Disturbing Difference: Translation, Naturalization, and the Global Publication of Japanese Fiction
Stephen Snyder, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Japanese Studies, Middelbury College
January 25, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies
This paper examines the intersection of theoretical, aesthetic and commercial interests in processes affecting the translation of contemporary Japanese literature. Translation is considered as a multi-stage practice influenced by various agents, involving issues of text selection, the translator's theoretical stance and working strategies, editing principles, and marketing tactics. An examination of naturalizing translation strategies designed to erase cultural difference and radical, often transformative, editing practices and marketing strategies highlight commodification processes in American and European markets.
Umberto Eco has argued that translation is best viewed as an act of negotiation between cultural spheres, but Lawrence Venuti reminds us that it is also a cultural practice that is "deeply implicated in relations of domination and dependence, equally capable of maintaining and disrupting them." The translation of contemporary Japanese fiction plays a central role in the negotiation of the unequal cultural relationship between Japan and the West. An examination of the forces at work in shaping the translated canon can serve to illuminate the contours of that relationship.
15th Annual Bakai: バークレー研究者大会
February 1, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies
Program
11:00 — Opening Remarks: Professor Duncan Williams, CJS Chair
11:10-11:30 — "Beyond American Exceptionalism in the Study of Welfare States: The Case of Japan" — Kenzo Yoshida, CJS visiting scholar, Matsuyama University, Economics
11:30-11:50 — "An Ethics of Self-Consciousness: Mori Ogai's Stereoscopic Vision" — Christopher Weinberger, Graduate Student, UCB, EALC
11:50-12:10 — "Japan's Falling Savings Rate" — Yoshiaki Azuma, CJS visiting scholar, Doshisha University, Economics
12:20-12:40 — "Social Indexation in Japanese Sign Language" — Johnny George, Graduate Student, UCB, Linguistics
12:40-1:00 — "Development of Immigrant NGOs in Japan and Korea: Convergence and Divergence" — Keiko Yamanaka, Lecturer, UCB, Ethnic Studies
1:00-2:00 — Buffet Lunch
Bodies, Names, and the Confusion of Tragedies: Memorializing the Tokyo Air Raids
Cary Karacas, Department of Geography, UC Berkeley
February 7, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies
Between November 1944 and August 1945, Tokyo was subjected to dozens of air raids that killed well over one hundred thousand civilians, caused millions to flee the metropolis, and left over half of the city in ruins. In stark contrast to the monuments, memorials, and museums that speak of the wartime catastrophic events that occurred in other places in Japan, the public structuring of Tokyo air raid memories has taken place on a decidedly smaller scale. In this presentation, I will examine central events and conflicts between citizen's groups, intellectuals, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government that have shaped forms of remembrance of the air raids and those killed in them.
Are We There Yet?: Prospects for Two-Party Politics in Japan
Robert Weiner, Political Science, the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey
February 8, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies
Many feel it's only a matter of time before a robust two-party system establishes itself in Japan. Last summer seemed to provide a big, clear push in that direction: the long-ruling LDP lost both its majority and its largest-party status in the Upper House. The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), along with a few smaller opposition parties, now controls that chamber, and has become the strongest parliamentary opposition the LDP has ever faced. The DPJ's obstructive power has deposed one LDP prime minister, continues to undercut the LDP's policy-making monopoly, and threatens the LDP's hold on the more powerful Lower House.
But we might recall something Chalmers Johnson once said: "I'm reluctant to be drawn in once again to the trap of Japanese politics — that is, to pretend that something significant has happened." Will the DPJ be able to exploit its momentum and bring about a genuine two-party system any time soon? Or will ideological disunity, poor electoral organization, its mercurial leader Ozawa Ichiro, and the allure of cooperation with the LDP frustrate yet another challenge to one-party dominance?
Robert Weiner is an assistant professor of political science at the Naval Postgraduate School (Monterey, CA). His research and teaching focus on Japanese and East Asian politics, political parties and elections, democratic institutions, and research methods. He earned his Ph.D. in political science at the University of California at Berkeley, and was an assistant professor in the Government Department of Cornell University for three years before joining NPS in 2007.
Continuity and Change in Japanese Party Politics: Pursuing the Advantage of a Median Party in Policy Competition
Junko Kato, Law and Politics, Tokyo University
February 12, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies, Political Science
The Japanese political change since 1993 has accompanied a sequence of breakups, mergers, extinctions, and formations of parties that is rare among stable democracies. Many observers attribute this inexplicable change to the centrality of personal bond among politicians that often goes hand in hand with less emphasis on policies in the Japanese party politics. Tackling this problem head on, the author argues that the increasing advantage of the middle-of-road position in party competition explains both the decline of one-party-dominance of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) as well as the survival of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) as a viable contender for office with the LDP. The analysis of changing party positions in policy space underpins the argument.
