WORKSHOP: Inaugural University of Queensland/University of Western Australia Bilateral Research Collaboration Award

This collaborative multidisciplinary workshop involves Japanese Studies scholars from both universities as presenters, and two distinguished external scholars as discussants. The workshop’s focus is the institution of ‘family’ in modern/contemporary Japan. While the middle-class, nuclear family has long dominated imaginings of ‘the Japanese family’, there have, in reality, always been multiple configurations of family and kinship arrangements. This diversity has gained greater visibility in recent decades, in the context of significant socioeconomic, cultural, and demographic shifts since the 1990s. Drawing upon a variety of disciplinary and methodological approaches, the presenters in this workshop will unpack some of these diverse meanings and practices associated with family. Issues explored range from historical contestations of the concept of family to contemporary issues like aging, single households, non-heterosexual living arrangements, and transborder families.