Centre for Japanese Studies Newsletter Spring 2018 Welcome to the UEA Centre for Japanese Studies spring e-newsletter. Please forward this on to anyone you think might 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 submissions for the next issue is 31 March 2018. To stay connected with Japan-related teaching, research and events, please visit www.uea.ac.uk/cjs for full details. The CJS office is located in the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts (the mezzanine floor). Our phone number is 591819. You can also reach us via email (cjs@uea.ac.uk). To keep up with goings-on at CJS, follow us on social media: www.facebook.com/CJSUea/ www.twitter.com/CJS_Uea Changes at the Centre for Japanese Studies We begin the New Year with a series of personnel changes in the Centre for Japanese Studies. Mami Mizutori, Special Advisor on Japan to the University and the Executive Director of the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Studies is moving to a new post outside the UK at the end of February. Mami has been instrumental in working with us to get Japanese studies established at UEA, and we wish her every success with her new career. Simon Kaner will become Executive Director of SISJAC for a fixed term starting 1st March, while continuing as Director of the Centre for Japanese Studies and running the Centre for Archaeology and Heritage at SISJAC. Last summer we bade farewell to Natsue Hayward, Administrative Assistant of the Centre for Japanese Studies. Natsue has taken up a new role in one of Norwich’s schools and we wish her well in the future, and thank her for everything she did to make CJS so effective at coordinating a multitude of Japan-related activities since she joined us in September 2011. CJS took on a new remit with the new academic year, as a researchactive unit, while retaining our institutional home in the Interdisciplinary Institute for the Humanities (IIH) within the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. We are joined by Neil Webb who becomes CJS Project Officer, who will be working to foster new interdisciplinary research initiatives, starting with our new series of Interdisciplinary Japanese Studies Research Seminars, which kicks off on 24th January with Dr Lola Martinez. The Seminar Series is convened by Dr Sherzod Muminov (HIS), a historian of modern Japan, who joined the University in September 2017. Full details are given below.
CJS has held two Japan Research Away Days, the most recent in January 2018, bringing together our Japan-related academic colleagues from across the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. Discussion included developing some new interdisciplinary Japanrelated research projects – a wonderful of example of this was the conference on Art and Politics organised by Dr Eriko Tomizawa-Kay and Dr Ra Mason from PPL in August 2017 (see under People below). Also high on the agenda was the proposed new MA in Interdisciplinary Japanese Studies, which we are looking to launch in 2020. In advance of that, CJS is offering two Summer Schools this year, with generous bursaries from the Toshiba International Foundation and the Ishibashi Foundation. See the full details in the Forthcoming Opportunities section below. Further funding opportunities for Japan-related postgraduate studies at UEA are offered by the Sasakawa Postgraduate Studentship scheme, which offers £10,000 per student towards tuition and subsistence. CJS successfully bid for three Sasakawa Studentships for 2017-18, and all of our studentship holders, past and present, took part in a special symposium at SOAS in September. More details below. Bringing together colleagues from across the University with an interest in Japan will continue to be an important part of what CJS does. In addition to the CJS e-newsletter, we are looking to enhance our social media presence on Twitter and Facebook. We will also continue to organise our occasional CJS Receptions – the last one was held in November, when we were joined by the wonderful puppets and their puppeteers from Shimane prefecture, prior to their performances at the Norwich Puppet Theatre. CJS also offers a bridge with SISJAC, whose news can be found on their website and emagazine. We also work closely with the Japan Country Dialogue Group which reports to the University’s International Executive, ensuring that Japan continues to be central to UEA’s international agenda. Forthcoming opportunities: Sasakawa Postgraduate Studentships 2018: CJS will once again be submitting applications for the Sasakawa Postgraduate Studentships, each worth £10,000 towards tuition and maintenance costs. If you are interested in applying please send a CV and details of your chosen course of study at UEA to Neil Webb at CJS. The course must include a substantial component relating to Japan. We would be pleased to discuss applications in advance. In 2017-18 we were awarded three studentships, in LDC and AMA. Deadline for applications: 28 February 2018. Japan Orientation International Summer School: It is a great pleasure to be again offering our ‘Japan Orientation’ programme as part of the UEA International Summer School. The programme returns for a fifth year, and is convened by CJS Director Simon Kaner. The programme will run from 30 June – 28 July, and is generously funded by the Toshiba International Foundation (TIFO), with 12 funded places to applicants from Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech-Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. The Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures (SISJAC) is supporting an additional 3 funded places for applicants from all other European countries. The application deadline for Japan Orientation Scholarships is 31 March 2018. For more details, please visit www.uea.ac.uk/summerstudyabroad/japan or contact the International Summer School team at summerstudyabroad@uea.ac.uk.
