Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra Workshop
Workshop
Date: January 7-8, 2016 | 9:30 a.m.-5:15 p.m.
Location: Stephens Hall, Townsend Center, Geballe Room
This workshop brings together scholars from Asia, Europe and the U.S. to explore the formation and impact of the Nirvana Sutra in the evolution of Buddhist thought, belief and practice in India, China, Korea, and Japan, the source of the teachings of buddha-nature, vegetarianism, icchantika, and filled with stunning parables and analogies, this meeting will explore both how its contents reflects developments within the Buddhist communities in India and impacted Buddhist communities in East Asia.
For the full schedule and speaker list, please visit the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra Workshop website.
Thursday, January 7, 2016
9:30-9:45: Mark Blum
Welcome Remarks, book proposal idea
9:45-10:00: Shimoda Masahiro
Welcome Remarks, introductory comments on the workshop; introduce Robert Grochowski
10:00-10:30: Robert Grochowski
Delivers talk of Shinsō Itō
10:45-11:30: Suzuki Takayasu
"The Influence of the MMPNS in India"
11:30-12:00: Paul Harrison
Reads "The Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra as 'Our First' Source for Tathāgatagarbha, and Implications for the Inception of the Doctrine" by Michael Radich
1:15-2:00: Habata Hiromi
"The Conflict with the opponent traced in the Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra: sautrāntika and icchantika."
2:00-2:40: Chis Jones
"The Tathāgatagarbha as 'True Self' in the Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra, and its place in the wider Mahāyāna"
2:40-3:15: Shimoda, Harrison, Sasaki, Habata
Discussion on contextualizing the MMPNS within Indian Buddhism
3:30-4:15: Kanno Hiroshi
"Some Perspectives on the Mahāyana Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra in China during the Northern/Southern and Sui Dynasties: Focusing on the System of Doctrinal Classifications"
4:15-5:00: Nishimoto Teruma
"Sanjie-jiao: A Heresy Created by the Nirvana Sutra"
Friday, January 8, 2016
9:30-10:15AM: Shimoda Masahiro
"Wŏnhyo's commentary on the Nirvana-sutra (Tae yŏlban-gyŏng chong'yo)"
10:15-10:45: Paul Groner
"The Precepts and Their Interpretation in the Nirvana-sutra"
11:00-11:45: Jacqueline Stone
"Curing the Incurable: Nichiren's Use of the Nirvana Sutra"
11:45-12:30: Mark Blum
"Does Tathāgatagarbha Define Other-Power? The Impact of the Nirvana Sutra upon the Formation of Pure Land Buddhism"
1:45-2:30: Nishimoto, Kanno, Groner, Stone, Blum, Wendi Adamek
Discussion on contextualizing the MMPNS within East Asian Buddhism
2:30-3:00: Nagasaki Kiyonori
"The SAT database and the future of digital humanities."
3:15-4:00: Mark Blum, Masahiro Shimoda
Discussion of book proposal: Readings of the Nirvana Sutra
Beyond Local Citizenship: Immigrant Community and Immigrant Incorporation in Japan
Panel Discussion
Date: January 22, 2016 | 4:00–6:00 p.m.
Speakers:
• Yuka Ishii, University of Shizuoka
• Keiko Yamanaka, UC Berkeley
• Sachi Takahata, University of Shizuoka
• Deana Mitchell, UC Berkeley Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsors: Group in Asian Studies, Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies, Center for Global Studies at the University of Shizuoka
The 2008 economic crisis of Japan significantly altered the landscape of immigrant communities. This is most visible in a sharp drop of foreign worker populations the largest of which are the Brazilians registering in manufacturing cities. The other newcomer communities, such as Filipinos and Vietnamese, witnessed a gradual population growth. What is happening to these immigrant communities spread widely throughout the country? This panel, in collaboration with the Center for Global Studies at the University of Shizuoka, examines policies of local administrations and activities of immigrant communities in support of their participation and empowerment. Such efforts, encapsulated in the concept of "Local Citizenship," however, remain ineffective in the absence of national policy for immigrant incorporation despite Japan's alarming demographic trend.
Speakers and Title of Presentation:
Introduction by Keiko Yamanaka, UC Berkeley
1. Yuka Ishii, University of Shizuoka
"Japan's Immigration Policy and Local Citizenship since the 2000s"
2. Keiko Yamanaka, UC Berkeley
"Limit of Local Citizenship: Filipina Wives' Activism in Rural Akita Towns"
3. Sachi Takahata, University of Shizuoka
"Local Policy and Support for Vietnamese, Brazilians and Filipinos in Manufacturing City Hamamatsu"
4. Deana Mitchell, UC Berkeley
Video, "Japan Is Home: Brazilian Second Generation in Hamamatsu"
Q & A
Both Eyes Open: A New Chamber Opera by Prof. Philip Kan Gotanda
Performing Arts — Theater
Date: January 29, 2016 | 7:30 p.m.
