NEWS: September 20, 2024 Book Talk on Unsilent Strangers: Music, Minorities, Coexistence, Japan
The CEGLOS offers an online Book Talk event on Unsilent Strangers: Music, Minorities, Coexistence, Japan (NUS Press 2023), edited and authored by Professor Michiyo Yoneno-Reyes and other distinguished scholars.
Date: September 20, 2024
Time: 19:30-20:30 (Japan); 18:30-19:30 (Singapore)
Format: ZOOM
Language: English
Registration here: https://forms.gle/mqW7jfPUGTBkHmuS8
This is a groundbreaking collection of essays that examines the significant role music plays in the lives of migrant minorities in and from Japan. It is the first academic work to explore music activities across diverse migrant groups in Japan, particularly in Tokyo and surrounding areas, and to compare them with Japanese emigrants as ethnic minorities abroad. Through archival research and fieldwork, the essays highlight music's influence on identity formation and the dynamics of cultural encounters.
The book also delves into Japan's "new immigration era," marked by the introduction of the "Specified Skilled Worker" visa in 2019. It critically examines the concept of "multicultural coexistence" (tabunka kyōsei) and the challenges of realizing this ideal, with ethnographic accounts of various minority communities such as South Indians, Brazilians, Nepalis, Filipinos, Iranians, and Ainu domestic migrants, alongside comparative studies from Japanese in California and Australia. This event will appeal to ethnomusicologists, students of migrant cultures, and anyone interested in cultural diversity and change in Japan and East Asia.