[Oct/23] Narrative, Performance, and “Premodern” Forms: Ishimure Michiko’s Contemporary Noh Play Okinomiya and its Costuming by Shimura Fukumi
Date: Tuesday, October 23, 2018 Time: 12:30 PM Venue: Asian Centre, Room 604 (1871 West Mall) By: Dr. Christina Laffin Abstract: Ishimure Michiko is often represented as a founder of Japan’s environmental movement, thanks to her efforts to represent those affected by Minamata Disease through grassroots organization, direct action, and literary works. Among Ishimure’s writings are two noh plays: […]
[Oct/19] Nation-Work: How Tea Became Japanese
Date: Friday, October 19, 2018 Time: 4:30 PM Venue: C. K. Choi Building, Room 120 (1855 West Mall) By: Dr. Kristin Surak (University of London) Abstract: Why did an activity as mundane as tea preparation become one of the potent symbols of Japan? Drawing on her award-winning book Making Tea, Making Japan: Cultural Nationalism in Practice, Kristin Surak will explore the […]
[Oct/9] Opening Reception
Date: Tuesday, October 9, 2018 Time: 4:30 PM – 6:30 PM Venue: C. K. Choi Building, First Floor Foyer Come join the Centre for Japanese Research,日本研究センター, as it launches into a new year of events. Refreshments will be served.
[Sep/21] Centre for Asian Legal Studies Seminar
Labour Law Reform: “Work Style Reform 2018 in Japan” (by Chikako Kanki, Associate Professor, Rikkyo University in Japan) || Succession Law Reform: “Inheritance Law Amendment in Japan, 2018” (by Koji Kanki, Attorney at Law, Ministry of Justice, Japan)
[Apr/6] Brazil and Modern Japanese Literature
This talk will present a brief overview of this history, with a focus on its early decades (1908-1941), and then consider ways that this history prompts us to reconsider many of the tacit and explicit presumptions that underlie the field of modern Japanese literature.
[Mar/29] 8th Annual Burge Lecture – Dr. Ian Miller, Harvard University
This talk takes us back to the dawn of the energy-intensive culture that we now call “modernity,” tracing the emergence of new attitudes towards electrical power and tracking the development of a political economy that has colonized the climate.
[Mar/28] Owning the Ocean: Alaska Fishermen and the Japanese ‘Invasion’ of Bristol Bay, 1937-1938
This talk examines the ways Alaskans interacted with and understood the salmon, the physical environment of Bristol Bay, and the conceptual nature of ocean borders, and how those perspectives entered the political and diplomatic discourse on the eve of the Second World War.
[Mar/14] Party System Institutionalization in Japan: Between Integration and Fragmentation
Time: 11:45 PM – 1:45 PM Location: Room 351, C. K. Choi Building By: Dr. Yosuke Sunahara Professor, Kobe University, Graduate School of Law Visiting Associate Professor, UBC Institute of Asian Research Join us for an informal seminar by our visiting scholar, Professor Yosuke Sunahara of Kobe University! This is also a celebration of his receipt of prestigious Osanagi […]
[Mar/12] An Endless River of Blood: Theatricalizing Lady Rokujō from Nō to the Present
ABSTRACT The Tale of Genji, written around 1000 CE by a woman in the Emperor’s entourage conventionally called Lady Murasaki, has inspired countless Japanese writers. Zeami saw the novel’s passionate, possessed female characters as ideal material for the nō. In the Sandō, he called these characters “jewels within jewels” whose stories contain “a seed that […]
[Mar/9] Workshop: “Gendering War and Peace in Modern Japan”
Time: 9 March 2018 1:00 – 5:00 pm Venue: IK Barber Learning Centre, Lillooet Room The 2017-2018 Academic Year sees the 150th anniversary of Japan’s 1868 “Meiji Restoration,” an epochal political revolution that sparked Japan’s remarkable modernization, dramatic cultural transformation, and rapid emergence onto the global stage. One legacy of the Meiji Restoration was Japanese imperialist expansion […]