Location: Morrison Hall, Elkus Room (#125)
Sponsors: Department of Music, Department of Theater, Dance & Performance Studies, First Look Sonoma
Workshop Presentation of a new chamber opera, BOTH EYES OPEN, featuring renowned tenor, John Duykers.
The Center for Japanese Studies at UC Berkeley with additional support of the Department of Theater Dance Performance Studies, Department of Music, and First Look Sonoma, presents a workshop-presentation of the new chamber opera, BOTH EYES OPEN. The work will be presented Friday, January 29, 7:30, at 125 Morrison Hall, in the Elkus Room at the Department of Music.
The music is by New York composer, Max Duykers, the libretto by UC Berkeley Professor, Philip Kan Gotanda. Tenor John Duykers, will be performing along with soprano Kalean Ung and UC student Hesed Kim. Featured musicians are Marja Mutru and Joel Davel of the Paul Dresher Ensemble. Direction by Melissa Weaver. Video design by Kwame Braun. The evening will consist of performed excerpts along with a short pre-show presentation and post-show discussion. An informal reception will follow.
BOTH EYES OPEN explores the impact of the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans on the internal life of one young man returning home after 3 years of imprisonment. Through dream, memory and hallucination, Jinzo Matsumoto tries to make sense of all that has happened to his life.
His farm has been taken, his beloved young wife, Catherine, has died and now Jinzo is contemplating taking his own life. Other worldly forces have something else in mind. The spirits of a Daruma Figurine and his late wife conspire to save him. Can these spectral forces keep him from a tragic fate? A Doll, a Ghost and a Suicide are all at play in this story told through opera and performance.
The Rise of China and Japan's New Security Strategy
Lecture
Speaker: Narushige Michishita, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies
Date: February 8, 2016 | 4:00–6:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Japan's most important security policy goal is to create an environment under which China's rise will be peaceful and cooperative. In strategic terms, maintaining the balance of power in the region and creating crisis prevention and management mechanisms are the most effective means of achieving this.
To this end, Japan is taking three important steps. First, it is restructuring its defense establishment while seeking to create a crisis prevention mechanism with China. Second, it is reinforcing cooperation with the United States. Finally, it is strengthening partnership with Australia, ASEAN countries, and India.
Narushige Michishita is a Japan Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center's Asia Program and simultaneously professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) in Tokyo. Previously, he served as senior research fellow at the National Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS), Ministry of Defense and assistant counsellor at the Cabinet Secretariat for Security and Crisis Management of the Government of Japan. He received his Ph.D. with distinction in International Relations (Asian Studies) from The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. A specialist in Japanese security and foreign policy as well as security issues on the Korean Peninsula, his works include North Korea's Military-Diplomatic Campaigns, 1966–2008 (Routledge, 2009). He is currently researching Japanese defense and foreign policy in the 1970s and 1980s, and is fluent in both Japanese and Korean.
Rethinking Religion, Ethics, and Political Economy in India and Sri Lanka: Critical perspectives from Japan
Workshop
Date: February 16, 2016 | 1:00–4:30 p.m.
Location: Stephens Hall, 10 (ISAS Conference Room)
Sponsors: Institute for South Asia Studies, National Institute for the Humanities Program, Contemporary India Area Studies, Ryukoku University Center for the Study of Contemporary India, The Shinjo Ito Chair Fellowship in Japanese Buddhist Studies
As the research of Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks has shown in detail, Area Studies programs in the United States emerge out of post-World War II Cold War preoccupations. Though Area Studies later come under significant criticism, this criticism seldom questions the central place of the United States in the formation of debate.
To open up the question of Area Studies in a more productive way, the Institute for South Asia Studies has embarked on a collaboration with Ryukoku University Center for the Study of Contemporary India (RINDAS) in Japan. Our hope is to offer a series of workshops bringing together groups of scholars from Japan, South Asia, and North America to engage and attend seriously to the possibility of different intellectual traditions as these confront contemporary cultural, religious, and political norms and events in South Asia. The focus of our first conference is on Sri Lanka and India.
The writer Pankaj Mishra recently explored the intense ties that linked intellectuals and artists in early 20th century India and Japan. Recent scholarship on California-centered social and political movements like the anti-colonial Ghadar Party has placed these in a transnational perspective on "Pacific Radicalism." In rethinking and reinventing the possibility of significant conversation between Japan, California, and South Asia, we hope to extend this history of powerful cross-Pacific engagement.
