Commentary | Warren A. Stanislaus, The Great Reset: Afro-Japanese Pasts, Futures & Digital Scholarship in Asian Studies
“The Great Reset”
An enduring COVID-19 pandemic and the ever-mutating virus of racism, among other urgent challenges that intensified during a turbulent 2020, have urged the World Economic Forum to label this moment as “the great reset” – a unique opportunity for a global rethink about the future. Similarly, academia is facing its own great reset. The pandemic has upended the traditional model and norms of higher education, and accelerated the need to address existing crises within the academy such as digital transformation, public relevance and inequality gaps.
Through digital formats such as blogs and video webinars that will come to characterize our much more hybrid futures, the Association of Asian Studies (AAS) and its members have highlighted particular issues that affect the field of Asian Studies. In the wake of the global spread of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in 2020 a diverse group of scholars submitted a petition to the AAS calling for a commitment to combat anti-Black racism within Asian studies, while others asserted the centrality of Black life and blackness in scholarship on Asia. Tristan R. Grunow made the case for digital scholarship arguing that the pandemic induced new normal is a chance to embrace public-facing digital output as a valuable and core component of scholarly life, rather than simply as an extra distraction. Writing about a perceived crisis within my own sub-field of Japanese Studies, Paula R. Curtis notes that to go beyond doom and gloom narratives of the “Death of Japan Studies” as an outdated field, scholars must share best practice and collaborate on promoting a “rebirth” that meets the complex challenges of our time.
These respective appeals for a great reset within Asian Studies inspired me to consider what this actually means in practice. In other words, what actions can I take today to incorporate these visions into my own research, teaching and output? After all, as stated by Curtis in a compelling call to action “if not now, when?” – and I would importantly add, if not me, who?
“‘If not now, when?’..If not me, who?”
My personal commitment to a great reset took the form of an ambitious new course that I designed for my students at Rikkyo University for the fall-winter 2020/21 semester, titled “Afro-Japanese Visions,” which places at its center the scholarly category of Afro-Asia. Being forced to go completely online for a 14-week/28 lesson course also came as a blessing in disguise. Not only did it remedy the usually dismal attendance of Japanese university students caused by club activities and the shūkatsu job hunting culture, it also afforded me a prime opportunity to creatively leverage digital tools for learning in the humanities and public engagement.
Afro-Japanese Encounters
A series of key moments in 2020: BLM protests across major cities in Japan; the “Sekai no ima” news review show on NHK clumsily depicting Black BLM protesters by using offensive stereotypes and caricatures; Japanese tennis star Naomi Osaka using her growing platform to spark conversations about racial injustice and police brutality; Nike’s viral ad on racism and bullying in Japan; Aisha Harumi Tochigi following in the path of Ariana Miyamoto as the latest mixed Black-Japanese winner of Miss Universe Japan; among other events, have highlighted the relevance and importance of reexamining Afro-Japanese encounters.
Notwithstanding the significance of exploring questions of mutual representation, Afro-Japanese scholarship is far too often characterized by what William Bridges and Nina Cornyetz describe as the “overrepresentation” of race and representation (1), which can inadvertently lead to discourses of Afro-Japanese encounters that reify hackneyed assumptions of Black and Japanese as mutually exclusive categories – and never the twain shall meet. Indeed, this is perhaps more broadly reflective of what Jennifer Ho contends is an imperfect understanding of the histories of solidarity and cross-racial coalition work, especially between Blacks and Asians (2). Aside from popular buddy-cop series such as Rush Hour and Martial Law, Afro-Asian encounters often conjure up images of perpetual minority competition, discrimination, ignorance, fear and even hostility; rather than exchange and cooperation.
Another related challenge is the perception of Afro-Japanese interactions only existing in the present. Over the past year, a growing interest in the topic of Blackness and Japan has presented me with opportunities to give digital lectures at various universities. I begin by surveying the attendees of their image of Afro-Japanese encounters using an online word cloud application. Each time it is striking to see that the key words, which rapidly expand all the way to the front and center are consistently interactions that only find their relevance in recent years such as hip hop, BLM protests, athletes and television personalities. Once again, longer histories of Afro-Japanese intimacies and exchange are routinely hidden.
In compiling a syllabus that explores the past, present and even future of Afro-Japanese connections, I have aimed to highlight it as a scholarly category that is neither a faddish interest nor merely a peripheral subject, but one that is integral to informing our understanding of Japan and Japan’s relations with the wider world. While we retell the mid-1800s arrival of Commodore Matthew C. Perry’s black ships and the role of gunboat diplomacy in the opening of Japan, less consideration is given to Japanese encounters with Perry’s “black bodies” in the form of bodyguards or minstrel performances as tools of American cultural diplomacy to foster amity (3). Equipping an additional “black lens” to disclose alternative international and transnational connections can help us further engage in what Sho Konishi calls the need to “reopen” the opening of Japan and its meanings beyond narratives rooted in Western modernity (4).
