Spring 2012 Events

An International Conference

Reassessing the Shôen System: Society and Economy in Medieval Japan

Co-sponsored with the Project for Premodern Japan Studies

Conference Convenors: Joan Piggott (USC) and Janet Goodwin (USC) 

Location: East Asian Seminar Room (110C), Doheny Memorial Library

Time: 9:30 AM – 6:00 PM

Keynote Lecture

Kyôhei Ôyama (Professor Emeritus, Kyoto University)

Panel Discussion

Motoo Endo (University of Tokyo, Historiographical Institute)

Toshiko Takahashi (University of Tokyo, Historiographical Institute)

Eiji Sakurai (University of Tokyo)

Koji Hirota (Izumi Sano Historical Museum)

Makoto Nagamura (Japan Women's University/Kanazawa Archives)

Shigemitsu Kimura (Osaka University)

Taizô Noda (Kyoto University)

Takeshi Nishida (Ono City Board of Education)

Lee Butler (Independent Scholar)

David Eason (SUNY, Albany)

Ethan Segal (Michigan State University)

and The Ôbe Estate Research Group at USC:

Joan R. Piggott (Professor of History)

Janet Goodwin (Associate-in-Research)

Yoshiko Kainuma (Independent Scholar)

Michelle Damian (Graduate Student)

Rieko Kamei-Dyche (Graduate Student)

Nadia Kanagawa (Graduate Student)

Sachiko Kawai (Graduate Student)

Dan Scherer (Graduate Student)

Takagi Kenmyo and Buddhist Socialism: A Meiji Misfit and Martyr

CJRC Lecture Series

By Paul Swanson

Permanent Fellow, Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, Nanzan University; Editor, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies

Location: East Asian Seminar Room (110C), Doheny Memorial Library

Time: 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM

Religion in the Public Sphere: Japan and the World

CJRC Inauguration Symposium - Co-sponsored by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science

Conference Convenors: Lori Meeks (USC) and Duncan Williams (USC)

27 APRIL

Location: Ron Howard Screening Room (RZC 111), Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts

Time: 8:00 PM – 10:00 PM

Film Screening

Abraxas (Director, Naoki Kato, 2010)

In his youth, Jonen was a punk-rock musician. Now he’s a Buddhist monk with a wife and five-year-old son. During his career-day speech at a local high school, however, Jonen has a public breakdown that leads to a deep depression when he realizes the importance of music to his life. In an attempt to raise Jonen’s spirits, the compassionate chief monk suggests he play a live show. As he plans for the concert, Jonen faces challenges from past loss, small-town resistance, and the possibility of alienating his family.

28 APRIL

Location: Tutor Campus Center, Room 227 (The Rosen Family Screening Theatre)

Time: 10:30 AM – 5:00 PM

A Symposium

Religion in the Public Sphere: Japan and the World

"Post 3-11 Religion in Japan"

By Susumu Shimazono (Professor, University of Tokyo; former President, Japanese Association for Religious Studies) 

Respondent: Donald Miller (Professor and Executive Director, Center for Religion and Civic Culture, USC)

"Religion in Films and Religious Culture Education in Contemporary Japan"

By Nobutaka Inoue (Professor and Director, Institute of Japanese Culture and Classics, Kokugakuin University) 

Respondent: Jolyon Thomas (Ph.D. Candidate, Princeton University)

"A Place for Religion in the Public Sphere? Some Postwar Japanese Responses to Secularization"

By Mark Mullins (Professor, Sophia University; Editor-In-Chief, Monumenta Nipponica) 

Respondent: David Kyuman Kim (Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Connecticut College)

"Religious and Citizenship Education in Public Schools in Japan: A Comparison with the United States"

By Koichi Mori (Chancellor, Kobe College; Professor Emeritus, Doshisha University)

Respondent: Helen Hardacre (E.O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Religions and Society, Harvard University)

Which "Zen" Rallied around the Emperor?  A Window on Issues in the Study of Japanese Religions and Culture

CJRC Lecture Series

By Christopher Ives

Chair, Department of Religious Studies, Stonehill College (Ph.D. Claremont Graduate University); author of Imperial-Way Zen: Ichikawa Hakugen’s Critique and Lingering Questions for Buddhist Ethics (University of Hawai’i, 2009)

Location: Intellectual Commons (Room 233), Doheny Memorial Library

Time: 4:30 PM – 6:30 PM

The Great Tohoku Earthquake, One Year Later: A Discussion about Japan's Path to Recovery based on Volunteer Experience

CJRC Lecture Series

By Scott Wilbur

Ph.D. Student (Politics and International Relations), USC School of International Relations

Location: East Asian Seminar Room (110C), Doheny Memorial Library

Time: 12:30 PM – 2:00 PM

Toxic Archipelago: A History of Industrial Disease in Japan

CJRC Lecture Series

By Brett Walker

Regent’s Professor, Montana State University (Ph.D. University of Oregon); author of Toxic Archipelago:  A History of Industrial Disease in Japan (University of Washington, 2010), and The Conquest of Ainu Lands: Ecology and Culture in Japanese Expansion, 1590-1800 (University of California, 2001)