We are delighted to have some of Japan's most renowned scholars of South Asia as well as young scholars just entering, and rethinking, the field. Please join the conversation.
AGENDA
12:45 - 1:15: Welcome speeches by Lawrence Cohen (Director, Institute for South Asia Studies, UC Berkeley) and Mitsuya Dake (Director, the Center for the Study of Contemporary India, Ryukoku University)
1:15 - 2:00: Kenta Funahashi (Ryukoku University): Local Leaders and Dalit Assertion in Contemporary India: A Study of Buddhist Movements in Uttar Pradesh
(Moderator) Paola Bacchetta, Associate Professor of Gender and Women's Studies and Vice Chair for Pedagogy, UC Berkeley
(Discussant) Alexander von Rospattt, Professor for Buddhist and South Asian Studies; Director, Group in Buddhist Studies, UC Berkeley
2:00 - 2:45 Yoshiaki Takemura (National Museum of Ethnology): Good Life and Traditional Occupation: Gulf Money, Social Mobility and Ritual Practices in Kerala, South India
(Discussant) Andrea Wright, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, The College of William and Mary. ISAS Visiting Scholar, 2015, UC Berkeley
2:50 - 3:35: Sae Nakamura (Kyoto University): Rethinking the Ethics of Care for the Dying: An ethnographic case study of a Sri Lankan institution
(Discussant) Lawrence Cohen, Director, Institute for South Asia Studies, Sarah Kailath Professor of India Studies and Professor of Anthropology and of South & Southeast Asian Studies, UC Berkeley
3:45 - 4:30: Akio Tanabe (Kyoto University): Vernacular democracy and politics of relationships: A subalternate perspective on postcolonial India
(Discussant) Abhishek Kaicker, Assistant Professor of History, UC Berkeley
PARTICIPANTS
Moderator
-
- Paola Bacchetta, Associate Professor of Gender and Women's Studies and Vice Chair for Pedagogy, UC Berkeley
Welcome
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- Mitsuya Dake, Director, the Center for the Study of Contemporary India; Professor, Department of International Studies, Ryukoku University
Roundtable Chair (closed session)
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- Minoru Mio, Director, the Center for the Study of Contemporary India, National Museum of Ethnology, Japan
Presenters
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- Yoshiaki Takemura, Research Fellow, National Institutes for the Humanities, National Museum of Ethnology, Japan
- Kenta Funahashi, Research Center for Buddhist Cultures in Asia, Ryukoku University
- Akio Tanabe, Director, the Center for the Study of Contemporary India, Kyoto University
- Sae Nakamura, Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies, Kyoto University
Discussants
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- Alexander von Rospatt, Professor for Buddhist and South Asian Studies; Director, Group in Buddhist Studies, UC Berkeley
- Andrea Wright, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, The College of William and Mary; ISAS Visiting Scholar, 2015, UC Berkeley
- Lawrence Cohen, Director, Institute for South Asia Studies, Sarah Kailath Professor of India Studies and Professor of Anthropology and of South & Southeast Asian Studies, UC Berkeley
- Abhishek Kaicker, Assistant Professor of History, UC Berkeley
The Poetics of Friendship in Early Modern and Modern East Asia
Conference
Featured Speaker:
• Julie Carlson, UC Santa Barbara
Speakers:
• Maram Epstein, University of Oregon
• Joshua Fogel, York University
• Matthew Fraleigh, Brandeis University
• Wai-yee Li, Harvard University
• Brendan Morley, UC Berkeley
• Atsuko Sakaki, University of Toronto
• Anna Shields, Princeton University
• Robert Tuck, University of Montana
• Dongfeng Xu, University of Chicago
• Hu Ying, UC Irvine Discussants:
• H. Mack Horton, UC Berkeley
• Andrew Jones, UC Berkeley
• Ling-Hon Lam, UC Berkeley
• Paula Varsano, UC Berkeley
• Alan Tansman, UC Berkeley
Date: February 26-27, 2016 | 9 a.m.-3:30 p.m.
Location: Stephens Hall, Townsend Center, Geballe Room
Sponsors: Center for Chinese Studies, Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures, Division of Arts & Humanities, Letters & Science, Townsend Center for the Humanities
Scholars from both Chinese and Japanese Studies will present papers that explore the poetics of friendship and the ways friendship is constructed in social and cultural spheres. The larger aim of the symposium is to think about the culture of friendship in an East Asian context. Papers will concentrate on friendship in the early modern and modern periods.
