Brandon M. Bodenstein

These cards are a part of a trading card game. The game is Jin Collect. Here the lives, expressions and experiences of foreigners and Japanese are transformed into playable characters. The cards have been created by numerous foreigners and Japanese living in Japan. This work aims to reflect on the many stereotypes imposed and experienced daily in Japan. This is an interactive work, allowing participants to view the cards created by other foreigners and then create their cards via a card generator available online via a QR code. These generated cards can then be uploaded and added to the collection of cards for future events and will be viewable online on an Instagram account. The cards express stereotypes of the “foreigner” and “Japanese” alike. The aim is to demonstrate the often reductive engagement between “self” and “other” in social interactions.

I am a scholar in the Joint Doctoral Program for Sustainability Research (JDPSR) at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. South African trained Anthropologists always keen on a story. Myinterests rest in human geography, anthropology of sustainability, policy, and migration in Japan’s forestry and agricultural sectors. Specifically, I am interested in the experiences of short-term migrants in the rural periphery, Japan’s labour shortages and the politics of migrant belonging in Japan in the twenty-first century. I have an ongoing project on the questions and public formations of sustainability (also my inspiration for JinCo. Pop) and the development of work around the role of migrant labour in the 21st century in Asia and Africa.