Effects of habitual daily physical activity and/or habitual weekly intake of fermented milk products on health maintenance in older people

AOYAGI, Yukitoshi

Head of “The Nakanojo Study” Group

Tokyo Metropolitan Institute for Geriatrics and Gerontology

After graduating from University of Toronto, Yukitoshi’s research encompasses from Physiology, kidney disease, bone health, to old age wellbeing. He has been creating guidelines for physical exercises for older adults. His publications include: “Steps Per Day. The Road to Senior Health?” “Sex differences in relationships between habitual physical activity and health in the elderly: Practical implications for epidemiologists based on pedometer/accelerometer data from the Nakanojo Study” and “Habitual intake of fermented milk products containing Lactobacillus casei strain Shirota and a reduced risk of hypertension in older people.”

Farming the Shima: Resurgent Indigeneity Discourse in Okinawa

CHIBANA, Megumi

Associate Professor of Politics

Department of International Business and Management, Kanagawa University

Originally from Okinawa, Megumi Chibana is an associate professor at Kanagawa University, where she teaches international cultural studies and political science. She received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Her research and teaching interests bring critical race, ethnic, and Indigenous approaches to the study of Okinawa. She is currently working on a book project that examines Indigenous cultural and political agency through critical analyses of indigeneity, Uchinanchu’s various actions, and the reconceptualization of land. Her recent publications include: “On the Politics of Indigeneity and Asian Settler Colonialism in Asia: A Roundtable Discussion” and “Resurgents Create a Moral Landscape: Indigenous Resurgence and Everyday Practices of Farming in Okinawa.”

Japan and right-wing politics in changing times
 

NARITA, Karin

Research Associate in Japanese Politics and International Relations in the School of Languages, Arts and Societies at the University of Sheffield

Karin Narita is a Research Associate in Japanese Politics and International Relations in the School of Languages, Arts and Societies at the University of Sheffield, having received her Ph.D. from Queen Mary University of London in 2023. Her main research focus is the intellectual history of the Global Right, and she is particularly interested in right-wing ideologies in Japan and East Asia. She is a co-author of World of the Right: Radical Conservatism and Global Order (Cambridge University Press, 2024) and Former Prime Ministers in Japan: Power, Influence and the Role of Informal Politics (Bristol University Press, 2025).

Okinawa in (re-)rising East Asian geopolitical tensions: reconfiguring the spaces and scales of war and coloniality

NISHIYAMA, Hidefumi

Finnish Academy Research Fellow

Geography Research Unit, University of Oulu, Finland
 

Hidefumi Nishiyama is a Finnish Academy Research Fellow working at the Geography Research Unit of the University of Oulu. His research broadly lies in the field of political geography and studies of geopolitics, security, and militarism. His recent research includes the Research Council of Finland-funded project "Spaces of Disregard: An agnotological approach to the geopolitics of Okinawa" (2019-2022), which focused on the post-colonial politics of ignorance concerning the militarised island of Okinawa. He is currently leading two research projects "Militarised Indigenous Borderscapes: Reconfiguring geographies of war and borders" (2023-2028, funded by the Research Council of Finland), which explores military uses of land in Sápmi and Okinawa, and "Youth in the security agenda: rethinking (in)security through young people" (2026-2030, funded by Kone Foundation), which examines security discourses and practices concerning young people in Finland. He has a PhD in Politics and International Studies from the University of Warwick, UK.

Thank You Mario, but Our Princess Has Left the Castle: Female Protagonists in Digital Games for the Japanese Market

POLAK-ROTTMANN, Christina

German Institute for Japanese Studies, Japan

Christina Polak-Rottmann studied Japanese Studies at the Department for East Asian Studies at the University of Vienna. Her research focuses on the analysis of digital games from a cultural studies perspective, examining their contents with regard to sociocultural and posthuman depictions of the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’, transcultural characteristics, war-themed narration and constructions of gender identity and gender roles. Her PhD dissertation studies constructions of female protagonists in digital games that were released for the Japanese market 1997–2017. In her current research project, “Putting Research into Play: Designing a Digital Game on Places of Resilience in Rural Japan,” she explores how digital games may be used as a tool for academic research output.

Tourism, difficult histories and mutual understanding: Cases from Japan

SHARPLEY, Richard

Richard Sharpley, Emeritus Professor of Tourism, University of Lancashire, UK

Richard Sharpley is Emeritus Professor of Tourism at the University of Lancashire, UK, and Visiting Professor at Wakayama University, Japan. His principal research interests are within the fields of tourism and development, island tourism, rural tourism and the sociology of tourism. His most recent book “Tourism and Difficult Histories in Japan” explores the relationship between tourism and difficult histories in Japan. By examining tourist destinations which offer the opportunity to consider dark events in Japanese history in the context of broader contemporary debates surrounding how such events should be remembered and the contribution of these tourist destinations to peace and reconciliation.