Session 1:

“Power of Compassion: Paths of Transmission of Avalokiteśvara,” a digital project

- Dorothy C. Wong, University of Virginia (current fellow)

Death of Images: Burial Practice, Relic Deposits, and Image Caches in Medieval China

- Wei-Cheng Lin, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Buddhist Brahmins: Ritual and the Subject in Esoteric Buddhism

- Charles Orzech, University of North Carolina, Greensboro (former fellow)

Guanyin’s Ghostly Guises

- Hun Lye, Davidson College

Session 2:

Art and Apotheosis: The Early Modern Afterlife of Tokugawa Ieyasu (1643-1616)

- Morgan Pitelka, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (current fellow)

Gender Bending and Gender Affirmation: A Performance of the Anan Kōshiki at a Contemporary Sōtō Zen Convent

- Barbara R. Ambros, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

The Realm of Obscurity: Lay Monk Villages near Korea’s Northernmost Border from 1440 to 1950

- Hwansoo I. Kim, Duke University

The National Humanities Center is located at 7 Alexander Dr. in RTP.

In the mid-1980s, Japanese Brazilians’ “return” labor migrations to Japan (known as dekassegui) started on a large scale. In São Paulo, Japanese Brazilians had found it impossible to elevate themselves as “true Brazilians,” due to their “face,” despite their urban middle-class position. Japan’s economic prosperity gave the educated Japanese Brazilian youth strong ethnic pride and, as a result, they began to affirm their collective Nikkei (Japanese descendant) identity. In 2008, when Brazil celebrated the centenary of Japanese immigration, the global recession began to affect the life of Japanese Brazilians in Japan. Many of those who chose to remain in Japan became increasingly nationalistic as Brazilians.

Sponsored by the Triangle Center for Japanese Studies, with support from the Carolina Asia Center, the Center for Global Initiatives, Global Studies,the  Department of Asian Studies, and the Japan Foundation. 

Takagi Kenmyo (1864–1914) was a Shinshu Otani branch Pure Land Buddhist priest who was arrested by the Japanese government on trumped-up charges as part of a crackdown on “socialist elements” in 1910, known as the Taigyaku (“great treason”) incident (taigyaku jiken). He was identified as a troublemaker by the government on account of his social activism for anti-discrimination and anti-war (Russo-Japanese war) causes. After his arrest he was immediately renounced by the Shinshu hierarchy, with his ordination rescinded, and his family driven from their temple and home in Shingu, Wakayama. Takagi himself was sentenced to be executed, but died in prison in 1914, reportedly by his own hand. His honor was finally restored in 1996 with an official apology by the Otani organization, and the posthumous restoration of his priestly rank. In my presentation I will look at the life and times of Takagi, and examine his experiences and writings (mainly his essay on “My Socialism”) as one of a very few Buddhist priests who conscientiously opposed the official policies and social pressures of early 20th century Japan.

Paul Swanson is a Permanent Fellow at the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture at Nanzan University, a Catholic university in Nagoya, Japan. He has conducted fieldwork on Shugendo (a Japanese mountain ascetic tradition), produced textual studies and translations of 6th century Chinese T’ien-t’ai treatises, and as the editor of Japanese Journal of Religious Studies kept an interest in all aspects of Japanese religions. His publications include Foundations of T’ien-t’ai Philosophy, Pruning the Bodhi Tree, and the Nanzan Guide to Japanese Religions (a Choice “Outstanding Academic Book” 2006).

Sponsored by the East Asian Religions Cluster funded by the UNC Carolina Asia Center and the Asian/Pacific Studies Institute at Duke.

Do medieval narratives and their pictorializations matter today? In 2008, a scandal at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco involved a 1389 handscroll of the Hachiman narrative, raising questions regarding the relevance of history, the veracity of images, and the politics of display. Beginning with a disciplinary critique and methodological explorations, Trede’s paper examines the influential history of the Hachiman legend and its visualizations. Drawing on thick descriptions of three pre-modern handscrolls and popular imagery of the 1870s and 1880s, she argues that the repeated textual and pictorial reinventions were imperative in devotional, individual, institutional and political times of crisis.

Sponsored by the Asian/Pacific Studies Institute, the Department of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies, the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, and the Triangle Center for Japanese Studies. 

