Reischauer Institute 2018-20 Biennial Report

Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies

Harvard University

2018-20 Biennial Report

The Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University supports research on Japan and provides a forum for related academic activities and the exchange of ideas, bringing together Harvard faculty and students, as well as scholars and visitors from other institutions, to create one of the world’s leading communities for the study of Japan.

Our Goals

• Cooperate with the Asia Center and other related programs at Harvard to increase the public’s understanding of Japan and Asia in the United States and abroad

• Expand and enrich research and teaching on Japan throughout the University

• Strengthen the ties between Harvard University and Japan

Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies

Harvard University Center for Government and International Studies, South Building 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138

Phone 617.495.3220

Fax 617.496.8083

Email rijs@fas.harvard.edu

Website http://rijs.fas.harvard.edu/

Abbreviation Key

AC Asia Center

CGIS Center for Government and International Studies

CSWR Center for the Study of World Religions

Davis Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies

DRCLAS David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies

EALC East Asian Languages and Civilizations

EAS East Asian Studies (Undergraduate Concentration)

Fairbank Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies

FAS Faculty of Arts and Sciences

GSAS Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

GSD Graduate School of Design

GSE Graduate School of Education

HAA History of Art and Architecture Department

HBS Harvard Business School

HDS Harvard Divinity School

HEAL History and East Asian Languages (Ph.D. Concentration)

HKS Harvard Kennedy School

HSPH Harvard School of Public Health

HYI Harvard-Yenching Institute

HYL Harvard-Yenching Library

KI Korea Institute

RIJS Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies

RSEA Regional Studies-East Asia (M.A. Program)

SAI South Asia Institute

USJRP Program on U.S.-Japan Relations

VES Visual and Environmental Studies Department

WCFIA Weatherhead Center for International Affairs

About the Institute

Established in 1973 as the Japan Institute, the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies (RIJS) was renamed in 1985 to commemorate the retirement of Edwin O. Reischauer. The Institute is one of Harvard’s international and regional centers, all of which operate under a mandate to contribute to the university as a whole. Administratively, the Institute reports to the FAS Dean. Since 1997, the Institute has been part of the Harvard University Asia Center (AC) and has coordinated closely with the AC and other associated units. Members of the RIJS Executive Committee also serve on the AC Executive Committee and Steering Committee.

Edwin O. Reischauer

October 1910-September 1990

Edwin Oldfather Reischauer was born and raised in Tokyo, the son of Presbyterian educational missionaries. At sixteen, he left Japan for Oberlin College, later taking up graduate work at Harvard where he studied East Asian history, including a five-year world study tour to Paris, Tokyo, Kyoto, and Beijing. He returned to Harvard with his wife Adrienne in 1938, received his Ph.D. in 1939, and taught in the Department of Far Eastern Languages until 1941, when the State Department and the Army recruited him to serve variously as a research analyst, organizer of Japanese language programs for the military, and translator of intercepted military intelligence. After his return to Harvard in 1946, Reischauer guided the development of a new curriculum in East Asian Studies and began his career as a prolific writer. It was during this “golden age” of teaching (to use his phrase) that he began his collaboration with John K. Fairbank to teach a course on East Asian Civilizations, nicknamed “Rice Paddies,” which is still taught today as part of the General Education curriculum.

An article written by Reischauer in 1960 analyzing current tensions between the U.S. and Japan caught the attention of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, who appointed Reischauer as ambassador to Japan (1961-1966). Key to Reischauer’s ambassadorial outlook was the notion of “equal partnership” between Japan and America. He and his second wife, Haru Matsukata, a journalist from Tokyo whom he had married after Adrienne’s death in 1955, gave priority to their ties with ordinary Japanese citizens and were enthusiastically received. Both professionally and personally, Haru was a supportive companion to her husband and a strong partner to him as ambassador and scholar.

Edwin O. Reischauer, pictured here with his wife, Haru.

Returning to Harvard in 1966 as a University Professor, Reischauer continued to teach “Rice Paddies” and, reflecting his growing interest in contemporary issues, developed a course on Japanese Government and Politics in the Government Department and participated in a History Department course on The United States and East Asia. Reischauer wrote many books, including East Asia: Tradition and Transformation (1973), co-authored with John K. Fairbank and Albert M. Craig. He was the prime mover in establishing and funding the Japan Institute, later renamed in his honor, and he served as its director from 1974 to 1981. Up until his retirement in 1981, he continued to teach, write, and initiate a myriad of projects to enhance relations between the U.S. and Japan, including producing a series of lectures on Japanese history on videotape for the University.

Reischauer was instrumental in expanding not only Harvard’s curriculum but the field of East Asian studies as a whole, deepening American consciousness of Japan and the outside world. All of these contributions continue today to guide the Institute that gratefully carries his name.

Home in CGIS

Since 2005, the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies has been housed in the Center for Government and International Studies (CGIS), a complex designed to promote the crossing of boundaries and the forming of connections. RIJS shares the second floor of the CGIS South Building with the Korea Institute (KI) and the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS), and the Asia Center and many other Asiarelated programs are located nearby. Through CGIS, faculty, students, postdoctoral fellows, visiting scholars, and staff are seamlessly integrated into the dynamic international studies community at Harvard.

The spaces in CGIS South provided to graduate student associates-in-residence (GSAs), postdoctoral fellows, and visiting scholars promote interdisciplinary and cross-regional interaction. Each floor of the four-story building contains space with carrels assigned to graduate students affiliated with a regional studies institute and/or department. GSAs from different centers are mixed together, allowing for exciting academic exchange. RIJS postdoctoral fellows share office space with “postdocs” from other centers who have similar research interests. The postdocs enjoy a broader intellectual environment, and those who study more than one Asian country greatly benefit from proximity to other programs. Occupying a shared space, RIJS visiting scholars also have the opportunity to exchange ideas on various research topics, from political science to visual arts, literary studies to technology.

In addition, CGIS South regularly features contemporary and traditional art exhibitions on the Japan Friends of Harvard Concourse. Those hosted by RIJS include: Irresolution: The Paintings of Yoshiaki Shimizu (2017), From Artistry to Ethnography (2015), The Thinking Hand: Tools and Traditions of the Japanese Carpenter (2014), Tomokazu Matsuyama | Palimpsest (2013), Mizue Sawano | Eternal Return (2011), and Mitsuko Asakura | Tapestry in Architecture: Creating Human Spaces (2008).

RIJS Director

Mary C. Brinton is the Reischauer Institute Professor of Sociology and current Director of the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies. Professor Brinton is also a Faculty Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and former Chair of the Harvard Department of Sociology (2010 to 2016). She joined the Harvard faculty in 2003, having previously taught at the University of Chicago for 12 years and at Cornell University for 4 years.

Professor Brinton’s research and teaching focus on gender inequality, labor markets and employment, social demography, and contemporary Japanese society. Her research combines qualitative and quantitative methods to study institutional change and its effects on individual action, particularly in labor markets. Her forthcoming book (Chūō Kōron Shinsha, summer 2022) analyzes the link between Japan’s stubbornly low birth rate and persistent gender inequality in the labor market and the family. Drawing on comparative statistics and in-depth interviews with young adult men and women, she argues that movement towards gender equality is stalled in Japan because of the primary policy emphasis on making women’s but not men’s work lives more consistent with family life. Sweden and the U.S. serve as counter-examples that respectively illustrate how social policy and open labor markets help society move towards greater gender equality and maintain higher birth rates. Professor Brinton studied sociolinguistics as an undergraduate at Stanford University, and she earned an M.A. in Japanese Studies and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Washington.

Committees of the Institute

The Full Committee (FC) carries out the core mission of RIJS. The FC is composed of tenured professors, junior faculty, and emeritus faculty from across the University whose research and teaching relate to Japan, as well as Japanese language faculty and librarians for the Japanese collections. The committee meets at least once annually, and its members participate actively in RIJS activities and subcommittees.

The Executive Committee (EC), the governing body of the Institute, is composed of 16 tenured faculty appointed from the FC by the FAS Dean. Membership recommendations for this committee are submitted annually to the Dean for approval. The EC meets four to six times per year to consider new initiatives, approve the annual budget, make formal and informal appointments, award fellowships and grants, and establish Institute policies and procedures.

The RIJS Full Committee 2018-20

Please see the next page of the names and titles of RIJS Full Committee members, which appear throughout this report. An asterisk (*) indicates members of the Executive Committee.

Ryūichi Abé, EALC*

Reischauer Institute Professor of Japanese Religions

David C. Atherton, EALC

Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations

Naomi Asakura, EALC Preceptor in Japanese (2019-20)

Theodore C. Bestor, Anthropology* Reischauer Institute Professor of Social Anthropology and Japanese Studies

Mary C. Brinton, Sociology* Reischauer Institute Professor of Sociology; Director of RIJS

Albert M. Craig, EALC Harvard-Yenching Professor of History Emeritus

Edwin A. Cranston, EALC* Professor of Japanese Literature (2019-20)

Christina L. Davis, Government* Professor of Government; Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor, Radcliffe Institute; Director of USJP, WCFIA (2020-)

John M. Doyle, Physics

Henry B. Silsbee Professor of Physics

Theodore J. Gilman, WCFIA Executive Director of WCFIA

Andrew D. Gordon, History* Lee and Juliet Folger Fund Professor of History

Tomoko Graham, EALC Preceptor in Japanese

Helen Hardacre, EALC* Reischauer Institute Professor of Japanese Religions and Society

Takuro Hashimoto, EALC Preceptor in Japanese (2017-18)

Takao K. Hensch, Molecular and Cellular Biology Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology; Professor of Neurology, Children’s Hospital

Howard S. Hibbett, EALC

Victor S. Thomas Professor of Japanese Literature Emeritus

David L. Howell, EALC*

Robert K. and Dale J. Weary Professor of Japanese History

Akira Iriye, History

Charles Warren Professor of American History Emeritus

Kosuke Imai, Government Professor of Government and Statistics

Wesley M. Jacobsen, EALC* Professor of the Practice of the Japanese Language; Director of the Japanese Language Program

Geoffrey G. Jones, HBS Isidor Straus Professor of Business History

Yuko Kageyama-Hunt, EALC

Senior Preceptor in Japanese

Rie Kamimura, EALC

Drill Instructor in Japanese (2018-19)

Ichiro Kawachi, HMS / HSPH

John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Professor of Social Epidemiology

Susumu Kuno, Linguistics Professor of Linguistics Emeritus

Shigehisa Kuriyama, EALC*

Reischauer Institute Professor of Cultural History; Harvard College Professor

Yukio Lippit, HAA*

Jeffrey T. Chambers and Andrea Okamura Professor of History of Art and Architecture

Melissa McCormick, EALC* Professor of Japanese Art and Culture; Harvard College Professor

Kuniko McVey, HYL Librarian for the Japanese Collection

Ian J. Miller, History* Professor of History

Takuma Miura, EALC Drill Instructor in Japanese

Miki Miyagawa, EALC Drill Instructor in Japanese

Toshiko Mori, GSD

Robert P. Hubbard Professor in the Practice of Architecture

David R. Odo, Harvard Art Museums Director of Student Programs; Research Curator of University Collections Initiatives

Susan J. Pharr, Government*

Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics; Director of USJP, WCFIA (2018-20)

J. Mark Ramseyer, HLS*

Mitsubishi Professor of Japanese Legal Studies

Michael R. Reich, HSPH

Taro Takemi Professor of International Health Policy

James Robson, EALC

James C. Kralik and Yunli Lou Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations; Victor and William Fung Director of HUAC

Henry Rosovsky, Economics

Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor Emeritus

Jay Rubin, EALC

Takashima Professor of Japanese Humanities Emeritus

Victor Seow, History of Science Assistant Professor of the History of Science

Ikue Shingu, EALC Preceptor in Japanese

Daniel M. Smith, Government Associate Professor of Comparative Politics

Hirotaka Takeuchi, HBS Professor of Management Practice

Karen L. Thornber, Comparative Literature*

Henry Tuchman Levin Professor in Literature; Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations

Ezra F. Vogel, Sociology

Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences Emeritus

Mihoko Yagi, EALC

Drill Instructor in Japanese (2019-20)

Tomiko Yoda, EALC*

Takashima Professor of Japanese Humanities

Junya Yoshino, EALC Drill Instructor in Japanese

Michael Y. Yoshino, HBS

Herman C. Krannert Professor of Business Administration Emeritus

Alexander Zahlten, EALC

Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations

Faculty Announcements

New Faculty

In fall 2018, RIJS welcomed two new faculty members.

Christina L. Davis

Christina L. Davis is a Professor of Government in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Radcliffe Institute. In January 2020, she also became Director of the Program on US-Japan Relations at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

Her research interests include the politics and foreign policy of Japan and East Asia and the study of international organizations, with a focus on trade policy, and her research has been published in leading political science journals. Professor Davis is the author of Food Fights over Free Trade: How International Institutions Promote Agricultural Trade Liberalization (Princeton University Press, 2003) and Why Adjudicate? Enforcing Trade Rules in the WTO (Princeton University Press, 2012), which won the International Law Book Award and Chadwick F. Alger Prize from the International Studies Association, as well as the Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize.

Professor Davis received her A.B. in East Asian Studies and her Ph.D. in Government from Harvard, and she returns after 16 years on the faculty of Princeton University.

Kosuke Imai

Kosuke Imai is Professor in the Department of Government and the Department of Statistics at Harvard and an affiliate of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science.

His research area is political methodology and more generally applied statistics in the social sciences, and he has extensively worked on the development and applications of statistical methods for causal inference with experimental and observational data. He is the author of Quantitative Social Science: An Introduction (Princeton University Press, 2017). He has published more than fifty peer-refereed journal articles in political science, statistics, and other fields, and authored over ten open-source software packages. He has won several awards including the Miyake Award (2006), the Warren Miller Prize (2008), the Pi Sigma Alpha Award (2013), the Stanley Kelley, Jr. Teaching Award (2013), the Statistical Software Award (2015), and is the inaugural recipient of Society of Political Methodology’s Emerging Scholar Award (2011).

Professor Imai received his B.A. in Liberal Arts from the University of Tokyo and his A.M. in Statistics and Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University, and he returns after 15 years of teaching at Princeton University, where he was the founding director of the Program in Statistics and Machine Learning.

In Memoriam

With great sadness, the Reischauer Institute notes the passing of Professor Ronald Dore and Professor Howard Hibbett.

Professor Ronald Dore, eminent British sociologist of Japan, passed away on November 14, 2018. Prof. Dore’s research and writing on Japanese society, culture, and economy profoundly shaped inquiries into Japan’s postwar social transformation and institutions and made a lasting impact on subsequent generations of area studies scholars. Over the course of his academic career, his intellectual focus spanned topics from rural land reform and urban life to factory management and educational achievement (including his pathbreaking

1965 book Education in Tokugawa Japan).

Prof. Dore joined the Japanese studies community at Harvard as Reischauer Institute Visiting Professor in 1987, and he returned to campus again in 1988 and 1989 to co-teach classes with Profs. Ezra Vogel and Susan Pharr. In 1996, he delivered the Distinguished Visitor Lecture for the Weatherhead Center Program on US-Japan Relations. Prof. Dore’s long and rigorous engagement with Japan is a legacy that continues to enrich the field of Japanese studies to this day. We hold in great esteem his profound contributions as an academic, colleague, and generous mentor to younger scholars of Japan in the US and around the world.

Professor Howard Hibbett, Victor S. Thomas Professor in Japanese Literature Emeritus, passed away on March 13, 2019. Prof. Hibbett was a central part of our Japanese Studies community on campus, and a beloved colleague and dear friend to many faculty, students, and staff during his many years at Harvard. He was the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Japanese Literature, Emeritus, having joined the Harvard faculty in 1958. He served as Chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations from 1965-1970 and again in 1972, and he was Director of the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies from 1985-1988. Originally a Harvard graduate (College ’47, Ph.D. ’50), Prof. Hibbett graced the halls of Harvard for nearly 70 years.

A prolific scholar and translator, Prof. Hibbett published numerous works on Japanese literature and trained generations of scholars. He is especially known for his translations of Junichiro Tanizaki, and in 2018 he was awarded the Lindsley and Masao Miyoshi Translation Prize from the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture at Columbia University, “for lifetime achievement as a translator of Edo period and modern Japanese literature.” We deeply appreciate his leadership and commitment to the Reischauer Institute in promoting Japanese Studies on campus, as well as his longstanding interest in our activities. He will be greatly missed.

Faculty News

Daniel Smith completes new co-edited volume Japan Decides 2017

In February 2018, Daniel Smith completed a co-edited volume with Robert Pekkanen (Univ. of Washington), Steven Reed (Chuo Univ.), and Ethan Scheiner (UC Davis), titled Japan Decides 2017: The Japanese General Election. The third volume in the Japan Decides series, this volume discusses the 2017 general election results, party politics, coalition politics with Komeito, the cabinet, constitutional revision, new opposition parties, and Abenomics, among a variety of topics in Japanese politics.

J. Mark Ramseyer awarded Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon

On 19 December 2018, J. Mark Ramseyer was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, by the Japanese government. One of the oldest and highest national decorations, this conferral recognized his extensive contributions to the development of Japanese studies in the US and the promotion of understanding of Japanese society and culture.

Toshiko Mori leads architecture studio to Japan

In February 2019, Toshiko Mori led an advanced architecture design studio from the Graduate School of Design on a week-long trip to study the legacy of modernist architecture in Japan, with a focus on the Seto Inland Sea region. After studying the post-war history and the cultural, political, and economic background of Modernism, the studio investigated the Kagawa Gymnasium (1964), named one of the most endangered architectural monuments by the World Monument Fund’s Watch List of 2018, and proposed a design for its new use based on their research before and during the trip. While in Japan, the studio visited various art museums and architectural sites throughout Tokyo, Okayama, Kagawa, and Hiroshima prefectures (including the three islands Naoshima, Teshima, and Inujima), and met with the Governor of Kagawa Prefecture. News

coverage on the visit can be found here: https://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20190215-00010000-ksbv-l37, https://www.pref.kagawa.lg.jp/content/dir4/dir4_3/dir4_3_2/wilps2190206120107.shtml

Melissa McCormick curates exhibition on Tale of Genji at the Metropolitan Museum

From 5 March – 16 June 2019, the Metropolitan Museum opened an exhibition titled The Tale of Genji: A Japanese Classic Illuminated, curated by Melissa McCormick and John Carpenter (Mary Griggs Burke Curator of Japanese Art, The Met). The first major loan exhibition in North America to focus on art inspired by Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji, this exhibition presented a wide range of works – from manuscripts to paintings to calligraphy – and offered a new perspective on the author, characters, and story, as reflected by these artistic interpretations. The exhibition homepage can be found here: https://www.metmuseum.org/ exhibitions/listings/2019/tale-of-genji

In December 2019, Sebastian Smee and Philip Kennicott of The Washington Post named this exhibition among the top five art exhibitions of the year. The complete article can be found here: https://www. washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/in-a-year-of-upheaval-the-best-art-was-also-thebravest/2019/12/09/246cab64-1545-11ea-9110-3b34ce1d92b1_story.html

Andrew Gordon featured on Asahi Shimbun and CNN to discuss imperial transition

On 3 April 2019, the Asahi Shimbun published an interview with Andrew Gordon on the naming of the new Reiwa Era. The article can be found here: https://adgordon.net/files/agordon/files/asahi_2019.04.03.pdf

On 30 April 2019, Andrew Gordon made an appearance on CNN to discuss the Japanese imperial transition on the first day of the Reiwa Era. He commented on the meaning and literary significance of reiwa, as well as the role of the emperor and the laws of succession. The full segment “Japan’s Emperor Naruhito Takes the Chrysanthemum Throne” can be found here: https://adgordon.net/files/agordon/files/andrew_gordan.mp4 [sic]

Rachel Saunders curates exhibition on Prince Shōtoku at Harvard Art Museums

From 25 May – 11 August 2019, the Harvard Art Museums opened an exhibition titled Prince Shōtoku: The Secrets Within, curated by Rachel Saunders. First acquired by Ellery Sedgwick Sr. in 1936 and gifted to Harvard by Walter C. Sedgwick ’69, the sculpture Prince Shōtoku at Age Two is the oldest extant image of the putative father of Japanese Buddhism in the world, valued for both its aesthetic qualities and its undisturbed cache of 70 dedicatory objects discovered inside its hollow body cavity. The entire ensemble has drawn intense interest from a wide range of scholars and is now available for study and appreciation for generations to come. The exhibition homepage can be found here: https://www.harvardartmuseums.org/exhibitions/5756/ prince-shotoku-the-secrets-within

Andrew Gordon completes new edition of textbook A Modern History of Japan

Authored by Andrew Gordon, the fourth edition of A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present was published by Oxford University Press in July 2019. Updating political and economic developments since 2013, this extensively revised fourth edition offers strengthened coverage of environmental history, including discussion of the relationship of social, political, economic, and cultural life with the natural environment.

James Robson appointed Faculty Director of Harvard University Asia Center

Effective 1 August 2019, James Robson was named Victor and William Fung Director of the Harvard University Asia Center by FAS Dean Claudine Gay and Provost Alan Garber. Succeeding Karen Thornber, he will serve for a 3-year term. Prof. Robson was also featured in Nikkei Business for an interview discussing the “power of place.” The article can be found here: https://business.nikkei.com/atcl/gen/19/00067/101600046/

Mary Brinton quoted in The New York Times for current sociology research

In August 2019, Mary Brinton was quoted in a New York Times article about women opting out of marriage in Japan. Prof. Brinton has been studying the factors at work in countries with historically low birth rates in parts of Europe and East Asia, especially Japan, and interview data have suggested a “strong correlation” with gender inequality at home and in the workplace. This article can be found here: https://www.nytimes. com/2019/08/03/world/asia/japan-single-women-marriage.html

She also discussed this research in an article in The Harvard Gazette: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/ story/2019/03/harvard-studies-japan-from-ancient-to-modern/

Three RIJS faculty named to endowed professorships

During fall 2019, three Reischauer Institute faculty were named to endowed professorships by FAS Dean

Claudine Gay and Provost Alan M. Garber:

David L. Howell, Robert K. and Dale J. Weary Professor of Japanese History

Yukio Lippit, Jeffrey T. Chambers and Andrea Okamura Professor of History of Art and Architecture

Karen L. Thornber, Harry Tuchman Levin Professor in Literature

Christina Davis appointed Faculty Director of Program on US-Japan Relations

Succeeding Susan Pharr, Christina Davis was appointed Director of the Program on US-Japan Relations at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, effective 1 January 2020. She was also featured in the Asahi Shimbun “Hito” Column for her new directorship. The article can be found here: https://www.asahi.com/ articles/DA3S14344802.html

Rachel Saunders and Yukio Lippit curate exhibition at Harvard Art Museums

From 14 February – 26 July 2020, the Harvard Art Museums opened an exhibition titled Painting Edo: Japanese Art from the Feinberg Collection, curated by Rachel Saunders and Yukio Lippit. The largest ever presented at the Harvard Art Museums, this exhibition included 120 of the over 300 works promised by Robert S. and Betsy G. Feinberg, offering an exceptional opportunity to explore continuities and disruptions in artistic practice in early modern Japan. The exhibition homepage can be found here: https://www. harvardartmuseums.org/exhibitions/5909/painting-edo-japanese-art-from-the-feinberg-collection

RIJS Website

Established in 2005, the RIJS website provides an overview of the Institute’s faculty, scholars, and students; events and activities; grants and fellowships; and publications. A renewed website was launched in fall 2018. Visit the RIJS website at: http://rijs.fas.harvard.edu.

