Luncheon with Akiko Hashimoto, Yale Ph.D '84 and author of The Long Defeat: Cultural Trauma, Memory and Identity in Japan
Wednesday, March 1, 2017 @ 12-1:30 PM
Purchase tickets for $25 HERE.
The Yale Club of Oregon and SW Washington warmly invites us to their luncheon with Akiko Hashimoto, Ph.D. ’84 and author of The Long Defeat: Cultural Trauma, Memory and Identity in Japan.
When a nation suffers a devastating defeat in war, how does it pass on its memories of defeat to future generations? Why do the memories of difficult national experiences endure, and even intensify, despite our impulse to avoid them and to move on? Dr. Hashimoto explores these questions by examining Japan’s efforts to come to terms with its defeat in World War II up to the present day. We will discuss popular films about heroes, victims and perpetrators that keep these memories alive in Japan’s everyday culture today.
Dr. Akiko Hashimoto is a sociologist with a long-standing fascination for the different ways people identify with their own cultures and histories. She has lived and studied in Japan, Germany, England, and the United States, and taught cultural, comparative, global sociology at the University of Pittsburgh for 25 years. Currently, she is visiting professor in the Department of Sociology at Portland State University, and also faculty fellow at Yale University’s Center for Cultural Sociology. Her latest book isThe Long Defeat: Cultural Trauma, Memory and Identity in Japan (Oxford University Press, 2015) which won the 2016 Scholarly Achievement Award of the North Central Sociological Association. The Long Defeat is also forthcoming in Japanese (2017) and in Chinese (2018).