Schedule at a Glance Speaker Index Room 1 Room 2 Room 3 Room 4 Room 5 Room 6 Room 7 Room 8 Room 9 Room 10 Room 11 Posters Special Events
This paper argues how traditional Japanese Satoyama practices can be used to solve the ecological crisis currently facing Japan. It critically examines Japan’s failing relationship with nature, and how Satoyama can help not only be used to protect local habitats and ecosystems, but also how it can potentially rewire the Japanese consciousness towards nature. It covers the government’s apathetic approach to conservation and uses scientific studies to argue for increased volunteer forest management. By studying successful forestry programs such as the Sakuragoaka Park conservation program, it identifies concreate example of how to increase volunteer support for conservation.
Faculty Sponsor: Miho Fujiwara
Discipline: Japanese Studies
The purpose this project is to gain a better understanding of the cult surrounding the 1995 Tokyo subway gas attack, Aum Shinrikyo. This will be done through translating a psychological study focusing on former cult members and their mental states while they were in the cult as well as an analysis of the existing research on the cult compounded with the translation to add new insights into the existing literature. This commentary will then give arguments as to how Aum Shinrikyo followed a similar pattern to other cults and could have been stopped before their infamous attack.
Faculty Sponsor: Miho Fujiwara
Discipline: Japanese Studies
Evangelion is a convoluted and long running (1995-2021) anime series with inherent connections to postmodernism and Japan’s Lost Generation. A close study of the three different endings presented in the Evangelion franchise: Episodes 25 & 26 of Neon Genesis Evangelion (1996), End of Evangelion (1997) and Evangelion: 3.0 + 1.0 Thrice Upon a Time (2021), will showcase the shift in attitude/messaging within each of these endings. Ultimately, each ending reflects the circumstances/time period under which it was created. This thesis will be one of the first to incorporate Thrice Upon a Time, which recontextualizes the entire Evangelion metanarrative.
Faculty Sponsor: Miho Fujiwara
Discipline: Japanese Studies
This paper examines and discusses diagnosed problems within Japan’s compulsory English education format and showcase how they are impacted by issues from the past 200 years and detrimental traditions created over 500 years ago. It attempts to counterpoint existing writing relating to the discourse on contemporary English education in Japan by highlighting how the use of flawed translation methodology like yakudoku and the inability to create enduring reforms to teaching curriculum throughout history have been long-standing and prevalent obstacles to the creation of education standards that equal the curriculum and methodology of other countries with notable English proficiency.
Faculty Sponsor: Miho Fujiwara
Discipline: Japanese Studies
The purpose of this project is to ask if ukiyo-e and japonisme has influenced current Japanese media, specifically on manga. Ukiyo-e is Japanese woodblock prints created in the Edo Period that gained popularity in the Western world in the Meiji period, bringing forth japonisme. This project focuses on identifying characteristics revealed through artists and their artworks through the two cultures, Japanese (ukiyo-e) and Western (japonisme) and using a case study of a present time manga, A Sign of Affection, to analyze whether these characteristics persist today.
Faculty Sponsor: Miho Fujiwara
Discipline: Japanese Studies
The application of Japanese aesthetics as a lens is not new in film analysis, yet most analyses focus on one concept at a time, the most popular of which is mono no aware, roughly translated as “the pathos of things.” This study revisits Japanese aesthetics as a lens by introducing other aesthetic concepts and reviewing their definition, interpretations, and applications. These concepts are then used to analyze a selection of Japanese films. This study aims to emphasize a more holistic application of aesthetics as a lens and discuss how these concepts interact with one another.