Covid-19 Pandemic Impact on Institute Operations

On March 12, 2020, the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a global pandemic. Beginning on March 16, 2020, Harvard University announced a transition to virtual instruction as students and faculty were sent away from campus. Following university guidance, the Institute also began a remote work period for staff in response to the unfolding situation. Events scheduled during the remainder of the spring semester were cancelled or postponed, and summer programs were cancelled due to travel bans. Over the next two years, Institute activities and operations were carried out online.

Advancing Research in Japanese Studies Advancing Research

Since its founding in 1973, the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies has sought, in a variety of ways, to promote and support research on Japan in all fields and disciplines across the University.

In addition to supporting Harvard faculty, RIJS creates professorships to bring in faculty from new or underrepresented fields. The research community built at Harvard includes not only faculty and students, but also leading visiting scholars, postdoctoral fellows, and, since 2005, graduate student associates-in-residence. RIJS organizes and/or sponsors seminars, conferences, colloquia, collaborative projects, and other activities that contribute to the exchange of ideas, while also supporting the WCFIA Program on US-Japan Relations, which fosters social science research that bears on Japan’s role in the world as an advanced industrial society. Finally, RIJS maintains a dynamic publications program that has produced a number of prize-winning books, provides major support to the Japanese language collection in the Harvard Libraries, and undertakes numerous initiatives including the recently established Japan Digital Research Center.

Support for Faculty Research

Professorships

Over the past two decades, the Institute has played a prominent role in building Harvard’s intellectual infrastructure for the study of Japan through creating professorships in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS). No other Japanese Studies program in the world has done more to create or support new faculty positions. These positions are intended to be incremental and are normally funded through the Institute’s endowment. Thus, the Institute owes much gratitude to its many friends in Japan who provided the original endowment funding in support of building Japanese Studies at Harvard.

The current RIJS faculty appointments are as follows:

›› Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics: Susan J. Pharr

›› Reischauer Institute Professor of Cultural History: Shigehisa Kuriyama

›› Reischauer Institute Professor of Japanese Religions: Ryūichi Abé

›› Reischauer Institute Professor of Japanese Religions and Society: Helen Hardacre

›› Reischauer Institute Professor of Social Anthropology and Japanese Studies: Theodore C. Bestor

›› Reischauer Institute Professor of Sociology: Mary C. Brinton

›› Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations: Alexander Zahlten

›› Associate Professor of Government: Daniel M. Smith

Edwin O. Reischauer Professorship in Japanese Studies

The terms of the Institute’s endowment also provide for a professorship, named for Edwin O. Reischauer following his retirement in 1980. Intended to contribute directly to faculty research and to the educational mission of the University, the professorship allows FAS senior faculty in Japanese Studies to devote up to one academic year to full-time research at some point during their tenure at Harvard. Normally, in alternating years, the Institute offers appointment as a visiting professor to a leading scholar in Japanese Studies. Visiting professors divide their time between research and teaching, offering two courses over the academic year, including at least one lecture course at the undergraduate level.

There were no Edwin O. Reischauer Professors in 2018-19. In 2019-20, Theodore C . Bestor, Reischauer Institute Professor of Social Anthropology, held the Edwin O. Reischauer Professorship.

Supplementary Support for Faculty

Since 2009, the Institute has provided salary support for a number of FAS faculty. In 2018-20, the following faculty received support for their research:

Melissa McCormick, EALC

The Tale of Genji: A Japanese Classic Illuminated

Curated by Melissa McCormick and John Carpenter (Mary Griggs Burke Curator of Japanese Art, The Met), this exhibition was held at the Metropolitan Museum from March to June 2019. This was the first major loan exhibition in North America to focus on art inspired by Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji, presenting a wide range of works – from manuscripts to paintings to calligraphy – and offering a new perspective on the author, characters, and story, as reflected by these artistic interpretations. A catalogue was also published by the curators for this exhibition: https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2019/tale-of-genji.

Carol Oja, Music

Marian Anderson’s 1953 Concert Tour of Japan: A Transnational History

In collaboration with Misako Ohta (Associate Professor, Kobe University) and graduate students Makiko Kimoto (Kobe) and Katherine Callam (Harvard), this project focused on the Japanese concert tour of the celebrated African American contralto Marian Anderson in 1953, the year after the American Occupation ended. The resulting article was published in American Music, University of Illinois Press.

Victor Seow, History

Making History: Technologies of Production in East Asia’s Past

Held in October 2019, this workshop was hosted by Victor Seow in collaboration with Dagmar Schäfer (Managing Director, Max Planck Institute). The workshop invited five other Japan-related scholars and graduate students: Sakura Christmas, Yulia Frumer, Aleksandra Kobiljski, Shi-Lin Loh, and Ian J. Miller.

Visiting Scholars

Visiting scholars are a vital part of the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies and the research community at Harvard. Their appointments vary widely from a few months to two years, with most staying for one year. During their stay, they collaborate with faculty or contribute directly to ongoing research endeavors at RIJS; advise students and provide contacts for Harvard undergraduate and graduate students preparing to conduct research abroad; give lectures and speak in classes; and participate in seminars and other research activities.

Student Host Program for Visiting Scholars

RIJS seeks to fully integrate visiting scholars into the research community and to ensure the opportunity for Harvard students to form working relationships with scholars who share intellectual interests. This mutually beneficial exchange allows scholars to offer advice and assistance to students during their stay and beyond. The RIJS Student Host Program pairs students with visiting scholars based on disciplinary focus.

The visiting scholars for 2018-20 are listed below, along with their institutions, research topics, faculty sponsors, and student hosts.

2018-19

Tsuyoshi Kawasaki, Shujitsu University

Envisioning En-no-Gyōja: Founder of Shugendō and Esoteric Master

Faculty Sponsor: Ryūichi Abé

Student Host: Jonathan Thumas, EALC

Tetsuya Mariko, Independent Filmmaker

Japanese Film History and the Harvard Film Archive’s Japanese Film Collection

Faculty Sponsor: Alexander Zahlten

Student Host: Patrick Chimenti, EALC

Noboru Matsuura, Tokyo University of the Arts

Japanese Shadow Methods in Ukiyo-e of the 18th and 19th Centuries

Faculty Sponsor: Yukio Lippit

Student Host: Leah Justin-Jinich, EALC

Sachiya Takeda, Kokugakuin University

Study of State Shinto in Japan

Faculty Sponsor: Helen Hardacre

Student Host: Jesse LeFebvre, EALC

Makiko Takekuro, Waseda University

The Linguistic Anthropology of Okinawa

Faculty Sponsor: Theodore Bestor

Shoji Teshigawara, Kahoku Shimpō

Comparing Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant with Massachusetts

Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station

Faculty Sponsor: Andrew Gordon

Student Host: Terasa Younker, EALC

2019-20

Akira Ide, Kanazawa University

Dark Tourism

Faculty Sponsor: Andrew Gordon

Yutaka Kanda, Niigata University

Sone Eki and the Politics of the Left in Postwar Japan

Faculty Sponsor: Andrew Gordon

Student Host: Jesus Solis, History

Tetsuya Mariko, Independent Filmmaker

Japanese Film History and the Harvard Film Archive’s Japanese Film Collection

Faculty Sponsor: Alexander Zahlten

Student Host: Patrick Chimenti, EALC

Fumihiro Okada, Minobusan University

Eleventh-Century Tales on the Lotus Sutra by the Monk Chingen

Faculty Sponsor: Ryūichi Abé

Student Host: Jonathan Thumas, EALC

Toshiyuki Ohwada, Keio University

Popular Music Scenes in Japan and the US

Faculty Sponsor: Tomiko Yoda

Rie Sugiyama, Kokugakuin University

Economic History and Business History in Prewar Japan

Faculty Sponsor: Geoffrey Jones

Postdoctoral Fellows

One of the oldest and most prestigious of its kind in the US, the RIJS Postdoctoral Fellowship Program provides recent graduates with the opportunity to continue their doctoral research at Harvard and produce publishable work from their dissertations. Former RIJS Postdoctoral Fellows occupy leading positions in Japanese Studies in universities all over the world.

Each year, the application process opens to a large pool of candidates in all fields and disciplines. Applicants must be within five years of earning their doctoral degree, in Japanese Studies, in any area of the humanities or social sciences. Selected fellows spend their year at Harvard actively involved in the Japanese Studies community at Harvard, work with faculty and students, and present their research in the Japan Forum lecture series at some point during their stay. RIJS also provides support for each fellow to host a manuscript workshop and participate in other research activities such as conferences and travel.

The postdoctoral fellows for 2018-20 are listed below, along with their PhD institutions, fields, degree years, and research topics.

2018-19

Michael Abele

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Premodern Japanese History, 2018

Peasants, Skinners, and Dead Cattle: The Transformation of Rural Society in Western Japan, 1600-1890

Julia Alekseyeva

Harvard University, Comparative Literature, 2017

Kino-Eye, Kino-Bayonet: The Avant-Garde Documentary in Japan, France, and the USSR

Robert Hegwood

University of Pennsylvania, Modern Japanese History, 2018

Transnational Foundations for Growth: Migrant Brokers and Japan’s Rise as a World Power, 1868-1964

Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda

University of California Berkeley, Modern Japanese Literature, 2018

The Tree of Life: The Politics of Kinship in Meiji Japan (1870-1915)

Mari Ishida

University of California Los Angeles, Modern Japanese Literature, 2016

Imperial Literature: Languages, Bodies, and Others in the Japanese Empire

Anna Skarpelis (Digital Fellow)

New York University, Sociology, 2018

Making the Master Race: Germany, Japan and the Rise and Fall of Racial States

2019-20

Yuki Asahina

University of Hawaii at Manoa, Sociology, 2019

Insecure Millennials: Coming of Age in Seoul and Tokyo

Lewis Bremner

University of Oxford, Modern Japanese History, 2019

The Magic Lantern in Japan: Transnational Technology Across the Long Nineteenth Century

Kaoru Hayashi

Princeton University, Premodern Japanese Literature, 2018

Mediating Spirits: Narratives of Vengeful Spirits and Genealogies in Premodern Japanese Literature

Matthew Mullane

Princeton University, Japanese Art and Architectural History, 2019 World Observation: Itō Chūta and the Making of Architectural Knowledge in Modern Japan

Graduate Student Associates-in-Residence

RIJS is surrounded by an extensive community of scholars which prominently includes graduate students enrolled in a number of departments and programs. Space in the CGIS Building makes it possible for RIJS and the other Asia-related centers to provide carrels or other space to a small number of Harvard PhD students completing their dissertations. Designated as graduate student associates-in-residence (GSAs), these students are encouraged to attend events hosted by RIJS and other international centers and invited to various functions hosted by RIJS. This development offers an important new way of bringing advanced graduate students more fully into the Japanese Studies research community.

In 2018-20, a total of 11 graduate students in Japanese Studies were designated as GSAs, as follows:

2018-19

Julia Cross, EALC

Ryan Glasnovich, EALC/HEAL

Yusung Kim, EALC

Jonas Rüegg, EALC/HEAL

Eric Swanson, EALC

Rebecca Veolcker, VES

Japan Forum

2019-20

Keung Yoon (Becky) Bae, EALC

Julia Cross, EALC

Yuting Dong, EALC/HEAL

Sara Kang, History

Jonathan Thumas, EALC

Catherine Tsai, EALC/HEAL

Established in 1974 in response to growing interest in Japanese Studies at Harvard, the Japan Forum lecture series provides scholars from a variety of fields and disciplines with an opportunity to present their research before a diverse audience that includes faculty, students, fellow scholars, and the general public. Assembling each Friday afternoon throughout the academic year, each forum is hosted by a Harvard faculty member and is followed by a reception at which attendees have an opportunity to interact with the speaker and with each other. After the reception, a smaller number of interested Harvard faculty, students, and other guests share dinner with the speaker. In addition, since 2010, RIJS has occasionally invited speakers to informal lunch gatherings with graduate students.

Since 1974, RIJS has sponsored more than 750 Japan Forum talks. In chronological order, the 2018-20 presentations are as follows:

2018-19

Helen Hardacre, Harvard University

The Japanese Enthronement Ceremonies of 2019: Ancient Ritual Meets Contemporary Politics (co-sponsored by USJRP)

Kenneth Ruoff, Portland State University

The Heisei Monarchy (1989-present) and the Future of the Japanese Monarchy

Faculty Host: Helen Hardacre (co-sponsored by USJRP)

Julia Alekseyeva, RIJS Postdoctoral Fellow

Cinema-Truth in 1960s Japan: Critiques of Objectivity

Faculty Host: Alexander Zahlten

Ken Tadashi Oshima, University of Washington

In Between Space: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Interchange with Japan

Faculty Host: Yukio Lippit

Michael Abele, RIJS Postdoctoral Fellow

Peasants, Skinners, and Dead Cattle: Capitalist Transformation of Property

Rights in Rural Tokugawa Japan

Faculty Host: David Howell

Mari Ishida, RIJS Postdoctoral Fellow

Imperial Literature and the Voices of Others: Ideological Visions of the Multiethnic Japanese Empire

Faculty Host: Tomiko Yoda

Benjamin Uchiyama, University of Southern California

The Hundred Man Killing Contest and the Birth of Carnival War in Japan

Faculty Host: Andrew Gordon

Vyjayanthi Ratnam Selinger, Bowdoin College

War Without Blood? The Curious Itinerary of a Taboo Fluid in Medieval Japan

Faculty Host: David Atherton

Brian Steininger, Princeton University

Rhyming Machines: Textual Technologies in Medieval Japan

Faculty Host: Karen Thornber

Andrew Gordon, Harvard University

“Dark Tourism” in Japan (co-sponsored by USJRP)

Brian Platt, George Mason University

The Sadness of Old Things: The Fate of an Ancient Monument in Tokugawa Japan

Faculty Host: David Howell

Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda, RIJS Postdoctoral Fellow

Blood Ties: Critiques of the Family in Early 20th-Century Japanese Literature

Faculty Host: Karen Thornber

Duncan Williams, University of Southern California

BOOK TALK: American Sutra: Buddhism and the Incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII

Discussants: Diana Eck (Harvard University), Stephen Prothero (Boston University)

Faculty Host: Helen Hardacre

(co-sponsored by Harvard Pluralism Project, CSWR, Harvard Buddhist Studies Forum, USJRP, and New England Japanese American Citizens League)

Brett de Bary, Cornell University

Theory, Fiction, and the Lightness of Translation in the Literature of Tawada Yoko

Faculty Host: Tomiko Yoda

2019-20

Alexander Zahlten, Harvard University

Left to the Occult: Networks & Media Culture in Japan, 1960s-1990s

Faculty Host: Tomiko Yoda (co-sponsored by EALC)

David Slater, Sophia University

New Refugee Flows into Japan: Oral Narratives Research and Community Support

Faculty Host: Mary Brinton (co-sponsored by USJRP)

Carol Gluck, Columbia University

Postwar Japan: A Pre-Postmortem

Faculty Host: Ian Miller (co-sponsored by USJRP)

Bryan Lowe, Princeton University

The Fragility of Connection: Roads, State, and Religion in Ancient Japan

Faculty Host: Ryūichi Abé

Kaoru Hayashi, RIJS Postdoctoral Fellow

Mononoke at the Bedside: Redefining Spirits and Kinship in The Tale of Genji

Faculty Host: David Atherton

Shochi Iwasaki, University of California Los Angeles

Which Languages are to be Saved and How? An Examination of the Ryukyuan Languages

Faculty Host: Wesley Jacobsen

Trent Maxey, Amherst College

The Automobile and its Drivers in Imperial Japan

Faculty Host: Ian Miller

Sherry Fowler, University of Kansas

Over and Underwater Adventures of Buddhist Bells in Japan

Faculty Host: Yukio Lippit

Shigeru Miyagawa, MIT

What is the Source of Politeness When You Use the –masu form?

Faculty Host: Wesley Jacobsen

William Kelly, Yale University

85 Years of Suye Mura: The Life History of a Japanese Village— and its Anthropology

Faculty Host: Mary Brinton (co-sponsored by USJRP)

Mark Ravina, Emory University

Mapping Missing Monks: A Digital Humanities Perspective on the Persecution of Buddhism in Early Meiji Japan

Faculty Host: Shigehisa Kuriyama

Robert Hegwood, RIJS Postdoctoral Fellow

Japan at Treasure Island: Diasporic Diplomacy at the San Francisco International Exposition, 1939-1940

Faculty Host: Andrew Gordon (co-sponsored by USJRP)

Marnie Anderson, Smith College

The Meiji Restoration as a New Start: Politics and Social Reform in the Life of Former Samurai and His Concubine

Faculty Host: David Howell

Hiromi Mizuno, University of Minnesota

Reclaiming Land, Reframing History: Kaitaku Genealogies and Modern Japan

Faculty Host: David Howell

Ryo Morimoto, Princeton University

Wild Boar Chase and Mononoke Wonderland: The Half-Life Politics of Nuclear

Things in Coastal Fukushima

Faculty Host: Andrew Gordon (RIJS JDA Project Special Presentation, co-sponsored by USJRP)

Jolyon Thomas, University of Pennsylvania

Faking Liberties: Religious Freedom and the American Occupation of Japan

Faculty Host: Daniel Smith (co-sponsored by USJRP)

Christine Marran, University of Minnesota

Japanese Literature in an Age of Rising Seas

Faculty Host: Tomiko Yoda

Lewis Bremner, RIJS Postdoctoral Fellow

Magic Lantern Technology, Transnational Knowledge, and the ‘Living Machine’ in Tokugawa Japan

Faculty Host: David Howell

Roger Goodman, Oxford University

Family-run Universities in Japan: Sources of Inbuilt Resilience in the Face of Demographic Pressure, 1992-2030

Faculty Host: Susan Pharr (co-sponsored by USJRP)

Yuki Asahina, RIJS Postdoctoral Fellow

Merit or Inheritance?: How Young Adults Understand Inequality in Japan and Korea

Faculty Host: Mary Brinton (co-sponsored by KI, and USJRP)

Other Seminars

Each year the Institute organizes and/or sponsors a variety of seminars and lectures on topics related to Japan. A number of these events are co-sponsored with other departments and centers, as indicated below.

2018-19

Nick Kapur, Rutgers University

When Revolutions Fail: Japan’s 1960 Protests and the Contemporary World Faculty Host: Andrew Gordon (USJP presentation co-sponsored by RIJS)

Fabio Lanza, University of Arizona

Ellen Schrecker, Yeshiva University

Andrew Gordon, Harvard University

Joseph Esherick, University of California San Diego

Partha Chatterjee, Columbia University

Lien-Hang Nguyen, Columbia University

Bruce Cummings, University of Chicago

The End of Concern: Maoist China, Activism, and Asian Studies (FC presentation co-sponsored by AC, KI, SAI, and RIJS)

Daniel Foote, University of Washington School of Law

Lawyers in Every Corner of Society? Recent Trends for the Japanese Legal Profession

(EALS presentation co-sponsored by RIJS)

Stephen Owen, Harvard University

Flavors of Truth and Claims of Authority

Discussant: Michael Puett

(Reischauer Lecture Series co-sponsored by AC, FC, KI, SAI, and RIJS)

Stephen Owen, Harvard University

How Can One Say the Unprecedented in Pre-Modern East Asia; Su Dongpo and Ink Bamboo

Discussant: Stephen West, Arizona State University

(Reischauer Lecture Series co-sponsored by AC, FC, KI, SAI, and RIJS)

Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Koichi Isobe, Asia Center Senior Fellow

Operation Tomodachi: Process and Recommendations - the U.S.-Japan

Alliance After the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

Discussants: Sak Sakoda (Office of the Secretary of Defense), Lt. Gen. Burton Field (Ret., US Air Force), Admiral Scott Swift (Ret., US Navy)

Faculty Host: Ezra Vogel (AC presentation co-sponsored by USJP and RIJS)

Frederick Dickinson, University of Pennsylvania

Rethinking the “American Century” through the Prism of Modern Japan

Faculty Host: Andrew Gordon (USJP presentation co-sponsored by RIJS)

Barbara Ambros, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

On Talking Terms with the Venerable Buddha: Material and Bodily Practices of a Jōdo Shin Healer

(Harvard Buddhist Studies Forum co-sponsored by RIJS)

Andrew Gordon, Harvard University

Akhihiro Shibayama, IRIDES, Tohoku University

Sebastien Boret, IRIDES, Tohoku University

Teaching the Japan Disasters Digital Archives: Perspectives from Japan (RIJS JDA Project Special Presentation)

Alexis Dudden, University of Connecticut

Timothy George, University of Rhode Island

Keigo Komamura, Keio University

Franziska Seraphim, Boston College

Constitutional Revision in Japanese Politics Today

Faculty Host: Helen Hardacre (AC presentation co-sponsored by RIJS)

Noboru Matsuura, Tokyo University of the Arts (RIJS Visiting Scholar)

Interpreting Western Methods of Shading in Ukiyo-e Prints

Faculty Host: Yukio Lippit

Ian Condry, MIT

Democracy and Inequality: Learning through Sound in Tokyo, Boston, and Berlin

Faculty Host: Theodore Bestor (USJP presentation co-sponsored by RIJS)

Stefan Huebner, National University of Singapore (AC Visiting Scholar)

From the Pacific Into the Anthropocene: Japanese-U.S. Research on Floating Structures, the Metabolist Movement, and Rising Sea Levels

Faculty Host: Andrew Gordon (AC presentation co-sponsored by USJP and RIJS)

Levi McLaughlin, North Carolina State University

Shifting Terrain: Soka Gakkai, Komeito, and Prospects for Constitutional Amendment

Faculty Host: Helen Hardacre (USJP presentation co-sponsored by RIJS)

Setsuko Shibuya, University of Fukuchiyama

Vietnamese Workers and Japanese Local Industry: Backgrounds and Trends

Faculty Hosts: Sunil Amrith and Sugata Bose (AC presentation co-sponsored by RIJS)

Jennifer Robertson, University of Michigan

Digital Hormones: Emotional Humanoids and Spiritual Humans

Faculty Host: Victor Seow (AC presentation co-sponsored by RIJS)

Eiko Maruko Siniawer, Williams College

Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan

Faculty Host: Andrew Gordon (USJP presentation co-sponsored by RIJS)

David Leheny, Waseda University

Empire of Hope: The Sentimental Politics of Japanese Decline

Faculty Host: Christina Davis (USJP presentation co-sponsored by RIJS)

Melissa Ann Curley, Ohio State University

From Dukkha to Disregulation: Buddhist Practice as a Treatment for Stress (Harvard Buddhist Studies Forum co-sponsored by RIJS)

Esther Hsusan (Associated Press, Nieman Fellow)

Yoshiaki Nohara (Bloomberg News, Nieman Fellow)

Challenges and Pressures Journalists Face in Asia: A Window Into the Global Media Landscape

Faculty Host: Nicco Mele (AC presentation co-sponsored by RIJS)

Earl Jackson, University of California Santa Cruz

The Cinematic Subject in Masumura Yasuzo (EALC presentation co-sponsored by FC, KI, and RIJS)

Mary Brinton, Harvard University

Babies, Work, or Both? Highly-Educated Women’s Employment and Fertility in Japan and South Korea

Faculty Host: Ezra Vogel (AC presentation co-sponsored by KI and RIJS)

Naomi Hirose, Executive Vice Chariman, Fukushima Affairs

The Future of Fukushima

Faculty Host: Andrew Gordon (USJP presentation co-sponsored by RIJS)

Justin Jesty, University of Washington Art and Engagement in Postwar Japan

(East Asian Media Ecologies presentation co-sponsored by EALC and RIJS)

2019-20

Ezra Vogel, Harvard University

China and Japan: Facing History

Discussants: Paula Harrell (Georgetown University) and Richard Dyck (former President, Teredyne, Japan)

Faculty Host: Elizabeth Perry (AC presentation co-sponsored by FC, HYI, USJP, and RIJS)

Susan Burns, University of Chicago

Sexual Assault and the Evidential Body: Forensic Medicine, Gender, and the Courts in Modern Japan

Faculty Host: Victor Seow (AC presentation co-sponsored by RIJS)

Chika Kinoshita, Kyoto University (HYI Visiting Scholar)

The Embryo Hunts in Public: Eugenics, the Atomic Bomb, and the Politics of Visibility in Japanese Film Culture, 1957-1966

Faculty Host: Alexander Zahlten (HYI presentation co-sponsored by RIJS)

Kim Su Yun, University of Hong Kong

Transwar Continuities of Colonial Intimacy: Korean-Japanese Relationships in Korean Cinema in the 1960s

Moderator: Yoon Sun Yang, Boston University

(HYI presentation co-sponsored by RIJS)

Helen Hardacre, Harvard University

The Politics of Postwar Japanese Enthronement Ceremonies

Faculty Host: Susan Pharr (USJP presentation co-sponsored by RIJS)

Gerald Curtis, Columbia University

Christina Davis, Harvard University

Noriyuki Shikata, Embassy of Japan in Beijing (USJP Associate)

Phillip Lipscy, University of Toronto

Japan by 2030: The Decade Ahead

Faculty Host: Susan Pharr

(USJP presentation co-sponsored by Japan Foundation and RIJS)

Steven Goldstein, Smith College

Mary Alice Haddad, Wesleyan University

Sooyeon Kang, HKS Pre-doctoral Fellow and PhD

Candidate, University of Denver

David Slater, Sophia University, Tokyo

Jeffrey Wasserstorm, University of California Irvine

Repercussions: The Hong Kong Protests in Context

Faculty Host: James Robson

(AC presentation co-sponsored by FC, KI, USJP, and RIJS)

Julius Weitzdörfer, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, HKS

Tsunamis, Nuclear Safety and the Law in Japan (EALS presentation co-sponsored by RIJS)

Sharon Hayashi, York University

Reclaiming Through Mapping, Olympics Sites of Tokyo 3.0

Faculty Host: Alexander Zahlten

(East Asian Media Ecologies presentation co-sponsored by EALC and RIJS)

Yang Yuanzheng, University of Hong Kong

(HYI Visiting Scholar)

Japonifying the Qin: Music and Ligitimization in Tokugawa Politics

Faculty Host: Shigehisa Kuriyama

(HYI presentation co-sponsored by RIJS)

Miki Dezaki, Film Director

Shusenjo Film Screening and Discussion with Director

Faculty Host: Carter Eckert

(KI presentation co-sponsored by RIJS)

Collaborative Study Projects

Since its founding, RIJS has sponsored many ongoing study groups to support the research of Harvard faculty and graduate students. These groups bring together members of the Harvard scholarly community, including faculty, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, visiting scholars and, in many cases, leading scholars from area institutions, to explore specific research themes that relate to Japan.

