To celebrate the completion of Donald Keene's new biography of the Emperor Meiji (published by the Japanese monthly literary magazine Shincho 45, and serialized over the past 5 years in more than 60 installments), the Donald Keene Center will present a series of four lectures, surveying the life of the emperor who reigned over one of the most tumultuous periods of Japanese history. Ascending to the throne in 1867, as a youth of sixteen, Emperor Meiji died in 1912, having witnessed the transformation of Japan from a state of feudal disunity to a modern nation.   Prof. Donald Keene, as one of the world's most renowned authorities on Japanese literature and intellectual history, brings unique talents and insights to the writing of the first comprehensive biography of the Emperor Meiji. His translations, anthologies, and critical studies of Japanese literature have provided the foundation for this field in the West. He has been twice decorated by the Japanese government and as received virtually every other major Japanese and western literary award. In 1985, he was the first non-Japanese to receive the Yomiuri Literary Prize for the best book of Japanese literary criticism in Japanese. Since 1986, Prof. Keene has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 1990 he was elected to the Japan Academy. Prof. Keene received his BA, MA, and PhD degree from Columbia University, and has been associated with Columbia throughout his academic career. He is currently a University Professor Emeritus at Columbia University and Shincho Professor of Japanese Literature Emeritus.

LECTURE SCHEDULE Feb. 1st 6:00 pm Lecture 1:  The Early Years of Emperor Meiji Feb. 8th 6:00 PM Lecture 2: Emperor Meiji and Foreign Visitors Feb. 22nd 6:00 PM Lecture 3: The Incident at Otsu Feb. 29th 6:00 PM Lecture 4: Emperor Meiji and War • Altschul Auditorium, (417 International Affairs Building) Columbia University, 115th St. & Amsterdam Ave. • Admission is free and all are welcome

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Kenji Mizoguchi Film Series February 14 - March 6, 2000 MIZOGUCHI: THE MASTER The films of Kenji Mizoguchi, along with those of Kurosawa and Ozu, are perhaps the most celebrated works of Japanese cinema throughout the world. In the years since his death in 1956, his reputation as one of the master directors of  world cinema has continued to grow. Few critics today would neglect to include at least one Mizoguchi film on their short lists of "best films of all time," and audiences the world over return again and again to his films, discovering something new in them with each re-viewing. Kenji Mizoguchi’s life closely parallels the development of cinema in Japan: born in 1898, only a year or two after the introduction of the first Kinetoscope and Vitascope films into Japan, Mizoguchi entered the film industry in the early 1920s, just as filmmakers were breaking away from the conventions of Japanese traditional theater to establish themselves as independent artists. Though Mizoguchi made eighty-five films during his thirty-three years as a director  (1923-56), his exalted international reputation rests on a relatively small number of works. Only about a dozen of his films are in regular distribution outside Japan, and of these fewer than half are seen with any real frequency. Among them, the three masterpieces that brought international acclaim to Mizoguchi by winning top awards at the Venice Film Festival in three consecutive years—The Life of Oharu (1952), Ugetsu  (1953), and Sansho the Bailiff  (1954)—continue to fascinate us with their extraordinary artistry.   Mizoguchi Film Series 2/14 6:00 PM - Panel Discussion 8:00 PM - Film - Sansho the Bailiff [1954] 2/21 6:00 PM - Film - Ugetsu [1953] 8:00 PM - Film - A Geisha [1953] 2/28 6:00 PM - Film - Utamaro & His Five Women [1946] 8:00 PM - Film - My Love Has Been Burning [1949] 3/6 8:00 PM - Film - The Life of Oharu [1952] Films are in Japanese with English subtitles. All showings will be at Columbia University's Miller Theatre  (Broadway at 116th Street). Tickets for each evening are $8.00 ($5.00 for students with ID and senior citizens) and can be purchased at the Miller Theatre Box Office in the theatre lobby. A subscription to the entire series is available for $25.00.  Tickets may also be purchased in advance either in person at the window with cash, check or credit card, or over the telephone using a credit card.  There is a handling charge of $2 for a credit card purchase. For more information, please contact Miller Theatre Box Office 2960 Broadway Columbia University New York, NY 10027 (TEL: 212-854-7799) If there is a single theme uniting all of Mizoguchi’s films, a "red thread" running through his entire body of work, it is his sympathy for individuals, particularly women, who are victimized by society. His very first film, The Resurrection of Love (Ai ni Yomigaeru Hi), a story of two impoverished sisters in love with an artist, has been described as "a portrayal of the poor so devastatingly realistic that it proved unacceptable to the censors" when it was made in 1923. Much the same could be said of his very last film, the 1956 Street of Shame  (Akasen Chitai), a sensitive portrayal of the hardships suffered by prostitutes, made at the time of a national debate over a new anti-prostitution law. In all his films, Mizoguchi’s compassionate humanism hovers like a protective angel over the women oppressed by society as he investigates with remarkable delicacy the nuances of human relationships. And in each film, regardless of whether it is a medieval ghost story, an adaptation from Maupassant or Eugene O’Neill, or a domestic tragedy unfolding in the back alleys of modern Osaka, the viewer is enveloped in an atmosphere perfectly attuned to the subject at hand. Transcending mere accuracy in selecting and decorating his settings, Mizoguchi seems almost to control the textures and vapors and aromas that draw the viewer totally into the worlds he created on film. The words of Akira Kurosawa, spoken in eulogy at Mizoguchi’s funeral, serve as eloquent commentary of the admiration of one Japanese film master for another: "Mizoguchi’s greatness was that he would do anything to heighten the reality of every scene.  He never made compromises. He never said that something or other ‘would do.’  Instead, he pulled or pushed everyone along with him until they had created the feeling which matched his own inner image. He had the temperament of a true creator. Mizoguchi pushed and bullied and was often criticized for it. But he held out, and in doing so he created masterpieces... Directors like him are especially necessary in Japan, where this kind of pushing is so resisted. Of all Japanese directors, I have the greatest respect for him... With the death of Mizoguchi, Japanese film has lost its truest creator.”

