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T. Seifman Profile picture
T. Seifman
@toranosukev
Historian of Japanese & Ryukyuan/Luchuan arts and culture. Person. I travel from time to time. He/they.
May 11, 2022 • 17 tweets • 7 min read
Feeling helpless and hopeless today, and very much on the verge of tears.

This coming Monday, May 15, marks the 50th anniversary of Okinawa's "reversion" to Japanese governance, i.e. the end of the formal American Occupation of Okinawa. The Tokyo International Forum is one of several places holding exhibits in connection with this history.

(This one up only until Monday)

t-i-forum.co.jp/en/event/
May 11, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Very interesting. Living here in Japan for the last few years, I've begun to think more and more about how, even when we know dictionary definitions, and are fluent enough to get by well, there is still so much that can be so elusive as to the connotations or nuances of words... Mishima Kitan here informs us that when women / fem-presenting people use boku 僕 as their first-person pronoun ("I"), it can be read as butch, queer, trans, and/or as cringe, as someone who is too influenced by pop culture and/or trying too hard to create a persona for themself.
May 11, 2022 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Thanks to Simon @B4Btv for letting me know about this exhibit at the Japan Newspaper Museum 日本新聞博物館!

Fascinating to see some of these photos, and to learn more about the events of Okinawa's 1972 "reversion" to Japanese administration. While the museum did not allow photos in the main portion of the exhibit space, it was mostly just reproductions anyway - so, if I take the time to go to NDL and look up the microfilm, I can see (and get a printout copy of!) these very same materials anyway.
Dec 6, 2021 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
@Docstockk Others have surely answered already, but I'll add to the pack. (1) Read around. A very quick Google search will reveal plenty of pages explaining that, yes, generally it does mean "I'm fine with either." Why? Well, I'll speak for myself, and give two reasons. @Docstockk First, because "they" is a neutral pronoun. It applies to everyone. "Someone lost their wallet." "I wonder who they are." Second, because some people don't feel 100% fully comfortable with the social constructs of "a man" or "a woman" and want to express that.
Dec 6, 2021 • 14 tweets • 11 min read
Visited Tobu World Square yesterday - a theme park near Nikko featuring models of famous buildings from around the world. Kind of cheesy, I guess, but kind of cool. My main purpose in going, ofc, was my interest in seeing their new model of Sui gusuku (Shuri castle). Very much looking forward to visiting Shuri again. We'll see when that ends up happening.
Nov 14, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I don't know about "extreme," but:

The quiet, unspoken, pressure to embody gender norms, to try to fit in and seem like a typical, "normal" guy/man/bro/dude, even when, who knows, maybe all the other guys are also pretending or self-policing in the same way, to fit in with you. Even when you know the guys and they'd probably be totally cool with you being a diff sort of guy to them, I'm always sort of curious, how many of them aren't actually that sort of guy either? We all just sort of play along to try to fit in, but maybe *all* of us are pretending?
Oct 14, 2021 • 26 tweets • 7 min read
My thanks to @softsoundingsea for bringing this article to my attention I don't know the author, and have nothing against them personally, but this seems a fine example of the kinds of things we see far too often in discussions of Okinawa & politics,

tokyoreview.net/2021/02/increa… And an indication, perhaps, of the kinds of things that Tokyo Review publishes, i.e. the kinds of submissions they approve, or invite. I have been aware of the existence of Tokyo Review for a while, but only recently have started to get a sense of the character of the site.
May 15, 2021 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
Wow. Beautiful. Look at how legible this is!!

Notes of an Interview with Napoleon Bonaparte at St Helena on 13 August 1817, written by Captain Basil Hall, Royal Navy

A key doc in the myth that Ryukyu was fundamentally peaceful & maintained no weapons.

collection.nam.ac.uk/detail.php?acc… ImageImageImageImage "Having settled where Loochoo was, he went on to enquire about the people ... On telling him that they had no arms, he said 'no arms - you mean no cannon, but they have muskets.' I said not only have they no cannon, they have no swords nor spears ... No, I replied, we never saw
Dec 20, 2020 • 19 tweets • 5 min read
Thank you to everyone at @ucsc_omi for an incredible program today on the Koza Uprising which took place on Dec 20, 1970. Deeply moving, thought-provoking, and educational. I learned a lot, and gave me a lot to think about.

okinawamemories.org/revisiting-the… In the early morning hours of Dec 20, 1970, an American GI in Koza (now Okinawa City) accidentally hit an Okinawan man in the street with his car. Okinawa had been under US military occupation at this point for 25 years, 18 years longer than mainland Japan.
Dec 16, 2020 • 30 tweets • 8 min read
Those who have been following me know I'm working on a translation of a chronology of events of the Bakumatsu period - the years leading up to the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate + the Meiji Restoration.