Introduced by Prof. Hitomi Endo (AMES)

Concealing its heavy-heart with the lightness of a sigh, Kumakiri Kazuyoshi ‘s Sketches of Kaitan City peruses the downhill slide of ordinary lives in a northern industrial town in recession. In the fictional Hokkaido shipbuilding town of Kaitan, local residents – mostly working-class stiffs for whom Japan’s postwar economic miracle never really happened – find that, in addition to another harsh winter, they must also face the downsizing of the town’s key industry due to depressed economic conditions. Despite being an adaptation of an anthology of short stories by the late Yasushi Sato (a contemporary of Haruki Murakami), Sketches of Kaitan City relies less on words and a literary structure than a large mosaic of dramatically-subdued, but richly textured images.

Contact: Hank Okazaki

Sponsors: The Asian Pacific Studies Institute (APSI), the Department of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies (AMES), and the Program in Arts of the Moving Image.

The triple crisis of Tohoku Japan was probably the most minutely documented disaster in history. But some images were also lost, including the hundreds of thousands of family photo albums that were washed away by the tsunami. Almost immediately, photo collection and restoration projects emerged all over Japan. Professor David H. Slater (Cultural Anthropology and Japanese Studies, Sophia University)  will addresses the various issues that have been raised therein, including the anxiety, ambivalence and obligation that surround the uncontrolled circulation and handling of other people’s photos; the pictures’ role in the formulation of loss, creation of hope and discharge of duty; and more speculatively, the interpretive challenges these pictures pose to representing a rural imaginary now very much gone.

Anne Allison (Cultural Anthropology, Duke) and Chris Nelson (Anthropology, UNC) will lead a discussion following the talk.

Sponsored by the Triangle Center for Japanese Studies and the Asian/Pacific Studies Institute. 

Geologist Andrew Moore (Geoscience, Earlham College) and special guest Nakamura Yugo (volcanologist/seismologist with the Institute for Seismology and Volcanology at Hokkaido University)

Professor Moore has lived and researched in the Sendai region and recently northeastern Japan, sampling the deposit and documenting events with Japanese colleagues. With comments by Jonathan Lees, Professor, Geological Sciences, UNC; David Richardson, Associate Professor, Epidemiology, UNC

Sponsored by the Triangle Center for Japanese Studies, with support from the Japan Foundation, UNC’s Global Studies, the Carolina Asia Center, the Center for Global Initiatives at UNC, and the Department of Asian Studies at UNC

Please join the Duke East Asia Nexus (DEAN) for an important event exploring the implications of nuclear energy use in Japan — and around the world. Long touted as the answer to the world’s growing energy demands and environmental conflicts, nuclear power has been looked at in a different light since the tragedy at Fukushima Dai-ichi in the wake of Japan’s devastating 3/11/11 earthquake and tsunami. The drawbacks to using nuclear power are glaring and permanent — but is it still our best option? A range of speakers will offer their insights on the past, present and future of nuclear energy — in Japan and abroad. We hope you will join us for this important reflection on the promise and peril of nuclear power. All are welcome; light refreshments will be served.

Speakers:

Simon Partner – Director of Duke’s Asian/Pacific Studies Institute (APSI) and Professor of History

 
William Pizer – Faculty Fellow at Duke’s Nicholas School for the Environment and Associate Professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy

 
Jim Warren -  Executive Director of NC WARN, a local non-profit devoted to environmental awareness

Von Cannons A is on the bottom floor of the Bryan Center, the apex of Duke’s West Campus. There will be signs and people to greet you.

Organized and Sponsored by the Duke East Asian Nexus (DEAN). 

This workshop, led by Takayuki Suzuki, founder and director of Wake Shora NPO in Niigata, Japan, and facilitated by Anne Allison (Robert O. Keohane Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Duke), will focus on youth culture in contemporary Japan. The workshop is part of a series of events on Japan’s 3/11 disaster.

Sponsored by the Triangle Center for Japanese Studies and supported by the Japan Foundation, the Asian/Pacific Studies Institute at Duke, the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke, the Carolina Asia Center, the Center for Global Initiatives at UNC, and the Department of Asian Studies at UNC.

Schedule:

6:00p.m.:  ”The Material Culture of Disasters in Premodern Japan” – Morgan Pitelka, Associate Professor, Asian Studies, UNC; Director, Triangle Center for Japanese Studies

6:30 p.m.:  ”Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923″ – Gennifer Weisenfeld, Associate Professor, Art, Art History & Visual Culture, Duke University

7:00 p.m.:  Catered reception in the FedEx Center Atrium

Free and open to the public.

Sponsored by The College of Arts and Sciences and the Office of the Provost-UNC Global; the Carolina Asia Center; the Center for Global Initiatives; the Japan Foundation