Date: 13-15 March 2018
Place: Kyoto University, Inamori Foundation Memorial Building, 3rd floor, Large Meeting Room
Access: https://en.kyoto.cseas.kyoto-u.ac.jp/.
Nearest train station: Jingu-Marutamachi St.

Registration: For those interested in attending the event please register until 11th March. Registration will be closed once reached the total number of participants. Please send the following information to the email address below:
1. Name,
2. Affiliation,
3. Position,
4. Nationality,
5. Email address,
6. Date and time of attendance
culturenvironment[at]cseas.kyoto-u.ac.jp

Co-organization:
Unit of Academic Knowledge Integration Studies of Kyoto University Research Coordination Alliance (UAKIS-KURCA)
Glocal Information Platform of Japan-ASEAN Platform for Transdisciplinary Studies
Research Unit for Development of Global Sustainability (RUDGS-KURCA)
Kyoto University Graduate School of Advanced Integrated Studies in Human Survivability (KU-GSAIS)

Program(Tentative):
　DAY ONE: 13 March (Tue.)
9:40~10:00 OPENING FIRST DAY
Greetings (KŌNO Yasuyuki, KU-CSEAS)
Greetings (MIZUNO Kōsuke, KU-CSEAS/ RUDGS)
Theme’s Rationale: The Systemic View in the Debate about Human-Nature Interactions (Andrea URUSHIMA, KU-CSEAS)

10:00~ 12:20 SESSION 1
Chairman: YANAGISAWA Masayuki (KU-CSEAS)
Presentation 1: Brazilian Atlantic Forest — Occupation, Death and Protection of Forest Remnants and Biodiversity. Neli DE MELLO-THÉRY (USP-EACH/IEA)
Presentation 2: Earth’s System Under Transformation — Humans and Geodiversity in an Anthropocene Perspective. Ricardo FRAGA PEREIRA (UFBA-IGEO)
Presentation 3: Lifetime of Human Occupations in Amazonia: Rethinking Human Presence and Landscape Transformation. Anne RAPP/ Claide MORAES (UFOPA-ICS)
Comments: Wil DE JONG (KU-CSEAS)/ KOHSHIMA Shiro (KU-WRC)

12:20~ Lunch

14:00 ~ 15:30 KEYNOTE LECTURE
Chairman: YAMASHIKI Yōsuke (KU-GSAIS)
Ancient culture and natural disaster – examples in East Asia (Provisional Title)
IZUMI Takura (KU- GSAIS)

(Obs.: Japanese-English Consecutive Translation will be available)

15:30~ Coffee Break

15:45~18:00 SESSION 2
Chairman: Andrea URUSHIMA (KU-CSEAS)
Presentation 4: Life Cycle of Brazilian Cities. Herve THÉRY (USP-EACH/ CNRS-CREDA)
Presentation 5: Center, Centrality and Consumption in Middle-Sized Cities’ Systems. Eliseu SPOSITO (UNESP-IGCE)
Presentation 6: Traditional Farming Systems on the Steep Slopes in Mountainous Areas of Tokushima. HAGIWARA Hachirō (Shikoku U-FMIS)

Comments: OKABE Akiko (UTokyo-GSFS)/ MATSUMOTO Yutaka (OSU-FDT)

18:00~ 18:30 First Day Closing
Moderator: Rohan D’SOUZA (KU-ASAFAS)

19:00~ Dinner

　DAY TWO: 14 March (Wed.)
9:40~9:45 OPENING SECOND DAY
Greetings (HARA Shōichirō, KU-CSEAS/ UAKIS-KURCA)

9:45~11:45 SESSION 3
Chairman: Andrea URUSHIMA (KU-CSEAS)

Presentation 7: Intercomparison survey among cities for the sustainable use of surface water and its impact of untreated wastewater in the river / lake basin system. YAMASHIKI Yōsuke (KU-GSAIS)
Presentation 8: Multiple Benefits Assessment of the Clean Energy Development in Asian Cities. Hooman FARZANEH (KU-IAE)
Presentation 9: Brazilian Metropolitan Natural Areas: Dissonances and Interactions between Rural and Urban on Macro Metropolitan Context. Roberta FONTAN (KU-CSEAS)
Comment: Neli DE MELLO-THÉRY (USP-EACH); Herve THÉRY (USP-EACH/ CNRS-CREDA)

