Colloquia in the Musicologies
Ian Condry
January 21, 2010
Center for Japanese Studies, Department of Music
"New Directions in Japanese Hip-Hop: Rethinking the Cultural Politics of Popular Music in the 21st Century"
Ian Condry, Associate Professor of Japanese Cultural Studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; author of Hip-Hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization
Recent Changes in Politics: A Yomiuri Special Lecture
Taro Kono, Director-General of the International Bureau, Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)
February 2, 2010
Center for Japanese Studies, The Yomiuri Program, Graduate School of Journalism
Taro Kono is an ex-candidate of the LDP presidential election in 2009. He is one of the most famous and influential young politicians. His father is Yohei Kono, ex-president of the LDP and ex-Speaker of the House of Representatives.Taro Kono will talk about recent "regime changes" from the LDP to the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), the future of Japan's politics and other newsworthy topics.
This talk is a special lecture for the Yomiuri Program at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, "Reporting on Japan: Society, Science and Okinawa" course taught by Prof. Kyoichi Sasazawa.
Remarks by Steven Vogel, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, UC Berkeley.
The Tale of Heike: A Biwa Lecture-Recital
Yoko Hiraoka, Senior master performer of Biwa
February 8, 2010
Center for Japanese Studies, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Department of Music
The Biwa is an historical Japanese lute that has been used for centuries to recount stories from medieval times with themes of love, hardship, epic battles and the evanescence of life. Many of these stories are collected together in The Tale of Heike, an account of the amours, battles and tragedies suffered by two warring clans, the Minamoto and Taira clans of 12th-century Japan. The influence of these stories on Japanese culture can be seen even today, in contemporary anime themes.
Yoko performs four of the classic biwa compositions, with projected images of scenes from The Tale of Heike.
The New Ethnic Identity for Sustainable Citizenship in Japan: Searching for the Meaning of "Belonging"
February 11, 2010
Center for Japanese Studies, Center for Global Studies, Shizuoka Prefectural University, Asian American Studies Program, Center for Race and Gender
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- Keiko Yamanaka, Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley — Moderator
- Duncan Williams, Chair, Center for Japanese Studies, UC Berkeley — Opening Remarks
- Keiko Nakayama, Chair, Center for Global Studies, University of Shizuoka — Introduction to Center for Global Studies, University of Shizuoka
- Mitsuhiro Fujimaki, Center for Global Studies, University of Shizuoka — Positing an Interpretive Form of Repatriation and Ownership of Knowledge of Indigenous Peoples (the Ainu): A Case Study of Asahikawa City Museum's Renewed Exhibition
- Hwaji Shin, Sociology, University of San Francisco (Currently Visiting Professor at Stanford University) — Colonial Legacy of Ethno-racial Inequality in Japan, with an Emphasis on Zainichi (Permanent Resident) Koreans
- Wesley Ueunten, Asian American Studies, San Francisco State University — Okinawan Music, Performing Arts and Diasporic Identities: Weathering the Global Storm
- Takahito Sawada, Center for Global Studies, University of Shizuoka — Economic Participation and Transforming Identity of Japanese Latino Immigrants after the Late-2000s Recession
- Stephen Small, African American Studies, UC Berkeley — Discussant
Discussion with the Audience
Screening of Campaign (選挙)
Kazuhiro Soda, Director of "Senkyo"
February 11, 2010
Center for Japanese Studies, Department of Film Studies
Screening of the film "Senko (選挙)," or in English, "Campaign," will be followed by a special audience Q&A with the director, Kazuhiro Soda.
SENKYO is a cinema-verite documentary that closely follows a heated election campaign in Kawasaki, Japan, revealing the true nature of "democracy." In the fall of 2005, 40 year-old, self-employed Kazuhiko "Yama-san" Yamauchi's peaceful, humdrum life was turned upside-down. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has suddenly chosen him as its official candidate to run for a vacant seat on the Kawasaki city council. Yama-san had zero experience in politics, no charisma, no supporters, no constituency, and no time to prepare for the impending election. Can a candidate with no political experience and no charisma win an election if he is backed by the political giant Prime Minister Koizumi and his Liberal Democratic Party?
