Conference Report — The Japan Association of International Relations 2020 Annual ConventionJohanna von Pezold

ASIEN – Nr. 156/157 (2020) pp. 192–93

Caritas International/University of Freiburg, October 23–25, 2020

The Japan Association of International Relations’ (JAIR) 2020 annual convention, Japan’s largest conference in the discipline, took place from October 23 to 25, online, via Zoom. While Japanese scholars are regularly present at international conferences on political science and international relations (IR), events organized by Japanese professional associations remain largely national affairs, still attracting little participation by outsiders. As it turned out, I was among a small number of non-Japanese contributors, in fact the only non-Asian participant based outside of Japan. As such, my participation provided rare insight into the current priorities and discourse of the Japanese IR community. My participation in the conference was made possible by a small grant disbursed by the German Association for Asian Studies (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Asienkunde, DGA)…