Wednesday 10 July 2013
6:00pm – 7:30pm

Shifting Values: Nationalism and Identity

Drinks reception from 8:30pm

13/14 Cornwall Terrace, Outer Circle, London, NW1 4QP

Organised by The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation

The theme for the annual seminar series in 2013 is The Search for Contentment: Shifting Values in the UK and Japan.

In economics, there is increasing interest in how to maximise happiness rather than just GDP. Religion and philosophy have always had plenty to say on this topic, and questions are raised across a broad range of areas. The second seminar in our series touches on religion. For this, the third seminar in the current series, we have invited two speakers from the social sciences to talk about identity and nationalism in the UK and Japan. Post-industrial societies seem to have reached a new phase in which they are focussing on issues such as community coherence and cosmopolitanism.

Japan, especially after two big disasters in the last two decades, has increased its sense of national solidarity, whilst appreciating the support it has received from the international community. But nationalism is also on the rise in both Japan and the UK. Against the backdrop of difficult issues with neighbouring countries, the Abe government is talking of amending Japan’s long-valued “Peaceful Constitution”, while Japanese netizens exchange vitriol with their neighbours on the blogosphere. In the UK, UKIP’s tough anti-immigration stance is bringing it electoral success, partly reflecting concerns that immigrants are undermining traditional British values. Is the rise in nationalism just a result of the tough economic situation? Or are people trying to cling to their ethnic origins and associated values because they feel they are losing their identity? And to what extent do ethnic values contribute to identity itself?

Summary of Shifting Values Nationalism and Identity

The video of this event can be viewed in three parts on YouTube:

Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:

About the contributors

Dr Toshihito Kayano

Dr Toshihito Kayano is a philosopher and Associate Professor of Tsuda College, in the Department of International and Cultural Studies. Born in Aichi Prefecture, he graduated from Waseda University in 1994. He gained his PhD in Philosophy, at Paris University Nanterre La Défense in 2003. His interests lie in current issues that are beyond the scope of philosophy. He is a member of the Great East Japan Earthquake Reconstruction Vision Committee of the Asahi Shimbun. His publications include What is State? and Genealogy of Money and Violence , which were published in Japan in 2005 and 2006 respectively. He is also co-author of An Inquiry into the State and Identity,(Iwanami Shoten, Tokyo, Japanese, 2009), author of Although We Say Violence is Wrong (Kawade Shobo, Tokyo, Japanese, 2010), Is Nationalism Evil? (NHK Publishing, Tokyo, Japanese, 2011) and co-editor of Difficulties of Life: Poverty, Identity, Nationalism (Kobunsya, Tokyo, Japanese 2008).

Professor Eric Kaufmann

Professor Eric Kaufmann is Professor of Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the author of Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth (Profile, London, 2010), The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America (Harvard, 2004), The Orange Order (Oxford, 2007) and Unionism and Orangeism in Northern Ireland since 1945 – with H. Patterson (Manchester, 2007). He is co-editor, among others, of Political Demography (Oxford, 2012) and Whither the Child: causes and consequences of low fertility (Paradigm, Boulder, Colorado, 2012), and editor of Rethinking Ethnicity: Majority Groups and Dominant Minorities (Routledge, London, 2004). An editor of the journal Nations & Nationalism, he has also written for Newsweek International, Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines, and blogs at Huffington Post. His current ESRC grant, affiliated with the think tank Demos, examines white working-class responses to diversity in the UK.

William Horsley (Chair)

William Horsley (Chair) is UK Chairman of the Association of European Journalists and International Director of the Centre for Freedom of the Media (CFOM) at the University of Sheffield. He has a degree in Japanese Studies from the University of Oxford and was BBC Bureau Chief in Tokyo from 1983 to 1990, covering Japan, China and other parts of Asia. Since then, based in Germany and the UK, he has reported extensively on the re-shaping of Europe’s political landscape and since 2007 he has been writing and broadcasting independently.