Donald Keene Center Events Calendar
Fall 2000
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• Please check this site for calendar updates.
• All events at Columbia are free and open to the public.
• Unless otherwise indicated, all of the programs listed below take
place at Columbia University, 116th Street between Broadway and
Amsterdam Ave.
• To view a campus map,
click here. |
September 5 (Tuesday)
The Shumei Taiko Drum Ensemble of
Japan
On the steps of Low Library Plaza, Columbia University
(116th St. & Broadway)
12:00 PM - 2:00 PM
Taiko drumming is a traditional form of Japanese art, often
used in celebrations and festivals. While the origins of
Taiko drumming are said to go back more than 1500 years,
Taiko drums remain an integral part of Japanese cultural
history today. The applicability of Taiko music to
contemporary music has been especially evident since the
1950's, when jazz musicians began to incorporate Taiko
scores and rhythms in their compositions.
Co-sponsored by the
Institute for Medieval Japanese Studies
October 17 (Tuesday)
Satsuma Biwa: Lecture,
Demonstration, and Concert
• Lecture and Demonstration by
Professor Hugh De Ferranti (Assistant Professor of Asian
Languages, Cultures & Music, University of Michigan)
• Concert of Satsuma Biwa narratives by the eminent
artist Yoshinori Fumon
301 Philosophy Hall, Columbia University (116th St. &
Amsterdam Ave.)
6:00 PM
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Yoshinori Fumon |
A Biwa is a short-necked plucked
lute, of which various types are used for
various kinds of music. The biwa is a
distant relative of the European and of
other Asian lutes, but derives immediately
from the Chinese piba. The biwa
was already used in court music in the 8th
century, but in the 16th century a new type
of biwa music grew out of an older
style. To arouse the martial ardor of young
men, biwa songs were composed on
suitable themes, and this repertoire was
continually added to over the years. The
Satsuma biwa has remained the most
popular of all biwa styles. |
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Co-sponsored by the
Institute for Medieval Japanese Studies, and the
Department of Music, Columbia University
October 20 (Saturday)
Symposium: Architecture and Modern
Japan
Columbia University (116th St. & Amsterdam Ave.)
9:00 AM- 5:00 PM
RSVP Required
- Session
1: ORIGINS AND FOUNDATIONS
(Discussant: Ellen Conant, Independent
Scholar)
- Session
2: NATION AND STATE (Discussant:
Professor Alan Tansman, University of
California, Berkeley)
- Session
3: MODERNISM AND INTERNATIONALISM
(Discussant: Professor Kenneth Frampton,
Columbia University)0
- Session
4: ARCHITECTURE AND THE CITY
(Discussant: Professor Gwendolyn Wright,
Columbia University)
Simultaneous interpretation between
Japanese and English will be available on
the day of the symposium. |
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This
symposium will be dedicated to the discussion of
sixteen papers intended for eventual publication in
a conference volume. The paper drafts will be made
available in advance to all who are interested in
attending the symposium and joining in the
discussions. Please note that it will not be
possible to provide copies of any of the papers to
those who are unable to attend the symposium in
person.
Those interested in receiving copies of the papers,
free of charge, in order to prepare for the
symposium, are asked to contact the Donald Keene
Center, either by email to Mari Nakahara, or by
phone to the Keene Center at (212) 854-5036, or by
fax at (212) 854-4019. Please provide 1) your name,
2) affiliation, 3) area of interest, 4) mailing
address, and 5) email, telephone, and fax contacts.
The papers will be mailed out in late September. |
pic: Yoshio Watanabe
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Co-sponsored by the
Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation,
Columbia University
This symposium is made possible by the generous support of
the Japan
Foundation and the J.C.C. Fund of the Japanese Chamber
of Commerce and Industry of New York, Inc.
October 26 (Thursday)
Booktalk and Slide
Presentation: Japanese Mandalas: Representations of
Sacred Geography
Professor Elizabeth Ten Grotenhuis
(Associate Professor of Asian and Japanese Art History,
Boston University)Discussion with Professor Ryuichi Abe (Kao
Associate Professor of Japanese Religion, Columbia
University)
403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. & Amsterdam
Ave.)
6:00 PM
The first
broad study of Japanese mandalas to appear in a
Western language, this volume interprets mandalas as
sanctified realms where identification between the
human and sacred occurs. The author investigates
eighth- to seventeenth-century paintings from three
traditions: Esoteric Buddhism, Pure Land Buddhism,
and the kami-worshipping (Shinto) tradition.
Explaining why certain fundamental Japanese mandalas
look the way they do and how certain visual forms
came to embody the sacred, ten Grotenhuis presents
works that show a complex mixture of Indian Buddhist
elements, pre-Buddhist Chinese elements, Chinese
Buddhist elements, and indigenous Japanese elements.
Professor Ten Grotenhuis is the author of many
articles and books. Her most recent publication is
the work featured in this lecture, Japanese
Mandalas: Representations of Sacred Geography (University
of Hawaii Press, 1999). She translated and
adapted from the Japanese Narrative Picture
Scrolls by Hideo Okudaira (1973) and Pure
Land Buddhist Painting by Joji Okazaki (1977).
