Sex Underground — JPEX: Japanese Experimental Film and Video, 1955–Now
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
Pacific Film Archive; Image Forum Archive; University of California, Irvine; University of Chicago; Institute for East Asian Studies
After the resounding success of the first two programs of this historic touring series exploring the neglected terrain of Japanese experimental film traditions, we return with three additional programs. JPEX: Japanese Experimental Film and Video, 1955–Now documents the radical medium of postwar Japanese experimental film, video, and animation at its fiftieth anniversary.
SCHEDULE OF FILMS
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
7:30 p.m.
Sex Underground
The works in this program rebel against workaday conventions of gender, sexuality, and the body. Utilizing theatrical traditions and a powerful performative agency, film and video makers such as Takashi Ito, Takashi Nakajima, Shuji Terayama, and Koichi Imaizumi subvert and then reconfigure sexual difference, queer subjectivity, and gendered norms. When viewed together, these works suggest that the sexed body was never far from the center of postwar image experimentation; as individual pieces, they open up complex worlds of transposed desire, indissoluble fetish, and deadly seduction. Mako Idemitsu's lighthearted invocation of traditional gender roles, Shin'ichi Tamano's perversely magical realism, and Yukie Saito's terrifying and oppressive exploration of male-female power dynamics collectively suggest unexpected yet open pathways for desire and subjectivity. — Jonathan M. Hall and Michelle Puetz
Apparatus M (Takashi Ito, 1996, 6 mins, Silent, Color, 16mm). Feedback (Nobuhiro Kawanaka, 1973, 8 mins, Silent, B&W, 16mm). Inner-Man (Mako Idemitsu, 1972, 4 mins, Color, 16mm on video). Dead Youth (Donald Richie, 1967, 13 mins, B&W, 16mm on video). Awanono (Miho Uehara, 2003, 3 mins, Color, 8mm on video). Ai (Love) (Takahiko Iimura, 1962, 10 mins, B&W, 8mm on 16mm). Baby Variations (Mako Idemitsu, 1974, 9 mins, Color, 16mm on video). I Want You to Kiss Me (Koichi Imaizumi, 2004, 5 mins, Color, Video). Utsu-musume Sayuri (Takashi Kimura, 2003, 4 mins, Color, Video). Investigation (Takashi Nakajima, 1984, 3 mins, Color, 8mm on video). Kosoku Bozu (Shin'ichi Tamano, 2002, 11 mins, Color, 8mm on video). Benighted But Not Begun (Yukie Saito, 1994, 22 mins, B&W, 16mm). An Introduction to Cinema for Boys and Young Men (Shuji Terayama, 1974, 3 mins, Color, 16mm triple projection).
* (Total running time: 101 mins)
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
7:30 p.m.
Funeral Parade of Roses
Toshio Matsumoto (Japan, 1969)
In 1955, Silver Wheels, Toshio Matsumoto's now lost collaboration with avant-garde composer Toru Takemitsu, helped inaugurate postwar Japanese experimental film. Since then, Matsumoto has embodied the mobility of Japanese experimental video and film with a career that spans work in criticism, theater, documentary, and independent filmmaking. In this program, we pay special homage to Matsumoto's oeuvre with a screening of his drag-queen melodrama Funeral Parade of Roses, a unique film that borrows the not-yet-politicized phenomenon of male homosexuality in 1969 Japan to launch a potent critique of Japanese society at the apex of high-growth economics. A classic in Japan's New Wave tradition, Funeral Parade dazzles in its humorous amalgamation of documentary, narrative, and visual experimentation. — Jonathan M. Hall and Michelle Puetz
With shorts by Matsumoto:
Expansion (Japan, 1972). Matsumoto's celebrated exploration of new media. (14 mins, Color, 16mm)
For My Crushed Right Eye (Japan, 1968). This extraordinary triple-screen projection-the first multi-projection piece made in Japan-brings the evening to a moving close. (13 mins, Color, 16mm triple projection)
Tuesday, February 1, 2005
7:30 p.m.
Contemporary Film, Video, and Animation
The final JPEX program, devoted to contemporary work, explores a complex interaction between the historical trajectory of Japanese avant-garde traditions and the current global economy of multimedia exchange. In the use of found footage and subversions of narrativity, the revelation of hybrid sexualities and formal explorations of perception and space, these media works question the dynamics of our visual-temporal experience and reveal hybrid and shifting national and cultural identities. — Jonathan M. Hall and Michelle Puetz
Peach Baby Oil (Junko Wada, 1995, 16 mins, In Japanese with English subtitles, Color, Super-8 on video). Textism (Isamu Hirabayashi, 2003, 11 mins, Color, Video). Mathematica (Sawa Takashi, 2000, 8 mins, Color, 8mm on video). Blooming Ink Tale (Kentaro Onitsuka, 2003, Color, 10 mins, 16mm on video). Plate #23 (songs) (Ryusuke Ito, 2003, 4 mins, Color, 16mm). Apollo (Tomonari Nishikawa, 2003, 6 mins, B&W, 16mm). A flick film in which there appear Liz and Franky, is composed under the score of ARNULF RAINER by P. Kubelka on NTSC (Ichiro Sueoka, 2000, 5 mins, Color, Video). Decades Passed (Tatsu Aoki, 2003, 26 mins, Color, 16mm).
Curated/Notes by Jonathan M. Hall and Michelle Puetz
Jonathan M. Hall is assistant professor of comparative literature at UC Irvine.
Michelle Puetz is a Ph.D. candidate in the Committee on Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago.
JPEX: Japanese Experimental Film and Video, 1955–Now has been made possible with the support of the Image Forum Archive, Tokyo, the University of Chicago, and the University of California, Irvine. Prints from Image Forum except as otherwise noted.
A Stitch in Time: The Sewing Machine and the Modern Transformation of Japan
Andrew Gordon, History, Harvard University
Thursday, January 20, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
Study of the sewing machine offers insight into the emergence of the consumer as a central figure in society, economy and culture. The larger project explores themes of gender, class, nation and empire. It studies the sewing machine from perspectives of maker and user, as well as the negotiations between the two including the birth of the salesman, home economics and education, consumer finance and credit. The lecture will focus on the user side of the story, discussing the meanings which the sewing machine held for women in Japan, circa 1900-1950s.
The Art of the Japanese Tattoo from Kuniyoshi to Longfellow
Christine Guth, Japanese Art History
Monday, January 24, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
In this lecture, Guth raises questions about the museum-centered understanding of nineteenth-century artistic exchanges between Japan, Europe, and America by examining the Euro-American attitudes towards and appropriation of the Japanese tattoo. The lecture expands on a chapter in her just-published Longfellow's Tattoos: Tourism, Collecting and Japan.
Implications of China's Emergence for Asia's Economies
Duck-Koo Chung, Former Vice Minister of Finance and Minister of Commerce, Industry and Energy of the Republic of Korea
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Institute of East Asian Studies
With an introduction by Barry Eichengreen.
Duck-Koo Chung, former Vice Minister of Finance and Minister of Commerce, Industry and Energy of the Republic of Korea, will speak on the implications of China's emergence on the economies in the East Asian region. Dr. Chung is a Professor in the Graduate School of International Studies and the Director of the Research Center for International Finance at Seoul National University. He is also a Visiting Professor at Beijing University. He is currently a member of the Korean Parliament.
Funeral Parade of Roses - JPEX: Japanese Experimental Film and Video, 1955–Now
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Pacific Film Archive; Image Forum Archive; University of California, Irvine; University of Chicago; Institute for East Asian Studies
The "Modern Enlightenment Era," A Doubly Paradoxical Space
Go Mee Suk, Visiting Professor, Cornell University
Friday, January 28, 2005
Center for Korean Studies
The Modern Enlightenment Era refers to Korean literary history from the late 19th century to 1910. It is a doubly paradoxical space in that modernity was conceived in various dimensions yet contained dynamic characteristics uncaptured by modern code. To reach the depth of this paradox requires breaking out of the "internal development" fantasy presupposed by previous research. The idea that history progresses through internal development is a product of the modern; as long as one is held back by such presupposition, the eccentricity of the Modern Enlightenment Era can never be grasped. One should also question the ultimate determinants of nation, the modern and literature that are counterpart to the discourse of continuity. One should be freed from these standards that occupy a crucial position in concept of the modern; only then can the paradoxical aspect of the Modern Enlightenment Era provide an opportunity to subvert the modern thinking that has operated as a self-evident truth.
Dr. Go Mee Suk currently teaches modernity in Korean literature as visiting professor at Cornell University. She received her Ph.D. from Korea University in the history of Korean poetry in the late Yi dynasty. She lead an independent intellectual community called "Suyu+Trans" in Korea, and also taught at her alma mater. Her recent research interests are the history of discourse in 18th century Korea and genealogical research of Korean modernity in the early 20th century. Her publications include journal articles such as Yonam and Dasan: Two channels to speculate the 'outside' of the medieval and Nomadism and the vision of intellectual community and numerous books: The Structure of Korean Sikasa from the 18th Century to the early 20th Century, Critique Machine, Korean Modernity: Search for Its Origin, Yul-ha-il-gi: The Joyous Space of Laughter, Paradox and Freedom that No One Designs.
Sponsored by a Grant from the Korea Foundation.
Free and open to the public.
Democracy without Competition in Japan: Opposition Failure in a One-Party Dominant State
Ethan Scheiner, Political Science, UC Davis
Monday, January 31, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
Why, even in the face of great dissatisfaction with the dominant party, has no opposition party been able to offer itself as a credible challenger in Japan? Understanding such failure is important for many reasons, from its effect on Japanese economic policy to its implications for what facilitates democratic responsiveness more broadly. The principal explanations for opposition party failure in Japan focus on the country's culture and electoral system, but neither can explain, in particular, continued opposition failure over the past decade. This talk argues that a more plausible explanation rests on the predominance in Japan of clientelism, combined with a centralized government structure. The talk focuses on Japan, but also applies the framework cross-nationally.
Contemporary Film, Video, and Animation - JPEX: Japanese Experimental Film and Video, 1955–Now
Tuesday, February 1, 2005
Film screening
Pacific Film Archive; Image Forum Archive; University of California, Irvine; University of Chicago; Institute for East Asian Studies
China's Economic Regionalization and Uneven Distribution of Foreign Direct Investment
François Gipouloux, Senior Research Fellow at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris
Wednesday, February 2, 2005
Institute of East Asian Studies
Over the past decade China has been a premier recipient of foreign direct investment (FDI). The dramatic inflow of FDI, however, has been concentrated on China's eastern seaboard. Despite rising production costs in these coastal areas, the influx of foreign capital into central and western provinces continues to be disappointing. François Gipouloux will discuss the main reasons behind the uneven distribution of FDI and outline the long-term implications for China's central and western regions.
François Gipouloux is a Senior Research Fellow at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris. He previously served in France's foreign service, with postings in both China and Japan. He has also served as a Research Director for the French Center for Research on Contemporary China in Hong Kong.
Re-inventing Local Tradition: Politics, Culture, and Identity in Early 19th Century Suzhou
Seunghyun Han, Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Chinese Studies, UC Berkeley
Friday, February 4, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies
Intensified local elite participation in local public affairs and the re-assertion of strong local identity in early 19th century Suzhou did not begin with the Taiping Rebellion, but can, in fact, be traced earlier to the Jiaqing and Daoguang periods.
Free and open to the public.
So Is Japan Changing or Not?
Robert Madsen, Asian Studies and Economics, Center for International Studies, MIT
Monday, February 7, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
A year ago it seemed that Japan had recovered from its long stagnation and was growing robustly. Now, however, the country appears possibly to be on the brink of recession and analysts are again asking whether anything has changed. The truth is that while the short-term outlook remains unclear, tectonic shifts are occurring in the underlying demographic and financial structure of the economy which will exert a transformative influence over the country's longer-term future. Hence the Japan of 2015 will scarce resemble that of today. It will exhibit a low savings rate, consistent if moderate growth, significant inflationary tendencies, and a shrinking — or even negative — trade balance. In some regards this will be a healthier Japan, and yet such problems as the need for restructuring and the mounting national debt will have become even more daunting.
Dr. Madsen has written numerous academic and popular articles on the politics and economics of East Asian countries, international trade and capital flows, political theory, and environmental economics. He is presently working on Japan's "lost decade" of the 1990s, the outlook for the Japanese economy in the 2000s and 2010s, the implications of China's rise for the rest of East Asia, and the problems posed by North Korea's nuclear development.
This event is free and open to the public.
Speaking for the Buddha? Buddhism and the Media
February 8-9, 2005
Center for Buddhist Studies and Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley
Organized in conjunction with the International Buddhist Film Festival. A presentation of the Buddhist Film Society; the Institute of East Asian Studies and the Center for Buddhist Studies, UC Berkeley.
For some two thousand years the authority to speak on behalf of Buddhism lay largely, although not exclusively, in the hands of the samgha — the community of ordained monks and nuns. Monastics held responsibility for propagating, authenticating, explicating, and translating Buddhist scriptures. Monastic authority was warranted by a complex set of institutional practices regulated, at least ideally, by the vinaya — the monastic code of conduct prescribing a lifestyle of discipline and restraint.
Perhaps the most salient aspect of what is commonly known as "Western Buddhism" is that representations of Buddhism and Buddhist teachings are no longer under the control of the ordained clergy. New generations of self-styled "Buddhists" learn their Buddhism through images and texts vetted not by the samgha but in the boardrooms of movie studios, publishing houses, and advertising agencies. The sanction of a recognized monastic order is no longer requisite to proclaim oneself a "Buddhist teacher" — media exposure alone will suffice. Even the ordained clergy find themselves succumbing to the pressures of the marketplace, resulting in an explosion of self-help books authored by Asian Buddhist teachers.
The notion of what it means to be Buddhist in America is determined not only, or even primarily, by learned monastics, but also by publishers, film producers, marketers, and entertainers. Scriptures are transformed into best-sellers, monks into media icons, media icons into spokespersons for Buddhism, and disciples into consumers. This conference brings together scholars, journalists, filmmakers, writers, and professionals from the television, movie, and publishing industries to discuss the media's role in the contemporary transformation of Buddhism.
The conference is free and open to the public, with the exception of the special screening of Kundun.
The conference is divided into four sessions.
Panel 1: "Print Media" will focus on print media and the nature of Buddhist publishing in the United States. How are book manuscripts on Buddhism reviewed, edited, and marketed? Which authors get published and why? How is Buddhism treated in US newspapers and magazines?
Tuesday, February 8, 2005, 1:30 - 3:30 pm
Panel 2: "Motion Pictures" will consider the representation of Buddhist themes in motion pictures and television. Why is Hollywood so fascinated with Buddhism? Is there any monitoring of or concern for accuracy or fairness? What is Hollywood's role in American Buddhism?
Tuesday, February 8, 2005, 4:00 - 6:00 pm
Special Screening of Kundun
Tuesday, February 8, 2005, 7:30 pm, Wheeler Auditorium
Panel 3: "Authority and Transmission" focuses on issues of authority and transmission in what has come to be known as Western Buddhism, and the media's role in the sanctioning of Buddhist teachers.
Wednesday, February 9, 2005, 1:30 - 3:30 pm
Panel 4: "Buddhism Sells - Buddhist Concepts and Images in American Advertising" explores the use of Buddhist concepts and images in American advertising. A 30-minute screening of TV commercials and print ads from the US media will be followed by a roundtable discussion.
Wednesday, February 9, 2005, 4:00 - 6:00 pm
Schedule
Tuesday, February 8, 2005
Lipman Room, Barrows Hall
1:30 pm — Welcome and Introductory Remarks: Robert Sharf, UC Berkeley
1:40 - 3:30 pm — Panel 1: "Print Media"
This panel focuses on print media and the nature of Buddhist publishing in the United States. How are book manuscripts on Buddhism reviewed, edited, and marketed? Which authors get published and why? How is Buddhism treated in US newspapers and magazines?
Panelists:
Orville Schell, UC Berkeley — Virtual Tibet: Buddhism from the Himalayas to Hollywood
Don Lattin, San Francisco Chronicle — Buddha and the Press: The Four Noble Facts
John Loudon, independent editor — What Makes a Buddhist Book Succeed?
Diane Winston, Annenberg School of Communication, USC — WWBD - What Would Buddha Do? Media Coverage of a Non-Christian Religion
Richard Jaffe, Duke University — An Idiot's Guide to Buddhism (and the Print Media)
Moderator:
Charles Hallisey, University of Wisconsin, Madison
4:00 - 6:00 pm — Panel 2: "Motion Pictures"
Panelists will consider the representation of Buddhist themes in motion pictures and television. Why is Hollywood so fascinated with Buddhism? Is there any monitoring of or concern for accuracy or fairness? What is Hollywood's role in American Buddhism?
Panelists:
Babeth VanLoo, Buddhist Broadcasting Foundation, Holland — Buddhist Tele-vision: A Vision for Inner Disarmament
John L. Solomon, Disney Television — Observations
Robert Buswell, UC Los Angeles — The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly: The Case For (and Against) Buddhist Movies
Nathaniel Dorsky, filmmaker — The Problem of Idolatry
Moderator:
Bernard Faure, Stanford University
7:30 pm — Special Screening of Kundun
Martin Scorsese's Kundun, the story of Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, will be followed by a discussion with Georges Dreyfus and Donald Lopez, moderated by Orville Schell.
Wednesday, February 9, 2005
Lipman Room, Barrows Hall
1:30 - 3:30 pm — Panel 3: "Authority and Transmission"
This panel focuses on issues of authority and transmission in what has come to be known as Western Buddhism, and the media's role in the sanctioning of Buddhist teachers.
Panelists:
Donald Lopez, University of Michigan — Fleshing Out the Buddha: The Orientalist Legacy
Gil Fronsdal, Insight Meditation Center, Redwood City — Buddhist Teachings Inside and Outside of the Marketplace
George Dreyfus, Williams College:
Exoticism, Commodification, Transmission and Authority in an Electronic Age: The Case of the Little Buddha
Zoketsu Norman Fischer, SF Zen Center — Is an Undistorted Media Message Possible?
Timothy McNeill, Wisdom Publications — Oprahfication of Buddha?
Moderator:
Carl W. Bielefeldt, Stanford University
4:00 - 6:00 pm — Panel 4: "Buddhism Sells — Buddhist Concepts and Images in American Advertising"
This panel explores the use of Buddhist concepts and images in American advertising. A 30-minute screening of TV commercials from the US media will be followed by a roundtable discussion.
Panelists: Gregory Levine, UC Berkeley — The Buddha Sells, or Not: Thoughts on Buddha Bodies in Consumer Culture
Alex von Rospatt, UC Berkeley — Buddhism in Popular American Culture: Some Remarks from a Startled Outsider
Jacquelynn Baas, former Director Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive — Artists of Life
Steven Goodman, California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco — Buddhism and Advertising - Message, Medium, and the Middle Way
Moderator:
Patricia Berger, UC Berkeley
Participants
Jacquelynn Baas is Director Emeritus of the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive and an independent scholar. She is co-editor of the recently published book Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art (University of California Press, 2004) and the author of another book, currently in press: Smile of the Buddha: Eastern Philosophy and Western Art from Monet to Today (University of California Press, 2005).
Patricia Berger teaches Art History at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests focus on Chinese Buddhist art and Asian architecture. She is the author of Empire of Emptiness: Buddhist Art and Political Authority in Qing China (2003).
Carl W. Bielefeldt teaches at Stanford University. He specializes in East Asian Buddhism, with particular emphasis on the intellectual history of the Zen tradition. He is the author of Dôgen's Manuals of Zen Meditation and other works on early Japanese Zen, and serves as editor of the Soto Zen Text Project.
Robert Buswell teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles. He specializes in the Son (Zen) tradition of Korean Buddhism. Professor Buswell spent seven years as a Buddhist monk in Thailand, Hong Kong, and Korea, which served as the basis for his book The Zen Monastic Experience: Buddhist Practice in Contemporary Korea (1992).
Nathaniel Dorsky is a Bay Area filmmaker. His works have been shown internationally and are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley), Image Forum (Tokyo) and Le Centre Pompidou (Paris). He is the author of Devotional Cinema (2003).
Georges Dreyfus was the first Westerner to obtain the title of Geshe Lharampa, the highest degree confered within the traditional Tibetan monastic system. He teaches Religion at Williams College. He is the author of The Sound of Two Hands Clapping: The Education of a Tibetan Buddhist Monk (2003).
Bernard Faure teaches at Stanford University. His research focuses on the anthropological history of East Asian Buddhism. His recent publications include Chan Insights and Oversight (1996), Visions of Power: Imagining Medieval Japanese Buddhism (1996) and The Will to Orthodoxy: A Critical Genealogy of Northern Chan Buddhism (1997).
Zoketsu Norman Fischer is the former abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center and the founder and teacher of the Everyday Zen Foundation. His latest books are Taking Our Places: the Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up (2003), and his newly published collection of poems Slowly But Dearly (2004).
Gil Fronsdal is trained in both the Japanese Soto Zen tradition and the Insight Meditation lineage of Theravada Buddhism of Southeast Asia. He has been the primary teacher for the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California since 1990. He received his Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from Stanford University.
Steven Goodman is co-director of Asian and Comparative Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies (San Francisco). His research concerns Indo-Tibetan influenced forms of Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism. He is co-editor of Tibetan Buddhism: Reason and Revelation (1992).
Charles Hallisey teaches at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. His research interests focus on Theravada Buddhism in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, Buddhist ethics and literature in Buddhist culture.
Richard Jaffe is a specialist in modern Japanese Buddhism at Duke University. His publications include Neither Monk nor Layman: Clerical Marriage in Modern Japanese Buddhism (Princeton University Press, 2002). He is currently working on a book about Japanese Buddhist travel and the transformation of Buddhism in late-nineteenth century Japan.
Don Lattin covers religion, spirituality and cults for the San Francisco Chronicle. He is the author of Following Our Bliss - How the Spiritual Ideals of the Sixties Shape Our Lives Today (2003) and the co-author of Shopping for Faith: American Religion in the New Millennium (1999).
Gregory Levine teaches art history at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include Buddhist visual cultures, cultures of viewing in Japan, and Buddhist images in modern and postmodern contexts. His book, Daitokuji: Art History and the Visual Cultures of a Zen Monastery is forthcoming from UW Press in 2005.
Donald Lopez teaches at the University of Michigan. He specializes in late Indian Mahayana and Tibetan Buddhism. His recent books include Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West (1998), The Story of Buddhism (2002), Buddhist Scriptures (2004) and Critical Terms for the Study of Buddhism (2005).
John Loudon is the former executive editor of Harper San Francisco and the original editor of Parabola Magazine. He is currently an independent editor, acquiring for various publishers including Harper San Francisco, Doubleday, The Penguin Group, and Shambhala. He lives and works in Marin.
Timothy J. McNeill is the president, CEO, and publisher of Wisdom Publications, a leading non-profit publishing house for books focusing on Buddhism. Mr. McNeill has a Masters in Public Policy (MPP) degree from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Alexander von Rospatt teaches in the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies at UC Berkeley. He specializes in the doctrinal history of Indian Buddhism, and in Newar Buddhism, the only Indic Mahayana tradition that continues to persist in its original South Asian setting (in the Kathmandu Valley) to the present.
Orville Schell, Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism, UC Berkeley, has written extensively on China and Asia. He is the author of Virtual Tibet: Searching for Shangri-La from the Himalayas to Hollywood (2001).
Robert Sharf teaches in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at UC Berkeley. He works primarily in the area of medieval Chinese Buddhism, but he also dabbles in Japanese Buddhism, Buddhist art, ritual studies, and methodological issues in the study of religion. He is the author of Coming to Terms with Chinese Buddhism: A Reading of the Treasure Store Treatise (2002).
John L. Solomon is the head of Disney Television Animation's Shorts Program, where he is responsible for producing 'creator driven' animated shorts which are ground-breaking and fresh in design, character, direction, and story-telling. Prior to working at TVA, John was Vice President of Creative Development of Theme Park Productions, where he was responsible for the creative development of all filmed entertainment in Disney Parks worldwide.
Babeth VanLoo is the director of the Buddhist Broadcasting Foundation in Holland and is an experienced documentary filmmaker. She gained international acclaim for her films on Joseph Beuys and the award-winning Haiti, Killing the Dream (1991). Recent films include: Bhutan, Women of the Dragon Kingdom; Philip Glass' Practice; Coming Home and Gross National Happiness.
Diane Winston teaches at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication. A veteran journalist and noted scholar, she is the author of Red-Hot and Righteous: The Urban Religion of the Salvation Army (1999) and co-editor of Faith in the City: Religion and Urban Commercial Culture (2002).
Conference Proceedings
On February 8-9, 2005, the Center for Buddhist Studies and Institute of East Asian Studies sponsored a conference titled "Speaking for the Buddha? Buddhism and the Media," on the UC Berkeley campus. The conference brought together over twenty scholars, journalists, filmmakers, writers, and professionals from the television, movie and publishing industries to discuss the media's role in the contemporary transformation of Buddhism. Over 120 people from the UC Berkeley community and the general public attended panels on print media, motion pictures, authority and transmission, and advertising. The conference took place in conjunction with the International Buddhist Film Festival, and was held with the support of Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai America.
The conference attracted attention from a large audience comprised of scholars, practitioners, media representatives and the general public.
Introduction
The conference kicked off with introductory remarks by Robert Sharf, Chair of the Center for Buddhist Studies and Director of the Group in Buddhist Studies at Berkeley. Sharf asserted that the power of the contemporary media to determine what it means to be Buddhist is unprecedented in the history of Buddhism. He drew a parallel between the introduction of Buddhism to China and its introduction to America. Arguably, Buddhism became popular in both places because people saw what they wanted to see in it — a form of Daoism in China, a technology of self-fulfillment in America. However, in China the representation of Buddhism remained largely in the hands of monastics, while in America it has came under the control of media industries. Sharf positioned the conference as a middle ground where scholars, practitioners and members of the media could initiate dialogue on contemporary developments in Buddhism.
Panel 1: "Print Media"
The first panel, "Print Media," was moderated by Robert Sharf. The first presenter, Don Lattin, covers religion, spirituality, and cults for the San Francisco Chronicle and recently authored Following Our Bliss: How the Spiritual Ideals of the Sixties Shape Our Lives Today (2003). His presentation highlighted the increasing popularity of Buddhism in print media. Lattin observed that references to Buddhism in Chronicle stories have doubled in the past five years. He then outlined four reasons why journalists are interested in covering Buddhism. It can be pitched as "exotic," with visually stunning imagery such as monks with shaven heads, and with charismatic leaders such as the Dalai Lama. It is also perceived as "experiential," a vague category that attracts people by appearing elusive and anti-authoritarian. Third, it seems "eclectic," that is, it blends well with other religions. Last but not least, it fits the "ethnic" bill, providing the opportunity to write about the Asian American experience. On this last point, Lattin noted surprisingly little overlap between Asian American and white Buddhist communities.
The next speaker was Orville Schell, Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley and author of Virtual Tibet: Searching for Shangri-La from the Himalayas to Hollywood (2001). His presentation analyzed travelogues of Tibet as evidence for the Western impulse toward the exotic. Without the travelogues of European and American explorers, Schell suggested, Buddhism would have been too remote to have spread easily to the West. Thus, Western fascination with Buddhism began with the printed word rather than with visual culture, through accounts that packaged the religious with the geographic. Tibet in particular was identified as an isolated site of otherness, a remarkable locus of natural beauty, spiritual dignity, magic and sorcery. The perception of Tibet as a transformative place was shared by Francis Younghusband, who wrote that he was freed from hatred and "infused with elation and goodwill" after taking Lhasa in a British military expedition. The writings of these authors have become part of our "collective DNA," Schell argued, informing current views and expectations about Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism.
John Loudon, an independent editor who was the former executive editor of Harper San Francisco and the original editor of Parabola Magazine, followed with "What Makes a Buddhist Book Succeed?" Loudon observed that since people generally buy for selfish motives, bookstores can be likened to restaurants that promise to fulfill the varying needs and expectations of each customer. Successful books promise what many people want by way of skillful packaging, and then deliver through their content. Religious books take longer to succeed commercially, spreading gradually through word of mouth, book clubs and lecture circuits by charismatic authors. Loudon further remarked that most readers of books on Buddhism don't care about Buddhism at all, but are simply looking for advice on the "art of living". He cited several best-selling books on Buddhism — including Sogyal Rinpoche's The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Jack Kornfield's A Path with Heart, Jon Kabat-Zinn's Wherever You Go, There You Are, and Dalai Lama's The Art of Happiness — as examples that require a "very low point of entry for the reader to participate" because they are not strictly about Buddhist topics. Such books, Loudon concluded, succeed because they detach their content from the cultural contexts of Buddhism, and because they use experience rather than dogma as a source of appeal.
The fourth speaker was Diane Winston, a veteran journalist who now teaches at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and recently co-edited Faith in the City: Religion and Urban Commercial Culture (2002). Winston began with the question, "What would the Buddha do about the media?" She suggested that he would give up the idea of changing or improving it, but would accept it for what it is. The media, Winston argued, is an interconnected environment of ideas, opinion and entertainment from multiple sources such as iPods, television, billboards, and the Web. She identified consumerism, materialism and rationalism as three substructures determining the media environment, which are antithetical to most religions except Protestantism. In addition, other religions are made to fit into Protestant frameworks. For example, in the nineteenth century Buddhism was viewed as modeling the best values of Protestantism, such as tolerance and rationalism. Later Buddhism was recast as different from Protestantism, with its world-renouncing tendencies interpreted as a mark of passivity and a lack of value for life. The latter view influenced coverage of self-immolating monks during the Vietnam War, which overlooked the religio-political nexus in which these events occurred. Moving to recent coverage, Winston found much of it "pedestrian and pedantic," e.g. simply calling attention to the presence of an ethnic-religious group in one's community. More encouragingly, some examples have been surprisingly sophisticated in treating the complexities of Buddhism in America, such as a Los Angeles Times feature on a local Shin Buddhist community.
Richard Jaffe, a specialist in modern Japanese Buddhism at Duke University, rounded out the panel with observations on the reach of the media about Buddhism in Christian-dominated areas. Jaffe noted that the selection of Christian books in local bookstores "dwarfed" that of Eastern religions, highlighting the uneven access to Buddhist materials in contrast to other geographic locations such as the Bay area. He raised the possibility that the media fosters differing, even diverging understandings of Buddhism to different audiences, in a parallel development to the partisan segmentation of news coverage. Jaffe then turned to the media portrayal of Buddhism directed toward Christian audiences, remarking that books on Buddhism sold in North Carolina were generally focused on strategies to convert Buddhists to Christianity. Another source on Buddhism was Christian fiction, where Buddhism was lumped with Eastern religions in general. Jaffe cited Frank E. Peretti's This Present Darkness, in which a character states: "It's all a con game: Eastern meditation, witchcraft, divination, Science of Mind, psychic healing, holistic education..." A second example, Pat Robertson's The End of the Age, features a host of bad characters who scheme to take over the U.S. government, including a president possessed by Shiva, a Buddhist monk as Secretary of Education, a Shiite Muslim as Secretary of Energy, and so on. Jaffe reminded us that while these forms of media might seem "retrograde" to a Berkeley audience, they have a wide reach in America at large.
The panel on print media was followed up by a lively question and answer session. One audience member asked about media coverage of scandals in contemporary Buddhism. Loudon responded that publishers looked for spiritual teachers who have a following, but did not necessarily vet them for authenticity nor take responsibility for protecting the public from the actions of teachers. Lattin stood by the San Francisco Chronicle's coverage of scandals as honest and forthcoming. Another member of the audience asked why the media emphasized Euro-American Buddhists almost exclusively, given that the majority of Buddhists in America are immigrants and/or Asian-American. Winston responded that coverage depends on location, and that stories in the Los Angeles area often covered immigrant Buddhists. Lattin considered this a valid criticism, while reiterating that journalists were constrained by the interests of their audience. Another participant asked whether "bad" books on Buddhism, i.e. "art of living" books, were better than no books on Buddhism. Loudon found nothing wrong with selling popular books, but said that he would not accept books that might later embarrass his publisher if the author was widely perceived as a fraud. Winston reiterated that many voices speak for Buddhism, implying the futility of controlling them all.