KAZUHIRO SODA was born and raised in Japan and has lived in New York since 1993. He has directed numerous fiction films and TV documentaries, but CAMPAIGN (SENKYO) is his first feature documentary. It was invited to many film festivals around the world including Berlin Film Festival, and it won the prestigious Peabody Award in 2009.
Lost Strands of Japan's Long Sixteenth Century
Kazuhiro Soda, Director of "Senkyo"
February 13, 2010
Center for Japanese Studies, Department of History
Over a quarter century has now passed since the publication of the last of the seminal collaborative projects on the sixteenth century. Notwithstanding the appearance of a number of remarkable works by individual scholars, the field as a whole has moved little since then, and over the years that pioneering work appears to have turned into a definitive statement of sorts. The longstanding preoccupation with the process of "unification" has led scholars to examine the sixteenth century in terms of its outcomes. Instead, this conference is part of an effort to give new impetus to the study of the period by turning attention to the daily practices and events that preceded the Edo settlement, and to foster scholarly inquiries that do not rely on heroic grand narratives or the justification of incipient modernity. Indeed, the "lost strands" of the title refer to practices and processes that did not survive into later periods. To emphasize them is to underscore the need to recover alternative narratives and call into question what deserves to be recovered.
This approach is not meant to marginalize the concerns of political and institutional historians, which ultimately must be central to any serious attempt to understand a society, but rather to call attention to the richness of themes that the important volumes of the seventies and eighties left out of the tapestry of published history. We are convinced that there is a need to move beyond the objectives of previous collaborative efforts by redirecting scholarly attention to themes that have more recently gained currency in history (and the humanities) at large — themes like the body and gender, the everyday and material culture, the "other," and memory (to name but a few possibilities). A new approach would allow scholarship to explore the codes and practices that made up the fabric of sixteenth-century society in ways that transcend the competition for military and political hegemony that has, understandably, attracted the lion's share of scholarly interest.
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- Eric Rath, University of Kansas — "Food Cultures of Momoyama Japan"
- Morgan Pitelka, Occidental College — "Absent Actors: Falconry In and Out of the Long Sixteenth Century"
- David Eason, University at Albany — "A Sound Policy: Restrictions on Slander and the Redefinition of Permissible Violence circa 1600"
- David Spafford, University of Washington — "No Longer the Age for Camping"
- Peter Shapinsky, University of Illinois at Springfield — "Recovering the History of 'Large Ships' in Japan's Long Sixteenth Century"
- Maria Grazia Petrucci, University of British Columbia — "Economic Development, Political Control, and Piracy in the Coastal Cities of Late Medieval Japan"
- Suzanne Gay, Oberlin College — "Risk and Opportunity: Entrepreneurs in the Long Sixteenth Century"
- Brian Goldsmith, Lenoir-Rhyne University — "Early Modern Infrastructure: Quiet Commercial Booms in the Long Sixteenth Century"
- Mary Elizabeth Berry, University of California, Berkeley
Relocating Ozu: The Question of an Asian Cinematic Aesthetic
February 19–20, 2010
Center for Chinese Studies, Center for Korean Studies, Center for Japanese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies
Jointly organized by the Centers for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, this meeting will bring together a dynamic group of international scholars on February 19–20, 2010 to reassess Japanese film director Yasujiro Ozu's work in its wider relation to inter- and postwar colonial and urban modernities in East Asia. Rather than replicate auteurist approaches to Ozu's legacy, we seek to situate his work — as well the afterlife of his style in contemporary East Asian cinema — within a global circuit, one that encompasses Hollywood as well as the cinemas of Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong, and mainland China. Clearly, what we might call an "Ozu-like" aesthetic — most readily identified with a long take, deep focus realism, non-180 degree editing, and a distinctive handling of cinematic time — has had an abiding presence in East Asian art cinema within and outside of Japan, particularly since the 1980s. What this conference aims to explore are the ways in which this phenomenon is not merely reducible to questions of influence. Nor can it be viewed simply in terms of a presentist history of global art-house cinema. Instead, this conference will attempt to place Ozu's work, and the emergence of an "Ozu-like" aesthetic, within the context of the early emergence of a genre-based commercial cinema in urban centers such as Tokyo, Shanghai, Taipei and Seoul.
