Advance registration for this Zoom webinar is required:
https://myumi.ch/WwXmY

Part of the Japanese Studies and Antiracist Pedagogy webinar series:
https://myumi.ch/88W5V

Today’s globalism and cosmopolitanism highlight nations’ economic ties by commodifying the diversity of peoples, cultures, and languages present in their own borders, becoming a local multiculturalism. In Japan, this extends to highlighting the heterogeneous population of a country that others consider homogeneous. In this presentation, I examine the consumption of a Brazilian national imaginary in Japan, not as a country of “poverty and crime” but as “Brasil Fantástico!”: land of samba, açaí, eternal summer, and carnaval. I argue that the use of samba in matsuri stereotypes, contrasts, and further essentializes Japan’s multiculturalism in its presentation of a sexualized, racialized Brazilian musical form. In particular, I’ll discuss the historicity of the Asakusa Samba Matsuri and the fantastical presentation of samba as a redemptionary medium in Shiozaki Shōhei’s Akaneiro no yakusoku: samba do kingyo (Goldfish Go Home, 2012).

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.