Japan
Directed by Gosha Hideo (Shochiku, 1978, 160 min., 35mm) Kumokiri Nizaemon is a former samurai who leads a band of thieves to attack the castle of his former clan in Gosha Hideo’s powerful adaptation of Ikenami Shōtarō’s novel. Nakadai Tatsuya again stars as Kumokiri in an all-star cast. SOME SPECIAL SAMURAI A trio of Japanese period films featuring unique heroes. All films in Japanese with English subtitles. All screenings at the Whitney Humanities Center Auditorium, 53 Wall Street. For More Information:...
Directed by Okamoto Kihachi (Toho, 1966, 119 min., 35mm) Okamoto’s masterful adaptation of Nakazato Kaizan’s epic novel, The Great Bodhisatva Pass, which featured the most nihilistic samurai of all time, Tsukue Ryūnosuke, here expertly played by Nakadai Tatsuya, descending into madness. SOME SPECIAL SAMURAI A trio of Japanese period films featuring unique heroes. All films in Japanese with English subtitles. All screenings at the Whitney Humanities Center Auditorium, 53 Wall Street For More Information:...
Directed by Kurosawa Akira (Toho, 1961, 110 min., 35mm) The film that introduced the most famous of samurai heroes, the nameless rōnin played by Mifune Toshirō, and which influenced many from John Belushi to Sergio Leone. This samurai inserts himself into a war between two rival gangs and, à la Red Harvest, prompts their mutual destruction. SOME SPECIAL SAMURAI A trio of Japanese period films featuring unique heroes. All films in Japanese with English subtitles. All screenings at the Whitney Humanities Center Auditorium, 53 Wall Street. For More Information:...
Keynote speech: “Entering Asia” by Kären Wigen, Professor of History, Frances and Charles Field Professor, Stanford University (9:45am-10:30am) In a much-discussed editorial of 1885, a leading Tokyo journal called for Japan to “leave Asia” (datsu-A). But when did the Japanese enter Asia in the first place? One way to answer this is to trace the career of continents on their maps. Introduced to the Sinophone world by the Jesuits, the continental scheme appears to have gained little traction in the early Qing or Chosŏn contexts, but in Japan it became a standard feature of world maps and...
Against the backdrop of evolving social institutions over the last 100 years, I will explore the role women have played in Japanese society through reflection on the lives of my grandmother, my mother, and myself Nobuko Sasae works as a conference interpreter and currently resides in Washington, D.C. along with her husband, Kenichiro Sasae, the present Ambassador of Japan to the United States. As a graduate of Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo from their College of Literature, Department of English, Mrs. Sasae went on to receive a Masters of Education from the University of Pennsylvania. ...
While Donald Richie was the first notable foreign observer of Japanese cinema, French critics became the tastemakers when the Musee Guimet in Paris began screening post war Japanese films in the early fifties, notably by Kenji Mizoguchi, whose work was rapidly hailed by a young critic at Cahiers du Cinema, Jacques Rivette, in turn creating a model that continues to this day, of a writer discovering and ‘making’ the work ‘his/hers’ before it is embraced by festivals and distributors. This lecture will look at the chronology and key actors of this intense relationship between Japan and France...
The Council is pleased to present the Seventeenth Annual John W. Hall Lecture in Japanese Studies. From the early 1950s until the early 1990s Japan’s political economy was distinguished by its reinforcing combination of conservative political dominance and superior economic growth. The two operated in tandem: economic growth boosted the political appeal of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) while long term conservative dominance facilitated hyper- growth. A close economic and security relationship between Japan and the United States furthered this winning package of ‘developmentalism...
In 1779 a Japanese scholar wished to (but could not) refuse a government assignment to translate a European set of images-with-captions. He was faced with what he called emuburema, and one problem with such images was that they did not mean what you saw. Histories of early modern Japan (1600-1868) that deal with Japan’s contact with the rest of the world will inevitably mention that China and the Netherlands were the two exclusive trade partners of Japan in this period. They will also mention that one result of this contact with the Netherlands was the creation of the discipline of “...
The Council is pleased to present the 4th Stanley Weinstein Dissertation Prize Lecture. In the middle of 748, Queen Consort Kōmyō commissioned one hundred copies—many on fine colored paper—of a relatively obscure work, entitled the Scripture on Saving and Protecting Body and Life. This text promises protection from attacks by demons and sorcerers, as well as from other threats that plague humans living in an era of decline. She also sponsored one hundred copies of the Golden Light Sutra and three copies of the Scripture on Brahma’s Spirit Tablets, a divination sutra, at the same time. This...
