Programs & Projects
Harvard Japan Events Calendar
ALL EVENTS UNLESS INDICATED OTHERWISE ARE FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.
ART EXHIBITION: CONTEMPORARY JAPANESE ART AND ANIME,
TUFTS UNIVERSITY
September 10 - November 22 ONGOING
Tufts University Art Gallery, 40 Talbot Ave. [note location]
EXHIBITION: "SACRED MONSTERS: EVERYDAY ANIMISM IN CONTEMPORARY JAPANESE ART AND ANIME"
Monsters and spirits are prominent elements of Japanese culture, whose representations range from the truly grotesque to the "creepy cute." Unlike in the Judeo-Christian tradition, this Other World (ikai) in Japanese Shinto belief is visibly and tangibly present, rather than physically removed and conceptually distant. The Shinto belief in animism - that all things are alive and imbued with sacred spirit - allows for a visual playfulness that has inspired incredible and sometimes incredulous artistic visions. This exhibition includes twenty-one works by eight Japanese artists, as well as seven anime and one live-action film screened continuously in the Gallery.
For more information view the Exhibition Catalog (in PDF) or visit The Tufts University Art Gallery.
November 2 (Monday), 5:00 p.m. THIS WEEK
Room 14A, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 11 Divinity St.
"Significance of 'Triangular-Rimmed Mirrors' in State Formation in Japan"
SHINYA FUKUNAGA, Professor of Archaeology, Osaka University
East Asian Archaeology Seminar presentation co-sponsored by the Early Korea Project at the Korea Institute
For more information, please contact jguedes@fas.harvard.edu
November 3 (Tuesday), 12:30-2:00 p.m. THIS WEEK
Bowie-Vernon Conference Room K262, CGIS Knafel Bldg., 1737 Cambridge St.
Special Series on Common Problems of Advanced Industrial Democracies
"Rising Crime and Crime Reduction Strategies in 21st Century
TAISUKE KANAYAMA, Director, Police Policy Research Center, National Police Agency (Japan)
Discussion Moderator: SUSAN J. PHARR, Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics, Dept. of Government, and Director, Reischauer Institute and Weatherhead Center Program on U.S.-Japan Relations
November 5 (Thursday), 4:30-6:30 p.m. THIS WEEK
Porté Room S250, CGIS South Bldg., 1730 Cambridge St.
"Imagining a Utopic Post-Colonial Korea: Anti-Japanese Resistance and the Rhetoric of Independence within the 1929-1930 Kwangju Student Movement"
DEBORAH SOLOMON, Joint postdoctoral fellow, Korea Institute and Reischauer Institute, Harvard University
Discussion Moderator: CARTER ECKERT, Yoon Se Young Professor of Korean History, Dept. of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University
Korea Institute Korea Colloquium Japan presentation co-sponsored by the Reischauer Institute
November 6 (Friday), 4:00-5:30 p.m. THIS WEEK
Porté Room S250, CGIS South Bldg., 1730 Cambridge St.
"Japan Transformed: Political Change and Economic Restructuring"
FRANCES ROSENBLUTH, Deputy Provost for Faculty Development and Damon Wells Professor of International Politics, Yale University
Discussion Moderator: J. MARK RAMSEYER, Mitsubishi Professor of Japanese Legal Studies, Harvard Law School
Reischauer Institute Japan Forum presentation co-sponsored by the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations
November 9 (Monday), 7:00 p.m.
Harvard Film Archive, Carpenter Center for Visual Arts, 24 Quincy St.
Film Screening: United Red Army (Directed by Koji Wakamatsu, 2008)
The most militant of the many radical political groups forged in late 1960s Japan, the United Red Army has also been among the most contested and controversial. After a string of bold and deadly attacks on the police in 1972, several URA members fled to a remote mountain holdout where the bloody events unflinchingly chronicled in Wakamatsu’s celebrated most recent film took place. A frightening exploration of the conflict between individual expression and ideological conviction, Wakamatsu’s powerful and unsettling film focuses with harrowing intensity on the disintegration of the group as its members gradually turn on each other in grueling sessions of critique and, eventually, torture. While drawing extensively from his own experience within radical politics, Wakamatsu also based his screenplay and story on exhaustive interviews conducted with those surviving Red Army members he was able to track down, many in prison or in exile.
Directed by Koji Wakamatsu. With Maki Sakai, Arata, Go Jibiki
Japan 2008, 35mm, color, 190 min. Japanese with English subtitles.
About the Director, Koji Wakamatsu: With over one hundred films to his name, the extraordinarily prolific and provocative producer-writer-director Koji Wakamatsu (b. 1936) has been a central figure in Japanese cinema since he forged his reputation as a daring iconoclast with some of the most controversial films of the 1960s and 1970s New Wave. A close associate of Nagisa Oshima, Wakamatsu has remained an adamant radical, both politically and aesthetically, whose incredibly unconventional cinema relentlessly challenges the Japanese status quo while also questioning the very nature of political dissent itself through its ambivalent portrait of ideologically driven movements and its argument that an untamed, anarchic spirit simmers in the heart of the individual. Wakamatsu’s own involvement in radical politics - and most especially his close association with the infamous United Red Army - has landed him on the State Department black list, preventing him from entering the United States. Celebrated as one of the quintessential postwar Japanese cult directors, Wakamatsu’s latest film- and perhaps his magnum opus- United Red Army brings a newly ruminative quality to his cinema that has won him a broader international audience and brought about a reevaluation of his earlier films. A searing portrait of political radicalism pushed to its most desperate and perilous extreme, the New England premiere of United Red Army is presented here as a prelude to a retrospective series which will be presented at the Harvard Film Archive in early 2010.