SCHEDULE
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26
1:00-1:30 | Opening remarks
Matthew Mewhinney, H. Mack Horton
1:30-3:00 | Panel 1: Friendship and the Modern City
Joshua Fogel, Friendship in a Time of War: Lu Xun and Uchiyama Kanzo¯
Hu Ying, Women's Friendship in Beijing, ca.1901-04
Discussant: Andrew Jones
3:15-4:45 | Panel 2: Friendship and Sinitic Poetry
Robert Tuck, Lands with the Same Writing, Friends with the Same Hearts: Sino-Japanese Kanshi Exchange in Early Meiji
Matthew Fraleigh, Friends in Elegance: the journal Gayu and literary camaraderie in postwar Japan's Sinitic poetry scene
Discussant: H. Mack Horton
5:00-6:00 | Keynote speech
Julie Carlson (Dept. of English, UC Santa Barbara)
Friendship and Creativity: Call Me (a British) Romantic
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27
9:00-10:30 | Panel 3: Locating the Figures of Friendship
Brendan Morley, In Rivalry and Fellowship: Poetic Exchange between Japanese Literati and Delegates from the Kingdom of Parhae
Anna Shields, Figuring Intimacy: Metonymy in Mid-Tang Texts on Male Friendship
Discussant: Paula Varsano
10:45-12:15 | Panel 4: Discourses of Late Imperial Friendship
Wai-yee Li, Friendship Among the Flowers
Dongfeng Xu, You: Confucian Concept of Friendship and Late Ming Inter-religious Hospitality
Discussant: Ling-Hon Lam
1:30-3:00 | Panel 5: Friendship and Narrative
Maram Epstein, Women and Friendship in Nineteenth-Century Chinese Fiction
Atsuko Sakaki, The Lost Word, the Lasting Word: Eulogies, Dedications and Other Asymmetrical Narratives of Friendship by Horie Toshiyuki
Discussant: Alan Tansman
3:00-3:30 | Closing remarks
Film Screening: Devils on the Doorstep
Film
Date: February 29, 2016 | 6:00 p.m.
Location: 102 Wurster Hall
Sponsors: The Japan Foundation Los Angeles, Center for Chinese Studies
Join us for a screening of the film "Devils on the Doorstep" (2000). Jiang Wen directed and stars as the hapless protagonist in this incendiary, sociopolitical satire set in a Chinese hamlet during World War II's waning days. One wintry night, peasant Ma Dasan (Wen) becomes — at gunpoint — the custodian of two Japanese prisoners, one a rabid, jingoistic soldier and the other his self-preserving translator. When the gunman doesn't return, Dasan faces a weighty dilemma: Either slay his captives or free them.
This event is sponsored in collaboration with the Japan Foundation Los Angeles, through their initiative to promote Japan studies in an Asian context.
Film Screening: Last Life in the Universe
Film
Date: March 7, 2016 | 6:00 p.m.
Location: 102 Wurster Hall
Sponsors: The Japan Foundation Los Angeles, Center for Southeast Asia Studies
A story of two very different people coming together in the wake of personal tragedies, Last Life in the Universe (2004) stars Tadanobu Asano as Kenji, a quiet, bespectacled Japanese librarian living in Bangkok. Obsessed with suicide, he meticulously stages ways to kill himself, only to be interrupted every time. One night, his more raucous brother shows up for an unexpected visit, accompanied by a yakuza gangster. A gunfight breaks out, leaving both visitors dead. Kenji ventures out into the night and happens upon Noi (Sinitta Boonyasak), a feisty bargirl whose sister has just died in an accident following a fight over their shared boyfriend. Kenji accompanies Noi to her sprawling, dilapidated house in the country, where a relationship develops despite their language barrier and clashing personalities, until another twist of fate threatens to tear them apart.
This event is sponsored in collaboration with the Japan Foundation Los Angeles, through their initiative to promote Japan studies in an Asian context.
Designing Media: Computer Art and Platform Production in Japan
Lecture
Speakers:
• Yuriko Furuhata, McGill University
• Marc Steinberg, Concordia University
Discussants:
• Weihong Bao, EALC, UC Berkeley
• Daniel O'Neill, EALC, UC Berkeley
Date: March 10, 2016 | 4:00–7:00 p.m.
Location: 142 Dwinelle Hall
Sponsors: Film & Media Studies, Townsend Center Working Group on Comparative Media
Professors Yuriko Furuhata from McGill University and Marc Steinberg from Concordia University will present their papers in this lecture.
