Asian Ethnology Podcast

Interview with Mark Bookman: Disability, Accessibility, and COVID-19 in Japan

Interviewer: Ben Dorman, co-editor Asian Ethnology

Recorded 30 March 2020, Nagoya & Tokyo

This episode features Mark Bookman, a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania and a visiting researcher at the university of Tokyo. Mark is completing his doctoral dissertation on the history of disability policy and related social movements in Japan. Mark discusses his personal challenges researching while using a wheelchair, changing research topics from Buddhism to disability in Japan, and accessibility issues related to COVID-19, including “transnational accessibility.”

Discussed in this episode

Bookman, Mark, and Michael Gillan Peckitt. “Facing the COVID-19 crisis in Japan with a disability.” Japan Times, 30 March 2020.

Bookman, Mark. “Paralympics as Possibility.”,TEDxFulbrightTokyo, March 2019.

Music used with kind permission of the performer, shamisen master Koji Yamaguchi.