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Sparking New Connections in the Field of Japan Studies: u:japan Lectures at the University of Vienna

As part of a public university we have a certain degree of responsibility to use our own knowledge to contribute to the knowledge of others. That is what u:japan is all about—contributing to the understanding of Japan on a global scale.

The u:japan lectures series hosted by the University of Vienna posted its 126th installment in June 2025 when Dr. Sebastian Polak-Rottmann, a senior research fellow at the German Institute for Japanese Studies, shared insights from his doctoral fieldwork addressing rural perspectives on well-being in Austria and the Aso area of Kumamoto prefecture in Japan. Speaking live from Expo 2025 in Osaka, he underscored the importance of including reciprocal and relational dimensions of well-being, such as neighborly activities and civic engagement, in our discourses on the subject. Now, as head of a research cluster on sustainability in Japan, Polak-Rottmann continues to look at the core areas of resilience, green transformation, and diversity and inclusion.

Polak-Rottmann received his doctorate in philosophy from the school of Japanese Studies at the University of Vienna in 2022, where Dr. Wolfram Manzenreiter, head of research on Japan, was his principal supervisor. “There is no evidence that the general trend toward urbanization is paralleled by an overall increase in happiness,” Manzenreiter offers. “So we were interested in rural notions of happiness and what makes life worth living to those who stay in, or indeed move to, the countryside.” A decade of interdisciplinary and collaborative research into well-being and rural society in Japan culminated in a conference chaired by Manzenreiter in 2024. Positing counterarguments to prevailing narratives that demise is inevitable for communities facing the 21st-century problems of depopulation, high aging, and economic decline, it effectively laid groundwork for further long-term explorations of rural resilience. Polak-Rottmann’s present work, for example, is demonstrating ways in which local stakeholders are uniting as shifting family demographics and challenges posed by natural disasters demand new means of sustaining interpersonal engagement in their communities. Manzenreiter’s team, meanwhile, is looking at the social structuring elements that are shaping both new opportunities for rural autonomy as well as an increasingly more differentiated understanding of diversity across Japanese society. With the opening of Japan’s labor market, how are municipalities—urban and rural—dealing with the increasing number of foreign residents? How does fiction written in Japanese by non-Japanese authors contribute to our understanding of Japanese literature? How are people navigating their sense of identity? The u:japan lectures database collates and showcases, essentially, the fruits of such ongoing inquiries.

We have always encouraged our students to engage with the scholars whose names they are familiar with from their reading—to observe them in action, to reach out, and to see that science is something that also happens in dialogue or in conversation. And therefore to break down walls of authority, of hierarchy, and make our students a bit more aware of their own ability to think critically.

Highly regarded in the global academic community for its dissemination of cutting-edge research on Japan, the school of Japanese Studies at the University of Vienna was, in the decades following World War II, the first in Europe to shift its study of Japan from text-based analysis toward qualitative anthropological and ethnographic research and the reflexive methodology of the social sciences. Today it receives an average of 200 students per year. “That’s the largest in Europe by far,” Manzenreiter observes. “We have seen a continuous, sustained interest in Japan Studies since the early 2000s.”

Around the time that he assumed a professorship at the university in 2013, Manzenreiter started thinking about a new way of integrating and developing research that would be more open and inviting not only to his students but to his younger colleagues as well, and that would better serve their mutual interests. “For people working in the social sciences and humanities we have this understanding that we are all contributing to questions that can be answered more efficiently and productively when we align our efforts right from the beginning of the process,” he explains. “There are people working in the same field on similar problems in very different parts of the globe.” His efforts in this direction took on heightened significance when the pandemic struck. Determined not to cancel the guest lectures that had been planned for the semester, his team of early-career and senior scholars found a way to move them all online. Amid the general lockdown, the inaugural season, launched in May 2020, thus welcomed researchers from Nagasaki, Japan; Turin, Italy; Utah, USA; and Paris, France, who presented on such diverse topics as radiation in atomic utopia and dystopia; contemporary shamanic practices; historicization in films of the Heisei period; and the role of aesthetical discourse in politics of identity.

u:japan lectures serves as a platform of academic exchange showcasing the cutting-edge research of established and up-and-coming scholars in the field of Japan Studies. Highly specialized topics looking at newly emerging research questions and popular topics alike draw the interest of followers outside of academia.

With our ongoing curation of the u:japan lectures database, we are working hard to guarantee it as an evergreen platform for innovative modes of publication and the distribution of new insights on Japan.

While a crossover between a book and a hybrid lecture series is not often seen, we are confident that such a novel endeavor is not only an interesting experiment, but also a promising way to invigorate academic exchange beyond journal articles and peer reviews.

Although the list of u:japan presenters is decided long months in advance, Manzenreiter encourages people to become part of the community. “Join our audience at the live lectures—share your ideas with us there. If you have something interesting to present, don’t be shy—try to snatch one of the few vacant spots that we might be able to provide. You can also become part of the community of post-program developers. If you are a teacher or course instructor, come forward with your suggestions and tell us the way you imagine using, or how you have practically used, the lecture materials for your classes. Maybe we can mutually benefit from that,” he offers. In his own introductory course on Japanese Society, Manzenreiter references, along with recommended books and articles, presentations his students would do well to hear. “Sometimes we use the u:japan lectures in first- or second-year undergraduate classes as a means of introducing them to working in an academic environment—how to set up a research project, or how to organize a presentation,” he adds. “What is the research question, and why is it significant? How does it relate to, or introduce, other things that have been done in the field? How does this researcher presenting in front of you contribute to a critical engagement with what we know?” The mechanics of research and presentation, the structure and format and even the delivery of the presentation thus all become tools for classroom exploration.

The foundation of our interdisciplinary approach to Japan Studies is high competence in the written and spoken use of the Japanese language, a solid understanding of Japanese culture and society in its historical and contemporary dimensions, and methodological skills.