Japan@IHJ
This spring, the I-House will launch a new forum, Japan@IHJ, with the help of a network of experts from academia, journalism, the arts, and business, for disseminating/sharing information and knowledge on Japan and for enhancing cross-cultural dialogue going beyond national, occupational and disciplinary boundaries with a focus on “Japan” as a common interest. As this forum will be organized on an occasional/ad hoc basis, please register your e-mail address for our electronic magazine from the I-House website to be kept fully posted.
Stitching in Modern Times~The Sewing Machine, Women, and Consumers in 20th Century Japan
Date:
Wednesday, March 17, 7:00 pm
Speaker: Andrew Gordon, Professor, Harvard University
Moderator: Shunya Yoshimi, University of Tokyo
Admission: Free (reservations required)
Language: English (no Japanese translation provided)
Having received his Ph. D. in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard
University, Professor Andrew Gordon taught at Duke University (1984.1995).
He joined the Harvard faculty in 1995. Prof. Gordon served as Director
of the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute (1998.2004) and Chair of the Department
of History at the university (2004.2007). Centering upon labor relations
in Japan, he has been engaged in the studies of the modern history of
Japan as well as economic and cultural history. Focusing on the prominent
emergence of consumers in Japan's 20th century history, in this lecture,
Prof. Gordon will discuss the Singer Sewing Machine company's export to
Japan along with a modern concept of the family. He will also discuss
the multi-sided character of modern consumer life that was connected to
and promoted by this American export, touching on the"wartime modernity"
and the postwar ascendance of the Japanese consumer-oriented society.
His publications include The Evolution of Labor Relations in Japan:
Heavy Industry, 1853.1955 (Harvard East Asian Monographs, 1985), Labor
and Imperial Democracy in Prewar Japan (University of California Press,
1991), Postwar Japan as History (editor, University of California
Press, 1993), The Wages of Affluence: Labor and Management in Postwar
Japan (Harvard University Press, 1998), A Modern History of Japan:
From Tokugawa Times to the Present (Oxford University Press, 2003),
and Nihonjin ga shiranai Matsuzaka mejaa kakumei [Matsuzaka's Unknown
Major League Revolution] (Asahi Shimbunsha, 2007).
Shunya Yoshimi: Specializing in Media and Cultural Studies; currently teaching at the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, University of Tokyo. His major publications include Cultural Turn for the Politics of Cultures (Jinbun Shoin, Kyoto, 2003) and Pro-America, Anti-America: Political Unconsciousness in Postwar Japan (Iwanami Shoten, Tokyo, 2007).
Origins of World War II and the Future of U.S.- Asia
Relations
Date:
Monday, March 29, 7:00 pm
Speaker: James Bradley, Writer
Admission: Free (reservations required)
Language: English & Japanese (with simultaneous translation)
Co-sponsors: International House of Japan, Japan Society of Boston, U.S. Embassy
The New York Times No. 1 best-selling author, James Bradley, returns
to Japan to discuss his new book, The Imperial Cruise.
Bradley's current bestseller, The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History
of Empire and War (Little, Brown and Company, 2009), documents that
Theodore Roosevelt based U.S.-Japanese relations on race theories he had
studied at Harvard and Columbia Universities and that Roosevelt agreed
a secret treaty with Tokyo to allow Japan to expand into Korea--all without
the knowledge of Congress or the Nobel Peace Prize Committee. The New
York Times wrote, "The Imperial Cruise is startling enough
to reshape conventional wisdom about Theodore Roosevelt's presidency."
James Bradley: An American historian of the Pacific. Studied at Sophia
University in Tokyo. President of the James Bradley Peace Foundation,
which for a decade has sent American high school students to live and
study in Japan and China. Bradley's No. 1 best-seller, Flags of Our
Fathers (Bantam, 2000), tells the story of six Americans who raised
the flag on Iwo Jima, one of whom was Bradley's father, John Bradley.
Clint Eastwood's movie version was released in 2006. Bradley's second
book, Flyboys: A Story of Courage (Little, Brown and Company, 2003),
details the secret executions of eight American flyboys on the island
of Chi Chi Jima. One flyboy survived. His name was Lt. George Herbert
Walker Bush, the 41st President of the United States.