Panel 2: "Motion Pictures"
The second panel, "Motion Pictures," was moderated by Bernard Faure, a professor of East Asian Buddhism at Stanford University who recently published Double Exposure: Cutting Across Buddhist and Western Discourses (2003). Babeth VanLoo, a documentary filmmaker whose recent films include Bhutan: Women of the Dragon Kingdom, presented on her work as the director of the Buddhist Broadcasting Foundation in Holland. VanLoo expressed the wish to replace the vision of Buddhism as an exotic form of escapism with a vision of using interdependence and compassion to foster society. She stated that the touchstones of the foundation are derived from the six Buddhist perfections (p?ramit?), stressing the efforts of the staff to cultivate these in their daily work. Couching television as a view on reality, VanLoo described the programs produced by the Buddhist Broadcasting Foundation as an alternative form of television based on filmmaking strategies such as selective slowness and narrow casting. Since 2001 their programs have included Four Noble Truths (1996), which films the Dalai Lama's teachings in London; Life Is An Illusion (2001), which considers similarities between modern scientific research and Buddhist theories that matter is created by the mind; The Next Step (2001), which interviews American and European Buddhists on applying Buddhism to the professional field and mainstream social institutions; Cave in the Snow (2002), which profiles an English woman who took retreat in the Himalayas for twelve years as a Tibetan Buddhist nun; and Come Dance with Me (2004), a documentary about second-generation Chinese youth in Holland and their efforts to incorporate Buddhism into their daily lives.
The next speaker was Gaetano Maeda, executive director of the International Buddhist Film Festival (IBFF) and a founding director of the Buddhist quarterly Tricycle whose films include Peace is Every Step (1998). Maeda spoke about his work with IBFF, affirming that the organization aims to "pitch a big tent" over the multiplicity of cultures, views and perspectives associated with Buddhism. The purpose of the International Buddhist Film Festival, according to Maeda, is to support films and bring them to broad audiences. He noted that people commonly ask what counts as a "Buddhist film," and discussed a range of films that have been screened at the Festival. While Andy Goldsworthy's Rivers and Tides (2001) may lack a single Buddhist technical term, the film conveys a central theme of Buddhism, namely decay. Jacob's Ladder (1990) was marketed as a thriller on first release, but screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin, who is a meditation practitioner, later revealed that it was adapted from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Maeda also emphasized IBFF's efforts to show a diversity of films from around the world: this year's festival featured films from 15 nations. He concluded with a quote by Bhutanese filmmaker and Tibetan reincarnated teacher Khyentse Norbu, on his decision to make films despite resistance from certain quarters: "Dharma is the tea, and culture is the cup... If necessary, I am ready to change the cup."
Robert Buswell, a professor specializing in the Son (Zen) tradition of Korean Buddhism and author of The Zen Monastic Experience (1992), gave a critical assessment of how Buddhism has been represented in the film industry. After seven years as a Buddhist monk in Asia, Buswell was appalled by Meetings with Remarkable Men (1979), a dramatization of the travels of G. I. Gurdjieff, because it unrealistically portrayed Asian characters as "spiritual zombies" who responded to even innocuous questions with skyward gazes. Buswell argues that the situation has not improved much since then, naming Why Has Bodhidharma Left for the East? (1989) and Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ...and Spring (2003) as two Korean films that also fail to authentically portray the range of monks' occupations and personalities, most of which are quite ordinary. Im Kwon-Taek's Mandala (1981) and Khyentse Norbu's The Cup (1999), in Buswell's opinion, were more successful in presenting an "authentic sense of what it's like to be in a monastery." Buswell concluded that he would also like to see films that "ask big questions" without talking explicitly about Buddhism, citing Peter Weir's Fearless as an example that tackles the issue of how to continue to live in the world after having given up the self.
The last speaker on this panel was Nathaniel Dorsky, a Bay area filmmaker and author of Devotional Cinema (2003). Dorsky observed that many in the Western world are interested in the "genius" of the Dharma teachings, not necessarily in Buddhism itself. He intends that his silent 16mm films "create a state of prayer," not by treating Buddhism as a subject but by expressing "the view that comes from Buddhism." Dorsky read passages from his book, speaking of the longstanding link between art and health as well as the transformative potential of watching film. He also spoke of the limitations of film when it is subservient to theme or dependent on "the ornament of language," which can describe a world but not see it. When images are not allowed to be as themselves, Dorsky argued, this makes for "subtle distortion" diluting the primordial strength that film can offer.
A number of questions were raised at the end of the panel. One audience member asked Buswell about his position on documentaries. Buswell was critical of documentaries that simply get it wrong, but also noted that even more accurate documentaries will give a particular representation of their subjects. For example, one documentarian arrived at an American Buddhist dharma center on the day a sex scandal erupted. The next question for the panel was: why does a film have to be accurate to be good? Maeda viewed the dualism of good and bad as a subjective issue dependent on form, content and audience response, which may not be congruent at the same moment. He considers Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ...and Spring (2003) to be a well-made film, but inappropriate for IBFF because of its "crypto-Christian" character. Another question was directed to VanLoo, asking how she established Buddhist television. VanLoo responded that although all major world religions may be represented on Dutch television, she encountered resistance for many years because Buddhism wasn't seen as being sufficiently grounded in Dutch society. Faure asked VanLoo if there was too much "enlightenment guaranteed" in film and television, i.e. works produced from a Protestant bias that make Buddhism appear easy and accessible to Western viewers. VanLoo countered that films they have received from Asia mostly consist of Buddhist ceremonies, which do not offer enough to their audiences in terms of insight or the practical application of Buddhism. Georges Dreyfus, a speaker from the third panel, commented that we are seeing a construction of Buddhism in Western culture, which eschews ritual in favor of our notion of the spiritual, i.e. the "experiential" and the "detachable."
Screening of Kundun
In the evening, the conference co-sponsored a special screening of Martin Scorsese's Kundun (1997) with the International Buddhist Film Festival. The film dramatizes the life of Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, up until his 1959 exile to India. The screening was followed by a discussion with Tibet scholars Georges Dreyfus and Donald Lopez, moderated by Orville Schell. Schell recapped the film's release amidst a surge of expectation in the mid- to late 1990's that American activism and media exposure could have a salutary effect on China's Tibet policy. He cited the "sheer brute force" of Hollywood in catalyzing the discussion on Tibetan political rights, citing Seven Years in Tibet (1997) and Windhorse (1998) as two related films. Nevertheless, Schell judged Kundun as "out of line" compared to the quality of Scorsese's other work, and observed that nothing substantial came out of the hype surrounding these Hollywood productions.
Dreyfus affirmed that he considers Kundun a very complex, emotional and beautiful film. At the same time he emphasized that it mainly conveyed the point of view of a certain subset of the Tibetan exile community, i.e. those living in and around Dharamsala. Dreyfus cited two depictions of historical events as "overdetermined," the fate of Reting Rinpoche and the escape of the Dalai Lama. The film doesn't make it clear that Reting Rinpoche, the ex-regent credited with finding the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, was assassinated. To the film's merit, Dreyfus added, it does touch on this troubled period of Tibetan history, including scenes of dissent among high officials and indicating that Reting Rinpoche died in prison. As for orchestrating the Dalai Lama's escape to India, the film credits the Nechung oracle. Dreyfus noted two other explanations that credit the CIA and Khampa guerrillas from eastern Tibet. A nod is given to the Khampas who follow the Dalai Lama to the border, but "it is very emblematic that the film ends in Dharamsala."
Lopez responded in turn to the comments of the previous two speakers. Addressing Dreyfus' point about Dharamsala perspectives in the film, he remarked that many of the Tibetan actors were aristocrats or the children of aristocrats who had been present during the events depicted in the film. On the glossing over of deaths in the film, he added that many now believe the Dalai Lama's father was poisoned by the Tibetan government because he was abusing his privileged position by making excessive demands on them. Lopez was baffled at why Scorsese, "chronicler of the debased in the U.S.," chose to film this subject, with untrained actors and at a financial loss. Instead, Scorsese poured all his efforts into cinematography and drawing from his great knowledge of film history: Lopez detected homage to John Ford cavalry westerns in the horseback scenes and borrowing from Gone With the Wind (1939) for his memorable tableau of the Dalai Lama standing in the "mandala of the dead." Lopez further noted that the film was shot in Morocco, comparing Kundun's evocation of a desert world and the high attention to costume to Scorsese's previous film Casino (1995). As a parting thought, Lopez analyzed the film's portrayal of the Dalai Lama as an observer who constantly sees through a medium: his telescope, radio, dreams, and the Nechung oracle.
Schell then re-opened the question of what Scorsese, and Hollywood, had intended to do with media exposure of Tibet. Dreyfus agreed that Scorsese's motives were puzzling in comparison to the obvious "caricature" in Seven Years in Tibet. He speculated that Kundun was Scorsese's sincere attempt to let Tibetans speak for themselves, although his own vision creeps in. Dreyfus felt that the "pizza effect" was at work here, so that the Western mythologization of Tibet ended up being repeated and reinforced by Tibetans in exile. With this collectively formed vision of Tibet circulating, Dreyfus said, "I have trouble knowing whose vision it is." Schell asked the discussants to comment on Disney's attempt to constrain distribution of the film to maintain relations with China. Lopez stated that at the time, Beijing initially protested against the making of the film, but on the other hand was trying to get a Disneyland. Disney refused to pull the film completely but reduced distribution so much that it was a box-office flop. When Schell asked about good films on Tibet, Dreyfus recommended Eric Valli's Himalaya (1999), on the lives of yak caravaners in the Dolpo region of northwestern Nepal.
Panel 3: "Authority and Transmission"
Day two of the conference began with the third panel, "Authority and Transmission," which was moderated by Carl W. Bielefeldt, a professor at Stanford University whose rsearch focuses on the intellectual history of the Zen tradition. The first speaker was Donald Lopez, a professor specializing in late Indian Mah?y?na and Tibetan Buddhism at the University of Michigan and recent editor of Critical Terms for the Study of Buddhism (2005). Lopez began with two travel anecdotes, in which Marco Polo and Daniel Defoe each report on a popular local idol: these would not be recognized as one and the same "Buddha" until the late eighteenth century. The early study of Asian religions, Lopez remarked, was to separate out the idolaters and call them by different "-isms." However, a shift to sympathetic, humanistic portrayals of the Buddha occurred in the mid-nineteenth century with Eugene Burnouf's publication of his introduction to Buddhism. This tendency is exemplified in Edwin Arnold's Light of Asia and continues today, e.g. in Karen Armstrong's Buddha (2001). As an extreme example, Lopez cited Conrad Rooks' film Siddhartha (1972): the viewer sees the Buddha's hand but not his body, as if seeing from the Buddha's point of view. Another reading of this cinematographic strategy is that the Buddha transcends the picture. Lopez noted a precedent in the art historical debate on aniconism, which posits that early art never depicts the Buddha's image directly but signifies it through the throne, his footprints, or other attributes. The aniconic analysis is consistent with the nineteenth century desire to see original Buddhism as rational rather than idolatrous. However, Lopez concludes, something is lost when we try to "turn a stone idol into flesh and blood." Better to accept that Marco Polo was right: the Buddha is an idol, and Buddhists are idolaters.
Gil Fronsdal, a primary teacher at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City who received a Ph.D. at Stanford University, spoke on a range of issues relevant to the conference. As a Buddhist teacher, he addressed the tension he encounters between speaking for Buddhism and speaking for himself. If there are multiple Buddhist religions, Fronsdal stated, we have to be careful about our reference points and our tendencies to over-idealize Buddhist practice and teaching in Asia. The American media, he argued, perpetuates a polarization between over-idealized Buddhism and scandal-ridden Buddhism. Fronsdal observed that the Thai media also idealizes Buddhism, but spins the psychic powers of monks rather than the psychotherapeutic benefits stressed in the U.S. He then turned to media "overrepresentation" of the Insight Meditation movement, stating that its teachers were assured publication of their writings through association with an organization that has produced popular authors. Fronsdal was critical of the editing process that captures a "popular way of writing spiritual books in English" through formulaic strategies such as including a high frequency of personal stories or limiting discussion to oft-repeated teachings such as "interconnectedness." Such strategies, Fronsdal concluded, are based on currents of Western thought and serve to "flatten" Buddhism.
The third speaker on the panel was Georges Dreyfus, the first Westerner to obtain the Tibetan monastic title of Geshe Lharampa, now a professor of Religion at Williams College and author of The Sound of Two Hands Clapping: The Education of a Tibetan Buddhist Monk (2003). Dreyfus' presentation critiqued Bernardo Bertolucci's film Little Buddha (1993) as an exoticization of Buddhism. This theme is developed through the re-enchantment of the cold, rational West — shot in blue tones — with the wonderful, exotic Other shot in yellows and other warm colors. Dreyfus was also disturbed by the narrative of Siddhartha's life, which he views as an example of how commodification unhinges the Buddhist tradition from its communities of practitioners and its institutional lines of transmission. In the market, he objected, people pick and choose what they like, reinterpreting them in ways that are totally different from how they are understood historically. Although Dreyfus admitted that the process of commodification is not entirely negative, since it helps people fulfill certain needs, he asked that we consider the degree to which it is changing the narratives and practices of Buddhism. Echoing Sharf's earlier observation, Dreyfus contended that we are at an unprecedented chapter in the history of Buddhism, with a new challenge to the tradition not previously encountered in the transmission of Buddhism across cultures. He characterized scholars as concerned with problems of translation, versus Buddhist teachers as concerned with conveying meaning — implying that perhaps neither is invested in addressing the current challenge to Buddhist tradition.
Zoketsu Norman Fischer, former abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center and founder of the Everyday Zen Foundation, began with a humorous anecdote about a newscast covering a blizzard. The reporter stood in the midst of it, saying, "There is really a lot of snow out here, Bob." Fischer paired this with a quote from Wittgenstein — "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" — commenting that the unspeakable is the most salient reality, but it's unspeakable. From this perspective, Fischer stated that he tries not mix up the world of media with the "quiet, intimate world" in which he lives. He doubted that Buddhism could actually have a spokesperson in the media, or that Buddhism is determined by learned monastics or the media. Fischer then turned to the panel topic of authority and transmission, affirming that in his tradition they are based on the faith and confidence of teacher and student. When his Soto Zen group began, the members only needed to trust that anyone who had gone through the recognized lineage transmission could belong. However, when it came to giving transmission, Fischer stated that he would do so only with the proper rituals, for individuals he knew well through practicing together. Even so, he warned that Buddhist teachers, certified or not, "have a history of doing damage" and that people need to stay attentive. Despite his view that the media by nature will always give incorrect depictions, Fischer expressed faith that the Buddhism he is familiar with will continue on quietly.
The final panel speaker was Timothy J. McNeill, the president, CEO and publisher of Wisdom Publications, a leading non-profit publishing house for books focusing on Buddhism. He discounted the existence of "Western Buddhism," instead seeing "people attempting to practice Buddhism, rooted in lineages from Asia." Offsetting the idealization of Buddhism in Asia, he drew from the life of the eminent Tibetan monk Jamgon Kongtrul (1813-99) as described in E. Gene Smith's Among Tibetan Texts (2001): the government spotted him as a rising star and moved him from the monastery where he was studying, but in a counter-move, the monastic authorities decided to name him somebody's reincarnation so they could reclaim him. McNeill went on to speak about the publishing activities at Wisdom, noting that among 175 active titles, 120 are authored by ordained clergy. The remaining works cover various topics, from meditation advice and psychology to short fiction and recent forays into pop culture such as The Dharma of Star Wars (2005). McNeill discounted the picture of publishing decisions being made by callous boardroom members, although he hoped a Wisdom author will appear on the Oprah Winfrey show someday, since "something has to pay for the other books we generate" such as the Nik?yas (P?li scriptures).
The panel led to an animated discussion among several panel participants, pulling together issues raised during the conference thus far. Sharf pointed out a resemblance between caricatures of Buddhism in Christian evangelical novels on the one hand and popular literature by Western Buddhists on the other, in that both refuse to distinguish between accurate and inaccurate representations, and both tend to conflate Buddhism with other Eastern religions and New Age trends. He also took participants to task for disavowing responsibility for debating what is right and wrong with regard to Buddhism: journalists and commercial publishers don't bother to distinguish the real from the ersatz, Buddhist teachers are not interested in getting involved, and scholars wish to maintain critical distance. Drawing a historical contrast, Sharf asserted that previously, committed Buddhists have always cared about distinguishing good Buddhism from bad Buddhism, "because to get Buddhism right is to get life right." Steven Goodman, a speaker from the fourth panel, asked whether people who are illiterate or who have not taken vows could be part of the debate. Sharf responded that the historic model for participation emphasizes seniority, and that to his knowledge, no tradition has ever viewed Buddhist authority as something to be determined democratically. Fischer agreed that the type of practice matters, but felt that it was more effective to make arguments to fellow practitioners than to make them in the "media blizzard," where they will get subverted. Fronsdal stated he is trying to be discerning about Buddhism, but pointed out the difficulty of evaluating others' wisdom when addressing them. He agreed with Fischer that rich, often passionate conversations take place among Dharma teachers, but are unlikely to occur in the public sphere. Winston asserted that meaning could be conveyed without discussions of good and bad, offering the alternative approach of working to empower audiences by giving them tools. Padmanabh Jaini, emeritus professor of Buddhist Studies at Berkeley, weighed in with his understanding that the true spirit of Buddhism is examination.
With that the question and answer session opened to the audience. One person asked about the sale of scholarly books and the Nik?yas. McNeill estimated that 20,000 copies of the Majjhima-Nik?ya (The Middle-Length Discourses) have been sold, but said that "breaking 1,000 is a bestseller" in terms of scholarly books. Another person raised the possibility of working conscientiously with pop culture as a skillful means, rather than viewing it as a necessary evil. Sharf responded that scholars have very little leverage in the popular world, and asked other scholars whether they feel involvement is appropriate. Dreyfus agreed that pop culture penetrates deeply into perceptions about Buddhism, but observed that scholars have not gotten far in establishing a good normative Buddhist discourse even amongst themselves. Jaffe pointed out that some scholarly books are entering the public forum, such as Lopez's Prisoners of Shangri-La (1998). Fronsdal conceded that he finds the issues raised by Sharf difficult to analyze, yet his colleagues are "much less interested" in this topic than he. At the same time he is "eagerly awaiting" the serious study of American Buddhism by scholars. Fischer addressed the question with the opinion that media is inherently neither good nor bad, and that for Buddhists to work conscientiously with pop culture is a worthwhile experiment.
Panel 4: "Buddhism Sells - Buddhist Concepts and Images in American Advertising"
The last panel, "Buddhism Sells – Buddhist Concepts and Images in American Advertising," was moderated by Patricia Berger, a Berkeley professor specializing in Chinese Buddhist art and Asian architecture and author of Empire of Emptiness: Buddhist Art and Political Authority in Qing China (2003). The panel first screened a 20-minute compilation of TV commercials from the U.S. media, advertising products ranging from fast food and FedEx to a Butthole Surfers music album and the state of California.
The screening was followed by Gregory Levine, a Berkeley professor whose research interests include Japanese art and Buddhist visual cultures, and author of the forthcoming Daitokuji: Art History and the Visual Cultures of a Zen Monastery (2005). Levine raised the questions: "Does the Buddha that sells also teach"? and "Does religion get pop cultured or vice versa?" He raised several pertinent examples, beginning with an Optimum Zen cereal box featuring a quasi-calligraphic font style and a model meditating in Spandex clothing on the back. As a Zen-styled product its implied use is inner harmony through the concept of diet as spiritual journey — "Zen and the art of gastrointestinal maintenance" for aging baby boomers. Levine next analyzed a miniature robed figure holding a cell phone and espresso called "Happy Buddha," a product that does not invite us to be more like the Buddha, but rather makes the Buddha more like us in our high-stress life of modern interconnectivity. Addressing the Buddha as fashion trend, Levine discussed a 2004 international protest of Victoria's Secret swimwear that featured Buddha images on the left breast and torso. Levine noted that the swimwear design conflated South Asian tropical lushness with its spirituality. With Buddhist groups in the U.S. and Asia objecting to the impure use of iconic imagery, Victoria's Secret issued a statement of regret but denied any knowledge that the person depicted was in fact the Buddha, and also passed off responsibility to the maker. However, when Victoria's Secret eventually pulled the product, it was due to business concerns about the discontent of Sri Lankan makers of Victoria's Secret lingerie. Levine concluded that we should challenge the "anything-goes monoculture" of consumerism, or else risk the slippery slope of exploitation.
Alex von Rospatt, a Berkeley professor specializing in the doctrinal history of Indian Buddhism and in Newar Buddhism, provided an analysis of the commercial compilation from the perspective of a newcomer to American pop culture. He was impressed that Buddhism is often taken for granted as part of the culture here, citing the pro-California ad that included a woman meditating outdoors. However, advertisers were more interested in evoking vague allusions to Eastern spirituality than in authenticity: one ad had Tibetan monks speaking in Japanese, and another selected by the compilers actually showed Franciscan monks in a remote mountain location. A number of ads also associated Buddhism with mantras, martial arts, self-hypnotization and other interests of white Dharma seekers. Taken as a whole, Rospatt observed, the Buddhism in the ads was predominantly marked as Tibetan or vaguely East Asian, with several cases of Western teachers but only one Theravada example. Contrary to Rospatt's expectation that Buddhism would be portrayed as a hip and appealing lifestyle, he found it was usually juxtaposed against the product being marketed. A common message was that the product grants fulfillment, not Buddhism: a cable-station ad showed an Eastern master watching UPN at the expense of his student, a car ad pitched driving a Lincoln as more satisfying than meditating, and a supermarket ad divulged that the secret of wisdom is the low prices at Price Chopper. In addition to poking fun at sincere but misguided Western Dharma seekers, ads also denigrated Asian teachers, including an NBA ad where the teacher keeps losing at "snatch the pebble from my hand" and is eventually reduced to asking for it. Despite this, Rospatt did not detect hostility towards Buddhism so much as a lack of recognition that Buddhism is an established religion to be respected as Judaism and Islam are.
The next speaker was Jacquelyn Baas, Director Emeritus of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive and an independent scholar who recently published Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art (2004). Baas asserted there is a significant Buddhist presence in European and American art, although it has gone largely unrecognized by specialists in these areas. Referring to a January 2005 New York Times article on Buddhism in advertising, she argued that the "Life is random" ad campaign for the iPod Shuffle sells consumers the idea that they are potential artists of life. Baas found resonance in Marchel Duchamp's statement that "my art would be art of living… neither visual nor cerebral… a sort of constant euphoria." Considering Marchel Duchamp's Bicycle Wheel (1913) not as an object of art but as an object of meditation, Baas cited the work of Taiwanese art historian Tosi Lee connecting it to the Buddhist wheel of the Dharma. During Duchamp's time, a stele fragment from the Indian Buddhist site Sanchi — depicting what appears to be a wheel on a pedestal with lions — was prominently displayed at the Musée Guimet in Paris. She interpreted his notes from this period as evidence of the direct influence of the stele on Bicycle Wheel, also documenting his later interest in a bodhisattva figure with his hand in the gesture dispelling fear (abhayamudr?). Baas then discussed Duchamp's photograph of his hand holding a cigar with smoke rising in the shape of a lotus, drawing a connection to tantric symbolism through Duchamp's comment that the smoke appeared similar to female genitalia. Duchamp's view that art resides in the mind of the viewer, Baas concluded, is linked to Buddhist thought. For Duchamp, ecstasy lay in the "aesthetically receptive" mind, an "awake" yet "humble state of mind" needed to become an artist of life.
Steven Goodman, a co-director of Asian and Comparative Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco who researches Indo-Tibetan influenced forms of Mah?y?na and Vajray?na Buddhism, was the last speaker on the panel. He commented on motifs of laughter and surprise in the commercial compilation, and proposed three rubrics for a successful ad: Buddhism in advertising, Buddhist advertising, and Buddhism as advertising. These forms are "exercising more cultural torque than we have thought," Goodman argued, citing a passive and decontextualized knowledge of Buddhism and Buddhist terms: Samsara is a perfume, Nirvana is a grunge band from Seattle, the message of the Bodhicary?vat?ra is embedded in the Beastie Boys song "Bodhisattva," and a recent campaign for iPod rival Zen Micro invoked "the power of Zen" and "the color of Zen." The use of Buddhism in American advertising dates back to early twentieth-century magazines of travel and exotica, with a National Geographic ad using an 11-headed Avalokite?vara image to sell life insurance. Current travel brochures continue the tradition, selling places like Bhutan as "blissfully untouched," "sacred," and as "spiritual adventures." Goodman discussed how the fashion world also capitalizes on Buddhism, citing a French Vogue issue guest edited by the Dalai Lama and an art/design catalogue featuring "divine interiors from Nepal to Japan." Buddhist advertising, he argued, uses the same tropes and adjectives that are associated with Buddhism in secular media. Echoing the Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu in stating that "Buddhism is both the medium and the message," Goodman ended with the question: how do we market texts that say Buddhism never taught anything at all?
The final question and answer session invited a variety of comments about this panel and the conference in general. One audience member had witnessed people in Burma prostrating to televised images of the Buddha and asked about "the effect of our media on the tradition." Levine responded that context and perception inflect the shifts of viewing an image, and in turn asked about alternatives to commercialism. In response to another audience question about the lack of Asian American panelists, Sharf responded that they were unable to find someone willing to engage in this conversation, since most Asian Buddhist teachers don't even recognize the Buddhism discussed at the conference as "Buddhism." Baas took the opportunity to show some work of Korean-born New York artist Nam June Paik, such as "Zen for TV" (1963). In response to a comment that advertisers view "Buddhists are crackpots who won't fight back," Goodman pointed to the separation of markets between martial arts and Buddhism, and problematized the notion of Buddhists as essentially nonviolent. Berger was struck by the degree of intertextuality in the commercials, suggesting there is a "separate discourse of Buddhist language in advertising" that re-circulates ideas such as the "Grasshopper" reference from the television show Kung Fu (1972-5). An audience member observed that images of the wheel in Indian Buddhism are not objects of meditation but are used for worship or invoking the presence of a site, and asked whether Duchamp misunderstood. Baas responded that Duchamp was "turning a corner" at this stage in his life with his decision to stop painting, and that the wheel "stood for setting out on a new path."
Report by Nancy Lin, graduate student, Group in Buddhist Studies, UC Berkeley.
Special Screening of Kundun
February 8, 2005
Film screening
Center for Buddhist Studies, Institute for East Asian Studies, International Buddhist Film Festival
Followed by discussion with Georges Dreyfus, Donald Lopez and Orville Schell.
Martin Scorsese's Kundun is the story of Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. His discovery as a child, schooling as a monk and teenage head of state, escape during the Chinese invasion and eventual exile in India are vividly depicted with Oscar-nominated cinematography by Roger Deakins and music by Philip Glass.
The film will be followed by a discussion between Georges Dreyfus, the first Westerner to obtain the title of Geshe Lharampa, the highest degree confered within the traditional Tibetan monastic system and author of Two Hands Clapping, and Donald Lopez, expert on Tibetan Buddhism and author of Prisoners of Shangri-La. The discussion is moderated by Orville Schell, Dean of UC Berkeley's School of Journalism and author of Virtual Tibet.
For tickets, please visit http://www.ibff.org or call (925) 275-9005.
UC Berkeley students will receive complementary tickets at the door (please bring your student ID to the "will-call" booth).
From a Vanguard to a Bastard: Rollercoaster-like History of the Industrial Relations at a Gigantic Shipyard in Korea
Jun Kim, Visiting Scholar, Institute of Industrial Relations, UC Berkeley
February 11, 2005
Center for Korean Studies
The trade union of the Hyundai Heavy Industry (HHI) had been recognized with its militancy and considered as the most prominent "vanguard" of the newly born Korean independent labor movement in late 80s and early 90s. It shook the country with a series of tremendous and tenacious strikes at that time. However, recently a federation, an umbrella union of militant unions in metal industry, expelled it for its alleged "betrayal against workers," and its militant labor activists, who now work as a weak opposition group in it, accuse it "company union", which now overtly advocates "employer-employee cooperation." Dr. Kim will provide some explanation on this huge change not only at the level of workplace but also in the context of nation wide industrial relation.
Jun Kim is a Visiting Scholar of the Institute of Industrial Relations at the University of California, Berkeley, and the KRF Research Professor at SungKongHoe University in Korea. He received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in Sociology from Seoul National University. His expertise lies in the history of labor and labor movement, and comparative political sociology, especially on East Asia. His books include Industrial Relations and Labor Politics I: On the Social Accord in Korea After 1987, Seoul: Korea Labor Institute, 1999, co-authored with Choi Younggi, Roh Chunggi, You Bumsang and Industrial Relations and Labor Politics III: Labor movement After 1987, Seoul: Korea Labor Institute, 2001, co-authored with Choi Younggi, Cho Hyorae, You Bumsang (both in Korean).
Dr. Kim worked as a senior researcher, legislative research division, the National Assembly Library of Korea, 1989-2003. He provided legislative and policy assistance for the members of the National Assembly on the labor and employment related issues. He taught industrial and labor sociology at Seoul National University, social class and social change at Hanshin University as a lecturer, among others. He also served as a member of board of editor for several academic journals in Korea including Gyoungje wa Sahoe (Economy and Society), Sahoe wa Yoksa (Society and History).
Sponsored by a Grant from the Korea Foundation.
Free and open to the public.
Hong Kong and Shanghai: The Growing Rivalry Between Two Global Logistics Hubs
François Gipouloux, Senior Research Fellow at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris
Monday, February 14, 2005
Institute of East Asian Studies
The rapid growth of trade and foreign direct investment in East Asia has given particular significance to a network of coastal cities forming a maritime corridor from Vladivostok to Singapore. A succession of maritime basins — the Sea of Japan, the Yellow Sea, the South China Sea — brings together both a manufacturing area, centered on labour-intensive production of exports to the rest of the world and sophisticated logistical platforms. François Gipouloux will discuss the growing rivalry between two global logistics hubs, Hong Kong and Shanghai.
François Gipouloux is a Senior Research Fellow at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris. He previously served in France's foreign service, with postings in both China and Japan. He has also served as a Research Director for the French Center for Research on Contemporary China in Hong Kong.
The Jewish Diaspora in Modern China
Xin Xu, Center for Jewish Studies, Nanjing University
February 16, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies, Jewish Studies Department
The history of the Jewish Diaspora in modern China really begins in the second half of the 19th century, when China was forced to open her doors to Western powers. With the Treaty of 1843 that followed the first First Opium War, China surrendered Hong Kong to the British and opened five major port cities in Mainland China to British and, later, other foreign powers. Territorial enclaves in these Treaty Ports attracted many foreign adventurers, including Jews. In the following 100 years, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and later Harbin, Tianjin, and many other cities became centers of Jewish communal life, as more than 40,000 Jews came to China; first seeking business opportunities and, later, seeking a safe haven during the Second World War. This talk will examine the history and development of various factors that brought Jews to China after 1840, as well as the social, economic, cultural, and religious life of Jews in China, their relations with the Chinese, and Chinese policy towards them and their religion.
Free and open to the public.
From Globalization to Planetarity: The Ecological Imperative in Japanese Studies
Richard Okada, Japanese Literature, Princeton University
February 17, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
Human life as we know faces environmental crises of monumental proportions. Examples include the complex effects of global warming, the depletion of energy sources, the degradation in air quality, the lack of safe drinking water, the extinction of animal species, the media pollution of our airways, the mass homogenization of subjectivity, and the question of future quality of life. The prospects according to many researchers are dire at best. It is high time that we who teach and do research in Japan studies incorporate ecological issues as an integral part of our daily life and labor. What might it mean to go about doing this in relation to Japanese literature and culture? That is the question central to the author's remarks, which will focus on what some have termed "mental ecology" in the context of what he wishes to call a planetary ethics.
This event is free and open to the public.
Decoration and Signification: The TLV Mirror Revisited
Lillian Lan-ying Tseng, Assistant Professor, History of Art, Yale
February 18, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies
Discussant: Patricia Berger, Associate Professor, History of Art, UC Berkeley
No decorative arts in China have aroused as intense modern academic interest as the TLV mirror that was mass-produced in the Han dynasty. Scholars from different fields have striven to rival one another in identifying its obscure design since the beginning of the twentieth century. With new evidence, particularly a mirror and a wooden board unearthed in 1993 at Yinwan, it is time to settle and set aside the old disputation about identification, and to move on to the intellectual adventure of the cultural significance of the TLV mirror in Han China. Viewing art, game and divination as an interconnected complex, this talk will discuss how the TLV mirror can serve a cultural sign that demonstrates the Han auspicious mentality, and how the formal variants of the TLV mirror illustrate the life of a cultural sign.
