NEW WEBSITE

Please visit the new website of the Triangle Center for Japanese Studies, and update your bookmarks:

http://trianglejapan.org

Lecture on the Artist Kawamura Kiyoo

Please join us for a lecture by Tanaka Yuji, Curator at the Edo-Tokyo Museum, who is working on an exhibition on the painter Kawamura Kiyoo (1852-1934) to be held in Japan in 2012.

Kiyoo was born into a samurai bannerman (hatamoto) family, was sent to study in the U.S., France, and Italy in 1871, and returned to Japan in 1881 to become a noted oil painter. In 1929, commissioned by Sylvain Lévi, a member of the Academy in France, Kiyoo’s work “Kenkoku” (Founding of the Nation) was accepted into the Luxembourg Museum in Paris. And in 1931, his painting “Shintenfu” (the imperial repository for war trophies from the Sino-Japanese War) was dedicated by Tokugawa Iesato to the Memorial Picture Gallery at the Meiji Shrine.

Thursday, December 8th, 4:30 p.m.
New West 219, UNC

 

 

 

 

 

 

Download the PDF poster for the talk: tanaka_poster

Symposium: Communities, Resource Management, and Health in Modern Japan

Communities, Resource Management, and Health in Modern Japan

Presented by the Triangle Center for Japanese Studies

Friday, November 18, 3:30pm
210 Gardner Hall, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

PART ONE, 3:30-4:30: New Scholarship on Communities and Resource Commons in Japan

Tomohiko Ohno (Economics, Hannan University)
“Rises and Falls in Watershed Governance in Japan: changes in river policy and community reactions”

Hitoshi Kominami (Rural Studies, Kyoto University)
“A Community-based Set-net Fishing Enterprise in Japan: demographic change and organizational response in the Niizaki Fisheries Cooperative from 1949 to the present”

Gaku Mitsumata (Economics, Hyogo University)
“Preservation of Commons, Innovation of Institutions, and Environmental Education in the Secret History of Japan’ʹs School Forests since Meiji”

PART TWO, 4:30-5:30: Waste Management and Public Health

Alex Bay (Chapman University)
“Nation from the Bottom Up: Disease, Toilets and Waste Management in Modern Japan”

Co-sponsored by the Duke Asian/Pacific Studies Institute + UNC’s Carolina Asia Center and Center for Global Initiatives

PDF Poster: TCJS_2011-11-18

Ian Condry lecture: “Miku: Japan’s Virtual Idol as Social Media Platform”

Tuesday November 8, 2:50 – 4:20 pm
Duke Dance Laboratory
1516 Hull Avenue, Durham, NC 27705

Free and Open to the Public

Miku Hatsune is Japan’s number one virtual idol. Her songs are sold online, she is one of the most requested karaoke downloads, she promotes Toyota in TV commercials, she performs concerts with live bands — and she doesn’t exist. Miku is a voice in music synthesizer software called Vocaloid, and her community of users have created something new in the world of popular culture: a crowd-sourced celebrity. Based on fieldwork in Japan and the US, this talk will explore the dynamics of the social in media through Miku and other examples in the aftermath of the 3/11 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis.

Ian Condry is a cultural anthropologist and associate professor of Comparative Media Studies at MIT. He is the author of Hip-Hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization (2006) and he is working on a forthcoming book The Soul of Anime: Collaborative Creativity and Japan’s Media Success Story. More info: http://iancondry.com

Professor Condry’s visit is part of the SLIPPAGE series of 2011-2012 Workshops and Lectures in Performance and Cultural Studies. For more info, contact t.defrantz@duke.edu, Thomas F. DeFrantz, Professor, African and African American Studies|DANCE, Director, SLIPPAGE:Performance|Culture|Technology

Ian Condry Flyer

 

Symposium: “Diglossia, Dialogue, Discourse: Remapping Colonial Korea and the Japanese Empire”

The Faculty Working Group on Relocating Empires in the Asia-Pacific (REAP) is proud to present an international workshop “Diglossia, Dialogue, Discourse: Remapping Colonial Korea and the Japanese Empire” on Wednesday, October 26th from 12:00-2:00 at Friedl 225.

A light lunch will be served. Please RSVP to mmarcus@duke.edu by Oct 19th.

DIGLOSSIA, DIALOGUE, DISCOURSE: Remapping Colonial Korea and the Japanese Empire

TIME: Wednesday Oct 26th, noon

LOCATION: Friedl 225 (Duke University East Campus)

“Performing Conversion (転向) and Absence (不在): Speech-Acts in Roundtable Dialogues from Colonial Korea” – SHIN Ji-Young (Hitotsubashi University)

“Japanophone Literature from Colonial Korea: Considering Kim Saryang and Yi Kwangsu” – WATANABE Naoki (Musashi University)

“Yun Ch’iho’s Theory of Reformation and Japan: English-Language Diaries from the First Sino-Japanese War” – RYU Ch’unghee (University of Tokyo)

