This lecture was organized as the fifth public lecture in the seminar series “Humanities in the Anthropocene,” a research project of the Waseda Institute for Advanced Study (WIAS). The lecture was attended by 41 participants from Japan and abroad, and was followed by a lively discussion.
The speaker Tomoki Takada (Associate professor, University of Hyogo) has a diverse background in areas including in civil engineering planning, consensus building, regional planning, and climate theory, and was once involved in landscaping as an employee of Kansaizoen Co, Ltd.
In the lecture, Takada first discussed yokai (a strange monster, ghost or spirit in Japanese folklore) as an intellectual resource for risk reduction by reviewing the various yokai lore in the regions. Next, he introduced the “Yokai Safety Workshop” that has been conducted at elementary schools, children’s centers, and libraries in Hyogo Prefecture. In this workshop, children walk around the neighborhood, identify risk potentials, and create their own original yokai. A special feature of the workshop is that they also propose ways to avoid risks by considering how to respond to the yokai they have created. Impressively, the children seemed to enjoy participating in the series of activities in which various yokai figures and names were given to the everyday dangers they identified from the children’s point of view, and actions to avoid risks were linked to these dangers.
Based on the practical examples, Takada pointed out the importance of “vision for the invisible” in process of community development, and raised the issue of exploring new theories and methodologies of community development grounded in complexity, paying attention to “genba (the field)” and “tachi-araware (appearing),” i.e., what are the invisible elements appearing there.
The Q&A session elicited questions and comments from a wide range of professional fields, including the effectiveness and future possibilities of using difficult-to-quantify materials such as local traditions and individual imagination, as well as scientific data, in the consensus building process, and how to actively evaluate “ambiguity based on individual circumstances” surrounding decision-making and judgment.
Furthermore, the lecture fully utilized the characteristics of the “Humanities in the Anthropocene” project by providing an opportunity for cross-disciplinary and fusion of humanities and sciences, including a reference to the difficulty of translating the concept of “yokai” in Christian cultures and the connection between ancient Japanese myths (the Kojiki and Nihon-shoki) and yokai.
Event details
Speakers:
Tomoki Takada: Associate Professor, University of Hyogo
Satomi Yamamoto: Professor, Waseda University
Date/Time: July 23, 2022 (Sat.), 10:00~12:00 (JST)
Location: Online meeting via Zoom (prior registration required)
Prospected Audience: Faculty members, researchers, graduate students and the general public
