Die u:japan lectures gehen in die zwölfte Saison!

Dank des unermüdlichen Engagements unserer Mitarbeiter*innen, der tatkräftigen Unterstützung unserer Sponsoren und ganz besonders der Bereitschaft der international gefragten Vortragenden nach Wien zu kommen, starten wir ab dem 19. März 2026 in eine neue Saison der u:japan lectures.

Auch ein erster Programmüberblick darf hier schon präsentiert werden:

Termine und Vortragenden | Season 12 | Spring 2026

ID              Date*               Mode**          Guest / Lecturer

s12e01     2026-03-19     hybrid (en)     Anne Mette Fisker-Nielsen
s12e02     2026-03-26     hybrid (en)     Robert Dahlberg-Sears
s12e03     2026-04-16     hybrid (en)     Alexandre Paquet
s12e04     2026-04-23     hybrid (en)     Susanne Kreitz-Sandberg
s12e05     2026-04-30     hybrid (en)     Higuchi Naoto
s12e06     2026-05-07     hybrid (en)     Anna Specchio
s12e07     2026-05-21     hybrid (en)     Iza Kavedžija
s12e08     2026-05-28     hybrid (en)     Greg Poole
s12e09     2026-06-11     hybrid (en)     Jorge Almazan
s12e10     2026-06-18     hybrid (en)     Grace En-Yi Ting
s12e11     2026-06-25     onsite (en)     Gill Steel

*Date & Time: Thursdays from 18:00 to 19:30, LL = Lunch Lectures are usally from 12:00 to 13:30
**Mode & Language:
onsite = Seminarraum 1 @ Department of East Asian Studies, Japanese Studies (University of Veinna Campus, Spitalgasse 2, Hof 2.4, 1090 Vienna)
online = via Zoom (no registration necessary)
hybrid = onsite and live stream via Zoom
en = English, jp = Japanese, de =German
Records: Only lecture conducted in online or hybrid mode will be recorded and available as view on demand lectures in the recorded lectures section.

| Abstract |

Two issues are essential to prevent catastrophic climate breakdown – keep fossil fuel in the ground and significantly reduce industrialised animal agriculture. My climate change research and youth activist project began in 2023 with a focus on meat consumption and engaged theory in the context of Japan. I argue that the question of the ‘animal’ is central to achieving sustainability. Carnivorism here presents an interconnected macro-micro level praxis that pivots around silencing its impact. As one of the wealthiest and most significant participants in globalised imports and world trade – in raw materials, meat and other food stuff – Japan’s biophysical metrics make it a major contributor to climate change. Climate discourses, however, far outstrip climate action, resulting in less attention being paid to the central contradiction of mainstream corporate and political culture that hail increasing GDP and consumer demand while also claiming support for the UN Sustainable Development Goals. As climate data focus primarily on effects rather than causes, narratives of inevitability dominate and in Japan little attention is paid to overconsumption as the major driver of climate change. Here the environmental problems of animal agriculture are framed as issues to be resolved by improved technology, avoiding critique of corporate and government drives that simultaneous increase meat production and consumption for capital growth.

This project investigates the sustainability contradictions of the growth paradigm that go largely unquestioned as particular discursive and embodied social practices normalise everyday consumption. Based on reviews of political discourses, policies, climate data, and fieldwork with youth groups in Tokyo and Okinawa, and ethnographic interviews with around 50 Japanese and 40 international youth interlocutors, as well as short surveys conducted after public lectures, this talk shows ‘carnivorism’ to be a multifaceted macro-micro level praxis underpinned by a ubiquitous ‘common sense’ of silencing the interdependent issues of global injustice, climate breakdown and the almost exclusive relations of exploitation involved in industrialised meat production. This talk explores how as interlocutors un-silence [for themselves and their peers] these strategically hidden consequences and begin to “not eat like everyone else,” they enter embodied social sensibilities of hitherto unquestioned Japanese identity structures that involve facing an embodied social discomfort when causing meiwaku, or trouble to others as social taboos surrounding meat are broken. The research illuminates how placing the ‘animal’ at the centre of critical pedagogy gives rise to a new cosmopolitan consciousness with implication for claims to global citizenship and new demands from interlocutors when they ‘awaken’ to how their everyday consumption creates the Capitalocene.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s12e01
Thursday 2026-03-19, 18:00~19:30 (CET, UTC +1h)

| Place | 

| Platform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s12/#e01.

| Abstract |

Drawing on a collected archive of Punk Rock Issue Bollocks, the only magazine publication (雑誌) dedicated to punk music and culture in Japan in the present, this presentation will explore how the punk music-culture scene in Japan is imagined and represented through print media and in what ways this mediated form contributes to and delimits the function of such representations. Print materials and commentaries are frequent references within studies of musical scenes in Japan, but are not commonly implicated in supporting the creation of the genre which they address. On the other hand, zine and magazine commentaries written by and for community consumption in punk scenes are well-known attendant aspects of punk culture. As frequent productions associated with punk music, how do these materials circulate, how are they valued, and who do they target?

The presentation makes use of dissertation research on punk music and culture in Japan begun at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic and examines the vital role of print materials in identifying and arbitrating the outline of a musical scene. The example of Punk Rock Issue Bollocks offers a distinct processual viewpoints onto the work of bringing communities of practice to life as they develop in-person and when distanced from a physical site of enactment. Based on both collected materials and ethnographic observation of punk places and events, this presentation offers interventions in studies of music, Japan, and punk to suggest that ephemeral materials can play a role beyond archival reference in ethnographic exploration.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s12e02
Thursday 2026-03-26, 18:00~19:30 (CET, UTC +1h)

| Place | 

| Platform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s12/#e02.