Location: Leavey Auditorium, Leavey Library

Time: 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM

Cosmopolitanism and Social Discourse in Premodern Japan

CJRC Religion and Social Life in Premodern Japan Project

Conference Convenor: Lori Meeks (USC)

8 MARCH

Location: Herklotz Room (G24), Music Library, Doheny Memorial Library

Time: 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM

Public Lecture

Perceptions of Kegare in Premodern Japan

By Masao Kawashima Professor Emeritus, Ritsumeikan University

9 MARCH

Location: Herklotz Room (G24), Music Library, Doheny Memorial Library

Time: 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM

Workshop

International Awareness and Exoticized Worlds in Maps from the Late Edo Period

By Ikuyo Matsumoto Associate Professor, Yokohama City University

**Please note: Talks on both days will be in Japanese**

Japan's Declining Population: Clearly a Problem, But What's the Solution?

CJRC Lecture Series, Co-sponsored with the USC Center for International Studies

By Leonard “Len” J. Schoppa, Jr.

Professor of Politics, University of Virginia (Ph.D. Oxford); author of Race for the Exits: The Unraveling of Japan’s System of Social Protection (Cornell, 2006), Bargaining with Japan (Columbia, 1997), and Education Reform in Japan (Routledge, 1991)

Location: Social Sciences Building (SOS), B40

Time: 12:30 PM – 2:00 PM

Future of Global/Hybrid/Japan: A Reading and Conversation with Pico Iyer

CJRC Hybrid Japan Innovation Lab Project

Pico Iyer

Travel writer, essayist for Time, Harper's, the New York Times, and the New York Review of Books, and author of eleven books including Video Night in Kathmandu (1988), The Lady and the Monk (1991), The Global Soul (2000), and The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama (2008)

Location: Embassy Room, Davidson Conference Center, USC (3415 South Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, CA 90089)

Time: 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM

A Symposium

Voices of Mono-ha Artists: Contemporary Art in Japan, Circa 1970

Hosted in conjunction with the exhibition Requiem for the Sun: The Art of Mono-ha curated by Mika Yoshitake at Blum & Poe, February 25 - April 14, 2012, and in association with PoNJA-GenKon, Post-1945 Japanese Art Discussion Group/Gendai Bijutsu Kondankai

Conference Convenor: Miya Elise Mizuta (USC)

Location: Friends of the USC Libraries (Room 240), Doheny Memorial Library

Time: 1:30 PM – 3:30 PM

Participating Artists:

Haraguchi Noriyuki

Koshimizu Susumu

Lee Ufan

Sekine Nobuo

Suga Kishio

Art Historians:

Mika Yoshitake, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

Reiko Tomii, Independent Scholar and Co-Founder of PoNJA-GenKon

Joan Kee, University of Michigan

Hollis Goodall, Curator of Japanese Art, LACMA

Please RSVP to MailPonja@gmail.com, thank you!

Sponsored by the Japan Foundation, Los Angeles, the East Asian Studies Center (USC), and the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures (USC)

Gender, Sex, and Pollution in Buddhist Discourse

CJRC Gender and Ideology in Japanese Religious Life Project

Conference Convenor: Lori Meeks (USC)

Location: East Asian Seminar Room (110C), Doheny Memorial Library

Time: 10:00 AM – 5:30 PM                 

Public Workshop

"Sorrowful Coverings of Tainted Karma: Towards a History of Female Impurity in Early and Middle Period Indian Buddhism"

By Amy Langenberg, Auburn University

"The Debtors' Prison - The Daoist Construction of the Blood Lake Hell for Women"

By Jessey Choo, University of Missouri, Kansas City

Response by Charlotte Furth (Professor Emerita, USC)

"Women’s Buddhist Practices and Ethnic Representation in Dali, Yunnan: The Tale of Woman Huang as Bai Folk Culture"

By Megan Bryson, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

"Dead Women in Medieval Japan: Painting Buddhist Truth in The Tale of the Demon Shuten Dōji"

By Keller Kimbrough, University of Colorado, Boulder

“Situating the Cult of the Blood Bowl Sutra in the Gender Discourses of Early Modern Japan: A View from the Commentarial Tradition.”

By Lori Meeks, USC

Response by Janet Hoskins (Anthropology, USC)

Beyond “Closed to Open”: Re-conceptualizing Japan’s Foreign Relations from the 17th Century to Today

CJRC Lecture Series

By Robert Hellyer

Associate Professor of History, Wake Forest University (Ph.D. Stanford); author of Defining Engagement: Japan and Global Contexts, 1640-1868 (Harvard, 2010)

Location: East Asian Seminar Room (110C), Doheny Memorial Library

Time: 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM