The Aesthetics of Empire: The Pursuit of the Ideal Beauty in Early 20th Century Japanese and Korean Art (Durham, NC)
February 7, 2019 4:00 – 5:30 pm
Rubenstein Library Carpenter Conference Room 249
411 Chapel Dr
Durham, NC 27705
After the annexation of Korea in 1910, Japanese artists enthusiastically toured their recently acquired colonial territory seeking new sources for artistic expression. Amongst the resulting images, the figure of the Korean beauty became a prominent and nearly ubiquitous subject. This talk will trace how this interest coalesced at a critical moment in which imported Western ideals of depicting beauty, the inheritance of Orientalist perceptions, and the readily available figure of the courtesan were melded together into a new erotic trope that was easily consumable for both Japanese and Korean audiences.
A scholar of East Asian art, Nancy Lin’s research focuses on modern Japanese and Korean art (late-19th century to mid-20th century), with special emphasis on the genre of painting. Lin spent the 2015-16 academic year as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Korea Institute. Previously, she spent a year (2011-12) as a visiting scholar at Seoul National University’s Kyujanggak Institute and as a researcher at Tokyo University of the Arts (2010-11). She is a graduate of the University of Chicago.
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Maehata Ganbare! Nation, Narration, and Immediacy in Early Japanese Sports Broadcasting (Chapel Hill, NC)
February 8, 2019 4:00 – 5:00 pm
Carolina Asia Center
The University of North Carolina
FedEx Global Education Center #3009
301 Pittsboro St.
Chapel Hill, NC 27599
The advent of sports broadcasting in Japan in the 1920s necessitated the creation of new forms of oral narrative performance. The sporting events themselves offered the narrative frame, and the task before the radio broadcaster was to present that bare sequence of events with enough structure and art to hold the audience’s attention to a spectacle that they couldn’t actually see. The contemporary discourses around these broadcasts traded on the rhetoric of an immediacy that was undeniable while also being, in many ways, a consensual fiction. The first half of the presentation outlines the beginnings of sports broadcasting in Japan, situating it within a larger media landscape of print media and sound recordings. The second half is an extended consideration of what is perhaps the most famous sports broadcast in Japanese history, Kasai Sansei’s calling of Maehata Hideko’s first-place finish in the 200-meter women’s breaststroke at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.
Kerim Yasar is Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures at USC. He is the author of Electrified Voices: How the Telephone, Phonograph, and Radio Shaped Modern Japan, 1868-1945 (Columbia University Press, 2018), and is active as a translator in a variety of genres and media, from contemporary novels to pre-modern poetry to the subtitles for more than a hundred feature films in the Criterion Collection/Janus Films library, including classic works by directors such as Kurosawa Akira, Ozu Yasujiro, and Oshima Nagisa.
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Seishun Con (Atlanta, GA)
February 8-10, 2019
Atlanta Marriott Marquis
265 Peachtree Center Ave NE
Atlanta, GA 30303
Seishun Con is proud to return in 2019 for its ninth year!
Come join us for a weekend full of panels, guests, vendors, contests and much more. Seishun Con IX will be held at the Atlanta Marriott Marquis, conveniently located in the heart of downtown Atlanta with easy MARTA access available via light rail and bus service. We have also partnered with Parking Panda to help you get the best parking rates on surface lots, and be able to reserve your parking in advance!
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Okonomiyaki Cooking Class (Birmingham, AL)
February 9, 2019 2:00 – 5:00 pm
Samuel Ullman Museum
2150 15th Ave S
Birmingham, AL 35205
Join us at the Samuel Ullman Museum for an okonomiyaki cooking class! All ages are welcome. Ingredients and cooking utensils will be provided.
Okonomiyaki (お好み焼き), made “as you like it,” is a savory pancake consisting mostly of cabbage with other vegetables, seafood, cheese, pork, and more depending on what you like! Often in Japan, okonomiyaki restaurants will feature tables with built-in iron grills (teppan, 鉄板）so that you can mix raw ingredients and enjoy cooking and flipping the pancake yourself. Then, it is topped with special okonomiyaki sauce, mayonaisse, and dried bonito flakes (katsuobushi, 鰹節) on top.
This program is funded by the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership as part of a long-term project to build a Japanese community around the Samuel Ullman Museum. We are grateful for their support!