A Japanese Immigrant Origin of Japanese Studies in the Western United States
Eiichiro Azuma, History, University of Pennsylvania
February 22, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies
The Cold-War origin of Japanese studies has attracted a keen attention since the 1970s. Vietnam-War generations of liberal scholars have often criticized Edwin Reischauer of Harvard University, and the "modernization theory" that he and his disciples allegedly systematized in the field. The Reischauer school is said to have set a imperialist nature of Japanese studies that has primarily served diplomatic interests of the United States in Cold War Asia. Though some critics rescued scholars like E. H. Norman from historical oblivion as a counter hero to discredit the Reischauer school, no scholar has considered a significant pre-World-War-II origin of Japanese studies that is traced all the way back to the 1910s. Azuma talk will discuss a critical nexus between Japanese immigrant experience and prewar Japanese studies in the United States, with consideration of the different kind of political interests and agendas that had already characterized the nascent stage of the field.
Is There Still Buddhism Outside Japan?: Some Thirteenth-Century Perspectives
Jacqueline Stone, Japanese Religion, Princeton University
February 28, 2008
Center for Buddhist Studies, Center for Japanese Studies
Buddhist thinkers in premodern Japan were keenly aware of Japan's location at the extreme eastern edge of the Buddhist world. Contrasting rhetorics alternately maintained that Japan occupied a soteriologically disadvantaged status as a marginal country in a degenerate age, far from the time and place of the historical Buddha, or that, despite its peripheral position, Japan enjoyed a strong, even privileged connection to the dharma. Historians have long been interested in early medieval representations of Japan for what light they may shed on the beginnings of national consciousness. In their own time, however, such representations formed part of a standard framework for Buddhist discourse and were deployed to advance competing definitions of normative Budddhist practice. This paper will examine how some early medieval figures, notably Eisai (1141-1214) and Nichiren (1222-1282), deliberately juxtaposed the two contrasting rhetorics about Japan to promote their own visions of what Buddhism should be.
Jacqueline Stone received her Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Cultures from the University of California, Los Angeles. Currently she is professor of Japanese Religions in the Religion Department at Princeton University and co-director of Princeton's Buddhist Studies Workshop. She is the author of Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism (1999) and, with Bryan J. Cuevas, co-editor of The Buddhist Dead: Practices, Discourses, Representations (2007). Her research interests include Buddhist intellectual history; medieval Japanese Buddhism; traditions based on the Lotus Sutra, including Tendai and Nichiren; Buddhist approaches to death and dying; and transformations of Buddhism in modern Japan.
Far-reaching Environmentally Friendly Motor Vehicle Technologies: Eying 2020 and Beyond
Yosuhiro Daisho, Mechanical Engineering, Waseda University, Japan
February 28, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies, CITRIS Program, Consul General of Japan, SF
In order to reduce oil consumption and mitigate global warming, vehicle fuel economy standards will become more stringent in the long term with exhaust emission regulations becoming stricter from 2010 to 2015. With the increase in regulation, advanced technologies will be adopted to meet these needs. Although hybrid, fuel cell, and electric vehicles are expected to begin replacing conventional gasoline and diesel vehicles, the relative ease in adoption of bioethanol, biodiesel, and biomass-to-liquid (BTL) technologies suggests that gasoline and diesel-type vehicles will remain the dominant technology for two or three more decades.
In his talk, Professor Daisho will describe environmental and energy-related motor vehicle technologies that are being investigated in Japan, the USA and the EU. A sample of technologies covered include pre-mixed charged compression ignition (PCCI) combustion systems, exhaust gas recirculation systems, urea-selective catalytic reduction (SCR) and NOx storage reduction catalyst systems (NSR), variable intake, transmission improvements, and engine downsizing. He will also briefly introduce advanced hybrid and electric vehicle technologies achieving higher efficiency and lower CO emission than the conventional vehicles.
