July 2, 2007
reunion with Nori in Kumamoto, Japan!
Sorry for the late posting – but I met Nori at a Mass Communication Studies conference held in Kumamoto in June 9-10.
I was a discussant to a panel on backlash against feminism and the role of the mass media and the internet, and Nori joined the panel as a guest speaker!
Nori was doing great – and he was so energetic! He told me that he enjoyed his experiences in Chicago so much, and he felt refreshed since then.
On Saturday night, we had a dinner/drinking gathering at a local restaurant, with lots of horse meat dishes, which is known as a local cuisine of Kumamoto.
The main speaker, Chiki (blogger), talked about his analysis of backlashers on the internet, and posed thoughts about feminism’s failure to communicate its thoughts efffectively to the general public. Nori then told his story on the bashing against him, and his own analysis and thoughts of the situation. Akihiro Kitada, a prof at the University of Tokyo, reported his work in progress on the survey he took with the internet users, especially the users of 2 Channel – and argued that it is wrong to simply assume that 2 Channelers are “right-wing.” I told about my own experience in creating websites and blogs for feminist organizations and of my own. Masami Saito, a feminist based in Toyama, who acted as a moderator also added her perspective as a feminist activist/scholar based in a rural Toyama prefecture.
If you are interested in reading the reports in Japanese, the panel participants posted the following reports and thoughts onto their own blogs.
Chiki Ogiue’s “Ogiue-shiki”
Chiki’s presentation
Masami Saito’s “Gender and Media Blog”
Report and thoughts
Nori’s “Imai Noriaki no Kakera”
Academic Convention and Activism
Tomomi’s blog
Report