This re-examination of Ozu's work entails a number of questions. In what ways were these various cinematic vernaculars in dialogue with one another, and how did they emerge from out of the crucible of colonial commerce and imperial violence that linked these urban centers? How might the most distinctly "Ozu-like" genre — the family melodrama — encode these histories? How, finally, might we reassess the question of Ozu's formalism? Yoshida Kiju has suggested that in Ozu's "anti-cinema," objects observe people, rather than the other way around. In what sense might this close attention to the world of things be a product of, as well as a creative response to, the reifications of urban modernity? How, in other words, can we open Ozu's aesthetics, and his continuing relevance to contemporary East Asian cinema, to historical question?
That Night's Wife
February 19, 2010
Center for Chinese Studies, Center for Korean Studies, Center for Japanese Studies
The showing of the film, "That Night's Wife" (1930), by director Yasujiro Ozu, is part of the conference, "Relocating Ozu, The Question of an Asian Cinematic Aesthetic."
A City of Sadness
February 20, 2010
Center for Chinese Studies, Center for Japanese Studies, Center for Korean Studies
The showing of the film, "A City of Sadness" (1989) by director Hou Hsiao-hsien is part of the conference, "Relocating Ozu, The Question of an Asian Cinematic Aesthetic." This is a new print of the film.
Japanese Buddhist Culture and Monzeki Temples
March 6, 2010
Center for Japanese Studies, Ryukoku University Berkeley Center
9:30AM–12:00PM
Chair: Donald Drummond (Institute of Buddhist Studies)
Panelist: Yukio Kusaka (Ryukoku University) on the Shôgo'in Monzeki (in Japanese)
Tesshin Michimoto (Ryukoku University) on Mt. Hiei and the Gochi Hôkan Buddha (in Japanese)
Fujimoto Kô'ichi (Ryukoku University) on the Byôdô'in as a case study of Buddhist temples and aristocratic society (in Japanese)
2:00–4:00PM
Chair: Yukio Kusaka (Ryukoku University)
Panelists: Donald Drummond (Institute of Buddhist Studies) on Omuro Ninnaji's Kakuhô Hosshinnô
4:10–5:10PM
Discussion with commentator Lori Meeks (University of Southern California)
Lord It's the Samurai: Socially Engaged Art and the Cultural Production of Orientalist Hysteria
Majime Sugiru, Communications Director, Asians Art Museum
March 9, 2010
Center for Japanese Studies
Majime Sugiru serves as communications director for the Asians Art Museum, a guerrilla art collective that creates public and online 'cultural interventions' as a means of challenging dominant (mis)representations of Japanese visual culture in the Bay Area. Their latest project integrates Japanese Studies scholarship with art in a parody of last summer's blockbuster "Lords of the Samurai" exhibition at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. Generating joyful laughter and impassioned debate across a broad spectrum of constituent communities while garnering media attention, critical acclaim and wide-ranging scholarly approval, this deft cultural counterpunch succeeded at raising awareness of the retrograde cultural politics that continue to play out in the exhibition of Japanese art in this country today.
"I'm always pleased to learn that what we have written within gated academic enclosures manages, sometime, to creep out to have an effect on thinking in the wider world. I couldn't agree more with the intent and execution of the 'intervention.'"
—Harry Harootunian, Professor Emeritus of History and East Asian Studies, NYU
Majime Sugiru is a Berkeley-born, Cal-educated contemporary artist based in San Francisco. His provocative art has been shown in New York and San Francisco, most recently at the de Young Museum where much of his work was ordered taken down shortly before the exhibition was about to open.
