan)

On Saturday 27 January 2018 Kyushu University hosted the final symposium for its Center for Asia-Pacific Future Studies (CAFS). The English title – Crisis in Northeast Asia – indicated the dominant theme of the day which was assessing the challenge to the region posed by North Korean missile testing. The Japanese title, however, offered an alternative nuance by including the word kiro – suggesting a critical turning point. The difference between the two titles reflected the variety of arguments put forward: some speakers emphasised the high level of danger in Northeast Asia while others were more sanguine about the future.

              In their opening remarks, Watanabe Koichiro (Vice-President, Kyushu University) and Jekuk Chang (President, Dongseo University) praised the work done by CAFS during the previous three years. Following his remarks, Professor Chang took his place on the Special Symposium panel to discuss the ‘North Korean problem’. Skilfully chaired by Izumi Kaoru (Faculty of Law, Kyushu University), the other participants included Mimura Mitsuhiro (Economic Research Institute for Northeast Asia), Jong Seok Park (CAFS) and Ko Il (Shimane University). The four panellists outlined to what extent they thought that a ‘threat’ existed. Views diverged over merits of American foreign policy in the region and the long-term causes of North Korean actions. Drawing the panel’s attention to factors other than diplomacy, Professor Izumi encouraged lateral thinking. He warned of the risks of strident Japanese media coverage and asked about how civil society might respond to current events. Encouraged by the Chairman’s opening up of the discussion, the panel received many questions from the audience. Some of the most interesting focussed on what role China and Russia might play in influencing North Korean policy.

              After the Special Symposium, the first panel tackled the question ‘The US-Japan-China-Russia Security Nexus? David Wolff (Slavic-Eurasian Research Center (SRC), Hokkaido University) began with a critique of the state of foreign policy making under President Trump. Noting that special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference had already made considerable progress uncovering evidence of wrongdoing, Professor Wolff warned that Trump might be tempted to instigate a conflict over North Korea to distract from events at home. The second speaker, Serghei Golunov (CAFS), analysed Russia’s ‘eastern pivot’ to China, Japan, South Korea and Turkey. He argued that this move had partly rebalanced the respective economic importance of the EU and China. Nevertheless, it had failed to lead to an economic breakthrough with several important Asian partners. Masuo Chisako (Graduate School of Social and Cultural Studies, Kyushu University) then discussed the role of North Korea in Sino-Japanese relations. In her opinion, over the last five years Sino-Japanese relations had improved because of the need to engage over the North Korean issue. When North Korea is a global level issue such cooperation becomes increasingly necessary. As a result, Professor Masuo explained, there was now a chance for Japan to improve its bilateral relations with China but this opportunity would not last for long. Akihiro Iwashita’s (CAFS/SRC) paper concluded the session. His point was that Russia was able to take a relatively flexible role in Northeast Asia in a way that was not possible in Europe. Consequently, although Russia is often missing from analysis of the region, the country frequently has an important role to play in international issues.

              CAFS final contribution to academic debate was the panel ‘Future-proofing Northeast Asian Security’. Chairman Yabuno Yuzo (Kyushu University) encouraged a disciplined approach to a topic that proved tricky for the panellists to explain. Beom-Shik Shin (Seoul National University) spoke of the need to look for solutions to the Northeast Asian security problems by using academic theory that takes the region on its own terms. Too often, he suggested, academics use theory based on European experience to analyse Northeast Asia. Paul Richardson (Birmingham University) outlined how he saw the main players in Northeast Asia dealing with future security threats. Sato Takeshi (Shimane University) invited the audience to consider the role civil society might play in improving the security situation and Miyawaki Noburu linked the discussion to current debates in Mongolia. Several incisive interventions from the audience improved the panel’s coherence.

              Professor Iwashita delivered the closing remarks by thanking the CAFS staff and the translators for their hard work. He reflected on the achievements of CAFS and explained that he was going to carry the Center’s main achievements with him in his future research.

Dr Ed Pulford (JSPS Fellow/SRC) and Assel Bitabarova, a doctoral candidate at Hokkaido University will present some of their recent research at the forthcoming UBRJ seminar. Details are as follows:

Ed Pulford - 'The limits of Koreanness: Korean encounters at a three-way border'

Assel Bitabarova - 'Between nationalization and transnationalization: the politics of belonging among Dungans in post-Soviet Kazakhstan'

Date: 22 February 2018 (Thursday)

Time: 16.00-18.00

Place: Room 403 (Large Conference Room), Slavic-Eurasian Research Center

Anyone interested is welcome to attend.

For further information please contact Jonathan Bull (j_e_bull[at]slav.hokudai.ac.jp)

On 26 February 2018 the seminar ‘Russia in the US-Japan Alliance? Beyond Chinese and North Korean Challenges’ will be held in the US-Japan Research Institute Office Seminar Room, Washington DC, United States.

