Ateneo Japanese Studies Program

The Japanese Studies Program
In partnership with the Department of History
Dr. Rosita G. Leong School of Social Sciences
Ateneo de Manila University

cordially invite everyone to

THE 2026 JSP LECTURE SERIES
𝐑𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐌𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐬𝐢𝐚-𝐏𝐚𝐜𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜 𝐖𝐚𝐫
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐩𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐉𝐚𝐩𝐚𝐧'𝐬 𝐍𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐌𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐲

by
Shingo SATO, PhD.
Faculty of Social Information Studies,
Otsuma Women's University

on
Friday, 20 February 2026
5:00 - 6:30PM
Faura AVR

REGISTER HERE FOR FREE:
bit.ly/JSP_Lecture_Series_2


Abstract
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How is the Philippines remembered within the collective memory of Japanese society in the Asia-Pacific War? This lecture will examine the nature of Japan’s national memory and its representations of Southeast Asia. A notable feature is the appearance of the Philippines in the introductory sections of particular texts discussing the “victim” of the Battle of Okinawa or the Atomic Bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, the Philippines is typically represented in military terms, such as “fall” or “climatic battle”, meaning the “victim” of its civilians is seldom mentioned. Considering this issue, the lecture will explore the potential for a dialogue-based memory between Japan and the Philippines.

REGISTER NOW! bit.ly/JSP_Lecture_Series_2

The Japanese Studies Program from the
RGL-School of Social Sciences
invites you to our 2026 JSP Lecture Series titled

"Theorizing the Feminist Potentials of Japanese Women’s Fandom for Male Idols Through Usami Rin’s Oshi, Moyu"
By Dr Thomas Baudinette
Senior Lecturer in Japanese and International Studies in Department of Media, Communications, Creative Arts, Languages and Literatures, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

Friday, 23 January 2026
5:00 - 6:30PM
SEC C 201
2/F SEC Building

Within Japanese girls’ culture, perhaps no fandom is more influential than that of the ubiquitous male celebrities known as ‘idols’ who dominate Japan’s media landscape. Usami Rin’s 2020 award-winning novella Oshi, Moyu (Idol, Burning) presents a thought-provoking window into the lives of the women who dedicate themselves to supporting these male idols via the practice known as oshi-katsu (pushing one’s ‘bias’). Rejecting the view that oshi-katsu solely represents a consumerist behaviour that entangles women within neoliberal structures geared towards their exploitation, this reading of Oshi, Moyu instead argues that oshi-katsu may operate as a significant practice which asserts the agency of women within a society that routinely silences their desires. This article argues that Oshi, Moyu explores the experiences of young women navigating precariousness in contemporary Japan’s hetero-patriarchal society to recuperate oshi-katsu as a feminist praxis. Through a ‘fanthropological’ reading of Oshi, Moyu, it brings previous scholarship on the Japanese idol industries into dialogue with recent feminist theorisations of fandom in Japan, providing a reparative analysis of women’s participation within the fandom which has been largely absent from the previous English-language literature on Japanese idols.

Dr Thomas Baudinette is Senior Lecturer in Global Cultures at the School of International Studies, Macquarie University. A cultural anthropologist, his research primarily explores how popular media and fandom culture inform knowledge about gender and sexuality across East and Southeast Asia. He is the author of Regimes of Desire: Young Gay Men, Media, and Masculinity in Tokyo (University of Michigan Press, 2021) and Boys Love Media in Thailand: Celebrity, Fans, and Transnational Asian Q***r Popular Culture (Bloomsbury, 2023). He is currently working on his third book, tentatively titled Q***r Fantasies of Asia: Japanese and Korean Media Fandom in the Philippines.

Register for this talk using the QR Code or click this link: https://bit.ly/JSPLectureSeries1