Ishibashi Foundation Summer School in Japanese Arts and Cultural Heritage: We are delighted to this new, intensive three-week postgraduate level course, kindly supported by the Ishibashi Foundation. Twenty fully funded places are available. The course is taught by leading experts in the field, and provides an opportunity for students to develop an extensive appreciation and understanding of Japanese arts and cultural heritage. In addition, students will develop enhanced study skills, in particular the ability to present information and express ideas about materials studied in oral and written formats. The application deadline for Ishibashi Foundation Scholarships is 31 March 2018. For further details, visit www.uea.ac.uk/summerstudyabroad/ishibashi or email the team at summerstudyabroad@uea.ac.uk. British Academy Visiting Fellowships: The British Academy has just launched a new funding scheme for Visiting Fellowships. These Fellowships present an opportunity for researchers working within the humanities and the social sciences and based in Japan to visit the UK. The scheme provides academics based in any country overseas and active at any career stage and in any discipline within the humanities and the social sciences with the opportunity to be based at a UK higher education or other research institution of their choice for up to six months. In doing so, participants can develop links and collaborations with UK colleagues and other scholars around the world. These Fellowships are open also to applicants who wish to work with UK colleagues in other areas or disciplines (including scholars within the natural, medical, or engineering sciences), in a cross- or inter-disciplinary way. The application deadline is 31 January 2018. For more details visit https://www.britac.ac.uk/visiting-fellowships. Daiwa Scholarships in Japanese Studies were established in 2015 to fund UK graduates in Japanese Studies on postgraduate Japan-related courses in either Japan or the UK. The scholarship will cover university fees for the course in question, plus living expenses. In the first three years of this new programme, Scholarships have been awarded to six individuals, focusing on Japan in a variety of areas such as archaeology, art, history, international relations and business studies. Candidates must be UK citizens who hold or are completing a degree in Japanese studies. Strong Japanese language ability will be a key selection criterion. The application deadline for this year is Thursday 25 January. Further details and online application information are available from www.dajf.org.uk. Centre for Japanese Studies Research Seminar Series: We are proud to announce a series of exciting research seminars covering a broad range of Japan-related topics. We kick off the series with Dolores Martinez’s ‘Mad, Bad and Dangerous: Revisiting Kurosawa’s Women” on the 24th January. Check the dates section for details of each individual seminar. UEA CareerCentral will be running Global Opportunities week again in 2018, 1216th February, kicking off with Japan day on the 12th of February. If you would like to hear from UEA alumni who have lived and worked in Japan/ been a Daiwa scholar or want to find out more about the JET programme or Interac then make sure you sign up on MyCareerCentral – and remember places are limited! Videos from the 2017 science Symposium are now available to view on the CJS youtube channel. The conference, titled “Exploring the past, present and future of the science of
agriculture: towards new Anglo-Japanese research collaborations,” was an opportunity to celebrate existing partnerships between research institutions in Japan and the UK, as well as to foster new relationships for the future. The KESHIKI series, published by Strangers Press, and launched in February 2017, is a collection of eight stories that showcase some of Japan’s most exciting literary talents today. Complete with beautifully designed, vibrant covers, the books are still available from https://www.strangers.press/. Japan Now North is a week of activities celebrating art, culture, literature and film in Sheffield, home of one of Europe’s leading academic centres for research and teaching on Japan. Events take place across the city, including talks with renowned filmmaker and photographer Mika Ninagawa, writer Tomoyuki