Faculty Sponsor: Miho Fujiwara
Discipline: Japanese Studies
This project looks at how the gender roles of Edo Period Japan influenced all-male Kabuki’s “female impersonators” or onnagata and how conversely onnagata influenced women’s roles in society after popularization. This paper compares this with contemporary all-female Takarazuka Revue’s “male impersonators,” otokoyaku, and how the introduction of Western influences on Japanese society shaped their gender performance. Contrary to Kabuki’s impact though, otokoyaku's performances were not acceptable ideals for men in 1900s Japan to strive for. Amidst Japan’s harsh patriarchy, gender fluidity has historically been a popular consumption while continuously being outlawed for various reasons which are explored in this text.
Faculty Sponsor: Miho Fujiwara
Discipline: Japanese Studies
The term yōkai has been recorded as early as the 8th century with Japan, but was not widely used until the 17th century Edo period. It wasn’t until the 19th century Meiji period that the term yōkai became synonymous with supernatural occurrences. Extensive research has been conducted on various yōkai throughout Japanese folklore and many have been cataloged within encyclopedias by numerous scholars throughout history. The purpose of this essay is to explore why this categorization of yōkai occurred and how this process shaped them into an invaluable source of inspiration and utilization throughout multiple eras in Japanese society.
Faculty Sponsor: Miho Fujiwara
Discipline: Japanese Studies
Chinese diaspora through migration can face many experiences such as culture shock, changing of identity, and nostalgia for their homes. In this ethnographic study, the idea of Chinese American identity preservation through foodways will be explored. Through a series of interviews with my family members representing three different generations, this study reveals that each generation preserve their Chinese heritage similarly through everyday engagement in Chinese food and holiday celebrations, while later generations (second and third) show closure in the cultural gap and reconstruction of the Chinese American identity.
Faculty Sponsor: Juwen Zhang
Discipline: Chinese Studies
Music has been a beloved aspect of global culture throughout time, but never before has music been so accessible and internationally influenced. This project explores popular music in China in the year 2020 during the pandemic. In addition to creating fully sing-able, English versions of three of the most popular Chinese songs during that time, I argue that these songs are a result of growing international communication in regard to politics, economics, music, and language. This presentation highlights the effects of cross-cultural communication and music’s ability to bring people of different backgrounds together to overcome hardships and loneliness.
Faculty Sponsor: Juwen Zhang
Discipline: Chinese Studies
Machine learning techniques such as NLP (Natural Language Processing) and TF-IDF (Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency) were used to design a model that helps shelters advertise animals more effectively and increase adoption rates. Public source data about animal descriptions and their adoption outcomes were used to create a model to predict adoption rates and efficient advertisement language. Shelters will be able to use this information to maximize the impact of adoption advertisements and thus increase the attractiveness of pets without a home and minimize their time in the shelter.
Faculty Sponsor: Haiyan Cheng
Discipline: Data Science
This project seeks to use machine learning algorithms to derive a play theorem about Atomic Chess, a Chess game variant where pieces will explode upon capturing and being captured, and the objective of the game is to blow up the opponent’s king. Using a large repository of recorded Atomic Chess games, this project seeks to establish a program that, given the setup of a board, will describe which player the board is currently in favor of depending upon played moves.
Faculty Sponsor: Haiyan Cheng
Discipline: Computer Science
Analyzing some thousands of public domain impressionist and post-impressionist art files, we attempt to train a supervised classification machine learning model using principal component analysis to understand and identify the distinct features and overall patterns in these pieces in order to determine the artist/artistic movement of a piece of work with image recognition. We intend to assess and tune the predictive capability of our model using confusion matrix analysis, potentially extending to turing-test against that of art history students.
Faculty Sponsor: Haiyan Cheng
Discipline: Computer Science
Business activities are consumer driven as top performing organizations make it a priority to satisfy their consumers’ desires. This analysis explores the question: can consumer sentiment provide insight into the future trends of key economic indicators? Machine learning techniques are utilized to explore the classification power of consumer sentiment when it comes to changes in unemployment and interest rates. In addition, the implementation of anomaly detection identifies instances of consumer responses that deviate from common patterns and might require closer analysis into specific causes.
Faculty Sponsor: Haiyan Cheng
Discipline: Data Science