SCHEDULE (outline):
10:30 – 10:35 Opening Remarks (Correa Cabrera)
10:35 – 10:40 Panel Objectives (Boyle)
10:40 – 11:45 Panel Discussion (Participants & Commentator)
11:45 – 12:00 Q & A

For further information, please click here.

As the editor pithily puts it, in Japan people have a tendency to imagine the country’s borders as a site for military fanatics or spies rather than a destination for tourism. Japan’s foremost exponent of Border Studies, Akihiro Iwashita, steps back from his academic research to consider how ‘border tourism’ can contribute to economic revitalization in several borderland regions. Along with five other main contributors, Iwashita takes his readers on a guided tour around some of the leading locations for border tourism (Fukuoka-Tsushima-Busan, Sakhalin-Wakkanai, Okinawa/Yaeyama-Taiwan and the Ogasawara Islands). As several of the authors emphasise, there are different kinds of border tourism. One of the most appealing is the tour that crosses an international border. However, there can also be ‘non-border crossing’ tours that go as far as the border to give an insight into life in the borderland. The import of border tourism, however, is its potential to encourage the reimagining of borderlands as ‘gateways’ rather than as ‘dead ends’.

In his introduction, Iwashita gives a sense of why border tourism caught his imagination: it offered a rare chance for an academic to work with a variety of people from a range of backgrounds including the media, the tourism industry and local government. Building networks among these actors has been a fundamental part of Iwashita’s role.

Yasunori Hanamatsu reveals how border tourism centring on Tsushima Island has the potential to introduce Japanese tourists to different views of history. Yoshihiro Takada makes a similar point about Japanese who he accompanied on visits to Sakhalin. For this reader, with an interest in Japan’s recent history, the insight that border tourism could provide new ways of looking at ‘national history’ was particularly inspiring. Ryu Shimada gives an important reminder of the practicalities of ‘successful’ border tourism – in particular the need to find well-organised tourism companies to develop attractive tours. Koji Furukawa provides a chapter explaining the academic background to border tourism and its place within the field of border studies.

In addition to the authors mentioned above, the book contains 16 vignettes. Those contributing include journalists, local government administrators and tourism professionals. While all give a glimpse into what makes border tourism such an interesting project to be involved with, the piece by self-described ‘local journalist’ Terumi Tanaka was especially thought provoking. She stresses how border tourism has the potential not only to contribute as part of an economic ‘project’ but also as a peace project, too. Peace education (heiwa in Japanese) has been a key tenet of Japanese society for much of the last 70 years. As political times change, some commentators have identified increased scepticism towards the value of peace education. Border tourism, therefore, could provide another way of ‘doing’ peace.

Contents (Main chapters only)

Introduction – The start of Border Tourism – the inside story (Akihiro Iwashita)

Ch. 1 – Connecting Fukuoka/Tsushima and Busan (Yasunori Hamamatsu)

Ch. 2 – Ties across the Sea of Okhotsk from Sakhalin to Wakkanai (Yoshihiro Takada)

Ch. 3 – The Yaeyama, Okinawa to Taiwan challenge (Ryu Shimada)

Ch. 4 – Ogasawara – imagining the border (Akihiro Iwashita, Hironobu Yamagami, Yasunori Hamamatsu, Masayoshi Saito and Koji Furukawa)

Ch. 5 – Questions raised by border tourism (Koji Furukawa)

Ch. 6 – Roundtable discussion – behind the scenes of a border tourism tour

On Saturday 27 January 2017 the Center for Asia-Pacific Future Studies (CAFS), Kyushu University will hold the seminar ‘Crisis in Northeast Asia’ at Kyushu University Nishijin Plaza from 12:50 to 18:30 (doors open at 12:30).

Anyone interested is welcome to attend.

Since 2013, when Xi Jinping announced China’s One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative, debated has raged about how best to understand the meaning of this puzzling phrase. As Edward Boyle (Kyushu University) emphasised, OBOR involved the repackaging of a series of pre-existing initiatives. Now academics, journalists and policy-makers discuss OBOR as if it were the only game in town. One aim of the workshop ‘Between Asia: inter-regional spaces’, therefore, was to piece together new ways of thinking about the region. In particular, he challenged the participants to examine ‘connectivity between spaces’ and furthermore to explore ‘countries experience of being within that space’.