Living and Learning: Sharing Memories of the Great Tokyo Air Raid in the US
Katsumoto Saotome, Director, Center of the Tokyo Air Raid & War Damages Resource
Haruko Nihei, Oral History Reciter, Center of the Tokyo Air Raid
Tadahito Yamamoto, Staff Researcher, Center of the Tokyo Air Raid
Cary Karacas, College of Staten Island, CUNY
March 16, 2010
Center for Japanese Studies, Department of History
3:00 pm: Opening Remarks by Andrew Barshay, History, UC Berkeley
3:15 pm–3:30 pm: "Introduction: Memorializing the Tokyo Air Raids"
Cary Karacas, Assistant Professor of Human Geography, College of Staten Island, CUNY
3:30 pm–4:00 pm: "The Mission of the Center of the Tokyo Air Raid and War Damages"
Tadahito Yamamoto, Staff Researcher, the Center of the Tokyo Raid and War Damages
4:00 pm–4:40 pm: "My Story: Passing Memories of the Great Tokyo Air Raid"
Haruyo Nihei, Tokyo Air Raid Survivor and Oral History Recitor
5:00 pm–6:00 pm: "Living and Learning: Sharing Memories of the Great Tokyo Air Raid in the US"
Katsumoto Saotome, Director, Center of the Tokyo Air Raid & War Damages Resource Center
6:00 pm–6:30 pm: Q & A
Writer Saotome Katsumoto is the author of numerous works of nonfiction and fiction, many of which center on the indiscriminate firebombing of Tokyo during the final months of World War II. As a youth he experienced firsthand the air raids carried out on March 10, 1945 by American B-29 Superfortress heavy bombers on Tokyo's Shitamachi region, which killed approximately 100,000 people. Informed by that catastrophic event, Saotome has endeavored for decades to ensure that the air raids are not forgotten and that societies seek a peaceful means of conflict resolution. In addition to his prolific body of written work, Saotome wrote the screenplay for "War and Youth", director IMAI Tadashi's final film, and is currently the director of the Tokyo Air Raid and War Damages Resource Center in Koto Ward, Tokyo. In this talk Saotome will discuss how citizens can become informed about and further understand the meaning of the Tokyo air raids.
Tokyo Air Raid and War Damages Resource Center — A small museum devoted to the attack, the Tokyo Air Raid and War Damages Resource Center opened near the center of the disaster zone in 2002, and has been renovated for the 60th anniversary. The museum has expanded its timeline display to include Tokyo's 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor and examples of Japanese pro-war propaganda to show Japan's role in starting the fighting, said Haruyo Nihei, a 73-year-old survivor and Center volunteer. Tadahito Yamamoto, Staff Researcher at the Center will speak of the mission of the Center and introduce its collections, exhibit, research activities, and publications.
Everything I Ever Needed to Know in Life I Learned from the Yakuza or the Cops
Jake Adelstein, Investigative Journalist
March 17, 2010
Center for Japanese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies
Jake Adelstein is the only American journalist ever to have been admitted to the insular Tokyo Metropolitan Police Press Club, and with Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan we have his firsthand, revelatory look at Japanese culture from the underbelly up.
At nineteen, Jake went to Japan in search of peace and tranquility. But he quickly worked his way from student to crime reporter for the prestigious Japanese-language Yomiuri Shinbun. For twelve years of 80-hour work weeks, he covered the seedy side of Japan, where extortion, murder, human trafficking, and corruption are more prevalent than we would imagine, given that Japan is one of the safest countries in the world to live. When his final scoop brought him face to face with one of Japan's most infamous yazuka bosses—and with it the threat of death for him and his family—Adelstein decided to step down from the newspaper. But he did fight back, and got that story told.
Tokyo Vice tells a riveting, often humorous tale of Adelstein's journey from an inexperienced cub reporter to a daring, investigative journalist with a price on his head. With its vivid, visceral descriptions of crime in Japan and an exploration of the world of modern-day yakuza that even few Japanese ever see, Tokyo Vice is a fascination, and an education, from first to last.
Jake Adelstein was a reporter for the Yomiuri Shinbun, Japan's largest newspaper, from 1993 to 2005. From 2006 to 2007, he was the chief investigator for a U.S. State Department-sponsored study of human trafficking in Japan. Considered one of the foremost experts on organized crime in Japan, he works as a writer and consultant in Japan and the U.S.
Introduced by Duncan Ryuken Williams, Chair, Center for Japanese Studies.
Writing the Infinite: Tendai Buddhist Calligraphy as the Bodhisattva Path
April 1, 2010 – June 10, 2010
Center for Japanese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies
A spiritual awakening awaits both creator and viewer in the highest forms of Tendai calligraphy. "Boundless" and "infinite" are favored characters, as monks and lay followers seek heightened awareness in the act of writing. Drawing upon a lifetime of rigorous training and meditative concentration, the calligrapher touches brush to paper in a moment of personal realization of Buddhist teachings.
