What does it take to produce one of Japan’s most relaxing spaces: the traditional Japanese inn, or ryokan? In this talk, Chris McMorran reveals ryokan work through both space and time. He distinguishes the exterior work of men (landscaping, business meetings) from the interior work of women. This includes the everyday tasks of cleaning, serving, and making guests feel at home, plus the generational work of producing and training a suitable heir who can carry on the family business.
Chris will share vignettes from a year in the life of a ryokan, based on intensive fieldwork during which he welcomed guests, carried luggage, scrubbed baths, folded towels, cleaned rooms, laid out bedding, and washed dishes, all while talking with ryokan owners and the small army of non-family employees about their jobs, relationships, concerns, and aspirations.
If you have ever stayed in a ryokan, experienced Japanese hospitality of any kind, or been curious about life behind the scenes in a small family-run business in Japan, please join us on 14th January at 7.30pm SGT (GMT +8)! Sign up here: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_U1LayKSIR-O09FyL3T_vIg
About Chris McMorran:
Chris McMorran is Associate Professor of Japanese Studies at the National University of Singapore. He is a cultural geographer of contemporary Japan who researches the geographies of home across scale, from the body to the nation. His latest work is Ryokan: Mobilizing Hospitality in Rural Japan (2021, University of Hawai’i Press), an intimate study of a Japanese inn, based on twelve months spent scrubbing baths, washing dishes, and making guests feel at home at a hot springs resort. He also has published research on tourism, disasters, gendered labour, area studies, field-based learning, and popular culture, including as co-editor of Teaching Japanese Popular Culture (2016).
Chris co-produces the Home on the Dot podcast with NUS students, which explores the meaning of home on the little red dot called Singapore. He is a past winner of the NUS Outstanding Educator Award and a Fellow of the NUS Teaching Academy. Chris grew up in a small town in Iowa but has lived outside the U.S. for much of his adult life, including Japan and Singapore, which he now calls home.