Today, I came across an exciting line: Kagoshima domain retainers Arima Shinshichi and Tanaka Kensuke; Ronin Tanaka Kawachinosuke, Maki Izumi, Yoshimura Torataro; and others gather around dawn and depart Osaka for Kyoto. They go up the Yodo River, arrive at Fushimi around dusk, and rest at the Teradaya inn.
Nov 17, 2020 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
「先年打続江戸江御使者被差上候節万端神妙有之和朝之聞へ宜讃嘆為有之由頂上之仕合候。」

“... when envoys went up to Edo, everything was done with great care, and we hear that it received praise in the Yamato court; this is the pinnacle of things coming together (happiness).” I can't say that I actually addressed this all that well in the diss, but the question being: what was the role of tradition, precedent, protocol, in shaping diplomatic ritual interactions in early modern East Asia?
Sep 22, 2020 • 27 tweets • 6 min read
A short thread on the importance of basic general details in your history research & writing. Reading 「徳川将軍家の演出力」by Andô Yûichirô 安藤優一郎 right now, and I'm loving it. Only on Chap 2, but so far lots of good basic details that I just hadn't ever come across before. The title is kind of a pain to translate, but I guess literally it's something like "The Performance Ability of the Tokugawa Shogunal House." Talking about how processions, audience ceremonies, etc were used to construct and convey notions of the shogun's power. 2/x
Sep 22, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Alright. Well, @youtubemusic is still shit. But I discovered today that all of a sudden Google Music is allowing me to download more than 100 tracks at a time. This is *huge* for allowing me to download and backup my library relatively quickly / efficiently. Prior to this, as far as I could figure out, one had to either download 100 tracks at a time, or use Music Manager to try to download the entire Library at once. It took hours and hours and hours, and if it got interrupted (e.g. wifi went out) had to start all over again 😠
Sep 20, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Waiting tables at a fancy sushi restaurant. Look, I understand from the management's point of view that they wanted someone polished, someone to do the job and do it well, not someone who was endlessly "trying their best" and on training wheels... But, boy did they expect too much. Memorize the menu before we'll let you take your own tables and get paid full wage, rather than letting me learn on the job? Make me memorize what each diff. saké is like, and what each piece of fish on each diff. sushi platter is?
Sep 20, 2020 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
I can't pick just one.

New York: it may be a goddamn mess in a lot of ways, but it's home, and I love it and miss it terribly: Image My bestie, @MotoHotei , the one time he came to Japan, along with several of our other bestest friends.

I can't wait to have them visit again sometime. Image
Sep 20, 2020 • 15 tweets • 3 min read
I don't know how unbelievable this is, but I do believe I've had multiple encounters with Yakuza.

Whatever we might imagine, in reality, they of course had no reason to give me any trouble, or to force/allow me to get involved in anything, so they just left me alone... So, that's not a particularly exciting story 😅

I have another story which I might have told on Twitter before, about just serendipity and thank god for good luck, and the kindness of others.
Sep 11, 2020 • 20 tweets • 6 min read
In 1872, the Empire of Japan declared that King Shô Tai of the Kingdom of Ryûkyû was to be no longer the king of a kingdom, but a lord of a domain within Japan. He was given a mansion here, at Mochizaka (today Chiyoda-ku Fujimi 1-chôme). ImageImageImage Nothing survives of the mansion today, so far as I know, or even marks the site. Banana leaves and palm trees give a tropical sense, evocative of Ryukyu, but today these are the grounds of the Filipino Embassy; I'm not sure exactly where the Shô family mansion had been.
Sep 11, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Avoiding predatory professors isn't the answer. Removing them is. Of course the predatory aspect, the physical/emotional danger, is paramount. But in addition to that, profs who are kept in their positions but who students have to avoid are profs who are blocking opportunities for students and for scholars who might be brought in in their place
Sep 5, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
YES. And more importantly than requiring it, is *funding it*. The fact that so much of the limited funding that's available is only available for conference travel, research travel, or modern language study, and not for paleography, classical language study, etc. is a problem. (1) I very nearly had my funding for a classical Japanese program revoked, even after it was awarded to me, because the funding agency/committee realized it wasn't for modern language study.
Sep 1, 2020 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
A great piece in @chronicle suggesting that "Doctoral Training Should Include an Internship." This theme was touched upon eloquently by @drebeccacorbett in the recent "Virtual Roundtable:
The “Rebirth” of Japanese Studies" organized by @paularcurtis .

prcurtis.com/events/AAS2020…
Aug 28, 2020 • 17 tweets • 3 min read
I tweeted last month about Shimazu Tadayuki, lord of Sadowara, whose death was kept (an open?) secret for 70+ days while waiting for his heir to be confirmed.

This was by no means uncommon in Tokugawa Japan. Shall we take a look at the case of Tairo Ii Naosuke? Ii Naosuke, lord of Hikone domain, was Tairo - head of the Roju, the Shogunate Elders - in the late 1850s. Easily one of the most powerful figures in the country, he played a key role in supporting the "opening" of ports to Western trade + settlement, ....