Hoshino and an exhibition and workshop with Japan-based photographer and visual artist Suzanne Mooney. We will also welcome documentary filmmakers Megumi Sasaki and the Peabody awardwinning Kyoko Miyake, and host the UK premiere of Sasaki’s documentary A Whale of a Tale. NHK: In November of last year, as part of the sekai fureai machi aruki series, a Japanese film crew visited Norwich to explore its historic centre and soak up the atmosphere. The team carefully document their favourite sites, and the video is accompanied by plenty of photos documenting the people they met along the way. It is fascinating to see Norwich through the lens of a visitor, and makes you appreciate just how lovely the fine city is! To watch the video and read about the adventure, visit here. Dates for your diary: Thursday 18th January 2018: 6pm (doors open 5.30pm) The Cathedral Hostry
Perceptions of the arrival of Buddhism in Japan
Dr Simon Kaner Head of the Centre for Archaeology and Heritage at the Sainsbury Institute Director of the Centre for Japanese Studies at the University of East Anglia http://sainsbury-institute.org/news-events/third-thursday-lectures/ Monday 12th February: UEA Global Opportunities Week, Japan Day. See above for further information, and sign up at MyCareerCentral. Wednesday 24th January: 5pm Lawrence Stenhouse Building (LSB) 0.113 CJS Research Seminar
Mad, bad and dangerous: revisiting Kurosawa’s women Dr Lola Martinez Emeritus Reader, SOAS University of London Research Associate, University of Oxford Wednesday 14th February: 5.15pm JSC 1.03 Global & Transitionary History Seminar: The UEA School of History, in conjunction with the Centre for Japanese Studies, presents: ‘Beyond the Nation: the Local and the Global in Interwar Japan’s Deep North’ Dr Ian Rapley, Lecturer in East Asian History
School of History, Archaeology and Religion, Cardiff University Thursday 15th February 2018: 6pm (doors open 5.30pm) The Cathedral Hostry
Respect, Curiosity and Taboo – Differing Visual Expressions of the Meiji Emperor Dr Jun Shioya Head, Modern/Contemporary Art Section Tokyo Research Institute for Cultural Properties Wednesday 28th February: 5pm SCVA Lecture Theatre (0.10)
Hands of Goze: The Tactile Culture of Visually-impaired People in Modern Japan Prof Kojiro Hirose National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka Thursday 8th March 2018: 5pm Lawrence Stenhouse Building (LSB) 0.113 CJS Research Seminar
Eating Contests in Early Modern Japanese Entertainment Media Prof Eric Rath History Professor, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences University of Kansas Thursday 15th March 2018: 6pm (doors open 5.30pm) The Cathedral Hostry
After the Tsunami: Japanese Contemporary Art Since 2011 Professor Adrian Favell Chair in Sociology and Social Theory, University of Leeds Wednesday 18th April 2018: 5pm Lawrence Stenhouse Building (LSB) 0.113 CJS Research Seminar
Surfacing Postwar Tensions: Politics and Performance on Tokyo’s Yamanote Line Dr Mark Pendleton Lecturer in Japanese Studies, School of East Asian Studies University of Sheffield Thursday 19th April 2018: 6pm (doors open 5.30pm) The Cathedral Hostry
The Modern Yayoi: Kusama Yayoi and Alice in Wonderland Dr Amanda Kennell Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Fellow at the Sainsbury Institute Wednesday 2nd May 2018: 5pm Lawrence Stenhouse Building (LSB) 0.113 CJS Research Seminar
The Political Use of Poetic Landscapes in the Edo Period Timon Screech Profesor of History of Art, Department of History of Art and Archaeology, School of Arts SOAS, University of London
Saturday 30th June 2018: The University of East Anglia
Angela Carter and Japan
Dr Charlotte Crofts Associate Professor of Filmmaking, University of the West of England People: Dr Akiko Tomatsuri contributed to a report on an international conference on ancient Greek music for The Classical Society of Japan. Akiko was also involved with a collaborative project between Yamanashi Prefectural University and the Japanese Language Sector in PPL was held on 1 March 2017. Four Japanese Degree students at UEA and a student from Yamanashi gave presentations about ‘Landscape and Gardens in Japan and the UK’, and exchanged various ideas about the topic. Dr. Tomatsuri is a Lecturer in Japanese Language, School of Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication Studies at the UEA. Prof Natsumi Ikoma will co-host a symposium with Dr Stephen Benson focusing on Japanese influences in the works of Angela Carter. Professor Ikoma is a Visiting Scholar in the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing at UEA for the year 2017-18. The one day conference is devoted to the influence of Japan on the life and work of Angela Carter, and the wider aspects of the relation between Carter’s writing and Japan. Proposals for papers (c. 300 words), accompanied by a short biography, should be sent to angelacarterandjapan@yahoo.com. The deadline for submissions is 22 January 2018 and the symposium will be held on 30 June 2018. For further information, please visit carterandjapan.wordpress.com. Prof Hiroyuki Kitaura is a Film Studies Researcher from the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken). Between 22 August and 22 September 2017, Professor Kitaura was based at the UEA, during which time he surveyed the reception of Japanese films and anime in the UK. His studies were made possible thanks to the National Institutes for Humanities (NIHU) 2017 programme for overseas research. The trip was planned as part of Nichibunken’s transdisciplinary project “Historical and international research into popular culture to pursue new images of Japan.” During his stay, he also attended the “International Workshop on Reflective Transitions of Politics in Japanese Art,” held at the UEA on 24 August. Kazuo Ishiguro, who joined the University’s Creative Writing MA programme in 1979 has been awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature. A fantastic achievement for this deeply engaging writer. Staff and students alike were treated to an appearance from Ishiguro at last year’s UEA Autumn Literary Festival. More details of the 2017 event’s lineup can be found here. Dr Simon Kaner was in Brussels just before Christmas to participate in an international conference organised by the Kobe University Brussels European Centre, speaking on the
international significance of Japan’s cultural heritage. In November Simon was in Kyoto, speaking at a special event marking a major exhibition about Jomon period Flame pots and archaeology in western Japan at the Kyoto University Museum. Simon held a Mombusho Scholarship at Kyoto University as part of his PhD research. Through 2017 he was Principal Investigator on an AHRC-funded project, Global Perspectives on British Archaeology which compared some of the best of East Anglian archaeology with interesting sites in Japan and elsewhere (www.global-britisharchaeology.org – there is still time to visit the site and take part in the online survey and post some virtual postcards) and published papers on the history of Japanese archaeology in the Routledge Handbook of Premodern Japanese History and on early Japanese pottery in the Springer Handbook of East and Southeast Asian Archaeology . In 2018, he is developing two exhibition projects for 2020, and the UK-Japan Season of Culture: the first takes a comparative look at the adoption of Buddhism in Japan and Christianity around the North Sea – he gave the January SISJAC Third Thursday lecture to a packed audience on the Japanese part of the story; the second will explore the Japanese links to one of the UK’s most famous archaeological sites, Stonehenge. Dr Amanda Kennell is one of three Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Fellows at SISJAC this year. Amanda is a scholar of modern Japanese literature and visual media. Her dissertation traced Japan’s reception of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland novels from their arrival in 1899 until today through adaptations in a variety of media. At the Sainsbury Institute, she will be revising her dissertation into a book, with a particular focus on the artist, Kusama Yayoi’s relationship to Alice in Wonderland, author Akutagawa Ryūnosuke’s two adaptations of Carroll’s novels, and contemporary adaptations in a variety of media. This project reveals the vital role played by both adaptation and Alice in Wonderland in modern Japanese culture, whilst situating Japanese phenomena within global trends. More generally, her research interests include gender roles, the role of digital technology in contemporary culture and pedagogy, East Asian