Free and open to the public.
Building a Regional Community of the Northeast Asia: Possibilities, Obstacles, and Korea's Role
Sang-Ki Chung, Consul General of the Republic of Korea
February 22, 2005
Center for Korean Studies
Discussant: Hong Yung Lee, Department of Political Science, UC Berkeley
Northeast Asia, one of the world's most dynamic areas, faces a number of security challenges such as North Korean nuclear issue, tensions along the Taiwan Strait, and Japan-China rivalry. Post-September 11 realignment of U.S. strategic posture, the rise of China as a global power and Japan's active move to strengthen its international role might further complicate strategic uncertainty. Mistrust among Korea, China and Japan pose the greatest obstacle to shaping up the regional integration. Nevertheless economic, cultural, and social cooperation has been rapidly increasing. In 2004 China replaced the U.S. as No.1 trading partner of Japan and Korea, while Japan become China's No.1 trading partner. Cultural exchanges and interaction among the three have also increased remarkably in the past few years. The flow of movies, dramas, music and fashions has increased. Thus a "Northeast Asian cultural community" has become topical. Will a Northeast Asian regional community be formed comparable to the European Union? If so, what would be the obstacles to such a move? Would Korea play a leading role of pushing the idea to form such a regional community? If so, how and why would Korea do so?
Mr. Sang-Ki Chung, a China specialist and currently the Consul-General of Korea in San Francisco has spent most of his diplomatic career in the Asia pacific region (China, Japan, Singapore, and Taiwan) since he joined the Foreign Service of the Republic of Korea in 1977. Previously he was Director-General of the Asian and Pacific Affairs Bureau of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Mr. Chung accompanied President Kim Dae-Jung to North Korea for the historic Inter-Korea Summit with North Korea's President Kim Jong-il in June, 2000.
Sponsored by a Grant from the Korea Foundation
Free and open to the public.
The Long March through the Tibetan areas in Western Sichuan: the interaction between Red Army and local Tibetans (1934-1936)
Jiangbian Jiacuo, Professor, Institute of Ethnic Literature Studies, CASS
February 23, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies
Of the two years of the Red Army’s Long March (1934-1936), one-and-a-half were spent passing through Tibetan areas in Western Sichuan province. This was the first time that the CCP came in contact with ethnic minorities, and the experience of these years greatly affected the future CCP and PRC’s minority policies. More than ten thousand ethnic Tibetans joined or assisted the Red Army, a participation that was essential to its survival. Among these Tibetan Red Army soldiers was Tianbao, who became the future party chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Region. This talk will explore this often-overlooked facet of the Long March period and discuss the effect of this early experience on modern Tibetan politics.
The Economic Structural Reform and Market Opportunities in Japan
Charles Lake II, President and Representative in Japan, AFLAC Japan
February 23, 2005
Yomiuri Speaker Series
Center for Japanese Studies
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has pursued a number of significant economic structural and regulatory reform initiatives to address the problem of economic slump and declining international competitiveness of the Japanese economy, which includes his initiative to privatize the Japan Post. The Japanese Government, particularly through the Financial Services Agency (FSA), has also continued to dramatically reform the Japanese financial system in line with the big bang plan. Japan has also taken steps to address problems stemming from an aging of its population and declining birthrate, which have placed tremendous pressure on Japan's social security system. What are the implications of these economic reform measures on the citizens of Japan, the Japanese market and the companies that operate in that market? Are business opportunities increasing or declining? The speaker will present an overview of the economic structural reform in Japan and discuss the emerging business opportunities that exist today, including providing AFLAC's story as a case study. The speaker will share his perspective based on his experience as a former U.S. Government international trade negotiator, private practitioner of law, and as president of the largest foreign insurance company operating in Japan.
This event is free and open to the public.
The India-China Connection: Rising Powers and Shifting Relations
Harry Harding, Dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs, Professor of International Affairs and Political Science, The George Washington University
February 24, 2005
Lecture, registration required
Institute of East Asian Studies, Asia Society, Commonwealth Club of California
Moderator: Dr. Prakash Ambegaonkar, Founder and CEO, Bridging Nations
$10 Members; $15 Non-Members; $5 Students with ID
As we move into the 21st century, India and China — the two most populous nations on earth — continue a long and tangled relationship, one with direct implications for stability in Asia. Given their nuclear rivalry, contested border, competition for influence in the region, growing economies, and internal problems, what will the future hold?
Please join us for an update on Sino-Indian relations with Harry Harding, co-editor of the Asia Society's new book, The India-China Relationship: What the United States Needs to Know.
Catering by Gaylord India Restaurant.
Reservations required. Please contact the Asia Society at 415-421-8707 for further information. Purchased tickets will be held at the door. Cancellations must be received by noon on February 21, 2004.
Other programs in the IEAS Book Series: New Perspectives on East Asia.
The Work of A Lifetime: History and Religion in Japan and East Asia. A Symposium in Honor of Professor Emeritus Delmer Brown
February 25, 2005
Symposium
Center for Japanese Studies, University of San Francisco
The Work of A Lifetime: History and Religion in Japan and East Asia. A Symposium in Honor of Professor Emeritus Delmer Brown
Program
1:15 — Welcome and opening remarks
Andrew Barshay, Department of History, U.C. Berkeley
John Nelson, Theology and Religious Studies, University of San Francisco
1:30-2:30 — Panel I: The Religious Dynamic in Japan and East Asia
John Nelson, Chair
Robert N. Bellah, Elliott Professor of Sociology Emeritus, U.C. Berkeley — Japanese Cultural History in Comparative Perspective
Allan Grapard, International Shinto Foundation Professor of Shinto Studies, East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, U.C. Santa Barbara — The Combinatory World of the Medieval Period
2:30-3:30 — Panel II: Centers and Contexts of Japanese History
Andrew Barshay, Chair
Mary Elizabeth Berry, Professor, Dept. of History, U.C. Berkeley — Historians Writing About Historians
Irwin Scheiner, Professor, Dept. of History, U.C. Berkeley — Conversations with Delmer
3:30-3:45 — Coffee Break
3:45-5:00 — Panel III: The Japan Historical Text Initiative: an Introduction and Demonstration
Lewis Lancaster, Professor Emeritus, East Asian Languages and Cultures, U.C. Berkeley — The Japan Historical Text Initiative: Strategies of Research for the Future
Delmer Brown, Professor Emeritus, History, U.C. Berekeley — The Unity of Religion and Politics in Early Japanese History
Commentary
Oketani Ikuo, Professor, Osaka International University
5:00-6:00 — Reception
The Rule of Law in China: If They Build It, Who Will Come?
Mary Gallagher, Assistant Professor, Political Science, University of Michigan
February 25, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies
Discussant: Kevin O'Brien, Professor, Political Science, UC Berkeley
When an authoritarian state self-consciously develops a "rule of law," which citizens, businesses, and organizations will choose to make use of it? Do new legal institutions only serve the elite — those with the requisite education and skill — or do they become the refuge of the majority, those without informal channels or close ties to management or local officials? More broadly, how does the creation of new legal institutions stimulate social actors to pursue their rights through these institutions? And if laws are incomplete, badly implemented, or subject to politically motivated interventions, can they still serve as a resource for social actors and ultimately for political reform?
Labor disputes and unemployment rates are both on the rise in China, and no longer neatly follow the scripts of the 1990s, which envisioned a reduction in labor conflict through the state-led construction of the rule of law. The growing use of labor and employment law in China provides an excellent window on many of these questions of legal mobilization, as citizens use new laws and institutions to protect their rights and interests. This greater demand for legal institutions can be seen as a type of legal mobilization from the "demand" side of rule-of-law reform.
Free and open to the public.
Eluding the Past: Chinese Views of Mao
Philip Short. Author of Mao: A Life
March 1, 2005
Institute of East Asian Studies
Join us for a presentation by Philip Short, author of the recently published Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare and the acclaimed biography, Mao: A Life. Philip Short is currently working on a documentary series about Mao's life, concentrating on interviews with members of his family and other close associates. He will speak about the picture of life at Mao's court that emerges in these recent interviews. The process of making the television series also raises important questions related to the current PRC leadership's unwillingness to confront the realities of China's recent history.
Japan's Foreign Policy Challenges in East Asia: Responding to New Realities
Makoto Yamanaka, Consulate General of Japan, San Francisco
March 2, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies, Yomiuri Simbun, Graduate School of Journalism
Is an East Asian Community finally emerging? What would be a viable security arrangement for East Asia? What is the role of free trade agreements (FTA) in this region? What role is the United States playing? Is Japan competing with China for regional leadership? Is North Korea coming to terms with Japan over the abduction and security issues? What is the right mix of dialogue and pressure vis-a-vis North Korea? Can the six-party talks produce good results? What is the future of relations between Beijing and Taipei? These are some of the questions Makoto Yamanaka, Consul General of Japan in San Francisco, will discuss on the day.
Consul General Makoto Yamanaka graduated from Keio University and joined Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1974. In 1977, he was posted to the Embassy of Japan in Washington, D.C. after graduating from Amherst College in Massachusetts.
At the Ministry of Foreign Affairs headquarters in Tokyo, Mr. Yamanaka has worked in the Asian Affairs Bureau, European Affairs Bureau, Treaties Bureau, and Intelligence and Analysis Bureau. His overseas assignments have included the Embassies of Japan in Bangkok and London, as well as the Permanent Mission of Japan in Vienna. Mr. Yamanaka has also served as the Head of the OECD Tokyo Centre. He began his tenure as the Consul General of Japan in San Francisco in March 2004.
This event is free and open to the public. Light Reception to follow.
Changing Geographies of War Memory in Postwar Japan
Franziska Seraphim, History, Boston College
March 3, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
As the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War II nears, perennial questions about Japan's relationship to its wartime past move into the public limelight once again-not only in the context of commemoration events, but also in current debates about constitutional reform, Japanese participation in international military ventures, war victims' compensation lawsuits in Japanese and American courts, even in movies and other popular entertainment. At stake is not so much the war itself, but the ways in which the legacies of war, defeat, and foreign occupation became embedded in postwar public life in the decades after 1945, and how they may be re-negotiated to meet the demands facing Japan today. Against the background of competing interpretations of the war through the articulation of specific interests, this talk focuses on struggles over the "parameters" of memory in Japanese public life from the 1950s to the 1990s and speculates on further changes today.
This event is free and open to the public.
Peasant Resistance to Conscription During the Anti-Japanese War (1937-1945)
Lucien Bianco, Professor Emeritus, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris
March 4, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies
Discussant: Fred Wakeman, Professor, History, UC Berkeley
Peasant resistance to wartime conscription during the Anti-Japanese War was very widespread, especially in Sichuan province. In many cases resistance to conscription was linked to tax — or other kinds of resistance. While not targeting conscription as such, other incidents were caused by army requisitions, extortions or acts of violence. A few complex events that linked most of the above with other grievances gathered tens of thousands of troops and lasted several months.
Free and open to the public.
Planning "Little Taipei" in Kunshan: Cross-border Flows and China's Institutional Innovation
Lan-chih Po, Assistant Professor, China Center for Economic Research, Peking University
March 9, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies
Taiwanese capital has engaged in the institutional innovation of a mainland Chinese locality — Kunshan in Jiangsu province — and built a unique system of governance where it helps shape local government. As represented by a custom-made export-processing zone for Taiwanese investors, such governance is related to a set of institutional regulations arranged by the local state through a series of negotiations among transborder actors with varying interests. Through this process, Taiwanese capital has maneuvered within Chinese policy loopholes and, in doing so, participated in building institutions and instigating local institutional change. The concept of transborder governance thus is employed to provide a theoretical link between the role of the local, state and transnational forces in a complex nexus producing and reproducing new spatiality. This case study of Kunshan demonstrates how a locality responds to globalization, specifically with regard to its unique regulatory structure and mixed spatial-temporal dimensions.
Free and open to the public.
Knowledge Value Society and Japanese Economy
Taichi Sakaiya, Author and Former Minister of State for Economic Planning
March 10, 2005
Yomiuri Speaker Series
Center for Japanese Studies
The "Knowledge Value Revolution" has been accomplished in the world during the past 20 years, and our global society has been fundamentally changing. While the Standoff of the East-West Cold War has disappeared, the globalization of the economy under the hegemony of the United States progresses as the subjectification of value prevails.
"Production Process-division" is increasingly common worldwide. Project planning, technology development, design creation, parts manufacturing, product assembly, distribution and shipping, advertisement strategy, and financing—these processes of making a product are now done in different countries and economies. Most notable is the fact that while capital-intensive processes transfer into China and East European countries where wages are low, labor-intensive processes grow in the developed industrialized countries.
This event is free and open to the public.
Light reception to follow.
23rd San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival
March 10-20, 2005
NAATA, selected films co-presented by the Institute of East Asian Studies
This year the Institute of East Asian Studies is again co-presenting a number of special screenings during the 23rd San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. The selected films focus on Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan and Hongkong. An overview of the co-presented films in alphabetical order is included below.
Schedule
20.30.40
SAT 03.12 145PM Kabuki San Francisco TUE 03.15 700PM Kabuki San Francisco
Taiwan/Hong Kong, 2004, 110mins, 35mm, Color, Mandarin, Cantonese & Hokkien w/E.S.
62 YEARS AND 6500 MILES
TUE 03.15 730PM PFA Berkeley MON 03.16 715PM Kabuki San Francisco
Preceded by:
PLANE MAKER
Taiwan 2004 | 11mins | Video Color | Mandarin w/E.S.
THUNDER LANNYANG
Taiwan/USA 2004 | 15mins | Video Color | Taiwanese & Mandarin w/E.S.
BUTTERFLY
SUN 03.13 1200PM Castro San Francisco TUE 03.15 900PM Kabuki San Francisco
Hong Kong, 2004, 124mins, 35mm, Color, Cantonese w/E.S.
CHINESE RESTAURANTS: THREE CONTINENTS
SUN 03.13 200PM Kabuki San Francisco THU 03.17 715PM Kabuki San Francisco
Canada, 2004, 72mins, Video, Color, English, Mandarin, Cantonese, & French w/E.S.
Preceded by: BBC HOUSE SPECIAL
Great Britain, 2004, 10mins, Video, Color
SELLING LOUIE'S VILLAGE
USA, 2004, 14mins, Video, Color
CUTIE HONEY
SAT 03.12 945PM PFA Berkeley SUN 03.13 915PM Castro San Francisco
Japan, 2004, 93mins, 35mm, Color, Japanese w/E.S.
DUMPLINGS
SAT 03.12 945PM Castro San Francisco SUN 03.13 810PM PFA Berkeley
Hong Kong, 2004, 91mins, 35mm, Color, Cantonese & Mandarin w/E.S.
THE GREEN HAT
FRI 03.11 700PM Castro San Francisco SUN 03.20 500PM Camera San Jose
China 2003, 98mins, 35mm, Color, Mandarin w/E.S.
HANA & ALICE
MON 03.14 645PM Kabuki San Francisco WED 03.16 915PM Kabuki San Francisco
Japan, 2004, 133mins, 35mm, Color, Japanese w/E.S.
HIROSHIMA, MON AMOUR
SAT 03.12 500PM Castro San Francisco
France, 1959, 89mins, 35mm, B&W, French w/E.S.
AN EVENING WITH STEVEN OKAZAKI
TUE 03.15 645PM Kabuki San Francisco
Steven Okazaki in Conversation with Pacific Time's Nguyen Qui Duc
Preceded by the world premiere of THE MUSHROOM CLUB
USA 2005 | 40mins | Video Color | Japanese & English w/E.S.
OLDBOY
FRI 03.11 930PM Kabuki San Francisco SAT 03.12 700PM PFA Berkeley
Hong Kong, 2004, 91mins, 35mm, Color, Cantonese & Mandarin w/E.S.
OUT OF THIS WORLD
SUN 03.13 930PM Kabuki San Francisco WED 03.16 630PM Kabuki San Francisco
Japan, 2004, 118mins, 35mm, Color, English and Japanese w/E.S.
THREE BY STEVEN OKAZAKI
SUN 03.13 Kabuki San Francisco
TRT: 86mins
From the zany streets of Tokyo to the parched landscape of Wyoming, these short works by Steven Okazaki demonstrate a tremendous range in style, subject and setting. But each film bears a distinctly Asian American perspective, always striving to break down stereotypes and to reveal the not-so-simple truth beneath the surface.
THE YEAR OF THE YAO
SAT 03.12 230PM Castro San Francisco SAT 03.19 500PM Camera San Jose
USA/China, 2004, 88mins, 35mm, Color, English & Mandarin w/E.S.
Beyond the Age of Innocence — A Worldly View of America
Kishore Mahbubani, Dean, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore
March 11, 2005
Institute of East Asian Studies
More than half of the world's population lives in Asia and the Middle East — and is becoming more and more alienated from America. In his new book Kishore Mahbubani explains provocatively why. Trained in philosophy in North America and Asia, and well-experienced in real politik as a diplomat on the world stage, Mahbubani has unusual insight into America's ever more troubled relationship with the rest of the world. To allow any lasting gap between America and the world, he argues, would be a strategic mistake for America and a loss to the world.
Kishore Mahbubani is the former Singaporean ambassador to the United Nations. He currently is Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore.
For an interview with Kishore Mahbubani during his visit to UC Berkeley, please visit
http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/ people5/ Mahbubani/ mahbubani-con0.html
Other programs in the IEAS Book Series: New Perspectives on East Asia.
Reconstructing National Identity during the Late Chosǒn Period: the Political Use of King T'aejo's Portraits and Royal Portrait Halls
Insoo Cho, Assistant Professor, Korean Art, University of Southern California
March 11, 2005
Center for Korean Studies
During the late Chosǒn period, portraits of King T'aejo, the founder of the dynasty, were continuously repaired and copied, and royal portraits halls were refurbished. These efforts elevated the legitimacy of the royal family and contributed to a noticeable sense of continuity in the Chosǒn period after two foreign invasions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was also part of a broader cultural movement that arose in response to the growing awareness of national identity. This talk discusses the political dimension of King T'aejo's portrait and royal portrait halls in terms of the construction of national identity, their impact on the contemporary imagination, and the shaping of a collective memory of the dynastic founder.
Professor Cho studied Korean and Chinese art history in Seoul National University, and at the University of Kansas, where he received a Ph.D. For the past 15 years, he had held curatorial positions at the Ho-Am Art Museum in Young-in, South Korea, where he was Chief Curator from 1999 until 2001. During his tenure at the Ho-Am, Professor Cho has curated or co-curated a wide range of special exhibitions, including award wining Treasures of the Early Choson Dynasty (1996) and highly praised Auspicious Dreams: Decorative Paintings of Korea (1998).
Before he joined to the Department of Art History at USC in 2003, he has been Visiting Curator at the Seoul National University Museum from 2001 to 2002. His other professional experience includes teaching Korean art as a lecturer at the Seoul National University and Sungshin Women's University. Professor Cho is engaged in research on Korean portrait paintings in the Choson Dynasty. Focusing on royal portraits, he investigates the political meaning and function of these images.
Sponsored by a Grant from the Korea Foundation.
Free and open to the public.
Japanese Social Science and Bureau-pluralism under Globalization
Yasuo Goto, Political Economy, Fukushima University, CJS Visiting Scholar
Kaoru Ishiguro, Economics, Kobe University, CJS Visiting Scholar
March 14, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
"The Net's New World and General Intellect — with reference to A.E. Barshay The Social Sciences in Modern Japan"
Yasuo Goto, Political Economy, Fukushima University, CJS Visiting Scholar
The transformation from 'Japan as No.1' through the 'lost decade' of the 1990's to 'Japan as nothing' and images of Japan's 'second defeat' has been striking. With the end of cold-war system, and the beginning of the 'Internet New World' information revolution, Japanese society as a whole has become increasingly 'old world'. Why? What's the significance of this 'third, real reform'? We will discuss the prospects of post cold-war stage of world history and ways of overcoming the 'ancient substrate' ( Maruyama Masao's koso) at the base of the traditions of Japanese social sciences.
"Trade Liberalization and Bureau-pluralism"
Kaoru Ishiguro, Economics, Kobe University, CJS Visiting Scholar
Free trade agreement (FTA) and regional trade liberalization attract much interest under globalization, while the multilateral trade negotiations in WTO have difficulty. In this seminar, we take up the trade liberalization negotiations in Japan and discuss what kind of effects the bureau-pluralism characterizing Japanese domestic politics has on these negotiation results. Here, we consider the APEC trade liberalization negotiations as an example and discuss the preferences and bargaining power of Japanese ministries and some of the results of trade liberalization negotiations.
Free and open to the public
A Never-ending Story — On the Rediscovery of Buddhist Sanskrit Texts
Michael Hahn, Numata Visiting Professor in Buddhist Studies, UC Berkeley
March 15, 2005
Center for Buddhist Studies
After the demise of Buddhism in the fourteenth century almost the entire body of Buddhist texts was lost in India. However, outside India proper Buddhist Sanskrit manuscripts survived in Nepal, Kashmir, Central Asia, Tibet and elsewhere. The process of locating and accessing these manuscripts is by no means completed, and new and exciting discoveries continue to be made. Reconstituting a particular corpus of Buddhist narrative literature, Michael Hahn will illustrate how recent discoveries can make it possible to regain works of seminal importance that have been believed to be irretrievably lost in the Sanskrit original.
Michael Hahn is the current Numata Visiting Professor in Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. A professor of Indology and Tibetology at Philipps-University in Marburg (Germany), his research interests focus on classical Sanskrit and Buddhist literature, in particular narrative works and didactic and epistolary texts. He is the author of numerous articles and books, among them a primer of the Tibetan language that has been reprinted seven times and is now forthcoming in an English translation.
23rd San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival
March 10-20, 2005
NAATA, selected films co-presented by the Institute of East Asian Studies
Guilt and Redemption in China: Theses on the History of Criminal Justice in the 20th Century
Klaus Muhlhahn, Professor, Sinology, Freie Universität Berlin
March 16, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies
This talk is based on a larger study dealing with the history of criminal justice and legal punishments of convicted offenders in China from late years of the Qing Dynasty to the end of the Cultural Revolution. The approach of this study is broadly conceived; it inquires into the wide-ranging history of criminal justice, explores their philosophical foundations, social functions, cultural meanings and moral ambivalences. The history of criminal justice in twentieth century China is dramatic by all accounts. It is full of twists and turns, moral ambivalences and bitter ironies, staggering pitilessness and tragedies of an almost inconceivable scale. The talk will summarize the main findings of this study in the form of five theses regarding the main traits of criminal justice in 20th century China.
Korean Traditional Music Today: P'ansori
Chan E. Park, Korean Language, Literature, & Performance Studies, Ohio State University
March 17, 2005
Lecture/Musical Demonstration
Center for Korean Studies
Korean artist Chan E. Park shares her insights into the distinctive aspects of the Korean musical heritage in a lecture, demonstration, and workshop that includes a performance of p'ansori, a musical form where a solo performer sings a story accompanied by a puk, a barrel-shaped drum. Male singers affiliated with the indigenous shaman rituals of southwestern Korea developed this musical form during the 18th century. It proliferated in the 19th century and was preserved as a "national treasure" in the 20th century. Professor Park will give a p'ansori demonstration and mini-workshop and will discuss the Korean musical heritage as part of Northeast Asian traditions, underscoring Korea's distinct areas of cultural convergance and divergence.
Chan E. Park received her Ph.D. from the University of Hawaii and is currently associate professor of Korean language, literature, and performance studies at Ohio State University. Her research focuses on the performance of p'ansori performance in transnational context, related oral/lyrical/dramatic traditions and their places in shaping modern Korean drama. She has published extensively on the theory and practice of oral narratology and other related topics, including her book Voices from the Straw Mat: Toward an Ethnography of Korean Singing (University of Hawaii Press, 2003). She has presented numerous lectures, seminars, workshops, and p'ansori performances locally nationally, and internationally.
Free and open to the public.
Sponsored by a Grant from the Korea Society. The Korea Society is a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan, 501(c)(3) organization that is dedicated solely to the promotion of greater awareness, understanding and cooperation between the people of the United States and Korea. Send correspondence to: The Korea Society, 950 Third Avenue, Eighth Floor, New York, NY 10022. For more information, please visit http://www.koreasociety.org.
The "Globalization" of Japanese Studies: Southeast Asian Perspectives
March 18, 2005
Joint Colloquium
Japan Society for Promotion of Science, Center for Japanese Studies
Schedule
9:00 am — Opening Remarks
Seishi Takeda, Director, Japan Society for Promotion of Science, San Francisco Office
Andrew Barshay, Chair, Center for Japanese Studies
9:10 am — Session 1: The Political, Economic, and Diplomatic Context
Introductory Remarks by T.J. Pempel, Director, Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley
9:20 am
Nobuhiro Hiwatari, Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo — After the Capitalist Developmental State: What Can Be Gained by Casting a New Light on the Japanese Political Economy
10:00 am
Takashi Terada, Department of Japanese Studies, National University of Singapore — Power Struggles Between Japan and China in Southeast Asia: Hard and Soft Dimensions in the Creation of an East Asian Community
10:40 am — Coffee Break
10:50 am
Naohiro Kitano, Department of Economics, Kyoto University — Japanese Contribution in Supporting China’s Reforms: A Study Based on ODA Loans
11:30 am
Annette Clear, Politics Department, University of California, Santa Cruz — Indonesian Responses to Japanese Foreign Aid and Investment
12:10 pm — Questions from the audience and discussion
12:40 pm — Buffet lunch
1:30 pm — Session 2: Intellectual and Cultural Dimensions
Introductory Remarks by Andrew Barshay, Chair, Center for Japanese Studies
1:40 pm
Kitti Prasirtsuk, Faculty of Liberal Arts, Thammasat University, Bangkok — Japan-Thai Trade and Cultural Relations
2:20 pm
Lydia N. Yu Jose, Director, Japanese Studies Program, Ateneo de Manila University — The Future of Japanese Studies in the Philippines
3:00 pm — Coffee Break
3:20 pm
Simon Avenell, Department of Japanese Studies, National University of Singapore — The Institutional and Cultural Context of Japanese Studies in Singapore
4:00 pm
Akio Igarashi, Department of Law, Rikkyo University — The Influence of Japanese Popular Culture in Southeast Asia
4:40 pm — Questions from the audience, wrap-up discussion
5:30 pm — Reception
"Globall" Flight
Hsiao-hung Chang, Professor, Foreign Languages & Literatures, National Taiwan University
March 18, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies
Blue Train by Ryohei Hirose and Other Japanese Modern Music
Nagoya Flute Ensemble Academy (NFEA), Akira Aoki, Conductor
March 19, 2005
Concert in celebration of International House's 75th and the Japan Society of Northern California's 100th anniversaries, followed by reception
International House, Japan Society of Northern California, Center for Japanese Studies
Program
- Divertiment D Major, K136 by Mozart for Flute Orchestra
- Medley of Japanese songs of Four Seasons
Spring-Summer-Autumn-Winter for Flute and Piano - Blue Train by R.Hirose for Flute Orchestra
- Matinee by K.Hirao for Flute and Piano
- Le Petit Âne Blanc by J.Ibert
- Ave Maria D. 839 by F. Schubert
Professor Aoki of Nagoya University for Arts and Music formed the NFEA especially for this event. The NFEA ensemble consists of various flutes from the piccolo to the contrabass flute and also includes the piano. The first flute ensemble, the Tokyo Flute Ensemble Academy (TFEA), was formed in Tokyo in 1974 and has performed in various countries such as Italy, France and Australia. Professor Aoki has been the Executive Director of the Japan Flute Association since its inception in 1966.
Admission is free.
Proceeds From Donations Will Benefit The I-House 75th Anniversary Scholarship Fund
Parking Tips
Street parking near the House may be available if you're lucky!
To park in Kleeberger Lot, bring $7 in five- and one-dollar bills and
- Drive north on Piedmont Ave. (as described below), pass I-House and turn right on Stadium Rim Way which is the first intersection north of I-House.
- Turn right immediately into the lot (across the street from Bowles Hall).
- Purchase ticket at the yellow dispenser for $7. Dispensers do not give change and only accept one- and five-dollar bills! Purchase after 5 p.m.
- Park anywhere in this lot EXCEPT inside the fence surrounding the Stadium or in those space marked OPT. With this pass, you may also park very close to 1- House in the spaces on the road on the west side of the Stadium.
- You may also continue on this road to Prospect Lot at the south end of the Stadium and park in the middle or far (east) sections.
For Special Needs Parking in the International House Lot
- Call the Program Office at (510) 642-9460 to reserve a space in a small lot on the north side of I-House. We will mail it to you if time allows. Space in this lot is very limited. Directions from 1-80
- Exit at University Ave. and go east on University (toward the hills). University dead ends at Oxford. Turn right on Oxford. Move to the left lane and turn left on Durant.
- Durant dead ends in Piedmont, turn left on Piedmont.
- International House is the large Spanish style, tan-colored building on the right (2299 Piedmont Avenue).
Please call the Program Office at 510-642-9460 for further information.
Contemporary Japanese Calligraphy Exhibit
April 1-15, 2005
Exhibit
Institute of East Asian Studies
In conjunction with Japanese calligraphy exhibit. On display: April 1-15, 2005
Monday through Friday, 9 am - 12 noon and 1 pm - 5 pm
IEAS Lobby, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor
This exhibit showcases works of thirty of Japan's finest modern calligraphers, working in Chinese characters, Japanese syllabary, and images. Curated by Keiji Onodera, the exhibition has toured China, Taiwan, Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, and Canada.
The lecture-demonstration by Keiji Onodera, President of the Shodô Journal Research Institute, will provide an introduction to modern Japanese calligraphy and highlight the innovative techniques used by the artists whose works will be on display.
See other IEAS Exhibits.
Contemporary Japanese Calligraphy Lecture
Keiji Onodera, President of the Shodô Journal Research Institute
April 5, 2005
Lecture - Demonstration
Institute of East Asian Studies
In conjunction with Japanese calligraphy exhibit. On display: April 1-15, 2005
Monday through Friday, 9 am - 12 noon and 1 pm - 5 pm
IEAS Lobby, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor
This exhibit showcases works of thirty of Japan's finest modern calligraphers, working in Chinese characters, Japanese syllabary, and images. Curated by Keiji Onodera, the exhibition has toured China, Taiwan, Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, and Canada.
The lecture-demonstration by Keiji Onodera, President of the Shodô Journal Research Institute, will provide an introduction to modern Japanese calligraphy and highlight the innovative techniques used by the artists whose works will be on display.
See other IEAS Exhibits.
Takeuchi Yoshimi: Inheriting the Past
Richard Calichman, Asian Studies, The City College of New York
April 7, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
The author's presentation will focus on the Japanese postwar sinologist and literary and social critic Takeuchi Yoshimi (1910-1977). He will examine Takeuchi's understanding of the past through the notion of "inheritance" so as to bring to light his forceful thinking of historicity. This thinking seeks to challenge more conventional notions of history, through which the past comes to be posited as an object, thereby domesticating its otherwise disturbing relation both to the present and to the historian. Reference will be made to the 1942 "Overcoming Modernity" symposium, whose nationalism Takeuchi both critiques and inherits.
This event is free and open to the public.
Remaking Economic Strengths in East Asia: Dealing with the Repercussions of Increased Interdependence
April 8-9, 2005
Conference
Institute of East Asian Studies
East Asia's economies account for more than half of the world's population, a quarter of the world's trade, sixty percent of global foreign exchange reserves and a significant percentage of foreign direct investment. Their successful re-emergence from the 1997 Asian financial crisis, rebound from the 2003 SARS epidemic and growing domestic income continue to make Asia one of the most economically dynamic regions in the world. While the East Asian success story has been well publicized, the increasingly close integration of national economies within the East Asian region has received much less attention. Intra-regional trade accounts for a significant and growing portion of total trade volume. Intra-regional foreign direct investment and the emergence of transnational Asian corporations further attest to regional economic integration.
