CJS Spring 2016 Newsletter

Centre for Japanese Studies E-Newsletter Spring 2016 Welcome to the UEA Centre for Japanese Studies spring e-newsletter. Please forward this on to anyone you think may be interested and let us know about any events or news you think would be of interest to the Japanese studies community in Norwich. The deadline for the next issue is 30 April 2016.

How to connect with Japan-related teaching, research and events through the Centre for Japanese Studies? It’s simple: 

Keep an eye on the website (www.uea.ac.uk/cjs) for full details of Japan-related teaching and research, and details of the members of CJS.

CJS Office is at ARTS 0.13A (just along the corridor from where we were before) with the same telephone number (591819). You can also reach us through email (cjs@uea.ac.uk).

Vice Chancellor makes first visit to Japan: In November the Vice Chancellor, Professor David Richardson made his first visit to Japan. As Vice Chancellor of UEA, Professor Richardson is also Chair of the Management Board of the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures, and most of the visits were made in both roles. In the course of a busy week he visited our major partners in Japan and hosted a reception at the International House of Japan. The visit began at Meiji Shrine in Tokyo, home to the Meiji Shrine Research Institute, with which the Sainsbury Institute is currently engaged in a series of lectures on the theme of ‘Tokyo Futures’, looking towards the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and Paralympic. Following meetings with the Presidents of the Japan Foundation, Toshiba Corporation, the Ishibashi Foundation, and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, as well as stopping by the Nippon Foundation, Professor Richardson spent a day at the University of Tsukuba, located in Japan’s science city. The ADAPT Group, where the organisation behind UEA’s inspirational new Enterprise Centre, has brokered a collaboration agreement with the Tsukuba Seed Company. A brief visit to the Edo-Tokyo Museum and we were on the bullet train to Kyoto, where meetings were held at the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, and Ryukoku University, one of the 14 universities up and down Japan which host our 3rd year Japanese language degree students – the Vice Chancellor found time to meet with UEA students studying both around Tokyo and in Kyoto. Ryukoku is located in the grounds of the massive Nishi-Honganji Temple, and boasts a very fine University Museum where there was time to enjoy an excellent temporary exhibition of Khmer art. A fuller report is available in the e-magazine of the Sainsbury Institute http://sainsbury-institute.org/support-us/e-magazine-issue-14/the-sainsbury-institute-abroad/ along

with the speech given by the Vice Chancellor during the reception in Tokyo http://sainsburyinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Remarks-by-Professor-David-Richardson.pdf.

PPL staff members’ university visits: During the summer 2015, Mika Brown visited Hokkaido University, Ritsumeikan University and Meiji Gakuin University. Dr Umezawa Kaoru visited Kobe College and International Christian University (ICU). Our first cohort of students to complete a year abroad in Japan all returned in the autumn, and a further 18 third year Japanese degree students flew to out Japan. Mika visited Tokyo and Kyoto again in December 2015 and saw some of the students who were all enjoying their time in Japan and discovering the language and culture.

UEA invited to join the prestigious Sakura Network by the Japan Foundation: Only one other English university, and that is in the north of England (Newcastle) is in this network, along with one in Scotland (Edinburgh) and one in Wales (Cardiff). We join 145 institutions around the world, in 45 countries and regions, working with the Japan Foundation to spread interest in learning Japanese Hot opportunities: Sasakawa Postgraduate Studentships: applications must be submitted to the Centre for Japanese Studies by 1 March 2016. In 2015-16 UEA was awarded two studentships, each of which are worth £10,000 towards tuition fees and living costs. Candidates interested in MA’s with a Japanese flavour are particularly encouraged to apply. Although UEA does not currently offer any dedicated Japanese MA programmes, candidates interested in developing a Japanese theme within any UEA MA programme is eligible to apply. https://www.uea.ac.uk/japanese-studies.

Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Fellowships: applications for these annual post-doctoral Fellowships at the Sainsbury Institute will close on March 1. http://sainsbury-institute.org/fellowships/robert-andlisa-sainsbury-fellowship/.

JSPS Postdoctoral Fellowship (Long Term): Application Deadline: Monday, 14th March 2016.

Fellowships must be started between 1st September and 30th November 2016. The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) is the leading research funding agency in Japan, established by the Japanese Government for the purpose of contributing to the advancement of science. JSPS Postdoctoral Fellowship for Foreign Researchers (Long Term) provides the opportunity for researchers based outside of Japan to conduct collaborative research activities with leading research groups at Japanese universities and research institutions for visits of between 12 to 24 months.

