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From Think-Tank to Archive: The Ohara Institute for Social Research as resource and subject for Japanese studies
Organizer and Chair: Andrew Gordon, Harvard University
Discussant: Kazuo Nimura, Ohara Institute for Social Research, Hosei University, Japan
The panel has two related goals. It will introduce an extraordinary and under-exploited resource for the study of 20th century Japanese history, and will present innovative research drawing on the collection, including examination of the Institute’s own activities. The Institute began its life in 1919 as a privately-funded social policy “think-tank,” founded by a textile industrialist, Ohara Magosaburo. In a postwar re-incarnation, it was transformed into a combination of archive, library, and research center. Although labor and other social movements have been the main focus of the Ohara Institute’s research and writing, its collection can be used to study diverse political, economic, cultural and intellectual issues. The Institute has been a leader in Japan in recent years in making its unique archival materials available over the internet
Nakayama will look at an understudied group of “labor scientists” at Ohara in the 1930s and wartime to understand the strategies of the state and social scientists to address problems associated with female laborers. By introducing postwar cultural productions in the Ohara archives, Gerteis will demonstrate how these materials, long considered the domain of labor sociologists and social historians, might also be useful to scholars in anthropology, culture studies, and literature. Suzuki, a current member of the Ohara Institute, will introduce recent innovations and future plans for online access to the Institute’s collection. The discussant, Nimura, is a leading historian of labor in Japan who was for many years the Institute’s director. The panel chair has made extensive use of the collection in his research over the years.
The Ohara Institute and the Birth of Labor Science
Izumi Nakayama, Furman University
This paper explores the Ohara Institute’s early history via the birth of labor science and its unique research on female laborers in prewar Japan. The Ohara Institute for Social Research supported a team of scholars whose specialties ranged from economics to physiology, and they conducted a wide variety of innovative research, which transcended existing disciplinary boundaries. One result of such efforts was the birth of labor science (rodo kagaku) from Ohara’s social hygiene division. Teruoka Gito, the founder of Japanese labor science, began developing methods for scientific investigation of labor issues at the request of textile mogul (and institute sponsor) Ohara Magozaburo. Labor scientists combined their expertise and examined unexplored topics, such as the dreaming patterns of factory girls, and the relationship between the menstrual cycle and work ability/productivity. This presentation highlights how social and medical sciences at the Ohara Institute blended to produce original research on female laborers.
Doing Culture Studies in the Ohara Archives
Christopher Gerteis, Creighton University
This paper will introduce some of the cultural treasures to be found in the Ohara collection by examining the vision of postwar Japanese society promoted by writers, cartoonists, and social activists who published in the propaganda organs of the labor federation Sohyo, its member unions, and affiliated organizations. Drawing from the monthly magazines and newspapers published by the labor press as well as the cultural productions circulated by the Sohyo-sponsored Kokumin Bunka Kaigi (National Culture Council), this presentation will suggest ways in which the materials held by the Ohara, generally considered the domain of sociologists and social historians, offer a unique cultural resource useful to scholars in anthropology, culture studies, and literature.
On-line resources available at OISR.ORG
Akira Suzuki, Ohara Institute for Social Research, Hosei Univers, Japan
The presentation will explain on-line resources available at Ohara Institute for Social Research’s website (http://oisr.org). The website aims to provide as much information of its possessions as possible (such as posters, primary materials, memorabilia collection and rare books) as well as to introduce some of the possessions in English to a broader international audience. The on-line resources currently available on the website include: (1) images and titles of about 4,000 posters (some of titles are translated into English), (2) 76,000 PDF-converted microfilm files of Kyochokai (Harmonization Society) primary materials, (3) an on-line version of Shakai-Rodo Dainenpyo (Chronology of Social and Labor Movement in Japan) which records about 40,000 events between 1858 and 2002 and contains 4,000 explanations of important events. In addition, I will explain other on-line resources such as title lists of primary materials folders and contents of OISR’s publications, how to use these resources, and as our future plan of the website.