The Crooked Timber of Cherry: Japanese Cherry Blossoms
in Peace and War
Date:
Wednesday, March 31, 7:00 pm
Speaker: Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Professor, University of Wisconsin,
Madison
Moderator: Ota Yoshinobu, Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate School of Social and Cultural Studies, Kyushu University
Admission: Free (reservations required)
Language: English (no Japanese translation provided)
Professor Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Ph.D., is William F. Vilas Professor,
Department of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, and occupied
the Kluge Distinguished Chair of Modern Culture at the Library of Congress
in 2009. Her work is focused on various symbols of the Japanese identity
in historical and comparative perspective, such as rice, the monkey, and
cherry blossoms, taken in a broader socio-political context. Her publications
include The Monkey as Mirror (Princeton University Press); Rice
as Self: Japanese Identities Through Time (Princeton University Press,
1993); Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms: The Militarization
of Aesthetics in Japanese History (University of Chicago Press, 2002)
and Kamikaze Diaries: Reflections on Japanese Student Soldiers
(University of Chicago Press, 2006). In this lecture, she will discuss
the processes of the state manipulation of the meaning and aesthetics
of cherry blossoms since the beginning of Meiji to the end of World War
II.
The Edo Inheritance in Contemporary Japan
Talk by the Eighteenth Head of the House of Tokugawa
Date:
Wednesday, June 9, 7:00 pm
Speaker:Tokugawa Tsunenari, Eighteenth Head of the House of Tokugawa/Former executive vice-president of Nippon Yusen (NYK Line)
Moderator: Bettina Gramlich-Oka, Assistant Professor, Faculty of the Liberal Arts, Sophia University
Admission: Free (reservations required)
Language: English (no Japanese translation provided)
The Tokugawa family served as shoguns during the Edo period, sometimes demonized as a dark ages when Japan adopted sakoku (a policy of national seclusion) and created a police state. Mr. Tokugawa Tsunenari, the eighteenth head of the main lineage of the Tokugawa family, will talk about the Edo period from his perspective as a descendant of the Tokugawa family and as a businessperson who has worked abroad amid the high growth period of the Japanese economy. He will talk about the egalitarian and peaceful nature of society in Edo, the development of an extensive education system for various classes, the significance of kogi (public domain) as a Japanese theory of human society in connection to the meaning of yakunin (public officials) and the sustainable development of this period, a legacy to be rediscovered by contemporary Japan.
Tokugawa Tsunenari: Born in Tokyo in 1940. After graduating from the Faculty of Political Science at Gakushuin University in 1964, he joined the NYK Line, one of the largest shipping companies in the world. Retiring as an executive vice-president in 2002, he became an advisor to the company. In 2003 he established the Tokugawa Memorial Foundation and became its president. He has served as WWF Japan chairman since 2007. Mr. Tokugawa spent two years in London as a student and a total of six years in New York as a businessperson. The English version of his book Edo no Idenshi (PHP Kenkyujo 2007) was published by the I-House Press* as The Edo Inheritance in 2009.
Bettina Gramlich-Oka: Ph.D. in Japanese Studies, Tübingen University, Assistant Professor of Japanese History at Sophia University. Prof. Gramlich-Oka has published on shogunal trade regulations and women of the Tokugawa period, including Thinking Like a Man: Tadano Makuzu (1763-1825) (Brill, 2006). She is the co-editor of the forthcoming volume Economic Thought in Early Modern Japan (Brill), and the guest-editor of East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine for the special issue on "Illness and Society in Early Modern Japan."
*The I-House Press is the commercial book imprint of the International House of Japan. It publishes in English various works, including the fruits of the House's program activities as well as revised editions of selected works from the LTCB International Library series, for the purpose of promoting understanding of Japan abroad.
http://www.i-house.or.jp/en/publications/ihousepress/index.html
Past Japan@IHJ
For past Japan@IHJ, Please see this page.
Contact
Program Department
International House of Japan
5-11-16 Roppongi, Minato-ku Tokyo 106-0032 Japan
Tel: +81-3-3470-3211 Fax: +81-3470-3170
E-mail: program*i-house.or.jp (Please replace * with @)