The study group program is open to a variety of formats and objectives. Many groups feature seminar series in which participants share their research findings, while others hold meetings aimed at engaging in common academic interests and developing major projects.

In 2018-20, RIJS sponsored two study groups, detailed below:

cinEncounters

Established in 2012, cinEncounters is a forum for critical engagement with lesser-known masterpieces of Japanese cinema from the 1960s, 1970s, and beyond. From the Japanese “New Wave” to Pink, from Anime to Documentary, screenings foster a collective exploration with the unexpected, the uncharted and the unusual currents of Japanese film. Monthly showings offer an opportunity to gather, discuss and enjoy new encounters with films, filmmakers and the histories and stories behind them. When possible, screenings invite critics, filmmakers and others related to the films to join our discussions over Skype, when possible. All films are shown with English subtitles and no prior knowledge of Japanese is required.

In 2018-19 the series below was organized by Professor Alexander Zahlten and RIJS Postdoctoral Fellow Julia Alekseyeva. Films focused on the topic, “Media about media: how Japanese films reflect on the nature of their medium.” Screened films are listed below. In 2019-20, the series was inactive.

Big Man Japan (Matsumoto Hitoshi, 2007)

Noriko’s Dinner Table (Sono Sion, 2006)

Black Sun (Kurahara Koreyoshi, 1964)

Contemporary Japanese Politics

Established in 1999, this group was created with the goals of better understanding key trends in politics and foreign policy in Japan and focusing a scholarly eye on major issues. This group enables advanced PhD students and postdoctoral fellows to circulate their works-in-progress (conference papers, draft dissertation chapters, etc.) and receive feedback, as well as faculty and postdoctoral fellows to present their research.

Chaired by Susan Pharr and Daniel Smith of the Department of Government and co-sponsored by RIJS and USJP, the group includes over fifty faculty, graduate students, and other scholars, both at Harvard and across the greater Boston and New England region. In 2018-20, the group organized the following activities: In 2018-20, the group organized the following activities:

Benjamin Bartlett, USJP Postdoctoral Fellow

Cyber Security Capacity-Building in Comparative Perspective

Scot Wilbur, Yale University

Fright of Fait Accompli: A Case Study of Zombie Films among Japanese SME

Kristin Vekasi, University of Maine

Political Shocks and the Japanese Firm in China

Daniel Smith, Harvard University

Destruction from Above: Long-Term Impacts of World War II

Tokyo Air Raids

Taishi Muraoka, USJP Postdoctoral Fellow

Capturing Vote-Seeking Incentives and the Cultivation of a Personal and Party Vote

Risa Kitagawa, Northeastern University

The Impact of Political Apologies on Public Opinion

Conferences, Symposia, Workshops & Events

2018-20

Symposium

29 AUGUST 2018

Harvard Symposium on Japanese Politics

Organizer: Daniel Smith

This symposium aimed to nurture dialogue and debate among political scientists dedicated to the study of Japanese politics, as well as explore the latest developments and new directions for future research. The keynote speaker was Steven Reed, Professor Emeritus of Chuo University, whose many contributions to the study of Japanese politics span several research areas, including elections and parties, political economy and policymaking, and religion and politics.

Panel 1: Making Common Sense of Candidates and Elections

Kenneth Mori McElwain, University of Tokyo (with Tomoko Matsumoto and Junko Kato)

Generational Differences in Japanese Attitudes Towards the Political Economy

Justin Reeves, Southern Methodist University (with Yoshikuni Ono)

Gender Differences in Candidate Policy Priorities, Expertise, and Positions: Do Male and Female Office Seekers Represent Different Issues in Japan?

Kiichiro Arai, Tokyo Metropolitain University

Did They Cheat on Candidates’ Surveys?

Jochen Rehmert, Hertie School of Governance

Behavioral Consequences of Open Candidate Recruitment

Moderator/Discussant: Stephen Ansolabehere, Harvard University

Panel 2: Making Common Sense of Clientelism and Organized Votes

Amy Catalinac, New York University

(with Lucia Motolinia-Carballo)

Geographically-Targeted Spending Under PR: Evidence from Japan and Mexico

Axel Klein, University of Duisburg-Essen (with Levi McLaughlin)

Explaining Change in “Organized Votes”: The Case of the Japanese Lay Religion Sōka Gakkai

Matthew Carlson, University of Vermont

Political Transparency and the 1975 Miki Reforms

Rieko Kage, University of Tokyo

(with Yuskau Horiuchi, Hiroto Katsumata)

Searching for Contributions by Moonlight: Politically Connected Firms in Japan

Moderator/Discussant: Pia Raffler, Harvard University

Panel 3: Making Common Sense of Political Economy and Policymaking

Kay Shimizu, University of Pittsburgh

Fiscal Decentralization and the Plight of Local Governments

Charles McClean, UC San Diego

Young Mayors and Municipal Fiscal Outcomes

Phillip Lipscy, Stanford University

From Leader to Villain: The Evolution of Japanese Energy and Climate Change Policy

Moderator/Discussant: Jeffry Frieden, Harvard University

Keynote Speaker: Steven Reed, Chuo University

(Symposium co-sponsored by Association for Asian Studies, Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership, USJP, and RIJS)

Workshop

20 SEPTEMBER 2018

Myth and Ritual in Ancient Japan

Organizer: Helen Hardacre

This workshop brought together five scholars from Kokugakuin University for presentations and discussions regarding enthronement ritual in Japan. Their presentations explained the structure of enthronement ritual, also introducing influential interpretations that link these rituals to the study of myth and literature. Significant works of art depicting enthronement ceremonies, held at the Museum of Shinto at Kokugakuin University, were also introduced and discussed.

Welcome Remarks: Helen Hardacre, Harvard University

Keynote Speaker: Mamoru Sasō, Kokugakuin University

Discussant: John Benley, Northern Illinois University

The Structure and Historical Background of the Daijōsai: A Focus on the State and Original Form of the Ancient Daijōsai and Daijōkyū

Kikuko Hirafuji, Kokugakuin University

Myth and Ritual from the Mythological Perspective

Discussant: Kenneth Ruoff, Portland State University

Takashi Watanabe, Kokugakuin University

The Relationship Between Kojiki Songs and Rituals: A Study of Rituals, Using the Song of the “Mie no Umeme”

Discussant: Matthieu Felt, University of Florida

Takaaki Daitō and Daiki Kimura, Kokugakuin University

Daijōsai and Kokugakuin University Collections

Discussant: Melissa McCormick, Harvard

(Workshop co-sponsored by Kokugakuin University Center for Kojiki Studies, Kokugakuin Institute for Japanese Culture and Classics, Kokugakuin University Museum, and RIJS)

Workshop

11 OCTOBER 2018

What is IIIF? Having fun with IIIF and Japanese Images

Organizer: Katherine Matsuura

This hands-on, interactive workshop, supported by RIJS and led by members of DARTH and JDRC, introduced participants to the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) and open-source IIIF image viewer Mirador. Together these tools support and enhance scholarly research for the web, digital exhibits, as well as course teaching materials.

Participants worked with a variety of digitized images (with special attention to Japanese demons, ghouls, and ghosts)

located at Harvard and partnering IIIF institutions around the world. Topics included:

• Core concepts of IIIF and why they are important

• Retrieving IIIF images and importing them into a Mirador viewer

• Learning how to use IIIF for creative projects

(JDRC Workshop co-sponsored by RIJS)

Event

22 OCTOBER 2018

Destination: World / Powered by Pechakucha

As part of Harvard’s Worldwide Week, which showcases the breadth of Harvard’s global engagement across schools through a series of internationally-themed academic and cultural events, Harvard College students shared their stories of personal discovery and intellectual exploration made possible through experiences abroad. Pechakucha, which originated in Tokyo, follows a format of 20 images x 20 seconds, in which the images advance automatically while the presenter is talking. Starting in 2018, this has become an annual event organized and hosted collaboratively by the CGIS centers. Presentations on Japan are listed below.

Motoy Kuno-Lewis ’19, Environmental Science and Public Policy Oysters

Claire Pinson’19, Cognitive Neuroscience & Evolutionary Psychology

What is water? (Omizu wa nan desu ka?)

Ellie Underwood ’19, Neurobiology (Re)Discovering Japan

(Harvard Worldwide Week Event co-sponsored by Harvard College, AC, Davis, DRCLAS, FC, HCF, KI, SAI, USJP, WCFIA, and RIJS)

Special Event

27 NOVEMBER 2018

14th Tsai Lecture: The Honorable Caroline Kennedy –Reflections on My Time as an Ambassador

The 14th Tsai Lecture welcomed Caroline Kennedy, former United States Ambassador to Japan from November 2013 to January 2017. As Ambassador, Kennedy supported economic empowerment of women and worked to increase student exchanges between the United States and Japan. Tracing her passion for Japanese culture back to her undergraduate years at Harvard, Kennedy spoke of her experience as the first woman given the ambassadorship, as well as commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II and the historic visits of President Barak Obama to Hiroshima and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Pearl Harbor, both key moments in postwar U.S.-Japan relations.

(Special Event co-sponsored by Harvard University, Tsai Lecture Fund, AC, FC, HYI, KI, SAI, USJP, and RIJS)

Film Series

8 DECEMBER 2018 – 23 FEBRUARY 2019

Harvard Film Archive Weekend Matinee Series

Part of an ongoing weekend matinee series for children featuring a selection of classic and contemporary films from around the world in their original exhibition format and language, the Harvard Film Archive screened six Japanese animated films.

26 JANUARY The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (Toki wo kakeru shōjo) Mamoru Hosoda, 2006

2 FEBRUARY Mirai

Mamoru Hosoda, 2018

24 MARCH The Boy and the Beast (Bakemono no ko)

Mamoru Hosoda, 2015

6 APRIL Summer Wars

Mamoru Hosoda, 2009

20 APRIL Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (Kaze no tani no Naushika) Hayao Miyazaki, 1984

25 MAY The Castle of Cagliostro (Rupan sansei: Kariosutoro no shiro) Hayao Miyazaki, 1979

(HFA Film Series co-sponsored by RIJS)

Art Exhibition

30 JANUARY – 8 MARCH 2019

Eye Eye Nose Mouth: Art, Disability, and Mental Illness in Nanjing, China, and Shiga-ken, Japan

Curators: Raphael Koenig and Benny Shaffer

Hosted in CGIS South, this exhibition explored the intersections of art, disability, and mental health by displaying original works on paper and sculptures created by ten groundbreaking, self-taught artists from China and Japan. Their compelling, formally innovative works represented a wide range of styles and media, from gestural abstractions to proliferating figurations, from meticulous clay obelisks to eye-popping wall paintings. The first exhibition of works produced in art workshops for people with disabilities ever to take place at Harvard (and only the second devoted to self-taught artists since the Harvard Society for Contemporary Art’s Exhibition of American Folk Paintings in 1930), “Eye Eye Nose Mouth” offered an original contribution to an ongoing conversation about mental health and the acceptance of mental disability and mental illness in both local and international contexts.

(CGIS Art Exhibition co-sponsored by AC, FC, HLS Project on Disability, HYI, and RIJS)

Memorial Event

21 FEBRUARY 2019

Remembering Ron Dore: Contributions to Social Sciences and Japanese Studies

Ronald Dore (1925-2018), “historian, sociologist, intellectual pioneer, humanist, mentor, friend,” was a pre-eminent scholar of Japan whose work crossed many disciplinary boundaries and influenced many outside our fields. A panel discussion and reception in his honor

included words by Professors Ezra Vogel, Andrew Gordon, Richard Samuels, Suzanne Berger, and Merry White, among others. Audience members were also invited to contribute their own memories.

(Memorial Event co-sponsored by RIJS)

Film Series

24 MARCH – 27 APRIL 2019

The Other New Wave: Alternate Histories of PostWWII Japanese Cinema

The Harvard Film Archive presented a collection of films from the Japanese New Wave, which arose after World War II in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Seeking a deeper understanding of this dynamic in film history, the series included selections from not only representative films and filmmakers, but also ones that remained overlooked, emerging from a wider range of practices and backgrounds beyond the major studios. The short program “New Wave Rarities” on 1 April 2019 included an introduction by film curator Go Hirasawa, Meiji Gakuin University.

24 MARCH Bad Boys (Furyo shonen) Susumu Hani, 1961

A Full Life (Mitasareta seikatsu) Susumu Hani, 1961

25 MARCH Nanami: The Inferno of First Love (Hatsukoi: Jigoku-hen) Susumu Hani, 1968

1 APRIL Short Program: “New Wave Rarities”

Introduction by Go Hirasawa, Meiji Gakuin University

Conversation Between Nail and Socks Katsumi Hirano and Hirō Ko, 2015

Forgotten Land

Shinkichi Noda, 1958

Anpo Joyaku

Toshio Matsumoto, 1959

14 APRIL Good-for-Nothing (Rokudenashi)

Kiju Yoshida, 1960

The Tragedy of Bushido (Bushido muzan) Eitaro Morikawa, 1960

Only She Knows (Kanojo dake ga shitteiru) Osamu Takahashi, 1960

15 APRIL Blood is Dry (Chi wa kawaiteru) Kiju Yoshida, 1960

20 APRIL The Samurai Vagabond (Akunin shigan)

Tsutomu Tamura, 1960

The End of Love (Kyonetsu no hate)

Eizo Yamagiwa, 1961

21 APRIL The End of Love (Kyonetsu no hate)

Eizo Yamagiwa, 1961

27 APRIL The Warped Ones (Kyonetsu no kisetsu) Koreyoshi Kurahara, 1960

The Age of Our Own (Warera no jidai)

Koreyoshi Kurahara, 1959

(HFA Film Series co-sponsored by Japan Foundation, National Film Archive of Japan, and RIJS)

Film Series Lecture

2 APRIL 2019

Meet the Director! A Conversation with Eizo Yamagiwa about Japanese New Wave Cinema

To accompany the pioneering retrospective The Other New Wave: Alternate Histories of Post-WWII Japanese Cinema at the Harvard Film Archive, Eizo Yamagiwa was invited on Skype to discuss the other history of Japanese cinema in the postwar, in conversation with film curator Go Hirasawa, RIJS Postdoctoral Fellow Julia Alekseyeva, and Professor Alexander Zahlten. A formative figure in Japanese film history as a New Wave rebel, Yamagiwa was the last director to emerge from the bankruptcy of major film studio Shin-Toho, the co-founder of central film journal Eiga Hihyō (Film Critique), and a fan favorite as director of the Ultraman sci-fi TV series, as well as a prominent political activist for prisoners’ rights. This presentation was accompanied by clips from The End of Love (1961), a legendary film until recently thought lost.

(Lecture in conjunction w/ HFA Film Series co-sponsored by AC, and RIJS)

Art Exhibition

25 MAY – 11 AUGUST 2019

Prince Shōtoku: The Secrets Within Curator: Rachel Saunders

A promised gift of Walter C. Sedgwick ’69, the sculpture Shōtoku Taishi at Age Two is not only one of the bestknown and well-loved objects housed at the Harvard Art Museums, but also the oldest extant image of the putative father of Japanese Buddhism in the world. This sculpture is valued for both its aesthetic qualities and its mysteries within – a cache of 70 dedicatory objects, or nōnyūhin, discovered inside its hollow body cavity, undisturbed since their insertion some 700 years ago. Offering a unique opportunity for sustained and repeated examination, the entire ensemble has drawn intense interest from a wide range of scholars, spanning the disciplines of religion, art history, history, and conservation science.

28 MAY 2019

Exhibition Workshop

Held in conjunction with the exhibition Prince Shōtoku: The Secrets Within at the Harvard Art Museums, this study day workshop aimed to deepen the understanding of the important Buddhist icon Shōtoku Taishi at Age Two. The workshop featured presentations by Harvard faculty and several invited scholars, as well as a collaborative in-gallery conversation with Harvard graduate students.

Welcome and Introduction

Rachel Saunders, Harvard Art Museums

Morning Session I: Cultic Power in Early Japan

Michael Como, Columbia University

Vows, Iconicity, and the Cult of Primce Shōtoku

Akiko Walley, University of Oregon

Efficacies of Concealment: The Spiritual Potency of Inaccessible Offerings

Morning Session II: Reliquaries in Context

Cynthia Hahn, City University of New York

Playing the Same Game? The Martyred Girl and the Divine Boy

Takayuki Seya, Kanazawa Bunko

The Prince and the Nunnery: Locating the Sedgwick Shōtoku in Medieval Japan

Afternoon Session I: Sacred Paper

Halle O’Neal, University of Edinburgh

Marking Death on Sacred Paper: Stamped Buddhas and Embodied Writing

Penley Knipe, Harvard Art Museums

The Papers Within: A Technical Study of the Papers Found Inside the Sedgwick Sculpture of Prince Shōtoku at Age Two

Ai Seya, Tokyo National Museum

Passage to the Pure Land: The Sedgwick Shōtoku and the Cult of the Dancing Priest Ippen (1234-1289)

Afternoon Session II: The Words Within: Interpreting “Shōtoku”

Kensuke Chikamoto, Nagoya University

The Precepts and the Prince: Interpreting the Documents Sealed within the Sedgwick Sculpture of Prince Shōtoku at Age Two

Ryūichi Abé, Harvard University

Illumining Prince Shōtoku: The Lotus Sutra as Mirror

Ai Seya, Tokyo National Museum

Passage to the Pure Land: The Sedgwick Shōtoku and the Cult of the Dancing Priest Ippen (1234-1289)

Closing Remarks and Discussion

Melissa McCormick, Harvard University

(Workshop in conjunction w/ H/AM Exhibition co-sponsored by RIJS)

28 MAY 2019

Exhibition Lecture

Speakers: Rachel Saunders and Angela Chang

Introducing the Harvard Art Museums exhibition Prince Shōtoku: The Secrets Within, this lecture reveals the latest findings in a collaborative effort to interpret the unique sculpture and its mysterious contents from both inside out and outside in.

(Lecture in conjunction w/ H/AM Exhibition co-sponsored by RIJS)

Art Exhibition

25 MAY – 11 AUGUST 2019

Japan on Paper

Curators: Quintana Heathman and Rachel Saunders

Among the earliest works of Asian art acquired by the Harvard Art Museums, Japanese woodblock prints first entered the collections in 1910. This exhibition featured approximately 50 of the 5000 works held in the museums, spanning the history of Japanese woodblock printing, from the 17th through 20th century, including single-sheet prints, luxury surimono prints, printed handscrolls, and printed books by renowned designers such as Katsushika Hokusai. Also included were modern “new print” (shin hanga) and “creative print” (sōsaku hanga) works by leaders of these two 20th-century movements, as well as a selection of woodblock printing to enhance understanding of the medium.

26 JUNE 2019

Exhibition Workshop

Notably, the art exhibition Japan on Paper marked the first public presentation of the newest acquisition in the area of Japanese prints, Mori yo! (Hey Forest!), a contemporary work by Noriko Saitō. In conjunction with this exhibition, a workshop “Drypoint Printing with Noriko Saitō” was held in the Materials Lab, in which participants were guided through the drypoint printing process by the artist herself while learning about its significance to her work.

(Workshop in conjunction w/ H/AM Exhibition co-sponsored by RIJS)

2018-20

Workshop

10 OCTOBER 2019

Everything Digital: An Essential Guide to Digital Tools for East Asian Studies

In this workshop, digital scholars gathered to share recommendations and useful shortcuts to help students and faculty make the most of their research at Harvard and overseas. This workshop focused on technology and ways to integrate various tools with Chinese, Japanese, and Korean research. Topics included: input methods and dictionaries, bibliographic tools such as Zotero and Endnote, writing tools such as Scrivener and Evernote, personal database building, and online presentation.

(Workshop co-sponsored by FC, HYL East Asian Digital Humanities Lab, and RIJS JDRC)

Event

10 OCTOBER 2019

Destination: World / Powered by Pechakucha

As part of Harvard’s Worldwide Week, which showcases the breadth of Harvard’s global engagement across schools through a series of internationally-themed academic and cultural events, Harvard College students shared their stories of personal discovery and intellectual exploration made possible through experiences abroad. Pechakucha, which originated in Tokyo, follows a format of 20 images x 20 seconds, in which the images advance automatically while the presenter is talking. Starting in 2018, this has become an annual event organized and hosted collaboratively by the CGIS centers. Presentations on Japan are listed below.

Westley Cook ’20, Social Studies and East Asian Studies

Drawing Inspiration from Rikuzentakata

Sky Russel ’20, History of Art and Architecture

Taking the Scenic Route

(Harvard Worldwide Week Event co-sponsored by Harvard College, AC, Davis, DRCLAS, FC, HCF, KI, SAI, USJP, WCFIA, and RIJS)

Workshop

24-25 OCTOBER 2019

Workshop on Family Change in East Asia and Southern Europe

Organizers: Mary Brinton, Paul Chang, and James Raymo

Co-organized by Harvard University and the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP)

Scientific Panel on Family Behaviour in East Asia and Southern Europe, and hosted at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, this workshop invited scholars from China, Italy, Japan, Korea, Spain, and the U.S. to discuss current sociological research on fertility and family change in East Asia and Southern Europe. Following a seminar presented by Letizia Mencarini of Bocconi University, the workshop consisted of five panels each presented by a team of international and U.S. scholars specializing in each country. The workshop concluded on the final day with a business meeting to explore future plans for research. In addition to the country team participants listed below, this workshop was also observed by the following Harvard students and scholars: Yuki Asahina, Ohjae Gowen, Sinn Won Han, Holly Hummer, and In Jeong Hwang.