The Institute of East Asian Studies at UC Berkeley is organizing a three-year series of conferences that will examine various elements of Asian regionalism, focusing on economic interdependence (2005), the changing security climate (2006) and civil society and social transformations (2007). The first conference "Remaking Economic Strengths in East Asia - Dealing with the Repercussions of Increased Interdependence" will focus on the influence of Asian regionalism on the movement of capital, labor, technology, and natural resources both within Asia and on a global scale.
Increased integration of the East Asian economies has changed the nature of capital flows as intra-regional investment has assumed a far larger share of total investment in East Asian capital markets. Global business and production networks, particularly in the high-tech sector, are fostering increased intra-regional economic ties. These changing investment and production patters have had a large impact on labor markets in East Asia. There is a vast movement of people not only from rural to urban areas, from agriculture to the manufacturing and service sectors, but there are also signs of a reverse brain drain as entrepreneurs and highly skilled labor move among East Asian countries as well as the United States. Economic change has also been energy intensive and various countries are pursuing strategies that would enable them to have continuous energy supply with bilateral deals on the supply of natural gas and oil. The new aggressiveness of East Asian economies in searching for energy supplies will have far reaching consequences for global energy economics and politics.
Schedule
Friday, April 8, 2005
9:00 am — Introduction: "What is Driving Asian Regionalism? A Macro-Perspective"
T.J. Pempel, UC Berkeley
Steven Weber, UC Berkeley
9:30 - 11:30 am — Panel 1: "Capital Markets: Evaluating Cross-regional Finance and Investment"
Chair: Barry Eichengreen, UC Berkeley
Panelists:
Stephen Yan Leung Cheung, City University of Hong Kong — Corporate Governance Reform: Regional Cooperation
Michael Hutchinson, UC Santa Cruz — Financial Stability in East Asia: Exchange Rate Pegs, International Reserve Accumulation and the Approaching Dollar Crisis
Hiro Ito, Portland State University — What Matters for Financial Development in Asia
12:00 - 1:00 pm — Lunch break
1:00 - 3:00 pm — Panel 2: "Business and Production Networks: Implications for the Global High-Tech Industry"
Chair: T.J. Pempel, UC Berkeley
Panelists: Dieter Ernst, East-West Center — From "Global Factory" to "Innovation Offshoring": What Forces are Transforming Global Production Networks in East Asia?"
Martin Kenney, UC Davis — Venture Capital Networks in East Asia: Exploring the 'Greater China' Concept
Tse-kang Leng, National Chengchi University — The Political Economy of Cross-Strait High-tech Relations
John Ravenhill, Australian National University — Why the East Asian Auto Industry Is Not Regional...or Why Electronics Might Not Be the Future of Autos
3:30 - 5:30 pm — Panel 3: "Labor Mobility and Migration: Brain Drain in Reverse?"
Chair: John Lie, UC Berkeley
Panelists:
David Zweig, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology — Reverse Migration and Regional Integration: Entrepreneurs and Scientists in the PRC
Hong-zen Wang, National Chi Nan University — Social Ties in the Transnational Movement of Labor between Taiwan, Vietnam and China
Keiko Yamanaka, UC Berkeley — Feminized Migration in East and Southeast Asia: Labor Mobility and Interdependence
Saturday, April 9, 2005
9:30 - 11:30 am — Panel 4: "The Changing Geopolitics of Energy: A New Role for East Asia"
Chair: Doug Ogden, The Energy Foundation
Panelists:
Mikkal Herberg, National Bureau for Asian Research — Asian Energy and Geopolitics: Markets or Mercantilism?
Seth Kleinman, PFC Energy — East Asia's Impact on the Oil Markets
Mark Levine, UC Berkeley — Strategic Issues in China's Energy Development: The Role of Energy Efficiency
12:00 - 1:30 pm — Roundtable Discussion
Peter Katzenstein, Cornell University — Where is East Asia? Beyond Japan, in the American Imperium
Comments: Vinod Aggarwal, UC Berkeley
Ed Lincoln, Council on Foreign Relations
John Ravenhill, Australian National University
Participants
Vinod Aggarwal teaches at UC Berkeley and directs the Berkeley APEC Study Center. His research focuses on the politics of trade and finance. He has coedited European Union Trade Strategies (2004) (with Edward Fogarty), The Strategic Dynamics of Latin American Trade (2004) (with Ralph Espach and Joseph Tulchin), and Bilateral Trade Agreements in the Asia-Pacific (in press) (with Shujiro Urata).
Stephen Yan Leung Cheung teaches at the City University of Hong Kong. A specialist on East Asia’s financial markets, he has published widely in international refereed journals. He serves on several committees of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the Securities and Futures Commission, and the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong.
Barry Eichengreen teaches at UC Berkeley. He specializes in the history and current operation of the international monetary and financial system. His recent books include Capital Flows and Crises (2003) and Financial Crises and What to Do About Them (2002).
Dieter Ernst is a senior fellow at the East-West Center. His current research focuses on global production and innovation networks, global markets for knowledge workers, and implications for industrial and technology policies. His recent books include and Technological Capabilities and Export Success: Lessons from East Asia (1998), International Production Networks in Asia: Rivalry or Riches (2000) and Complexity and Internationalization of Innovation — Root Causes and Policy Implications (forthcoming).
Mikkal Herberg is Director of the Asian Energy Security Program at the National Bureau of Asian Research. He previously taught at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at UC San Diego. Prior to this, he was Director for Global Energy and Economics in the Strategic Planning Group at ARCO.
Michael Hutchinson teaches at UC Santa Cruz. His most recent work is on the costs of financial crises, the effects of IMF programs, and the effectiveness of official foreign exchange market intervention. His recent books include Financial Policy and Central Banking in Japan (2001) and The Political Economy of Japanese Monetary Policy (1997).
Hiro Ito teaches at Portland State University. His research interests focus on international finance, financial development, and Japanese and East Asian economics. Recently he served as a Research Associate at the Economic Strategy Institute, Washington, D.C. where he published a report on the Japanese banking crisis.
Peter Katzenstein teaches at Cornell University. His current research interests are regionalism and religion in world politics. His most current publications include A World of Regions: Asia and Europe in the American Imperium (2005), Beyond Japan: the Dynamics of East Asian Regionalism (2006) (coedited with Takashi Shiraishi), and Transnational Religion in an Enlarging Europe (2006) (coedited with Timothy A. Byrnes).
Martin Kenney teaches at UC Davis. His recent research has focused on both the venture capital industry in the development of Silicon Valley and the globalization of venture capital and high-technology industries. His recent books include Locating Global Advantage: Industry Dynamics in the International Economy (2004) and Understanding Silicon Valley: Anatomy of an Entrepreneurial Region (2000).
Seth Kleinman is a global oil market analyst with PFC Energy, a Washington-based strategic advisory firm. His particular focus is global oil demand forecasting. He has spent much of his time researching Asia and analyzing how developments in that region are impacting global oil markets.
Tse-Kang Leng teaches at National Chengchi University in Taiwan. His research interests include international political economy, third world development and Taiwan-China relations. His recent books include A Political Analysis of Information Technology Industries: Shanghai in Global Perspectives (2002, in Chinese) and The Taiwan-China Connection: Democracy and Development Across the Taiwan Straits (1996, in English).
Mark Levine is the Director of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He is working with senior energy policy officials in China to modify the country's energy policies.
John Lie teaches at UC Berkeley and is Dean of International and Area Studies. His research focuses on racial, ethnic, and national attitudes and conflicts in East Asia. His most recent publications are Multiethnic Japan (Harvard University Press, 2001) and Modern Peoplehood (2004).
Edward Lincoln is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He specializes in the Japanese and East Asian economies, as well as U.S. policy toward Asia. He is the author of East Asian Economic Regionalism (2004), and Arthritic Japan: The Slow Pace of Economic Reform (2001).
>Doug Ogden is executive vice president of the Energy Foundation in San Francisco, and director of the China Sustainable Energy Program (CSEP) in Beijing. CSEP is a partnership of the Energy Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and focuses on energy efficiency and renewable energy policy development in the People's Republic of China.
T.J. Pempel teaches at UC Berkeley and is Director of the Institute of East Asian Studies. He specializes in the political economy of contemporary Japan and Asian regionalism. He is the editor of Remapping East Asia (2004), and Beyond Bilateralism: U.S.-Japan Relations in the New Asia-Pacific (2003).
John Ravenhill teaches at Australian National University. His current research concerns the automobile industry in East Asia, and the political of the new preferential trade agreements in the Asia-Pacific. His recent books include Global Political Economy (2005) and APEC and the Construction of Pacific Rim Regionalism (2001).
Hong-zen Wang teaches at National Chi Nan University in Taiwan where is is the Director of the Graduate Institute of Southeast Asian Studiies. A specialist on social and human capital, he has published widely in international refereed journals.
Steve Weber teaches at UC Berkeley and is Director of the Institute of International Studies. His areas of interest include international and national security; the impact of technology on national systems of innovation, defense, and deterrence; and the political economy of knowledge-intensive industries. His most recent book is The Success of Open Source (2004).
Keiko Yamanaka, Lecturer in UC Berkeley's Department of Ethnic Studies, is a sociologist who studies labor migration in Asia, focusing on Japanese-Brazilian workers in Japan, Nepalese unauthorized workers in Japan, and feminized migration in East and Southeast Asia. In addition to journal articles and book chapters, she has recently submitted a solicited report on Asia's feminized migration to the UN Research Institute for Social Development.
David Zweig teaches at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and is the Director of HKUST's Center on China's Transnational Relations. He specializes in Chinese politics and political economy, and China's resource-based foreign policy. Most recently his research has focused on returnee scholars in China. He is the author of Internationalizing China: Domestic Interests and Global Linkages (2002).
Proceedings
On April 8-9, 2005, the Institute of East Asian Studies sponsored a conference entitled "Remaking Economic Strengths in East Asia - Dealing with the Repercussions of Increased Interdependence," on the UC Berkeley campus. The conference brought together over twenty academics and practitioners to discuss the implications of increased economic interdependence across the Asia-Pacific. Over 100 participants from the UC Berkeley community and the general public attended panels on capital markets, business and production networks in the high-tech industry, labor mobility and migration, as well as the changing geopolitics of energy.
Introduction: What is Driving Asian Regionalism? A Macro-Perspective
The conference kicked off with introductory remarks by T.J. Pempel, Director of the Institute of East Asian Studies and Steven Weber, Director of the Institute of International Studies. Pempel and Weber presented two different perspectives on the factors driving Asian regionalism. Pempel focused on conditions within Asia that enhanced regional links; Weber concentrated on the ways in which whatever was happening to enhance links in Asia was largely a result of broader global processes. Key questions included: Will common regional economic interests pressure governments to look beyond territorial disputes and nationalism? Can current patterns of regional integration remain stable if there is a dramatic shift in the United States' relationship to the region? How will China fare on the U.S. foreign policy agenda should the 'War on Terrorism' be deemed less relevant by U.S. policy-makers?
T.J. Pempel began his presentation stressing two important processes driving Asian regionalism: top-down regional cooperation fostered by organizations like the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and ASEAN+3 and bottom-up economic integration through cross-border investment and the establishment of regional production networks. Pempel asserted that although official efforts at encouraging cooperation through political organizations were on the rise, unofficial collaboration through business networks remained a more important driving force behind recent regional integration. Steven Weber argued that Asian regionalism must be placed within the broader context of a changing international environment, with special emphasis on the role that the United States plays in the region, in particular, the Sino-U.S. relationship. Weber argued that this relationship is driven by a number of contentious economic and political issues, including the financing of U.S. treasury debt, the dollar- RMB exchange rate, violation of intellectual property rights, and nuclear proliferation and that Asian regional links may well be more greatly affected by changes in US policy than by anything happening within Asia.
Panel 1: Capital Markets: Evaluating Cross-regional Finance and Investment
The first panel was moderated by Barry Eichengreen. In his introductory remarks Eichengreen emphasized how the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis revealed the weaknesses of financial institutions and of broader macroeconomic management in many countries in the region. Today the main arenas for financial cooperation among regional players include the coordination of exchange rate management, the development of a regional bond market, harmonization of legal institutions and procedures, and corporate governance reform. Panelists identified a number of issues faced by East Asian policy-makers, including long-term sustainability of the current exchange rate system; the incentives for central banks across East Asia to maintain current exchange rate levels; the role of legal institutions in fostering further deepening of financial markets and the relationship between corporate governance and market valuation.
Michael Hutchison highlighted three main issues in assessing the prospects for regional financial stability: the potential impact of a sudden stop in capital flows, prospects for exchange rate cooperation, and the current build-up of U.S. dollar reserves in central banks across the region. Commenting on the Chiang Mai Initiative, Hutchison asserted that steps towards meaningful exchange rate cooperation have been modest to date. He expressed concerns about the current unprecedented accumulation of U.S. dollar foreign exchange reserves by East Asian central banks in combination with growing U.S. current account imbalances, but argued that even in the event of a collapse of the current system overall economic adjustment in the region may only be moderate. He also underlined the importance to regional stability of severe weaknesses in China's banking sector. Hiro Ito's presentation focused on the complex relationship between financial liberalization and the development of equity markets. In Asia financial openness combined with relatively strong legal institutions has had a markedly positive effect on the development of equity markets. Ito pointed out that in contrast, in Latin America, financial openness in the absence of strong legal institutions has had a significant negative effect on equity market development. Stephen Yan Leung Cheung discussed the importance of corporate governance reform in the region. Cheung presented his empirical research on a study of firms listed on the Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong which found a close relationship between good corporate governance, particularly with respect to transparency, and higher market valuation.
The Q&A session following the presentations focused on whether stock markets in Asia efficiently allocate scarce capital resources, why governments have recently shown a preference for bond markets over stock markets, and the likely impact of an appreciated RMB on the economies of East Asia and the United States. Panelists responded that the role and efficiency of stock markets in resource allocation varies greatly across countries in the region. Bond markets hold more appeal than stock markets since they do not require as much openness and transparency. Several presenters argued that East Asian nations (particularly China) may be better off with gradual and systematic revaluation of the currency over a several year period without pre-defined targets.
Panel 2: Business and Production Networks: Implications for the Global High-Tech Industry
The second panel was moderated by T.J. Pempel, Director of the Institute of East Asian Studies. Speakers discussed the various ways in which business and production networks are being developed across national boundaries within different industrial sectors. The main topics included venture capital, the political economy of cross-straits relations, innovation in the electronics industry, and the peculiarities of the automobile industry. The panelists sought to explain the large flows of venture capital to relatively uninstitutionalized countries across East Asia; the impact of cross-straits politics on Taiwan businesses operating in the PRC; whether Asian firms can replicate the U.S. model of attracting top talent from the global labor market; and the limited regionalization of the auto industry in East Asia.
Martin Kenney presented his research on the recent growth of the venture capital industry in Greater China. He argued that Asia, and Greater China in particular, is a fascinating case study because most scholars postulate that the success of venture capital industry is predicated upon equity-based financial institutions and common law legal regimes. The region, however, does not have such institutions. Kenney's research demonstrates that there is ample evidence of a venture capital network across Greater China capable of mobilizing and deploying large sums of capital. This set of networks has four main axes: the first connecting Taiwan and Silicon Valley (now further expanding to Shanghai); the second connecting Hong Kong and the PRC; the third, most recent and rapidly growing, linking the San Francisco Bay Area and the PRC; and the fourth centered on Singapore. Kenney's research suggests that in East Asia technological capability and market potential seem to be of greater significance than legal systems.
Tse-Kang Leng assessed the political economy of cross-straits relations with special attention to the high-tech sector. Regulatory efforts by the Taiwan government have failed to halt a stampede of Taiwan corporate investment into mainland China. As a result, Leng argued, there is growing competition between the PRC and Taiwan governments to attract investment by Taiwan firms in research and development projects within several key industries. While Taiwan firms are at times able to leverage their position to extract privileges from one side, they often find themselves uncomfortably caught in the middle between two rival states. Dieter Ernst proposed that East Asia is witnessing a paradigm shift in the electronics industry from 'global factory' to 'innovation off-shoring'. China's emergence as the third largest exporter of electronic products and the second largest importer of electronic products today exemplifies the old 'global factory' model. However, with the recent movement of R&D to East Asia to take advantage of a lower-cost talent pool, the region is moving toward a new model of 'innovation off-shoring.' John Ravenhill's presentation on the East Asian auto industry focused on the reasons for why that industry has not followed the regional production network model that has been so successful in the electronics industry. Ravenhill pointed to several factors that help to explain the lack of regional integration in car manufacturing: industry-specific differences, a strong legacy of economic nationalism in autos as well as the currently small size of the East Asian auto market. Ravenhill identified the PRC as a key player in the region's future auto industry both as a market as well as an exporter of components and assembled vehicles.
The Q&A following the presentations focused on whether the mobility of 'innovation off-shoring' would render geography obsolete. The panelists responded that geography still matters, particularly since firms need to be close to consumers in order to understand local tastes. Another audience member asked about sources of non-institutional investment for start-up companies in East Asia. Panelists agreed that most of the investment into start-ups throughout the region comes from "angel investors," often family members of firm owners or management, rather than from venture capital funds. Another participant asked how multinational firms deal with ongoing problems of intellectual property violations. Panelists argued that firms try to mitigate IP leakages by having a strong on-site presence to manage local employees.
Panel 3: Labor Mobility and Migration: Brain Drain in Reverse?
The third panel was moderated by John Lie, Dean of International and Area Studies, and Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley. Speakers discussed different patterns of migration across East Asia. Migratory pressures arising from globalization involve three types of migrants in the region: 1) low-skilled workers, 2) female migrants, and 3) high-skilled professionals. Panelists discussed the factors that have led to an increase in migration across the region and the effects on the societies of receiving states; the implications of the 'feminization' of labor migration in East Asia and the role of scientists and entrepreneurs in their home countries after completing higher education abroad.
Hong-Zen Wang examined the inflow of migrant workers from Southeast Asia to Taiwan and the socio-economic impact of this influx on Taiwan society. Due to rising labor costs and an aging society the Taiwan government began to implement various 'guest worker' schemes in the 1980s. Two categories of workers that have taken particular advantage of such policies - temporary workers, mostly represented in the so-called '3D' industries (i.e. dirty, dangerous and difficult industries) and permanent female migrants, many of whom get married and start families in Taiwan. Wang also commented on a new class of 'professional transients,' Taiwan expatriates who work for Taiwan companies throughout East and Southeast Asia.
Keiko Yamanaka discussed the 'feminization' of migration across the region. Most female migrants (an estimated 3.7 million authorized and 2.4 million unauthorized workers in 2000) leave their home countries in Southeast Asia to work in unskilled occupations such as domestic work, entertainment, and factory work in Northeast and other parts of Southeast Asia. Popular destinations include Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan. Yamanaka focused on the immigration policies of receiving countries, the emergence of different categories of migrant women, and the implications of 'feminized' migration for labor-importing societies. David Zweig addressed the 'reverse brain-drain,' showing the major roles played by scientists, entrepreneurs and other professionals returning to the PRC after completing studies abroad. With the PRC's economic success the number of returning entrepreneurs and scientists has been increasing dramatically in recent years. Zweig examined whether returnees are actually strengthening regional economic ties and maintaining international business connections. His survey research suggests that returnees indeed continue to maintain their international ties often bring back to the PRC values and norms they acquired abroad. This could have potentially long term implications on social and business developments in China.
The panel was followed by an animated discussion with the audience. One person asked why the PRC is becoming a new 'mecca' for Southeast Asia and East Asian students studying abroad and hence enhancing China's 'soft power.' Many foreign students are heading to the PRC because learning Mandarin Chinese is widely perceived to increase chances of attaining employment in other regions of Asia. When another audience member asked whether the United States is likely to lose its reputation as the top destination for the world's best and brightest students the panel commented that students from many Asian nations have become interested in pursuing higher education in English-speaking countries such as the United Kingdom and Australia because the visa processes there are easier to complete than in the post-9/11 United States. One audience member wondered about the linkage between free trade agreements and migration. Panelists agreed that free trade is mostly limited to goods and services and does not include human capital. However, one recent example that includes specific provisions for increased labor mobility is a free trade agreement signed between Japan and the Philippines. This agreement includes specific provisions to allow Filipino nurses and elder-care workers to work in Japan.
Panel 4: The Changing Geopolitics of Energy: A New Role for East Asia The forth panel was moderated by Doug Ogden, Executive Vice President of the Energy Foundation in San Francisco, and director of the China Sustainable Energy Program (CSEP) in Beijing. The speakers focused on the implications of East Asia's rapidly growing energy demand for both global energy markets as well as regional cooperation. All of the panelists agreed that one of the greatest challenges would be Asia's ability to meet the increased energy requirements necessitated by rapid economic growth. Growing demand is causing a heightened sense of energy insecurity, which in turn has opened the door for growing energy nationalism rather than energy cooperation. This rise of a new mercantilism in East Asia could result in a much more complex web of diplomatic ties and alliances that is likely to complicate the United States' energy and security policies in the future.
Seth Kleinman presented data on the impact of growing oil demand from East Asia on global oil markets. Recent growth in PRC demand in particular has caught the world off guard, and current global oil prices reflect the limits of the current oil supply chain from crude oil production to shipment and refinement. Kleinman stressed that China's growing energy demand has not only kept oil prices higher than they would be otherwise, but it has also affected U.S. domestic energy policy and foreign policy strategy toward the Middle East. Mikkal Herberg highlighted the rise in energy nationalism in countries across Asia as a result of the perceived need to secure future energy supplies in an increasingly supply-short world. According to Herberg, the rise of a new mercantilism is already trumping markets in Asia, thus fueling existing regional rivalries. In order to mitigate conflict, Herberg proposed the establishment of regional strategic petroleum reserves. Herberg stressed that how Asia addresses its energy security will have significant implications for United States policy toward the region. Mark Levine diagnosed the PRC's current energy problems as the failure to institute policies to improve efficiency and reduce demand. Levine argued that the rapid movement toward a market-based system since the early 1990s has dismantled the mechanisms responsible for past, modest success in improved energy efficiency. Consequently, in the past three years, China has faced a serious new energy crisis. Levine suggested that China should substantially increase investment into energy efficiency projects. In 2003, energy conservation investment was only RMB 23 billion ($US3 billion) while supply-side investment reached RMB 424 billion (US$50 billion). Secondly, he argued that China should implement targets for energy efficiency, establish energy efficiency standards for appliances and cars, and invest more in the public transportation (non-auto) infrastructure. Third, the government should support programs and policies like technical guidance and demand-side management in utilities.
The first question during the Q&A session asked whether the influence of China's growing energy demand on oil prices is not exaggerated. The panelists responded that market perceptions of China's growing oil demand are at least as important as the real data in influencing prices. Another audience member asked whether inter-state cooperation over energy is really possible. Panelists agreed that a zero-sum mentality still prevails in the region and common interests have not been translated into concrete measures to establish meaningful cooperation. The panel closed by arguing that the key to preventing future energy shortages lies in investing in energy efficiency and promoting demand-side regulation.
Roundtable Discussion
The concluding roundtable discussion focused on the institutional architecture of East Asian regionalism. Panelists highlighted the decline of any single national model, specifically the Japanese model, in shaping regional integration, as well as the prospects and limitations of the regional economic institutions to drive informal market-based regionalism. The discussion focused on why East Asian regionalism may be distinctive; the trends likely to influence the future of East Asian regionalism; whether East Asian regional institutions will help to link East Asia more closely to other parts of the world; and finally, whether the definition of 'region' is appropriate to deal with the issues of integration in East Asia.
Peter Katzenstein opened his presentation with the question 'Where is East Asia?' The answer he argued is 'beyond Japan.' While the previous study of East Asia revolved around a single national model, namely that of Japan, today no single national model can embody the rapidly evolving informal market-driven integration occurring in East Asia. Instead cooperation in many sectors, such as technology, popular culture or the environment is driven largely by non-state actors. In comparison to Europe which is a regional model based on international law, East Asia is a model based on informal market mechanisms. Katzenstein noted that support from one key player in each region, Germany in Europe and Japan in East Asia, has been vital to U.S. interests. He speculated on how rapid change in the PRC might influence this balance in East Asia.
Vinod Aggarwal examined the various institutional architectures of regionalism: traditional geographical regionalism, the newly evolving inter-regionalism, and bilateralism. East Asian regionalism has developed around a few distinct types of regional institutions. Aggarwal also raised questions about the new institutional architecture of East Asia with regard to the formalization of institutions, linkages between security and economic institutions, as well as those between East Asian institutions and those in other parts of the world. Based on case studies of capital markets, production networks, labor mobility and education, Ed Lincoln discussed the diminishing role of Japan in Asian regionalism, in contrast to the situation ten years ago. He also highlighted the weaknesses of current regional institutions in East Asia, including the Chiang Mai Agreement, that to him remains more symbolic than contenual. John Ravenhill examined the burgeoning intra-regional preferential trade agreements in East Asia and discussed how divergent political interests and the exclusion of non-governmental actors underlie their inherent weaknesses. He also highlighted the positive changes and future role of APEC in the post 9/11 world. As he sees it APEC is likely to deepen pan-pacific regional integration.
The conference concluded with a series of comments from the audience that focused on the future role that the PRC is likely to take in the region, and the repercussions this may have for the U.S. economy and foreign policy-making.
Recent Discoveries of Ancient Chinese Manuscripts
Donald Harper, Professor, East Asian Languages & Civilizations, University of Chicago
Imre Galambos, Overseas Project Manager, International Dunhuang Project, The British Library
Jeffrey Riegel, Professor, East Asian Languages and Cultures, UC Berkeley
April 8, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies
"Communication by Design: Two Silk Manuscripts of Diagrams (Tu) from Mawangdui Tomb Three"
Donald Harper, Professor, East Asian Languages & Civilizations, University of Chicago
The Han conception of tu 圖 "diagram" is illustrated in two manuscripts from Mawangdui tomb 3: I assign the title Tianwen tu 天文圖 (Diagrams of heaven's patterns) to the first, and Fanxin tu 幡信圖 (Diagrams of banner tokens) to the second. The Tianwen tu diagrams depict phenomena such as cloud formations and comets. I argue that the drawings are not based on empirical observation, but rather are paradigmatic designs that are part of a system to divine the omens associated with the phenomena. The conception of tu "diagrams" as forming a symbolic system is shared with Fanxin tu, which contains drawings (some identical to Tianwen tu drawings) used to produce objects such as symbolic tokens and banners as well as magical talismans. In both manuscripts, paradigmatic designs communicate meanings that were perceived by the Han elite who recognized the code.
"A Comment by Confucius in Light of the Houma Covenant Texts"
Imre Galambos, Overseas Project Manager, International Dunhuang Project, The British Library
Confucius laments in the Analects that the scribes of old, unlike his contemporaries, would rather leave an empty space in the text than write a character they were not sure about. Since the Han dynasty, advocates of orthographic standardization have used this passage as a justification for their cause. However, the textual discoveries of the past decades show that the Chinese script in pre-Qin times exhibited a considerable degree of orthographic variability. I intend to use the Houma covenant texts from about the time of Confucius to show that sage could not have made such a statement about the writing habits of the scribes. A second look at the passage in question also reveals that it did not refer to writing but was misinterpreted in later times for a specific agenda.
"The Way of Pengzu: Notes on a 'nurturing life' text excavated at Zhangjiashan"
Jeffrey Riegel, Professor, East Asian Languages and Cultures, UC Berkeley
This paper will analyze the opening and concluding sections of the Yinshu 引書, a manuscript discovered in a mid-2nd century BCE tomb at Zhangjiashan 張家山 in Hubei province. The analysis will consist largely of comparing the overall text with those sections of The Annals of Lü Buwei that are concerned with physical cultivation or yangsheng 養生 "nurturing life"; contrasting the rules on hygiene, diet, and sexual practices found in the first part of the manuscript with the "Yueling" 月令 or "Monthly Ordinances" literature of Qin and Han times; and linking the account in the concluding section of the manuscript of the causes and prevention of various illnesses as well as their cures with some similar concepts found in the "Zhao Gong" 昭公 section of the Zuozhuan.
Free and open to the public.
Culture and Commerce in Hong Taeyong's Peking Memoir
Gari Keith Ledyard, King Sejong Professor of Korean Studies Emeritus, Columbia University
April 8, 2005
Center for Korean Studies
Trade was probably the chief concern of the annual Korean tribute missions to Peking, especially in the 18th and 19th centuries. There were also the tributary formalities, of course, and occasionally a crucially important diplomatic issue, but always the main business was business. Hundreds of Korean merchants accompanied a typical mission, mostly at their own expense. Some of the chung'in staff of administrators, interpreters, and other specialists had official commissions to make purchases for the Korean government, but all of them also engaged in trade on their own account, in some cases in considerable volume. In addition, hundreds of servants, soldiers, grooms, guards, and stable boys carried their own petty bags of goods for sale and some private orders for purchases for others back home. Embassies sojourned in Peking for at least forty days and often as long as sixty days or more. Cultural items, mainly books but also art and antiques, musical instruments, technical devices, and luxury items of all kinds made up a significant part of the Chinese goods purchased. Korean goods were of mixed variety but dominated by ginseng and paper products.
On the Chinese side, there were merchants and brokers who specialized in Korean goods, and a veritable army of officers and petty officials who supervised the fairs and trading sessions where everything changed hands. The senior officials among them worked in the Bureau of Tributary Affairs (Huitongguan), but the Board of Rites also deployed platoons of protocol officers and police in the principal Peking markets to make sure that all trade took place under the official auspices.
In 1765, Hong Taeyong (ho Tamhǒn, 1731-1783) accompanied the annual Solsticial Embassy, so named because it usually left Korea around the time of the winter solstice, as a "military aide" (kun'gwan, a fictive position) to his uncle, who on this occasion was the Third Ambassador and Secretary. Apart from making himself useful to his uncle, who for his part made few demands, he had no other duties and spent as much time as possible on his "sightseeing work." He was the scion of a privileged sadaebu family, highly educated and of very broad interests, which, apart from his Neo-Confucian faith, encompassed everything from history and statecraft studies to religion, music, mathematics, and science and technology of all kinds. A true polymath, he had also taken the trouble to provide himself with Mandarin skills sufficient to make interpreters unnecessary. On this trip he met hundreds of Chinese from all walks, and kept abundant notes, which on his return home in June, 1766, were used to produce a 1300-page diary in Korean and a very long, topically arranged memoir in Chinese, the latter of which circulated in his lifetime. His views of the Chinese cultural scene and his close-up observation of the traders who, much to his Confucian annoyance, were all around him, provide most of the material for this Korean Studies Colloquium lecture.
The Sera Project: Representing a Tibetan Monastery in a Digital Environment
José Cabezón, Department of Religious Studies, UC Santa Barbara
April 8, 2005
Center for Buddhist Studies
José Cabezón will introduce The Sera Project, an interdisciplinary digital multimedia initiative whose goal it is to document Buddhist monastic life in one of Tibet's great monasteries. Sera Monastery, one of Tibet's premier monastic educational institutions, had close to 10,000 monks before 1959, making it the second largest monastery in the world. What variables of analysis are most relevant to the study of a religious institution like Sera? What difference does digital media make in the envisioning and dissemination of research on an institution like Sera?
José Cabezón is the XIVth Dalai Lama Professor of Tibetan Buddhism and Cultural Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at UC Santa Barbara. His research interests focus on Tibetan Buddhism, and Buddhism and popular culture. He recently co-edited Identity and the Politics of Scholarship in the Study of Religion. He is the principal investigator for The Sera Project, a joint research initiative between UC Santa Barbara, and the Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library.
Good Science, Bad Science, and Taste Cultures: A Short History of MSG
Jordan Sand, Japanese History and Culture, Georgetown University
April 11, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
MSG: ubiquitous, invisible, and a part of our modern sensorium. Where did this much-maligned food additive come from? How did it make its way into the world food system? Why is it particularly associated with Chinese restaurants? The historical trajectory of MSG from its early twentieth-century origins in Japan through East Asia to the United States reveals the intertwined relationships between science and culture, marketing and imperialism in the globalization of food industries.
This event is free and open to the public. The lecture will be accompanied by a blind tasting.