cinema, animation, science-fiction and fantasy, Korean literature and popular culture, and the depiction of violence. Her work has appeared in The Journal of Popular Culture, and she guest curated the Finding Alice in Japan (20152016) exhibit at USC Libraries. She has held fellowships from the Andrew W Mellon Digital Humanities programme and the Nippon Foundation. She has also received an MA in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from the University of Pennsylvania. Congratulations to Professor Rosalynd Jowett and Dr Nao Kishita (HSC) and for winning one of the highly competitive Daiwa Awards from the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation to develop collaborations in Health Sciences with Japanese Universities. The grant will enable Rosalynd and Nao to visit Japan again in summer 2018, following their very successful visit in spring 2017 at the same time at the Vice-Chancellor, Professor David Richardson, and Pro Vice-Chancellor for Science and International, Professor Phil Gilmartin. Dr Jungeun Lee is one of three Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Fellows at SISJAC this year. Jungeun is an art historian who specializes in medieval and early modern Japanese and Korean art and architecture. With her broad curatorial and research experience in the states and Korea, her primary research interests include formal interior display, visual and material ornamentation in architectural setting, court and shogunal patronage on arts and their collections, and the inter-cultural relationship among the arts of Japan, Korea and China. She obtained her PhD from University of Pittsburgh in 2017, where she investigated the socio-political and socio-economic contexts of the Ashikaga collection and the associated development, function, and multifaceted meanings of
formal display in medieval Japan. Her dissertation explored the meaning of elaborate Ashikaga formal display as an ensemble and as a means of representing patrons’ identities in Kyoto’s complicated political and economic spheres. Part of this has been published as the “Politics of Formal Display” (Misulsa nondan, 2015) and her interdisciplinary approach toward formal display will be addressed in an international workshop, which will be organized at the Sainsbury Institute in summer 2018. In addition, she is working on a project on the inter-relationships between Japanese and Korean visual and painting practices by analysing folding screens decorated with fans. Dr Ra Mason and Dr Eriko Tomizawa-Kay organised a fascinating international workshop on Art and Politics at the end of August with the support of the Japan Foundation, the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation and the SISJAC-SOAS Collaborative Research Fund. The workshop kicked-off a new research project into how contemporary Japanese arts have been shaped by political forces, from wartime militarism to the ‘neoliberal world order’, identifying the processes of atomization of society through art forms. The focus was on empirical examples of internalized art productions and art currents, in juxtaposition to art expressing national/regional politics – focusing on the presence of political notions in Japanese fine arts, popular cultures such as manga and anime, and visual arts, and on the reflections/intersections between Western arts and representations of Japanese politics. Insights were provided into the changing boundaries and concepts of Japanese/Far Eastern Art History in the 19th–21st centuries, as seen by the contemporary scholars of both the West and East. Dr John McDonagh, Head of School of International Development visited Japan in the autumn with Tracey Hearn, Country Development Manager for East Asia in UEA International. John met a number of prospective students wanting to study at UEA, and visited Kobe University, with which UEA has a long-standing double degree programme in Development Studies. Dr Sam Nixon, Senior Research Associate at the Centre for Archaeology and Heritage at SISJAC leaves us to pursue his interests in African archaeology. He will be leading fieldwork in Morocco prior to taking up a writing fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies at UCL, where he will be working on his next book on the transSaharan gold trade. In the autumn Sam published a major excavation