Day 1

Social Demography Seminar: “Trust and Fertility in Uncertain Times”

Letizia Mencarini, Bocconi University

Day 2

Welcome and Introduction:

Mary Brinton (Harvard) and James Raymo (Princeton)

Fertility and Family Change in ITALY

Arnstein Aasve, Bocconi University

Letizia Mencarini, Bocconi University

Elena Pirani, Universita Degli Studi Firenze

Chen Peng, Bocconi University

Fertility and Family Change in SPAIN

Albert Esteve, Universitat Autonòma de Barcelona

Xiana Bueno, Universitat Autonòma de Barcelona

Alicia Adsera, Princeton University

Fertility and Family Change in JAPAN

James Raymo, Princeton University

Mary Brinton, Harvard University

Setsuya Fukuda, National Institute of Population and Social Security Research

Fertility and Family Change in KOREA

Soo-Yeon Yoon, Sonoma State University

Hyunjoon Park, University of Pennsylvania

Mary Brinton, Harvard University

So-Jung Lim, Utah State University

Jeong-Hwa Ho, Ajou University

Sangsoo Lee, University of Pennsylvania

Paul Chang, Harvard University

Fertility and Family Change in CHINA

Jia Yu, Peking University

Yu Xia, Princeton University

Cheng Cheng, Princeton University

Juliet Zhou, University of Michigan

Day 3

Business Meeting

(IUSSP Workshop co-sponsored by Center for Population and Development Studies and RIJS)

Workshop 1 NOVEMBER 2019

The Idea of Antiquity in Modern Japanese Religous Culture

Organizer: Helen Hardacre

Meiji Japan, while advancing toward modernization, at the same time looked back toward “Antiquity.” Attempting to answer this question, this workshop discussed the conception of antiquity based on the work of two prominent Japanese authors, Kokugaku scholar Hirata Atsutane, who had notable influence on post-Meiji Shinto theology, and Anesaki Masaharu, who laid the foundations of modern religious studies in Japan. This workshop also explored the different ways in which Antiquity has been represented artistically in different eras – from Edo period ukiyo-e paintings to contemporary Japanese pop culture – as an approach to see how “Antiquity” was understood, imagined, and transmitted within Japan’s contemporary religious culture.

Welcome Remarks: Helen Hardacre, Harvard University

Kikuko Hirafuji, Kokugakuin University

The Idea of Antiquity and Modernity in Depiction of Deities

Discussant: Jolyon Thomas, University of Pennsylvania

Jun Endo, Kokugakuin University

The Reality of Ancient Kami in Hirata Kokugaku: Toward Modern Japan

Discussant: Anne Walthall, UC Irvine

Seiji Hoshino, Kokugakuin University

The Narrative of the History of Japanese Religions and ‘The Ancient’ in the Development of Religious Studies

Discussant: Kaoru Hayashi, Texas State University (RIJS Postdoctoral Fellow)

Tomoo Saitō, Kokugakuin University

Theological Frame and Evolutions in the Conception of the Three Creator Deities

Discussant: Trent Maxey, Amherst College

Wrap-Up Discussion

(Workshop co-sponsored by Kokugakuin University Center for Kojiki Studies, Kokugakuin Institute for Japanese Culture and Classics, Kokugakuin University Museum, and RIJS)

Film Screening

2 DECEMBER 2019

Yama – Attack to Attack (Yama – Yararetara Yarikaese)

Directed by Mitsuo Sato and Kyoichi Yamoka, Yama –Attack to Attack (1985) is a documentary that exposes the workers’ struggle during Japan’s economic rebirth in the 1980s, cenetered on Tokyo’s Sanya “yoseba,” a slum community dating from the 19th century where day laborers lived in terrible conditions while they sought work. Still as relevant as ever, Yama is a vital record of a still unresolved chapter of postwar Japanese history that sheds light on the dark underbelly of labor and

power relations under capitalism. The film was screened by the Harvard Film Archive as part of the “Cinema of Resistance” film series.

(HFA Film Screening co-sponsored by RIJS)

Workshop 6-7 DECEMBER 2019

Using the Japan Digital Disasters Archive in the Classroom: A Workshop on Teaching about Japan and about Disasters Digital Research

Organizers: Andrew Gordon and Katherine Matsuura

This workshop invited high school and college faculty as well as librarians from public or private libraries to gather at Harvard and learn about the JDA through presentations and hands-on sessions in which participants were divided into groups and tasked with building their own collections while utilizing a variety of functions within the archive. Participants later came back together to share their collections and discuss takeaways from the workshop and plans on implementing the JDA in their teaching.

Day 0 – Optional Activity

Teaching the Japan Disasters Digital Archive: Perspectives from Japan

Presentations by students from Tohoku University (Sendai, Japan) and Kumamoto University (Kumamoto, Japan)

Chair: Andrew Gordon, Harvard University

Guangze Guo and Xinyi Yang, Tohoku University

Tourism as a measure for the recovery and revitalization of Tohoku

Ying Song, Tohoku University

Religious activities and grief relief after 2011

Chikako Ogane and Shiori Osanai, Tohoku University

The conditions of women in evacuation centers

Yongra Ko, Tohoku University

Supporting disaster affected areas after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake via popular manga

Eko Setiawan Imam, Tohoku University

Nature talks: Interpretations of natural phenomena as signs of disaster and recovery

Ryotaro Mihara, Kumamoto University

Adaptation of active fault survey results after the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake in disaster risk education

Hajime Watanabe, Kumamoto University

The support situation for the reconstruction of victims’ lives after the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake

Kotaro Igata, Kumamoto University

Study on the construction of the digital archive system about the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake

Day 1

Workshop Presentations on the Japan Disasters Digital Archive

Andrew Gordon and Katherine Matsuura, Harvard University

Kathy Krauth, American School in Japan

Japan Forum: “Wild Boar Chase and Mononoke

Wonderland: The Half-Life Politics of Nuclear Things in Coastal Fukushima”

Ryo Morimoto, Princeton University

Day 2

Presentation of Collections by Workshop Participants

Wrap-Up Discussion

(JDA Workshop co-sponsored by IRIDeS, Tohoku University, and RIJS)

Workshop

13 DECEMBER 2019

The Heredity of Desire: Love and its Literary Contestations Across Boundaries of Tradition and Modernity

Organizers: David Atherton

This workshop examined the contentious centrality of emotion, desire, and love in Japanese literary writing across the early modern-modern divide, focusing on their capacity to generate critical debates and to inspire complex gendered representations. Motoi Katsumata examined the reception of the (in)famous Heian poetess Ono no Komachi during the Edo and Meiji periods, drawing upon an array of genres to examine how her legendary reputation as a cruel beauty intersected with changing discourses of sexual morality to ignite debates over her sexual and literary virtue. Daniel Poch explored the clash between early modern and modern conceptions of “literature” within the novels of Natsume Sōseki, asking what consequences the intersection of the modern novel with older, didactic conceptions of literature held for Sōseki’s representation of love, desire, and emotion (ninjō). Together, their papers worked to deepen understanding of the divide between Japanese tradition and modernity – both on the page, and in the heart.

Welcome Remarks: David Atherton, Harvard University

Motoi Katsumata, Meisei University (Visitin Professor, Brandeis University)

Was Ono no Komachi a Virtuous Woman?

Daniel Poch, University of Hong Kong

Emotion, the Novel, and Sōseki’s Writing of ‘Literature’ in Late Meiji Japan

Closing Discussion

Conference

24-25 JANUARY 2020

Oceanic Japan: Environmental Histories of the Archipelago and the Sea

Organizers: David Howell and Ian Miller

This international conference brought together a diverse, multi-national, multi-disciplinary group to expand the ambit of Asian Studies, drawing energy from a broader turn to the sea—the “New Thalassology”—developing within our fields and in adjacent areas such as Atlantic History, Pacific History, and Indian Ocean Studies. One particular spatial focus was Japan’s place within oceanic history, concerning the environmental history of the sea.

Day 1

Welcome Remarks: David Howell and Ian Miller, Harvard University

Empires, Surf, and Turf

Martin Dusinberre, Univeristy of Zurich

Sayuri Guthrie-Shimizu, Rice University

Paul Kreitman, Columbia University

Jonas Rüegg, Harvard University

Daniel Poch, University of Hong Kong

Discussant: David Armitage, Harvard University

Straits and Narrows

David Howell, Harvard University

Katherine Matsuura, JDRC, Harvard University

Hannah Shepherd, University of Cambridge

Discussant: Timothy George, University of Rhode Island

Lunch and Cross-Panel Discussion

Moderated by David Howell and Ian Miller

Mappable and Unmappable Seas

Alexis Dudden, University of Connecticut

Mariko Jacoby, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiberg

Kären Wigen, Stanford University

Discussant: Robert Hellyer, Wake Forest University

Day 2

Piscis Species

Kjell Ericson, University of Kyoto

Nadin Heé, Freie Universität Berlin

Manako Ogawa, Ritsumeikan University

Satsuki Takahashi, Hosei University

Discussant: Naomi Oreskes, Harvard University

War on the High Seas

Toshihiro Higuchi, Georgetown University

Stefan Hübner, National University of Singapore

Brett Walker, Montana State University

Discussant: William Tsutsui, Hendrix College

Seashells on the Seashore

Jakobina Arch, Whitman College

Gerald Figal, Vanderbilt University

Takehiro Watanabe, Sophia University

Discussant: Ian Miller, Harvard University

(Conference co-sponsored by AC, HYI, and RIJS)

Art Exhibition

14 FEBRUARY – 26 JULY 2020

Painting Edo: Japanese Art from the Feinberg Collection

Curators: Yukio Lippit and Rachel Saunders

The largest exhibition ever presented at the Harvard Art Museums, Painting Edo offered a window onto the supremely rich visual culture of Japan’s early modern era. Selected from the unparalleled collection of Robert S. and Betsy G. Feinberg, the more than 120 works in the exhibition connect visitors with a seminal moment in the history of Japan, as the country settled into an era of peace under the warrior government of the shoguns and opened its doors to greater engagement with the outside world. In response to museum closures due to COVID-19, the exhibition was moved online from April 2020, including a spectacular virtual tour on Google Arts and Culture and numerous multimedia resources on the Harvard Art Museums website.

13 FEBRUARY 2020

Exhibition Lecture

Into the Kaleidoscope: Painting Edo Japan

Timon Screech, SOAS University of London

Part of the opening celebration for Painting Edo, this lecture explored the spectacular diversity of Japanese art of the early modern Edo period (1615-1868), astonishing for both its quality and quanitity. Had a person from the era been asked to account for this efflorescence, how would they have explained it? Introduced by exhibition curator Rachel Saunders and presented by Professor Timon Screech of SOAS University of London, this lecture addressed the circumstances that allowed such proliferation to occur and how this was perceived using visual materials, diaries, and critiques to re-create an “art mentality” for the age.

(Lecture in conjunction w/ H/AM Exhibition co-sponsored by RIJS)

Film Series

21-24 FEBRUARY 2020

Self-Destruction Cinema: The Films of Tetsuya Mariko

The Harvard Film Archive presented a retrospective of work by Tetsuya Mariko (b. 1981), Japanese filmmaker and RIJS Visiting Fellow. Known for creating arresting and subversive films centered on characters locked into cycles of extreme antisocial behavior, Mariko first gained fame for his Super-8 films made while a student at Tokyo’s Hosei University and then at Image Forum. Each evening of the film series was followed by a conversation with director Tetsuya Mariko, together with producer Eisei Shu and HFA director Haden Guest.

21 FEBRUARY Destruction Babies (2016)

22 FEBRUARY Miyamoto (2019)

24 FEBRUARY Tetsuya Mariko Short Films

Mariko’s 30 Pirates (2004) (Mariko sanjūki)

The Far East Apartment (2003) (Kyokutō no manshon)

Ninifuni (2011)

(HFA Film Series co-sponsored by RIJS)

Student Photo Exhibition

24 FEBRUARY – 13 APRIL 2020

Bāba, Babushka

Curators: Dasha Bough (‘21) and Sky Russell (‘20)

With the generous help of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, RIJS hosted a student photo exhibition titled Bāba, Babushka in the Asian Centers Lounge in the CGIS South Building. This exhibition featured photographs taken by Dasha Bough (‘21) and Sky Russell (‘20).

Dasha spent the summer of 2019 in Volgograd, Russia to film a documentary following the life of a babushka named Galiya, and Sky spent the same summer in Tenryu-mura, a rapidly aging rural hamlet in central Japan, photographing the day-to-days of the bābas (grandmas) and jījis (grandpas) she met there. The images and text, taken together, presented a picture of the colorful lives being lived in two very different corners of the world. While the stories were each unique and

the settings vastly disparate, what the snapshots shared is the hushed beauty, unassuming poetry, and outrageous humor found in the mundane. This was an exhibition made with love, dedicated to the people and places they had the honor of visiting.

18 MAY 2020

Gallery Talk and Discussion with Student Curators

Dasha Bough (‘21) and Sky Russell (’20), in conversation with Gavin Whitelaw

In response to the closure of the CGIS buildings due to Covid-19, the Bāba, Babushka exhibition was moved online into a 3D gallery featured on the RIJS website. To introduce the exhibition, an online gallery talk was hosted on Zoom and broadcasted on YouTube Live, in which the student curators discussed their works and answered questions from Gavin Whitelaw and the audience.

(Lecture in conjunction w/ CGIS Student Photo Exhibition co-sponsored by Davis and RIJS)

Online Event

4 JUNE 2020

“Painting Edo” at the Arnold Arboretum: Magnolia sieboldii

Hosted by Rachel Saunders and William (Ned) Friedman, Director of the Arnold Arboretum

Taking inspiration from the exhibition Painting Edo: Japanese Art from the Feinberg Collection at the Harvard Art Museums, speakers discussed the striking Magnolia sieboldii, also known as Siebold’s magnolia or the Oyama magnolia. Following a close examination of the painted specimen from the exhibition, viewers were invited virtually to the Arboretum’s landscape to learn about the live specimen’s unique biology and gorgeous bloom.

(Event in conjunction w/ H/AM Exhibition co-sponsored by Arnold Arboretum and RIJS)

Publications

The Harvard East Asian Monograph Series

Along with other Asia centers, RIJS plays an active role in publishing outstanding research in the prestigious Harvard East Asian Monograph series (HEAM). Books on Japan sponsored and funded by RIJS are produced through the Publications Office of the Harvard University Asia Center. The series plays a vital role in making the research of scholars available to a broader audience, and many leading academics in Japanese studies today, including numerous Harvard Ph.D. recipients, began their academic careers with books that appeared in the series. Of the approximately 410 books that have been issued to date, over 150 deal with Japan. The works concern all aspects of Japan with particular emphases on Japan’s history, culture and society, and literature. In 2018-20, the following thirteen books on Japan were published in the HEAM Series.

2018-19

Hwansoo Kim The Korean Buddhist Empire: A Transnational History, 1910-1945

Miya Elise Mizuta Lippit Aesthetic Life: Beauty and Art in Modern Japan

Kirsten Ziomek Lost Histories: Recovering the Lives of Japan’s Colonial Peoples

Evan Dawley Becoming Taiwanese: Ethnogenesis in a Colonial City, 1880s-1950s

Adam Kern Manga from the Floating World: Comicbook Culture and the Kibyōshi of Edo Japan, 2nd ed.

Nobuko Toyosawa Imaginative Mapping: Landscape and Japanese Identity in the Tokugawa and Meiji Eras

2019-20

Michal Daliot-Bul and Nissim Otmazgin The Anime Boom in the United States: Lessons for Global Creative Industries

Diane Wei Lewis Powers of the Real: Cinema, Gender, and Emotion in Interwar Japan

Jürgen Melzer Wings for the Rising Sun: A Transnational History of Japanese Aviation

Takeshi Watanabe Flowering Tales: Women Exorcising History in Heian Japan

James McMullen The Worship of Confucius in Japan

Kenneth Ruoff Japan’s Imperial House in the Postwar Era, 1945–2019

Eric Han Rise of a Japanese Chinatown: Yokohama, 1894-1972

Seth Jacobowitz Writing Technology in Meiji Japan: A Media History of Modern Japanese Literature and Visual Culture

Edith Sarra Unreal Houses: Character, Gender, and Genealogy in the Tale of Genji

Erin Brightwell Reflecting the Past: Place, Language, and Principle in Japan’s Medieval Mirror Genre

Janet Borland Earthquake Children: Building Resilience from the Ruins of Tokyo

Program on US-Japan Relations

Founded in 1980 based on the belief that the United States and Japan have become so interdependent that the problems they face require cooperation, the Program on US-Japan Relations (USJP) strives to foster research on Japan’s relationship with the US and the rest of the world, as well as the domestic issues that bear on the country’s international roles and evolving regional context to which it belongs.

Housed at 61 Kirkland Street, USJP is administered by the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs (WCFIA), cosponsored by RIJS, and overseen by a Harvard Faculty Advisory Committee. In 2018-19, Susan J. Pharr served in her final year as Program Director and was succeeded by Christina L. Davis in January 2020.

The Program’s intellectual mandate includes a wide range of issues and problems in US-Japan relations; contemporary Japanese culture, economy, politics, and society as viewed from a comparative perspective; common problems of advanced industrial democracies; international relations of Asia and Asian regionalism; the globalization of Japanese popular culture; the rise of civil society in Asia; and global governance of issues such as energy, environment, and public health.

The Program and its activities reach a wide audience of faculty and students in the social sciences and throughout Harvard’s professional schools. As the seminar series of USJP and RIJS have surprisingly little overlap – two-thirds of attendees join one series, but not the other – this partnership creates new synergies and connections.

Each year with support from RIJS, USJP hosts 2-3 postdoctoral fellows whose research focuses on US-Japan relations and 12-15 scholars and outstanding professionals in government, business, finance, journalism, NGOs, and many other fields. While in residence, they conduct research, speak in classes, participate in Japanese language tables hosted by Harvard’s undergraduate houses, and serve as resources for faculty and students, both graduate and undergraduate.

The 2018-20 USJP Postdoctoral Fellows were as follows:

Benjamin Bartlett (University of California Berkeley)

Yeon Ju Lee (University of Chicago)

Vivian Shaw (University of Texas Austin)

Elijah Greenstein (Princeton University)

Claudia Junghyun Kim (Boston University)

Taishi Muraoka (Washington University St. Louis)

USJP also coordinates closely with RIJS to provide summer internship opportunities for Harvard College students and maintains a well-organized and active alumni group in Tokyo. Please view the USJP website, as well as its SoundCloud and Vimeo channels, for further introduction.

The USJP staff for 2018-20 was as follows:

Executive Director

Program Coordinator

Shinju Fujihira

Kendal Kelly (2018-19)

Amy Stockton (2019-20)

Staff Assistant Wei-Hsuan Jenni Ting (2018-19)

Research Assistant

Emma Duncan (2019-20)

Nina Coomes (2018-19)

Sophie Welsh (2019-20)

Harvard’s Libraries

Harvard has one of the world’s leading research collections on Japan, and RIJS plays a major role in providing the necessary support for its maintenance and development.

Harvard-Yenching Library

In 1978-79, RIJS established a special fund to support Japanese language acquisitions by the HarvardYenching Library (HYL). Since then, this fund contributes yearly income to HYL and is used to acquire Japanese-language books and materials incremental to Harvard’s library budgetary allotments. Kuniko Yamada McVey serves as Librarian for the Japanese Collection.

Library Travel Grants

Through the Harvard-Yenching Library Travel Grant Program, scholars from other institutions throughout the US and Canada have been able to visit Harvard and consult the Japanese collections at the Fung Library and HYL, which are supported by the Institute.

Digital Initiatives at Harvard

Evolving with the times, RIJS has embarked on several initiatives in collaboration with its faculty and in partnership with the university and other institutions and organizations in the US and Japan, with the objective of bringing digital scholarship to the field of Japanese Studies.

Japan Digital Research Center (JDRC)

The Japan Digital Research Center was established in 2017 for the purpose of developing new modes of support and collaboration amongst librarians, faculty, and students working in an increasingly digitized and networked environment. The JDRC is focused on meeting the opportunities and challenges that international and multilingual digital scholarship presents, and the emphasis is on identifying, building, and sharing innovative and evolving digital resources that advance scholarship for Japan both today and into the future.

Formerly known as the Documentation Center of Contemporary Japan (DCJ), the JDRC has been one of three libraries housed in the Fung Library. Although originally focused on the collection of Japanese social science journals, newspapers, and ephemera of postwar Japan, over time the rapid expansion of digital resources became increasingly central to the mission and purpose of the DCJ. In keeping with these changes, RIJS has redefined the mission of the DCJ and introduced the newly created Japan Digital Research Center. Since August 2017, the JDRC has been led by Katherine Matsuura, Japan Digital Scholarship Librarian for the Fung Library. Having completed a doctoral dissertation that studies former pirates and nomadic fisher communities on the Shiwaku Islands of the Seto Island Sea, Katherine has brought to this position breadth and depth of experience as both a librarian and a scholar. In August 2019, Sachie Shishido joined the JDRC as the Japan Digital Project Manager.

Constitutional Revision in Japan Research Project (CRJP)

Founded by Helen Hardacre in 2005, the Constitutional Revision in Japan Research Project (CRJP) meets to discuss, analyze, and document the process and debate surrounding the revision of Japan’s 1947 postwar constitution. In addition, the project seeks to situate the contemporary process of constitutional revision in the longer historical context of constitutionalism in Japan, as well as examine the role and perspectives of the political parties, the media, the political, labor, and business associations, women’s groups, religious groups, and many civil society groups in the constitutional revision debate. Related topics include Japan’s defense and security; imperial succession; rights and duties of citizens; the status of women; and the relationship between religion and state.

A central aim of the project is to collect and preserve original data and documents generated in the course of debate. With assistance from the Library Digital Initiative (LDI) in early 2006, the project began monthly “web-harvesting,” archiving material from a target set of 77 related Japanese websites. By 2007, the project launched its website, which features links to these Japanese websites both current and archived, a chronology of events relevant to the current debate, and a bibliography with over 1000 references to academic research and political analysis of the Meiji Constitution, postwar constitution, and ongoing discussion of constitutional revision.

Leadership of the project was formalized through the creation of an Advisory Council, which currently includes Alexis Dudden (History, University of Connecticut), Timothy George (History, University of Rhode Island), Helen Hardacre (EALC, Harvard), Keigo Komamura (Law, Keio University), and Franziska Seraphim (History, Boston College). This group convenes to set directions for the project and plan future activities.

Research on constitutional revision connects RIJS and other branches of Asian and international studies, including the social sciences, humanities, and beyond. The project engages not only students and faculty at Harvard and the New England region, but also faculty, diplomats, researchers, and students from Japan and around the world.

In 2020, the CRJP began developing a new website, which will be launched in the fall of 2022.

Japan Disasters Digital Archive (JDA)

Launched in July of 2012 by then acting Institute director Andrew Gordon, the Japan Disasters Digital Archive (JDA) is an advanced search engine for materials from around the globe, building digital repositories about the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011. With the support of metaLAB and the Center for Geographic Analysis at Harvard, the project seeks to collect, preserve, and make broadly accessible many forms of first-hand information and primary documentation of the events of 11 March 2011 and their aftermath. Through the archive, the project aims to provide a public space of information exchange, to establish innovative means of organization, access, and integration of materials, and to contribute to teaching, research, and policy analysis both now and in the future. But most of all, JDA hopes that the archive will serve as a site of shared memories and reflection for those most affected by these events and concerned about their consequences.