Places of Nostalgia, Landscapes of the Dispossessed: Contemporary Chinese Photoessays
William Schaefer, Assistant Professor, East Asian Languages & Cultures, UC Berkeley
April 13, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies, Asian Art and Visual Cultures Working Group
Myths, Mandalas, and Monuments: Art of the Newar Buddhist Monasteries of Nepal
Dina Bangdel, Ohio State University
April 14, 2005
Center for Buddhist Studies, Department of Art History
The Newar Buddhist traditions of Nepal serve as the last remaining legacy of Sanskrit Buddhism, still practiced within the South Asian cultural milieu. Contextualizing the art and ritual practices, Dina Bangdel will discuss the iconography of Newar Buddhist monastic architecture, highlighting the relationship of these visual expressions with the larger Tantric traditions as well as with the local cosmogonic myth of Kathmandu Valley.
Dina Bangdel specializes in South Asian as well as Himalayan Art and is currently the Director of Special Collections at Ohio State University. In fall 2005, she will join the faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University as Associate Professor of South Asian art.
Second Berkeley-Stanford Buddhist Studies Graduate Student Colloquium
April 15, 2005
Center for Buddhist Studies
Presentations
Jinah Kim, Berkeley
From Text to Deity: Understanding the advent of Mahayana female deities in the perspective of book-cult
Nancy Lin, Berkeley
Narrative Strategies in the Avadana Thangkas of Situ Panchen (1700-1774)
Tad Cook, Stanford
Pivots of Meaning in the Teaching of the Way: An Introduction to the Daojiao yishu
Are Chinese Managers Ready to be Successful?
Lei Wang, Professor, Psychology, Peking University
April 15, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies
Discussant: Kaiping Peng, Associate Professor, Psychology, UC Berkeley
It has been two and half decades since China adopted a more open policy towards developing its economy. However, it may take even longer for Chinese managers to learn how to be successful organizational leaders in the new market-based economy. A series of studies carried out over the last decade have shown that Chinese managers still do not have a set of well-defined concepts of exactly what is "successful business management," and this situation shows little sign of improvement. The historical basis for this phenomenon, and its implications for future Chinese business development, will be discussed.
Free and open to the public.
Korean Mask Drama and the Dance of Therapy: Five University Tour
April 18, 2005
Korean Dance Demonstration and Lecture
Center for Korean Studies
Lecture
The Korean Mask Dance Drama: An Example for the Cultural Self–Assertion. by Moon Hwan Kim, Ph.D., Th.D., Professor of Aesthetics, Seoul National University (Former Director, Planning and Executing Committee, Opening and Closing Ceremonies for 1988 Seoul Olympics)
Dance
Aeju Lee, MFA (Korean Human Cultural Treasure #27 on Art of Buddhist dance) Professor, Seoul National University
Sponsored by East Rock Institute at Yale University; The Korea Institute, Harvard University; Loyola University, Chicago; Center for Korean Studies, University of California at Los Angeles and Center for Korean Studies, University of California at Berkeley jointly with Yale Korean Graduate Student Association, Korean American Association of Chicago, UCLA Korean American Student Association, and The Korea Daily. Additional assistance provided by Koreatown Youth & Community Center, LA
Supported by the Korea Foundation, Overseas Koreans Foundation and the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven
Emails: ERI3@pantheon.yale.edu (Yale), dlee@luc.edu (Chicago), Koreanstudies@international.ucla.edu (LA), justyw@socrates.berkeley.edu (UC Berkeley).
Aeju Lee — Professional Dancer
Our Korean dance is not just a form of expression. It is a spontaneous performance of body, which expresses the overflow of emotion. It soars up from the inside, like willow branches saturated with water in spring water, which joins from two different valleys. The dance of Korea is not intentional. It configures all kinds of sorrowful feelings such as pain; grief that is deeply scarred into the bottom of your heart, the will of the mind, and the dreams inside our souls. Korean dance is a process of transforming all of these things into a dance externally.
The basic movements of Korean dance represent pulling out (as pulling out an arrow) that got stuck (as an arrow thrust into a target), and unwinding when wound up (as the winding of ropes). Its movements are seemingly scattered, but return to the center; then the center is endlessly expanded. Therefore, the dancer embraces the universe and creates a new universe within his body. Of course, the term 'universe' does not mean scientific space, but rather man's universal hope to be lovely human beings and to create a grand new beautiful world. We can say that the Korean dance is a language, which is expressed by the whole body that can produce labor. It also realizes one's dream, because our Korean dance is based on our labor and on the aesthetic tools of man's daily life. We cannot find this kind of dance anywhere else in the world, and it probably lacks typical aesthetics even if we do "Taepyungmu" (a dance of peace), and "Talchum" (a mask dance) and so on, reaching a stage of completing man's life and aesthetic hopes.
Our dance starts from rhythm. But this does not only mean a musical rhythm. A dancer has to perceive a beat of history in man's heart (the trembling of nature), and has to harmonize them each with the other. One basic characteristic of our dance is that it is permeated in its movement with the dynamism of life and combativeness that creates a light of history.
These are the fundamentals of Korean dance, bases for my performance. But through out Korean history, Korean dance had been a possession of the ruling classes as a means of amusement. As a result, Korean dance had lost the power (dynamism) and combativeness in its motions. Rather, its formality and tricks had come to be emphasized. However, my dance has bypassed these formalities and tricks.
I retrieved Korean dance from its retrogression by devoting my 50 years of dance life to develop it. And finally I put it on a unique and creative stage. I digested "Salpuri" (Exorcising an evil spirit), "Seungmu" (a Buddhist dance), "Taepyungmu" (a dance of peace), and so on. I was named an intangible human treasure in 1996 for performing it with its functions. Through dance, I attempt to pass over the limit of techniques and formalities. Every movement of gesture is something to restore and create an original dance form, as well as to ask endless questions about life. I have tried to incorporate every gesture of human beings alive, to express through dance the essence of human life.
I have danced for appeasing dead spirits, and my dance implies hope in every historical field of Korean society. For example, I performed "Sungpuri" (calming a vigorous anger) dance, which is the new version of the traditional emancipator dance "Salpuri", in front of two million people who poured out into the street in order to attend the funeral of the patriot Han Yeol Lee, who resisted the despotism on the 9th of July 1987. Lee Han Yeol was a young man who died from a teargas shell in demonstrations against military despotism. This was the first time that such an outpouring happened, in the history of dance, both in Korea and in the world.
Korean dance is every movement shaping of humans' wishes as well as the expression of the human body. The characteristics of Korea dance are to soothe a man's heart that is deeply hurt, and to create distortions of men's dreams with the body. In the respect of transforming a human life's hope into a physical motion of a dance, this can be a characteristic of human culture, as well as being a characteristic of Korean dance. Therefore, my dance belongs equally to Korea and to the universe. With this meaning, we hope with overflowing heart, that this dance will be opened to the eyes of the world and will be truly felt by them.
Dr. Moon Hwan Kim — Seoul National University, Korea
Korean Mask Dance Drama: an Example for Cultural Self-Assertion
This paper can be regarded as research on the tendency to assert or reassert a sense of local identity dearly demarcated from that of the West, especially in present-day Korea. In this paper, I would like to mention the mask dance drama as an example of self-assertion in Korea, especially during the era of so-called modernization. As for critical forces, a series of performances using traditional mask dance drama or shamanic ritual on the basis of an episodic drama are defined as: a cultural movement, centered on the struggle for survival, not just a new drama movement; a social movement to find hidden reality and to propose common solutions; and a joint movement to soothe people at home and in the third world through their cultural momentum.
As will be made clear from the presentation, this study can be regarded as one of the post-colonialist studies which have opened new approaches to the study of power, collective identity, culture, and mode of presentation.
For those focusing on the Korean post-colony, however, the fact that theory runs ahead of our basic historical, core historical period hampers scholarly progress. Among East Asian societies, core historical, social, and cultural knowledge of Korea in the West lags considerably behind research on Japan or China. This fact is particularly troublesome for post-colonial studies, because in order to examine the post-colony it is necessary to have some historical grounding on the forces that shaped the "pre-colonial" period. In this sense, I would like to start with a very short introduction to the historical confrontation between Korean and Western culture.
Moon Hwan Kim (born in 1944) is professor at the Department of Aesthetics, College of Humanities, Seoul National University, since 1984. He has studied at the Seoul National University and the University of Frankfurt, Germany. From the latter, he received his Ph.D. in 1983. Besides, he received his Th.D. in 2005 from Korean Sungkonghoe University. He has been visiting professor at the Tokyo University (1991-1992) and the Keio University (1999) in Japan. At the recent time he occupied the chair of President of the Korean Society for Aesthetics.
He also works as a theatre critic and was President of the Korean Society for Theatre Studies and the Korean Society for Performing Arts Critics. He was member of the Organizing Committee for the Opening & Closing Ceremony at the Seoul Olympic Games in 1988, and President of the Korean Cultural Policy Institute (affiliated to the Ministry of Culture) from 1996 to 1999. He has published numerous books and articles in all fields of his activity.
Human Trafficking from Asia to California
April 18, 2005
Panel discussion, registration required
Asia Society, Institute of East Asian Studies
Please RSVP to the Asia Society, 415-421-8707. $7 Members; $10 Non-Members, $5 Students with ID
Imelda Buncab — National Program Director, Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking
Ivy Lee — Director of Immigration and Trafficking Project, API Legal Outreach
Moderator: Laurel Fletcher — Director, International Human Rights Law Clinic
Every 10 minutes, a woman or a child is trafficked into the United States for forced labor. California is a transit point and destination for much of this trafficking activity, which ranges from agricultural and factory work, to domestic service, to sexual servitude. Countries such as India, Myanmar, Nepal, and Thailand have laws against kidnapping, slavery, and child prostitution. But are they enforcing them? Are these countries working with the US in eradicating exploitation of their economies most vulnerable members? Who are the suppliers? Who are the customers? Should all trafficking be stopped or should trafficking of agricultural, factory, and domestic laborers be legalized? What are the incentives and disincentives built into the US immigration laws that support or hinder human trafficking? While movement of labor is discussed at the WTO, under Services, is it seriously negotiated? Why or why not?
Please join our panel of legal and policy experts on immigration and human rights for a look at this complex economic-social issue and the steps being taken to prevent it.
Co-sponsored by Amnesty International USA; International Museum of Women; International and Area Studies, UC Berkeley; the Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley; and International Human Rights Law Clinic, UC Berkeley.
Changing Lanes in China: Local Governments, Foreign Direct Investment and Auto Sector Development
Eric Thun, Assistant Professor, Politics, Princeton University
April 20, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies
This talk will revolve around two most important trends in political economy — globalization and decentralization — in the context of the world's most rapidly growing economic power: China. Using case studies of joint venture projects in the Chinese auto industry, the presentation will analyze how local political and economic institutions shape the ability of Chinese state-owned firms to utilize foreign direct investment as a means of preparing themselves for the rigors of global competition.
North Korean Food Security: A Humanitarian Perspective
Joo Kim Pilju, CEO/Chairperson, Agglobe Services International Inc.; Adjunct Professor, University of Minnesota
April 22, 2005
Center for Korean Studies
From the mid to late 1990s, famine killed as many as two million people in North Korea. Although the famine has passed, the country still suffers from severe food shortages and millions of North Koreans continue to face hunger. North Korea faces incredible challenges in food security caused by a combination of marginal farmland, inclement weather, dilapidated farm machinery, extreme shortages of agricultural supplies, and a tenuous political situation. Dr. Joo Kim Pilju, a Minnesota-based seed scientist and founder of Agglobe Services International will talk about her innovative project, which is considered to be among the first large-scale North Korean venture in market socialism.
Dr. Joo is working with several cooperative farms along North Korea's western coast in an effort to turn the farms into model self-sufficient agricultural communities. With humanitarian aid she is helping farms recapitalize so that they can collectively grow enough food to feed everyone and also grow small amounts of cash crops, the revenue from which would go to improving the institutions of the community, such as medical clinics, schools, and day care facilities. Dr. Joo has coordinated almost fifty humanitarian assistance trips to North Korea over the past decade, and travels to North Korea several times a year. She will present some slides and offer her on-the-ground insight of the food and fuel situation in North Korea.
Fourth Annual Graduate Symposium on Korean Studies
April 23, 2005
Annual Graduate Symposium
Center for Korean Studies, Berkeley Graduate Working Group in Korean Studies
Schedule
Morning Panels
Moderator: Hong Yung Lee, Professor of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley
09:00-09:15 — Opening Remarks
Session 1: Political Economy of Labor
09:15-09:30
Chung-min Tsai, University of California, Berkeley, "Corporatism and East Asian Capitalism: The Case of South Korea"
09:30-09:45
Ji-Whan Yun, University of California, Berkeley, "The Price of Belatedness: Social Policy Reform in Korea and Its Limitations"
09:45-10:00
Jaesok Sonn, University of Chicago, "Korean Exceptionalism? The Peculiarity or the Universality of the Working-Class Movement"
10:00-10:45
Panel Discussion: Taek-Jin Shin, University of California, Berkeley
10:45-11:00 — Coffee Break
Session 2: Politics of Economic Reform
11:00-11:15
Christopher Hale, Columbia University, "Disentangling the Incentive for Expropriation within Business Groups: The Case of the Korean Chaebol
11:15-11:30
Myung-Koo Kang, University of California, Berkeley, "Politics of Financial Restructuring in South Korea and Japan"
11:30-12:00
Panel Discussion: Moderator
12:00-1:00PM — Lunch
Afternoon Panels
Moderator: Myoung Kyu Park, Visiting Professor of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley
Session 3: International Relations in Historical Perspective
1:00-1:15
Steven Park, National Defense University, "South Korea's Foreign Policy: Strategies for Survival of the State"
1:15-1:30
Geun Koh, Seoul National University, "Projecting Soft Power of the United States on South Korea: Perception Politics of the United States Information Service, Korea during the 1950s and the 1960s"
1:30-1:45
Su-Kyoung Hwang, University of Chicago, "The Price of Becoming Equal: South Koreans in the Vietnam War"
1:45-2:30
Panel Discussion: Min Gyo Koo, University of California, Berkeley
2:30-2:45 — Coffee Break
Session 4: Tradition, Culture, and Social Change
2:45-3:00
Liora Sarfati, Indiana University, Bloomington, "Private and National Shamanic Kut Rituals in South Korea"
3:00-3:15
Kyoim Yun, Indiana University, Bloomington, "The Entrepreneurial Spirit and Innovative Ritual Technology of Jeju Shamans"
3:15-3:30
Yoonhee Chang, Indiana University, Bloomington, "Contemporary Traditional: Its Names and Images in Radio Broadcasting"
3:30-4:15
Panel Discussion: TBA
4:15-4:30 — Coffee Break
4:30-4:45
Deok-Hee Seo, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, "Together than Alone vs. I, My Children: Contesting Interdiscursive Practices regarding the Education in School Crisis Era in South Korea"
4:45-5:00
Sun-Chul Kim, Columbia University, "Three Misunderstandings about South Korean Democratization: A Theoretical Excursion"
5:00-5:30
Panel Discussion: Moderator
Free and open to the public
Lunch and light refreshments will be provided.
Berkeley Graduate Working Group and the Center for Korean Studies, University of California, Berkeley, acknowledge the generous support of the Korea Foundation.
Whither a Buddhist Golden Age? The History of the Burmese in Northern Thailand
Justin McDaniel, University of California, Riverside
April 25, 2005
Center for Buddhist Studies, Center for Southeast Asian Studies
The Burmese invasion of Northern Thailand in the 1550s is often seen as ushering in a period of decline in Buddhism after its Golden Age from 1400-1550. However, manuscripts, inscriptions, and literary evidence suggest that this was not a period of serious decline and, in fact, the teaching of Buddhism survived and in many cases thrived under Burmese rule. Furthermore, it is difficult to label this period particularly Burmese. Justin McDaniel explores the available evidence and suggests new ways of looking at Buddhist history and development in the region from 1550-1893.
Justin McDaniel received his PhD from Harvard University's Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies in 2003. Presently he teaches Buddhism and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California, Riverside. His research foci include Lao, Thai, Pali and Sanskrit literature, Southeast Asian Buddhism, ritual studies, manuscript studies, and Southeast Asian history.
Meeting Rising Community Expectations — From Landslide Prevention to Habour Enhancement in Hong Kong
Lee Chack Fan, University of Hong Kong
April 25, 2005
Institute of East Asian Studies
Hong Kong's rapid population growth has to be accommodated on limited land resources. Housing is either built on slopes, or on land reclaimed from the sea. Dr. Lee Chack Fan will describe efforts to satisfy community concerns regarding the development of reclaimed land around Victoria Harbour. His comments will highlight the use of environmentally friendly approaches to reclamation and slope preservation as well as coordination between the government and local residents.
Dr. Lee Chack Fan is the Chair of the Department of Civil Engineering and a Pro-Vice-Chancellor at The University of Hong Kong. He has published widely in the field of geotechnical engineering and has served as special consultant and advisor to the United Nations, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and other agencies on a variety of topics, including hydroelectric power projects, slope stabilization and landslide hazard mitigation, seismic risk assessment and and other geotechnical problems.
Kim Dae-jung — Korea and its Strategic Role in the Peace, Security, and Prosperity of Northeast Asia
April 25, 2005
Special address, reservations required
The Asia Foundation, Institute of East Asian Studies, Korean Center, Center for the Pacific Rim, Korean-American Chamber of Commerce, World Affairs Council
In his long struggle to bring democracy to Korea, Kim Dae-jung endured years of political persecution, imprisonment, house arrest, and exile, as well as kidnapping and assassination attempts. In December 1997, Kim Dae-jung, longtime opposition leader and champion of democratic reform, was elected the eighth President of the Republic of Korea, marking the first transition of power from the ruling to the opposition party in Korea's modern history. In 2000, the Norwegian Nobel Committee, in recognition of his "extraordinary and lifelong work for democracy and human rights in South Korea and East Asia in general, and for peace and reconciliation with North Korea in particular," awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to Kim Dae-jung.
In his first visit to the United States since leaving the presidency in 2003, Kim Dae-jung will address the strategic role that Korea plays in the ongoing struggle for peace, security, and prosperity in Northeast Asia, as well as the key challenges for American foreign policy as it assesses its multilateral and bilateral relationships in this critically important region. Join us for a rare and extraordinary evening with one of the world's leading voices for progressive and democratic governance, human rights, and social justice — Kim Dae-jung of Korea.
Open to the public and free of charge. Seating is limited and reservations are required.
RSVP no later than April 22 to The Asia Foundation, (415) 743-3347 or rsvp@asiafound.org.
An Introduction to "China Digital Times"
Xiao Qiang, Director, Berkeley China Internet Project, Graduate School of Journalism, UCB
April 26, 2005
Institute of East Asian Studies
China Digital Times (CDT) is a participatory media portal covering China's social and political transition and its emerging role in the world. Based at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, CDT aims to use the new generation of interactive digital media technology to create a collaborative network that will track and report news, facilitate conversations and debate, and share resources and knowledge in a virtual China community. The director of the project, Xiao Qiang, will talk about the main goals of the website and explain how UCB students and scholars can become part of the vibrant online CDT community.
Xiao Qiang is the former Executive Director of Human Rights in China and the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship.
For more information about the site, please visit http://chinadigitaltimes.net.
Interest Group Politics and the Battle for Structural Reform in Japan: The Case of the Post Office
Patricia Maclachlan, Asian Studies and Government, University of Texas at Austin
April 28, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
Prime Minister Koizumi has long regarded the privatization of postal services as the fundamental prerequisite for the reinvigoration of Japan's financial system and the elimination of structural corruption in the political sphere. But as events in 2002 and 2005 attest, the process of reforming the postal system has met with considerable resistance from those who benefit most from the status quo: the postmasters and their allies in the Liberal Democratic Party. Patricia Maclachlan will explore the sources and repercussions of political resistance to postal reform, showing how the battle over the post office represents a much deeper conflict over the structure of the political economy.
This event is free and open to the public.
Pacific Rim Music Festival
April 29 – May 7, 2005
Concerts and symposia
Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Korean Studies
The Pacific Rim Music Festival, a series of nine concerts and four symposia involving a wide variety of musicians from around the globe will take place at UC Santa Cruz between April 29 and May 7, 2005. The Festival opens on April 29 with an ceremony performed by Indonesian Gamelans and Korean Samulnori. That evening's opening concert of "Hun Qiao" - Bridge of Souls - is a special project for the "remembrance and reconciliation" of World War II. Wu Man, one of the most distinguished pipa players in the world, will be joined by renowned Japanese vocal artist Mutsumi Hatano and Korean violinist Young-Nam Kim.
Guest ensembles performing later in the festival include: Speculum Musicae of New York, EarPort Ensemble from Germany, Quake of Seattle and NOISE from San Diego. Other special concerts include: a 70th Birthday Celebration for Terry Riley (May 3) with Kronos Quartet and Zakir Hussain; an evening of "Korean Musical Ceremony" (May 6) with Masters Byung-Ki Hwang and Aeju Lee; and the preview of "Manzanar - An American Story" (May 7) with the Berkeley Symphony conducted by Kent Nagano and featuring pianist Aki Takahashi.
For further details and ticket information, please visit: http://pacificrim.ucsc.edu.
Late Imperial Perspectives on Political Participation in Twentieth-Century China
Bin Wong, Professor, History, UCLA
April 29, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies
Discussant: Wen-hsin Yeh, Professor, History, UC Berkeley
We conventionally conceive modern political participation in terms of categories and relationships developed first in European and American settings. While some students of Western politics know well that twentieth-century political participation emerged out of earlier historical practices, a similar attention to Chinese changes is lacking. This presentation suggests that some features of recent Chinese political preferences and practices can be better understood when viewed from late imperial perspectives.
Free and open to the public.
Beyond the Strai(gh)ts: Transnationalism and Queer Chinese Politics
April 29-30, 2005
Conference
Center for the Study of Sexual Cultures, Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Chinese Studies, Comparative Literature, Consortium for the Arts, Women's Studies, International and Area Studies, Dean of Humanities, Townsend Center, Center for Race and Gender, Dean of Social Sciences, Institute for Tongzhi Studies
In recent years, transnational flows of people, information, images, and capital radically changed the lives and organizations of queer people in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. How do queer people in these regions today organize their communities and futures in an era marked by transnational corporations, bootleg DVDs, internet chat rooms, migrant workers, inter-Asia human rights organizations, "flexible citizenship," sex tourism, the Chinese diaspora, minority studies in Asia, and new cinematic and literary modes of cultural exchange? What engagements have there been, or should there be, be with US queer politics, and Asian American and racial politics in particular? How have transnational norms, themselves been shaped by queer forms of exchange?
This conference aims to bring to a US audience ten scholars, activists, and cultural producers whose work has been critical in queer transformations in China and Taiwan, and to engage them in dialogue with important US based queer scholars and artists. Shifting the focus of comparison from the governmental role of individual states, it will ask both overseas and US participants how they perceive existing — and future — transnational processes to affect queer organizing and political discourses both within and beyond the local. We hope this forum will also enable a critical discussion of the relations between Asian American and tongzhi (Chinese lgbt) politics.
In conjunction with the conference we will be premiering new queer Chinese films and artwork by Shi Tou, Cui Zien, Hoang Tan Nguyen, and Lynne Chan (aka JJ Chinois).
The conference will be in English and is open to the general public.
Schedule
Friday, April 29, 2005
2.15pm
Welcome: Judith Butler, UC Berkeley
2:30 - 3:45pm
Keynote: Josephine Ho, Center for the Study of Sexualities, Taiwan
"Queer Existence under Global Governance: A Taiwan Exemplar"
Yanhai Wan, AIZHIXING Institute of Health Education, Beijing
"AIZHI and New Gay and Lesbian Organizing in China"
Respondent: Lisa Rofel, UC Santa Cruz
4:00 - 5:45pm
Zien Cui, Beijing Film Academy<
"The Communist International of Queer Film"
Nguyen Tan Hoang, UC Berkeley
"I Got this Way from Eating Rice: Gay Asian Documentary & the Re-Education of Desire"
Guo-Juin Hong, Duke University
"Memorandum on Happiness: Taiwan's Tongzhi Movement in Mickey Chen's Documentaries"
Dinner Break
7:00 - 8:30pm
Film Premieres:
"Women's 30 Minutes" (dir. Shi Tou, Beijing)
"Star Appeal" (dir. Zien Cui, Beijing)
Saturday, April 30, 2005
9:30 - 10:00am
Coffee and Refreshments
10:00 - 11:00am
JiaZhen Ni, Gender/Sexuality Rights Association Taiwan (G/SRAT)
"AIDS prevention and sexual stigma"
Xiaopei He, University of Westminster, UK
"New AIDS activism in China"
Break/Film
"K.I.P." and "The Calling" (dir. Nguyen Tan Hoang, USA)
11:30 - 12:30pm
Ping Wang & Yu-Rong Chen, G/SRAT, Taiwan
"The Three Obstacles to Queer Rights"
Chung To, Chi Heng Foundation, Hong Kong
"Activism and the Internet"
Institute for Tongzhi Studies and Community outreach (open mic)
Lunch Break
2:00 - 3:15pm
Shi Tou, artist, activist, Beijing
"Tongzhi Public Space"
Respondent: Tze-lan D. Sang, University of Oregon
Karen Tongson, University of Southern California & Lynne Chan aka JJ Chinois, artist, NY
"A Conversation"
Break/Film
"Pirated!" and "Forever Bottom!" (dir. Nguyen Tan Hoang, USA)
3:45 - 4:45pm
Naifei Ding, National Central University, Taiwan
"Imagining Sex: Concubinage, the 'New Woman,' and Universal Chastity"
David Eng, Rutgers University
"Freud in China"
5:00 - 5:45pm
Roundtable
An exhibition of selected works of the Beijing artist Shi Tou will be open to the pubic throughout the weekend within the Berkeley Art Museum (adjacent to the Museum Theater).
Organizers: Roy Chan, Tamara Chin, Virginia Eleasar, Petrus Liu
How Did the Gakkyuu Hookai Happen? An Ethnography of Japanese Junior High School Girls' Linguistic and Spatial Resistance at the Crossroad of Japanese Education
Ayumi Miyazaki, Education, CJS Visiting Scholar
May 2, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
Based on an ethnographic study of a Japanese junior high school, the author analyzes how Japanese girls, through their non-traditional linguistic and social practices, negotiate and resist the norms of gender, language, and the body enacted through daily practices of gakkyuu, the fundamental unit of Japanese schools. Since the late 1990's, the gakkyuu — composed of up to forty students who undertake many group activities together throughout the day — is under siege, as students' resistance to the system of group-centered gakkyuu has intensified all over Japan, a phenomenon widely reported in the media as gakkyuu hookai (classroom breakdown). Japanese gendered language norms have also faced increasing challenges from the younger generations. Within this changing configuration of power, girls at a research site, through tactically shifting their masculine, neutral, and feminine speech and behavior, opposed various norms in gakkyuu. In her presentation, she examines actual negotiations between teachers and girls in a gakkyuu where gakkyuu hookai took place, and documents how these negotiations shifted moment-to-moment according to space and context. By analyzing these complex negotiations, the author explores shifting grounds of gender, language and identity at the crossroad of Japanese education.
This event is free and open to the public
2nd Aobakai "Japan" Conference
May 6, 2005
Conference
Center for Japanese Studies
Schedule
1:10-1:15 — Opening Remarks: Stephanie Skiles
1:15-2:15 — Panel I
"Social Aspects of Enka Songs"
Chiara Puppo, Ca Foscari University, Venice, Italy, recent graduate, Japanese Music
"Japanese Buddhist Symbolism: Shingon Esoteric Mandalas"
Natalie Vail, UC Berkeley, senior, Anthropology
Professor Steven Nelson, Music 139A - Buddhist Music
"Maki Ishii (1936-2003), Japan and the West: Musical Encounters"
Kristian Ireland, Stanford, graduate student, Music
Professor Brian Ferneyhough (advisor)
Discussant: Professor M. E. Berry, UC Berkeley, professor, Japanese History
2:15-3:00 — Panel II
"The Japanese in Okinawa"
Yoshie Oya, UC Davis, senior, International Relations, and Japanese
Professor Kyu Hyun Kim (advisor)
"Invention of Okinawa through Our "Traditional" Healing Power: Development of Our Own Industry"
Kensuke Sumii, UC Berkeley, Ph.D. Candidate, Medical Anthropology
Professor Christie Kiefer and Prof. Nelson Graburn (advisors)
Discussant: Luke Franks, UC Berkeley, PhD candidate, Japanese History
3:00-3:20 — Coffee Break
3:20-4:35 — Panel III
"Committed Fiction: Noguchi Hiroshi and the Aesthetics of Proletariat Literature in Japan in 1927"
Orna Shaughnessy, UC Berkeley, graduate student, Modern Japanese Literature
Professor Alan Tansman (advisor)
"Translating Dialect in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"
Tom Gaubatz, Stanford, junior, Mathematics
Professor Yuri Shimizu, Japanese Language and Cultures, Kyushu University
"A Human, Retrofit: Cybernetics and the City, 2029 A.D."
Andrew McKeon, UC Berkeley, senior, Integrative Biology
Professor Dan O'Neill, Japanese 180
"Japanese New Wave Cinema; Matsumoto Toshio and Oshima Nagisa"
Suzanne Manneh, UC Berkeley, senior, Film Studies
Professor Miryam Sas (advisor)
Discussant: Professor Miryam Sas, UC Berkeley, professor, Compartive Literature and Film Studies
4:35-5:30 — Buffet Party
If you have any question about the Conference, please email Stephanie Skiles at: sskiles@berkeley.edu.
The Uneven Burden of Vitality: College Rank, Class, and South Korea's "New Generation"
Nancy Abelman, Anthropology, East Asian Languages and Cultures, and Women's Studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
May 6, 2005
Center for Korean Studies
"I am interested in transformed ways in which contemporary South Korean college students envision human development, namely ideal ways to mature. Foremost, they are committed to becoming vital people who lead active and enjoyable lives — people who 'live hard and play hard' — and who are able to circulate in an increasingly wide and global arena. Distinguishing themselves from earlier peers, they want to be social without relinquishing themselves to collectivities. These images of free-formed selves aside, students are well aware that this new mode of being is at the same time a requirement for productive (and vital) life in a rapidly transforming and globalizing world. It is not lost on students that the work of becoming a vital human being is no simple matter, even if it presents itself as 'more fun' than earlier 'ways of being.' The cultural work of vitality is gendered as co-educational.
This talk builds on arguments that with intensified privatization, individuation, and globalization we are increasingly becoming self-managers of our human capital development. I argue that the mode in which many college students now distinguish themselves from the past reflects this global neoliberal turn in which individuals take personal responsibility for their own development, thus effectively obscuring the work of structural features. Vitality is shared by students with vastly different class backgrounds and at a wide array of institutions of higher learning. I analyze specifically how to listen to the ways in which this 'burden of vitality" is borne variously in accordance with South Korea's highly stratified higher education sector. I contrast students at elite universities for whom the university itself confers vitality in a 'brand'-like manner, from students at third-tier colleges who are aware that they must assume this human development project on their own." — Nancy Abelman
Free and open to the public.
Sponsored by a Grant from the Korea Foundation.
Bushido, Masculinities and Foreign Policymaking in Japan
Yumiko Mikanagi, Politics, International Christian University, CJS Visiting Scholar
May 9, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
Since the Japanese government decided to send its Self Defense Force troops to Iraq in July 2003, the images of samurai have been numerously quoted by policymakers and other leaders, and widely discussed by journalists and scholars. The sudden rise of public interest in the way of samurai warriors is apparent from the fact that Nitobe Inazo's classic "Bushido" has become a national best seller. Why this sudden rise in the interest? The author will try to connect the construction and reconstruction of mainstream masculinities in post-WWII Japan and analyze how that may have been affected by and affected Japan's foreign policymaking. The author will first demonstrate how the construction of masculinities in Japan during the post-WWII evolved from demilitarized masculinities between 1945 and 1970s to remilitarized masculinities since the 1980s. Then, focusing on more recent events, she will contend that the Japanese policymakers and the public felt emasculated when Japanese monetary contribution ("check book diplomacy") during the Gulf War was not taken seriously by the U.S. and its allies. The experience has become a "trauma" for policymakers since then and thus they had struggled hard in the reconstruction of Japan's identity in relation to the rest of the world. Within such context, images of samurai served as a guiding principle for identity re-formation for policymakers.