11:45~12:30 SPECIAL TALK:
Chairman: YAMASHIKI Yōsuke (KU-GSAIS)
SDGs and Its Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities (Provisional Title)
KONDŌ Tetsuo (UNDP Tokyo)

12:30~ Lunch

14:00~18:30 Field Trip Survey

　DAY THREE: 15 March (Thu.)
10:30~12:30 FINAL CLOSING DISCUSSION:
Moderator: TBD

LIST OF PARTICIPANTS*

(*The list follows the order of appearance in the program)

KEYNOTE LECTURE:

• Izumi Takura (Archeology, KU-GSAIS)

PARTICIPANTS IN SESSIONS:

• Neli de Mello-Théry (Geography, USP-EACH/IEA)
• Ricardo Fraga Pereira (Geology, UFBA-IGEO)
• Claide Moraes / Anne Rapp (Archeology, UFOPA-ICS)
• Hervé Théry (Geography, USP-EACH/ CNRS-CREDA)
• Eliseu Sposito (Geography, UNESP-IGCE)
• Hagiwara Hachirō (Geography, Shikoku U-FMIS)
• Yamashiki Yōsuke (Hidrology, KU-GSAIS)
• Roberta Fontan (Urban and Regional Planning, KU-CSEAS)
• Hooman Farzaneh (Engineering, KU-IAE)

SPECIAL TALK:

• Tetsuo Kondō (UNDP Representative at Tokyo Office)

DISCUSSANTS:

• Kōno Yasuyuki（Livelihood Management, KU-CSEAS）
• Mizuno Kōsuke（Economic Policy, KU-CSEAS）
• Andrea Urushima (Urban Environmental Studies, KU-CSEAS)
• Yanagisawa Masayuki（Agro-ecology, KU-CSEAS）
• Wil de Jong (Environmental Governance, KU-CSEAS)
• Kohshima Shiro (Ethology, KU-WRC)
• Rohan d’Souza (Environmental History, KU-ASAFAS)
• Okabe Akiko（Urban Environmental Studies, UTokyo-GSFS）
• Matsumoto Yutaka（Urban Environmental Studies, OSU-FDT）
• Hara Shōichirō（Information Science, KU-CSEAS）

LIST OF PARTICIPATING INSTITUTIONS*

KU-CSEAS (Kyoto University, Center for Southeast Asia and Area Studies)
KU-RUDGS (Kyoto University, Research Unit for Development of Global Sustainability)
USP-EACH (University of Sao Paulo, School of Arts Sciences and Humanities)
USP-IEA (University of Sao Paulo, Institute of Advanced Studies)
UFBA-IGEO (Federal University of Bahia, Institute of Geosciences)
UFOPA-ICS (Federal University of Western Para, Institute of Sciences of the Society)
KU-WRC (Kyoto University, Wildlife Research Center)
KU-GSAIS (Kyoto University, Faculty for Graduate School of Advanced Integrated Studies in Human Survivability)
CNRS-CREDA (French National Centre for Scientific Research, Centre for Research and Documentation on the Americas)
UNESP-IGCE (Sao Paulo State University, Institute of Geosciences and Exact Sciences)
Shikoku U-FMIS (Shikoku University, Faculty of Management and Information Science)
UTokyo-GSFS (University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences)
OSU-FDT (Osaka Sangyō University, Faculty of Design Technology)
KU-ASAFAS (Kyoto University, Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies)
KU-IAE (Kyoto University, Institute of Advanced Energy)
UNDP-Tokyo (UNDP Representative Office in Japan, Tokyo)

Brazil-Japan Seminar on Cultural Environments

Seminar explanation:
Following the First and Second Brazil-Japan Seminar on Cultural Environments held on FY2015 and FY2016, we are pleased to announce the preparation of the third event to be held in March 2018.
The “Brazil-Japan Seminar on Cultural Environments” was created with the objective of promoting the encounter of scholars interested in the debate about the processes of making, interpreting and interacting with cultural environments. This seminar serves as an interdisciplinary platform that aims at promoting the exchange and collaboration between Brazilian and Japanese scholars; between scholars engaged in research about Brazil and Japan; and between scholars interested in studies of a global scope that include Brazil and Japan as case studies.

