From the Foundation

On Thursday, October 25, the Toyota Foundation hosted a public symposium on the theme “Ties Between People Will Unlock Asia’s Potential: What Network Formation Generates” at the Hyatt Regency Tokyo. This symposium, which began at 1:30 PM, was organized with the twin goals of deepening public understanding of the Asian Neighbors Network Program and broadly sharing the experiences it has engendered.

The three speakers making presentations in the symposium’s main program were all recipients of Toyota Foundation grants under the Asian Neighbors Network Program. They spoke about their experiences in running the funded projects, the events that inspired them to seek to create networks and the process of their creation, the products of the networks thus formed, and what they hope their networks will achieve in the future.

In the first presentation Shiho Tsuji of Aichi Prefectural University spoke from the viewpoint of elucidating “unseen ties,” discussing her research project titled “Creation of Regional and Personal Networks on the Legend of Xu Fu: The Possibilities of New Comparative Studies Based on Oral Literature.”

As described in the Records of the Grand Historian, Xu Fu was a sorcerer who set sail with a fleet of thousands of sailors in 219 BCE on the orders of Qin Shihuang, the first Qin emperor, in search of the elixir of life, said to exist on the “three sacred mountains” rising in the eastern seas. Some tales say that he took with him the five staple grains and a group of engineers, allowing him to take over an area of what is said to have been Japan and set himself up as a king, not returning to China. Various legends about Xu Fu have long been handed down in numerous areas of China, Korea, and Japan.

In her project, Tsuji traveled to the different areas where these legends still remain and where events celebrating Xu Fu take place, communicating regularly with the elderly residents who maintain and hand down old traditions. By taking on the role of liaison officer in addition to main researcher, she was able to deepen ties among the people in each region who have kept the legends alive, thereby helping to revitalize local communities through activities related to Xu Fu and ensure that the tales are passed on to the next generation. In her symposium presentation she reported that the Xu Fu legend is becoming an increasingly active topic of debate in research circles. Her speech made it clear that what had started as an attempt to create a personal network, with her at the center keeping the people in different areas connected, was gradually resulting in the formation of a network that functions even without her.

The second presentation was from Shin Aiba of Tokyo Metropolitan University. He spoke on his project, “Construction of a Network and Archive on the History of Community Development in East Asian Countries,” from the perspective of discovering both unique and universal themes through exchange and comparison activities.

Aiba worked to create a network of young researchers focusing on the modern history of urban planning in Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. In this project, through joint interviews of people in each country at the forefront of urban planning, the members of this network have sought to describe a common history and to pass the experiences of those leading figures down to younger generations. Aiba’s project did not seek to carry out research as such, but rather built up the foundation of shared consciousness that will inform future research in this field. For this reason his methodology was kept simple, with the main focus on providing forums for people to meet and discuss matters in person. In his speech he reported that he is taking care to create as many nodes as possible in this network.

In response to a question from the floor on how the results of his work could be presented, Aiba noted that rather than producing academic papers as the results of the program, he hoped to achieve results by delivering messages directly to the people living in the areas under consideration.

The final presentation was from Tetsuo Tsutsui of the Shapla Neer Citizens’ Committee in Japan for Overseas Support, who spoke on the project “The Role and Relationships of International NGOs and Local NGOs in a Global Community: The Example of South Asia.”

The international NGO Shapla Neer was founded in 1972. At first it was directly involved in projects on the ground in Bangladesh, but beginning in 1996, when it launched its first activities in Nepal, it began working in cooperation with local NGOs in the areas of activity. The group has worked in this way for more than 10 years now. In the process of its projects, Shapla Neer came to confront fundamental questions on the proper role of international NGOs and the best ties to seek with local counterparts. This project has its roots in a desire to define a course for the group’s future activities by creating networks involving various NGOs. The purpose of this project is, in short, to clarify Shapla Neer’s own position through its ties with other groups.

Tsutsui noted that through this project his organization had come to understand that its partnerships with other groups were not fixed in stone, and that all its meaningful activities began with the act of communicating to the partners exactly what Shapla Neer hoped to accomplish. The group’s networking efforts paid off in unexpected ways, such as the lack of difficulty it had gathering information and launching initial efforts in the wake of disasters like the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the October 2005 Pakistan earthquake. It was clear from his presentation that even now that the project has ended, Shapla Neer is carrying out its daily activities with an understanding that relationships between foreign and local NGOs are bidirectional and are a process of constant change.

Following the three presentations, Haruo Miyamura of Seikei University offered his commentary: when dealing with multiple communities that, while they may share the same roots, have a diverse range of present states, researchers must find ways to act as a catalyst of sorts.

The symposium was wrapped up with a summary from Kozo Hiramatsu of Kyoto University. He recognized the difficulty of identifying just what the benchmark should be when gauging the results of network formation activities. However, he argued, it is those networks that function most naturally that are truly vital networks. This observation may well become an important theme in next fiscal year’s Asian Neighbors Network Program.

The gathering closed with a lively question and answer session, ending on an energetic note.