What explains the rise and fall of military power in Japan? I identify key determinants of Japan’s military power and security policy in recent years to be a set of political institutions, pacifist norms, and laws. While China’s rise in military power has caused Japan to upgrade its capability and use technology and foreign cooperation to buttress military power, the “troika” of the postwar institutions has long shaped Japan’s security policy and constrained the use of force. I will show that the institutional, normative, and legal constraints are a large part of...
Since 3.11, there has been a resurgence of political activism, especially among women. Activists, NPOs (non-profit organizations), NGOs (non-governmental organizations), and voluntary organizations help women manage needs related to the disasters and prolonged relocation. These organizations provide services and create spaces for women’s empowerment and care. Yet by finding solutions outside of the political system, the gap between civil society—where women are active and engaged—and Japan’s political institutions has deepened, further marginalizing women from the political process. For women...
The Treaty of Peace with Japan, commonly known as the San Francisco Peace Treaty, was signed on September 8, 1951 in San Francisco, and came into force on April 28, 1952. This post-World War II settlement with Japan, prepared and signed against the backdrop of the intensifying Cold War, fell far short of settling outstanding issues at the end of the war or facilitating a clean start for the “postwar” period in East Asia. Rather, various aspects of the settlement were left equivocal. The peace treaty, which largely determined Japan’s position in the post-war world, along with the US-Japan...
Now a global poetry, the haiku was originally a type of verse flourishing in Japan from the 16th through 19th centuries. Widely renowned for its minimalism of form (typically running 3 phrases in 17 syllabets) and aesthetics (deploying nature imagery to profound, even philosophical, effect), historically the haiku was much more: its surprisingly numerous modes tended to the erotic, satirical, crude and mischievous. Drawing from my forthcoming edited anthology, The Penguin Book of Haiku (London: Penguin Classics), I contend that the “Japanese” haiku was always a world literature, an invented...
The Yale Council on East Asian Studies, in cooperation with the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University, invite graduate students, other advanced students, and scholars to participate in back-to-back workshops. The first workshop will focus on the Heian anthologies Wakan roeishu and Honcho monzui, examining their relationship to Chinese texts including Wenxuan, Mengqiu, and the poetry of Bai Juyi; the second will focus on the material culture of the book (the scroll, the codex, and other formats) in pre-modern...
The Yale Council on East Asian Studies, in cooperation with the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University, invite graduate students, other advanced students, and scholars to participate in back-to-back workshops. The first workshop will focus on the Heian anthologies Wakan roeishu and Honcho monzui, examining their relationship to Chinese texts including Wenxuan, Mengqiu, and the poetry of Bai Juyi; the second will focus on the material culture of the book (the scroll, the codex, and other formats) in pre-modern...
The 25th Conference of the Japanese Language Teachers’ Association of the Northeast Region of the United States (JLTANE) is being hosted at Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut, on June 11, 2011. The venue is Room 101, Linsly-Chittenden Hall, 63 High Street. Recommended parking: Lot 51, 324 Temple Street Featuring a special lecture by Yuji Ikegaya, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Tokyo CLICK HERE TO ACCESS CONFERENCE PROGRAM...
Things Left Behind (2012) explores the transformative power of the first major international art exhibit devoted to the atomic bomb. The exhibition, at the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver, featured large-format color photographs of clothing once worn by those who perished, taken by renowned Japanese photographer Ishiuchi Miyako. Ishiuchi brought the garments—still colorful and fashionable nearly seven decades later—out of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial archive and photographed them in the light, to trace the spirits of those who once wore them. A cinematic reverie about art’s...
Maxine Hughes is a senior producer for BBC News. She currently work as the Bureau Editor for Wales, and is responsible for the BBC’s coverage of Wales for National TV and Radio. Prior to her current role in Wales, she worked for BBC Newsgathering across TV, online and radio for the BBC’s national news, responding to all aspects of breaking news from politics to crime. On 11th March, 2011, Hughes was sent to Japan to cover the earthquake and tsunami where she served as the BBC’s live producer, providing live coverage for the BBC News Channel and BBC World News. The tsunami measured a massive...
Frontier. It is a word at once pregnant and fraught. 120 years have elapsed since Frederick Jackson Turner presented his epoch-making paper on “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” but frontiers still have a powerful hold on the popular imagination. In addition to the American West, we speak of frontier markets, technological and scientific frontiers, and, of course, the “final frontier.” This conference asks, “What is the significance of ‘frontiers’ to Japanese history?” We will present recent and in-progress works exploring the utility of a frontier perspective to enrich...
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