The Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture - Donald Keene Center Events Calendar Spring 2006



Donald Keene Center
of Japanese Culture
507 Kent Hall, MC 3920
Columbia University
New York, New York 10027

Tel: 212-854-5036
Fax: 212-854-4019




Donald Keene Center Events Calendar Spring 2006

  JANUARY | FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL

  • 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.

 

The Donald Keene Center celebrates its 20th Anniversary in 2006!

For the past 20 years, the Keene Center has adhered to its founding mission of fostering interest in and advancing the understanding of Japan and its culture. On this notable anniversary, the Center seeks to expand its scope and pursue new directions in the study of Japan. We invite you to join us as Friends of the Center. Please read a message from our director and information on participating in our GLOBAL JAPAN: Past, Present, and Future initiative.

 

JANUARY 2006

January 26 (Thursday)
Marketing the Bunjin: TAKEBE Ayatari as an 18th-Century Entrepreneur of the Arts
Dr. Lawrence Marceau (Senior Lecturer in Japanese, University of Auckland)
403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

In early-modern (Edo/Tokugawa period) Japan, artists, writers, and poets known as bunjin actively portrayed themselves as transcendent followers of "art for art's sake." Realities of survival for many bunjin dictated that they actively pursue wealthy patrons, informally organized groups of paying disciples, or other sources of income in order to support their "refined" pursuits. In this illustrated lecture, Dr. Marceau examines a third approach which he asserts TAKEBE Ayatari took pains to pursue: publishing. Dr. Marceau will present Ayatari as a publishing entrepreneur who used his connections in Japan's urban centers to promote his ideals in dynamically successful ways in the 1760s and 1770s.
 

FEBRUARY 2006

February 2 (Thursday)
"Korean Influences in Japanese Culture" Lecture Series
The Dual Career of 'Arirang': The Korean Resistance Anthem That Became a Japanese Pop Hit
E. Taylor Atkins (Associate Professor of History, Northern Illinois University)
403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
6:00 PM - 7:30 PM

This lecture will address the multiple cultural uses to which the "Arirang" song was put during the Japanese colonial occupation of Korea (1910-1945). The presentation will include examples of "Arirang" songs by Koreans and Japanese from this period as well.

Co-sponsored by The Weatherhead East Asian Institute and The Center for Korean Research
 

February 8 (Wednesday)
Lecture: Bashōfu: Japan's Folk Craft Movement and the Construction of a New Okinawa
Dr. Amanda Mayer Stinchecum (Historian)
403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
6:00 PM - 7:30 PM

From the time of his first visit to Okinawa in 1938, YANAGI Sōetsu, founder of Japan's Folk Craft (Mingei) Movement, promoted an image of bashōfu (cloth made from the fiber-banana ) as emblematic of an essentialized, idyllic and homogeneous Okinawan culture. Yanagi's view of Okinawa as a "tropical country," a southern island paradise, became the theme of the islands' tourism industry after Japan's defeat in 1945.

Since the 16th century, bashōfu has clothed the people of the Ryukyu archipelago, from Ryukyu's kings to its poorest villagers. Production and use of the cloth persists today. Through the intervention of Yanagi and his colleagues, the Mingei view of Okinawa has shaped an image of the islands that came to be held by both Okinawans and Mainland Japanese. This lecture examines bashōfu as one medium through which members of the Mingei Movement and other outsiders, and through them, Okinawans themselves, have defined Okinawan identity.

Dr. Amanda Mayer Stinchecum is an independent scholar specializing in the history of Ryukyu/Okinawa. She focuses on cultural and economic history, issues of marginalization, tourism development, and identity as viewed through the medium of textile and clothing production, technology, design, and use.
 
 

February 23 (Thursday)
What Did a Regent Do? Regent FUJIWARA Tadahira in the 930s
Joan Piggott (Gordon L. Macdonald Professor of History, University of Southern California)
403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
6:00 PM - 7:30 PM

What did a regent do at the Heian court from the later ninth through the later eleventh centuries? In the English historiography, the regent has generally been portrayed as an autocrat whose paramount power was rooted in "marriage politics"—his control over a child monarch through the monarch's mother, in a society where uxorilocality was customary—and buttressed by his martial Minamoto "claws and fangs." As for how a regent ruled, we find mention of the idea of "household government" (mandokoro seijiron), suggesting that the regent's household chancellery itself ruled the tennô's realm in patrimonial fashion. While this idea has been rejected by experts in Japan, there is a lively debate among specialists as to how regents actually led court and realm from the later ninth through the early eleventh centuries, and the resulting shape of the monarchy and polity of their era.