Yuriko Furuhata "Searching for Japan's Bell Labs: Experiments in Computer Art"
The 1960s witnessed the rise of computer art in Japan and North America. The nascent field of computer art dovetailed with the broader current of the "art and technology" movement, prompting a number of artists to experiment with the emergent technologies of computers, lasers, and sensors, while embracing cybernetics and information theory. At the centre of its American history sits the Bell Labs, a hub of crossover activity where engineers and artists frequently collaborated, where the first computer-generated films were made, and where art collectives such as E.A.T. (Experiments in Art and Technology) drew their inspiration and technical support. In looking at Japanese context of computer art and similar experiments with information technology, then, one might ask: where was Japan's equivalent of the Bell Labs? What place played the role of facilitator in encounters between artists and engineers, and where did these two groups find their technical support? These questions prompt us to look closely at the network of scientists, engineers, artists, and architects who became the pioneers in Japan's nascent computer art scene, shuttling between Japan's prestigious national University of Tokyo, its venerable Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation (NTT), and its soaring electronics industry. Focusing on several key exhibitions and artworks that featured computer-generated graphics and films made by Japanese artists and engineers in the 1960s and early 1970s, this talk will delineate the similarities and differences between the Japanese and American contexts, and call into question US-centric narratives of the history of computer art.
Yuriko Furuhata is Associate Professor and William Dawson Scholar of Cinema and Media History in the Department of East Asian Studies and World Cinemas Program at McGill University. She is the author of Cinema of Actuality: Japanese Avant-Garde Filmmaking in the Season of Image Politics (Duke University Press, 2013), which won the 2014 Best First Book Award from the Society of Cinema and Media Studies. She has published articles in journals such as Grey Room, Screen, Animation, Semiotica and New Cinemas. She is currently working on a book, tentatively titled "The Rise of Control Room Aesthetics," exploring the history of Japanese expanded cinema and cybernetic art in relation to the Cold War science and geopolitics.
Mark Steinberg "Genesis of the Platform Concept: From Japan's Platform Theory to Nintendo, iMode and Niconico Video"
Accounts of the genesis of the media concept — such as John Guillory's masterful essay of that title — often privilege its Greek origins and Euro-American derivation. But what if we took the same question of genesis and applied it to a more recent, and arguably most important media concept: the platform? What might an account of the genesis of the platform concept look like? And how might it transform the way film, media and game studies treats the term? This talk will advance the claim that we have to look to Japan to see the emergence of platform both as a concept, and as a media practice (including in this latter attention to both their construction and management). The presentation will begin by examining recent literature on the economic conception of the platform, before turning to Japanese management discourse, where the term became subject to intense theorization in the early 1990s. Following from this, we will briefly examine three moments in the development of platform production and platform-mediated commerce in Japan: the Nintendo Famicom/NES in the 1980s, the iMode system of mobile Internet telephony in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and the Niconico Video sharing site in the mid-2000s. Through an examination of both platform theory and practice, we will arrive at a more robust conception of the platform, and a finer sense of the history of platform construction and management.
Marc Steinberg is Associate Professor of Film Studies at Concordia University, Montreal. He is the author of Anime's Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Characters in Japan (University of Minnesota Press, 2012) and Naze Nihon wa "media mikkusu suru kuni" nano ka (Why is Japan a "Media Mixing Nation"?) (Tokyo: KADOKAWA, 2015). He is currently co-editing a volume on "Media Theory in Japan" (forthcoming from Duke UP, 2017).
2016 Kotenseki Workshop: 古典籍ワークショップ
Workshop
Speakers:
• Yūichirō Imanishi, National Institute of Japanese Literature
• Atsushi Iriguchi, National Institute of Japanese Literature
• Ken'ichi Kansaku, National Institute of Japanese Literature
• Junko Koyama, National Institute of Japanese Literature
• Keisuke Unno, National Institute of Japanese Literature
• Toshie Marra, C.V. Starr East Asian Library, UC Berkeley
Date: March 11, 2016 | 1:00–5:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsors: C.V. Starr East Asian Library
Workshop on Old and Rare Japanese Books
(All presentations will be in Japanese)
Friday, March 11 | 1:00 - 5:00 PM
Art History Seminar Room, C. V. Starr East Asian Library
Speakers from National Institute of Japanese Literature (NIJL):
• Yūichirō Imanishi (Director General)
• Atsushi Iriguchi
• Ken'ichi Kansaku
• Junko Koyama
• Keisuke Unno
Sponsors:
• C. V. Starr East Asian Library
• Center for Japanese Studies
Program (All presentations will be in Japanese):
Part 1
• 歴史的典籍に関する大型プロジェクトについて (Prof. Atsushi Iriguchi)
• 板本『職原抄』について (Prof. Yūichirō Imanishi)
• 江戸の写本文化 (Prof. Ken'ichi Kansaku)
• UC バークレー所蔵三井写本コレクションの概要 (Toshie Marra)
Part 2
Findings on the Library's manuscripts collection (Prof. Keisuke Unno, Prof. Junko Koyama, Prof. Atsushi Iriguchi, and Prof. Ken'ichi Kansaku)
The C.V. Starr East Asian Library is known to hold ca. 2,800 titles of hand-written manuscripts from Japan on a wide range of subjects, primarily dating from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. Most of these materials came to the Library in 1950 as a part of the Mitsui acquisition. While a brief list of titles was produced by a group of scholars from the National Institute of Japanese Literature and Kyoto University in the 1980s, most of these materials have been kept uncataloged. As NIJL and the Library recently signed an agreement for academic exchange, the two institutions organize this workshop, which will highlight some noteworthy materials from the collection.