Red, White, and Bruised: Japanese Disabled Veterans of the Second World War
Lee Pennington, East Asian History, US Naval Academy in Annapolis
February 29, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies
From 1931 to 1945, ensuring the well-being of disabled veterans became a major issue on the wartime Japanese home front. Bloodied by combat, Japan's disabled veterans were heroically cast as "heroes in white," a term derived from the white hospital gowns that they habitually wore in public. But, after 1945, these living casualties of war had to endure not only the trauma of battle and the unease of newly-acquired disabilities but also military occupation by the very-same foe that battered their bodies and shattered their lives. In what ways did total war and total defeat shape the Japanese disabled veteran of the Second World War?
Yoshida Shoin's Encounter with Commodore Perry: A Review of Cultural Interaction in the Days of Japan's Opening
Tao Demin, Chinese Literature, Kansai University
March 4, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies
Yoshida Shoin's (1830-59) attempt to escape from Japan with Commodore Perry's "black ship" in 1854 has been a subject of both scholarly and popular attention for more than a century. By examining the text of the "original" letters kept at Yale and analyzing the dilemmas of both the addressor and the addressee, however, I have tried to rediscover its meaning in the context of Japanese dawning relations with the United States and other western nations.
I see no foundation for the assertion that Shoin was a terrorist trying to kill Perry. To the contrary, I have confirmed that he was a trained military strategist with lofty goals for himself and his country, and have argued that both his motives for going to American to study the advanced military technology, and his actions in attempting to do so, symbolized a new direction in Japan's Western learning. In this, Shoin had recognized the importance of learning about—and from—the English-speaking world fully five years before Fukuzawa Yukichi began to advocate shifting from "Dutch learning" to Anglo-American learning. At the same time, I noted that the unusual difficulties that Perry had experienced in choosing between the American national interest, and his concern for the human rights issues he recognized in dealing with Shoin's request for passage abroad—the fact that Shoin would be handled as a criminal. Japanese scholarship has not, to date, seen the encounter between Shoin and Perry in terms of human rights, largely because Shoin was regarded a national hero making extraordinary contributions to the Meiji Restoration, and his role as mentor of such leading Choshu politicians as Ito Hirobumi and Yamagata Aritomo. Therefore, his attempt to stow away has been considered as motivated solely for the national cause, without interrogating his personal motivations, as I have done here. By "reducing" a hero to an average person and simply looking on Shoin as an ordinary stowaway, however, it has become possible to read the complexities of this historic event and the dilemmas on the both sides.
Who Cares About the Environment in Japan?
Paul Waley, School of Geography, University of Leeds
March 7, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies, History
Rivers have become an important focus of environmental activity in contemporary Japan. In particular, they have become a rallying point for a large but disparate group of civil society organizations. Faced with a continuing reliance on construction in concrete on the part of many state officials and the construction industry, these groups have been fighting to win acceptance for a more eco-friendly approach to river re-landscaping. In his talk, the author uses these groups as a prism for a discussion about the nature of civil society in Japan and in particular its relation to the state. He refines simplistic interpretations that see civil society as being led or coopted by the state on the one hand or locked into an antagonistic relationship on the other. Instead he advances the idea of a "soft elite" of government officials, academics and other professionals working in the field of landscape and the environment who use their ambivalent position on the borders of civil society and both in and outside the state to campaign for and establish a consensus around a benign view of nature and the environment. He concludes this talk by transferring the concept of a soft elite to the related sphere of town planning and community development to examine the extent to which it may be applicable in these similar contexts.
Adjusting to Globalization: Moving Forward with the Toyota Way
Yoshio Ishizaka, Advisor, former Vice-President, Toyota Corporation
March 12, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies, Yomiuri Shimbun, Haas School of Business
Yoshio Ishizaka joined Toyota in 1964 upon earning a degree in law from Tokyo's Hitotsubashi University. His career has centered on overseas business, and he has served two, extended stints at Toyota's operations outside Japan: six years in Australia in the late 1970s and four years in the United States in the late 1980s. Mr. Ishizaka served as senior vice president and chief coordinating officer of Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc. from 1986 to 1990, while helping to develop the special project that became the Lexus Division.
Mr. Ishizaka then became general manager of the Europe division at Toyota in 1990. In that position, he supervised accelerating efforts to build an integrated, local organization in Europe to support expanded manufacturing, marketing and product development there. Named to Toyota's Board of Directors in 1992, Mr. Ishizaka returned to the U.S. sales arm to serve as president from 1996 to 1999. He returned to Japan in 1999, whereupon he was promoted to senior managing director in charge of overseas operations. In 2001, he became an executive vice president in charge of Toyota's overall overseas operations. In 2005, he became senior advisor to the board. In April of that same year, Mr. Ishizaka became the co-chair of the Trade and Investment Liberalization and Facilitation Working Group of the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC).