This event is free and open to the public
Patrolling the Revolution: Worker Militias, Citizenship and the Modern Chinese State
Elizabeth Perry, Professor, Department of Government, Harvard University
May 11, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies
The talk will draw on the speaker's forthcoming book, which explores the role of working-class militias as vanguard and guardian of the Chinese revolution. Based primarily on research in the Shanghai Municipal Archives, the book traces the development of urban militias from the late nineteenth century down to the present. Perry regards worker militias as a revealing lens for viewing the changing (yet enduring) impact of China's revolutionary heritage on subsequent state-society relations. She also adopts a comparative perspective, examining the influence of revolutionary citizenship (institutionalized in militias) on the political trajectories of the United States, France, the Soviet Union, and Iran.
Stanford-Berkeley Japanese Politics Workshop
May 13, 2005
Workshop
Center for Japanese Studies
Schedule
10:00 — Opening Remarks
10:15-11:15
Japan's foreign policy towards North Korea
Celeste Powell, UC Berkeley
Faculty Discussant: Yumiko Mikanagi
Student Discussant: Ken Haig
Q&A
11:15-11:30 — Coffee Break
11:30-12:30
The evolving role of development banks in East Asia
Jennifer Amyx, Stanford, Visiting Scholar
Faculty Discussant: T.J. Pempel
Student Discussant: Kay Shimizu
Q&A
12:30-1:45 — Lunch Break
1:45-2:45
The politics behind Japan's "lost decade"
T.J. Pempel UC Berkeley
Faculty Discussant: Laurie Freeman
Student Discussant: Kenneth McElwain
Q&A
2:45-3:45
Dissertation chapter on bureaucratic reforms in Japan
Jooyoun Jung, Stanford
Faculty Discussant: Steve Vogel
Student Discussant: Jon Marshall
Q&A
3:45-4:00 — Coffee Break
4:00-5:00
"Gaiatsu" from within? Effects of FDI on politics and institutional change"
Kenji Kushida, UC Berkeley
Discussant: Jennifer Amyx
Student Discussant: Myung-koo Kang
Q&A
5:15 — Closing Remarks
Contact: Ken Haig: kenhaig@berkeley.edu.
The Mystery of Encounters in Everyday Life; The Motivation behind Writing Hymn of the Spirit; A Talk with the Korean Novelist, Han Mahlsook
May 17, 2005
Center for Korean Studies
Life is a continuum of encounters, death being the last of them. The first encounter of a person is the environment of his or her birth, that is, the kind of family the person is born into. We go through encounter after encounter throughout life with the nation, siblings, relatives, maids, friends, schools, teachers, work places, members of the opposite sex, marriages, children...
Not only human encounters but encounters with mother nature that can dramatically change the course of one's life: Birds chirping, flowers coming and going, tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions. Encounters with books... More important by far are the encounters with other human beings. Then there are also encounters that are dreamy and surreal.
The encounters of Anthony and Cleopatra, Korean Admiral Yi Sun-shin and Japanese Warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Hitler and the Jews... All these encounters, good or bad, are they predestined?
Is there what is called previous life? Do dreams prophesy? How is it that we encounter the dead in our dreams and that the dead foretell what is to happen? Is it, after all, the work of the brain of very special people? We can only cherish the unfathomable mystery of the encounters.
Mahlsook Han is one of Koreas most gifted and prolific writers and many other renowned Korean writers have cited her works as having inspired them. She has published 51 short stories, 6 collections of short fiction, 3 novels, and a collection of essays. Because of their universal appeal, many of her works have been published in other languages since 1964. Shinhwa ui Tanae (Shattered Myths) was made into a movie in 1959, and Yosu(Travel Weary Blues) was made into a movie in 1978 and into a movie for television in 1989. A translation of Changma (Flood) was included in The World Anthology: Language of Love published by Bantam Books, New York in 1964. More recently, a collection of her short stories was published in French (La Plaie, Maison Neuve et La Rose) in 1997, and two collections were published in Polish in 1996 (Komungo, Dialog) and 1997 (Filizanka Kawy, Dialog). In recent years, she has written many newspaper columns and essays spotlighting social and political problems. In 1999, she was presented the Korean governments Bogwan Cultural Award by the president of Korea.
Han began her literary career in 1956 when, on the recommendation of the renowned writer Kim Dong-ni, the journal Hyondae Munhak (Modern Literature) published her short story Pyolbit sok ui Kyejol (The Starlit Season). She made her formal debut in the same journal the following year with the publication of Shinhwa ui Tanae (Shattered Myths) and a number of poignant stories quickly followed. Readers were attracted by her vision of the world and extraordinary sensibility as well as her concise and lucid prose that was devoid of unnecessary verbs and superfluous adjectives. In 1964, Hyondae Munhak named her outstanding new writer of the year, and in 1968, she received one of Korea's most prestigious literary prizes, the Best Literature Award presented annually by the Hankook Ilbo, a daily newspaper.
Han's most popular work is the critically acclaimed novel Arumdaun Yongga (Hymn of the Spirit in English). It was first published in Korean in 1981, and has been a steady seller ever since. The Korean Literature Foundation published an English translation of the novel in 1983. The translator has since revised the translation and it was published in a local English-language monthly magazine in installments from November 1998 to December 1999 (see www.koreapost.com), and because of its great popularity, beginning in November 2004, the same magazine is again publishing it in installments. The novel has also been published in Polish (1993, Comer), French (1995, L'Harmattan and UNESCO), Chinese (1996, Social Science Publishers, Beijing), Czech (1997, Dar Ibn Rushd), Italian (2001, O barra O), German (2002, EOS; hard cover edition to be published in 2005), and Japanese (2004. Fugurumashoin). A Swedish translation has been completed and its publishing is being negotiated.
Arumdaun Yongga (Hymn of the Spirit) is a contemporary Korean novel addressing the age-old questions of life and life after death as well as the invisible powers that support the living and challenging the reader with alternative modes of comprehension. It probes and questions various borders such as those between generations, individual consciousness, continents, and the living and the dead. The novel presents a year in the life of Kim Yu-jin, a contemporary Korean housewife at a time when everyday happenings take on a strange direction and odd meaning. The story is full of questions, Is there life after death? Is there a soul? What is love? Is this the other world? and provides insight into the way East Asians view the world around them. Through the pages of the novel, the reader can see how Shamanism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Christianity have blended over the centuries (with juxtaposition being more evident than conflict), to create the rare, paradoxical and enduring culture that is Korea. Hymn of the Spirit offers the Western reader a vivid account of the customs and worldview of Koreans.
Han's extraordinary talent is well demonstrated in Hymn of the Spirit. Again and again in the course of the novel she startles the reader with sudden, precise evocations of mood, playing familiar feelings against unexpected resonances. One of her greatest strengths, and one that is especially well demonstrated in the novel, is her ability to depict the psychological as opposed to the merely logical interrelation between beliefs and concepts within a single psyche.
A Japanese critic wrote: With fluent writing that touches the heart like resonant orchestral music and weaves together the issues of love and hate, life and death and religious and historical awareness, the novel vividly depicts the spiritual world of the Korean people.
A Western critic writing about the novel wrote: "Western readers of Han Mahlsooks Hymn of the Spirit will not, I'm fairly sure, close the novel saying, Well, thats all very nice, but whats Korean about it? Yet for all its satisfying, titillating foreignness, the narrative is seldom obscure and not opaque. Instead of being jolted by the unknown and the incomprehensible, readers will be challenged by alternative modes of comprehension." He went on to write: "she [the translator] enables English-language readers to share a glimpse not just of other realms and the way they appear in the modern Korean psyche, but also of the extraordinary gifts of Han Mahlsook, a Korean writer deserving of a much wider readership."
Book Summary
This novel consists of four chapters: Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn.
Winter
Kim Yu-jin, the heroine, is an English instructor at a high school and a part time translator of foreign literature. She married her husband Yi Sang-jun for love (as opposed to the usual chungmae, or arranged marriage) and they have two children, a boy and a girl. Every morning Yu-jin and her husband walk to a mountain spring near their home because they heard that the spring water is good for one's health. At the spring they become acquainted with Dr. Chang Ki-ho, a college professor, his frail wife Yong-suk, an octogenarian laborer Kang, whose long life has been filled with poverty and misfortune, and his six-year-old great-great-grandson Sok-kyu. Sok-kyu, whose parents are dead, adores Yu-jin as if she were his mother, and Yu-jin comes to love him so much that she wonders if they had some karma from the previous life.
Yu-jin had a brother who was killed in World War II, having been conscripted into the Japanese military by the Japanese colonial government when he was a sophomore in college. Her parents are dead, and she has one sister, Su-jin, a student who is living in Paris.
Yu-jin is disturbed by a midnight call from Su-jin. Su-jin says that their dead father appeared in her dream and instructed her to warn her brother-in-law to cancel his plans for a joint-venture business with a Japanese businessman. Yu-jin's reasonable, pragmatic husband Sang-jun dismisses it, saying a dream is just a dream.
When Yu-jin was in her teens, her maternal grandfather, who was already over 60, took a 17-year-old woman named Son Chong-im as a concubine. She was usually referred to as Taegu-taek, literally meaning "Woman from Taegu." (Koreans of yore never called a married woman by her name but by the name of her birthplace or current hometown, adding as a suffix the word "taek," which means "house".) After Yujin's grandfather died, the beautiful young Son Chong-im spent her life going from one wealthy man to another. Her last lover died in her bed one night after bragging about some land he had recently acquired and showing her the deeds. She sold the land in secrecy for a small fortune. Now, over 70 years of age, in the process of sorting out her property, she remembers a debt her brother owed Yu-jin's grandfather and wants to repay it by bequeathing part of her fortune to Yu-jin. She calls Yu-jin to tell her, but Yu-jin rudely tells her that she wants nothing from her.
Chong-im tells her old friend Chinju-taek, a fortuneteller known as O, The Enlightened One, who tells fortunes by reading faces and also by divination of birth dates, that she keeps having weird dreams. The fortuneteller, reading death in her future, urges her to give to the grandchildren of Choe Kwang-su (her last lover), who have recently learned about the stolen deeds and are demanding money, as much money as they demand. Chong-im refuses to take her advice and is killed by Choe's grandsons, the death O, The Enlightened One foresaw.
Spring
Having been notified of Chong-im's death by O, The Enlightened One, a total stranger, Yu-jin finds herself playing the role of chief mourner at Chong-im's funeral. O, The Enlightened One, advises Yu-jin to accept Chong-im's inheritance but she refuses. However, she requests that Old Man Kang and Sok-kyu be allowed to live in Chong-im's house. As Yu-jin climbs the hill behind her house to go to the illegal shanty where the old man and boy live to tell them of their new home, she is caught in a sudden rainstorm. She then develops pneumonia.
Nam Ki-chol, a senior friend from Yu-jin's college days, rushes to visit her on hearing that she is in the hospital with a serious illness. Returning to his office, he has a heat attack and dies.
In a feverish daze in the middle of the night Yu-jin hears Ki-chol calling her. She also sees in her dream that Ki-chol is building a house in a deep mountain, which she interprets as a sign that he is dead. The death of a trusted friend in whom she could confide anything and everything causes her great sorrow and a sense of loss.
Summer
The money that the Sang-jun's joint-venture partner Matsmoto promised would be sent from Japan is delayed day after day and Sang-jun's business begins to crumble. On the verge of succumbing to the passionate advances of Dr. Chang Ki-ho, Yu-jin sobers up when the sound of Sok-kyu ringing the doorbell interrupts their romantic interlude and she hastily puts her clothes back on and leaves. She promises to meet Chang in a hotel coffee shop but he does not show up.
Chang was born into a well-do-do family but first his parents and then his kindhearted stepmother died while he was a boy. The lonesome youth looked forward to a happy marriage but he became even more lonesome as his wife Yong-suk turned out to be a psychotic with a morbid suspicion about his fidelity. By the time he made up his mind to divorce, Yong-suk was found to have cancer. Denied even the choice of divorce, he is overcome by even greater loneliness and despair. Leaving his house to meet Yu-jin at the coffee shop, he finds Yong-suk prostrate on the ground just inside their gate, which prevents him from going to meet Yu-jin. That night in his bedroom, as lighthearted as if moving to a new house, Chang removes the valve from a gas heater in his room and kills himself.
Later, Yu-jin sees a vivid apparition of Chang in her living room and despairs at the evanescence of passionate love.
Autumn
Sang-jun's business goes bankrupt. Overcome by the death of Dr. Chang and the fear of a poverty-driven life, Yu-jin is considering committing suicide when Sok-kyu finds her and informs her that Chong-im's building was sold finally and the Enlightened One is going to invest that money in Sang-jun's company. Yu-jin wonders at the mystery of the presence of Sok-kyu who comes to save her at every crisis in her life.
Weeks later, as Yu-jin and Sok-kyu walk hand in hand up the hill and passed the spring, Sok-kyu confides that he doesn't want to become a head of a company or a minister but a choir member to praise Jesus Christ. Sok-kyu climbs up a tree to rescue a fallen baby bird. He falls from the tree and Yu-jin, trying to break his fall, tumbles down the slope with him. Sok-kyu dies and Yu-jin falls into coma.
At the death of Sok-kyu, the Enlightened One, who loved the boy as if he were her son, decides it too was the work of the karma of their previous life and makes up her mind to believe in Jesus. Old man Kang dies a natural death, calling for Sok-kyu even at his deathbed.
Regaining consciousness briefly, Yu-jin realizes for the first time in a long while a powerful love for her husband and children, but she cannot stop blaming herself for Sok-kyu's death. She is full of remorse. She does not want to live. She removes the IV needle from her arm. As her consciousness ebbs away, she hears Sok-kyu saying, "It's alive! It's alive!" Sok-kyu begins to run toward Yu-jin's parents and brother, Nam Ki-chol, Dr. Chang…all who were close to Yu-jin are waving their hands, motioning for Sok-kyu to come to them, but he runs into the window with a resounding sound. Yu-jin wakes up at the sound. The windows are clattering under the strong wind. Yu-jin feels some invisible force is urging her to stay longer in this life. She is overcome with gratitude. She gets out of her hospital bed, opens the window, and begins to wail, "Oh, my beloved souls!"
Since it was published in 1981, the novel has been translated into English (1983), Polish (1993), French (1995, included in a UNESCO collection), Chinese (1996), Czech (1997), Italian (2001), Japanese (2004) and German (2002). A Swedish translation has been completed and is under negotiation for publication in Sweden.
U.S. Role in Asia: An Overview
Tsuneo Akaha, Director, Center for East Asian Studies, Monterey Institute of East Asian Studies
June 14, 2005
Summer lecture series: Confronting Crises in Northeast Asia
World Affairs Council, Institute of East Asian Studies
Lecture-demonstration by Nakamura Ganjiro III of Japan's Grand Kabuki Chikamatsu-za
June 15, 2005
Lecture / Demonstration
Institute of East Asian Studies, Cal Performances, The Consulate General of Japan in San Francisco, Department of Music
Organized in conjuction with the performances of Japan's Shochiku Grand Kabuki Chikamatsu-za, Friday-Saturday, June 17-18, 2005 at Zellerbach Hall.
Kabuki, the art of theatrical exploration into human passions and flaws, has been performed exclusively by men for more than 300 years. Male actors play all roles, including women characters, or onnagata.
Grand Master of the kamigata style of Kabuki, Nakamura Ganjiro III, who has played the female lead in Sonezaku Shinju ("Love Suicides at Sonezaki") for over 50 years and who has been designated a Living National Treasure, will talk about the history and forms of Kabuki Theatre. The lecture will be illustrated on stage by his apprentice, Nakamura Gankyo, who will be transformed into a beautiful woman through the application of full traditional make-up and costume, and will then demonstrate the theatrical conventions of the Kabuki female character role.
Free and open to the public.
China-Taiwan Issues and China in the WTO
Marsha Vande Berg, Executive Director, Pacific Pension Institute and Founding Director, IBAdvisors
June 21, 2005
Summer lecture series: Confronting Crises in Northeast Asia
World Affairs Council, Institute of East Asian Studies
This summer lecture series focuses on a variety of important challenges faced by governments in Northeast Asia. Speakers will examine US-Asia economic and security matters; look into the cross-straits issues between China and Taiwan and the implications of China's entry into the World Trade Organization; examine the resurgence of friction between Japan with China and South Korea over territorial claims and lingering WW II animosities; question the threat of North Korea's nuclear weapons and the response by the U.S. and the DPRK's Asian neighbors; scrutinize the changing geopolitics of energy as China's fast-growing economy increases its demand in competition with other industrialized users; and, finally, ask what can be done to combat China's environmental problems such as widespread air and water pollution and growing desertification that so adversely affect living conditions throughout the area.
Check In: 11:30 AM
Program: 12:00 PM
Members: Free
Non-members: $5
Students: Free
To reserve tickets call (415) 293-4600, e-mail registration@wacsf.org, or visit www.itsyourworld.org
Schedule
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
"U.S. Role in Asia: An Overview"
Professor Tsuneo Akaha, Director, Center for East Asian Studies, Monterey Institute of East Asian Studies
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
"China-Taiwan Issues and China in the WTO"
Dr. Marsha Vande Berg, Executive Director, Pacific Pension Institute and Founding Director, IBAdvisors
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
"Japan Confronts a Hostile Neighborhood"
Professor T.J. Pempel, Director, Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
"North Korea: Nuclear Weapons and the Six-Party Talks"
Professor Philip Yun, Pantec Fellow in Asian Studies, Stanford University
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
"The Geopolitics of Energy"
Thomas G. Burns, Director of Planning, Strategic Energy & Economic Research, Inc. (SEER)
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
"China and the Environment"
Professor Stephanie Ohshita, University of San Francisco
The US Government's Response to the Tsunami: From Relief to Reconstruction
Mark S. Ward, USAID — U.S. Agency for International Development
June 22, 2005
Presentation
Boalt Office of Career Development, Institute of East Asian Studies
Please join us for a presentation by Mark S. Ward on the efforts of the United States Government to provide relief and reconstruction assistance in countries affected by last year's tsunami disaster. Mr. Ward will discuss USAID's strategies for cooperating with the U.S. military during the initial relief phase, planning for longer-term reconstruction and ensuring the long-term effectiveness of donor assistance by engaging local NGOs, informal community groups, media entities, and local government officials. He will give an overview of progress to date and outline the challenges that still lie ahead.
Mr. Ward received his B.A. in Political Science from UC Berkeley and is an alumnus of the Berkeley's School of Law (Boalt Hall). He is the Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Bureau of Asia and Near East at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Since January 2005 he has served as co-chair of USAID's Tsunami Task Force. Mr. Ward has been with USAID for nearly 20 years. His most recent overseas post was in Pakistan as the Country Director, serving from July 2002 through December 2003.
Sponsored by the Boalt Office of Career Development and the Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley
Please RSVP by June 20th to Amy McDonough at amcdonough@law.berkeley.edu.
Japan Confronts a Hostile Neighborhood
T.J. Pempel, Director, Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley
June 28, 2005
Summer lecture series: Confronting Crises in Northeast Asia
World Affairs Council, Institute of East Asian Studies
Before the Flood — A film by Yan Yu and Li Yifan
July 8-10, 2005
Film screening
Asia Society of Northern California, Institute of East Asian Studies, NAATA, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Before the Flood is a breathtaking achievement in verité-style documentary filmmaking. China's Three Gorges Dam, the largest ever built on earth, is expected to be completed in 2009. Until then, millions of local residents will have to be relocated, because many towns and villages — including countless natural monuments and historic places — will be flooded. The film documents the relocation of one of these towns, Fengjie; a town that gained fame as the home of Li Bai, one of the most famous poets in Chinese history. This profound film shows what the ideas of home and community really mean to the inhabitants of Fengjie, and what it means to lose them. Directed by Yan Yu and Li Yifan (2005, 150 minutes, in Mandarin with English subtitles).
Beginning on June 1, tickets may be purchased by calling 415-978-ARTS or on-line at www.ybca.org.
$8 regular/ $5 Asia Society, YBCA Members, seniors & students
North Korea: Nuclear Weapons and the Six-Party Talks
Philip Yun, Pantec Fellow in Asian Studies, Stanford University
July 12, 2005
Summer lecture series: Confronting Crises in Northeast Asia
World Affairs Council, Institute of East Asian Studies
The Geopolitics of Energy
Thomas G. Burns, Director of Planning, SEER — Strategic Energy & Economic Research, Inc.
July 19, 2005
Summer lecture series: Confronting Crises in Northeast Asia
World Affairs Council, Institute of East Asian Studies
China and the Environment
Stephanie Ohshita, University of San Francisco
July 26, 2005
Summer lecture series: Confronting Crises in Northeast Asia
World Affairs Council, Institute of East Asian Studies
Findings on the East Asian Library's Rubbings Collections
Hui-ling Keng, Professor, Chaoyang University of Technology, Taichung, Taiwan
August 9, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies, East Asian Library
The East Asian Library's Chinese Rubbings Collection is the third largest in the United States. Prof. Keng has worked on the rubbings collections at Academia Sinica, Taiwan, the Beilin, Xi'an, the Han-Nom Research Institute, Hanoi, and the East Asian Library, and will discuss the depth and significance of the Berkeley collection.
Lecture will be conducted in Chinese.
Free and open to the public.
Disciplinarity in Chinese Art Studies: an Historical Perspective
Stacy Pierson, Curator/Head, Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, University of London
August 17, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies
The Military Situation Across the Taiwan Strait: China, the United States... and Taiwan
Bernard Cole, Professor, International History, National War College
August 26, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies
Since the mid 1980s, the People's Republic of China (PRC) has been engaged in a large-scale modernization of its military forces. Taiwan has also taken steps to modernize its military. In this lecture, Bernard Cole examines the military balance across the Taiwan Strait.
Bernard D. Cole teaches at the National War College in Washington, D.C., where he concentrates on Sino-American relations, the Chinese military, and Asian energy issues. He spent the 2004-2005 academic year as a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies of the National Defense University, writing a book on Taiwan's national defense.
Collective Bargaining & Dispute Resolution in China Today
Yanyuan Cheng, Associate Professor, Labor & Human Resources, Renmin University
September 2, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies, Center for Labor Research and Education
Dr. Yanyuan Cheng is Associate Professor in the School of Labor and Human Resources at the People's University in the People's Republic of China. Her publications include "A Study on the System of Collective Negotiation," 2004; "Work Relationship," 2002; and "On Labor Law," 1998.
Free and open to the public. RSVP to Anahita Forati by email: aforati@berkeley.edu, or call (510) 643-4312.
The Prehistory of Chinese Music Theory
Robert Bagley, Professor, Art and Archaeology, Princeton University
September 7, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies, Department of Music, Department of History, Asian Art and Visual Cultures Working Group
The tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng (d. 433 BC), excavated in 1978, contained thirty well-preserved musical instruments, including sets of bells and chime stones bearing inscriptions that concern pitches, scales, and transposition. These inscriptions are the earliest texts on music theory known from China, and the bells still sound the pitches that their inscriptions refer to.
The set of 41 chime stones is chromatic, that is, the step from one stone to the next is always a semitone. The 65 bells, each of which produces two distinct pitches depending on where it is struck, supply a five-octave pentatonic scale on C along with shorter stretches of other scales, including a chromatic stretch.
The inscriptions use two types of pitch nomenclature, one for relative pitch and one for absolute pitch. Names for a sequence of standard absolute pitches are inscribed on a subset of the bells that embodies those standards. For relative pitch the inscriptions use a solmization system that assigns monosyllables to the steps of the pentatonic scale and disyllables to the remaining steps of the chromatic scale.
The lecture will describe the chromatic instruments and their inscriptions, then try to account for the theoretical knowledge they display by proposing a hypothetical prehistory for Chinese music. It will argue that music theory before Marquis Yi's time differed from the music theory of later periods in focusing on bells and absolute pitch rather than on strings and calculated scales, and will suggest that the difference explains the startlingly early discovery of the chromatic scale in China.
Free and open to the public.
Reporting from China
Mark Leong, photographer and author of China Obscura
September 8, 2005
Institute of East Asian Studies
In conjunction with:
"Mark Leong: China Obscura – A Photo Exhibit"
On display: September 8 – October 11, 2005 and November 1 – December 9, 2005
Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.
IEAS Lobby, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor
Mark Leong will present photographs from China Obscura, discussing his experience in China and the background behind the pictures. Mark's presentation will be followed by the screening of four short films reported and produced by the Digital TV and the World project at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. Filmed in Shanghai in May 2005, the vignettes focus on migrant workers, bar girls, China's elderly, and the eviction of residents from one of the city's old neighborhoods.
Introduction by Kevin O'Brien. Program followed by book signing and reception.
Digital TV and the World
The Digital TV and the World project at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism presents "Report from Shanghai," four vignettes reported and produced by Joe Mullin, Jonathan Kaminsky, Nagomi Onda and Kim Perry. Instructors: Todd Carrel and Christopher Beaver. Technical Advisor: Milt Wallace.
EVICTED by Joe Mullin
As planners remake Shanghai with skyscrapers and housing blocks, they are also destroying old neighborhoods and demanding that residents move out. This is the story of one man who fought to stay.
MIGRANT WORKERS by Jonathan Kaminsky
With the new mobility in China, millions of peasants from the countryside have headed to the cities to find work and build better lives. Some of these migrant workers are farmers who have learned to construct highrises.
BAR GIRL by Nagomi Onda
Many women have come from the countryside, too. Some have taken jobs as nannies, cooks, sales clerks, even bar girls. This is the story one woman who found a job in bar that caters to Japanese businessmen.
RETIRED by Kim Perry
The profile of China's elderly is beginning to change, with more people living apart from their children. For those who can afford them, retirement homes have become a new option for China's aging generation.
"Report from Shanghai" was funded by institutional and individual gifts from UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, the Institute of East Asian Studies, the Center for Chinese Studies, the Department of East Asian Languages and Culture, International and Area Studies, and the Program on Mass Communication. ORIAS contributed to outreach and distribution. The Digital TV and the World project is supported by gifts from the Walter and Elise Haas Fund, the Broadcast and Professional Systems Division of Sony Electronics, Inc. and Apple.
Special thanks to Dean Orville Schell, Rob Gunnison, and Carolyn Wakeman of the Graduate School of Journalism; Tom Kennedy of washingtonpost.com; and the journalism faculty and students at Shanghai International Studies University.
Washingtonpost.com has published stories from the Digital TV and the World project. A companion series of print reports has been published in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Mark Leong: China Obscura - A Photo Exhibit
September 8 – October 11, 2005
Institute of East Asian Studies
Korean Learning: Changing Patterns of Specific Investments
Ingyu Oh, Visiting Professor, International and Area Studies, U.C. Berkeley
September 9, 2005
Center for Korean Studies
Interaction between foreign and domestic cultural mindsets can result in dramatic economic changes. One example is intercultural learning, which can change the cultural mindset of investors' decision-making, in regard to employee training or specific investments. Modern Korean learning has traditionally been motivated by the pushing, rather than the pulling, factor, partly because of colonialism and the rapid economic catch-up periods forced upon the country by military dictators in the past. This traditional pattern was then reinforced by medium to high specific investments, which were either imposed by the government or necessitated by economic factors, such as boosting employee motivation. During the developmental phase most poor Korean young people learned advanced skills and knowledge while they were employed, through on the job training, on-factory campuses, and/or educational referrals. We cannot rule out the impact of intercultural learning with Japanese institutions on specific investments in Korea, during this period. After the Asian financial crisis, however, Korean society experienced heightened intercultural learning with the U.S. and the West, auguring a rapidly decreasing level of specific investments in major workplaces that hire young people. This study explores what has been changed over the years and what will be the new resulting implication for the Korean economy, as the learning pattern among young Koreans changes. This study finds that the changing learning pattern among young Koreans will reduce costs involved in new employee training, which is borne by corporations, although the so-called "exit" option (or job hopping) will become increasingly common. Furthermore, poor young people will have less opportunity for social mobility, due in part to the fact that these young people cannot get any long term employee contracts from corporations, not to mention tenure.
Free and open to the public. Sponsored through a grant from the Korea Foundation.
Music, Community Politics, and Environmental Justice in Taiwan
September 10, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, Cal Performances, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Department of Music, Townsend Center for the Humanities, Berkeley Consortium for the Arts
Organized in conjunction with the performance of Sheng Xiang & Band on Friday, September 9, 2005 at Hertz Hall. In his first United States appearance, composer, musician and social activist Sheng Xiang brings his distinctive musical hybrid of folk and contemporary sounds to UC Berkeley. The performance will be based on Sheng Xiang's newest album Getting Dark, this year's winner of three Golden Melody Awards, the Chinese equivalent of the Grammy Awards. The songs will be sung in Hakka, a dialect of Chinese; Sheng Xiang, popular in Taiwan for his support of social and environmental causes as well as his music, will provide commentary between songs in Mandarin and English.
Screening of East of County Road 184, a documentary about Taiwan folk band Sheng Xiang and the environmental movement that prevented the construction of the Meinung dam in southern Taiwan, will be followed by a discussion with Guo-Juin Hong, Asian & African Languages, Duke University; poet and activist Yongfeng Zhong, member of Sheng Xiang & Band; and Aviva Imhof, Campaigns Director, International Rivers Network.
Film and Round Table: Raise the Red Lantern
September 15, 2005
Institute of East Asian Studies, Cal Performances
Organized in conjunction with the performances of the National Ballet of China: Raise the Red Lantern on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, September 16-18, 2005 at Zellerbach Hall. Raise the Red Lantern, an adaptation of Zhang Yimou's award-winning film, is among the ensemble's most breathtaking accomplishments, displaying a uniquely Chinese style of ballet theater.
A screening of Zhang Yimou's Raise the Red Lantern will provide context for the dance performance by the National Ballet of China on September 16-18 in Zellerbach Hall. Based on Su Tong's novel Wives and Concubines, Zhang Yimou has now adapted Raise the Red Lantern as the first ballet to blend Peking Opera and Western dance. The ballet has provoked controversy in China, "partly because of its subject-matter – the role of women under feudalism – partly because it dares to blend ballet and traditional Chinese dance, and partly because it is staged by Zhang Yimou, the most famous film director in China," according to artistic director, Zhao Ruheng.
Evaluating the Japanese Election
T.J. Pempel, Political Science, UC Berkeley
Steve Vogel, Political Science, UC Berkeley
Ethan Scheiner, Political Science, UC Davis
Robert Madsen, MIT Center for International Studies
Rob Weiner, Cornell University
September 16, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi won an overwhelming victory in Lower House elections September 11. His party and its coalition ally will have a key two-thirds majority in the new parliament. This forum will provide a small panel to assess what the election means for Japanese politics and economic reforms.
Free and open to the public.
China, Macrohistory, Art: The Parallax of Relational Modernities
Fred Wakeman, Professor, History, UC Berkeley
William Schaefer, Assistant Professor, East Asian Languages and Cultures, UC Berkeley
Jonathan Hay, Professor, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
September 16, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies
This position paper discusses the limitations and potential of using a macrohistorical and cross-cultural theory of modernity in the Chinese context, with particular attention to art and, more broadly, visual and material culture. Drawing together the threads of more specific arguments that I have advanced in publications over the last several years, the paper sketches out the framework of a systematic relational theory. Formulated in terms of axioms and problematics, the discussion is highly abstract, and in disciplinary terms probably speaks more directly to sinology than art history. Not a slide show.
Free and open to the public.
The Body in Naturalist Literature and Modern Social Imaginaries
Christopher L. Hill, East Asian Languages & Literatures, Yale University
September 16, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
The literary school of naturalism spread rapidly around the world from the time of its rise in France in the mid-nineteenth century. By the early twentieth century writers acknowledging a tie to naturalism could be found on every inhabited continent. Naturalism was not a solitary traveler, however: it moved along with other genres such as criminology, reportage literature, and evolutionary social theory that together constituted a modern social imaginary. The example of Japanese naturalism shows that representation of the degenerate body played an important role in this imaginary as an anchor for the description of society and the rapid changes it was experiencing. Free and open to the public.
Air Pollution: Comparing Asian Cities
Christine Loh, Chief Executive Officer, Civic Exchange
September 19, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies
Free and open to the public.