JDA actively encourages user submissions of resources such as websites, videos, and photographs, as well as user testimonials about personal experiences of the disasters and their aftermath. Its innovative map feature provides a visualization of all materials that are tagged with geographic information in real time. And with the nature of sharing and exchanging collections and presentations, JDA fosters new connections, both between items and among users. This network of users is ever-expanding, from a major organization that submits thousands of location- and direction-tagged photographs, to fellow citizens who share their family’s

experiences, to historians who seek to understand the interaction of public and private actors in the relief effort. Thus, the archive is an interactive space that promotes and, indeed, thrives on user participation. A video introduction can be found here: http://www.jdarchive.org/en/about/about-archive.

The JDA continues to be led by Andrew Gordon as Project Director. For a complete list of team members, please visit the JDA website.

JDA Workshop

On 6-7 December 2019, RIJS and JDA organized a workshop titled, “Using the Japan Digital Disasters Archive in the Classroom: A Workshop on Teaching about Japan and about Disasters Digital Research,” as part of a grant from the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership. Selected from a competitive pool of applications, participants included high school and college faculty as well as librarians in public or private libraries. In preparation for the workshop, participants were expected to complete assignments, including readings on the March 2011 disasters and exercises on exploring features on the JDA. Participants are listed at the end of this section.

Additionally, this workshop was attended by delegations of students and faculty from Tohoku University, led by Akihiro Shibayama, Julia Gerster, and Sebasitan Boret, and Kumamoto University, led by Toshitaka Yamao and Yukiko Takeuchi.

On 5 December (Thursday), participants were invited to attend an optional activity, watching presentations by students from Tohoku University and Kumamoto University about perspectives, responses, and research projects related to the March 2011 disasters.

On 6 December (Friday), the workshop began with an introduction to the JDA by Andrew Gordon, Katherine Matsuura, and Kathy Krauth (American School in Japan). The presentations were followed by breakout sessions in which participants were divided into predetermined groups based on teaching level and research interests. They were tasked with working together to build their own collection around a theme of their choosing, while utilizing a variety of functions within the archive. The first day of the workshop concluded with a special Japan Forum presentation by Ryo Morimoto (Princeton University) on “Wild Boar Chase and Mononoke Wonderland: The Half-Life Politics of Nuclear Things in Coastal Fukushima.”

On 7 December (Saturday), the second day of the workshop, participants and organizers came back together to share their collections with each other as well as discuss takeaways from the workshop and plans on implementing the JDA in their teaching. As part of their agreement in attending the workshop, participants later submitted reports on how they moved forward introducing the JDA to their respective schools, universities, and institutions and using the JDA in their classrooms.

Day 0 – Optional Activity

Teaching the Japan Disasters Digital Archive: Perspectives from Japan

Presentations by students from Tohoku University (Sendai, Japan) and Kumamoto University (Kumamoto, Japan)

Chair: Andrew Gordon, Harvard University

Guangze Guo and Xinyi Yang, Tohoku University

Tourism as a measure for the recovery and revitalization of Tohoku

Ying Song, Tohoku University

Religious activities and grief relief after 2011

Chikako Ogane and Shiori Osanai, Tohoku University

The conditions of women in evacuation centers

Yongra Ko, Tohoku University

Supporting disaster affected areas after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake via popular manga

Eko Setiawan Imam, Tohoku University

Nature talks: Interpretations of natural phenomena as signs of disaster and recovery

Ryotaro Mihara, Kumamoto University

Adaptation of active fault survey results after the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake in disaster risk education

Hajime Watanabe, Kumamoto University

The support situation for the reconstruction of victims’ lives after the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake

Kotaro Igata, Kumamoto University

Study on the construction of the digital archive system about the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake

Day 1

Workshop Presentations on the Japan Disasters Digital Archive

Andrew Gordon and Katherine Matsuura, Harvard University

Kathy Krauth, American School in Japan

Japan Forum: “Wild Boar Chase and Mononoke Wonderland: The Half-Life Politics of Nuclear Things in Coastal Fukushima”

Ryo Morimoto, Princeton University

Day 2

Presentation of Collections by Workshop Participants

Wrap-Up Discussion

(JDA Workshop co-sponsored by IRIDeS, Tohoku University, and RIJS)

List of Participants

Workshop Organizers

Andrew Gordon

Katherine Matsuura

Kumamoto University Delegation

Yukiko Takeuchi Delegation Leader

Toshitaka Yamao Delegation Leader

Kotaro Igata Student Presenter

Ryotaro Mihara Student Presenter

Hajime Watanabe Student Presenter

Tohoku University Delegation

Sebastian Boret Delegation Leader

Julia Gerster Delegation Leader

Akihiro Shibayama Delegation Leader

Gunagze Guo Student Presenter

Eko Setiawan Imam Student Presenter

Yongra Ko Student Presenter

Chikako Ogane Student Presenter

Shiori Osanai Student Presenter

Ying Song Student Presenter

Xinyi Yang Student Presenter

Participants

Mahua Bhattacharya Elizabethtown College (Elizabethtown, PA)

Heather Brougham-Cook Cross Schools (Bluffton, SC)

Sarah Campbell Ketchikan High School (Ketchikan, AK)

Tara Ann Carter Saint Petersburg Catholic High School (Saint Petersburg, FL)

Nina Corley O’Connell College Preparatory School (Galveston, TX)

Cheryl Crowley Emory University (Atlanta, GA)

Tiffany Esteban Humanities and Social Sciences Library West, University of Florida (Gainesville, FL)

Nia Gipson Saint Joseph Prep High School (Boston, MA)

Laura Imaoka University of Texas at Dallas (Richardson, TX)

Michaela Kelly Lafayette College (Easton, PA)

Robin Kietlinski City University of New York, LaGuardia Community College (Long Island, NY)

David Kinkela State University of New York at Fredonia (Fredonia, NY)

Kathy Krauth American School in Japan (Tokyo, Japan)

Kristen Larson Rogers Middle School (St. Michael, MN)

Elizabeth Miles Kennesaw State University (Kennesaw, GA)

Julie Mitchell Helena High School (Helena, MT)

Thomas Mueller California University of Pennsylvania (California, PA)

Karl Neumann The Dana Hall School (Wellesley, MA)

Laura Ng University of North Georgia (Watkinsville, GA)

Lynn Parisi University of Colorado (Boulder, CO)

Anne Prescott Five College Center for East Asian Studies (Northampton, MA)

Susan Reichelt Sam Houston State University (Huntsville, TX)

Catherine Ryu Michigan State University (East Lansing, MI)

Daryl Schuster Bayside High School (Clearwater, FL)

Kara Schwartz Hermon High School (Hermon, ME)

Laura Semba Carroll High School (Fort Wayne, IN)

Anthony Zanin Hutto High School (Hutto, TX)

Supporting Harvard’s Educational Mission

No goal of the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies (RIJS) is more important than advancing the educational mission of the University. The Institute pursues this task in a number of ways: providing opportunities for undergraduates to study, conduct research, and hold internships abroad; funding grants to support the research and training of graduate students; and enriching the Harvard curriculum by promoting the development of courses on Japan.

Programs for Harvard Undergraduates

International Experience

Harvard is engaged in a concerted effort to give every undergraduate a significant international experience during his or her time in the College. Long a leader in this area, RIJS has increased its offerings over the past decade to allow more undergraduates to study, conduct research, hold internships, and pursue other related activities in Japan. From fall 2018 through summer 2020, RIJS funded or facilitated 54 such opportunities for Harvard College students and provided support for a wide range of Japan-related student activities.

In 2017, in partnership with the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and sciencerelated departments within FAS, RIJS developed the Japan Summer Science Undergraduate Research Program (JSSURP), a new grant opportunity in response to the increasing interest in research experience abroad in the life, physical/natural, engineering, and applied sciences. This opportunity provides support for non-credit, independent laboratory research at host institutions in Japan.

In cooperation with other Harvard international and regional centers, such as the Office of Career Services (OCS), the Office of International Education (OIE), and Harvard Summer School (HSS), RIJS offers informational events for undergraduate students designed to introduce grants, internships, and study abroad programs. These include the OCS Freshman Open House, OIE Open House, Study Abroad Programs & Perspectives Student Panel, International Education Week/Photo Contest, HSS Study Abroad Fair, and OCS Summer Funding & Programs Fair.

Each fall, RIJS organizes its own meetings for students to introduce programs and opportunities in Japan, and each spring holds a pre-departure meeting required for all summer and fall travelers, as well as orientations for participants of certain programs. In 2018-20, RIJS offered three information sessions for the Summer Internship Program in Japan, Summer Language Programs/Study Abroad in Japan (including HSS Kyoto), and Japan Summer Science Undergraduate Research Program. These programs are made available to students through various funding sources at the University.

Academic Year Study in Japan

A number of well-established programs in Japan accept applications from Harvard students. All of them offer Japanese language instruction and courses in English. They include, in Tokyo: International Christian

University, Keio University, Sophia University, University of Tokyo, and Waseda University; and in the Kansai region: Kobe University, Kyoto University, and Nanzan University.

In addition, some American colleges and universities run year-abroad programs in Japan that admit students from other institutions. RIJS and the Japanese Language Program (JLP) at Harvard assist students in identifying programs suitable to their interests and language preparation.

Kyoto Consortium for Japanese Studies

Harvard College students with two years of language study may spend an academic year or semester at the Kyoto Consortium for Japanese Studies (KCJS). KCJS, formerly the Kyoto Center for Japanese Studies, offers courses in the Japanese language, humanities, and social sciences. Initially based at Kyoto University from its inception in September 1989, the program moved to its current home at Doshisha University in 2009.

The Consortium is currently headquartered at Columbia University and is sponsored by the following universities: Boston University, Brown University, University of Chicago, Columbia University /Barnard College, Cornell University, Emory University, Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, Stanford University, Washington University in St. Louis, and Yale University, in association with University of Virginia. RIJS contributed start-up funds and, along with other sponsoring institutions, has made annual financial contributions to the Consortium since it was established. In 2018-20, the Harvard faculty representative was RIJS Executive Director Gavin H. Whitelaw.

The Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies in Yokohama

The Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies (IUC) is administered by Stanford University and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and is sponsored by a consortium of now sixteen universities (previously fourteen), including Harvard. RIJS contributes annually toward its support.

Summer Grants and Programs

RIJS was among the first of Harvard’s international and regional centers to offer summer funding for undergraduate research abroad, beginning in 1980. In addition to travel grants for senior thesis research, RIJS now awards grants in support of Japanese language study and internships, as well as supplementary grants for Harvard College students attending the Harvard Summer School Kyoto and RIKEN programs or pursuing other science research opportunities in Japan.

See end of section for a detailed list of grant recipients and program participants.

Henry Rosovsky Travel Grant

Since 1980, RIJS has awarded the Henry Rosovsky Summer Research Travel Grant to students conducting research and/or fieldwork in Japan directly related to a senior honors thesis in an area of Japanese Studies, primarily humanities or social sciences. This prestigious award is made with funds from an endowment established by an anonymous donor to commemorate the retirement of Henry Rosovsky, a distinguished economic historian of Japan, from the post of FAS Dean. Funds from this endowment are divided between the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and RIJS.

In 2013, RIJS expanded the range of support covered by this grant to include supplementary funding for students attending Harvard Summer School in Japan.

Harvard Summer Language Study Grant

Created in 2007, the Harvard Summer Language Study Grant is intended to provide students with the opportunity to study Japanese language in its home country and explore Japanese culture. This grant was initially available for students with two years of Japanese or equivalent and subsequently available for those with one year of study at Harvard. In addition to KCJS and IUC, mentioned above, students receive funding to study at accredited programs such as Princeton in Ishikawa (PII) and Hokkaido International Foundation (HIF).

In summer 2019, RIJS sent 4 students to Japan through the language study grant. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, no students traveled to Japan for language study in summer 2020.

Harvard Summer Internship Program in Japan

For over twenty-five years, Japanese Studies at Harvard has provided opportunities for undergraduates to hold internships in Japan, following the university-wide mission to give every College student a significant international experience. Through this program, eligible students are selected for placement in organizations in Japan, where they learn about local society and culture while gaining professional experience in the workplace. Each year, such opportunities for students continue to diversify with the growing ties of RIJS. The main objectives of the Japan summer internship program are as follows:

• Increase the total number of internship opportunities in Japan and the funding necessary to support them;

• Extend opportunities to students from various backgrounds and experience levels;

• Monitor and coordinate the numerous efforts of the College that offer research, study, and internship opportunities in Japan;

• Organize orientations to provide students with the necessary preparation to derive maximum benefit from their stay;

• Provide a Summer Student Program Coordinator in Tokyo to serve as a resource over the summer for students in Japan.

Established in 1988 by Tazuko Monane, then director of the Japanese Language Program (JLP), the internship program continued to grow with the vital support of JLP, under the guidance of Wesley Jacobsen, program director since 1993. Initially, the program was open only to undergraduates with two years of Japanese, but in 2005, RIJS began a major initiative to extend its internship opportunities to a wider circle of students, creating additional internships for students with little or no Japanese language. And in 2017, RIJS extended eligibility to first-year students in the Regional Studies East Asia (RSEA) Master’s Program.

In cooperation with JLP, USJRP, OCS, Rotary Club of Okayama, Harvard Club of Japan, Harvard Business School Japan Research Center, several Harvard science departments, and other programs on campus, RIJS has significantly increased the number of internships, coordinating closely to maintain relationships with existing host organizations and identify new ones. Since its inception, Harvard has sent more than 500 undergraduates to intern in locations such as Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Hiroshima, Hokkaido, Ibaraki, Iwate, Miyagi, Okayama, and Okinawa.

In summer 2019, RIJS sent 18 students on internships in Japan. Due to Covid-19, no internships were hosted in Japan in summer 2020; however, 4 students participated in remote internships. For both years, internships included both students placed directly into organizations by RIJS and those who self-arranged internships through different channels, including, but not limited to, faculty, departments, and alumni

networks. Working alongside Harvard’s student service and resources offices, RIJS also supports students by providing small supplementary grants and by including them in orientation activities. (For names, see list.)

The Summer Student Program Coordinator was Kimberlee Sanders in 2019. Due to Covid-19, no programs were held in 2020.

Harvard Summer School in Japan

In 2007, under the leadership of RIJS, Harvard Summer School developed a credit-based, 8-week summer program in Japan. The HSS program is currently directed by James Robson, James C. Kralik and Yunli Lou Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations. Initially hosted by Waseda University in Tokyo, the program moved to Doshisha University in 2010. Students enroll in two courses, which are also open to Doshisha students. In 2019, the courses included: “Inequality and Society in Contemporary Japan” (Mary Brinton) and “East Asian Religions – Traditions and Transformations” (James Robson). Non-credit Japanese language instruction with Doshisha staff was also provided for students with no previous Japanese language training.

In 2019, 11 students participated in HSS Japan. In 2020, the program was cancelled due to Covid-19; as an alternative, undergraduates were offered grants to continue their language studies through the Harvard Summer School online courses.

Japan Summer Science Undergraduate Research Program

Launched in 2018 in response to the increasing interest in research experience abroad in the sciences, the Japan Summer Science Undergraduate Research Program (JSSURP) provides support for non-credit, independent laboratory research at host institutions in Japan. This opportunity is designed to prepare Harvard College students in life, physical/natural, engineering, and applied sciences for post-baccalaureate research positions, graduate/doctoral study, and postgraduate fellowships. Successful applicants receive a grant package put together by RIJS and the host institution, which primarily supports travel and accommodation.

This new program also includes non-credit internships at various RIKEN centers, established through the efforts of Takao Hensch, and the Japan-US Undergraduate Research Exchange Program (JUREP), a physics research opportunity founded and directed by John Doyle. Participants of either program are eligible to apply for funding through RIJS.

In 2019, 13 students participated in JSSURP. In 2020, the program was cancelled due to Covid-19.

Enrichment at Harvard

Noma-Reischuaer Undergraduate Prize in Japanese Studies

Each year, RIJS conducts a competition to award the Noma-Reischauer Prize of $1000 to the best Harvard College student essay on a Japan-related topic. The Prize was established and supported from 1996 through 2010 by Kodansha Publishers in honor of Sawako Noma, then President of Kodansha, and Professor Edwin O. Reischauer. Since 2011, the prize has been funded by RIJS and awarded in conjunction with the Tazuko Monane Prize for Language Study, given by the Japanese Language Program. In 2018-19, the Prize winner was Jasmine Parmley ’21 (English), for “Yokohama Night Clubs at Contact Zones: Mirroring Constructed Racial Divisions and Building National Identity in Postwar Japan.” In 2019-20, the Prize winner was Devon Gunter ’19 (Psychology), for “The Development of Kokugo and Language Reforms During the Meiji Period.”

Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies Prize, OIE International Photo Contest

In fall 2006, RIJS collaborated with OIE to inaugurate the sponsorship of a Japan category within Harvard College’s annual International Photo Contest. The prize recipients and their photos are listed below.

2018

RIJS Prize: Katharine Schluntz ’19

OIE Third Prize & Best in Show: Sky Russell ’20

Worldwide Week, Destination: World / Powered by

2019

RIJS Prize: Eunsoo Oh ’23

Office of Undergraduate Research and Fellowships

Special Prize: Andrew Zhang ’22

Pechakucha

As part of Harvard’s Worldwide Week, which showcases the breadth of Harvard’s global engagement across schools through a series of internationally-themed academic and cultural events, RIJS and the CGIS centers organized and hosted Destination: World / Powered by Pechakucha, starting in 2018. In this event, Harvard College students shared their stories of personal discovery and intellectual exploration made possible through experiences abroad. Pechakucha, which originated in Tokyo, follows a format of 20 images x 20 seconds, in which the images advance automatically while the presenter is talking. Presentations on Japan are listed below.

2018

Motoy Kuno-Lewis ’19, Environmental Science and Public Policy Oysters

2016 Summer Internship Program (Hotel Sekifu)

2017 Summer Internship Program (Kahoku Shimpo)

2018 Henry Rosovsky Undergraduate Summer Research Travel Grant

Claire Pinson ’19, Cognitive Neuroscience & Evolutionary Psychology

What is water? (omizu wa nan desu ka?)

2018 Japan Summer Science Undergraduate Research Program (Kyoto University)

Ellie Underwood ’19, Neurobiology (Re)Discovering Japan

2017 Summer Internship Program (Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology)

2018 Japan Summer Science Undergraduate Research Program (University of Tokyo)

2019

Westley Cook ’20, Social Studies and East Asian Studies

Drawing Inspiration from Rikuzentakata

2017 Summer Internship Program (ISA, Inc.)

2018 Summer Internship Program (Rikuzentakata City Mayor’s Office)

2018 Henry Rosovsky Undergraduate Summer Research Travel Grant (Rikuzentakata)

Sky Russell ’20, History of Art and Architecture

Taking the Scenic Route

2018 Summer Internship Program (ISA, Inc.)

2019 Summer Internship Program (Samurai, Inc. and ICU-Middlebury)

Japanese Language Table

Since fall 2008, RIJS has hosted a monthly Japanese language table at CGIS. Now co-hosted with USJP, the language table provides a space for an enthusiastic group of undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, faculty, RIJS visiting scholars, and USJP research associates to converse in Japanese and discuss a wide range of topics over lunch.

Support for Undergraduate Activities

Harvard-Radcliffe Chado Society

A student group dedicated to learning chanoyu (“Japanese tea ceremony”), this organization strives to learn the traditional ways to prepare, serve, and drink tea. While officially an undergraduate organization, the chado society also welcomes graduate students, non-student Harvard affiliates, and non-Harvard students. Participants study the Way of Tea in the tradition of the Urasenke School, and the instructors are all members of Urasenke Boston, the local affiliate of the Kyoto-based Urasenke organization. The head of the international organization is Sen Soshitsu XVI, a direct descendant of one of the first Japanese tea masters, Sen no Rikyu. In 2018-20, RIJS supported weekly meetings as well as occasional tea ceremony events.

Harvard Aikido Club

RIJS provides support to the Harvard Aikido Club (Aikikai), which brings together Harvard students to practice aikido and to study the principles and techniques behind the sport. Harvard’s oldest martial arts club, the group holds practices, classes, and seminars at the Malkin Athletic Center and the Quadrangle Recreation and Athletic Center. In 2018-20, RIJS provided support to club activities and events.

Undergraduate Japan Experience 2018-20

Japan Undergraduate Research Exchange Program = JUREP

Hokkaido International Foundation (Hakodate) = HIF

Kyoto Consortium for Japanese Studies (Kyoto) = KCJS

Princeton in Ishikawa (Kanazawa) = PII

Harvard Business School = HBS

Harvard Summer School = HSS

Research Institute of Economy, Trade, and Industry = RIETI

2018-19

Henry Rosovsky Summer Research Travel Grant

Westley Cook ’20

Social Sciences, “Social Capital and Disaster Recovery in Rikuzentakata”

Summer Language Study Grant

Joshua Jenkins ’20, Math/Philosophy, PII

Alexander Koller ’22, Undeclared, PII

Hannah McCormack ’20, EAS, KCJS

Jacob Moore ’22, Undeclared, HIF

Summer Intership Program in Japan

Marie Carroll ’20

History & Science / Music, Temple University Japan (Tokyo)

Yifan Chen ’21

Sociology, Showa Women’s University (Tokyo)

James Clay ’21

Linguistics, P & E Directions (Tokyo)

Esteban Flores ’20

EAS / Philosophy, Morrison & Foerster (Tokyo)

Haozhou Gu ’20

History, HBS Japan Research Center (Tokyo)

Devon Gunter ’20

Psychology, Kahoku Shimpo (Sendai)

Deni Hoxha ’21

Economics, Ise-Shima Tourism & Convention Organization (Ise)

Emily Kim ’21

EAS / VES, SIMONE, Inc. (Tokyo)

Edward Lee ’22

Undeclared, International Christian University (Tokyo)

Su Min Lee ’21

Computer Science, Internet Business Japan (Tokyo)

Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology = OIST

RIKEN Center for Brain Science = CBS

UTokyo Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe = IPMU

UTokyo International Research Center for Neurointelligence = IRCN

East Asian Studies = EAS

Molecular & Cellular Biology = MCB

Visual & Environmental Studies = VES

Shokuma Matsukata ’22

Undeclared, Robot Fund (Tokyo)

Rachel Phan ’21

ESPP, Showa Women’s University (Tokyo)

Michaela Rosen ’22

Undeclared, Tonda Bunraku (Nagahama)

Sky Russell ’20

HAA, Samurai, Inc. / ICU-Middlebury College (Tokyo / Nagano)

Leo Saenger ’22

Undeclared, RIETI (Tokyo)

Rani Shagarabi ’21

Applied Math / Economics, Jenerate Partners, Inc. (Tokyo)

Kexin Sun ’22

Undeclared, Kamonohashi Project (Tokyo)

Chang Yu ’22

Undeclared, Quantstamp (Tokyo)

Japan Summer Science Undergraduate Research Program

Natasha Abrams ’21

Astrophysics / Physics, UTokyo Kavli IPMU - JUREP (Kashiwanoha)

Simon Arango Baquero ’21

Neuroscience, RIKEN CBS (Wako)

Jenny Liu ’21

HDRB, Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo)

Matthew Mardo ’20

Neuroscience, RIKEN CBS (Wako)

Vanessa Roser ’21

Neuroscience, UTokyo IRCN (Tokyo)

Hayato Shiotsu ’22

Undeclared, Hiroshima University (Hiroshima)

Joshua Stern ’21

Neuroscience, OIST (Okinawa)

Justin Sydloski ’19

Undergraduate Japan Experience 2018-20

Neuroscience, Hiroshima University (Hiroshima)

Jennifer Wang ’22

Undeclared, UTokyo IRCN (Tokyo)

Michelle Wang ’20

Chemistry, Hiroshima University (Hiroshima)

Hilina Woldemichael ’21

MCB, Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo)

Andrew Zhang ’22

Undeclared, Hiroshima University (Hiroshima)

HSS at Doshisha University, Kyoto

Carolina Beroutsos ’21, History & Science

Alexis Boo ’22, Undeclared

Richard Brown ’22, Undeclared

Andrew Lee ’21, Computer Science

Hongshen Lee ’22, Undeclared

Ramona Park ’22, Undeclared

Jonathan Ragheb ’22, Undeclared

Hannah Starr ’24, Harvard Extension School, Social Studies

Kelyn Tyner ’21, Psychology

Henry Villarreal ’21, Psychology

Youning Zhang ’22, Emory University, Undeclared

2018 Noma-Reischauer Undergraduate Prize in Japanese Studies

Jasmine Parmley ’21, English

“Yokohama Night Clubs at Contact Zones: Mirroring Constructed Racial Divisions and Building National Identity in Postwar Japan”

2019-20

Henry Rosovsky Summer Research Travel Grant

Rachel Estell ’21

Social Sciences, “Confronting a Shrinking Population Crisis: A Threat to the Japanese Employment Paradigm”

Koji Everard ’21

History, “The Colonization of Hokkaido: Constructing the Fields of Empire”

Summer Language Study Grant

Kyle Felter ’23, Undeclared, Intermediate Japanese S-120 (HSS Online Course)

Summer Intership Program in Japan

Roger Cawdette ’22

Technological & Social Innovation, Blackship Ventures / Jenerate Partners (Online)

Anne O’Neil ’22

EAS, Bulk Homme (Online)

Ayana Yaegashi ’23

Undeclared, SIMONE, Inc. (Online)

Satoshi Yanaizu ’23

Undeclared, The Wall Street Journal (Online)

2019 Noma-Reischauer Undergraduate Prize in Japanese Studies

Devon Gunter ’20, Psychology

“The Development of Kokugo and Language Reforms During the Meiji Period”

Support for Graduate Student Training

RIJS supports GSAS and the future development of Japanese Studies by providing a range of fellowships and grants to Harvard graduate students.

