Japanologie Uni Wien

>>> [CANCELLED]
Why are Women so Underrepresented in Japanese Politics? Lower House Elections 1996-2026

25.06.2026 18:00 - 19:30

A hybrid u:japan lecture by Gill Steel (University of Oxford & Waseda University)

CANCELLATION NOTICE

We regret to inform you that the u:japan lecture by Gill Steel, scheduled for Thursday, June 25, has been cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your understanding.

Why are Women so Underrepresented in Japanese Politics? Lower House Elections 1996-2026

🏢🌐 A hybrid u:japan lecture by Gill Steel (University of Oxford & Waseda University)🌐🏢

📅 25.06.2026 (Thursday)
🕛 18:00 – 19:30 CET
💬 English language
📍Department of East Asian Studies, Japanese Studies (2.4), Seminarraum 1
🌐 and online over ZOOM (link on our website)

Gill Steel is a political scientist who is currently a Visiting Academic at the Nissan Institute for Japanese Studies, Oxford and Visiting Researcher at the Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies, Waseda University.

She was Professor of Political Science at the Institute for the Liberal Arts, Doshisha University. She has taught widely in Japan, including at the Department of Social Psychology at the University of Tokyo.

Her recent work includes What Women Want. Voting Preferences in Japan, Britain, and the United States and editing Beyond the Gender Gap in Japan. She has also contributed to edited volumes and published journal articles on public opinion, voting behavior, and the media and politics.

LECTURE INSIGHTS PRESENTS:

>>> Season 12, episodes 05-10

30.04.2026, e05

> Politicization of Immigration in Japan: On the Intersection of Conservative and Right-wing Politics
by Higuchi Naoto

05.05.2026, e06

> Lost in Dystopia? Practices of Resistance in Japanese Speculative Fiction: Murata Sayaka’s Vanishing World and Li Kotomi’s Celebration of Life
by Anna Specchio

21.05.2026, e07

> Engaged Aging: Longer Working Lives in Japan
by Iza Kavedžija

28.05.2026, e08

> In the Shadow of a Mountain: A Community School Coordinator and the Politics of Survival in Rural Japan
by Greg Poole

11.06.2026, e09

> Tokyo Urbanism: Building the Intimate Megacity
by Joe McReynolds

18.06.2026, e10

> Reading Li Kotomi: Acts of Witnessing in Times of Global Violence
by Grace En-Yi Ting

Reading Li Kotomi: Acts of Witnessing in Times of Global Violence

🏢🌐 A hybrid u:japan lecture by Grace En-Yi Ting (University of Hong Kong)🌐🏢

📅 18.06.2026 (Thursday)
🕛 18:00 – 19:30 CET
💬 English language
📍Department of East Asian Studies, Japanese Studies (2.4), Seminarraum 1
🌐 and online over ZOOM (link on our website)

Tokyo Urbanism: Building the Intimate Megacity

🏢🌐 A hybrid u:japan lecture by Joe McReynolds (Keio University, Tokyo) 🌐🏢

📅 11.06.2026 (Thursday)
🕛 18:00 – 19:30 CET
💬 English language
📍Department of East Asian Studies, Japanese Studies (2.4), Seminarraum 1
🌐 and online over ZOOM (link on our website)

Tokyo is one of the most vibrant and livable cities on the planet, a megacity that somehow remains intimate and adaptive. Com¬pared to Western metropolises like New York or Berlin, however, few outsiders understand Tokyo’s inner workings. For cities around the globe mired in crisis and seeking new models for the future, Tokyo’s success at balancing growth and local community poses a challenge: if we learn why Tokyo succeeds, can we use that knowledge to improve our cities at home?

Joe McReynolds, the co-author of Emergent Tokyo: Designing the Spontaneous City, answers this question in the affirmative by delving into Tokyo’s most distinctive urban spaces, from iconic neon nightlife to tranquil neighborhood backstreets. Tokyo at its best offers a new vision for a human-scale urban ecosystem, where ordinary residents shape their own envi¬ronment in ways large and small, and communities take on a life of their own beyond government master planning and corporate profit-seeking. As a Tokyoite himself, he uncovers how key features of Tokyo’s cityscape such as intimate yokochō alleyways, multi-tenant zakkyo buildings and dense low-rise neighborhoods together enable this ‘emergent’ urban¬ism, allowing the city to organize itself from the bottom up.

