Association of Asian Studies 2011 Conference

This year the Association of Asian Studies celebrated its 70th anniversary by holding its annual conference as close to Asia as possible—in Honolulu. It was a tough assignment, but attending that conference and the in-conjunction annual meetings of the Council on East Asian Libraries required me to spend a full week in Hawaii in late March-early April. Sadly, the panels and other events were largely overshadowed by the tragic occurrences in Japan, which affected both the conference, in terms of speaker and participant cancellations, and Hawaii generally, in terms of a significant drop in Japanese tourism. I was struck by the way the Japanese speakers who were able to attend the conference expressed their obviously deeply felt gratitude toward the United States for its assistance in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami. The topics of some programs were changed at the last minute to address the calamity. The “Network for Historical Materials,” which originated in the wake of the 1996 Kōbe Earthquake has posted some photographs and information about the damage to museums and other sites.

In the exhibit hall, I was happy to see that a book I co-translated was being heavily featured at the booth of the publisher, University of Minnesota Press. The title of the original work by Saitō Tamaki literally means “A Psychoanalysis of Beautiful Fighting Girls,” but the editors and translators ultimately chose the simpler Beautiful Fighting Girl as the English title of this somewhat eccentric, partly Lacanian treatment of otaku--obsessive fans of manga and anime--who focus particularly on the very young girl heroines who appear in those works.