Research and Training Support

Dissertation Completion/Supplementary Dissertation Research Grants

RIJS awards Dissertation Completion Grants to support advanced graduate students in the full-time write-up of their dissertations and Supplementary Dissertation Research Grants to provide graduate students with the opportunity to continue year-long research in Japan and to support continued research after initial support by external funding sources. In the case of non-US citizens, thus ineligible for many of the major fellowships that support fieldwork in Japan, these grants provide the core funding for their fieldwork.

For 2018-20, RIJS awarded Dissertation Completion or Supplementary Dissertation Research Grants to 26 doctoral students, 14 in 2018-19 and 12 in 2019-20, representing a cross-section of academic departments: Anthropology, Comparative Literature, EALC, EALC/HEAL, History, History of Art and Architecture, and Religion.

Summer Research Travel Grants for Graduate Students

RIJS awards Summer Research Travel Grants to allow graduate students to deepen their knowledge of Japan, maintain and improve their Japanese language skills, and develop ideas, investigate sources, and build contacts in Japan for future dissertation research. In the case of comparative projects that include Japan, graduate students also may apply for funding to conduct research in another country.

In 2018-20, RIJS gave 22 Summer Research Travel Grants to Japanese Studies graduate students in the humanities and social sciences, 10 for summer 2019 and 11 for summer 2020.

Starting in 2019-20, Wintersession Research Travel Grants were also made available to a small number of graduate students. In January 2020, RIJS supported research travel for 4 students.

Summer Language Study Grants for Graduate Students

RIJS also provides grants to graduate students (both PhD and MA) to support summer language study in programs in Japan and elsewhere. Especially in the social sciences, some students develop their interest in Japan only after entering graduate school and need additional time to build their language skills to researchlevel competence. Normally the language is Japanese, though applications for other languages are encouraged from students whose research would be furthered by another language or students who are engaged in comparative research that involves Japan.

In 2018-20, RIJS gave 23 Summer Language Study Grants to graduate students, 10 for summer 2019 and 13 for summer 2020. Due to Covid-19, no students traveled to Japan for language study in summer 2020; as an alternative, graduate students were offered grants to continue their language studies through the Harvard Summer School online courses.

The Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies in Yokohama

Graduate students with at least two years of Japanese language training who want to devote an academic year to full-time advanced Japanese language study may apply to the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies Program (IUC), located in Yokohama. On behalf of Harvard, RIJS supports the IUC by providing a yearly membership fee of $10,000.

Noma-Reischauer Graduate Student Essay Prize

Each year, RIJS conducts a competition to award the Noma-Reischauer Essay Prize of $1500 for the best Harvard graduate student essay on a Japan-related topic. The Prize was established and supported from 1996 through 2010 by Kodansha Publishers in honor of Sawako Noma, then President of Kodansha, and Professor Edwin O. Reischauer. Since 2011, the prize has been funded by RIJS and awarded in conjunction with the Tazuko Monane Prize for Language Study, given by the Japanese Language Program.

In 2018-19, the Prize winner was Sara Kang, RSEA ’18 and current PhD candidate in History, for her essay “Letters from Occupied Women: Gender and Nation in the Occupation of Japan (1945-2017).” In 2019-20, the Prize winner was Feng-En Tu, EALC/HEAL, for his essay “The Island of Fragrance and the Making of the Modern Smell.”

See end of section for a detailed list of grant recipients and program participants.

Professional and Write-up Support

Professional Development

RIJS seeks to contribute to the professional development of graduate students in a variety of ways. Beginning in 2005 with the construction of the CGIS buildings, RIJS made space available for doctoral students engaged in dissertation write-up (see Advancing Research). RIJS provides funds for graduate students to meet and discuss their research in progress, and graduate students are also encouraged to interact with RIJS visiting scholars, either informally or through the Student Host Program (see Advancing Research).

In addition, RIJS provides small grants to graduate students for paper presentations at conferences or professional meetings, for the purposes of professional development and dissemination of dissertation research. Students in relevant fields may also apply for small grants that cover travel costs for job interviews held at professional meetings. RIJS awarded 16 conference attendance grants in 2018-20.

Support for Dissertation Writers Groups

RIJS recognizes that dissertation writing can be a lonely pursuit and that many students benefit from support and comments from their peers. In 2018-20, the Institute continued to make funding available to groups of graduate students in Japanese Studies looking to meet on a regular basis to discuss their dissertations.

Support for Student Groups

Harvard Buddhist Studies Forum

The Harvard Buddhist Studies Forum (HBSF) is a long-standing lecture series that invites scholars to present on a topic related to the field of Buddhist Studies, while promoting a wide range of disciplines, geographical areas, and methodologies. As Buddhist Studies is a highly interdisciplinary and cross-regional field, RIJS joins with other programs at Harvard in supporting scholarly activities in this area of research. In 2018-20, the Institute contributed support to the following lectures:

15 NOVEMBER 2018

Barbara Ambros, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

On Talking Terms with the Venerable Buddha: Material and Bodily Practices of a Jōdo Shin Healer

1 APRIL 2019

Melissa Ann Curley, Ohio State University

From Dukkha to Disregulation: Buddhist Practice as a Treatment for Stress

Harvard East Asia Society

The Harvard East Asia Society is organized by students in the RSEA program and is open to all those with an interest in East Asian cultures, history, and society. Students organize individual talks and an annual spring conference designed to provide an interdisciplinary forum for graduate students from the US and elsewhere to exchange ideas and discuss current research on East Asia with peers, professors, and professionals. In 2019 and 2020, the conference was co-sponsored by the Asia Center, Fairbank Center, Korea Institute, Weatherhead Center, and RIJS.

The 22nd annual HEAS graduate student conference was held 8-9 February 2019 on the theme, “Voice and Silence: Memory in East Asia.” Ezra Vogel and Stephen Owen gave the keynote addresses. The 23rd annual conference was held 8-9 February 2020 on the theme, “Borders and Boundaries in East Asia.” Mark Elliot and Karen Thornber gave the keynote addresses.

Curriculum and Teaching

Curriculum

Enrichment Grants

In the educational experience of Harvard College students, General Education (Gen Ed) courses, formerly Core courses, play a crucial and central role. As such, RIJS mounted a major initiative to increase the number of these courses dealing with Japan. The Institute also supported non-Japan specialists to add material on Japan to Harvard College courses they already offered or were developing. Cumulatively these courses have played an important role in bringing Japan more fully into the undergraduate educational experience.

Harvard College Core/Gen Ed Courses Developed under the Curriculum Enrichment Grant Program

Ryūichi Abé, EALC

Core: Foreign Cultures, Buddhism and Japanese Culture

Gen Ed: Aesthetic and Interpretive Understanding, Buddhism and Japanese Culture

Theodore C. Bestor, Anthropology

Core: Foreign Cultures, Tokyo

Gen Ed: Societies of the World, Tokyo

Mary C. Brinton, Sociology

Gen Ed: Societies of the World, Inequality and Society in 21st-Century East Asia

Andrew Gordon, History

Core: Historical Study, Tradition and Transformation in East Asian Civilization: Japan

Gen Ed: Societies of the World, Japan in Asia and the World

Shigehisa Kuriyama, EALC

Gen Ed: Culture and Belief, Medicine and the Body in East Asia and Europe

Ian J. Miller, History

Core: Historical Study, Japan’s Modern Revolution

Gen Ed: Societies of the World, Japan’s Modern Revolution (2010-11) / Japan’s Samurai Revolution (2011-12 and beyond)

Support for Departmental Teaching

RIJS encourages faculty and departments to invite outstanding scholars or other specialists of Japan to Harvard in order to enhance the educational experience in their particular field. Typically, visitors appear in classes and meet with faculty and students. RIJS also supports course excursions, travel, and other related activities. The Institute provides funding to these visits and activities, as well as funding for Harvard faculty to travel to Japan for purposes that will ultimately contribute to the educational experience of students.

The interest in Japan is broad among Harvard faculty and students and among the general public, extending to numerous art forms associated with Japanese culture, including film, kabuki, Noh drama, martial arts, tea ceremony, ikebana, and many others. RIJS plays an active role in sponsoring activities in which these cultural forms are linked to the educational mission of the University.

During 2018-20, departmental teaching was supported in the following ways:

Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations

As part of his spring semester course “Traditional Japanese Literature: From the Dawn of Writing to the Dawn of Modernity,” David Atherton led a class trip to the Metropolitan Museum in April 2019 to tour the exhibition The Tale of Genji: A Japanese Classic Illuminated, curated by Melissa McCormick and John Carpenter. A second trip for undergraduate students concentrating in East Asian Studies was led by Ryuichi Abe and organized by the Department of EALC.

Harvard Art Museums

In April 2020, the Harvard Art Museums launched an online course on edX, titled “Japanese Books: from Manuscript to Print.” Taught by Melissa McCormick and Rachel Saunders, this course explored the meaning of “book” in Japanese culture and history, drawing from scrolls and albums found inside the 13th-century Buddhist sculpture of Prince Shōtoku, as well as various representations of The Tale of Genji. This course attracted over 20,000 enrollees all over the world.

Harvard Graduate School of Design

From 10-18 February 2019, Toshiko Mori led a group of GSD students on a trip to the Seto Island Sea (Setouchi) region of Japan for their spring 2019 architecture studio course. Focusing on Kenzo Tange’s Gymnasium, a Modernist building commissioned by Kagawa Prefecture in 1964, the studio explored the complex and rich context surrounding this endangered building, proposing the potential for a new program, new use, and new design through intervention, recontextualization, reorientation, contraction, or expansion.

The studio opened with a visit to the Tange Archive in Loeb Library Special Collection at GSD to study drawings of Tange buildings and understand the style and planning behind these precedent projects. Based on initial research, students proposed new programs for the gymnasium in preparation for their trip to Japan. During the trip, the group visited sites in Tokyo and Takamatsu, Kagawa, as well as the Taniguchi Project in Marugame, Sakaide Artificial Ground, Noguchi Studio in Mure, Inujima, and Naoshima. Using their observations and information collected on the trip, students created models and presented their final proposals for the Gymnasium.

For her spring 2020 architecture studio course “Making Next to Forest,” Toshiko Mori led a group of GSD students to Hokkaido, Japan from 7-16 February 2020. After researching Hokkaido, its economy, and its forestry and biomaterial industries, students worked together to propose plans for turning a site abandoned by Tokai University into a center for forestry and wood product studies. In addition, they designed a museum in the township of Higashikawa, which would be constructed using local wood and house a chair collection donated by the Oda family.

The Hokkaido trip began with a visit to Higashikawa for the Oda chair collection. The group then visited Asahikawa to observe the lumber yard, wood production factory, wood testing lab, and wood building research institute. Along with the Tokai University site, they also toured Asahikawa Station and Asahikawa City Museum, among other institutions related to their field research. The trip concluded with a visit to Asahikawa University to exchange ideas with local students and present their design proposals, as well as a brief visit to Tokyo to explore various wood buildings in the city.

Academic Exchange Agreements

RIJS has established a number of academic exchange agreements with universities in Japan. The initial agreement was made with Kokugakuin University, beginning in July 2000 and renewed every five years. RIJS has hosted a number of visiting scholars from Kokugakuin, and Harvard graduate students in Japanese Studies have received accommodations and extensive assistance in their research at Kokugakuin.

In fall 2011, RIJS concluded exchange arrangements with Taishō University and Rissho University for the purpose of promoting academic research. Both agreements include the exchange of faculty members, the exchange of advanced graduate students engaged in dissertation research, and other items deemed mutually beneficial.

Graduate Research and Training

2018-19

Dissertation Completion Grants (via GSAS)

Julia Cross, EALC

Stolen and Worshipped relics: Enshrinements of the Buddhas Body in Kamakura, Japan

Max Durayappah-Harrison, Anthropology

Remaking Rural Japan

Subodhana Wijeyeratne, History

Red Sun Rising: People and Places in the History of the Japanese Space Program 1920-2003

Supplementary Dissertation Research Grants

Manuel Azuaje-Alamo, Comparative Literature

Performing the Author-Translator Across Shores: Japanese Refractions of World and Latin American Literature in the 20th Century

Yusung Kim, EALC

Cold War Techno-Fantasy: Displays on the Futures and the New Environments in Japan and South Korea

Maria Joelle Tapas, EALC

Modelling Modernity in Japanese Children’s Media

Kimberlee Sanders, EALC

Intimate Listening: Tuning into Voices of 20th and 21st Century

Japanese Popular Media

Rebecca Voelcker, VES

Land Cultivation and Visual Culture

Summer Research Grants

Keung Yoon Becky Bae, EALC

A Hall of Mirrors: The Origins and Refractions of Film Regulation Across the Japanese Empire, 1939-1945

Leah Justin-Jinich, EALC

Understanding a Sense of Place: Famous Sites, Tourism and Comic

Illustrated Poetry from the Edo Period (1603-1868)

Juhee Kang, EALC-HEAL

Working Scientifically in Twentieth-century Japan

Lingling Ma, EALC

The Transnational Flow of “Life” in Japanese and Chinese Modernisms

Naohito Miura, Religion

Schisms and Continuities in Japanese New Religions and Shinto

Donald O’Keefe, MArch, GSD

From City Plan to Communal Form: The Urban Design of Fumihiko Maki, Sachio Otani and Masata Otaka, 1962-1974

Yuxin Qin, Religion

Graduate Research and Training 2018-20

Understanding and Practicing Familial Relationships: Kōdō Kyōdan’s Efforts in Contemporary Japan

David Song, RSEA

Visas, Bureaucrats and Activists: Negotiating Belonging Among Foreign Workers in Japan

Haruka Umetsu-Cho, Religion

Meiji-Taisho Japanese Literature Archival Research in Yamanashi, Hokkaido, and Gifu, Japan

Yuchen Chloe Yan, RSEA

Electrifying Ginza: The Rise of an Urban Place in Interwar Japan

Summer Language Study Grants

Daniel Borengasser, EALC, IUC

Yedong Chen, EALC, IUC

Guttorm Gundersen, EALC, KCJS

Gene Kim, RSEA, IUC

Sara Klingenstein, Religion, IUC Profesional Tutorial

Yitian Li, EALC, HIF

Xiaoyi Peng, RSEA, IUC

Maria Salvador Cabrerizo, HAA, KCJS Classical Program

Casey Stevens, RSEA, KCJS

Jalem Towler, RSEA, IUC

Conference Attendance Grants

Manuel Azuaje-Alamo, Comparative Literature

American Literature in the World Conference (New Haven, CT)

Katie Callam, Historical Musicology

Society of Music Annual Conference (New Orleans, LA)

Patrick Chimenti, EALC

CUBASGA East Asian Conference (Boulder, CO)

Max Durayappah-Harrison, Anthropology

International Pragmatics Conference (Hong Kong)

Amin Ghadimi, EALC-HEAL

British Association of Japanese Studies Conference (Sheffield, UK)

Ryan Glasnovich, EALC-HEAL

Annual Meeting of the Association of Asian Studies (Denver, CO)

Rui Hua, EALC-HEAL

Annual Meeting of the Association of Asian Studies (Denver, CO)

Jonas Ruegg, EALC/HEAL

International Conference of Asian Scholars (Leiden, Netherlands)

Eric Swanson, EALC

Buddhism and Ritual Performance in Pre-modern Japan Conference (Montreal, Canada)

Susan Taylor, Anthropology

American Anthropologists Annual Meeting (San Jose, CA)

Catherine Tsai, EALC-HEAL

Japanese Studies Association Conference (Honolulu, HI)

Floris van Swet, EALC-HEAL

British Association of Japanese Studies Conference (Sheffield, UK)

Yuchen Chloe Yan, RSEA

Imaging East Asia: Constructing Knowledge through the Visual (Santa Barbara, CA)

2018 Noma-Reischauer Graduate Prize in Japanese Studies

Sara Kang, RSEA (AM 2018), current PhD candidate in History

“Letters from Occupied Women: Gender and Nation in the Occupation of Japan (1945-2017)”

2019-20

Dissertation Completion Grants (via GSAS)

Yuting Dong, EALC-HEAL

Empire on the Ground: The Co-Production of Japanese Railway Towns in Northeast China (1905-1953)

Dana Mirsalis, EALC

Female Shinto Priests: Gender and Labor in Contemporary Shinto

Kimberlee Sanders, EALC

Intimate Listening: Tuning into the Voices of 20th and 21st Century

Japanese Popular Media

Maria Joelle Tapas, EALC

Schooling Artlessness: New Media and Children’s Arts Education in Early 20th Century Japan

Haruka Umetsu Cho, Religion

The Newly Forming Flesh of Women and the Divinity: A Theological

Reading of Modern Japanese Fiction

Rebecca Voelcker, VES

Field Work: Land, Cultivation, and Culture

Supplementary Dissertation Research Grants

Daniel Borengasser, EALC

Hall of the Lotus King Sculpture and Multiplicity in Early Medieval Japan

Graduate Research and Training 2018-20

Yusung Kim, EALC

Cold War Techno-Fantasy: Displays on the Futures and the New Environments in Japan and South Korea

Jesse LeFebvre, EALC

The Antifragile Kannon-The Proliferation of Hasedera and the Hasedera Kannon in Medieval Japan

Helen Swift, HAA

Founding Yoga: Juroda Seiki’s Vision for a “Western-style School” of Japanese Painting

Susan Taylor, Anthropology

Used Books and the Market for History: An Ethnography of Jimbocho, Tokyo

Bohao Wu, History

Sino-Japanese Rapprochement and Competition in Southeast Asia

1955-1974

Wintersession Research Grants

Ismail Buffins, MDiv, HDS

Sacred Geography: Moral Philosophy, Renunciation, and Pilgrimage in Japanese Esoteric Buddhism

Zhe Carrie Geng, Comparative Literature

Mental Health and Disability as Sites of Protest in East Asian and Asian

American Literature

Sara Kang, History

“Enemy Women” and Gendered Violence in the Decolonization of the Japanese Empire

Summer Research Grants

Patrick Chimenti, EALC

(Re) Constructing the Periphery: The Postcolonial Imaginary in Japanese Print and Visual Media

Charlotte Ciavarella, EALC-HEAL

Nomadic Modernity

Yuting Dong, EALC-HEAL

Empire on the Ground: The Co-Production of Japanese Railway Towns in Northeast China (1905-1953)

Leah Justin-Jinich, EALC

Ties that Bind: Exploring Complex Social Relationships within Japanese

Inscribed Paintings

Juhee Kang, EALC-HEAL

Translating the Universal Science: Mental Tests in Twentieth-century Japan

Mari Kishi, EALC

Japanese Queer Cinema in the 1990s

Joshua Linkous, EALC-HEAL

Bodily Conquest of Nature: Mt. Hakkoda as Imperial Laboratory

Janet Louie, EALC

Sounding the Transpacific: A Study of Cold War Film and Media in Hong Kong, Japan and America

William Sack, History

Multiethnicity and Successor Statehood: The Great Guryo Plan, 1920-1922

Yingxue Wang, HAA

Technologies of Worldmaking: The Genesis of Early Japanese Buddhist Material Culture

Jeremy Woolsey, EALC

Social Fragmentation and Ironic Communication: Subcultural Magazines in 1970s-1990s Japan

Summer Language Study Grants

Yedong Chen, EALC, IUC (Online)

Maria Salvador Cabrerizo, HAA, IUC (Online)

GSAS Tuition Waivers for HSS Courses (Online)

Charlotte Chiavarella, EALC-HEAL, Korean S-120

Mari Kishi, EALC, Korean S-120

Benjamin Landauer, RSEA, Japanese S-120

Jialu Li, Government, Japanese S-120

Wei Li, RSEA, Japanese S-120

Joshua Linkous, EALC-HEAL, Japanese S-120

Isabel McWilliams, HAA, Japanese S-120

Michael Norton, HAA, Japanese S-120

Hwei Ru Ong, EALC, Japanese S-120

Boya Ouyang, RSEA, Japanese S-120

Kaiyi Cathy Shen, EALC, Japanese S-120

Yi Zhang RSEA, Japanese S-120

Yuyan Zhang, RSEA, Japanese S-120

Conference Attendance Grants

Rui Hua, EALC-HEAL

Historical Association Annual Conference (New York, NY)

Janet Louie, EALC

Mechademia Queer(ing) North American Conference (Minneapolis, MN)

Yusuke Tsuzuki, RSEA

Workshop on Constitutional Revision at Keio University (Tokyo, Japan)

2019 Noma-Reischauer Graduate Prize in Japanese Studies

Feng-en Tu, EALC-HEAL (PhD 2019)

“The Island of Fragrance and the Making of the Modern Smell”

Courses on Japan at Harvard 2018-20

Faculty of Arts and Sciences

General Education (Gen Ed)

