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CENTRE FOR JAPANESE RESEARCH
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Centre for Japanese Research:
November events!
Christian Books in Pre-modern Japan: Printing, Prohibition, & Circulation
Thursday, November 8, 2018
Time: 6:00 PM
Room 604, Asian Centre (1871 West Mall)
Dr.
M. Antoni Ucerler (University of San Francisco)
In 1590 the Jesuits in Japan imported a Gutenberg printing press from Portugal and began using metal type to print books in Japanese. Besides Christian devotional works, the Jesuits also printed grammars and dictionaries of the Japanese language. Join Professor M. Antoni Ucerler (University of San Francisco) in an evening about texts, censorship and Christianity in Japan.
Click here for full details
New Explorations in Tea History: Putting Women and Children First
Friday, November 9, 2018
Time: 4:30 PM
C. K. Choi Building, Room 120 (1855 West Mall)
Dr. Rebecca Corbett (University of Southern California)
In her recent book, Cultivating Femininity: Women and Tea Culture in Edo and Meiji Japan
, Rebecca Corbett writes women back into the history of chanoyu
(Japanese tea ceremony) and shows how tea practice for women was understood, articulated, and promoted in the Edo (1603-1868) and Meiji (1868-1912) periods. Viewing chanoyu
from the lens of feminist and gender theory, she sheds new light on tea's undeniable influence on the formation of modern understandings of femininity in Japan, and corrects the male-centered narratives that dominate writing about tea history. Her current research project likewise focuses on a hitherto unexplored aspect of Edo period tea culture: children's participation. Using the tea gatherings of Tagami Kikusha (1753-1826) - a nun who practiced calligraphy, painting, and music (shichigenkin
), and a broad range of poetry including haikai
, waka
, and kanshi
, in addition to chanoyu
- Corbett will discuss a world of tea practice in which play and children's edification were the main functions.
Click here for full details
CJR Lunchtime Lecture series:
A Family Maintaining Its Elevation: Household, Status, and Documentation in Early Modern Shugendō
November 13, 12:30-1:30 pm
Asian Centre, Room 604
Dr. Frank Clements
Shugendō is a Japanese religious tradition centered around mountain asceticism that incorporates elements of esoteric Buddhism, Daoist immortality beliefs, and the worship of local deities. Its practitioners, called yamabushi or shugenja, engage in austerities within the mountains to achieve bodily enlightenment and acquire supernormal power to benefit lay patrons. The Dewa Sanzan, or the Three Mountains of Dewa, were the focus of northern Japan's most influential Shugendō tradition, and one of them, Mt. Haguro, was the headquarters for a network of yamabushi that spanned northern and eastern Japan during the medieval and early modern eras.
In this lecture, Frank Clements will present research on the Sanada Shichirōzaemon household, an elite lineage of Haguroyamabushi who were crucial to the functioning of the Haguro organization and its community of yamabushi and lay patrons during Japan's Edo period (1603-1868). The Sanadas employed strategies of document production, exchange, and preservation in order to define and defend their privileged place in Haguro Shugendō's economic, political, ritual, and social structures. Despite the tradition's seeming emphasis on mountain austerities, there was far more to the lives of yamabushi than just detached ascetic practice.
The Social and Political Lives of Japanese Cherry Blossoms
John Howes Memorial Lecture in Japanese Studies
Thursday, November 22, 2018
Time: 6:30 PM
Asian Centre Auditorium, 1871 West Mall
Dr. Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney (Ohnuki Emiko) (University of Wisconsin)
Following from her recent book, Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History, Dr. Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney's talk will present the many, often contradictory, meanings assigned to cherry blossoms - from life and love to death - while becoming a symbol of various social groups, and, ultimately, the Japanese as a whole. Her lecture will highlight abuses of this aesthetic during Japan's military period, and conclude by deliberating on opacity in symbolic communication and its impact on the people. Refreshments available!
Registration is required. Click
here for full details
That's all for now
Have a great week!
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