Eligible applicants should be citizens of the UK or EU and need to have finished their PhD at a UK university or research institution at the time of applying to start their fellowship in Japan or have obtained their PhD after 2nd April 2010. https://royalsociety.org/grants-schemes-awards/grants/jspspostdoctoral.

Japanese Studies International Summer School: CJS is once again working with the International Programmes Office to organise the third Summer School in Japanese Studies www.uea.ac.uk/summerstudyabroad/japan. We are again fortunate to be able to offer full bursaries to a number of students from central and eastern Europe thanks to our partnership with the Toshiba International Foundation, and for other UK and European students thanks to the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures. Applications due by March 31. For Flyer: https://issuu.com/ueacipo/docs/uea_japanorientationleaflet_pages__.

Sainsbury Institute – University of Tokyo Short-term Programmes in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage: In late February we will welcome a group of undergraduates from the Faculty of Letters at the University of Tokyo, the first in a series of planned annual visits designed to introduce British archaeology and cultural heritage. As reported in the last e–newsletter, UEA students have already been among those benefitting from related short-term programmes in Japan. The programme will be lead by Dr Sam Nixon, Senior Research Associate at the Sainsbury Institute. Sam has worked closely with colleagues at UEA to develop five online programmes about the tour, introducing some of the people the participants will meet and the sites they will visit – we hope to make this online resource more widely available in the near future. There will shortly be a further call for applicants for the Japan Short-term Programme, which will be held in early September 2016.

First UEA Japanese Language Speech Contest: Nikkei Telecom Speech Contest: The 4th Nikkei Telecom Speech Contest (the 1st at UEA) will be held at Council Chamber on Friday 22nd April at 10:00. Nikkei is a prestigious Japanese newspaper who have recently acquired the Financial Times.

The final year students of Japanese at UEA have been working on creating a speech using Nikkei Telecom Database. They have been given access to the Nikkei Database during the academic year so they can freely browse and conduct searches of varieties of articles online. Students have studied the articles, selected the topic of their interest, and created a speech in Japanese. The finalists will compete on the day of contest and Nikkei are generously offering a range of prizes. This is an open event, so please come along and show your support! Organised by Dr Umezawa Kaoru.

Global Opportunities Japan Day: UEA CareerCentral kicked off their annual Global Opportunities week with Japan Day on Mon 1st February. Representatives from the Embassy of Japan spoke about the JET and MEXT programmes, DISCO spoke to Japanese speaking students about graduate recruitment in Japan, a former DAIWA scholar spoke about his experiences in Japan on the DAIWA scholarship and Interac closed the day and spoke about the opportunities to teach English in Japan on their programmes. The Centre for Japanese Studies provided Japanese snacks that were enjoyed by all and the Japan Society performed a dance in the square https://www.dropbox.com/s/a60s63knke82lnw/Japanese%20Society%20Dance.mp4?dl=0 – an excellent start to Global Opportunities week.

Brecklands-Nagawa Link. Last autumn we were pleased to hear about two prestigious awards for our colleagues in the Brecklands-Nagawa project. The flint specialist David Smith who designed and worked on the monument of the Nagawa Town’s new building http://www.flintman.co.uk/projects/japan-obsidian/, was the consultant for the building of The Flint House which was selected for the Royal Institute of British Architecture (RIBA) Award, and the Ancient House Museum in Thetford was named the winner of the EDP Visit Norfolk Tourism Awards’ ‘Best Visitor Attraction’ in the under 50,000 category. Congratulations to both! Nagawa has completed both the monument and the new building work and is planning to send some ‘Nagawa Young Obsidian Ambassadors’ to the U.K. this summer. There are more events planned for this project in July.

Niigata University of Health and Welfare is sending trainee nurses to Norwich this spring again.

This year’s visit is hosted and coordinated by Dr Anthony Germy from Health Sciences and Dr Susanne Lindqvist, Director of the Centre for Interprofessional Practice at the Norwich Medical School, who plan to deepen connections with health professionals in Japan. The agreement is to be renewed after 5 years.

Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto will once again be sending a group of students to spend a month at UEA in February and March. While improving their English communication skills, they will also be working with Japanese language degree students in PPL on a special project comparing Norwich with Kyoto.

The Sainsbury Institute Annual Report and e-Magazine: are out now. http://sainsburyinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Annual-report-sainsbury_institute_20132014_notrim.2.pdf and http://sainsbury-institute.org/support-us/e-magazine/ Dates for your Diary: THURSDAY 18 FEBRUARY: ‘The Portrait, painted in 1916’, by Tanaka Atsushi, Deputy Director at the National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, Tokyo. SISJAC Third Thursday Lecture 18.00 Norwich Cathedral Hostry. Entry free. All welcome.