Session 1 focused on ‘Connectivity at the Sino-Indian Interface’. Sara Shneiderman (University of British Columbia) spoke about the devastating effects of the two earthquakes that hit Nepal in 2015. Using an anthropological approach, Shneiderman explained how the conservative elements of the state have used post-earthquake relief work as a means to regain control that had been lost during the Maoist insurgency. She also discussed how the various relief efforts have increasingly involved cross-border relationships with several countries, but especially China. Mari Miyamoto (Keio University) followed and added to the evidence that for countries at the ‘interface’ of Sino-Indian geopolitics, strategic engagement with these two powers is evermore tricky. Miyamoto’s presentation identified the border spat at Doklam in June 2017 as a recent example of how Bhutan’s government has had to tread lightly in its diplomatic relations with India and China. The session finished with Marie Izuyama’s (The National Institute for Defense Studies, Japan) commentary on the presentations. Among several insights, she pointed the speakers and the audience towards considering whether, or not, the relationship between India and China was becoming more competitive as the ‘buffer’ between the two vanishes.

The second session – with its title of ‘Security at the Sino-Indian Interface’ neatly followed Izuyama’s perspective. Prashant Kumar Singh (Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, India) argued that the India-China relationship represented a ‘fault line in Asian space’. Citing tensions between the two over the OBOR and Chinese support for Pakistan, the speaker suggested that perhaps the time had come for the idea of ‘the quad’ - meaning greater cooperation on security issues among the leaders of India, the US, Japan and Australia. Osaka University’s So Yamane added to the previous speaker’s remarks about the growing importance of ties between China and Pakistan. Yamane reminded the audience that even an issue as seemingly intractable as the conflict over Kashmir could provide grounds for optimism if the countries involved recognised that they might derive economic benefit from the arrival of OBOR. Nevertheless, as Yamane’s nuanced analysis mentioned, such an optimistic reading coexists with the more pessimistic view of entrenched national interests.

Some of the ways different actors have understood being ‘in-between’ was the topic of the third session. The session began with Yukiko Hama’s (Tsuda University) analysis of the concept of ‘Eurasianism’. Popular among intellectuals in the first half of the twentieth century, the term experienced a revival in the 1990s. Hama identified different groups of actors (some are radical right figures with anti-US sentiment, others are academic political philosophers interested in promoting dialogue with China) who have used the term to reconceptualise different regions of Europe and Asia into an overall construct as ‘Eurasia’. The second presenter was Umut Korkut from Glasgow Caledonian University. He introduced his work on political discourse in Turkey on ‘in-betweenness’ and argued that the Turkish government often likes to present itself as a ‘bridge’ between ‘East’ and ‘West’. The ambiguity of a term like ‘in-between’ is what makes it so appealing to politicians who are able to use it for different purposes such as debating migration diplomacy and devising a Turkish-African partnership. Mark Turin’s (University of British Columbia and Yale University) presentation finished the session. He gave a linguistic analysis of how language categories such as ‘Tibeto-Burman’ are misleadingly used a way of conveying ethnic characteristics. No group or person can speak ‘Tibeto-Burman’ (it is a language group and not a language as such), but the term gets pressed into service to imply cohesion in ancestral origin. Country and language do not align – there will always be examples of those ‘in-between’ such as the large number of people whose first spoken language is in the Tibeto-Burman category but who do not live in either Tibet or in Burma.

The workshop concluded with a roundtable on ‘Reconceptualising Interstitial Spaces and China’. Chaired by Akihiro Iwashita (Kyushu University and Hokkaido University), the discussants (David Wolff (Hokkaido University), Mitsuhiro Mimura (The Economic Research Institute for Northeast Asia, Japan) and Ed Pulford (JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow)), and the audience engaged in a lively conversation about China place in Asia’s Interstitial Space. Wolff provided a historian’s perspective by proposing that China had largely succeeded in eliminating the Russo-Chinese borderland. In effect, China had sacrificed this borderland to remove an ‘endless source of friction’. The leadership in Beijing are now able to turn their attentions elsewhere (such as the South China Sea). Mimura countered that contradictions internal to Chinese society might mean that the country posed less of a challenge to the rest of Asia than is often argued. Pulford then encouraged the audience to think about some of the similarities between Chinese who feel as aggrieved as people living outside of China about the Chinese Communist Party’s engagement with neo-liberal economics. Could there, the discussants suggested, be a fruitful way of thinking about China as the central space between the lines of Asia? Were concepts such as ‘post-colonial’ and ‘post-socialist’ meaningless in this part of the world? Was South Asia a term that needed more attention in any future debate? The fact that the workshop was raising such questions by its end suggested that the organisers’ had achieved their aim of thinking about Asia in new ways, including as an inter-regional space.

Presenter: Professor Yonghui Li (Institute of East European, Russian and Central Asian Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)

Date: 1 December 2017 (Friday)

Time: 17.00-18.30 Place: Slavic-Eurasian Research Center, Small Meeting Room (401)

Enquiries to: Jonathan Bull (j_e_bull@slav.hokudai.ac.jp)

Please note this presentation will be in Russian.

On 16th December the seminar ‘Between Asias: inter-regional spaces’ will be held at Nishijin Plaza, Kyushu University.