Donald Keene Center Events Calendar
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• Please check this site for calendar updates. |
September 21 (Tuesday) Lecture: Sexuality in Modern Japanese Women's Poetry Hiroaki Sato (Poet and Translator) 403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. & Amsterdam Ave.) 6:00 - 7:30 PM
Presented by the Institute for Medieval Japanese Studies
October 11 (Monday) Lecture: Reconsidering Medieval Japanese Literature: The Issue of Setsuwa Bungaku Prof. Hiroshi Araki (Professor of Japanese Literature, University of Osaka) 403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. & Amsterdam Ave.) 4:00 - 6:00 PM Professor Hiroaki Araki, a specialist in classical and medieval literature on leave from the University of Osaka, is currently a Visiting Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia. Please note: Professor Araki will lecture in Japanese. Co-sponsored by The Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures in cooperation with the Institute for Medieval Japanese Studies October 12 (Tuesday) Brownbag Lecture: Sony: The Private Life Prof. John Nathan (Professor of Japanese Cultural Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara) 918 International Affairs Bldg, Columbia University (118th St. and Amsterdam Ave.) 12:00 -1:30 PM John Nathan is the Takashima Professor of Japanese Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Also celebrated as a filmmaker and writer, he is author of a definitive biography of Yukio Mishima and principal translator of the Nobel Laureate Kenzaburo Oe. His prizewinning documentary films include Full Moon Lunch, Blind Swordsman, Farm Song, and The Colonel Comes to Japan. Co-sponsored by the East Asian Institute and the Center on Japanese Economy and Business Lecture: Revisiting Full Moon Lunch: John Nathan's Films on Japan Prof. John Nathan (Professor of Japanese Cultural Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara) 567 Lerner Hall, Columbia University (115th St. and Broadway) 6:00 - 8:00 PM During the late 1970s and 1980s, John Nathan produced a number of films on Japan that are still considered the most penetrating documentary portraits of contemporary Japanese society. His 3-part series, The Japanese (including Full Moon Lunch, Blind Swordsman, and Farm Song) has been broadcast repeatedly on PBS. The Colonel Comes to Japan, about Kentucky Fried Chicken in Japan, is a humorous and highly revealing look at American business and Japanese consumerism. Nathan's films have won Emmy awards and numerous other international documentary-film prizes. In this program, John Nathan will show excerpts of several of his films and reflect on filmmaking in Japan then...and now. October 20 (Wednesday) Lecture: Untamed Samurai: The Ten Old Men in the Ako Vendetta Prof. Thomas Harper (Professor Emeritus of Japanese  Literature,
Leiden University)403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Ave.) 4:00 PM Co-sponsored by the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures October 20 (Wednesday) Lecture: Yosano Akiko and the Canonization of the Tale of Genji Prof. Gaye Rowley (Lecturer in Japanese, University of Wales, Cardiff) 403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Ave.) 5:30 PM Co-sponsored by the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures October 21 (Thursday) Panel Discussion: Post-War Japanese Photography Moderated by Prof. Marilyn Ivy (Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, Columbia University); featuring Alexandra Munroe (Director, Japan Society Gallery) and Leo Rubinfien (Photographer and Independent Scholar) Davis Auditorium, Schapiro Hall (CEPSR), Columbia University 6:00 - 8:00 PM Presented in conjunction with The Daido Moriyama Photography Exhibits at the Japan Society and the Metropolitan Museum of Art
November 3 (Wednesday) Lecture: In the Tracks of the Iwakura Embassy: The U.S. and Japan in 1872 Prof. Martin Collcutt (Chair, East Asian Department, Princeton University) and Mrs. Akiko Collcutt 403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. & Amsterdam Ave.) 6:00 - 8:00 PM In 1871-73, Japanese Minister of State Iwakura Tomomi led an official mission of forty-eight government leaders and bureaucrats and fifty-four students to the United States and Europe, with the purpose of studying Western institutions and lifestyles. The undertaking had a major effect on how newly modernizing Japan came to view the West and its own role in international affairs. Two years ago, historian Martin Collcutt and his wife Akiko Collcutt accompanied a group of Japanese historians in precisely retracing the Iwakura Mission's progress across the American continent. They visited all major cities and small towns where the Japanese embassy had stopped, investigated local historical societies and newspapers, collecting documentary materials and personal recollections of the experience of America by the early-Meiji travelers. Illustrated by slides and other materials, Prof. and Mrs. Collcutt will describe their own journey of discovery. Co-sponsored by the East Asian Institute November 10 (Wednesday) Lecture: Destroying the World to Save It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism Prof. Robert J. Lifton M.D. (Senior University Lecturer, John Jay College) 403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. & Amsterdam Ave.) 6:00 - 8:00 PM
Co-sponsored by the East Asian Institute November 22 (Monday) Lecture: The Tokugawa Shoguns and the Ceremonies of Light at the Toshogu Prof. Timon Screech (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London and Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures) Institute of Fine Arts, New York University (1 East 78th Street) 6:00 PM (A reception will follow in the Loeb Room Co-sponsored by the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University and the Ukiyo-e Society of America, Inc. |
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In
1995, members of a little known Japanese religious cult
called Aum Shinrikyo stunned the world with a poison-gas
attack in the Tokyo subways, leaving 12 people dead and more
than 6,000 injured. The trials of cult leader Asahara and
his followers have moved slowly through the Japanese legal
system and memories of the terrorist attack will continue to
have a corrosive effect on Japanese society for many years
to come. Psychiatrist and psycho-historian Dr. Robert J.
Lifton has studied the psychology of the terrorists and the
apocalyptic vision of their leaders in his new book
Destroying the World to Save It. His previous books
include Thought Reform and the
Psychology
of Totalism (1961), Death in Life: Survivors of
Hiroshima (1967), Revolutionary Immortality: Mao
Tse-tung and the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1968),
America and the Asian Revolutions (1970), History and
Human Survival (1970), Home From the War: Vietnam
Veterans--Neither Victims Nor Executioners (1973),
Explorations in Psychohistory: The Wellfleet Papers
(1975), Six Lives Six Deaths: Portraits from Modern Japan (1979),
Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of
Genocide (1986), Genocidal Mentality: Nazi Holocaust
and Nuclear Threat (1990), Hiroshima in America: 50
Years of Denial (1995). 