Globalization and the Intellectual Future of Women's Emancipation
Nobuyo Goto, Political Economy, Fukushima Medical University
September 19, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
At present, Globalization is underway, on one hand via the Information-Communication Revolution, and on the other hand making Asia the workshop of the world. In cyberspace, we have the Internet Community, while in the real world, the back-office and sweatshop of women's workers for low wages. Meanwhile, in the U.S. the family is the focus of "the cultural war." What does that mean? This lecture tries to dissect those problems by using concepts of some Japanese social scientists as discussed in A. E. Barshay's The Social Sciences in Modern Japan.
Free and open to the public.
Funding Workshop for the UC Pacific Rim Research Program
September 20, 2005
Institute of East Asian Studies
The UC Pacific Rim Research Program (PRRP) is a UC systemwide grants program open to UC faculty and graduate students whose research explores Pacific Rim topics. A total of about $800,000 is available for 2006-07; individual grants in 2005 ranged from $3,000 to $30,000.
IEAS is hosting an informational workshop on PRRP funding opportunities. Professor Harry Scheiber, campus representative to the PRRP Executive Committee; Sandra Wulff, PRRP Program Coordinator; and Shelley Sprandel, Berkeley Sponsored Projects representative, will discuss the program funding opportunities and answer your questions about submissions.
Free and open to the public.
What Mahayana Sutras Mean: Thinking about Interpretation and Commentary
Jonathan Silk, Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, UCLA
September 22, 2005
Center for Buddhist Studies
Scholars and students of Buddhism have given much attention to Mahayana sutras, but little to the question of what they may have meant to traditional Indian readers. This talk will explore some questions of the meaning of Mahayana scriptures, how we might determine that meaning, and what to make of the comparative absence of Buddhist scripture commentaries in India.
Jonathan Silk is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on the history and scriptures of Indian Buddhism on the basis of Indian, Tibetan and Chinese literary sources. He is the author of Heart Sutra in Tibetan and the editor of Wisdom, Compassion, and the Search for Understanding: A Buddhist Studies Legacy of Gadjin M. Nagao.
South Korea's Education Fever: Origins, Impact and Challenges
Michael J. Seth, James Madison University
September 23, 2005
Center for Korean Studies
Understanding South Korea's preoccupation with schooling (its "education fever") is essential to understanding the recent history of Korea. Education fever is not simply an educational issue but a product of the dynamic mix of social, political, economic and cultural forces that have shaped this rapidly changing society. It has its origins in inherited cultural values that equated education with status as well as moral perfection, in the Western, especially American concepts of progressive education, in the Japanese colonial experience and in the education policies of the South Korean government after 1945. The zeal for education was the crucial factor in accounting for the country's remarkable transformation into a well-schooled nation in the decades after liberation and was an important factor in the nation's rapid economic growth and its democratization. It has also created a host of problems such as the focus on examination preparation, the enormous financial burden on families, and the struggle to maintain equal education opportunity. Education fever poses challenges for both educational policy makers and for scholars seeking to understand South Korea's society and its recent history.
Michael J. Seth received his Ph.D. from the Department of History, University of Hawaii at Manoa and has taught at James Madison University since 1998. He has written extensively on Korean historical and cultural issues.
Free and open to the public. Sponsored through a grant from the Korea Foundation.
Modern Girls (Unless They're French) Don't Wear Kimono
Liza Dalby, author of Geisha, Kimono — Fashioning Culture, and The Tale of Murasaki
September 25, 2005
Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley Art Museum, Pacific Film Archive
Organized in conjunction with "Taisho Chic: Japanese Modernity, Nostalgia, and Deco" at the UC Berkeley Art Museum and other related events and programs.
The first two decades of the twentieth century in Japan saw the kimono burst forth in a creative last gasp of fashion for the masses. In this lecture, anthropologist and writer Liza Dalby examines the juncture where kimono began to lose ground to western clothing on its home turf, yet its exotic design and form (as seen through western eyes) impacted the fashions of Paris, London, and New York.
Close Readings of Recently Excavated Manuscripts: The Evidence From Zhangjiashan
Donald Harper, Professor, East Asian Languages & Civilizations, University of Chicago Michael Nylan, Professor, History, UC Berkeley
September 29, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies, Department of History
Race, Empire, and the Dominatrix in the Novels of Japanese Author Numa Shozo
Christine Marran, Asian Languages & Literature, University of Minnesota
September 30, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
Between the Boudoir and the Global Marketplace: Shen Shou, Embroidery and Modernity at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
Dorothy Ko, Professor, Chinese History, Barnard College Wen-hsin Yeh, Professor, History, UC Berkeley
September 30, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies
Previous studies of China's modernization have focused on the modern half of the story—the development of factory production and urban culture. My current research project seeks to illuminate the "traditional" half of the story, with an emphasis on the resilience of female labor in the domestic economy and artistic innovations in the handicraft industries from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries.
This talk focuses on the global presentations and domestic reception of Shen Shou (1874-1921), one of the most innovative embroiderers from Suzhou, the center of the silk industry in China. In particular, I focus on her visit to Japan in 1904-05 and participation in world expos in the subsequent decade to explore the entanglements between Chinese modernity and changing definitions of femininity, skill, and visual realism.
Free and open to the public.
How to do Things with Books: Science, Modernity, and the New Reference Books of Twentieth Century China
Bridie Andrews Minehan, Assistant Professor, History, Bentley College
October 3, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies, Office for History of Science and Technology, UCSF History of Health Sciences, Townsend Center for the Humanities
In twentieth-century China, political leaders were often critical of traditional knowledge. Confucian education was blamed for inhibiting the natural sciences; the structure of the Chinese literary language was blamed for "inhibiting rational thought," and such skills as geomancy (fengshui) and traditional medicine were despised as superstitious, or unhygienic, or both. Yet today many of these judgments have been reversed, both in China and abroad. This talk concentrates on the social and textual technologies used to make apparently esoteric Chinese knowledge transparent and transferable. My working hypothesis is that Chinese reformers succeeded in reclassifying their culture: they took traditional categories of knowledge and reformulated them using new rubrics and modern information retrieval tools. The first implication of this research is that the organization of knowledge is a highly political act, in this case successfully repackaging unacceptably traditional forms of knowledge in acceptably modern ways. The second implication concerns the importance of printing for the development of western modernity. Very cheap books were widely available in China since at least the 16th century, without leading to a vernacularization of elite knowledge, a religious reformation, or a renaissance in arts and sciences – all of which, in Europe, are sometimes traced to the availability of cheap printed texts. Instead, similar developments occurred in China when texts were indexed and rearranged in ways that made their contents transparent.
Free and open to the public.
New Modes of Economic Governance: Decentralized Government in Vietnam and Indonesia
Alasdair Bowie, George Washington University
October 6, 2005
Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Southeast Asia Studies
Over the past five years, Vietnam and Indonesia have seen unprecedented transfers of regulatory power over private sector economic activity to provincial and district level governments. This talk will focus on the effects of these changes on economic governance at sub-national levels, and the interplay of economic governance and "renovation" in Vietnam and democratization in Indonesia. Alasdair Bowie has spent a year in Vietnam and Indonesia researching these issues at nine main study sites, and a further year writing and speaking about his findings as a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC.
Alasdair Bowie is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University. A 2004-2005 Wilson Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Dr. Bowie's research project is: "Power to the People? Implications of Decentralizing Government for Economic Governance in Vietnam and Indonesia." Alasdair Bowie received his Ph.D in Political Science from UC Berkeley in 1989.
Fukuzawa Yukichi and Maruyama Masao: Two Visions of Japan
Alan MacFarlane, Social Anthropology, King's College, University of Cambridge
October 6, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
In conjunction with: Alan MacFarlane's October 7 Maruyama Seminar, "Fukuzawa and Maruyama: How to Understand Japan."
The Maruyama Lectures are named in honour 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. Sponsored by the Center for Japanese Studies, 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.
On October 6-7 (Thursday-Friday), Alan MacFarlane, Professor of Social Anthropology at King's College, University of Cambridge will offer the 5th Maruyama Lecture and Seminar.
Alan Macfarlane was born in Assam, India, in 1941. He gained doctorates in history (Oxford, 1967) and anthropology (London, 1972) and has taught at the University of Cambridge since 1971. He became a Fellow of King's College in 1981, the British Academy in 1986 and Professor of Anthropological Science in 1991. He has given the Frazer, Malinowski and Marrett Lectures in Britain, the Silver Jubilee Guest Lecture at the Delhi School of Economics, and is the Sir Li Ka-Sheng distinguished lecturer in China in 2005. He has taught at the University of Tokyo and lectured at a number of Japanese universities.
He has undertaken extensive historical and anthropological work in England, Nagaland, Nepal, Japan and China. Among his fifteen published books are: Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England (1970); The Origins of English Individualism (1978); Marriage and Love in England (1986); The Culture of Capitalism (1987); The Savage Wars of Peace - England, Japan and the Malthusian Trap (1997); The Riddle of the Modern World (2000); The Making of the Modern World (2002 - on F.W.Maitland and Fukuzawa Yukichi); Glass: A World History (2002, with G.Martin); Letters to Lily - On How the World Works (2005).
His website contains interviews of sixty leading academics and thinkers, films from around the world, and various historical and anthropological databases and sets of writings.
Free and open to the public, reception to follow
Doxography, History, and Identity: Reflections on "Theravada Buddhism"
Peter Skilling, Fragile Palm Leaves Foundation, Thailand
October 6, 2005
Center for Buddhist Studies, Center for Southeast Asia Studies
"Theravada Buddhism" has become an unquestioned category in modern religious studies, as well as one of the premier options for Buddhist practice in the globalized "marketplace of religions." Peter Skilling will examine the origins and significance of the term "Theravada." Is the modern usage historically accurate? Have there been alternate designations? Was 'Theravada' the chosen marker of identity for the Buddhist communities of Southeast Asia in the pre-colonial and pre-modern periods? Is it possible that the term flattens the landscape, and lulls us into thinking we know more than we do?
Peter Skilling is the 2005/06 Numata Visiting Professor in Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Fellow of the Lumbini International Research Institute (Lumbini, Nepal) and a Special Lecturer at Chulalongkorn University (Bangkok, Thailand). He is founder of the Fragile Palm Leaves Foundation (Bangkok), a project dedicated to the preservation, study and publication of the Buddhist literature of Southeast Asia. He is also a founding member of the International Centre for Buddhist Studies (Bangkok).
Co-sponsored by the Center for Southeast Asia Studies.
China, India, Russia: Investing in Emerging Markets
October 7, 2005
Institute of East Asian Studies, UCB Haas School of Business, Clausen Center for International Business & Policy, Institute of Management, Innovation & Organization, US Russia Technology Symposium at Stanford, ISEEES, Center for South Asia Studies
At this conference on "Investing in Emerging Markets", top experts in finance, investment, trade, tax and intellectual property law discuss the challenges and opportunities for business growth and investment in China, India and Russia – three of the fastest growing economies in the world.
This event is sponsored and produced by two international business enterprises and six research centers at UC Berkeley and Stanford. See the Haas School of Business for the agenda, participants, location and registration information.
Co-sponsored by the East Asia National Resource Center at IEAS.
Preserving the Lore of Korean Antiquity: Iryon's Privileging of Local Discourse in the Samguk yusa
Richard D. McBride, II, Washington University, St. Louis
October 7, 2005
Center for Korean Studies
The Samguk yusa (Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms, ca. 1285) is not a "Buddhist history" to counter supposed "Confucian history" Samguk sagi (History of the Three Kingdoms, 1136-46). Iryon (1206-89), who took refuge in North Kyongsang Province after passing monastic examinations in the Koryo capital, composed the Samguk yusa to preserve anecdotes from antiquity for to demonstrate that the tales of Korea's founding ancestors were the equal of those of China. A more fruitful way to conceptualize the differences between the Samguk sagi and Samguk yusa is to think of the former as representative of official or central discourse and the latter as promoting local discourse. The great wealth and worth of the Samguk yusa comes from its inclusion of many types of local materials, anecdotes, traditional narratives, and native songs, as well as ancient myths and legends transformed by Buddhist conceptualizations of the universe. It is a valuable demonstration of how ancient Koreans of the Silla kingdom and their Koryo successors forged a meaningful amalgamation of native beliefs and practices within the broader Sinitic and Buddhist culture of East Asia.
Richard D. McBride, II, currently postdoctoral fellow in Korean and Buddhist Studies at Washington University-St. Louis, received his Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Cultures from UCLA. His publications include "Dharani and Spells in Medieval Sinitic Buddhism." Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 28, no. 1 (forthcoming, 2005); "Hidden Agendas in the Life Writings of Kim Yusin." (Acta Koreana 1, August, 1998:101-142); "The Hwarang segi Manuscripts: An In-Progress Colonial Period Fiction." Korea Journal (forthcoming, 2006); "Is There Really 'Esoteric' Buddhism?" (Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 27, no. 2, 2004: 323-350); and "The Vision-Quest Motif in Narrative Literature on the Buddhist Traditions of Silla" (Korean Studies 27, 2003:16-47). His book Domesticating the Dharma: Buddhist Cults and the Hwaom Synthesis in Silla Korea is under review at the U. Hawai'i Press.
Free and open to the public. Sponsored through a grant from the Korea Foundation.
Fukuzawa and Maruyama: How to Understand Japan
Alan MacFarlane, Social Anthropology, King's College, University of Cambridge
October 7, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
In conjunction with: Alan MacFarlane's October 6 Maruyama Lecture, "Fukuzawa Yukichi and Maruyama Masao: Two Visions of Japan."
The Maruyama Lectures are named in honour 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. Sponsored by the Center for Japanese Studies, 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.
On October 6-7 (Thursday-Friday), Alan MacFarlane, Professor of Social Anthropology at King's College, University of Cambridge will offer the 5th Maruyama Lecture and Seminar.
Alan Macfarlane was born in Assam, India, in 1941. He gained doctorates in history (Oxford, 1967) and anthropology (London, 1972) and has taught at the University of Cambridge since 1971. He became a Fellow of King's College in 1981, the British Academy in 1986 and Professor of Anthropological Science in 1991. He has given the Frazer, Malinowski and Marrett Lectures in Britain, the Silver Jubilee Guest Lecture at the Delhi School of Economics, and is the Sir Li Ka-Sheng distinguished lecturer in China in 2005. He has taught at the University of Tokyo and lectured at a number of Japanese universities.
He has undertaken extensive historical and anthropological work in England, Nagaland, Nepal, Japan and China. Among his fifteen published books are: Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England (1970); The Origins of English Individualism (1978); Marriage and Love in England (1986); The Culture of Capitalism (1987); The Savage Wars of Peace - England, Japan and the Malthusian Trap (1997); The Riddle of the Modern World (2000); The Making of the Modern World (2002 - on F.W.Maitland and Fukuzawa Yukichi); Glass: A World History (2002, with G.Martin); Letters to Lily - On How the World Works (2005).
His website contains interviews of sixty leading academics and thinkers, films from around the world, and various historical and anthropological databases and sets of writings.
Reservation required: 510.642.3156 or cjs@berkeley.edu.
Kwaidan
October 8, 2005
Institute of East Asian Studies, Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan
This film, described as a re-discovery of Japanese beauty through non-Japanese eyes, is based on Yakumo Koizumi's series of short spooky stories. Kwaidan is comprised of four parts: the story of a samurai, a young woodcutter, an expert biwa player, and a man named Kannai. This screening of Masaki Kobayashi's Kwaidan will be introduced by actress Yoko Sugi, Special Advisor for Cultural Exchange for Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs.
Film screening followed by reception.
Calligraphy by Venerable Master Hsing Yun
Master Hsing Yun, Founder of Fo Guang Shan Buddhist Order in Taiwan
October 11, 2005
Center for Buddhist Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies
In conjunction with Master Hsing Yun's calligraphy exhibit
On display: October 11–28, 2005
Monday through Friday, 9:00 am-5:00 pm
IEAS Lobby, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor
This exhibit features a wide array of Master Hsing Yun's calligraphy works and other artifacts. The works have been grouped into three categories: encouragement to disciples, blessings to devotees, and Dharma words. In 1967, Venerable Master Hsing Yun founded Fo Guang Shan Buddhist Order in Taiwan. Master Hsing Yun has devoted his time to promoting Dharma propagation through educational, cultural, and charitable endeavors.
Disciple of the Three Caverns: Lu Xiujing's renewal of medieval Taoism" and "Daoist Inner Alchemy and its views of other practices
Franciscus Verellen, Director, École française d'Extrême-Orient Fabrizio Pregadio, Acting Associate Professor, Religious Studies, Stanford
October 12, 2005
Center for Buddhist Studies, Center for Chinese Studies, Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures
The Exquisite Art of Kunqu Opera
Lecture and Demonstration: 崑曲之美講習會
October 12, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies
The Archaeology of the First Emperor's Burial Mound
Jeffrey Riegel, Professor, East Asian Languages & Cultures, UC Berkeley
October 14, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies
Free and open to the public.
The Space Between: The Cartographic Imagination of Japanese Modernism
October 14-15, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities
Ma Jian, Stick Out Your Tongue
October 17, 2005
Institute of East Asian Studies
Ma Jian is the author of the highly acclaimed Red Dust, a thoughtful memoir of an urban poet, painter and writer on the road in the mid-1980s. In his 2004 novel, The Noodle Maker, Ma Jian writes about the absurdities and cruelties of life in post-Tiananmen China. Ma Jian won the Thomas Cook Prize (UK) for his book, Red Dust. His forthcoming book, Stick Out Your Tongue, will be published in spring 2006.
Other programs in the IEAS Book Series: New Perspectives on East Asia.
60 Years after WWII: Japan's Complicated Relationship with China and Korea
Yoshibumi Wakamiya, Chairman, Editorial Board, Asahi Shimbun
October 18, 2005
Institute of East Asian Studies
Japan continues to face harsh anti-Japanese sentiments in both China and South Korea. What are the reasons for the persistent hostility? How can the Japanese government overcome long-standing resentments? Are current policies reinforcing historical images? What are the prospects for continued East Asian regional cooperation?
Yoshibumi Wakamiya has observed Japanese politics and diplomacy for a long time as a journalist for the Asahi Shimbun. Currently the chairman of the Asahi Shimbun's editorial board, his major publications include The Postwar Conservative View of Asia (1999) and Korea and Japan (2004, in Japanese).
An Immortal in Politics: Abbot Gao Rentong and the Quanzhen Daoist Nexus of Patronage, Power, and Monastic Expansion in Ninteenth Century Beijing
Xun Liu, Professor, History, Rutgers
October 19, 2005
Center for Buddhist Studies, Center for Chinese Studies, Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures
The Rise and Demise of China's 'New Thinking' on Japan
Peter Gries, Assistant Professor, Political Science, University of Colorado, Boulder
October 20, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies
Following the publication of Ma Licheng's provocative article "New Thinking on Relations with Japan," 2003 China witnessed a remarkable public debate on Japan policy. Academics tangled with Internet nationalists, and heavy pressure was put on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to take a tough line on Japan. The crushing defeat of the "New Thinking" and a spate of recent anti-Japanese protests on the Chinese street and in Chinese cyberspace portends trouble in East Asia.
Free and open to the public.
Mao's Revolution: What Remains?
Roderick MacFarquhar, Harvard University
October 20, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, Graduate School of Journalism, Office of the Chancellor
Featuring Roderick MacFarquhar, Leroy B. Williams Professor of History and Political Science, Harvard University. Lecture followed by conversation with Orville Schell, Dean, Graduate School of Journalism, UC Berkeley.
The Business of Lobbying in China
Scott Kennedy, Assistant Professor, Political Science, Indiana University
October 21, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies
Professor Kennedy's recently published book, The Business of Lobbying in China (Harvard University Press, February 2005), documents the growing influence of domestic and foreign businesses on national economic policy in China. Companies have become involved in a tug of war with the government and with each other to gain national policy advantages, often setting the agenda, providing alternative options, and pressing for a favored outcome. At the same time, a comparison of lobbying in the steel, consumer electronics, and software industries reveals that although companies operate in a common political system, economic circumstances of firms and their industries shape the nature and outcome of lobbying. The systemic nature of this variation suggests that China has not just one political economy, but multiple political economies.
Free and open to the public.
China's Cultural Revolution
October 21, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, Graduate School of Journalism
Shirking or Shouldering Responsibility? Central-Local Dynamics in the Chinese Rural Tax Reforms
Linda Che-lan Li, Associate Professor, Social and Public Administration, City University of Hong Kong
October 26, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies
Since the turn into the 21st Century, Chinese political leaders have placed added emphasis on social harmony and sustainable development. State resources have been budgeted, and new programs launched, to improve the well being of deprived social groups. This paper looks into one such program – the rural tax-for-fee reform, which had the peasantry as the intended beneficiary – and asks whether, and how, the implemented measures indicate a shirking or shouldering of responsibility, and by whom. Drawing on primary data from fieldwork and documentary analysis, the paper describes the twists and turns of reform implementation, and argues that the strategic interactions between central and local state actors have, unintentionally and somewhat ironically, served to improve the likelihood of responsibility being shouldered, rather than shirked.
Free and open to the public.
How Taoist Masters Engaged with the Modern Spiritual Market: The Case of Peking, 1800-1949 and The Qigong Movement, Taoist Revival, and Nationalism in Post-Mao China
Vincent Goossaert, Vice-Director, Institute of Sociology of Religions and Secularism, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
David Palmer, Director, Hong Kong EFEO Centre, Chinese University of Hong Kong
October 26, 2005
Center for Buddhist Studies, Center for Chinese Studies, Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures
Chinese Minorities of Yunnan Province and The Ancient Tea Road: 雲南少數民族與茶馬古道
Yao Jide (姚继德), Director, Southwest Asia Institute, Yunnan University
Mu Jihong (木继红), Professor, Chinese Language and Literature, Yunnan University
October 26, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies
In Chinese.
Yunnan Province is home to 26 different ethnic minorities, making it the most culturally diverse province in China. This multiplicity of cultures has endowed the province with a rich heritage. In 1997, the city of Lijiang was designated by UNESCO as one of the world's major cultural heritages. Lijiang is the center of the Lijiang Naxi Ethnic Minority Autonomous County. In 2002, Sifengjie village, Naxi Township, in Yunnan was listed as a "protected world architectural heritage site" by the World Architecture Foundation. The Ancient Tea Route has been referred to as the "Silk Road" of Southwestern China because of its significance in economic trade between China, Tibet and beyond. Until recent times most of Yunnan was not easily accessible as it was cut off from communication with the outside world by precipitous mountains.
Prof. Yao Jide is a Chinese Muslim from Yunnan province in China. He has a Bachelor's degree in Chinese Language and Literature and a Ph. D. in Anthropology. He is currently on the faculty of the Department of International Relations at Yunnan University and he is also the Director of the Southwest Asia Institute,Yunnan University. His research specialties are in the field of history of Chinese anthropology, history of Islam in China, history of cultural exchange between China and the West (Silk Road, expedition of Zhenghe) and others. Professor Yao has authored or co-authored 10 books and published more than 60 academic articles. He is presently on the Board of Directors of the Chinese Association of Anthropology, Chinese Association of Muslim Studies and other professional organizations.
姚继德,民族学（法学）博士。曾在云南民族大学、云南大学人 文学院。现任云南大学国际关系学院西南亚研究所副所 长，中国世界民族研究会会员，中国回族学会副秘书长，云南省郑和研究会副秘书长。研究伊斯兰教、民族宗教学、中外文化交流史、中外国际关系史。著作包括 《回族——通海县纳古镇》、《中国南方回族经济商贸资料选编》、《云南伊斯兰教史》、《云南回族人物碑传精选》、及《亚洲民族论坛》（执行副主编）、《丝 路悠悠：中国与伊朗》（执行副主编）、《礼物与商品》（译著）、《唐代中国与大食穆斯林》（译著）等。
Professor Mu Jihong is a member of the Naxi minority group in southwest China. He is a Professor of Chinese Language and Literature of Yunnan University and also Professor of Chinese Literature in the College of Contemporary Literature. His research interest is in the study of history and culture of minority groups in the southwestern region of China. One of the special subjects of Professor Mu's research is the ancient tea and horse caravan road going from southwestern China into Tibet and beyond. In fact, Professor Mu is the advisor to a documentary film entitled "De La Mu," about this subject. Professor Mu has authored and co-authored 15 books and published more than 50 academic articles.
木继红(木霁弘) 纳西族。现任教于云南大学文学与新文学院中文系、主要教授古代汉语、训诂学、文字学、汉语言与汉文化、中国少数民族文化、云南少数民族语言与少数民族文 化、民族文化与旅游。总发表论文五十二篇。著作等身。出版论著15本。《滇、藏、川“大三角”文化探秘》,《儒学与政治经济的发展汉文化转型》,《云南文 化奇观》,《云南旅游大全》,《中华民族整体论》,《茶马古道考察、纪事》,《茶马古道上的民族文化》,《云大早期的历史文化》,《普洱茶》另有报告文学 《走向辉煌的城市化道路》,《绿海卫士》。影视《如意宝地》,《香格里拉》,《金生丽水》,《茶马古道、德拉姆》（获华表奖）。议题包括茶马古道,寺庙文 化,儒学与云南政治经济的发展及文化转型,云南民族文化现状及保护措施。
Making Sense of North Korea
Mike Chinoy, CNN's Senior Asia Correspondent
October 26, 2005
Center for Korean Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, Goldman Forum on Press and Foreign Affairs, Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley
North Korea is still largely inaccessible to journalists, scholars, and policy makers. Even as media headlines announce the latest developments in the 6-party talks, predict continuing food shortages, or warn of accelerating nuclear threat, the international community receives little information about this reclusive country and its people.
Mike Chinoy has made fourteen reporting trips to North Korea since 1989 and was the only journalist to travel with former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on his historic peace-making trip to Pyongyang in 1994. Chinoy will offer a veteran Asia reporter's penetrating look behind the curtain of secrecy and misunderstanding that screens North Korea from outside view, address the challenge facing journalists who cover North Korea, and show his recent documentary film "North Korean Journeys."
Award-winning journalist Mike Chinoy joined CNN in 1983 as a correspondent based in the network's London bureau, covering such stories as the Thatcher era in Britain, the 1984 assassination of Indian Prime Mininster Indira Gandhi, the 1986 "People Power" revolt in the Philippines. As CNN's Beijing Bureau Chief for eight years and Hong Kong Bureau Chief for five years, he brought depth and perspective to reporting on China and the Asian region. Among the major stories he covered were Hong Kong's handover to China, the overthrow of Indonesia's President Suharto, the war in Afghanistan, and more recently the devastating tsunami in Southeast Asia. In 1989 he received an Emmy Award, an Award for Cable Excellence, a Dupont Award, and a Peabody Award for his coverage of the Tiananmen Square crisis. He is the author of China Live: People Power and the Television Revolution.
Miracles and Visions Among the Monastic Communities of Kucha, Xinjiang
Angela Howard, Professor of Asian Art, Department of Art History, Rutgers
October 27, 2005
Center for Buddhist Studies
In this presentation, Angela Howard focuses on some aspects of the art and Buddhist teachings of the ancient Kingdom of Kucha, present-day Xinjiang, where monastic communities thrived from 200-650. Monks settled in several locations – Kizil and Kumtura are the largest and best known, but equally important are Simsim, Mazabaha, Kizilkargha, and Taitai'er to name a few. Howard discusses a selected number of unusual images from these sites. They are painted representations of the Shravasti miracle, of the Cosmological Buddha, and of monumental clay sculptures of Buddha. All three are rooted in teachings formulated during the earliest phase of Buddhism. Teachings and images are tightly interconnected. These icons, moreover, are the exclusive outcome of devotional practices in which Kuchean monks engaged.
Angela Howard is Professor of Asian Art, Department of Art History, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. As Special Consultant in Chinese Buddhist art, the Asian Art Department, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, she contributed to the exhibition China – Dawn of a Golden Age (October 2004-January 2005). In addition to numerous articles, Dr. Howard has authored The Imagery of the Cosmological Buddha (1986) and Summit of Treasures, Buddhist Cave Art of Dazu, China (2001). She is the Western editor and collaborator of the volume Chinese Sculpture, a Yale University and Foreign Language Press publication, forthcoming Fall 2005.
Spirits of the State
John Nelson, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of San Francisco
October 28, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
Yasukuni Shrine is one of Japan's most controversial and important religious sites. This presentation will begin with Nelson's 26-minute documentary film that addresses the complex and contentious positioning within the shrine of nationalism, cultural identity, religion, and historical revisionism. Based on ethnographic and other video footage, the film provides a rare look into rituals carried out for spirits of the military dead and bereaved families, as well as exhibits from the shrine's museum of war memorabilia. Following the film will be a short lecture on recent developments related to the shrine – including the Prime Minister's fifth visit on Oct. 18th – that have the potential to destabilize East Asian security, international investment, and regional cooperation.
John Nelson, Associate Professor of East Asian Religions at the University of San Francisco, is the author of A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine (1996) and Enduring Identities: the Guise of Shinto in Contemporary Japan (2000), an article on the shrine itself, "Social Memory as Ritual Practice: Commemorating Spirits of the Military Dead at Yasukuni Shinto Shrine," (Journal of Asian Studies, May 2003), and the 1997 documentary film, "Japan's Rituals of Remembrance: Fifty Years after the Pacific War."
Homecoming Diaries: Inhabiting and Dis-inhabiting the Theatrical in Postwar Shanghai Cinema
Bao Weihong, Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Chinese Studies
Andrew Jones, Associate Professor, East Asian Languages & Cultures, UC Berkeley
October 28, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies
Postwar Shanghai cinema (1945-1949) has been acclaimed for its quasi "neo-realistic" quality, yet its arguable "neo-realism" is also constituted and punctuated by the irreducible presence of the theatrical in figural, stylistic, and spectatorial sense. My paper explores this theatrical visibility by examining a cluster of "homecoming" films that feature the postwar theater workers who returned from the hinterland only to find themselves denied dwelling in the estranging city of Shanghai. I argue that the displacement of the cinematic and the theatrical in a new social order of mass media is most effectively reimagined and negotiated in the housing problem prevalent in these films, evoking asymmetrical binaries of country/city, exteriority/domesticity, and utopic past/dystopic present.
The weight of the theatrical reconfigured in these films can be better understood via a historical investigation of the ways Chinese cinema had been imbricated with theater since 1896. This process of interaction came to a significant juncture during the wartime period when numerous Shanghai filmmakers departed for the "Great Hinterland" and plunged into a radically altered dynamic between cinema and modern spoken drama. Their mutual framing, contiguous aesthetics, and shared exhibition space propelled the transformation for both media on aesthetic as well as social-spatial levels. This retrospection will help understand the "neo-realism" and the shelter-seeking motif for postwar films as sites of cinematic negotiation with the recent past, rendered mostly eloquently in Zhang Junxiang's Homecoming Diaries (1947), in the climactic battle for disowned and repossessed homes and the ecstasy of flying saucers.
Free and open to the public.
Occupational and Environmental Health in the Developing World: Making a Difference
October 28, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies, Center for Occupational and Environmental Health
Third Berkeley-Stanford Buddhist Studies Graduate Student Colloquium
October 29, 2005
Center for Buddhist Studies
Koizumi's Gamble and Its Consequences
Gerald Curtis, Political Science, Columbia University
October 31, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
Japan's September 11th general election was one of the most interesting, entertaining, and important elections in recent memory. The election's outcome tells us a lot about what has changed in Japanese society. The key questions now are what Koizumi is going to do with his victory and what the implications of the election are for Japanese politics over the longer term.
Gerald L. Curtis is the Burgess Professor of Political Science at Columbia University and a visiting professor at the Graduate Research Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo. He is former Director of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University. Professor Curtis is the author of The Logic of Japanese Politics and numerous other books and articles on Japanese politics, government, and foreign policy and U.S.-Japan relations. He is a columnist for the Chunichi and Tokyo Shimbun, senior advisor to Newsweek for Newsweek Japan, and a regular contributor to mass media and intellectual journals in the United States, Japan, and other countries. Professor Curtis has held appointments at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, London; the College de France, Paris; Keio and Tokyo Universities; and the Research Institute for Economy, Trade and Industry in Tokyo. He is the recipient of the Chunichi Shimbun Special Achievement Award, the Masayoski Ohira Memorial Prize for The Japanese Way of Politics, and the Japan Foundation Award for his writings on Japanese politics and society and his contributions to increasing knowledge about Japan abroad. In 2004 Professor Curtis was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star by the Emperor of Japan. Professor Curtis is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Board of Directors of the U.S. Japan Foundation. He is advisor and consultant to numerous public and private organizations in the United States and Japan.