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Photo credit: Yayoi Kusama with recent works in Tokyo, 2016. Courtesy of the artis
t. Art © YAYOI KUSAMA. Photo by Tomoaki Makino
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Kusama – Infinity: The Life and Art of Yayoi Kusama (Atlanta, GA)
February 13, 2019 7:00 – 9:00 pm
High Museum of Art
Memorial Arts Building
Beauchamp C. Carr Room
1280 Peachtree St NE
Atlanta, GA 30309
Want more Yayoi Kusama in your life? Catch a screening of Kusama—Infinity, the movie the New York Times says provides “ample, illuminating access to an artist’s way of thinking and working.”
Before the film, stop in and learn some tips and tricks on how to create Japanese origami with The Japan-America Society of Georgia. After the screening stick around for a talk back with producer Karen Johnson. Don’t miss out on this special evening.
This film includes some nudity and sexual content that may not be appreciated by all audiences.
Price
Free for Members
$14.50 for Not-Yet-Members
Reservations Required
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US-Japan Now Luncheon: Sports, Business & Economy (Atlanta, GA）
February 16, 2019 11:00 am
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta
1000 Peachtree Street NE
Atlanta, GA 30309
Registration
Member Registration
Non-Member Registration: $25.00
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Goodness beyond Melodrama: Compassionate Awareness in Ozu’s TOkyo Story (Chapel Hill, NC)
February 20, 2019 3:30 – 5:30 pm
Hyde Hall, University Room
176 E Franklin St
Chapel Hill, NC 27514
Tokyo Story (1953), the most famous film in Ozu Yasuji’s so-called “Noriko triology” and regularly ranked first among the top-ten greatest films of all time, is based loosely on Leo McCrarey’s 1937 American melodrama, Make Way for Tomorrow. An elderly couple from Onomichi travel to Tokyo to visit their children who greet them with indifference and ingratitude. Only their widowed daughter-in-law Noriko shows them kindness. Ozu contrasts Onomichi, a city known for its Buddhist templates (in Hiroshima Prefecture), with the urban sprawl of Tokyo. This lecture discusses Ozu’s gentle critique of egotism, his transcendence of melodrama, his compassionate use of the camera, and his depiction o the central character’s transformation.
Jeffrey Stout is emeritus professor of religion at Princeton University. His interests include ethics, social criticism, political thought, modern theology, film, and theories of religion. He is the author of The Flight from Authority, Ethnics after Babel, Democracy and Tradition, and Blessed Are the Organized: Grassroots Democracy in America.
Tokyo Story is available for streaming through UNC’s library and on Amazon Prime Video.
Sponsored by the Department of Religious Studies, the American Academy of Religion, the Institute for Arts and Humanities, the Carolina Asia Center the Departments of Asian Studies and English & Comparative Literature.
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Okinawa’s “shrine problem”: Reconfigurations of Okinawa’s Religious Landscape, 1879-1945 (Chapel Hill, NC)
February 22, 2019 12:30 – 2:00 pm
Wilson Library, Pleasants Family Room
200 South Rd
Chapel Hill, NC 27514
Mainland shrine Shinto and its practices of kami worship spread in prewar Okinawa as part of the imposition of Japanese colonial rule in the prefecture. This spread was visible not only in the establishment of new Shinto shrines but also in the conversion of utaki sacred groves and other spaces of Okinawa’s indigenous ritual practices into jinja.
Despite these developments, shrine Shinto’s presence in prewar Okinawa cannot be left only as a story of the successful top-down imposition of practices and spaces of mainland kami worship. The spread of Shinto was so slow that Okinawa was described as having a “shrine problem.” However, speed was not the only issue; the spread of Shinto was problematic in other ways too. Mainland Shinto was caught up in a complex encounter with the prefecture’s indigenous religion that unsettles commonplace understandings of and assumptions about the Japanese state’s rule of Okinawa, the role that Okinawans played in that process, and the power relations between the Japanese mainland and Okinawan periphery.
This presentation will discuss two elements that demonstrate the complexity of that encounter. First, it looks at how local Okinawan intellectuals and communities actively wrote Okinawa’s indigenous religion into the world of shrine Shinto. Second, it examines how shrine Shinto served as a means through which Okinawan communities pursued local agendas that were unrelated to the concerns of the mainland Shinto establishment and Japanese state.