WEDNESDAY 24 FEBRUARY: 18.00 CJS Reception at Council Chamber on campus to welcome Winter Programme and Niigata University of Health and Welfare, Ritsumeikan University groups and Kokugakuin staff members. Please contact: cjs@uea.ac.uk for further information.

THURSDAY 17 MARCH: ‘What can "Religion" be in Art and Architecture in Modernity? Some Thoughts on Kyoto/Japan and Norwich/England’, by Dr Tsuchikane Yasuko, Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Fellow. SISJAC Third Thursday Lecture. 18.00 Norwich Cathedral Hostry. Entry free. All welcome.

THURSDAY 21 APRIL: ‘Myriad Countries’: The Outside World on Historical Maps of Japan’, by Dr Radu Leca, Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Fellow. SISJAC Third Thursday Lecture 18.00 Norwich Cathedral Hostry. Entry free. All welcome.

THURSDAY 21-FRIDAY 22 APRIL: Norwich-City of Interculture Event at the Forum, Norwich, organised by PPL. Free and all welcome. Please see: https://www.uea.ac.uk/lcs/city-of-interculture.

FRIDAY 22 APRIL: Nikkei Telecom Speech Contest. 10:00-12:00 at UEA Council Chamber. Entry free. All welcome.

UNTIL NOVEMBER 2016: ‘Flint and obsidian’: special exhibition on flint at the Ancient House Museum in Thetford, which includes obsidian artefacts from Nagawa-machi in Nagano, part of the initiative linking the Neolithic flint mines of Grimes Graves in Thetford with the Hoshikuso obsidian mines in Nagawa. This special exhibition will run for a year (till November 2016) and there will be a conference relating to flint and obsidian in summer 2016. http://www.museums.norfolk.gov.uk/Visit_Us/Ancient_House/Ancient_House_Collections/index.ht m.

People CJS Director Simon Kaner has made several visits to Japan over the past few months. As well as accompanying the VC to Japan in October, after which he travelled to Sapporo in Hokkaido to give a lecture on the wonder of Jomon archaeology http://www.pref.hokkaido.lg.jp/ks/bns/jomon/northjomonforum2014.htm (in Japanese), he was back in Tokyo in December at Kokugakuin University for a workshop establishing an international network of university museums

http://www.kokugakuin.ac.jp/oard/museum_event__international_symposium2015.html (in Japanese). He recently returned from a further conference in Tokyo, helping to promote the bid to have a series of 16 prehistoric Jomon sites in northern Japan inscribed as Jomon World Heritage http://jomon-japan.jp/en/. In between the long-haul trips, Simon travelled to Bucharest to give the keynote address marking the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Japanese Studies programme at the University of Bucharest – an invitation which grew out of Romanian students’ participation in the Japan Orientation summer school which will be running again in June and July 2016.

Congratulations to PPL student Michael Anglim who was selected to take part in an all-expenses paid trip to Tokyo to take part in a two day symposium at Ochanomizu University in December.

Michael delivered a presentation on day two on the topic of ‘The Invention of Maori Culture – The Impact of Anthropology on Traditional Culture’.

Mr Kimura Tadakazu CBE, former President of Asashi Newspaper, Japan’s most renowned newspaper, is spending six months based in Norwich at the Sainsbury Institute as a Senior Fellow.

Mr Kimura gave a talk for the Japanese Language degree students on 4 February.

A warm welcome to Professor Watanabe Toshio, one of the best known art historians of Japan, and until 2015 the Director of the Transnational Art and Identity Network (TrAIN) at the University of the Arts, London, who took up a Professorial appointment at the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures. Professor Watanabe will give the Ishibashi Lectures on Japanese gardens in Europe in Kyoto, in March http://sainsbury-institute.org/news-events/ishibashi-lecture-3/.

Useful links and opportunities

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Embassy of Japan and webmagazine: http://www.uk.emb-japan.go.jp/ Japan Foundation: http://www.jpf.org.uk/ JSPS: http://www.jsps.go.jp/english/ Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation: http://www.dajf.org.uk/ Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation: http://www.gbsf.org.uk/ Japan Society: http://www.japansociety.org.uk/ Ishibashi Foundation: http://www.ishibashi-foundation.or.jp/english/ EU-Japan Centre: http://www.eu-japan.eu/ SIN Japan Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/bOR4y9 Canon Foundation : www.canonfoundation.org Applications for JET Programme : http://www.jetprogramme.org/ Japanese Language Proficiency Exam : http://www.jlpt.jp/e/index.html UEA Japan Society (Meetings on Monday evenings) : ueajapansociety@gmail.com Taiko Centre East: http://www.taikocentre.org.uk/ Career Forums: http://www.careerforum.net/event/?lang=E

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