The Relevance of “Cultural Environments”
Among the earliest records where the use of the expression “cultural environment ” was employed it is worth to cite the book “The geographic basis of society (1933)”, written by the American geographers Charles Clifford Huntington and Fred Albert Carlson. In that book, the geographers discussed how man interacts with the habitat from a point of view that was quite innovative at that time. They argued that man and his habitat appear to be the product of each other in a ‘dynamic’ process of change and interaction. In Japan, one of the first scholars to use the expression ‘bunka kankyō’ was the geographer Kojima Eiji in 1938. Although this is an example that demonstrates the early appearance of this expression within scholarly writings, it is rare to find it in other writings of the Prewar period in Japan. This expression began to be largely used and gained attention during the Postwar period, at first in the writings of scholars from education related fields interested in the debate of how the living environment of children affected learning. It was especially after the 1960s period that the expression ‘cultural environment bunka kankyō’ was definitively incorporated into the debate about the dynamic and interactive relations established between man and environment. The scope of the definition and amplitude of the use of the expression was then enlarged and influenced the apparition of original writings that included the article ‘Man’s physical characteristics and environment’, published in 1969. In this article, the anatomist and professor of Niigata University School of Medicine, Ogata Tamotsu, investigated rather the climatic and geologic alterations of the Jomon period were a cause of change in human daily life activities, that subsequently changed the physical characteristics of human bodies, a hypothesis which he tried to confirm through the study of skeletons.

Nowadays, the expression is largely used, with varied definitions, in writings produced by researchers from varied disciplines, such as, social sciences, environmental studies, architecture and planning, anthropology, among others. The broad, integrative and inclusive range of use of this expression allows the breeding of a debate of great actuality and relevance to our global society. In an effort to understand better the causes and effects of environmental change and its relation to human living this seminar will generate an academic debate that overcomes disciplinary limitations through an integrative approach to knowledge production. Participants in this seminar are invited to think about how humans live and interact with their surrounding environments, with a debate that will support to overcome the long-standing separation between nature and culture.

3rd Session (FY2017) Specific Theme
Lifetime of Urban, Regional and Natural Systems
“When do fields replace forests? When do cities and villages are born and die? When are forests restored?”

This seminar will focus on the topic of continuity and decay in urban, rural and natural systems. The longevity of varied systems has depended upon dynamic interactions occurring at variable levels. In planning theory, theoretical streams linked evolutionary metaphors to the livability of cities, towns and villages: human settlements existed through vital forces and energy flows (vitalism), from a holistic-organic perspective (organicism) or from a viewpoint of urban dynamics based on natural evolutionary theories (Mehmood 2010).

Theoreticians of cities wrote about the lifetime of human settlements, about urban expansion and retraction, and eventually, some interpreted the lifetime of human settlements with analogies to ecological cycles and evolutionary models. One of the earliest was the biologist Patrick Geddes, who developed theories linking the livability of cities with their surrounding regions. Geddes broke apart with disciplinary boundaries, tried to integrate biological notions to social theories, and became a great advocate of “regional survey”. Following his steps, other figures worth to mention include the American journalist, Jane Jacobs who wrote about the death and life of American cities; the historian Lewis Mumford, who wrote about the natural history of urbanization, and the mathematician Christopher Alexander who wrote about the nature of order in an acclaimed statement about cities’ existence through networks. In Japan, one of the earliest to link together a theory of life to the formation of cities was the sociologist Okui Fukutaro since the Prewar period. Nowadays, an accumulated knowledge towards making cities comfortable has led cities to reach high-levels of livability able to respond to the needs of many people. Urban concentration has steadily increased, in parallel to an increment in environmental problems, depopulation of rural areas and other issues. It is urgent to discuss rather urbanization is an inevitable outcome of human evolution as a species. If we consider as a fundamental characteristic of the human nature to incessantly accumulate knowledge and create technology oriented towards the well-living of humans, probably people will continue to concentrate in cities. A deep reflection about the consequences and the potential alternatives to this trend is needed.

We would like to invite contributions from varied disciplinary views to discuss about the above. We invite contributions that discuss how urbanization and development interfere in natural settings; the complex interactions between human and non-human living patterns of existence; how societies and environments respond to that; and how associated transitions (spatial-social-cultural-environmental etc) are interpreted, evaluated and dealt with in Brazil, Japan or from a comparative viewpoint.