RIEB Seminar
RIEB Seminar
RIEB Seminar
Jointly supported by The Japanese Association for South Asian Studies, The 36th Annual Conference Committee
| Date & Time | Saturday, July 8, 2023, 15:00 - 17:00 |
|---|---|
| Place | Meeting Room at RIEB, Kobe University (Annex, 2nd Floor) |
| Intended Audience | Faculty, Graduate Students, and People with Equivalent Knowledge |
| Language | Japanese |
| Number of Seats | Seating is lmited to 35. The registration may close prior to July 4 if all seats are taken. |
| Remarks | Please complete the registration before July 4. Registration Form (Due: July 4) |
15:00 - 17:00
- Topic
- Seeing the Unseen in the Process of Filmmaking: Indian Migrant Women in Tokyo
- Speaker
- Megha WADHWA (Free University of Berlin / Institute of Comparative Culture, Sophia University)
- Abstract
- Dr. Megha Wadhwa, a filmmaker and Research Associate at Free University of Berlin, as well as a Visiting Fellow at Sophia University, Tokyo, will screen an hour-long documentary film 'Finding their niche: Unheard stories of migrant women'. The film is inspired by a chapter of her Ph.D. dissertation, which was adapted into a book "Indian migrants in Tokyo: A study of socio-cultural, religious and working worlds" (Routledge 2021). After the screening, Dr. Wadhwa will discuss with us the process of creating a film using visual methods and her research experiences in the field with and without camera. The film has both English and Japanese subtitles.
This film documents the life of two Indian women migrants who moved to Japan more than a decade ago as trailing spouses. Jyoti and Mandeep grew up in the state of Punjab, northern India, in middle-class households. They received a good education and had promising careers in India. Then, in their early 20s, they each agreed to marry men living in Japan by arrangement.
The women were excited to move to a foreign country and to be with their husbands, but they had no prior knowledge of Japan. Having witnessed at a distance the lives of their relatives settled in the US, UK and Canada, they had similar expectations for their own future lives in Japan. But the reality was to prove different from the expectation. In place of comfort, luxury, love, and fun, loneliness and fear took over.
Through personal narratives told by the women, we examine past, present and future expectations and see how these affect their roles as Indian women, wives, mothers and workers in a foreign country, as well as the challenges they faced in 'Finding their Niche'.