Together, these elements raise questions about how local agendas inflected the process often referred to as the “Japanization” of Okinawa in the prewar. They suggest that while local communities suffered discrimination and coercion which characterized Japanization, Okinawans were able to bend that process in ways that challenged Tokyo’s authority. In some instances, Okinawan communities went even further to appropriate and deploy mainland Shinto in ways that maintained local lifeways, even as they negotiated the radical changes demanded by an increasingly mainland-centered world taking shape around them.
Tze M. Loo is an associate professor of history at the University of Richmond. She is the author of Heritage Politics: Shuri Castle and Okinawa’s Incorporation into Modern Japan, 1878-2000 (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2014).
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Kami-Con 2019 (Birmingham, AL)
February 22-24, 2019
Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex
2100 Richard Arrington Jr Blvd N
Birmingham, AL 35203
Kami-Con is a 3-day convention that celebrates Japanese culture, geek culture, anime & manga, cosplay, tabletop & video gaming, comics, TV shows, movies, and much, much more! Kami-Con is also a uniquely interactive convention in that it features events which allow congoers to affect the outcome of its story!
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The Power to Transform Our Lives: Trilateral Japan-US-Israel Advancements in Artificial Intelligence and Big Data Analytics (Atlanta, GA)
February 28, 2019 6;00 pm
Greenberg Traurig Terminus 200
3333 Piedmont Road NE, Suite 2500
Atlanta, GA 30305
Japan, the United States, and Israel are three leading nations on the cutting-edge of technological innovation. Partnerships and investments between them are transforming societies across the globe and creating a more interconnected world. From robotics to health care management, artificial intelligence (AI) continues to unlock new possibilities for our lives by reshaping and equipping industries with innovative tools and technologies to deliver advanced services and products.
Join us for a panel discussion featuring government, private sector, and academic experts from each country who will talk about what impacts we can expect from trilateral collaboration, as well as potential problems which may arise and their solutions, as AI integrates further into society and our everyday lives.
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JAASC/JASNC Business Speaker Series (Charlotte, NC)
March 1, 2019 3:30 – 6:30 pm
Quail Hollow Country Club
3700 Gleneagles Road,
Charlotte, NC 28210
Japan-America Association of South Carolina and Japan-America Society of North Carolina co-host Business Speaker Series in Charlotte, NC. This Business Speaker Series is sponsored by Keizai Koho Center (Japan Institute for Social and Economic Affairs).
Refreshments and Snacks will be provided.
Registration
$10 for JAASC/JASNC Members
$20 for Non-Members
Advance Registration is required.
Seating is limited. Please Register Early.
Speakers:
- Mr. Daichi Arima, President/CEO of Asahi Kasei America, Inc., and Lead Executive Officer of Asahi Kasei Corporation
- Mr. John Moyer, Chairman/CEO of Asahi Kasei Plastics North America, Inc., and Lead Executive Officer of Asahi Kasei Corporation
- Mr. Ira Shapiro, Senior Advisor, ASG’s East Asia & Pacific Practice
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AnniCon 2019 (Anniston, AL)
March 2, 2019
Anniston City Meeting Center
1615 Noble St
Anniston, AL 36201
AnniCon is a FREE, one-day celebration of Asian culture including art, music, costuming, manga, anime, gaming, food, history, and special guests.
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AgamaCon (Aiken, SC)
March 2-3, 2019
H.O. Weeks Activities Center
1700 Whiskey Rd
Aiken, SC 29803
AgamaCon is the biggest pop-culture convention in the CSRA! We have something for all ages, and bring more fun activities and excitement every year! This will be AgamaCon’s 4th year and it will be held once again in beautiful Aiken, SC at Odell Weeks Activity Center. There is plenty of outdoor space for amazing photo shoots, and lots of tables indoors for all of your gaming needs! As a multi-genre convention, we welcome all fandoms and interests from D&D to Rick & Morty. Cosplay is always encouraged and we welcome you to bring your games to showcase and share with others. Hope to see you there!
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The Consulate General of Japan in Atlanta is an overseas establisment of the Government of Japan. The main function of our office is to protect Japanese nationals and economic interests, provide consular services and cultural exchange. There are 18 Japanese diplomatic missions in the United States. The jurisdiction of our office in Atlanta is Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina.
Consulate General of Japan in Atlanta
Phipps Tower, Suite 850
3438 Peachtree Road
Atlanta, GA 30326
Email: info@aa.mofa.go.jp
Phone: 404-240-4300
Fax: 404-240-4311
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