Japan
Directed by Masaki Kobayashi (Shochiku, 1962, 133 min., 35 mm) A tour de force performance in one of the most damning critiques of the Japanese feudal structure ever. In Japanese with English subtitles Yale University welcomes Nakadai Tatsuya, one of Japan’s greatest actors. From Kurosawa Akira’s Ran and Kagemusha to Kobayashi Masaki’s Harakiri and The Human Condition, Nakadai Tatsuya has starred in many of Japan’s greatest films and worked with many of its greatest directors. In a career that spans seven decades, from Shakespeare on stage to starring roles on TV, Nakadai has...
Surveying the changes in Japan’s place in the world from the ashes of defeat in 1945 to the country’s growing global role in a fast-changing region under Prime Minister Abe, Aaron Forsberg discusses his scholarly research on Japan’s postwar revival and his experience working on Japanese affairs at the U.S. Department of State since 2001. Keying off of the relationship between Japan and the United States, his talk explores the internal and external drivers of policy across the major phases of Japan’s place in the world since 1945. These include reintegration into the international community as...
Political dynasties exist in nearly all democracies, but have been conspicuously prevalent in Japan, where over a third of all legislators and two-thirds of all cabinet ministers in recent years come from families with a history in parliament. Such a high proportion of dynasties in a developed democracy is unusual, and has sparked concerns over whether the democratic processes in Japan are working properly. In his book project, Dynasties and Democracy: The Inherited Incumbency Advantage and Institutional Reform in Japan, Daniel M. Smith introduces a comparative theory to explain the...
Happy Hour (Directed by Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, 2015, 317 min. DVD) The product of workshops with mostly newcomers to film, Hamaguchi Ryusuke’s Happy Hour has won awards around the world, including a Best Actress award at Locarno shared by its four principals. Its leisurely but emotionally dense narration of the lives of four female friends as they confront changes in their work, domestic, and romantic lives, has earned praise around the world, including most recently in The New Yorker and The New York Times as the film was featured in a special run at MoMA in New York. The director will be...
Come enjoy the festivities as the Council on East Asian Studies kicks off the fall term and please join us in welcoming our new students, postdocs, and visiting scholars! RSVP to eastasian.studies@yale.edu by 09/02/16
After a general introduction to the broad array of sources and reference materials available for conducting research related to the history of Japan since ca. 1600, students prepare original research papers on topics of their own choosing in a collaborative workshop environment.
Exploration of postwar theories of popular culture and subculture in Japan, particularly focusing on the intellectual debates over television and new media.
This seminar critically explores how anthropologists use contemporary social theories to formulate the junctures of meaning, interest, and power. It thus aims to integrate symbolic, economic, and political perspectives on culture and social process. If culture refers to the understandings and meanings by which people live, then it constitutes the conventions of social life that are themselves produced in the flux of social life, invented by human activity. Theories of culture must therefore illuminate this problematic of agency and structure. They must show how social action can both...
This seminar critically explores how anthropologists use contemporary social theories to formulate the junctures of meaning, interest, and power. It thus aims to integrate symbolic, economic, and political perspectives on culture and social process. If culture refers to the understandings and meanings by which people live, then it constitutes the conventions of social life that are themselves produced in the flux of social life, invented by human activity. Theories of culture must therefore illuminate this problematic of agency and structure. They must show how social action can both...
Senior scholars from Japan and the United States will travel to Yale for this conference and give presentations on Japanese foreign and domestic policy. In addition, graduate students from Yale, Stanford, Princeton, and Boston University will present their work. Panelists: • Takako Hikotani (National Defense Academy) • Jennifer Lind (Dartmouth College) • Keisuke Iida (University of Tokyo) • Syuhei Kurizaki (Waseda University) • Ryo Sahashi (Kangawa University) • Chikako Ueki (Waseda University) • Phillip Lipscy (Stanford University) • Nobuhiro Hiwatari (University of Tokyo) Graduate...
The history of Sino-Japanese relations focusing on four periods of especially close contact: Sui/Tang/Nara/Heian 1895-1931 World War II Papers since 1978 A reception will follow after the event. Ezra F. Vogel is the Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences Emeritus at Harvard. After graduating from Ohio Wesleyan in 1950 and serving two years in the U.S. Army, he studied sociology in the Department of Social Relations at Harvard, receiving his Ph.D. in 1958. He then went to Japan for two years to study the Japanese language and conduct research interviews with middle-class...
In the midst of sweeping new paradigms of “global history,” “world literature,” or “world philology,” what specifically can Eurasian comparisons contribute to our understanding of the premodern world? This lecture analyzes practices of Eurasian comparisons over the past decades, asking what kind of work has been done, who has engaged in this work and to what effect. It then reflects on the glass ceilings and inequalities involved in comparisons of premodern Eurasia, and addresses the ethical challenges and responsibilities that are at stake in doing this kind of work. Throughout, the lecture...
This talk will explore the sharp satire of Tokugawa-period politics and society cleverly disguised in Honzō Mōmoku, a work of comic fiction compiled and published in the second half of the eighteenth century. While narrating the entertaining story of Haraga Bannai’s descent to the Underworld and his encounter with Enma, the King of Hell, this work alludes to period gossip on politics and economics. Making use of contemporary sources, I shall unravel the plot of Honzō mōmoku, demonstrating that the events narrated therein made a mockery of the bakufu administration and, in particular, of...
An introduction to the performance styles of modern kabuki stars Sakata Tōjūrō and Bandō Mitsugorō X. Performer and scholar Nakamura Gankyō offers a lecture comparing the kata and kaishaku, or “form” and “interpretation,” of famous scenes in the play Maiden at Dōjoji Temple (Musume Dōjōji). The lecture will conclude with a dance-performance. Nakamura Gankyō was born and raised in Southern California. He started his Nihon Buyō (Japanese Classical dance) training at the age of three from the Bandō School of Japanese Classical dance. As a young performer, Gankyō traveled through out the United...
Tea men in sixteenth-century Japan inaugurated novel object-centered practices, employing all manner of things – paintings, calligraphies, metalwork vessels, lacquer containers, bamboo implements, and especially ceramics – in their pursuit of excellence in chanoyu, the practice of tea. Many of these dōgu, or utensils, were imported from abroad, made for settings other than chanoyu, and were not aestheticized in their original contexts; and so, physical and conceptual transformation was part and parcel of their use in Japan. In this presentation, I examine the ways in which objects were thus...
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