The workshop is intended to be open for scholars, graduate students, library staffs, with a maximum of 20 participants
Tohoku Springs Back!: A Fundraiser Celebrating 5 Years of Positive Change in Tohoku, Japan
Reception
Date: March 12, 2016 | 7:00–10:00 p.m.
Speaker: Martin Fackler
Performers: DJ Marcy; Akira Tana and Otonowa
Location: David Brower Center, Suite 100, 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley
Sponsors: Umami Mart
Umami Mart and the Center for Japanese Studies present TOHOKU SPRINGS BACK, an evening of food, drinks, music and dancing to commemorate the hardships endured in the Tohoku region in the last five years, and the people who are bringing positive change to the area.
We are inviting our friend DJ Marcy from Fukushima (owner of a record shop in Fukushima City called Little Bird) and our friend Tori-chan, who owns a restaurant in Tokyo called Jicca (but herself is from Minami-Soma, in Fukushima). Tori will cook for the event along with Casa de Kei, and DJ Marcy will spin records.
Local jazz band Akira Tana and Otonowa, featuring Art Hirahara, Masaru Koga and Ken Noriyuki Okada with guest vocalist Saki Kono will play a set and there will also be a special talk by Martin Fackler, former New York Times Bureau Chief of Japan, who was on the ground on 3/11/2011. He will talk about his experiences during this time as a journalist.
Event Menu
Local Fukushima Cuisine By Jicca
Miso Roll with Shiso (しそ巻き)
Mushroom Kinpira (きのこのきんぴら)
AIZU SOBA Salad (会津蕎麦サラダ)
Shio Koji Pickles (三五八ピクルス)
Salmon & Ikura Pilaf (鮭はらこ炊き込みおにぎり)
Miso-marinated Roast Pork (豚ロース味噌漬け)
Anko & Chocolate Ball (あんこトリュフ)
The two non-profit organizations we will be fundraising for will be:
1. Y-PLAN Japan ("Youth — Plan, Learn, Act, Now"), a UC Berkeley leadership and exchange program that has hosted 600 high schoolers from Tohoku since 2012. Through TOMODACHI SoftBank Youth Leadership Program, 100 youth pursue a three-week intensive program on building leadership and social enterprise skills. We've met these students when they were in town two years ago and they were so wonderful. These funds will go towards an event to be held while the TOMODACHI students are here this summer, honoring and showcasing their accomplishments and inviting back the many, many people who have come to know them in the Bay area through family homestays, field trips and intense interactions on community development.
2. Safecast, a foundation selling kits to build geiger counters and encouraging people to share their radiation data online in a free, open-source website platform. Yoko and I built a geiger counter with Safecast last month in Shibuya, then went up to Koriyama to visit Safecast volunteers, who have a sensor at their residence. We respect the work of Safecast deeply and would like to raise funds for geiger counters to be installed in public spaces Tohoku.
Can't join us for the event?
Donate to Safecast here.
Donate to TOMODACHI SoftBank Youth Leadership Program here. In Step #4, write "Tomodachi Program."
Career Porn: Blogging and the Good Life
Lecture
Speaker: Gabriella Lukacs, University of Pittsburgh
Date: April 11, 2016 | 4:00–6:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
This presentation examines the role of blogging in reconfiguring dominant perceptions of work in 2000s Japan. In the early 2000s, the rapidly growing number of bloggers was accompanied by the growing number of blogging tutorials that promoted blogging as a new pathway to the good life. Blogging tutorials criticized lifetime employment for stifling individual freedom and promoted blogging as a means to develop fulfilling DIY careers. By doing so, I argue, blogging tutorials made more acceptable the erosion of protections and benefits that the system of lifetime employment used to offer. However, by presenting blogging as an activity that was more play than work, blogging tutorials also undermined bloggers' efforts to demand compensation for online content production. These tutorials helped blogging portals recruit online content providers, predominantly women, who were not paid for producing blogs while blog portals grossed massive profits from selling the community of blog writers and readers to advertisers.