In this talk, Mr. Ishizaka will introduce Toyota's progress overview, current status, and the Toyota's way and discuss the secrets of Toyota's success and its future challenges.
Passing on History: The Problems for Youth in Hiroshima
Steve Leeper, Director, Hiroshima Peace & Culture Foundation
March 19, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies, Yomiuri Shimbun
Steven Lloyd Leeper (age: 60) has been a management consultant and peace activist in Hiroshima since 1984. He is the only non-Japanese to serve on the Board of Directors of two Hiroshima corporations and the only non-Japanese to represent Hiroshima peace activists in the Asahi Shimbun-Hiroshima City Peace Symposium. After working six years for Mayors for Peace, an NGO based in Hiroshima and funded primarily by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in April 2007 he became the first non-Japanese chairman of the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation. The Foundation, with 110 employees and a budget of approximately $12 million, is the official peace and international relations arm of the city of Hiroshima, managing the Peace Memorial Museum, the National Memorial Hall, and the International Conference Center.
The Ancient Jomon and the Pacific Rim
March 20-22, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, Department of Anthropology, Archaeological Research Facility, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Henry Luce Foundation
"Jomon" is the name of a prehistoric culture and period on the Japanese archipelago. Dating from about 16,000 to 2500 years ago, the Jomon culture is known for its artistic pottery, large settlements and complex ritual sites such as stone circles. Unlike most prehistoric pottery-using peoples in other parts of the world, the people of the Jomon period are thought to have been hunter-gatherer-fishers. It is also known that characteristics of the Jomon culture changed significantly through time, and between regions. By examining such temporal and regional variability, Jomon archaeology can contribute to understanding the Japanese past and the mechanisms of long-term culture change in human history.
Scholars who work on other archaeological cultures along the Pacific Rim, such as California, have pointed out the importance of comparative studies. Similarities between Jomon and Native American cultures include a heavy reliance on marine food and various nuts, including acorns. Recent developments in new scientific techniques, such as AMS radiocarbon dating, and bioarchaeological studies, have further stimulated academic interaction between Japanese and North American archaeologists.
The goals of this symposium are thus twofold: (1) to compare the Jomon with other archaeological cultures along the Pacific Rim, and (2) to exchange new information on theory and method of hunter-gatherer archaeology, environmental archaeology and archaeological science. By doing so, we hope to demonstrate that Jomon archaeology is an exciting and emerging regional field.
This symposium is part of our institutional project "Understanding Lifeways and Biocultural Diversity in Prehistoric Japan" supported by the Luce Initiative on East and Southeast Asian Archaeology and Early History.
The 2008 US Presidential Election and Japan
Glen Fukushima, Director and CEO, Airbus Japan KK
March 21, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies, Haas School of Business, Political Science
Origin of the Shingon Patriarchal Portraiture: Or, Disjunction between History and Theory
Ryûichi Abé, Japanese Religions, Harvard University
April 17, 2008
Center for Buddhist Studies, Center for Japanese Studies
This talk examines, first, the social and historical condition in which Kûkai produced the portraits of Nâgârjuna and Nâgabodhi in the twelfth year of the Kônin era (821), and, secondly, the validity of the theory of Shingon's Dharma transmission, the nondual transmission of the Matrix and Diamond Mandalas, which is said to be grounded in these paintings and Kûkai's narratives attached to each of these works. Although a few art historians have studied these portraits, there is not yet a thorough investigation on Kûkai's motive to commission the production of these paintings at this particular stage in his career. Professor Abé will focus his analysis in the relationship, on one hand, between these two portraits produced under Kûkai's supervision and the five patriarchal portraits Kûkai brought back from China, and, on the other, between the biographical narrative texts Kûkai prepared to be attached to the seven portraits. The concluding part of the talk considers Kûkai's production of the portraiture in relationship to his swiftly increasing visibility and public responsibility in the early Heian priestly and aristocratic circles.
Ryûichi Abé is the Reischauer Institute Professor of Japanese Religions at Harvard University. Until May 2005, he was Professor of Japanese religions and Buddhism of East Asia at Columbia University, where he received the Philip and Ruth Hettleman Award for distinguished teaching. Professor Abé, through his teaching and books, has made an important contribution to the Western understanding of Japanese Buddhism. His book on Kûkai underscores Kûkai's impact on 9th century Japanese society. At a time when Confucian discourse dominated Japan, Kûkai developed a "voice" for Buddhism. He has also written about Ryōkan, and Saichō. His publications include The Weaving of Mantra: Kûkai and the Construction of Esoteric Buddhist Discourse (1999), Great Fool: Zen Master Ryōkan: Poems, Letters, and Other Writings (1996, with Peter Haskel), and Saichō and Kûkai: A Conflict of Interpretations (1995).
