The Making of Contemporary Japan in the Hispanic Imaginaries

Javier Pérez-Jara

Date: June 18, 2025

Time: 18:30-20:00

Venue: Room 301, Building 10, Sophia University

Format: In person

The presentation explores how contemporary Japan is represented across the cultural imaginaries of the Spanish-speaking world, tracing the long-standing influence of orientalist narratives. Focusing especially on the present, it examines the role of social media and digital journalism in perpetuating both idealized and negative portrayals of Japan. The aim is to foreground the psychosocial mechanisms—such as cognitive biases—that shape these perceptions and to

invite a more critical, reflexive approach to cross-cultural understanding.

Javier Pérez-Jara is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and East Asian Studies at the University of Seville and Faculty Fellow at Yale’s Center for Cultural Sociology. He earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy in 2012 and conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge before teaching for eight years at Beijing Foreign Studies University. He is the author of Techno-Utopia and Techno-Apocalypse in Global Capitalism (CUP, forthcoming), co-author of Science and Apocalypse in Bertrand Russell (Lexington 2022), and co-editor of Dramatic Intellectuals (Palgrave Macmillan 2025), Beyond Nature and Nurture (Springer Synthese 2025), and Contemporary Materialism (Springer Synthese 2022). Pérez-Jara has held visiting positions at the Universities of Stanford, Yale, Tokyo, Kyoto, Sangyo, Gothenburg, Aristotle of Thessaloniki, Fu Jen Catholic, and Minzu of China.

This talk is organized by Takehiro Watanabe (Associate professor of Anthropology, Sophia University)