As a historian keenly interested in the course of monarchy and state formation in Japan—Professor Piggott is presently writing a monograph entitled On Beyond Shômu concerning those very issues—she was initially drawn to the journal of FUJIWARA Tadahira (880-949), the Teishinkôki, in search of evidence concerning the operation and character of the early regency as it was being routinized during Tadahira's day. In this presentation, she focuses primarily on how Tadahira exercised his regental prerogatives and his relationship with other court officials, including the monarch. As will become clear, Tadahira was much less an autocrat than a chief executive who managed a team of courtier-officials and colleague-rulers, including the retired tennô, members of the Council of State, and relatives from his own family who served both inside and outside of the child tennô's residential palace. Under the regency of Tadahira, tennô-centered government and its ritsuryô process continued, but there were nonetheless adaptations in and challenges to both hallmarks of the earlier charter era.

 

MARCH 2006

March 2 (Thursday)
Screening and Discussion: Original Child Bomb

Linda Hoaglund (Senior Film Curator, Japan Society), Carey Schonegevel McKenzie (Director),
Greg Mitchell (Author)
304 Barnard Hall, Barnard College
6:00 PM - 7:30 PM

Inspired by Thomas Merton's poem, ORIGINAL CHILD BOMB shows the human cost of nuclear weapons. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are depicted through declassified footage, photographs, drawings and testimonies of mothers, brothers and soldiers. Ordinary people gaze upon the nuclear past and its terrifying present. They expose the political rhetoric surrounding "security" and "weapons of mass destruction." The film is a wake-up call and an invitation to action.
 
 

March 9 (Thursday)
"Korean Influences in Japanese Culture" Lecture Series
Between Life and Death: Diaspora and Koreans in Japan
Sonia Ryang (Associate Professor of Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University)
403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
6:00 PM - 7:30 PM

Many researchers on Koreans in Japan, especially those with political conscience and passion for justice, argue that Koreans in Japan are treated like sub-humans, second-class citizens, and are discriminated against inside Japanese society.

In this talk, Professor Ryang makes the case that, in fact, they are not discriminated against inside Japanese society, since they actually stand outside Japanese society, and that discrimination arises from the fact that they are merely and nakedly human, and not sub-human. Furthermore, Professor Ryang maintains, to suggest that they are treated like second-class citizens would be missing the point, since they are in no sense citizens of Japan in any capacity whatsoever. The talk seeks to resolve this conundrum.

Co-sponsored by The Weatherhead East Asian Institute and The Center for Korean Research
 

March 23 (Thursday)
Lecture: Singing Tales of the Gishi: Naniwa-bushi and the 47 Ronin in Meiji Japan

Henry Smith (Professor of Japanese History, Columbia University)
403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
6:00 PM - 7:30 PM

The art of storytelling known as "naniwabushi" (or "rôkyoku") emerged in early years of the 20th century as the first true medium of mass entertainment in modern Japan, spreading through live performance, phonograph records, and radio. Although it hangs on by a thread today, its impact on modern Japanese popular culture was immense. This talk explores the special role of the singer TÔCHÛKEN Kumoemon and his tales of the 47 Ronin in helping to raise naniwabushi from the art of lower-class street performers to the "voice of the Japanese nation."

 

APRIL 2006

April 12 (Wednesday)
Special Tea Demonstration and Lecture
Dr. Genshitsu Sen
Low Memorial Library, Rotunda, Columbia University (116th Street btw. Broadway and Amsterdam Ave.)
4:00 PM - 5:10 PM

RSVP by April 7th
 

April 12 (Wednesday)
Awarding of the First Annual Donald Keene Prize for the Promotion of Japanese Culture

Annual Soshitsu Sen XV Distinguished Lecture on Japanese Culture by Donald Keene: "To Japan by Way of Columbia"

Low Memorial Library, Rotunda
Columbia University (116th Street btw. Broadway and Amsterdam Ave.)
5:30 PM

RSVP by April 7th


Note Regarding Passover
We regret that these events coincide with the observance of the Eve of the First Day of Passover. Whilst every consideration was made to avoid this conflict, the recipient of the Donald Keene Prize is traveling to the United States from Japan within a very limited schedule. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

In order to accommodate those who will be observing the Eve of the First Day of Passover (Candle Lighting Time is 7:13 pm on April 12), the Keene Center will hold a Special Tea Demonstration from 4:00 to 5:10 pm in the Rotunda of Low Memorial Library (see above). The Demonstration will be given by the Former Grand Master of the Urasenke School of Tea, Dr. Genshitsu (Hôunsai) Sen. In addition, this year's Sen Lecture will begin slightly earlier than the accustomed time. We thank everyone for their gracious understanding.

April 21 (Friday)
Award Ceremony for the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature
Main Reading Room, C.V. Starr East Asian Library
Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
6:00 PM

Damian Flanagan, for his translation of The Tower of London by NATSUME Sôseki

     and

Yosei Sugawara, for his translation of The Gift of Numbers by OGAWA Yôko

RSVP by April 14th

See more information on the Translation Prize.

 

Copyright 2005-2008 The Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture at Columbia University