CJS Noon Lecture Series | Recrafting Closeness in Death: Relational Proxies for Future Japan/ese

Please note: This lecture will be held in person in room 555, Weiser Hall, and virtually on Zoom. The webinar is free and open to the public, but registration is required. Once you've registered, joining information will be sent to your email. Register for the Zoom webinar at: https://myumi.ch/jJNP2

Japan is often called a “relationless society” ( muenshakai). No longer tethered to the “thick bonds” of workplace, village, and home, Japanese are losing forms of connectedness (en) that once ensured social reproduction as well. In these post-growth times, alongside a high-aging population and declining marital and childbirth rates, singlehood is on the rise as are aging seniors “without anyone to depend upon” ( miyori ga nai). In the face of spiraling all-aloneness, there is deep-seated distress over the state of “Japanese sociality” in an era “lacking family” ( naki jidai). But emerging as well is an avalanche of new designs and relational proxies, stand-ins or replacements for what once constituted human bonds: virtual characters, techno-companions, rental spouses, care robots, and pets. The talk essay considers such relational stand-ins not for the living but for the dead. Targeting social singles at risk of dying lonely deaths and remaining dislocated souls ( muenbotoke) after that, a wealth of new products, services, and apparati promises “relationality” post-death. What kind of sociality is envisioned here; is it modeled upon or transgressive of the familial form, and (how) do these new notions of self/other-hood portend a future for Japan/ese?

Anne Allison is a professor of cultural anthropology at Duke University. Her research on contemporary issues in Japan spans nightlife, popular culture, Pokémon, sexuality, gender, precarity, and death. She is the author of Nightwork, Millennial Monsters, Precarious Japan, and, most recently, Being Dead Otherwise—the winner of the John Whitney Hall Book Award for 2025.

This lecture is made possible with the generous support of the U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant.

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at cjsevents@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.