CPASセミナー「Cultural Exchange, Fair and Foul: How Blackface and Baseball Crossed the Pacific」
アメリカ太平洋地域研究センター（CPAS）では、5月18日に講演者としてDavid M. Henkin、Rhae Lynn Barnes両氏をお招きし、CPASセミナー「Cultural Exchange, Fair and Foul: How Blackface and Baseball Crossed the Pacific」を開催いたします。
本セミナーは以下の通りハイブリッド方式で開催いたします。対面参加者は参加登録が不要ですが、遠隔参加者は事前登録をお願いいたします。皆様のご参加をお待ちしております。
CPAS Seminar, Globalizing American Studies
Center for Pacific and American Studies (CPAS), University of Tokyo (U-Tokyo)
“Cultural Exchange, Fair and Foul: How Blackface and Baseball Crossed the Pacific”
A Joint Book Talk with David M. Henkin and Rhae Lynn Barnes
Speakers: David M. Henkin (UC Berkeley) and Rhae Lynn Barnes (Princeton University)
Moderator: Ai Hisano 久野愛 (University of Tokyo)
Date & Time: 13:00 – 16:00, Monday, May 18, 2026
Venue: Collaboration Room #1, 4th floor, 18th Building, Komaba I Campus, U-Tokyo
Organizer: CPAS, U-Tokyo
Cosponsor: Institute for Advanced Global Studies, U-Tokyo
Contact: res@cpas.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp
For Zoom Registration: https://u-tokyo-ac-jp.zoom.us/meeting/register/5JQN6SvuRJGNu96CMQzeYw
This event will be held in a hybrid format. In-person attendance does not require pre-registration, and is most welcomed.
Two new historical works challenge us to look beyond the surface of two very different iconic U.S. cultural products— professional baseball and blackface minstrelsy—to reveal a complicated relationship between Japanese and American popular culture. Join David M. Henkin, author of Out of the Ballpark: How to Think About Baseball, and Rhae Lynn Barnes, author of Darkology: Blackface and the American Way of Entertainment, for a provocative discussion.
Both authors examine how their subjects disseminated globally, emphasizing a profound trans-Pacific history. Baseball, introduced to Japan not long after Commodore Perry’s arrival, grew quickly as a spectators sport played by amateurs and became an important civilizing instrument in Japanese imperial expansion, particularly in Korea and Taiwan. At the same time, Japan’s embrace of Stephen Foster’s blackface music became so foundational that his melodies were incorporated into the national songbooks (shōka) and then exported throughout the Japanese empire. These cultural traditions were then exploited by the US government, with minstrelsy acting as a symbol of the Americanization of Japanese-descended U.S. citizens in World War II concentration camps. Both separately, and in conversation, the two authors offer a powerful exploration of cultural history, racial politics, the role of the U.S. federal government, and the enduring and complicated legacy of American popular entertainment across the Pacific.
