Join us for the Daebak Spartans Spring Showcase on April 19th, 2026 at the Kellogg Auditorium. This event highlights K-pop performances prepared by members throughout the semester, celebrating their hard work and creativity on stage.

Doors open at 3 PM, and the show begins at 4 PM. Come out to support student performers and enjoy an energetic and engaging performance experience!

Funded by the U.S. Department of Education, the Technology Facilitated Chinese Language Teaching (TFCLT) project examines how digital tools are shaping Chinese language instruction across U.S. post-secondary institutions. 

In this talk, Dr. Jiahang Li will present findings from a national survey conducted as part of the TFCLT project, highlighting key trends in enrollment, course offerings, and instructional practices. The presentation will also explore instructors' perspectives on technology integration and the growing role of generative AI in language education, offering insights into current challenges and future directions in the field.

Paper submission deadline: March 27th. 

Michiyoshi Sato is a national champion of Tsugaru-jamisen, a dynamic and improvisatory style of Japanese folk music played on a banjo-like instrument called a shamisen. He is the founder and lead singer of KOTOBUKI Band, a festival-themed east/west fusion performance group that combines music, dance, comedy, and audience participation. His other accomplishments include appearing as a recurring character on the popular NHK program "Nihongo de asobo" and, more recently, composing commercial film scores. Sato will be joined for this concert by Yoshiaki Shiratori on shakuhachi (flute) and Yusaku Kanno on keyboard; interpretation and commentary will be provided by Dr. Joshua Lee Solomon of Hirosaki University (Japan).

This event, part of the Midwest Japan Seminar, is made possible by a generous grant from the U.S.-Japan Foundation, administered by the MSU Asian Studies Center.

"Democracy, Stunted: The U.S. Liberal Hegemonic Projection and the Making of Japanese Conservative One-Party Dominance in Cold War Asia"

The interplay of conflicting forces in the US Occupation and in Japan set the basic parameters within which postwar Japanese politics unfolded -captured by the contradiction of a puppet democracy. The United States, on the other hand, as a liberal hegemon, preferred the new Japan to embody a liberal, anti-communist variety of democracy, ideally based on a pluralist competition of the ruling elites, but as a hegemon, it could live with the emergence of a unified hegemonic party of these conservative elites, if that was what it took to block the leftist parties that stirred up the untamed Japanese masses with a call for an anti-imperialist democratic action from coming to power. By mastering the American language of democracy, the Japanese conservative elites were able to reconsolidate their hegemonic position within Japanese domestic politics against the leftist proponents of egalitarian and participatory democracy. The fact that the eftist parties have never jettisoned their pacifism and chose instead to give up the chance to win power has often been criticized as irresponsible and hypocritical by the trans-Pacific political and academic elites, but by doing so, the leftist parties saved Japanese democracy and peace from the diktats of the American hegemon.