Equally, by adopting this lens to interrogate contemporary themes such as Japanese popular culture, we can unearth hitherto obscured phenomena such as the popularity of Japanimation among African diaspora populations. Probing the “black gaze” can contribute to reframing the way we understand “Cool Japan” and speaks to its enduring relevance belying an imagined decline. As Bridges and Keisha A. Brown remind us, referring to figures such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Asia and Asian Studies have always mattered to Black life. Indeed, this affinity persists today through cultural forms such as martial arts, music, streetwear and a recent boom in Afro-Samurai imagery drawing inspiration from Yasuke the 16th century “African Samurai” who was enlisted into Oda Nobunaga’s clan.
Digital Futures
I set the tone of a digitally minded and public-facing course at the outset by producing and sharing a bilingual video introduction to the module, signaling that our goal transcends learning about Afro-Japanese interactions; we will participate in creating them.
Actively forging cross sector partnerships is essential in this pursuit. For example, I collaborated with the British Embassy in Tokyo to produce online content for their first ever Black History Month UK campaign in October 2020. While Japan’s image of Britain has long been limited to afternoon tea and the English country house, I tasked the students with curating a Spotify playlist as part of the official campaign that introduces Japan to another side of Britain through music, and in particular to select songs that they feel would appeal to a Japanese audience. This national level public impact initiative also became a teachable moment for reflecting on the types of Black voices that Japanese desire to hear and consume.
Invited class guest speakers were also valued contributors. As leading practitioners in their respective fields, they shared examples of how they are creating Afro-Japanese futures through their wide-ranging work in cultural diplomacy, anime production, documentary film making, hip hop videos, fashion shoots and pageant competitions. After students had the chance to witness government and industry creatives in action, I asked them to embark on a speculative journey to create their own visions of an Afro-Japanese future for a digital humanities final project assignment.
Students leveraged their individual creativity and produced projects that link theory and practice such as a trap rap video that satirizes the Japanese government’s response to the pandemic; an illustration that explores questions of cultural authenticity, calligraphy art that overlaps and challenges opposing stereotypes of Black male hyper-physicality and Japanese “oriental” spirituality; “green book” tourism maps of Japan; recipes that blend African and Japanese flavors; a role playing game storyboard that traces the history of Afro-Japanese encounters; make-up and fashion designs that visualize alternative beauty standards in Japan, and many more.
The best projects will be judged and the top 3 awarded by our guest speaker, Amarachi Nwosu, founder of the influential Melanin Unscripted creative agency and producer of the groundbreaking Black in Tokyo documentary with 1.5 million + YouTube views. I also teamed up with community partners; Black-owned and local businesses in Tokyo to provide prizes. This multi-stakeholder dynamic encourages students to be conscious of the potential “impact” of their research and the growing importance of communicating to diverse audiences outside of academia. From 15 February 2021 all of the projects will be available for public online viewing via our class VR gallery and the essay descriptions will be compiled into an Afro-Japanese visions Medium publication.
Indeed, public-facing digital outputs can be theoretically meaningful in conception and practice. Our constructed space of a virtual reality gallery becomes a visible digital representation of the many imagined “virtual” spaces where Afro-Japanese interactions and dreams of transnational solidarity have taken place. Furthermore, by attempting to create Afro-Japanese futures we critically engage with a central question posed by Afro-futurism: is it even possible to imagine a future without a past (5)? Unearthing materials and gathering sources to construct a course that discloses Afro-Japanese encounters is the “reset” button that rebuilds a hidden past and provides a foundation for futures to be imagined.
Notes:
William H. Bridges IV and Nina Cornyetz ed., Traveling Texts and the Work of Afro-Japanese Cultural Production: Two Haiku and a Microphone (Lexington Books, 2015), 2-4.
Jennifer Ho, “Anti-Asian racism, Black Lives Matter, and COVID-19” Japan Forum (October 2020).
John G. Russell, “Excluded Presence: Shoguns, Minstrels, Bodyguards, and Japan's Encounters with the Black Other” Zinbun (March 2008).
Sho Konishi, “Reopening the ‘Opening of Japan’: A Russian-Japanese Revolutionary Encounter and Vision of Anarchist Progress,” The American Historical Review (February 2007).
Mark Dery, “Black to the Future: Interviews with Samuel R. Delany, Greg Tate, and Tricia Rose” in Mark Dery ed., Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994), 180.
Warren A. Stanislaus is a DPhil Candidate in modern Japanese history at the University of Oxford’s Faculty of History. Originally from South East London he has spent 11+ years in Tokyo, speaks fluent Japanese and is learning advanced Mandarin Chinese. Previously, he worked as a foreign policy researcher at Asia Pacific Initiative, a Tokyo-based think tank. He teaches transnational intellectual and cultural history as an Associate Lecturer at Rikkyo University. In 2019, he was named No.3 in the UK’s Top 10 Rare Rising Stars awards.
To cite this essay, please use the suggested entry below:
Warren A. Stanislaus, “The Great Reset: Afro-Japanese Pasts, Futures & Digital Scholarship in Asian Studies,” criticalasianstudies.org Commentary Board, February 1, 2021; https://doi.org/10.52698/GHFL5398.