Nuances: Our Asian Stories

S4 E06: Dr. Sachi Schmidt-Hori on U.S. vs Japan culture, parenting, social norms, & why gender pronouns aren't an issue in Japan


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Mar 17 2024 61 mins   1
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GUEST BIO

Prof. Sachi Schmidt-Hori is interested in investigating how gender, sexuality, corporeality, and power are represented and negotiated in pre-seventeenth-century Japanese narratives and illustrations. Her first book, Tales of Idolized Boys: Male-Male Love in Medieval Japanese Narratives (University of Hawai`i Press, 2021) is on medieval chigo monogatari (Buddhist acolyte tales), which often depict romantic relationships between Buddhist priests and adolescent boys. These tales challenge a host of normative and moral standards we (academics, especially) internalize, including such ideas as "sexual orientation," "transgenerational sex," and "sexual agency." Her current project is on the literary representations of "milk kinships" in pre-seventeenth Japanese tales, in cluding the Tale of Ochikubo, the Tale of Genji, the Tales of the Heike. She is also the director of the Springboard Japan Project, a multi-purpose open-access forum for Japan Studies.

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MENTIONED

TAKEAWAYS

  1. The equation of your career/life choices is for you to solve. It doesn't have to make sense to anyone else if it makes sense for you.
  2. You can seek out spaces where being you is a plus instead of a minus. Don't settle.
  3. If you're not a white man, emulating white men probably won't help. Be goofy :-)
  4. Language shapes our discussions.
  5. Identity is seen as static, whereas actions are choices that we could change in the future, not immutable character traits.
  6. How integrity is perceived is one of many things that can vary widely outside the West.
  7. In Japan, parenting is about taming the child's ego. In the U.S., parenting is about nurturing the child's ego.
  8. Do not talk to cats and babies in Japan.

CONTACT

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Host: Lazou

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