AESTHINT 53/GENED 1042

Anime as Global Popular Culture

Tomiko Yoda

AESTHINT 63

East Asian Cinema

Jie Li

GENED 1083

Permanent Impermanence: Why Buddhists Build Monuments

Jinah Kim and Yukio Lippit

GENED 1119

Law, Politics, and Trade Policy: Lessons from East Asia

Christina Davis

SOCWORLD 33

Tokyo

Theodore Bestor

SOCWORLD 43

Japan’s Samurai Revolution

Ian Miller and David Howell

USWORLD 38

Forced to Be Free: Americans as Occupiers and Nation-Builders

Andrew Gordon and Erez Manela

Freshman Seminars

FRSEMR 61K

Life Lessons from Professional Killers: What We Can Learn from the Samurai

David Atherton

FRSEMR 62Z

Buddhist Enlightenment: Visions, Words, and Practice

Ryūichi Abé

FRSEMR 70L

Ancient East Asia: Contested Archaeologies of China, Korea, and Japan

Rowan Flad

FRSEMR 70Y

Asian America

Diana Eck

FRSEMR 71D

Zen and the Art of Living: Making the Ordinary Extraordinary

James Robson

Anthropology

ANTHRO 2682

Anthropology of Urbanism: Japan in Comparative Perspective

Theodore Bestor

Comparative Literature

COMPLIT 147

Global Crime Fiction: Tackling Crime, Corruption, and Social Disintegration

Karen Thornber

COMPLIT 277

Literature, Diaspora, and Global Trauma

Karen Thornber

East Asian Languages and Civilizations

East Asian Studies

EASTD 97AB

Introduction to the Study of East Asia: Issues and Methods

Ryūichi Abé

EASTD 98B

Japan and the World

Shigehisa Kuriyama

EASTD 98B

Japan and the World

Susan Pharr

EASTD 140

Major Religious Texts of East Asia

Ryūichi Abé

EASTD 141

East Asian Religions: Traditions and Transformations

James Robson

EASTD 152

Tea in Japan / America

Melissa McCormick

EASTD 170

Medicine and the Body in East Asia and in Europe

Shigehisa Kuriyama

EASTD 196

Political Parties of East Asia

Daniel Koss

EASTD 260

The Lotus Sutra: Texts, Narratives, and Translations

Shigehisa Kuriyama

EASTD 261

Advanced Readings in East Asian Art

Melissa McCormick

East Asian Buddhist Studies

EABS 245R

Ritual and Text in Japanese Buddhist Literature

Ryūichi Abé

East Asian Film & Media Studies

EAFM 111

East Asian Media Studies

Alexander Zahlten

EAFM 141

Japanese Language and Visual Media

Wesley Jacobsen and Alexander Zahlten

EAFM 201

Media Mix: Representations and Meaning Between Media in Japan

Alexander Zahlten

Courses on Japan at Harvard 2018-20

EAFM 202

Rip and Tear – The Body as Moving and Moved Image in Japanese Film

Alexander Zahlten

EAFM 204

Three Times +1. Transitional Moments in Film and Media Culture in Japan

Alexander Zahlten

Japanese Language Courses

JAPAN BAB (2 courses each year)

Elementary Japanese

Yuko Kageyama-Hunt

JAPAN 106A

Classical Japanese

Edwin Cranston

JAPAN 106C

Later Classical Japanese

Edwin Cranston

JAPAN 120AB (2 courses each year)

Intermediate Japanese I

Takuro Hashimoto 2018-19 / Naomi Asakura 2019-20

JAPAN 130AB (2 courses each year)

Intermediate Japanese II

Tomoko Graham

JAPAN 140AB (2 courses each year)

Advanced Modern Japanese

Ikue Shingu

JAPAN 150AB (2 courses each year)

Readings and Discussion in Japanese Social Sciences

Ikue Shingu

JAPAN 210AB (2 courses each year)

Reading Scholarly Japanese for Students of Chinese and Korean

Wesley M. Jacobsen

Japanese History

JAPANHIST 120 (Cross-listed with HDS)

Japanese Religions in the 20th and 21st Centuries

Helen Hardacre

JAPANHIST 214R (Cross-listed with HDS)

Major Issues in the Study of Japanese Religions

Helen Hardacre

JAPANHIST 270

Early Modern Japanese History

David Howell

Japanese Literature

JAPANLIT 124

The Tale of Genji in Word and Image

Melissa McCormick

JAPANLIT 162

Girl Culture, Media, and Japan

Tomiko Yoda

JAPANLIT 170

Traditional Japanese Literature: From the Dawn of Writing to the Dawn of Modernity

David Atherton

JAPANLIT 270

Topics in Modern and Contemporary Japanese Fiction

Tomiko Yoda

JAPANLIT 271

Topics in Gender and Culture in Japan

Tomiko Yoda

JAPANLIT 281

Medieval Japanese Literature and Culture

David Atherton

Government

GOV 1270

Government and Politics of Modern Japan

Daniel Smith

GOV 2148

Civil Society, West and East

Susan Pharr and Grzegorz Ekiert

GOV 2240

Comparative Political Institutions

Daniel Smith

History

HIST 1023

Japan in Asia and the World

Andrew Gordon and David Howell

HIST 1610

Environments: China, Japan, Korea

Ian Miller

HIST 2651

Japanese History

Andrew Gordon

HIST 2653

Historiography of Modern Japan

Andrew Gordon

History of Art and Architecture

HAA 18J

Introduction to Japanese Architecture

Yukio Lippit

HAA 83

Buddhist Monuments

Jinah Kim, Yukio Lippit, and Eugene Wang

HAA 286S

The Shoso-in Treasury

Yukio Lippit, Eugene Wang, and David Roxburgh

HAA 188P

Edo Painting

Yukio Lippit

Courses on Japan at Harvard 2018-20

HAA 282S

Japanese Buddhist Sculpture

Yukio Lippit

History of Science

HISTSCI 183

Engineering East Asia: Technology, Society, and the State

Victor Seow

Linguistics

LING 173

Structure of the Japanese Language

Wesley Jacobsen

LING 174

Tense and Aspect in Japanese

Wesley Jacobsen

Religion

REL 14 (Cross-listed with HDS)

Studying Religion and Media

Helen Hardacre

Social Studies

SOCSTD 98NQ

Global East Asia

Nicole Newendorp

Sociology

SOCIOL 1174

Inequality and Society in Contemporary Japan

Hilary Holbrow

SOCIOL 2112

Men, Women, and Work

Mary Brinton

SOCIOL 3323

Social Demography Workshop

Mary Brinton and Jason Beckfield

SOCIOL 3328

Gender Inequality Workshop

Mary Brinton and Jason Beckfield

Visual and Environmental Studies

VES 183

Art Cinema/Counter Cinema: The Rebirth and Revolution of Post-WWII Japanese Cinema, 1950-1979

Haden Guest

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 3958 (Cross-listed with EALC)

Japanese Religions in the 20th and 21st Centuries

Helen Hardacre

HDS 3961 (Cross-listed with EALC)

Major Issues in the Study of Japanese Religions

Helen Hardacre

HDS 2043 (Cross-listed with Religion)

Studying Religion and Media

Helen Hardacre

Harvard Graduate School of Design

HIS 4377

Competing Visions of Modernity in Japan

Seng Kuan

STU 1315

Making Next to Forest

Toshiko Mori

STU 1320

Studio Abroad: Small is Big; Newborn Typologies from the City without a Manifesto

Sosuke Fujimoto and Kazuaki Yoneda

STU 1505

Osaka – World Expos as Transformative Engine: Potentials for the Regular City

Joan Busquets and Dingliang Yang

SCI 6601

Tectonic Tradition in Japan

Mitsuhiro Kanada

Harvard Law School

HLS 2670

Human Rights Law in Japan

J. Mark Ramseyer

Harvard Extension School

HIST E-1842

East Asian Environments: China, Japan, Korea

Ian Miller

HIST E-1851

Japan in Asia and the World

Andrew Gordon and David Howell

HSCI E-146

Medicine and the Body in East Asia and in Europe

Shigehisa Kuriyama

Ties to the Community

Building Social and Intellectual Networks on Campus

Like all of Harvard’s regional and international centers, the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies has a university-wide mandate—to build ties with the broader Harvard community through collaboration with other Harvard centers and departments to sponsor programs and activities relating to Japan. RIJS serves as a clearinghouse for Japan-related endeavors; collaborates in the planning and organization of events and/or research programs; funds the Japan component of activities organized by other units or other cost-sharing; and advertises events and/or suggests participants. Such collaborations create and sustain social and intellectual networks across the University among people with intersecting interests.

RIJS/USJRP Annual Fall Reception

To create contexts within which people with common interests can meet and share ideas, the Institute holds a series of annual activities. Every year, RIJS holds a Fall Reception together with the Program on US-Japan Relations to introduce new faculty and affiliates, visiting scholars, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, staff, and members of the wider community whose research relates to Japan. On 11 September 2019, nearly 200 guests filled the Japan Friends of Harvard Concourse in CGIS South to welcome the new academic year. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, no Fall Reception was held in 2020.

Annual New Year’s Gathering

The early days of the New Year are a time of major celebration in Japan. In keeping with its cultural tradition, RIJS holds an annual shinnenkai for Harvard faculty, students, affiliates, staff, and their families and guests, including those affiliated with the other Asia-related centers. The party features Japanese food, including the traditional pounded rice balls (mochi) and garnishes prepared by RIJS visiting scholars and their families.

The Institute’s electric mochi-making machine featured during this event is also, on occasion, called into service by Japanese language instructors seeking to give Harvard students a unique cultural and culinary experience.

Fostering Networks in the Boston-Cambridge Community and Beyond

One of the greatest resources for Harvard’s faculty and students is the sheer concentration of knowledge and human resources relating to Japan in the greater Boston-Cambridge area. Because RIJS has long included area institutions’ scholars in its research activities, the networks linking Harvard faculty and students to scholars at nearby institutions are exceptionally vast. Harvard graduate students seek out faculty at local institutions for advice on their work and benefit from these scholars’ inclusion in RIJS activities. These networks lead to new ideas, academic jobs for Harvard graduate students, new faculty for Harvard, advice for Harvard College thesis writers, and access to data or archival resources elsewhere.

Associates in Research

Because of the mutual benefits for the research community at Harvard and the local Japanese Studies world, RIJS offers informal Associate-in-Research status to scholars and experts in various disciplines and fields relating to Japan. These scholars are based at MIT, Tufts University, Boston University, the MFA, and many other institutions, mainly in the Northeast region. Informal appointees receive library privileges and may attend Institute activities. These informal appointments are approved by the Executive Director after submission of a written application and curriculum vitae. Further, the appointments must be renewed annually. For a complete list of RIJS Associates in Research in 2018-20, see below.

At the annual Associates Dinner, Associates in Research are able to come together for a meal and conversation with RIJS faculty, visiting scholars, postdocs, and staff. Each dinner features a presentation by a noted scholar. On 4 October 2019, this event coincided with Japan Forum presentation by Carol Gluck, George Sansom Professor of History, Columbia University, titled “Postwar Japan: A Pre-Postmortem.” During the dinner, Professor Gluck spoke on “A Grand Unified Theory of Japanese History.” There were 202 Associates in Research during 2018-20. They are indicated at the end of this section, along with their affiliations and research topics.

Japan Society of Boston

RIJS maintains close relations with the Japan Society of Boston (JSB), the oldest Japan Society in the United States. JSB events are often of interest to Harvard faculty and graduate students and, in some cases, contribute directly to their research.

JSB holds an annual gala dinner, attended by many RIJS-affiliated Harvard faculty and other members of the RIJS community. The 2019 Annual Dinner was held on 26 April 2019, with the special theme “Celebrating 60 Years of Boston and Kyoto: A Legacy of Friendship, Culture, and Peace,” in recognition of the 60th anniversary of the sister-city relationship between Boston and Kyoto. The 2020 Annual Dinner was postponed to 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Community Outreach

In August 2019, RIJS received a generous gift from New York-based landscape architect and artist Marc Peter Keane, a series of three bontei sculptures. Installed throughout campus in CGIS South 2nd floor concourse, CGIS Knafel 2nd floor concourse, and the Center for the Study of World Religions, respectively, these sculptures symbolize the longstanding connection between Harvard and Japan. Photos and details can be found on the next page.

The Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference was scheduled to be held in Boston from 19-22 March 2020. During this event, RIJS planned to host an institute reception and, in cooperation with the Department of EALC, a memorial reception for Howard Hibbett. Due to Covid-19, the conference was ultimately cancelled.

Maintaining Ties with Organizations Abroad

RIJS maintains an extensive network of relationships with organizations in Japan and elsewhere abroad. The RIJS director and staff regularly meet with representatives of these organizations and, where appropriate, arrange sessions for interested Harvard faculty and students to meet visitors as well. These visitors represent the broad range of activities involving Japanese Studies, faculty research and curricular interests, and student opportunities, as well as serve as part of the Institute’s larger mission of promoting cultural and intellectual ties between the US and Japan.

In February 2019, delegations from Iwate University (Rikuzentakata) and The University of Tokyo International Research Center for Neurointelligence visited RIJS to discuss summer internships and other exchange opportunities for undergraduate students. During this month, Executive Director Gavin H. Whitelaw also met with the Kyoto Consortium for Japanese Studies (KCJS) board of directors to plan for language programs for the upcoming academic year.

In March 2019, the Institute supported Harvard University President Lawrence S. Bacow’s trip to Asia, including visits with several Harvard alumni and university leaders in Japan.

In December 2019, as part of JDA project activities, RIJS welcomed high school and college faculty, librarians from public or private libraries, and students and scholars from universities in Japan to come together at Harvard for the workshop “Using the Japan Digital Disasters Archive in the Classroom: A Workshop on Teaching about Japan and about Disasters Digital Research.” As part of this workshop, delegations from Tohoku University and Kumamoto University were invited to give presentations on their research related to natural disasters in Japan. This event was organized by Andrew Gordon and Katherine Matsuura and cosponsored by the International Research Institute of Disaster Science (IRIDeS) of Tohoku University. Details can be found on page 32.

To commemorate Emperor Naohito’s accession to the throne in 2019, RIJS hosted a series of workshops organized by Helen Hardacre on enthronement ceremony and the Daijōsai. In fall 2018, the theme was “Myth and Ritual in Ancient Japan,” and in fall 2019, “The Idea of Antiquity in Modern Japanese Religious Culture.” These workshops were co-sponsored and attended by scholars from the Kokugakuin University Center for Kojiki Studies, Kokugakuin Institute for Japanese Culture and Classics, and Kokugakuin University Museum. Details for each event can be found on pages 21 and 25.

The Ploughman’s Dream

Marc Peter Keane, 2018 bark & slate, brushed aluminum tray, 36”

CGIS South Building, 2nd Floor

The Ploughman’s Dream II

Marc Peter Keane, 2018

bark & slate, patinaed steel tray, 36”

CGIS Knafel Building, 2nd Floor

Where Forest Meets Field

Marc Peter Keane, 2018 bark & wood slivers, black walnut tray 30” Center for the Study of World Religions Photos from https://www.mpkeane.com.

Scott W. Aalgard

Wesleyan, Asst. Prof. of East Asian Studies

Critical practice and visions of community in modern and contemporary Japanese cultural production

Marié Abe

BU, Asst. Prof. of Music

Intersection of sound, public space, and social difference in contemporary Japanese urban life through ethnographic analysis of chindon-ya

Barbara R. Ambros

UNC Chapel Hill, Prof. of East Asian Religions

Animals and religion in contemporary Japan; the life and teachings of a contemporary Shinshu healer

Galen D. Amstutz

Independent Scholar; Adj. Faculty, Inst. of Buddhist Studies

New historical overview of Shin Buddhism

Marnie S. Anderson

Smith, Assoc. Prof. of History

Social, political, and legal history of Meiji Japan with focus on gender

Anna V. Andreeva

Heidelberg, Karl Jaspers Centre, Res. Assoc. in Japanese History

Japanese Buddhism, history of medicine, and gender in medieval Japan

Yuko Aoyama

Clark, Prof. of Geography; Assoc. Provost and Dean of Res., Office of Academic Affairs

Globalization, social innovation, and transnational social entrepreneurship

Bruce P. Baird

UMass Amherst, Assoc. Prof. of Japanese Butō, Japanese theater, intellectual history, and new media

Mikael Bauer

McGill, Asst. Prof. of Japanese Religions

Japanese premodern Buddhism and history

Jeffrey P. Bayliss

Trinity, Assoc. Prof. of History; Chair, Dept. of History

History and perception of Korean athletes who participated in Japanese sports during the colonial period

Thomas U. Berger

BU, Assoc. Prof. of Int’l Relations

The US alliance system in Europe and East Asia in comparison

Rosemarie Bernard

Waseda, Asst. Prof. of Anthropology and Japanese Studies

Anthropology, art, emperorship, law, religion, ritual and politics, and Shinto

Associates in Research 2018-20

Laura E. Bernhart-Wong

Independent Scholar; FFD Koordinatorin, German Foreign Ministry

Intercultural communication between Western Europe, East Asia and the North Americas

Joanne R. Bernardi

Rochester, Prof. of Japanese and Film and Media Studies

Re-Envisioning Japan (digital humanities project); Routledge Handbook of Japanese Cinema (co-editor); Juzō Itami (monograph)

Victoria Lyon Bestor

North American Coordinating Council on Japanese Library Resources, Exec. Director Library resources; development of new internetbased Open Source materials on Japan in support of undergraduate education

Phyllis Birnbaum

Independent Scholar; Writer Biography of Okakura Tenshin

Herbert P. Bix

SUNY Binghamton, Prof. Emeritus of History and Sociology

America’s path to perpetual war, 1820s-present

Thomas S. Blackwood

Tokyo International, Inst. for Int’l Strategy, Prof. of Sociology

Japanese language schools as a “side-door” for labor immigration

Verena K. Blechinger-Talcott

Free Univ. of Berlin, Prof. of Japanese Politics and Political Economy

Patterns of modernity in East Asia; collaborative project on the emergence of global governance due to epidemics

Mark L. Blum

UC Berkeley, Prof. of Buddhist Studies and Shinjo Ito Distinguished Chair in Japanese Studies History of nenbutsu thought, practice, and performance

Robert Borgen

UC Davis, Prof. Emeritus of East Asian Languages and Culture

Early Japanese cultural relations with China

Daniel Botsman

Yale, Prof. of History

Emancipation in 19th-century Japan; translations of recent work on Tokugawa social history

Ethan D. Bushelle

Western Washington, Visiting Asst. Prof., Dept. of Liberal Studies

Buddhist understandings of nature in premodern Japan

Patrick Caddeau

Princeton, Dean, Forbes College

Tale of Genji reception, ecocriticism

Gavin J. Campbell

Doshisha, Prof. of American Studies

US-Japan cultural encounters, 1830s-1890s

Matthew M. Carlson

Vermont, Assoc. Prof. of Political Science

Political corruption and scandals, campaign finance

Haeng-ja Sachiko Chung

Okayama, Discovery Prgm. for Global Learners, Assoc. Prof.

Program building and contents education in English and Japanese at Japanese universities

Ellen P. Conant

Independent Scholar

Article reappraising lives and careers of Ernest and Mary Fenollosa titled, “Unraveling the Fenellosa Narrative”

Ian Condry

MIT, Prof. of Japanese Cultural and Media Studies

A comparative ethnographic study of diverse music scenes (Tokyo, Boston, Berlin) as emergent social economies

Thomas D. Conlan

Princeton, Prof. of East Asian Studies and History Court, ritual, and politics in sixteenth-century Japan

Theodore F. Cook

William Patterson, Prof. of History; Director, Asian Studies Program

War and memory in shaping Japanese culture, especially the Asia-Pacific War

Teruko Craig

Tufts, Senior Lecturer Emerita in Japanese

Translating essays by Fukuzawa Yukichi

Michael P. Cronin

William and Mary, Assoc. Prof. of Japanese Studies

Historical link between Osaka and the Korean island Jeju, figure of posthuman in cultural production, alternate histories

Jennifer Cullen

Northeastern, Lecturer, Dept. of Cultures, Societies, and Global Studies

Shojo manga and incest films of Shinoda Masahiro

Michael A. Cusumano

MIT Sloan, Sloan Management Review, Distinguished Prof. of Management

Entrepreneurship in Japan

Brett de Bary

Cornell, Prof. of Asian Studies and

Associates in Research 2018-20

Comparative Literature

Practice and theory of translation for contemporary Japanese intellectuals

Jennifer F. deWinter

WPI, Assoc. Prof. of Rhetoric; Director, Interactive Media and Game Development Prgm. Japanese video game industry, Japanese robotics and HCI, and Japanese media studies (anime, manga, games)

Wiebke Denecke

BU, Assoc. Prof. of East Asian Literatures

Role of Sino-Japanese literature/kanshinbun in early Japanese literary culture

Frederick R. Dickinson

UPenn, Prof. of History

Global history of modern Japan

Rachel DiNitto

Oregon, Assoc. Prof. of Japanese Literature

Cultural production after the 2011 disaster in Japan

Eric G. Dinmore

Hampden-Sydney, Elliot Assoc. Prof. of History

Monograph on resource anxieties in 20th-century Japan, “Legacies of the Co-Prosperity Sphere in Japan’s Aid to Indonesia’s Oil Industry”; monograph on Kurobe Dam

Sharon H. Domier

UMass Amherst, East Asian Studies Librarian

Compilation of materials to support Japanese language learner in academic libraries

James Dorsey

Dartmouth, Assoc. Prof. of Japanese

The culture of the student movement of Japan’s 1960s; translation theory and practice

John W. Dower

MIT, Prof. Emeritus of History

US-Japan relations; recent publication The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II

Fabian Drixler

Yale, Prof. of History

Demographic history and history of mentalities, especially with regard to social change in the 17th century

Edward R. Drott

Sophia, Assoc. Prof. of Japanese Religions

The connections between religion, medicine, and the body, particularly with regard to aging in medieval Japan

Alexis Dudden

UConn, Prof. of History

The current trend toward territorialization of sovereignty through Japan’s island disputes

Steven J. Ericson

Dartmouth, Assoc. Prof. of History

Zaibatsu dissolution and business deconcentration during the US occupation of Japan

Margarita Estévez-Abe

Syracuse, Assoc. Prof. of Political Science

Japanese politics, comparative social policy, gender in advanced industrial societies, and political institutions

William R. Farrell

U.S. Naval War College, Adj. Prof.