Chikuzan Takahashi II

A complex and beautifully wrought fable of the perils of greed and ambition, set during the civil wars of 16th-century Japan.  A village potter and his neighbor go off to Kyoto to peddle their wares and are seduced by the attractions of the city and by the ease with which they can prosper.  When rampaging armies loot their village, the potter is more concerned with protecting his profits than his own family.  The potter falls under the spell of a beautiful ghost-woman, and only his harrowing escape from her clutches brings him to his senses.  He rushes home to discover that his family has perished.  His neighbor, smitten with the lure of military glory succeeds through fraud to secure a high rank, only to be brought down by the discovery that his wife has become a prostitute. One of the most famous and best loved of all Japanese films, Ugetsu has been listed by many international critics among “the best films of all time.”  Among its many awards are the Silver Lion and Film Critics’ Prize at the 1953 Venice Film Festival.

In part a reworking of Mizoguchi’s 1936 film, Sisters of the Gion, the present film depicts the relationship of two geisha in postwar Kyoto. Miyoharu, slightly past her prime, is loved by a younger man who is squandering his family's fortune on her. Eiko, a younger geisha, asks Miyoharu to train her.  The older woman, impressed by Eiko’s beauty and talent, arranges for her debut, using money borrowed from a wealthy businessman.  When Eiko rejects the advances of this patron, he angrily has both women blacklisted in Kyoto’s teahouses.  The ban is lifted only when Miyoharu agrees to sleep with an unwanted suitor, while urging Eiko not to follow in her footsteps. Although Miyoharu was intended to be the central character, the picture was “stolen” by the young actress Ayako Wakao in the role of Eiko.  She survived the severe criticism that Mizoguchi typically directed at all his actors, and exceeded even the director's expectations.  A Geisha launched Wakao as one of Japan's greatest stars.

In this film about the renowned 18th-century woodblock print artist Utamaro, Mizoguchi may have found the perfect allegorical subject for his own experience as a film director. Utamaro, like Mizoguchi, was the creator of a popular art form, not always appreciated as art, yet he was profoundly convinced that his work was of no less quality than that of conventionally acknowledged artists.  Both men were obsessed with women as subjects, and both were hampered throughout their careers by restrictions imposed by outsiders. Utamaro was the first period film made after the war to be approved by the censors of the American Occupation, no doubt because its theme is about freedom and equality  The film depicts Utamaro’s irrepressible creative impulses and his relationships with the many women who posed for him.