Buddhism and Technology: Attitudes, Philosophy, and Practices
Marcus Bingenheimer, Dharma Drum Buddhist College, Taiwan
April 22, 2008
Center for Buddhist Studies, Center for Japanese Studies
Information technology slowly changes the ways of research and teaching in the Humanities. As new forms of scholarly publication and evaluation emerge, scholars in the Humanities are challenged to rethink the role of technology for their field. Taking cues from the philosophy of technology in the Western tradition, especially that of Martin Heidegger, this talk will probe the possibilities of a dialog between Buddhism and technology. The presentation will make the case for a critical and reflective attitude towards the use of technology and the chance for Buddhist Studies as academic discipline to play a mediating role in the emerging dialog.
Marcus Bingenheimer's research interest lies mainly in the history of Buddhism and Buddhist historiography. Beyond that he is engaged in the task of editing and supervising the production of digital Buddhist texts and Buddhist study tools. Dr. Bingenheimer has published on Japanese and Chinese monks of the 7th and 8th century, the Chinese Buddhist historiographer Yinshun (1906-2005) and contemporary Buddhist whole-body relics in Taiwan. He has contributed an entry to the DDB on Yinshun.
Subtitling Can be Disturbing: Memories of Agano and Abusive Translation
Abe Markus Nornes, Screen Arts & Culture/Asian Languages & Cultures, Unviersity of Michigan
May 2, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies, East Asian Languages and Cultures, Film Studies, Berkeley Film Seminar
In 1992, director Sato Makoto released Living on the River Agano, a documentary closely examined the impact of Minamata Disease on a rural community in the mountains of Niigata. It was the result of several years spent living with the old farmers in the area. Ten years later, Sato and his cameraman returned to Niigata to renew their friendships with the farmers — at least those that had survived in the intervening years, and on this occasion, they made another film Memories of Agano (2004). These two films posed a range of challenges to the subtitler, beginning with the remarkably thick dialect of Niigata. Sato wanted his sequel to steadfastly resist the reduction of these people to the Disease, deciding that his goals could be best served by forcing spectators to listen to how people spoke rather than simply what they were saying. This posed a novel challenge to the English subtitler. Nornes used Memories of Agano as an opportunity to bring his theorization of an "abusive subtitling" into thorough practice. After screening his version of Memories of Agano, Nornes will discuss his collaboration with Sato. Abé Markus Nornes is the author of Cinema Babel (Minnesota UP), a theoretical and historical look at the role of translation in film history. He also wrote Forest of Pressure: Ogawa Shinsuke and Postwar Japanese Documentary and Japanese Documentary Film: From the Meiji Era to Hiroshima (both Minnesota UP). He co-edited Japan-American Film Wars (Routledge), In Praise of Film Studies (Kinema Club), and many film festival retrospective catalogs. He is on the editorial boards of Documentary Box (Japan), International Studies in Documentary, and Mechadamia and has been co-owner of the internet newsgroup KineJapan since its inception.
Critique, Responsibility, and Performative Rights
Judith Butler, Rhetoric/Comparative Literature, University of California at Berkeley
May 12-13, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies
Judith Butler is Maxine Elliot Professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley.
Professor Butler received her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Yale University in 1984, and is the author of numerous works that include Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Routledge, 1990), Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (Routledge, 1997), Antigone's Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death(Columbia University Press, 2000), and Hegemony, Contingency, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left, (with Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Zizek, Verso Press, 2000). In 2004, she published a collection of writings on war's impact on language and thought entitled Precarious Life: Powers of Violence and Mourningwith Verso Press. That same year, The Judith Butler Reader appeared (edited by Sara Salih, Blackwell Publishers). Among Professor Butler's most recent books is Who Sings the Nation-State?: Language, Politics, Belonging (co-authored with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Seagull Books, 2007). She continues to write on cultural and literary theory, philosophy, psychoanalysis, feminism, and sexual politics.