Discussants: Rey Chow, David Ambaras, Nayoung Aimee Kwon

Co-sponsored by the Faculty Working Group on Relocating Empires in the Asia-Pacific (REAP), the Triangle Center for Japanese Studies (TCJS), the Department of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies (AMES), and the Franklin Humanities Institute (FHI)

Symposium: Rethinking “Postwar Japan,” 10/25

Symposium: Rethinking “Postwar Japan”

October 25, 2011, 5:00-8:00 pm
Withers Hall 331, North Carolina State University

• General Remarks – Narita Ryuichi, Japan’ Women’s University
• Emerging Differences in the Wake of “3.11”: Uneasiness Turns into Anger – Shin Ji-Young, Tsuda Women’s College
• From the Postwar Debate on Subjectivity to Discourses on the 1950s: Implications and Premises – Iwasaki Minoru, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
• Hanada Kiyoteru and the Problem of 1950s Criticism – Sato Izumi, Aoyama Gakuin University

Here is a map of the north campus.  If you use a GPS system, the building address is 101 Lampe Drive, Raleigh, NC 27695.

Parking on campus or on Hillsborough Street is free after 5:00; until 5:00, parking on Hillsborough street requires a small fee.

This event is organized by the Triangle Center for Japanese Studies, with funding from the NCSU College of Humanities and Social Sciences, the NCSU History Department, the Carolina Asia Center at UNC, the Center for Global Initiatives at UNC, and the Asia Pacific Studies Institute at Duke.

Links to poster

Professor Lori Meeks to Speak on Japanese Buddhism

Lori Meeks (Associate Professor, Departments of Religion and East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Southern California) will present a lecture titled “Making Sense of the Blood Bowl Sutra: Early-Modern Commentaries on Women’s Salvation in Japanese Buddhism,” on October 3, 2011 4:30–6:00 pm in the York Room, 229 Gray (Duke West Campus).

Meeks is the author of Hokkeji and the Reemergence of Female Monastic Orders in Premodern Japan (University of Hawai’i Press, 2010) and co-editor of Buddhist Monasticism in East Asia: Places of Practice (Routledge, 2009).

 

Four Roof Tiles from Hiroshima

In a largely symbolic gesture, UNC sent two scholarly books to the University of Hiroshima in 1951 to help the educational institution recover from the loss and destruction of August 9, 1945. This exchange was recently marked by the University  of Hiroshima with a reciprocal gift of four roof tiles that survived the bombing and were recently recovered from rivers around the city.

According to a press release from UNC Global, the tiles “have bubbly, scorched surfaces due to the 5,000°C (9,032°F) heat rays from the atomic bomb. Meant to be symbols that represent the devastation and lost souls, the tiles will be placed at four locations throughout campus, including the FedEx Global Education Center, the University Library, South Building, and the Department of Asian Studies located in New West. Each shard will be accompanied by a plaque detailing its significance and symbolism as an artifact of ‘an unforgettable tragedy’ that speaks of ‘the resilience of Japanese people and their commitment to a world free of nuclear weapons,’ as noted by Toshimasa Asahara, president of Hiroshima University, and Rebun Kayo, chair of the Association of Hiroshima University Students for Sending an Atomic Bombed Roof Tile.”

The exchange and its commemoration also prompted UNC to send symbolic gifts to Fukushima University this summer, including some scholarly books and a poplar tree, a gift that was recently acknowledged by the President of the university, Osamu Nittono.

Film Showing: “Nobody Knows,” Introduced by Professor Anne Allison

This fall’s East Asian cinema series at Duke begins September 14th, 8pm in Richard White Lecture Hall (East Campus):

Nobody Knows

(Hirokazu Koreeda, 2004, 114 min, Japan, in Japanese with English subtitles, Color, DVD)

Introduced by Professor Anne Allison, Cultural Anthropology

Four abandoned children try their best to survive in their own little world, devising and following their own set of rules. This winsome, documentary-like detailed study of their lives and struggle to survive has the gut-shot anxiety of the best thrillers.

— Winner for Best Actor at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival
— Winner for Best Film at the 2005 Kinema Junpo Awards

Sponsored by the Asian Pacific Studies Institute (APSI), the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image (AMI), and the Department of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies (AMES)

 

 

 

 

 

Calls for Proposals

Please submit proposals for the following opportunities:

1. Travel Grants for Japanese Studies Visitors to the Triangle (to conduct research). These grants are not to bring speakers, but to encourage faculty at schools with less resources, particularly in the southeastern U.S., to visit the Triangle to use Duke’s Japanese studies library materials or the Japanese materials in our university museums.
2. Research Travel Grants open to faculty and graduate students from Duke, NCSU, and UNC; they provide funding for travel to and accommodation in Japan.
3. Cross-Institutional Study Groups. Proposals are invited from Duke, NCSU, and/or UNC faculty or graduate students on Japan-related topics. Study groups should include members from at least two participating institutions. The maximum number of proposals on which a faculty member may co-sign is two. UPDATED DEADLINE: September 26th!

Please click on the appropriate link below to download the application instructions (pdf):

vistors
travel

cross-institutional