Japan’s political and international environment, with emphasis on SDF and defense policy

William D. Fleming

UC Santa Barbara, Asst. Prof. of Japanese Literature

Early modern Japanese literature and reception of Chinese fiction in Japan

Lawrence A. Fouraker

St. John Fisher College, Assoc. Prof. of History

Political economy of interwar Japan

Matthew P. Fraleigh

Brandeis, Asst. Prof. of East Asian Literature and Culture

Sinitic literature (kanshibun) in early modern and modern Japan

Sarah A. Frederick

BU, Assoc. Prof. of Japanese and Comparative Literature

Book manuscript about author Yoshiya Nobuko (1896-1973); digital humanities mapping project focusing on Kyoto and Natsume Soseki

Nicole Freiner

Bryant, Assoc. Prof. of Political Science

Documenting and analyzing rice growing in Japan, utilizing fieldwork and qualitative interviews across Japan

Naomi Fukumori

Ohio State, Assoc. Prof. of Japanese Ritual and ceremony in Heian period women’s court literature; Tanabe Seiko and Heian Literature

Terence Gallagher

Independent Scholar Ghost stories of 3/11 earthquake

Timothy S. George

Rhode Island, Prof. of History

Toroku arsenic poisoning

William L. Givens

The Japan Fund, Former Chairman

US-Japan trade competition

Carol Gluck

Columbia, George Sansom Prof. of History

The work of history in modern Japan

Janet E. Goff

Independent Scholar

Foxes and the art of transformation in classical Japanese theatre (noh, kyōgen, jōruri, kabuki)

Yoshie Gordon

Boston Higashi School, Director of Development and Corporate Relations

Autism education in Japan and in the US

Robert D. Goree

Wellesley, Asst. Prof. of Japanese

Tokugawa Period book history, geography, and literature

Peter Grilli

Japan Society of Boston, President Intercultural exchange

William W. Grimes

BU, Prof. of Int’l Relations; Assoc. Dean for Academic Affairs

Political economy of financial cooperation and financial regulation in East Asia

Elizabeth ten Grotenhuis

BU, Prof. Emerita for Japanese Art; Head, Birches School

Asia-based curriculum at Birches School; “Dig into History” advisory board

Tristan R. Grunow

UBC, Asst. Prof. of Japanese History

Mapping the spatial redevelopment of Tokyo into the Imperial Capital during the Meiji Period

Christine M. E. Guth

Independent Scholar

Craft in early modern Japan

Mary Alice Haddad

Wesleyan, Prof. of Government; Chair, College of East Asian Studies

Environmental politics in East Asia

Kenneth Haig

Hokkaido, Research Associate; Director of Regulatory Affairs, Oracle Japan

Energy and environmental policy

William M. Hammell

Independent Scholar

Scholarly publishing, voiceover narration, international school culture

Jeffrey E. Hanes

Oregon, Assoc. Prof. of History; Director, Ctr. for Asian and Pacific Studies

Design of postwar base housing in Japan, urban space and culture in modern Osaka

Walter F. Hatch

Colby, Assoc. Prof. of Government; Director, Oak Inst. for the Study of Int’l Human Rights

Reconciliation between Japan and its neighbors, politics of US military bases in Asia

Tom Havens

Northeastern, Prof. of History

History of Japanese botany

Kenji Hayao

BC, Assoc. Prof. of Political Science

Changing impact of Japanese prime ministership on the policy process

Robert I. Hellyer

Wake Forest, Assoc. Prof. of History

An American Cup of Green Tea: Made in Japan

Mariko I. Henstock

BU, Senior Lecturer of Japanese

Analyzing motivations of East Asian international students to study Japanese language in the US

Money L. Hickman

Independent Scholar

Early maitreya imagery in gandhara, the paintings of Meiyo Kokah, priest-painter (1653-1717)

Junji Himeno

Keio Medical, Assoc. Coach of Kendo Club

The concept of kendo, the purpose of practicing kendo, and the mindset of kendo instruction

Hosea Hirata

Tufts, Prof. of Japanese Literature

A study of Kobayashi Hideo

Allen F. Hockley

Dartmouth, Assoc. Prof. of Art History

“Visualizing History in Meiji Japan,” a book manuscript on illustrated histories of the Meiji Period

Todd J. M. Holden

Independent Scholar

Fictionalized account of Japan’s 3/11 tragedy

Saburo Horikawa

Hosei, Prof. of Sociology

Research for book manuscript “Place, Preservation, and Politics: A US-Japan Comparison”

Yusaku Horiuchi

Dartmouth, Prof. of Government and Mitsui Prof. of Japanese Studies

Japanese public opinion (e.g. attitudes toward refugees), electoral politics

Christopher W. Hughes

Warwick, Prof. of Japanese Studies and Int’l Politics

Japan’s international relations and security policy

Takaharu Ichimura

Harvard Medical School, Instructor of Medicine

Study of Japanese biology in Meiji Period

Kimberly H. Icreverzi

Independent Scholar

Gender and labor in postwar Japanese cinema

Associates in Research 2018-20

Evan S. Ingram

Chinese Univ. of Hong Kong, Asst. Prof. of Japanese Studies

12th-century Japanese religious exchange with China

Charles Shirō Inouye

Tufts, Prof. of Japanese Finishing “Archipelago: Figurality and the Development of Modern Consciousness”, beginning new translation of Izumi Kyōka

Rei O. Inouye

Northeastern, World Languages Ctr., Assoc. Teaching Prof. of Japanese

Using popular cultural texts/images as tools to teach cultural perspectives in elementary Japanese classrooms

James P. Ito-Adler

Association for Central Asian Civilization and Silk Road Studies, Exec. Officer Buddhism and the Silk Road

Christopher A. Ives

Stonehill, Prof. of Religious Studies

Zen Buddhist views of nature in relation to environmental ethics

D. Colin Jaundrill

Providence, Asst. Prof. of East Asian History

Book manuscript research on the 1868 battles at Toba and Fushimi

William D. Johnston

Central Connecticut State, Assoc. Prof. of History History of cholera and public health in Japan

Mark A. Jones

Central Connecticut State, Assoc. Prof. of History History of romantic love and marriage in 1920s Japan

Jason A. Josephson Storm

Williams, Assoc. Prof. of Religion; Chair, Dept. of Religion

Japanese religions, East Asian philosophy, history of science, philosophy of social science

Naoki Kamimura

Nanzan, Prof. of British and American Studies Japan-US security relations and US policy toward the 1952 Bolivian Revolution

Ikumi Kaminishi

Tufts, Assoc. Prof. of Asian Art History

Book manuscript on medieval politics of picture handscroll production

Miki Kaneda

BU, Asst. Prof. of Music

Japanese avant-garde and experimental music in transnational context, race and gender in music

Nikhil Kapur

Rutgers-Camden, Asst. Prof. of History

Finishing book manuscript on 1960 US-Japan

Security Treaty protests and their aftermath

Taizo Kato

Waseda, Prof. Emeritus of Psychology

Unhealthy nature of Japanese addictive relationships

Sachiko Kawai

USC, Res. Assoc., Dept. of History

Medieval Japanese women’s inheritance, land management, and their strategies to wield power

Sari Kawana

UMass Boston, Assoc. Prof. of Japanese

History of literary publishing in Japan; genre fiction, particularly detective fiction and educational manga

Terry Kawashima

UMass Boston, Prof. of Asian Studies; Chair, Dept. of Asian Studies

Rebirth, recognition, and visuality in premodern Japan

Adam L. Kern

Univ. of Wisconsin, Prof. of Japanese Literature and Visual Culture; Director, Ctr. for Visual Cultures

Book manuscripts in progress: “The Penguin Book of Haiku” and “A Kamigata Anthology: Literature from Japan’s Metropolitan Centers, 1600-1750”

Masato Kimura

Shibusawa Ei’ichi Memorial Foundation, Senior Director

Entrepreneurs and philanthropy from the late 19th century until the early 20th century

Takako Kishima

Waseda, Assoc. Prof. of Political Science

Status of sexual minorities in the media-/marketmediated consumer culture of neoliberal era

Aleksandra Kobiljski

Nat’l Ctr. for Scientific Research, Assoc. Prof. of Modern and Contemporary History

Engineering the Restoration: Envirotech History of Steel in Japan

Gabriele Koch

Yale-NUS, Asst. Prof. of Anthropology

Gender and sexuality, care, labor, and rights

T. James Kodera

Wellesley, Prof. of Religion

Takashi Paul Nagai (1908-1951): radiologist, convert, atomic bomb victim, and pacifist

Takeshi Kokubo

UMass Boston, Lecturer Emeritus on Japanese

A history of the Musashi Koku with emphasis on the influence of the Uesugi Clan

Associates in Research 2018-20

Keigo Komamura

Keio, Vice President; Prof. of Law

Constitutional law, constitutional history of Japan, and constitutionalism in the US and Asian countries

Yukinori Komine

Fitchburg State, Visiting Asst. Prof. of Political Science Alliance Restraint in International Politics: The US-Japan Alliance and the Senkaku Islands

Kimberly T. Kono

Smith, Assoc. Prof. of Japanese Literary representations of Japanese women and colonial Manchuria

Thomas LaMarre

McGill, James McGill Prof. of Japanese Studies and Media Studies

Regional Television: Geographies of Japanese Media

Gary P. Leupp

Tufts, Prof. of History

Silk workers in Kyoto during the Edo Period

Adam P. Liff

Indiana, Asst. Prof. of East Asian Int’l Relations

Japanese and Chinese foreign policy, Asia-Pacific security affairs

Mark E. Lincicome

Kyoto Consortium for Japanese Studies, Director UNESCO World Heritage Convention and Japan’s pursuit of international cultural legitimacy

Jennifer M. Lind

Dartmouth, Assoc. Prof. of Government How countries rise economically and militarily to become great powers

Terry E. MacDougall

Stanford Japan Ctr., Bing Overseas Program, Director Emeritus

Immigration, ethnicity, and citizenship in contemporary Japan; Nagasaki in the making of modern Japan

Edward T. Mack

Washington, Assoc. Prof. of Japanese Japanese-language literary activities in Brazil, prior to the Second World War

Tamaki Maeda

Independent Scholar

Sino-Japanese artistic exchanges in the later nineteenth and early twentieth century

Ayu Majima

Meiji, Senior Asst. Prof.

Socio-cultural history of modern Japan; family and gender, mindsets, and lifestyle

Federico Marcon

Princeton, Asst. Prof. of East Asian Studies and History

The introduction of Western philosophy in nineteenth-century Japan

Andrew L. Maske

Kentucky, Assoc. Prof. of Art History

Book manuscript on the tea bowl in Japan

Thomas Mason

ALLEX Foundation, Exec. Director Chinese and Japanese pedagogy, study abroad

Jennifer M. J. Milioto Matsue

Union, Assoc. Prof. of Music, East Asian Studies, and Anthropology

Cross-cultural comparison of religious dance in Bali and Japan; research on iconic Icelandic avant-garde artist Bjork

Yoshihisa Tak Matsusaka

Wellesley, Prof. of History

Imperialism and the Nationalist Opposition in Late Meiji Japan: A Study of the Seikyōsha, 1888-1918

Reo Matsuzaki

Trinity, Asst. Prof. of Political Science

Variation in institution-building outcomes within foreign occupations especially in police and education

Trent E. Maxey

Amherst, Assoc. Prof. of Japanese History

The social and political history of automobility in 20th-century Japan

James McLendon

Independent Scholar

The role of MOF in Japan’s political economy

Sean H. McPherson

Bridgewater State, Asst. Prof. of Art History

Development of Buddhist architecture by Japanese immigrant communities in the US and the Americas

Richard H. Minear

UMass Amherst, Prof. of History

Tokyo University in the 1930s

Shigeru Miyagawa

MIT, Prof. of Linguistics and Philosophy

Linguistics, digital humanities, and Japanese culture and history

Kuniko Miyanaga

Independent Scholar

Factuality (observed by anthropologists) among ordinary people as basis of science, justice, and democracy

Jiro Mizuno

Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific, Visiting Prof. of Japanese Diplomacy and Int’l Law

Japan’s contribution to Iran-US relationship restoration

Robert H. Morehouse

Independent Scholar

Manila war crimes trials, IMTFE, SCAP, legacy of the occupation, and Tsuji Masanobu

Kiyoko Morita

Tufts, Lecturer Emerita in Japanese

Pedagogy: analyzing problems and helping students’ reading comprehension and translation skills

Carolyn A. Morley

Wellesley, Prof. of Japanese Literature and Theatre

Buddhist nun plays in Kyōgen comedies

James W. Morley

Columbia, Ruggles Prof. Emeritus of Political Science

Current affairs and U.S. policy

Anne Nishimura Morse

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, William and Helen

Pounds Senior Curator of Japanese Art

Japanese Buddhist painting and ritual practice; contemporary Japanese photography

Samuel C. Morse

Amherst, Howard M. and Martha P. Mitchell

Prof. of Art and History of Art

The Hasedera Kannon and the Seiryōji Shaka in the Kamakura Period

Andrea Murray

Independent Scholar

Book manuscript on tourism and environmental problems in Okinawa

Hiromu Nagahara

MIT, Assoc. Prof. of History

Politics of art and culture in Japan since the nineteenth century

Susan J. Napier

Tufts, Goldthwaite Prof. of Rhetoric

Finishing book on Japanese animation director

Hayao Miyazaki

Emer O’Dwyer

Oberlin, Assoc. Prof. of History and East Asian Studies

Japan’s Postwar Democracy: The First Decade

John C. Perry

Tufts, Fletcher School, Henry Willard Denison

Prof. of History

An imperial history of the China Seas

Samuel E. Perry

Brown, Assoc. Prof. of East Asian Studies

Japanese literature and the Korean War

Lizbeth H. Piel

Lasell, Asst. Prof. of History

Childhood, education, and youth in modern Japan, focusing on the Second World War

Joan R. Piggott

USC, Gordon L. Macdonald Prof. of History and

East Asian Languages and Cultures

Book manuscript “Visions of Heian Kyoto” and collection of annotated translations “Obe Estate and its Residents—the World of a Medieval Estate”

Tamae K. Prindle

Colby, Oak Prof. of East Asian Languages and Literature

Article on anime and review of Donald Keene’s book on Ishikawa Takuboku (2016)

Ronald Richardson

BU, Assoc. Prof. of History

“Opening Japan”: Popular Movements and the Transition to Modernity

Paul Roquet

MIT, Asst. Prof. of Japanese Studies

Emotional space in twenty-first century Japanese audiovisual media

Brian D. Ruppert

Bates, Hirasawa Prof. of Japanese Studies; Chair, Asian Studies Prgm.

“Opening Japan”: Popular Movements and the Transition to Modernity

Atsuko Sakaki

Toronto, Prof. of East Asian Studies

Sporting narratology, deterritorialization in Japanese literature, and photography as site of translation

Richard J. Samuels

MIT, Ford Int’l. Prof. of Political Science; Director, Ctr. for Int’l. Studies

Research for a book manuscript “The Rhetoric of Crisis: Japan’s Choices after 3.11,” examining the policy impact of the March 2011 catastrophe on Japanese security policy, energy policy, and local governance

Ernesto F. Sanz

UMass Lowell, Prof. Emeritus of Economics

Terms of trade, Japan and the European Union

Minae Savas

Bridgewater State, Assoc. Prof. of Japanese Studies; Chair, Dept. of Global Languages and Literatures

Gaining new insights into the significance of Noh performance traditions transmitted between generations for centuries

Janine T. A. Sawada

Brown, Prof. of History of Japanese Religions

A study of the origins and early development of Mt. Fuji religious practices and ideas in late medieval Tokugawa Japan

Ellen Schattschneider

Brandeis, Assoc. Prof. of Anthropology and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies

Japanese and Okinawan pilgrimages to Micronesia, especially Saipan and Tinian, to memorialize

Associates in Research 2018-20

civilian war-time casualties; the aftermath of the 3/11 “triple disaster” (earthquake, tsunami, radiation) in Northern Japan

Frank J. Schwartz

Showa Boston Inst., President

International education in Japan

Amanda C. Seaman

UMass Amherst, Prof. of Japanese Literature

Representations of medicine and illness in literature and popular culture in contemporary Japan

Vyjayanthi R. Selinger

Bowdoin, Assoc. Prof. of Asian Studies

Book projects “The Law in Letters: The Legal Imagination of Medieval Japanese Literature” and “Transforming the Ramayana: The Chaste Sita in Hobutsushū and Beyond”

Franziska Seraphim

BC, Assoc. Prof. of Modern Japanese History

Social history of the Allied war crimes trials in Japan and Germany focusing on the post-trial phased clemency and reintegration

James M. Shields

Bucknell, Assoc. Prof. of Comparative Humanities and Asian Thought

Progressive and radical Buddhist thought and practice in East Asia, especially Japan

Yumiko Shimabukuro

Columbia, Lecturer of Int’l and Public Affairs Redistributive politics in affluent democracies

Toru Shinoda

Waseda, Prof. of Social Sciences

Comparative labor politics

Eiko M. Siniawer

Williams, Prof. of History

History of the idea of waste in postwar Japan

Kerry Smith

Brown, Assoc. Prof. of History

Disasters, disaster science, and earthquake prediction in 20th-century Japan

John P. Solt

Independent Scholar

Co-editing volume on Kenneth Rexroth’s poetry translated into Japanese for Shichōsha

Amanda M. Stinchecum

Hosei, Ctr. for Okinawan Studies, Special Research Associate

The future of “handicraft” and the sustainability of handloom weaving in Okinawa

Sarah M. Strong

Bates, Prof. Emerita of Japanese Language and Literature

Ainu oral traditions, animism in the works of Miyazawa Kenji, haikai traditions

Shizuko Suenaga

Seattle, Senior Instructor of Japanese Japanese war brides

Noriko Sugimori

Kalamazoo, Asst. Prof. of Japanese

Language ideology, oral history, modern history, sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology

Ronald Suleski

Suffolk, Prof. of History

Aspects of Manchukuo, including Japanese colonizers and lives of Chinese officials

Rebecca M. Suter

Sydney, Assoc. Prof. of Japanese Studies

Comparison of Japanese and Western cultures of soft drink consumption

Paul L. Swanson

Nanzan, Inst. for Religion and Culture, Permanent Research Fellow

Translation and commentary on Chih-i’s Mo-ho chih-kuan

Paul D. Talcott

Free Univ. of Berlin, Postdoctoral Res. Assoc., Japan Seminar

For a second dissertation (the German habilitation) working on an interdisciplinary project on vaccines in Japan, including economic, political, scientific and cultural dimensions, both current and historical

Wako Tawa

Amherst, Prof. of Asian Languages and Civilizations

Synonyms in Japanese

R. Kenji Tierney

Skidmore, Asst. Prof. of Anthropology

Examining the socio-economic roles of sumo in Japanese society and culture; looking at historical processes and contemporary situations, analyzing the place of sumo and its wrestlers in contemporary Japan and the world

Alice Y. Tseng

BU, Assoc. Prof. of Art History

Modern art and architecture of Kyoto

Yolanda Alfaro Tsuda

Kobe, Prof. of Global Studies

Diaspora of early women migrants in Japan; biography of Cara Whitney

Mary Evelyn Tucker

Yale, Senior Lecturer and Senior Scholar in Forestry and Environmental Studies, Divinity School, and Religious Studies

Confucianism, world religions, and ecology

Timothy J. Van Compernolle

Amherst, Assoc. Prof. of Japanese

Associates in Research 2018-20

“Struggling Upward: Worldly Success and the Japanese Novel”: the role played by modern discourses on social mobility in the formation of the spatial imagination of the modern Japanese novel during the Meiji era

Elena Varshavskaya

Rhode Island School of Design, Senior Lecturer in History of Art and Visual Culture

Working on description of a Russian private collection of ukiyo-e prints focusing on actor prints by the Utagawa School print designers

Alexander M. Vesey

Meiji Gakuin, Assoc. Prof. of Japanese Religion and Comparative Cultural Studies

Cultural and social history of early modern Japanese Buddhism, especially Kyoto’s cultural history and visual representations of that city

James Keith Vincent BU, Assoc. Prof. of Japanese and Comparative Literature

Modern Japanese literature, novel theory, psychoanalytic theory, queer theory, and translation

Louise E. Virgin

Worcester Art Museum, Curator of Asian Art

Japanese haiga, surimono and scroll and screen paintings; cataloguing ukiyo-e collection and contemporary prints; researching art objects for future exhibitions of Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and other Asian art

Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano

Carleton (Ottawa), Assoc. Prof. of Film Studies

Digital technology’s impact on contemporary Japanese cinema, the 1990s and 2000s; postwar Japanese cinema in the 1950s

Mariko Namba Walter

Independent Scholar

Working on multi-author publications, The Silk Road: Interwoven History, 3 volumes

Kay B. Warren

Brown, Tillinghast Prof. of Int’l Studies and Prof. of Anthropology

Working on “Human Trafficking and Transnationalism: Global Solutions, Local Realities”

Takeshi Watanabe

Connecticut, Asst. Prof. of Japanese Sixth-century Shuhanron scroll, twelfth-century scrolls associated with Go-Shirakawa, and Heian culinary practices

Neil L. Waters

Middlebury, Prof. of History

A history of Japan’s Young Men’s Associations from the Edo Period to the Pacific War

Robert Weiner

Naval Postgraduate School, Asst. Prof. of National Security Affairs

Japanese politics, democratic political institutions, and political parties and elections

Cherie Wendelken

Independent Scholar

History of Japanese architecture

Melissa L. Wender

Independent Scholar

Imperialism and war in post-war fiction of Japanese women

Victoria Weston

UMass Boston, Assoc. Prof. of Art

Okakura Kakuzo and the Nihon Bijutsuin; transfer of garden ideas and plants between Japan and the American Northeast

Merry White

BU, Prof. of Sociology and Anthropology

Ethnographic research on “work” in Japan in food from domestic to artisanal to industrial work

Ellen B. Widmer

Wellesley, Mayling Soong Prof. of Chinese Studies Brother novelists: Zhan Kai, Zhan Xi, and the shape of late-Qing fiction

Kristin Williams

Wellesley, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow

Japanese book history in the Edo period with focus on illustrated popular literature for children

Leslie I. Winston

Independent Scholar

Interrogating subjectivity in literature from the late 19th century through the early 20th century through the trope of intersexuality

Michael A. Witt

INSEAD, Affiliate Prof. of Asian Business and Comparative Management

Researching institutional change in different varieties of capitalism, especially the role of beliefs held by business leaders in shaping these processes

David Wittner

Utica, Prof. of Asian History

Meiji Era industrial technologies and industrial modernization, choice of technique, specifically in the iron and silk reeling industries; material and visual culture and their relationship to nationalism/cultural pride

Aida Yuen Wong

Brandeis, Assoc. Prof. of Asian Art; Chair, East Asian Studies

China-Japan relations and transnationalism; Nakamura Fusetsu and his circle of Japanese calligraphers who popularized Metal-and-Stone Aesthetic in the late 19th and early 20th centuries

Laura E. Wong

UNESCO, Scientific Advisor; Research Associate, Heidelberg Ctr. for American Studies

Writing about intergovernmental organizations’ place in transnational history, focusing on UNESCO; Japan-Germany-US protest movements in the 1960s; the Cold War and textbook revision

Genzo Yamamoto

Wheaton (IL), Asst. Prof. of History

Locating pre-WWII Japanese criticisms of Enlightenment thought in the broader contexts of global discontent with Europe

Tadashi Yamamoto

Tokyo Inst. of Technology, Senior Research Fellow; Research Associate, National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka

Japanese organizations; Japanese cities and urban culture; Japanese future policies; Japanese philosophy and arts; applied mathematics and information science

Nobuko Yamasaki

Independent Scholar

Makino Tomitaro (1862-1957), a botanist in modern Japan

Kikuko Yamashita

Brown, Assoc. Prof. of Japanese Language and Linguistics

Compiling a reference grammar and a reader of pre-modern Japanese

Midori Yoshii

Albion, Assoc. Prof. of Int’l Studies

US foreign policy toward northeast Asian countries during the 1960s

Anna M. Zielinska-Elliott

BU, Lecturer in Japanese

Finishing translation of Murakami Haruki’s 1Q84 into Polish

Eve Zimmerman

Wellesley, Assoc. Prof. of Japanese

The role of the girl in modern Japanese literary texts and manga

Administration

Through 2018-20, the Institute was administered on a day-to-day basis by the individuals listed below. Starting 16 March 2020, following university policies related to the Covid-19 pandemic, RIJS staff began a remote work period, which would continue over the next two years.

Reischauer Institute Staff

›› Director Mary C. Brinton

›› Executive Director Gavin H. Whitelaw

›› Assistant Director Stacie Matsumoto

›› Assistant to the Director/ Yukari Swanson (2018-19)

Event Coordinator Mizuka Yasuhara (2019-20)

›› Graduate Program Coordinator Catherine Glover

›› Undergraduate Program Coordinator Jiyoun Kim (2018-19) Wei-Hsuan Jenni Ting (2019-20)

›› Project Coordinator Hannah Perry

›› Financial Assistant Yitsy Ooi

›› Japan Digital Scholarship Librarian Katherine Matsuura

›› Japan Digital Project Manager Sachie Shishido (2019-20)

Japan Summer Student Program Coordinators

›› 2019 Kimberlee Sanders

›› 2020 (no coordinator due to international travel bans)

Student Assistants

›› Sara Kang, EALC

›› Erin Trumble, RSEA

Cover image: 2018-19

RIJS Holiday Card Photo

“Take Flight to the New Year” (Shonan, Kanagawa)

Jeffrey Cott, Harvard Class of 2018