Harvard Film Archive special screening.
Tickets are $9 General Admission, $7 Harvard Staff, non-Harvard students and seniors. Harvard students free. For more information view, http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa or
contact (617) 495-4700 for more information.
November 10 (Tuesday), 12:30-2:00 p.m. [new date]
Bowie-Vernon Conference Room K262, CGIS Knafel Bldg., 1737 Cambridge St.
"The Politics of Economic Downturn in
KAY SHIMIZU, Advanced Research Fellow, Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, and Assistant Professor of Political Science,
Discussion Moderator: SUSAN J. PHARR, Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics, Dept. of Government, and Director, Reischauer Institute and Weatherhead Center Program on U.S.-Japan Relations
November 11 (Wednesday), 7:00 p.m.
Hauser Hall 102, Harvard Law School, 1545 Massachusetts Ave. [note room location change]
Japanese Law Film Series: Family and War in Law and Film
FILM SCREENING: The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On (Dir. Kazuo Hara, 1987) with English subtitles
November 13 (Friday), 4:00-5:30 p.m.
Tsai Auditorum S010, Japan Friends of Harvard Concourse, CGIS South Bldg., 1730 Cambridge St.
"The Soul of Anime: Collaborative Creativity and Japan's Media Success Story"
IAN CONDRY, Associate Professor, Mitsui Career Development Professor, Foreign Languages and Literatures, MIT
Discussion Moderator: SUSAN J. PHARR, Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics, Dept. of Government, and Director, Reischauer Institute and Weatherhead Center Program on U.S.-Japan Relations
Reischauer Institute Japan Forum presentation co-sponsored by the Harvard Japan Society
November 17 (Tuesday), 12:30-2:00 p.m. [new date]
Bowie-Vernon Conference Room K262, CGIS Knafel Bldg., 1737 Cambridge St.
Special Series on Globalization and Governance
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ROBERT N. STAVINS, Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government; Director, Harvard Environmental Economics Program; and Chairman, Environment & Natural Resources Faculty Group,
Discussion Moderator: SUSAN J. PHARR, Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics, Dept. of Government, and Director, Reischauer Institute and Weatherhead Center Program on U.S.-Japan Relations
November 18 (Wednesday), 7:00 p.m.
Hauser Hall 102, Harvard Law School, 1545 Massachusetts Ave. [note room location change]
Japanese Law Film Series: Family and War in Law and Film
FILM SCREENING: Patlabor 2 (Dir. Mamoru Oshii, 1993) with English subtitles
Harvard Law School
November 20 (Friday), 4:00-5:30 p.m.
Porté Room S250, CGIS South Bldg., 1730 Cambridge St.
"Remembering the Soldiers: The Cultural Reproduction of National Trauma in Japan"
AKIKO HASHIMOTO, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Pittsburgh
Discussion Moderator: MARY C. BRINTON, Reischauer Institute Professor of Sociology, Dept. of Sociology, Harvard University
Reischauer Institute Japan Forum presentation
November 25 (Wednesday), 7:00 p.m.
Hauser Hall 102, Harvard Law School, 1545 Massachusetts Ave. [note room location change]
Japanese Law Film Series: Family and War in Law and Film
FILM SCREENING: Seven Samurai (Dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1954) with English subtitles
Harvard Law School
December 1 (Tuesday), 12:30-2:00 p.m.
Bowie-Vernon Conference Room K262, CGIS Knafel Bldg., 1737 Cambridge St.
Special Series on International Relations of East Asia
"The United States and Kaji Wataru in Wartime China and Occupied Japan"
ERIK ESSELSTROM, Assistant Professor of History, University of Vermont
Discussion Moderator: ANDREW GORDON, Lee and Juliet Folger Fund Professor of History, Dept. of History, Harvard University
December 4 (Friday), 4:00-5:30 p.m.
Porté Room S250, CGIS South Bldg., 1730 Cambridge St.
"Modernity’s Aesthetic Turn: Art Education and the Nation in Japan and Egypt"
RAJA ADAL, Reischauer Institute postdoctoral fellow (Ph.D. History, Harvard University 2009)
Discussion Moderator: ANDREW GORDON, Lee and Juliet Folger Fund Professor of History, Dept. of History, Harvard University
Reischauer Institute Japan Forum presentation
December 14 (Monsday), 12:30-2:00 p.m.
Bowie-Vernon Conference Room K262, CGIS Knafel Bldg., 1737 Cambridge St.
"Prime Ministerial Leadership: Japanese Diplomacy under Koizumi and Beyond"
TOMIHITO SHINODA, Professor, International University of Japan
