Our international workshop ImaginAsia 2017, hosted by us at Meiji, started yesterday. Students from Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, UK, and Japan work in small groups to look into the local histories of Asian immigrants in Japan. This is the statement I wrote as an introduction.
About
ImaginAsia
How many Asias are there in this world?
How many do we know and how many do we live? Beyond any narrow-minded ethnocentrism
and baseless identification with the Western gaze, we are now embarking, once
again, on our collective journey of self-knowledge. There may be a thousand
Asias that run through us, here and now, releasing and recapturing us at each
moment, making us a collective flux of diversity, differentiation, and constant
discovery. Imagination is the only nation we share and across cultural and
linguistic borders we keep encountering our new selves, thanks to your new
friends walking side-by-side with you in this unknown territory. That is the
spirit of ImaginAsia.
This year’s edition of ImaginAsia will
explore the rich presence of various Asian traditions in Tokyo. How can we see
through the surface and speak to this vibrant inter-Asian mega-city with a
necessary socio-historical and critical consciousness? This is a truly unique
educational and research opportunity for all participants. Let’s see what comes
out of it.
Keijiro
SUGA, Meiji University