Above all, this talk will give a clear account of the web of public policies that makes Tokyo's emergent urbanism possible, from transit to zoning to housing. By demystifying the social and spatial conditions that power Tokyo, we can extract practical, trans-cultural lessons for the rest of the world. We can bring Tokyo-style intimacy, adaptability, and spontaneity to our cities at home -- as long as we learn to ask the right questions about how our cities are built and governed.

>>> 11. Forum für literaturwissenschaftliche Japanforschung

📆 05.-06. Juni 2026
📍 Campus der Universität Wien

Das jährliche Forum für literaturwissenschaftliche Japanforschung bietet den zahlreichen japanologischen Fachbereichen an Universitäten im deutschsprachigen Raum eine regelmäßige Gelegenheit für akademischen Austausch sowie für Einblicke in gegenseitige Forschungsprojekte.

Die Japanologie der Universität Wien freut sich sehr, dieses Jahr das 11. Forum für literaturwissenschaftliche Japanforschung auszutragen. Wir dürfen Sie ganz herzlich am 05. und 06. Juni 2026 bei uns am Campus der Universität Wien mit einem spannenden Programm willkommen heißen. Um Anmeldung wird gebeten.

Mehr Informationen:

https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/literaturforum2026/

https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/startseite/einzelnews/news/11-forum-fuer-literaturwissenschaftliche-japanforschung/

In the Shadow of a Mountain: A Community School Coordinator and the Politics of Survival in Rural Japan

🏢🌐 A hybrid u:japan lecture by Greg Poole (Doshisha University, Japan) 🌐🏢

📅 28.05.2026 (Thursday)
🕛 18:00 – 19:30 CET
💬 English language
📍Department of East Asian Studies, Japanese Studies (2.4), Seminarraum 1
🌐 and online over ZOOM (link on our website)

>>> Board Game Insights presents:

u:japan culture board game series: Go workshop, 22nd May 2026

- with Go7 (), a club in Vienna dedicated to teaching and playing Go. Find out more about them on their website https://go7.at/
- organized by Tim Heißenberger, Japanologie Uni Wien

For our final workshop in the u:japan board game series, we were visited by a team from the Go7 Vienna club. The workshop focused largely on the history, rules and famous players of Go, but of course that wasn’t all: all participants were invited to try their hand at the game themselves under the supervision of Go7.

Go is one of the oldest and most complex games in the world, originating in China and now widely played across East Asia. However, the workshop participants were not only able to play against each other, but also to compete against a Go robot, which independently analyses the board and places stones on it using an arm.

We would like to extend our warmest thanks to the team at the Go7 club for the workshop and presentation! We would also like to thank Tim Heißenberger, the organizer of the u:japan culture board game series, and the Akademischer Arbeitskreis Japan (AAJ) for sponsoring the snacks.

Engaged Aging: Longer Working Lives in Japan

🏢🌐 A hybrid u:japan lecture by Iza Kavedžija (University of Cambridge, UK) 🌐🏢

📅 21.05.2026 (Thursday)
🕛 18:00 – 19:30 CET
💬 English language
📍Department of East Asian Studies, Japanese Studies (2.4), Seminarraum 1
🌐 and online over ZOOM (link on our website)

>>> Board Game Insights presents:

u:japan culture board game series: Riichi Mahjong workshop, 8th May 2026

- with KASU, a club for playing traditional Japanese board games like Mahjong, Shōgi or Hanafuda. Find out more about them on their website https://kasu.at/

- organized by Tim Heißenberger, Japanologie Uni Wien

After a short introduction on the history of Mahjong and explanations on how to play the Riichi Mahjong event, participants of the workshop gathered around the square Mahjong tables provided by KASU. Each table had four participants and one KASU member, who explained the rules and helped the players get into the game by starting with fewer tiles before increasing the difficulty.

The result was an enjoyable afternoon with a relaxed atmosphere, snacks, and conversations around the tables. By the end, all participants had learned the basic rules and could play Riichi Mahjong with little assistance from the instructors. To conclude the workshop, four KASU members demonstrated how fast-paced games with experienced players can be in a show game.

We would like to thank KASU for patiently sharing their valuable experience and for providing all the necessary equipment for playing Riichi Mahjong. We would especially like to thank Tim Heißenberger for organising and hosting the event.

The next and final workshop in this series, on 8th May, will focus on the board game Go.