A Meiji-period drama based loosely on the autobiography of Eiko Kageyama, one of that era’s most influential feminists.  Eiko defies her family and leaves her job as a schoolteacher in Okayama to live in Tokyo with her lover, a leader of the new Liberal Party.  She leaves him for another political activist, with whom she is arrested.  Released from prison in the 1889 amnesty following the issuance of the Meiji Constitution, she rejoins her husband in liberal political work, but leaves him when he has an affair with her former servant.  An interesting view of Meiji-period politics through the eyes of an intensely committed advocate of women's rights.

March 6 (Monday) The 2000 Soshitsu Sen XV Distinguished Lecture on Japanese Culture: Kuruma-za (Sitting in a Circle) - Thoughts on Japanese Group Mentality Makoto Ooka (Poet) Casa Italiana, 1161 Amsterdam Ave. (between 116th and 118th Streets, Columbia University » Campus Map 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM (followed by a reception in honor of Mr. Ooka) RSVP REQUIRED: call 212-854-5036 Makoto Ooka is one of Japan's most distinguished contemporary poets. He is perhaps best known for his daily poetry column, Ori-ori no uta (Verses of the Times), which has appeared every morning for nearly two decades on the front page of the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's mass-circulation newspaper. In this widely read column, he examines a single poem written by a classic or modern Japanese poet, and occasionally a translation of a non-Japanese poem. Mr. Ooka has also published numerous volumes of his own poetry, as well as translations, literary criticism, and essays, for which he has received nearly every major Japanese literary award. English translations of his writing include: The Colors of Poetry: Essays on Classic Japanese Verse (1991), A String Around Autumn (1982), Elegy and Benediction (1991), A Poet's Anthology: The Range of Japanese Poetry (1994), What the Kite Thinks: A Linked-Poem with Three American Poets (1994), and Beneath the Sleepless Tossing of the Planets (1995). He has served as President of the Japan Poets Association (1979-81) and President of the Japan PEN Club (1989-93). He was designated Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres by the government of France in 1993, and received the Imperial Award of the Japanese Art Academy in 1996. The following year he was designated a Person of Cultural Merit by the Japanese government. Mr. Ooka is a Visiting Fellow of the Donald Keene Center, under a program supported by the United States-Japan Foundation.

In this film adaptation of Saikaku’s 17th-century cautionary tale The Woman Who Loved Love  (Koshoku ichidai onna),  Mizoguchi substitutes a heartrending pathos for the bitter irony and self-mocking humor of Saikaku’s original.  Both versions depict the downfall of a well-bred woman, caused both by social forces and by her own sexual appetites.  The Life of Oharu, like Mizoguchi’s powerful 1936 film Osaka Elegy, shows how a woman can be stripped of social respectability and her own self-esteem simply by the fact of her own helplessness in a world dominated by men. Winner of the Grand Prize at the 1952 Venice Film Festival, The Life of Oharu is the film that first brought Mizoguchi to international prominence, and is ranked as one of his greatest masterpieces.

Paper Gallery, 1994

".... In the last five years, Ban has responded to the news of earthquakes and other disasters as if to a call of conscience.  After the Kobe quake in 1994, Mr. Ban designed units of cardboard and plastic housing for the thousands who had been driven from their homes.  The following year, he established the Volunteer Architects Network, a non-governmental agency of the United Nations.  This year, under the aegis of that agency, he has coordinated the production and shipment of cardboard housing units for refugees in Turkey.

It happens that Mr. Ban is also a brilliant designer of private houses, apartment houses, public buildings and museum exhibitions.  In these, he has displayed a striking talent for innovative form, structure and spatial organization.  This diverse body of work plays havoc with our Western inclination to plug architects into mutually exclusive categories: the artistically gifted or the socially committed.  In Mr. Ban’s case, they stem from the same outlook... In his work, we are invited to see the social dimension within the aesthetic, the artist inside the humanitarian."

Eto Jun (1932-1999)