She is the co-author, with John M. Rosenfield, of
Journey of the Three Jewels (1979), and the
author of The Revival of the Taima Mandala in
Medieval Japan (1985). She is currently at work
on a book entitled Arts of the Silk Road. In
addition to having authored scholarly books and
articles, she wrote the script and narrated a short
film called the The Life of the Buddha,
produced by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
(1987), and she wrote the program notes for a
concert featuring Yo-Yo Ma based on the Japanese
aesthetic concept mono no aware (1992). |
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Co-sponsored by the University
Seminar on Buddhist Studies
November 3 (Friday)
Symposium: New Perspectives on
Studying Medieval Japan
Professor Masaharu Imai (Tsukuba
University); Visiting Fellow of the Donald Keene Center;
Visiting Professor (Dept. of East Asian Languages and
Cultures, Columbia)
403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. & Amsterdam
Ave.)
10:00 AM - 6:00 PM
4 Sessions involving Professor
Imai and leading scholars from surrounding
institutions:
- Session 1: Defining "Medieval Japan": New
Perspectives
- Session 2: Buddhism, Shinto, and Women's
History
- Session 3: History and Art: Dealing with
Textual and Nontextual Primary Sources
- Session 4: The formation of "Nihon kenkyu"
and US-Japan Intellectual Exchange
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Professor Imai is a
Visiting Fellow of the Donald Keene Center, under a
program sponsored by the
U.S.-Japan
Foundation. Co-sponsored by the
Institute for Medieval Japanese Studies
November 10 (Friday)
Symposium: Japanese Aesthetics in
Contemporary Sound And a Demonstration on the Traditional
Japanese Sho
• Keynote Speech: Music critic,
writer, and arts administrator John Rockwell
Mr. John Rockwell was the Director during the first
years of the Lincoln Center Festival,
and is currently the editor of the Sunday "Arts &
Leisure" section of New York Times.
• Demonstration of Sho: Mayumi Miyata
plays examples of gagaku and contemporary sho music
• Panel Discussion: Toshio Hosokawa, Karen Tanaka, Lois V
Vierk, and other music specialists
301 Philosophy Hall, Columbia University (116th St. &
Amsterdam Ave.)
5:30 PM
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Sho is a mouth organ of Japanese
court music. The sho consists of a
lacquered wooden cup-shaped body, into which
17 narrow bamboo pipes of varying length are
inserted vertically to form a circular
cluster. Two of the pipes are mute; the
remainder are fitted with small metal
tongues vibrating freely through a small
slot, and made to speak by closing a finger
hole on the pipe. The instrument plays
single notes and chords identified in the
notation by the names of the pipes, and the
player can maintain a continuous sound by
sucking and blowing alternately. The sho is
related to the Chinese sheng and to
other East Asian mouth organs. |
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Co-sponsored with the
Institute for Medieval Japanese Studies, the
Department of Music, Columbia University, and
Music From Japan.
November 10 (Friday)
Lecture: Samurai Sword and
Sorcery: Illustrations of Fantasy Literature in
Nineteenth-Century Japan
Professor Sarah Thompson (Assistant
Professor of Japanese Art History, University of Oregon)
403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. & Amsterdam
Ave.)
6:30 PM
Certain nineteenth-century Ukiyo-e prints by Kuniyoshi and
other Utagawa school artists depict subjects very similar to
those of the "sword and sorcery" genre of twentieth-century
English-language pulp fiction, comics, movies, and
television. Kuniyoshi's brawny warrior heroes battle not
only human enemies but supernatural monsters and seductive
sorceresses, in much the same manner as the prototypical
sword-and-sorcery hero, Conan the Barbarian. The prints
illustrate novels by authors such as Santo Kyoden and
Takizawa Bakin, who turned to themes of fantastic adventure
as a safer alternative to the witty stories of the
contemporary demimonde that had been suppressed by the
government during the Kansei Reforms of the late eighteenth
century. This lecture will examine several popular fantasy
novels of the nineteenth century as illustrated in Ukiyo-e
prints.
Co-sponsored by the
Ukiyo-e
Society of America, Inc.
November 29 (Wednesday)
Booktalk: Traces of Dreams:
Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Basho
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Professor
Haruo Shirane (Shincho Professor of Japanese
Literature, Columbia University)
Discussion with Dr. Amy Heinrich (Donald Keene
Center Director & Director of the C. V. Starr East
Asian Library)
403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. &
Amsterdam Ave.)
6:00 PM
» Click here
to read a description of this book (Stanford
University Press) |
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December 5 (Tuesday)
Lecture: The Utility Fallacy -
Japanese Criticisms of Bioethics in America
Professor William LaFleur (Professor
of Japanese Studies, University of Pennsylvania)
403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. & Amsterdam
Ave.)
6:00 PM
Japanese bioethicists have been struggling with the specific
problems of their field but also against the way their
American counterparts, dominant in this field, tend to
define the issues and offer "solutions." An awareness of
Japan as having once gone - in the case of the horrendous
activities of Unit 731 - far too far in the direction of
unethical medical research shows up in Japanese bioethical
writing and is part of the critique of Utilitarianism. An
adequate understanding of the protracted debate in Japan
concerning the ethics of organ transplantation in Japan
requires attention to this matter.
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