Staging the Legacy of Colonialism in Korea-Japan Theatrical Collaborations
Colloquium
Speaker: Kiwoong Sung, Berkeley-Daesan Writer-in-Residence
Moderator: Philip Gotanda
Date: April 14, 2016 | 4:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsors: Center for Korean Studies
In this talk, Korean playwright and director Kiwoong Sung will discuss theatrical collaborations between Korean and Japan that stage colonialism and its legacy. In particular, Sung will reflect on two recent new works that he created in collaboration with Japanese director Junnosuke Tada. In these pieces, titled Karumegi (2013) and A Typhoon's Tale (2015), Sung wrote scripts that transformed Anton Chekov's The Seagull and Shakespeare's The Tempest into new multilingual plays set during Japan's occupation of Korea, featuring actors and actresses from both Korea and Japan.
Sung will discuss the process of adapting and staging these plays, including a reflection on the different cultural and historical perspectives that he encountered in both Japan and Korea. Sung will share the divergent reactions to these plays in each country, and he will argue that this is linked to an incomplete historical understanding of the colonial domination of Korea by Japan.
This talk will also give an overview of other theater works related to his two major collaborative pieces. In addition to introducing an earlier play written and directed by Sung himself on the same theme, Sung will touch on recent works by major Japanese directors and playwrights (Oriza Hirata and Toshiki Okada) that explore the relationship between Korea and Japan, with an emphasis on how both countries deal with the problem of history.
In this era of globalization, it may be that identity is no longer narrowly defined by race and nationality. The worlds we imagine in fiction frequently depict cultures that blend together and vanishing national boundaries. However, Sung's experiences making collaborative theater demonstrate how the unresolved historical disputes between Korea and Japan that have lingered since the era of colonialism and modernization leave little room for a fully post-colonial imagination.
Playwright and director Kiwoong Sung is at the forefront of Korean theater, using natural, everyday language in exquisite depictions of the intellectual, cosmopolitan lives of modern Koreans. Sung is also a translator who has introduced works of contemporary Japanese playwrights, including Oriza Hirata. The name of his theater group, 12th Tongue Theatre Studio, comes from the fact that Korean is the 12th most spoken language in the world.
Sung refuses to use formulaic tropes such as lines that sound like unpolished translations or customary theatrical exaggerations. Instead, he has rediscovered the long-lost colloquialisms of 1930s Seoul, and prefers creating delicate and detailed reproductions through meticulous research.
Recently, Sung is also challenging himself with new performance styles, veering away from realistic reproductions. He has presented experimental performances in which plays and novels are recited in various ways and introduced documentary theater and Brechtian epic theater techniques. The 2012 Too Much Love, Too Many Loves, in which the playwright plays himself and describes his own experience with romance, incorporates his newfound writing and directing style.
In 2011, Sung's production of The Scientifically Minded — Heart of Forest Edition(based on the play by Oriza Hirata) won the Excellent Drama award of the 4th Korea Theater Grand Prix; in 2012, Karumegi, his collaborative work with Japanese director Junnosuke Tada, won the Best Play, Best Director and Best Visual and Sound Design awards of the 50th Dong-A Play Awards; and in 2014, he won the 4th Doosan Artist Award and the Young Artist Award of Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.
LIST OF WORKS
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- 2006 Wrote and directed A 26-Month Soldier
- 2006-2009 Translated and directed The Scientifically Minded trilogy(written by Oriza Hirata)
- 2007 Wrote Detective Hong in Jo-seon
- 2007 Wrote and directed Mr. Kubo the Novelist and His Neighbors in Gyeong-seong (based on Tae-won Pak's short stories)
- 2008 Wrote and directed Showa 10, Our Joyful Young Days
- 2010 Adapted and directed A Day in the Life of Mr. Kubo the Novelist(based on Tae-won Pak's novella)
- 2011 Translated, adapted, and directed The Scientifically Minded - Heart of Forest Edition (written by Oriza Hirata)
- 2012 Wrote and directed Too Much Love, Too Many Loves
- 2013 Wrote Karumegi (based on Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, directed by Junnosuke Tada)
- 2015 Co-wrote and co-directed Kings of the road 2002 (collaboration with Oriza Hirata)
- 2015 Wrote A Typhoon's Tale (based on Shakespeare's The Tempest,directed by Junnosuke Tada)
Embodied Health, Embodied Knowledge: UC Berkeley Japan Studies Graduate Student Conference
Conference
Dates: April 22, 2016 | 2:00–5:30 p.m.; April 23, 2016 | 9:30–5:20 p.m.