report. While at SISJAC Sam has worked in particular on our AHRC-funded project Global Perspectives on British Archaeology (see www.global-britisharchaeology.org) and the Winter Programme on British Archaeology and Cultural Heritage, co-organised with the Faculty of Letters at the University of Tokyo, which this year will be led by Jan Summerfield and our Centre for Archaeology and Heritage Project Officer Oscar Wrenn. Dr Stephanie Su is one of three Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Fellows at SISJAC this year. Stephanie’s research interests include global modernism, historiographies, the history of collecting and exhibition, Sino-Japan relationship, and the materiality of colours. Her
long-term research goal is to reconstruct a more interconnected, more globalized history of East Asian art by exploring the transmission of ideas and objects across East Asia and Europe. At the Sainsbury Institute, she is working on a project that examines the impact of synthetic dyes in the production, circulation and aesthetic expressions of Meiji Japanese prints. Bringing together interdisciplinary approaches to art history and conservation science, her project aims to renew our understanding of Meiji culture and changing colour sensibilities in Japan. Her publication has appeared in academic journals and exhibition catalogues, including “Status of the Field: Overseas Scholarship on Modern Sino-Japanese Artistic Exchanges” in Passing Through Fusan: The Reform of Painting by Chinese Artists Studied in Japan (upcoming), “An Opened Toy Box: The History of Japanese Art by Tsuji Nobuo,” Dushu (Feb 2017), “Recent Trends and Future Directions in Overseas Chinese Art Exhibitions,” in Quarterly Journal of Henan Art Museum, “Translating History Painting: Xu Beihong and Confucianism in Modern China,” in Un Matîre et ses Maîtres: Xu Beihong et la peinture académique français (Beijing: Xu Beihong Memorial Art Museum, 2014), “Classicizing Creative Prints: Yamamoto Kanae in France,” in Anne Leonard, ed, Awash in Color: French and Japanese Prints (Chicago: Smart Museum of Art, 2012), among others. Congratulations to Dr Nadine Willems (HIS) on the publication of Kotan Chronicles. Selected poems by Genzo Sarashina, who lived in Hokkaido whose ‘colloquial, vigorous and committed poetry of the 1930s addressed the plight of both migrant settlers and Ainu people’. The book ‘is one of the few examples of Japanese proletarian poetry to appear in English’. Nadine gave an excellent SISJAC Third Thursday lecture in September about Sarashina, with readings from the book by Paul Rossiter. Dr Sherzod Muminov joined the University, and CJS, in September of last year. Sherzod is a multilingual historian working with sources in Japanese and Russian. He has a BA in International Relations from the University of World Economy and Diplomacy in Uzbekistan, an MA in International Politics from the University of Manchester, and an MA in International Area Studies from the University of Tsukuba in Japan. Sherzod received his PhD in East Asian Studies from the University of Cambridge, where he was also a postdoctoral research associate in the ERC Project "The Dissolution of the Japanese Empire and the Struggle for Legitimacy in Postwar East Asia" and taught courses in modern Japanese and East Asian history. Sherzod is co-editor, with Barak Kushner, of The Dismantling of Japan's Empire in East Asia (Routledge 2017), and has published articles in journals such as Cold War History and Situations: Cultural Studies in the Asian Context. Sherzod is also convening our exciting CJS research seminar series, taking place throughout the semester. Neil Webb joins us as Project Officer for the Centre for Japanese Studies. He will be assisting Simon with coordinating the summer schools convened by CJS, as well as providing a point of contact for the day-to-day running of the centre. Neil recently returned to the UK after three years spent living in Nagasaki, working as an assistant language teacher on the JET Programme. Oscar Wrenn joined the Centre for Archaeology and Heritage at SISJAC as Project Officer in December. Oscar has recently returned from three years in Kagoshima on the JET programme, and is working with Simon Kaner on a range of projects, including the Winter Programme in British Archaeology and some publications.