Seminar Flyers

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 81
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    Trace and Memory: Memorial Photography in Modern Japan
    ( 2023-03-09)
    In modern Japan, memorial photographs (iei 遺影) have played a significant role in funerals, memorial services, and the everyday lives of the bereaved. Typically, a portrait photograph taken during the sitter's lifetime is transformed into a memorial photograph after their death. The process of transforming a mere portrait into a memorial image involves various rituals, which Prof. Satow terms "the relicization of a portrait." These rituals include not only religious services but also the selection of a frame, the location of enshrinement, and the manipulation of the image. This lecture theoretically and historically examines the function of memorial photography in modern Japan, comparing it to examples from other cultures such as Europe, Mexico, and Brazil.
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    Contemporary Sagi Kyōgen: Liminal Spaces & Conceptualizing Tradition Outside Kyōgen's Professional World
    ( 2022-11-16)
    Today’s practice of the traditional performing art, Sagi kyōgen, is no longer a part of the professional kyōgen world. It remains, however, as a regional art form with a history of performance traditions in Yamaguchi City (Yamaguchi Prefecture), Kanzaki City (Saga Prefecture) and on Sado Island (Niigata Prefecture). As such, the typical criteria by which professional kyōgen claims itself as a culturally significant tradition do not entirely apply to contemporary Sagi kyōgen. So how then does Sagi kyōgen create a sense of value as a tradition? Drawing on his 2022 dissertation, Dr. Alex Rogals will present the ways in which todayʻs Sagi kyōgen performers have centralized locale as a primary means for determining legitimacy, authenticity, and value in contemporary practice.
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    Marital Surname System in Japan - the Fufubessei Issue and the Disparate Impact of Civil Code Article 750 and Family Registry Law
    ( 2022-11-02)
    Fufubessei or "selective marital surname" has reemerged in media headlines. Japan appears to be the only country in the world that holds onto the unitary surname system, under which 96% of wives relinquish their birth surnames. At the grassroots level, liberal lawyers and feminist activists have been advocating for the introduction of a system that allows a married couple to choose whether they select one family name or retain their own surnames. Some activists took the matter to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, which has been pressuring the Japanese government. This paper presents that the current Japanese law pertaining to a marital surname produces a disparate treatment of part of the population, despite the law facially providing individual freedom of choice and gender equality as stipulated in the Japanese constitution. This paper approaches this issue with both social and legal backgrounds.
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    "Contending with the Modern West: Japanese and Yiddish Satires in the Era of High Imperialism”
    ( 2022-08-30)
    In the later nineteenth century, many Japanese and East European Jews, respectively, perceived their polities to be under threat from Western governments, even as some also found hope in humanitarian idealism. To understand this mixed atmosphere, we will examine two satirical works: Japanese democratic activist Nakae Chomin’s A Discourse by Three Drunkards on Government (1887) and classic Yiddish novelist Sholem Abramovitch’s The Mare (1873). Each story features an idealist figure—in some measure, the author’s younger self--who is assailed by a realist and a cynic, respectively, for his naivete. Reflecting contrastive trajectories, the Japanese novel inclines to comedy, while the Yiddish one inclines to tragedy.
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    Unpredictable Agents
    ( 2022-03-09)
    Professor Mark Levin, the director of the Center for Japanese Studies, will speak with the editor of and two of the contributors to Unpredictable Agents: The Making of Japan’s Americanists during the Cold War and Beyond (University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2021). The book is a collection of twelve essays by Japanese scholars of American Studies who encountered “America” in different ways during the Cold War decades. Through the authors' personal journeys and intellectual trajectories, the essays illustrate the complex positionalities, fluid identities, ambivalent embrace, and unpredictable agency of Japan’s Ameriacnists who continue to chart their own course in and across the Pacific. In this event, three scholars for whom the University of Hawaiʻi has played a central role in their intellectual and professional growth will reflect upon their experiences and positions as “Japan’s Americanists.”