Location: Stephens Hall, 220, Geballe Room, The Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities
This conference invites graduate students from all disciplines of Japanese Studies to explore past and present concepts, understandings, and experiences of health and the body. How are these embodied in Japan's knowledge systems, institutional structures, and identities?
FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 2016
OPENING REMARKS (2:00-2:10p)
Prof. Dana Buntrock, CJS Director
TRANSNATIONAL BODIES (2:10-3:40p)4
James Stone Lunde, UC Berkeley: Treating the Enemy, Healing the Scars: Japanese Medical Conscripts of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, 1945-1958
Ariko Shari Ikehara, UC Berkeley: Okinawa's America: Mixed Life and Language
Natalia Duong, UC Berkeley: Exposing Agent Orange: Việt, Đức, and Transnational Repair
KEYNOTE TALK (4:00-5:30p)
Prof. Noriko Horiguchi, University of Tennessee
Devouring Body of Empire: Eating the Other in Modern Japanese Narratives
SATURDAY, APRIL 23, 2016
MODERNIZING BODIES (9:30-11:00a)
Discussant: Prof. Sabine Fruhstuck, UC Santa Barbara
Kerry Shannon, UC Berkeley: Hygiene for the Masses: Public Health and Local Praxis in Meiji Japan
Sayaka Mihara, Keio University: Vitalism and Technology for Babies in Modernizing Japan
Lani Alden, University of Colorado at Boulder: Building Modern Women: Fukuzawa Yukichi's Dialogues with Naturalism and Gender Equality
ABSENT BODIES (11:20-12:50p)
Discussant: Prof. Noriko Horiguchi, University of Tennessee
Lisa Reade, UC Berkeley: The Ephemerality of the Dialectic: Lafcadio Hearn's Kokoro as Transnational Love Story
Kanako Shimizu, Jichi Medical University: Pathological Bereavement in Japan
Mariko Takano, UCLA: Anti-life Discourse by Hanada Kiyoteru
MILLENNIAL BODIES (2:00-3:30p)
Discussant: Prof. John Lie, UC Berkeley
Shelby Oxenford, UC Berkeley: Disastrous Bodies: The Unmaking and Remaking of the Post-3.11 World in Kawakami Mieko's "March Yarn"
Shoan Yin Cheung, Cornell University: A Therapeutic for a New Millennium: The Birth Control Pill as "Medicine" in Contemporary Japan
John Mark Wiginton University of Michigan: The Fire across the River: HIV/AIDS in Japan
PERFORMING BODIES (3:50-5:20p)
Discussant: Prof. Joseph Sorensen, UC Davis
Sara Klingenstein, Harvard University: One Time, One Meeting: The Transience of Gestures in Chanoyu and Zen
Shoko Kikuta, Seijo University: Gender Roles and Responsibilities in Urban Festivals in Japan: A Case Study of Narita Gion
Melissa Van Wyk, University of Michigan: The Curious Case of Sawamura Tanosuke III: Gender, Disability, and Performance in Bakumatsu Japan
Click here to visit the conference website.
The Origins of Japanese Comics, 1905‑28
Colloquium
Speaker: Andrea Horbinski, Ph.D. Candidate, UC Berkeley Department of History
Date: May 6, 2016 | 3:00 p.m.
Location: 308A Doe Library
Sponsors: The Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities Asian Art and Visual Culture Working Group, Japan Studies Working Group
Between 1905 and 1928 manga emerged as a separate artistic medium in Japan in reaction to ponchie, a populist hybrid art form that flourished in the early and mid-Meiji period (1868 – 1912). The pioneers of manga, self-consciously elitist in the vein of Fukuzawa Yukichi's (1835 – 1901) philosophy of "civilization and enlightenment" (bunmei kaika), wished to create a higher-class art form that could, and did, depict exclusively political content. This early vision of manga as consisting of only political satire did not survive the economic fortunes of World War I, and its collapse, therefore, has profound implications for the history of Japanese comics as a whole. Only by expanding the scope of manga beyond political satire was the medium able to survive and flourish in the Taishō (1912 – 1926) and Shōwa (1926 – 1989) periods.
Andrea Horbinski is a Ph.D. candidate in History and New Media whose research employs transnational history, new media, and fan studies methods and themes. Her dissertation Manga's Global Century: A History of Japanese Comics, 1905-2012 explores the history of Japanese comics as a medium, a format, and a site of fan engagement over the past one hundred years. Horbinski's recent publications include "Record of Dying Days: The Alternate History of Ôoku" in the journal Mechademia (2015) and "Watching, Creating, and Archiving: Observations on the Quantity and Temporality of Fannish Productivity in Online Fan Fiction Archives" in Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies (2015).