FEBRUARY 2008

February 7th, 2008 (Thursday)
On the Trail of the Urban Nomad in the Tokyo of the 1980s
Jonathan Reynolds (Associate Professor, Barnard College)
403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
6:00 – 7:30 PM

February 13th, 2008 (Wednesday)
Woman on the Other Shore: An Evening with Mitsuyo Kakuta
Mitsuyo Kakuta, Writer
301 Philosophy Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
6:00 – 7:30 PM

Copyright Osamu Koizumi

Celebrated writer Mitsuyo Kakuta will be discussing her recent works, including Woman on the Other Shore, with Dr. Michael Emmerich and Ms. Satoko Shimazaki.

Mistuyo Kakuta was born in Yokohama in 1967. She began her writing career while still a student at Waseda University. She is the author of over a dozen books and the recipient of several literary awards, including Japan's most prestigious for popular fiction, the Naoki Prize, which she won for Woman on the Other Shore.

This event is co-sponsored by the Japan Foundation and the Weatherhead East Asian Institute.

February 22nd, 2008 (Friday)
Edward Seidensticker (1921-2007):
A Celebration of Lifetime Achievement in Japanese Literary Studies
C. V. Starr East Asian Library, 300 Kent Hall, Columbia University
5:30 – 7:30 PM

MARCH 2008

March 27th, 2008 (Thursday)
Householders: The Reizei Family in Japanese History
Steven Carter (Professor, Stanford University)
403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
6:00 – 7:30 PM

Housholders presents the history of the Reizei House—a noble lineage descended from Fujiwara no Teika—as a house, rather than as a genealogy of individual poets. This study goes against the grain of much traditional scholarship in that it places emphasis less on individuals than on the various roles of those individuals in a larger collective effort. In Householders, Prof. Steven Carter contends that a close reading of the various texts and artifacts of the Reizei, which we are fortunate to have in abundance, reveals that by their nature those materials virtually demand such an approach. In that sense, the approach of traditional scholarship on Japanese court poetry of the late medieval and early modern eras is in need of re-examination.

This talk will begin with a brief statement by Prof. Carter about how he became interested in the Reizei House, and then will focus on passages from the book that deal with the house as an enterprise dedicated to a particular kind of professional practice that involved not just composing poems but also politics, teaching, critique, textual services, and ritual activities.

APRIL 2008

April 7th, 2008 (Monday)
Japanese Style Shifts and Social Identities: The Case of JFL Learners and their Host Families
Haruko Cook (Professor, University of Hawai'i at Manoa)
403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
6:00 – 7:30 PM

For many American college students who study in Japan, living with a Japanese host family is a highlight of their study abroad experience. Many of them report that they learned Japanese most from talking with their host family members. How do learners of Japanese as a foreign language (JFL learners) learn Japanese and acquire new social identities in interaction with their host families? One of the ways in which speakers display their social identities in Japanese is through style shifts between the addressee honorific masu and non-honorific plain forms. In the homestay context, in which style do the participants interact with each other? What social identities are indexed by the use of the masu or plain form in dinnertime talk between the learner and host family? Based on dinnertime conversation data from nine JFL learners and their Japanese host families, this talk attempts to answer questions concerning co-construction of social identities through style shift in the homestay context.

April 10th, 2008 (Thursday)
Beyond Jakuchu's Surfaces: Painting Techniques and Conservation of an 18th-century Masterwork
Kent Hall Lounge, 4th Floor, Kent Hall, Columbia University
5:30 – 7:30 PM

April 16th, 2008 (Wednesday)
The Days After the Surrender
Donald Keene (Professor Emeritus, Columbia University)
301 Philosophy Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
6:00 – 7:30 PM

During the hectic days immediately following the Emperor's broadcast announcing the Japanese surrender in August 1945, several writers recorded their reactions in diaries. These diaries, more trustworthy and moving than later recollections or newspaper accounts, give a vivid picture of what it meant to be a writer at a time when all values were suddenly turned topsy-turvy.

A reception will follow the talk.

Book Culture will be selling copies of Prof. Keene's forthcoming autobiography, Chronicles of My Life: An American in the Heart of Japan, at the talk.

This event is open to the public free of charge. No RSVP is necessary.

MAY 2008

May 1st, 2008 (Thursday)
Gloss Writing in the 8th Century: Korean Kugyŏl and the Origins of Japanese Kanbun
John Whitman (Professor, Cornell University)
403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
6:00 – 7:30 PM

This talk concerns a manuscript that was destroyed in the B-29 raid on Tokyo on April 15, 1945. One side was an untitled, undated text known as the Tôdaiji fuju monkô (Draft of a Sermon for Tôdaiji Temple). On the reverse side was inscribed one of two extant copies of a sutra commentary, the Kegon mongi yôketsu (Key to the Text and Meaning of the Avatamsaka Sutra), approximately datable to the late eighth century. In the 1930s Yamada Yoshio and others noticed that the Tôdaiji fuju monkô was the earliest example of "mixed" kanji and katakana writing, with katakana written by the same hand, on the same line (as well as in the margin) as Chinese characters in the text. The Kegon mongi yôketsu similarly attracted attention among scholars, including Kobayashi Yoshinori, who showed that the system of glossing (kunten) it uses is nearly identical to those in stylus-pointed texts from the ancient Korean states of Late Shilla and Koryo. This discovery has led to a flurry of interest in the hypothesis that kunten glossing technology was brought from Shilla to Nara in the mid- to late eighth century, as part of the transmission of Huayan/Kegon doctrine and texts at that time. In his talk, Prof. Whitman will look at the two texts in brief detail. He will discuss what it means to gloss a text "to be read in a language" and will consider the relationship between glossing and construction of a written vernacular.