Free and open to the public.
Mark Leong: China Obscura - A Photo Exhibit
November 1 – December 9, 2005
Institute of East Asian Studies
Living in Beijing and traveling across the country over the past fifteen years, Mark Leong has captured images that astonish both in their power and their access to the subtle currents of everyday life – official and underground – where migrant workers float from city to city looking for work, a rock band is monitored by plainclothes police, traveling strippers perform in a tent, and an addict sifts heroin on a bill bearing Mao's benevolent smile. In addition to Mark's stunning black-and-white photographs, the exhibit will feature new color work.
Mark Leong's photographs have appeared in Time, National Geographic, Stern, Fortune, the New York Times, and the New Yorker. A selection of his photos was published recently in China Obscura (Chronicle Books, 2004). He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Lila-Wallace-Reader's Digest Foundation, and the FiftyCrows International Fund for Documentary Photography. A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, he currently lives in Beijing.
The Harvard Buddha Reconsidered
Roderick Whitfield, Professor, Chinese and East Asian Art, SOAS
November 2, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies, Asian Art and Visual Cultures Working Group
In the Sackler Museum, Harvard University, there is displayed a handsome gilt bronze figure of the seated Buddha, bequeathed to the Fogg Museum of Art in 1943 by Grenville Winthrop, who had acquired it from Yamanaka and Co., New York. Recently, Marylin Martin Rhie discussed this piece at length in the first volume of her book, Early Buddhist Art of China and Central Asia (Leiden: Brill). Rhie suggested that this image is one of the earliest Chinese gilt bronze Buddhist images, dating from the late second or early third century AD, i.e. the late Han dynasty.
Comparison with other early Chinese gilt bronze images, such as the Brundage Buddha in the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, a seated Buddha of similar size dated by inscription to a year corresponding to AD 338, reveals a marked difference in style. This raises questions, if Rhie's date is to be accepted, as to how Chinese artisans were able as early as the late Han dynasty to make an accurate copy of an image of Gandhara style, and why they subsequently reverted to the simplified drapery style seen both in some generic Han dynasty representations of Buddha and in important votive images like the Brundage Buddha.
Free and open to the public.
Brook Larmer, Operation Yao Ming
November 2, 2005
Institute of East Asian Studies, Graduate School of Journalism
Operation Yao Ming traces the development and emergence of Yao Ming as China's first bona fide NBA star, from the arranged marriage of his parents — both reluctant but sensational, and tall, basketball players in China — to Nike's savvy insinuation into Yao's career and his number-one selection in the 2002 NBA draft. Not coincidentally, Yao's story reflects the seismic shifts taking place in Chinese sports; it starts with a country virtually invisible in the global arena that becomes, by the time of Yao's emergence, an international power not embarrassed to flex its muscle.
Brook Larmer is an award-winning journalist who has worked as the Newsweek bureau chief in Buenos Aires, Miami, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, where he now lives with his wife.
Program followed by Book Signing. See other programs in the IEAS Book Series: New Perspectives on East Asia.
Lao She's "Teahouse" and Modern China
Peter Li, Professor Emeritus, Asian Studies and Comparative Literature, Rutgers
November 3, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies
In conjunction with Cal Performances production of Teahouse, November 5th & 6th
As Lao She himself said, "A big teahouse is like a miniature society." "Teahouse" then can be read as a metaphor for modern China in the 20th century. Temporally, the play spans fifty years of modern Chinese history from the One Hundred Days' Reform in 1898, through the warlord era, to the civil war period beginning in 1945. These fifty years witnessed the disintegration of the Qing empire and the beginning of the struggle to build a modern nation-state. Through portrayal of a series of xiao renwu – ordinary characters – from all walks of life who frequent the traditional Beiping teahouse, Lao She presents a vivid and poignant portrait of China locked in a life and death struggle for survival.
Colonial Modernity in Korean Literature
November 4, 2005
Center for Korean Studies, Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures
The workshop considers limits and possibilities of colonial modernity through discussions of the early twentieth century Korean writers' engagement with various aspects of the Japanese colonial empire, with an aim to foster a broader dialogue on the relationship between transnational forces such as colonialism and circulation of literary and cultural forms. This workshop serves as a follow-up meeting to the conference "Colonial Literature & Constellations of History," held at Rutgers University in November 2004.
Schedule
Opening Remarks
9:15 a.m.: Clare You (Chair, Center for Korean Studies)
Forms in Translation
9:30-10:00: Sorting Culture, Jiwon Shin (East Asian Languages & Cultures, UC Berkeley)
10:00-10:30: Forms of Crisis, Janet Poole (East Asian Studies, New York University)
10:30-11:00: Heterolingual Love: Kim Ôk's International Affections, Ann Choi (Asian Languages and Cultures, Rutgers University)
11:00-11:10: Coffee Break
11:10 a.m.-12:30 p.m.: Discussion
Lunch
Texts & Images in the Policed Space
2:00-2:30: Yôm Sang-sôp's Love and Crime and the Colonial Cityscape, Theodore Hughes (East Asian Languages & Cultures, Columbia University)
2:30-3:00: Can Texts Ever Be Definitive?: Modern Korean Literature and State Censorship, Kyeong-Hee Choi (East Asian Languages & Civilizations, University of Chicago)
3:00-3:30: Intertextual Constellations in Depictions of Film: Yi Sang/Akutagawa Ryuosuke's "Artificial Wings" and Ben Hur., Walter K. Lew (English, Mills College)
3:30-3:40: Coffee Break
3:40-5:00: Discussion
Unspeakable Acts: The Avant-Garde Theatre of Terayama Shuji and Postwar Japan
Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei, Japanese Theater, UCLA
November 4, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
Unspeakable Acts interrogates postwar Japanese culture and theatre through the creative work of Terayama Shûji (1935-1983), one of postwar Japan's most gifted and controversial playwrights/directors, also a filmmaker, poet, novelist and theorist. Using Japanese and Western theories of psychoanalysis, anthropology, sociology, gender studies and aesthetics, Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei situates this unique yet emblematic artist – hailed as a genius and denounced as a terrorist/pornographer – in historical and cultural context. She explores why Terayama remains a cult hero today by examining issues such as the postwar ruins of personal and national identity; nostalgia; post modernity; the theory of Japan as a "mother-centered culture"; and the artistic legacies and practices that bind Terayama to – and sever him from – the international avant-garde and the popular performances of his rural youth. Translations of three key plays and portions of Terayama's dramatic theory enhance the analysis. The video-illustrated lecture will emphasize Terayama's tortured "love-in-hate" for his mother and other females.
This event is free and open to the public.
A Book Reading with Novelist Hwang Suk-Young
November 4, 2005
Center for Korean Studies
"More has been expected of Hwang Sok-Yong than almost any other Korean writer of the past quarter century. Ever since the early 1970s, when Hwang began to write stories about the nameless millions on whose backs the Korean 'economic miracle' was realized, he has been regarded as a champion of the people," wrote Bruce Fulton in the Columbia Companion to Modern East Asian Literature. Indeed, Hwang Sok-Yong has witnessed many of the tumultuous events of modern Korean history and drawn artistic inspiration from his own experiences as vagabond day laborer, student activist, Vietnam War veteran, advocate for coalminers and garment workers, and political dissident.
Hwang Sok-Yong was born in 1943 in Zhangchung, Manchuria, where his family had fled after fighting the Japanese occupation of Korea. When Korea was liberated in 1945, they returned to Hwanghae Province in what is now North Korea. In July 1953 an armistice was signed which definitively divided the country into two states, a division which still haunts the national psyche.
In 1966, Mr. Hwang was drafted into Korea's military corps in Vietnam, and fought until 1969 for the American cause which he saw as an attack on the Vietnamese liberation struggle:
What difference was there between my father's generation, drafted into the Japanese army or made to service Imperial Japan's pan-Asian ambitions, and my own, unloaded into Vietnam by the Americans in order to establish a 'Pax Americana' zone in the Far East during the Cold War?
In Vietnam he was responsible for "clean-up," erasing the proof of civilian massacres and burying the dead. Based on these experiences, he wrote the 1970 short story The Pagoda, which won the Korean daily newspaper Chosun Ilbo's New Year prize.
His first novel — The Chronicle of a Man Named Han, the story of a family separated by the Korean War — was also published in 1970, and is still relevant today after Kim Dae-jong's visit to North Korea led to talk of reunification and reunion programs for separated families.
Mr. Hwang published a collection of stories, The Road to Sampo in 1974, and became a household name with his epic, Chang Kil-san, which was serialized in a daily newspaper over a period of ten years (1974-84). Using the parable of a bandit from olden times ("parables are the only way to foil the censors") to describe the contemporary dictatorship, Chang Kil-san was a huge success in North as well as South Korea. It sold an estimated million copies, and remains a bestseller in Korean fiction today.
Hwang Sok-Yong also wrote for the theater, and several members of a company were killed for performing one of his plays during the 1980 Kwangju uprising. During this time Hwang Sok-Yong went from being just a writer revered by students and intellectuals to becoming a political activist. As he says:
I fought Park Chung-hee's dictatorship. I worked in the factories and farms of Cholla, and I took part in the movements of the masses throughout the country [...] In 1980, I took part in the Kwangju uprising. I improvised plays, wrote pamphlets and songs, coordinated a group of writers against the dictatorship, and started a clandestine radio station called "The Voice of Free Kwangju."
A substantial and award-winning novel based on his bitter experience of the Vietnam War, The Shadow of Arms, was published in 1985, and a Vietnamese-Korean film based on the novel is currently in production.
In 1989, Mr., Hwang travelled to Pyongyang in North Korea, via Tokyo and Peking, as a representative of the nascent democratic movement, to promote exchange between the Association of South Korean artists and the general Federation of North Korean literature and arts unions. This crossing of the border was illegal, and the South Korean criminal investigation service regarded Mr. Hwang as a spy. Rather than return to South Korea, he went into voluntary exile in New York and Germany.
In 1993 he returned to Seoul – because "a writer needs to live in the country of his mother tongue" – and was promptly sentenced to seven years in prison for breach of national security. While in prison, he conducted eighteen hunger strikes against restrictions such as the banning of pens and inadequate nutrition. Organizations around the world, including PEN America and Amnesty, rallied for his release and he was finally pardoned in 1998 as part of a group amnesty by the then newly elected president Kim Dae-jung.
Mr. Hwang published his first novel in ten years, The Old Garden, in 2000. This "requiem for the inner experiences of the 1980s generation, who dreamed of a better life" has been highly successful, and won the Danjae Award and Yi san Literary Award.
The Guest, a novel about a massacre in North Korea wrongly attributed to the Americans that was in fact a battle between Christian and Communist Koreans, was published in 2002. The "guest" is a euphemism in Korean for smallpox, or an unwanted visitor that brings death and destruction, and it is used in the novel to describe the twin horrors that Christianity and Communism became when introduced to Korea.
Today, he remains as committed as ever:
What is known as globalization is in fact Americanization: we need to stop following the American model and build a movement that will close the gap between the rich and the poor and give more purchasing power to the developing world.
Free and open to the public.
Taisho: Chic on Screen
November 5 – December 11, 2005
Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley Art Museum, Pacific Film Archive
For Taisho-era audiences, part of the appeal of the cinema was its exoticism, during a time when international influences were becoming widely popularized. Films both foreign and domestic were a potent force in shaping the identities of "modern girls" (and "modern boys"), in the context of the public debate over "the new woman." The 1920s through the mid-1930s were formative years for Japanese cinema, a period in which many of the great directors evolved their signature styles. Taisho Chic on Screen begins with two of the very few surviving Japanese features from the early 1920s, Souls on the Road and Winter Camellia, examples of the "pure film movement," which aspired to free cinema of traditional practices such as men playing women's roles and live narration, and looked instead to American and European models.
Tickets for the Taisho Chic on Screen film series are available from the Pacific Film Archive.
In Conversation with China's AIDS Ambassador Pu Cunxin
Pu Cunxin (濮存昕), Actor, AIDS Activist
Humphrey Wou, Director, AIDS Relief Fund for China
November 5, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies, AIDS Relief Fund for China, The Asia Society, Berkeley Chinese Student Scholar Association (BCSSA)
In conjunction with Cal Performances production of Teahouse, November 5th & 6th
Free. Pre-registration required. Please email your RSVP by November 2 to: eventpu@gmail.com
Pu Cunxin (濮存昕) is a household name in China. He's known for his accomplished career on stage, in films, on television and, most recently, as one of China's foremost spokespersons on AIDS. He was appointed by the Ministry of Health in 2000 to raise public awareness of the AIDS epidemic – the first person to play such a role in China's public health history. Pu fights stigma and discrimination against AIDS through public speaking and visits with AIDS patients and families. He has also set up a personal fund of more than 400,000 RMB to help children from impoverished AIDS families continue their education. In the past few years Pu has starred in three Chinese films and television series involving AIDS as a theme, portraying roles ranging from AIDS patient to doctor to family member, and donated a significant portion of the proceeds to AIDS research in China. In international film circles, he's best known for playing the leading role in the award-winning film "Shower" (洗澡). This bilingual program will feature Mr. Pu discussing his experience with AIDS education and AIDS activism in China.
Co-sponsored by the AIDS Relief Fund for China, The Asia Society, and Berkeley Chinese Student Scholar Association (BCSSA).
Buddhist Relics Redux Workshop
November 5, 2005
Center for Buddhist Studies
In the past few decades the study of relic veneration has taken a central place in research on Buddhist history, material culture, and institutions. This spate of interest was spurred, in part, by the groundbreaking studies of relics in medieval Christendom by scholars such as Peter Brown, Caroline Bynum, and Patrick Geary. Following the lead of these medievalists, Buddhologists such as Gregory Schopen and Bernard Faure turned their attention to the phenomena of relics in the Buddhist tradition, producing a number of important studies. In 1994 Kevin Trainor and David Germano started the Relic Veneration Seminar, which met over a four-year period in conjunction with meetings of the American Academy of Religion. A number of participants in that seminar came out with entire monographs devoted to the subject; the volumes include Kevin Trainor's Relics, Ritual, and Representation in Buddhism: Rematerialising the Sri Lankan Theravada Tradition (1997), Brian Ruppert's Jewel in the Ashes: Buddha Relics and Power in Early Medieval Japan (2000), and John Strong's Relics of the Buddha (2004). And in 2004 Trainor and Germano published a volume of papers that emerged from the Relic Veneration Seminar, entitled Embodying the Dharma: Buddhist Relic Veneration in Asia. As a result of these monographs and dozens of additional articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia articles, we now possess a wealth of data testifying to the importance of relics in Buddhist history across the Asian continent.
Much of the work done to date has been descriptive in nature, testifying to the centrality of relics in Buddhism. When scholars have strayed beyond description, the analyses have often been Foucauldian in nature; we learn that relics were wielded in the interests of institutional authority, political power, and religious legitimation. Many questions, however, remain unexplored. Why do relics assume such a prominent role in Buddhism in the first place? Is there something distinctively "Buddhist" about the Buddhist treatment of relics? Why are there so many apparent parallels – superficial or otherwise – in Buddhist and Christian relic cults? This workshop will take stock of where we are with respect to our understanding of relics, and where we might go from here.
Schedule
10:00 a.m. — Keynote address
Roderick Whitfield (London University): "A Phoenix from the Ashes: The Inextinguishable Power of Chinese Buddhist Relics"
11:30 a.m. — Lunch Break
1:00 p.m. — Panel 1: Circumscribing Relics
Chair: Bryan Cuevas (Florida State University)
Panelists:
Phyllis Granoff (Yale University): "Relics, Rubies, and Rituals: Some Comments on the Distinctiveness of the Buddhist Relic Cult."
Koichi Shinohara (Yale University): "The Distinctiveness of Relic Miracle Stories."
Peter Skilling (Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, and Fragile Palm Leaves Foundation): "Relics: The Heart of Buddhist Veneration."
Benjamin Bogin (UC Berkeley): "Making Brahman's Flesh in Tibet: The Kyédun Ritual and the Cult of Relics."
Discussant: Duncan Williams (UC Irvine)
3:10 p.m. — Coffee Break
3:30 p.m. — Panel 2: Thinking with Relics
Chair: Jan Nattier (Soka University, Japan)
Panelists:
Justin McDaniel (UC Riverside): "Category Shift: Making New Relics in Bangkok."
James Robson (University of Michigan): "Relic Wary: Facets of Buddhist Relic Veneration in East Asia."
John Strong (Bates College): "What Makes Relics Run."
Discussant: Steven Collins (University of Chicago)
Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mao: The Unknown Story
November 7, 2005
Institute of East Asian Studies, Graduate School of Journalism, Cody's Books
In their new book Mao — The Unknown Story Jung Chang and Jon Halliday make an impassioned case for a reevaluation of Mao — as a tyrant worse than Stalin or Hitler. Based on a decade of research into previously untapped sources worldwide and on unprecedented interviews with Mao's inner circle and with virtually everyone outside China who had significant dealings with him, this book raises new questions about Mao's role in the rise and success of the Chinese Communist movement.
Jung Chang is the author of Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, a best-selling memoir that chronicles the sufferings of her family under Mao. Jon Halliday, her husband, is a British historian.
Other programs in the IEAS Book Series: New Perspectives on East Asia.
Japan's FTAs with Southeast Asia: Economic Interests and a Contest with China
Kitti Prasirtsuk, Political Science, Thammasat University, Thailand
November 7, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
It is both economic and political interests that have driven Japan towards the establishment of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with Southeast Asia. Perceivably, Japan has three goals in launching these FTA negotiations. First, Japan desires to contest China's increasing clout in Southeast Asia following Beijing's initial proposal of the China-ASEAN FTA in 2001. Second, Japanese industries aim to advance their economic interests in Southeast Asia by lessening restrictions particularly in regards to investment rules and the service industry. Third, FTAs are expected to exert external pressure (gaiatsu) for structural reform in Japan.
This presentation argues that Japan has given priority to the first and second goals which, it turns out, are quite intertwined. With China in perspective, Tokyo always emphasizes high standards on investment rules and the protection of intellectual property rights, which should be useful when Japan has to deal with China on such issues whether bilaterally or regionally. The third goal of FTA gaiatsu meanwhile, is greatly compromised by Japan's reluctance to embrace labor and agricultural imports. Political leadership on FTAs is lacking as Koizumi has been focusing elsewhere.
Interrelationships between the Arts of China and Korea
Robert Mowry, Curator of Chinese Art, Arthur M. Sackler Museum
November 9, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies, Center for Korean Studies, Asian Art and Visual Cultures Working Group
This illustrated slide lecture will discuss stylistic and technical relationships between the arts of China and Korea. Although it is well known that the arts of those two cultures are closely related, it is less well understood that at their best, the arts of Korea stand alongside those of China in terms of aesthetics, quality, and technical mastery. This lecture will develop that thesis, demonstrating how the Koreans learned from the Chinese — in painting, ceramics, Buddhist sculpture, lacquer, and metalwork — fully mastered the necessary techniques, and then moved on to express their own aesthetic preferences. The lecture will treat all historical periods of Korean art, from the Three Kingdoms period (traditionally, 57 BC - AD 668) through the Choson dynasty (1392-1910), but it will focus on the Koryo dynasty (935-1392).
Free and open to the public.
Modern Girl in East Asia
November 13, 2005
Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley Art Museum, Pacific Film Archive
Organized in conjunction with Taisho Chic: Japanese Modernity, Nostalgia, and Deco at the UC Berkeley Art Museum and other related events and programs.
Panelists will focus on the central role of the "Modern Girl" — a motif which figures prominently in the Taisho Chic exhibition — in understanding the cultural and historical moment of Japan's embrace of Western modernism in the 1920s and 30s. The discussion will offer a cross-cultural look at the "Modern Girl" and related issues from the standpoint of China, Korea, and of course, Japan.
Participants include: Tani Barlow (University of Washington); Jordan Sand (Georgetown University); Miriam Silverberg (UCLA.); Kyu Hyun Kim (UC Davis); Dan O'Neill, moderator (UC Berkeley).
Baby Showers: Ajanta Ceiling Paintings and Festivals of Kathmandu Valley
Gautama Vajracharya
November 14, 2005
Center for Buddhist Studies, Department of Art History
Indian astrological texts usually have a chapter called "Symptom of Pregnancy." This chapter, however, has nothing to do with human pregnancy but with the conception of Mother Sky. Recent investigation indicates that this concept is closely associated not only with Ajanta ceiling paintings but also with the Buddhist and Hindu festivals, still observed annually in Kathmandu Valley.
The Cheonggyecheon Restoration: Background, Meaning, and Challenges
Chang, Seok Hyo, Vice Mayor, Seoul Metropolitan Government
November 16, 2005
Center for Korean Studies
Colloquium in Korean
"The restoration of the stream will provide an interesting case to see if a city can replace concrete jungles with green spaces"
(Reuters, Oct. 1, 2005).
"A landmark experiment, which is restoring the flowing clean water and green landscape of the stream by demolishing a covered road on which approximately 170,000 vehicles pass per day"
(Asahi Shimbun, Dec. 21, 2004).
The original name of the Cheonggyecheon was "Gaechon," meaning, "Open Stream." It is an urban stream flowing from west to east through the center of Seoul. Ever since Seoul was designated as the capital during the Choson Dynasty in 1394, this stream has played a symbolic role in Korean society. Nevertheless, construction of the so-called "Cheonggyecheon Highway" commenced in August, 1967 and ended in August, 1971. This construction project effectively erased this important cultural heritage property.
The stream's restoration work by the Seoul Metropolitan Government, launched in July, 2003, is now complete. The 5.8 kilometer-long stream, which had been buried in concrete for half a century, was reborn on October 1, 2005. The Cheonggyecheon restoration project has proven to be a remarkable model of ecological restoration work for metropolises. As the Discovery Channel titled its Cheonggyecheon documentary, "Man-Made Marvels, Seoul Searching" (aired in October, 2005), the project is also expected to enhance the city's globally attractive investment possibilities and to transform the area into another tourist magnet. Today Vice Mayor Chang as the project team leader will talk about his experiences in carrying out this remarkable project and will discuss its implications for similar projects both in Korea and in other countries as well.
Free and open to the public. Presentation in Korean.
Humans, Ghosts, and Spirits in Chinese Late Antiquity
Michael Puett, Professor, History, Harvard
November 16, 2005
Center for Buddhist Studies, Center for Chinese Studies, Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures
Anne Allison, Millennial Monsters
November 17, 2005
Institute of East Asian Studies
Within the past decade, the currency of made-in-Japan cultural goods has skyrocketed in the global marketplace. From sushi and karoke to martial arts and techno-ware, the globalization of Japanese "cool" today is being led by youth products: video games, manga (comic books), anime (animation), and cute characters that have fostered kid crazes from Hong Kong to Canada. What precisely is it about the fantasies enjoined by these goods and about the conditions of life that inspired them that accounts for such global popularity? In her new book Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination Anne Allison examines the crossover traffic between Japan and the United States of four waves of youth goods.
Anne Allison is a professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University. Allison's current research is on the recent popularization of Japanese children's goods on the global marketplace and how its trends in cuteness, character merchandise, and high-tech play pals are remaking Japan's place in today's world of millennial capitalism.
Other programs in the IEAS Book Series: New Perspectives on East Asia.
The Manuscript Legacy of the Tang
Stephen Owen, Professor, Harvard University
November 17, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies
Predicting Rural School Enrollments: How Wealth and Politics Close the Gender Gap
Deborah Davis, Professor, Sociology, Yale University Tom Gold, Professor of Sociology, UC Berkeley
November 18, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies
From the Roji to the World: Nakagami Kenji and the Politics of Translation
Sayuri Oyama, Japanese Studies, Sarah Lawrence College
November 21, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
In his fiction and ethnographic writing, postwar Japanese writer Nakagami Kenji (1946-1992) explores the connections between place and identity. As a writer from the Kumano region of Japan, Nakagami has been framed in criticism and translation in terms of his specific connection to buraku by birth. Yet Nakagami's writing calls for a rethinking of what it means to belong to a place or for places to represent people. This paper will examine how Nakagami's narratives, including Misaki (The Cape) and Kishu: Ki no kuni, ne no kuni monogatari (A Tale of the Land of Trees, a Land of Roots), complicate readings of Nakagami as a writer from or of the buraku.
Free and open to the public.
Becoming Hevajra
Harunaga Isaacson, Department of South Asia Studies, University of Pennsylvania
November 22, 2005
Center for Buddhist Studies
Professor Isaacson will give an overview of the daily meditative and ritual practice of an initiate into the system of Hevajra, on the basis of a large body of literature in Sanskrit, mostly unpublished, describing this Buddhist tantric practice. He will also comment on the tensions between this form of practice and non-tantric Buddhism, and on how the authors of this corpus attempt to resolve these tensions.
Harunaga Isaacson is Assistant Professor of South Asia Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His focus is on Sanskrit and classical Indian studies, with special interests in poetry, Puranic literature, Indian philosophy, and Tantric religious practices. He is currently working on a forthcoming monograph entitled, The Practice of Hevajra: Studies in the Sanskrit texts of the Hevajra-cycle.
Debates on Reform of Personal Income Tax in China
November 29, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies
China's current 800 RMB personal income tax deduction was set in 1980 when the average personal income was approximately 40 RMB. There is a dire need to raise the current amount of the personal deduction, however, the level of the new deduction amount is a rather controversial topic. This presentation will focus on some of the underlying reasons reform is needed, and present current arguments from both sides of the debate, as well as the speaker's own views.
Recent Developments in China's Criminal Law
Zuo Weimin, Vice Dean and Professor of Law at Sichuan University School of Law
November 29, 2005
Institute of East Asian Studies
China's legal system is undergoing significant changes. Over the past two years in particular there have been several significant developments that have influenced the public's attitude, and resulted in changes in criminal procedures, including changes to detention without trial. Zuo Weimin, Vice President of China's Procedural Law Association, and author of many books on criminal procedure, will discuss his views on recent developments. Professor Zuo is Vice Dean and Professor of Law at the Sichuan University School of Law. He was a Visiting Scholar at Yale Law School in 2002 and is currently a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University where he is researching the judicial appointment systems in the US and China.
One Billion Customers: Lessons from the Front Lines of Doing Business in China
James McGregor
November 30, 2005
Institute of East Asian Studies, Berkeley China Initiative
Followed by reception and book signing.
James McGregor asks the big questions about China's current economic boom: Who are China's entrepreneurs and how did they get so rich? How independent are they from their government and bureaucracy? How and to what extent can Western companies partake of China's new wealth? He gives his answers in a series of lively and detailed case studies describing how important deals came together or fell apart, how the people involved viewed and treated each other, and how politics and prejudices may taint expectations and outcomes.
James McGregor is a former Wall Street Journal Beijing Bureau Chief. In the 1990s he served as Chief Executive of Dow Jones' China operations and subsequently became a venture-capital investor during China's dotcom boom.
See other programs in the IEAS Book Series: New Perspectives on East Asia.
Thinking Outside the Boxes: Nesting Reliquary Caskets from a Ninth-Century Chinese Monastic Crypt
Eugene Wang, Department of Art History, Harvard University
December 1, 2005
Center for Buddhist Studies
An underground crypt was discovered in the Tang-dynasty pagoda basement of a Chinese Buddhist monastery in 1987. The crypt yielded hundreds of precious artifacts donated in the name of the Tang emperors and others, as well as four Buddha relics, one of them now believed by the Buddhist community to be the "authentic" finger-bone of Buddha Sakyamuni. What merits art historical attention in particular is the set of eight nesting reliquary caskets arranged in the manner of Russian dolls. The reliquary contains examples of the earliest surviving mandalas in China. Professor Wang's lecture will unpack the nesting caskets to reveal the vast ancient and medieval Chinese imaginary cosmos embedded therein.
Eugene Y. Wang is Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of Asian Art at Harvard University. His most recent book is Shaping the Lotus Sutra: Buddhist Visual Culture in Medieval China (2005). He is the art history associate editor of Encyclopedia of Buddhism (2004). He has widely published on Chinese art and visual culture.
Mishima Yukio: Camp, Kitsch, or Crazy?
Keith Vincent, Japanese Literature, New York University
December 2, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
Mishima Yukio knew how to push people's buttons. As an ambiguously gay neo-fascist driven by an unapologetic narcissism that was leavened in turn with a heavy dose of irony, Mishima's life and work is as fascinating for the reactions it provokes as it is on its own merits. From the far left to the far right the Mishima phenomenon has brought out the worst in people, stirring up equal measures of outrage and adoration. Mishima forces us to think about the political and psychological factors that might distinguish kitsch from camp, and the genius from the madman. This talk looks at a variety of texts written about Mishima before and after his death in 1970 as a means of better understanding the dynamics of reception in political and historical context.
Keith Vincent teaches in the departments of East Asian Studies and Comparative Literature at New York University. His work focuses on modern Japanese literature, novel theory, psychoanalysis, and queer theory. He is currently completing a manuscript entitled The Exciting Cause: Paranoid Homosociality in Modern Japanese Narrative.
Free and open to the public.
Social Repercussions of AIDS in China
Jenny X. Liu, Public Policy, UC Berkeley, UCSF Center for AIDS Prevention Studies
Joseph D. Tucker, MD, UCSF Internal Medicine Department
Humphrey Wou, Program Director, AIDS Relief Fund for China
December 2, 2005
Center for Chinese Studies, AIDS Relief Fund for China
Democratization and Anti-American Sentiment in South Korea
Chang Hun Oh, Kaya University
December 2, 2005
Center for Korean Studies
While many studies have been done on rising "anti-American" sentiment in South Korea, insufficient attention has been paid to the relationship between Korean democratization and the negative views toward the U.S. This study analyzes the dynamics of changing Korean views of the U.S. in the context of democratization since 1987. Democratization, with its dynamic and dialectical interaction with significant international and external changes, has produced particularly dramatic and turbulent results in Korea, substantially weakening the rigid anti-Communist political system that had been maintained since the end of the Korean War. Rising anti-U.S. sentiment in the 1990s and early 2000s should be viewed in this context, and this lecture will explore how that may be done.
Dr. Chang Hun Oh (Kaya University) earned his Ph.D. in political science from Ohio State University. He studies contemporary Korean politics from a comparative-oriented perspective, including politics under Park Chung Hee's Yushin regime, Korean democratization, classification of Korean political regimes, and anti-American sentiment in South Korea. His book, Yushin cheje wa hyondae Hanguk chongchi (Yushin Regime and Contemporary Korean Politics, Oreum Publisher, 2001) was selected one of the excellent scholarly books by the Korean National Academy of Science.
Free and open to the public. Sponsored through a grant from the Korea Foundation.
Fiscal Decentralization and Education in USA and Japan
Hiroaki Hayashi, Economics, Kansai University
December 5, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
Colloquium in Japanese
The financing of education has been an important subject of discussion for a number of years now, in both Japan and the United States. In Japan, education is largely centrally planned and financed. The United States offers a different model. Recently, in Japan, decentralization has become a hot topic of political debate. This debate has often occurred by way of comparison to similar discussions in the United States. The talk will focus on this discussion.
Free and open to the public. Presentation will be in Japanese.
Publishing and the Creation of a Cultural Identity: Selling Modern Japanese Literature
Ted Mack, Asian Languages & Literature, University of Washington
December 9, 2005
Center for Japanese Studies
The intellectual historian Maruyama Masao described his experience at the beginning of the Shôwa period (1926-89), when the status of modern Japanese literature changed dramatically in the national consciousness: at the end of the Taishô period (1912-26), someone "who spent all his time reading novels was doing one of two things: avoiding his studies or corrupting his morals"; yet after the one-yen book boom that began in 1926, "everyone – not just students – had to at least know the names of famous Japanese and world authors and their works, whether you had read them or not. After these one-yen series appeared, this sort of information became 'common knowledge.'" This talk looks at the ways in which publishing gave modern Japanese literature a cultural prestige it had not previously possessed and changed the way we think about Japanese-language literary production in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Ted Mack teaches at the University of Washington, Seattle. His work focuses on the material history of modern Japanese literature. He is currently completing a manuscript entitled Manufacturing Modern Japanese Literature: Publishing and the Creation of a National Culture.
Free and open to the public.