Scholar to Discuss TV Heartthrob, Textbook Battle

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Noted Japanese feminist scholar Shimizu Kiyoko next week will present two lectures at the University at Buffalo, one about an East Asian television heartthrob who has bridged the cultural and political gap between Korea and Japan, and the second about women's role in the latest incarnation of Japan's century-old textbook controversy.

Her visit is sponsored by the Asian Studies Program and the Women's Studies Department at UB.

A professor of feminist studies at Ohtemon Gakuin University in Osaka, Shimizu is a scholar of Hanna Arendt and an activist on the issue of the impact of war and military bases on women's human rights.

Thomas Burkman, director of the UB Asian Studies Program, said Shimizu "is still remembered by many at UB for a stirring talk she presented here in 2001, during a visit hosted by Kah Kyung Cho, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of Philosophy."

Shimizu will address the positive influence of popular culture on the traditionally strained relationship between Japan and Korea in a lecture titled "Understanding Between Korea and Japan through Popular Culture." It will be held at 5 p.m. Oct. 24 in 280 Park Hall on UB's North (Amherst) Campus.

Her focus will be the Korean serial television romantic drama "Winter Sonata," which is enormously popular not only in Korea, but in Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and other parts of Asia. Its male star, Bae Yong Joon has been embraced by women from teenagers to seniors and Shimizu asks why so many Japanese women, who previously displayed little interest in Korea, have become so engrossed in the drama and have rushed to Korea to study the culture.

On Oct. 25, Shimizu will be the guest of the "Asia at Noon" lecture series and will speak on "Women and the Japanese Textbook Controversy" from noon to 1 p.m. in 280 Park Hall.

The controversy, which involves a dispute over how historical events are presented in authorized Japanese school textbooks, has been alive in Japan since the country established its modern education system in 1890. At the core of the controversy is the question of whether the authorization of a particular textbook by the Japanese government represents its official record of the country's historical past.

In its most recent incarnation, it involves the junior-high "New History Textbook," which many claim downplays Japan's military aggression in the Sino-Japanese War, in its 1910 annexation of Korea and in World War II.