"Writing the Infinite: Tendai Buddhist Calligraphy as the Bodhisattva Path" opens at the IEAS Gallery at the University of California, Berkeley on April 1, 2010. The calligraphy on display represents some of the most accomplished and highly placed members of the sect. On loan from Enryakuji temple on Mount Hiei in Kyoto as well as other temples in Japan and the United States, this exhibit is an opportunity to experience directly the sacred texts of Tendai.
For all Tendai priests, training in calligraphy is central not only to their own spiritual growth, but the everyday practice of religious duties. Monks need to write temple signs, funeral tablets, certificates, inscriptions, as well as the copy sutras. Some priests make calligraphy their primary religious practice. But for all, calligraphy is central to one's spiritual journey, and the painted words serve as an inspiration for others seeking guidance. Just as Bodhisattvas forego nirvana to assist others in achieving enlightenment, Tendai priests, through calligraphy, seek to help others to greater understanding.
Those who find calligraphy a less accessible form than other arts, or who wish to learn more about Tendai Buddhism, are invited attend a symposium "Tendai Studies and Art" on April 23, 2010, at the Institute of East Asian Studies (2223 Fulton Street in Berkeley, 6th Floor Conference Room, 9 am to 6 pm). Priests, scholars, and practitioners of calligraphy will speak about Tendai practice in the morning and writing in the afternoon, culminating in a demonstration by one of the major figures in Tendai calligraphy.
Tendai Studies and Art Symposium
April 23, 2010
Center for Japanese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, California Tendai Monastery
Symposium: 9:00AM – 12:00PM
9:00–9:15AM: Introduction by Prof. Duncan Williams (UC Berkeley)
9:15–9:45AM: Keynote Lecture by Prof. Shoshin Ichishima (Taisho University) — "The Integration of Sutra & Tantra at Mount Hiei"
9:45–10:00AM: Q & A
10:00–10:30AM: Lecture by Prof. Paul Groner (University of Virginia — "The Training and Education of Tendai Monks"
10:30–10:45AM: Q & A
10:45–11:30AM: Lecture by Prof. Hodo Shioiri (Taisho University) — with interpreter — "Syncretism of Kami and Buddha in Terms of Sanno Shinto"
11:30–11:45AM: Q & A
Tendai Calligraphy Panel: 1:30PM – 6:00PM
1:30–1:35PM: Introduction by Monshin Paul Naamon (Tendai Buddhist Institute) 1:35–2:15PM: Lecture by Prof. John Stevens (Tohoku Fukushi University) — "An Illustrated History of Tendai Calligraphy"
2:15–2:30PM: Q & A
2:30–3:00PM: Lecture by Prof. Elizabeth ten Grotenhuis (Boston University) — canceled
"Entering the Pure Land at a Tendai Temple — Seigantoji at Nachi"
3:00–3:15PM: Q & A
3:30–4:30PM: Ven. Senkei Shibayama (Calligrapher and author of Saicho no Sho)
Demonstration of Tendai Calligraphy — with interpreter
4:30–6:00PM: Reception
Climate Change and Subsistence in Prehistoric Japan
June 19–20, 2010
The impact of climate change on past peoples' lives is a topic of debate in the archaeology of different parts of the world. It is no exception in the study of the Jomon culture in Japan. Many Japanese scholars have suggested that the cooling climate at around 4300–4000 years ago resulted in a significant population decrease and a decline of large settlements at the end of the Middle Jomon period. Was climate change really the cause, or was it simply a trigger? How were the other factors, such as subsistence intensification, plant domestication and social stratification, related to the culture change? In addition to the climate change, should we also consider human impacts on the environment as a major factor for understanding human-environment interaction during the prehistoric period? Answering these questions is beneficial not only for the study of ancient societies but also to think about environmental issues with a long time scale. In this two day public event, scientists and archaeologists will discuss climate and subsistence change from such data as marine cores, pollen analyses, palaeoethnobotany, isotope studies, bioarchaeology, micromorphology and residue analyses. Results of our Institutional Project "Understanding Lifeways and Biocultural Diversity in Prehistoric Japan" will be used as a case study to link these lines of evidence with archaeological data. Comparative case studies will be discussed from other parts of Asia and the Pacific Rim.