Judith Butler's translated works in Japanese 『ジェンダー・トラブル — フェミニズムとアイデンティティの攪乱』 竹村和子 訳(青土社, 1999 年) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, (Routledge, 1990)
『触発する言葉 — 言語・権力・行為体』(岩波書店, 2004 年) 竹村和子訳 Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative, (Routledge, 1997)
『アンティゴネーの主張 — 問い直される親族関係』竹村和子訳（青土社, 2002 年) Antigone's Claim: Kinship between Life & Death, (Columbia University Press, 2000)
『偶発性・ヘゲモニー・普遍性 — 新しい対抗政治への対話』竹村和子・ 村山敏勝 訳（青土社, 2002 年)Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left, with Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Zizek, (Verso, 2000.)
『生のあやうさ — 哀悼と暴力の政治学 』 本橋哲也 訳 (以文社, 2007 年) Precarious Life: the Powers of Mourning and Violence, (Verso, 2004)
The Maruyama Lectures are named in honor of the late Maruyama Masao (1914-96), historian of East Asian political thought and one of the most influential political thinkers in twentieth-century Japan. The series brings to the university important scholars and thinkers who will offer reflections on the problem of political engagement and responsibility in modern times, which was the central and overriding concern in Maruyama's work.
This series is supported by a grant from the Konishi Foundation for International Exchange, Tokyo
Cal Japan Day
May 17, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies
Celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Center for Japanese Studies at UC Berkeley!
UC Berkeley's Center for Japanese Studies (CJS) is one of the oldest Japanese Studies centers in the United States, with internationally recognized strengths in Japanese history, literature, political science, religion, anthropology, and art history. CJS has hosted numerous historic conferences and visiting scholars from Japan and other countries, funded our best-in-the-nation Japanese collection in the C.V. Starr East Asian Library, distributed research grants to hundreds of graduate students and faculty, and sponsored a wide range of events to introduce Japan to Berkeley and the larger community in the San Francisco Bay Area.
To celebrate our 50th anniversary, we are inviting Cal alumni and others with an interest in Japan back to campus for Cal Japan Day. This will officially launch a year of 50th anniversary celebrations with exciting events such as a reading by the novelist, Murakami Haruki, coming up in the Fall.
Rakugo: Japanese Sit-down Comedy in English
Kaishi Katsura, Ambassador, Ministry of Culture, Japan
May 17, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies
What is Rakugo? Rakugo can be best described as Japanese sit-down comic story telling, with a history of about 400 years. The performer sits on a small cushion in front of the audience and acts out stories consisting of conversations among several characters.
Dressed in traditional formal Japanese clothes (Kimono) and usually equipped with a paper fan (Sensu) and hand towel (Tenugui). The performer uses these items to help act out the story. There are about 300 popular classic Rakugo today, and after a few hundred years, people still find new laughter in them.
Traditional Rakugo comedian and current cultural ambassador for Japan, Kaishi Katsura performs an entire cast of traditional Japanese characters from the comfort of his cushion. With only the help of his fan, Katsura enacts the voices, faces, and activities of a range of people such as geisha, samurai, merchants, and ninja. He will perform some traditional pieces as well as his own original stories. Enjoy this unique art with Kaishi Katsura, one of the world's top performers of English Rakugo.
Kaishi Katsura started his career as a professional Rakugo performer in 1994 and started presenting Rakugo in English in 1997. He has given more than 200 performances in 12 different countries. In 2007, Katsura was appointed by the Japanese Ministry of Culture as its cultural exchange ambassador. He will be on a nationwide tour of English Rakugo in the United States from April to September 2008. Do not miss this unique opportunity.
$15 — General Public; $10 — Student
Goddesses: Prints by Mayumi Oda
June 1 – September 15, 2008
Center for Buddhist Studies, Center for Japanese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies
Shaped by training in traditional Japanese arts and informed by contemporary concerns, Oda's "Goddesses" interprets the Buddhist pantheon with a feminine flair. Environmentally aware and encompassing in her religious vision, Oda's vibrant compositions bring to life an array of icons from household gods to Buddhism's supreme dieties.
Mayumi Oda's Artist's Talk will be held on Friday, September 12, 2008 at 5:30 pm.
Culture and Health in Nineteenth Century Japan
June 1 – August 29, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, ORIAS (Office of Resources for International and Area Studies)
Disease, medicine, and health through the lens of artistic production illuminate cultural attitudes and beliefs current in nineteenth century Japan. Selected digital reproductions of woodblock prints in the collection of the University of California, San Francisco Library offer lively, imaginative, and revealing views of an era when Japan was not only coping with traditional scourges, but grappling with new attitudes and approaches to medicine as Japan opened its doors to the West. The full collection can be viewed online here. This exhibit is presented in conjunction with the ORIAS summer teachers' workshop "Pestilence and Public Health."