■Topics 2018
2018-06-15 NichibunkenNews
International Symposium to Commemorate Nichibunken’s 30th Anniversary Report (May 20–21, 2018) “Japanese Studies around the World: In Search of Critical Proposals” (Day 1)
A two-day international symposium was held May 20–21, 2018 to finalize a series of projects commemorating the 30th anniversary of Nichibunken’s founding. The symposium brought together sixteen researchers from twelve countries who had previously been at Nichibunken as visiting research scholars and who are engaged in collaborative research and research exchange activities. The symposium allowed them to renew their association with Nichibunken researchers through the lively discussion in the sessions.The first day began with a greeting by Nichibunken Director-General Komatsu Kazuhiko and a briefing on the aims of the symposium by Executive Committee Chairman Inoue Shōichi, followed by presentations and comments by participants in the three areas of history, classics/language, and performing arts.
In the area of history, Matthias Hayek, associate professor at Université Paris Diderot, gave a presentation calling for sharing of new perceptions of issues, reporting on the recent trends in research on Japanese (cultural) history in France. Japanese studies in France is livelier than before, he said, partly because of an increased number of instructors and partly due to generation change. As to the future of Nichibunken, he proposed the expansion of its international collaborative research network by shifting the focus from initiatives by individual researchers to greater inter-institutional solidarity. He also stressed the importance of trying to engage in new comparative studies other than Japanese studies. The path forward for Nichibunken, he suggested, would depend on opening the way for further networking and organization of scholarship.
The next presentation, by Phan Hai Linh, associate professor at Vietnam National University, discussed how to make research on Japanese history more internationalized and cross-disciplinary. From the history of Japan-Vietnam relations in the early modern period, he took up two case studies, “elephant trade” and “the roots of Matsuzaka shimaori fabric,” discussing the necessity of the cross-checking of sources and documents across national and disciplinary (history) lines as well as the importance of interdisciplinary research methodology. Ranjana Mukhopadhyaya, associate professor at Delhi University, talked about two major Japanese studies trends in India—as “area study” and as “foreign language research.” Looking back on the history of those trends, she asserted that the Nihonjinron discourse, which was dominant among Japanese and Western researchers in the post-World War II period, placed so much emphasis on the uniqueness of Japanese culture and society that Japanese studies became isolated from the social sciences in general. She suggested that finding ways for Japanese studies to contribute to the further development of the social sciences and success in overcoming the language barrier to transmit Japanese studies to the world will be the tasks to grapple with in the years ahead.
In the area of “classics/language,” Maral Andassova, JSPS postdoctoral fellow at Wako University, described two major challenges facing overseas researchers on classical Japanese literature—the translation of honorific expressions in the original Japanese and interpretation and research methodologies for original sources—using abundant examples from Russosphere and Anglosphere scholarship. As sharing of discourse with researchers in specialized neighboring disciplines tends to be difficult in Japanese academia, she called for the sharing of awareness of issues from a broad perspective.
Next, language historian Yi Kangmin, professor at Hanyang University, Republic of Korea, first outlined the status of Japanese studies in Korea and Korean translation of Japanese classical literature and then urged Nichibunken to discover appealing new aspects of Japan and communicate them widely overseas, as well as explore research topics that can be shared with overseas researchers, creating forums for such activity. In response, commentator Yang Xiaojie, professor at the University of Calgary, Canada added that Nichibunken, its greatest asset being the networks it has built up over three decades, still has much to do in sharing its human and research resources and research achievements. He asserted that building virtual, rather than physical, spaces [forums] is what should receive the greatest attention from now on.
In the area of performing arts, Tokita Alison, visiting professor at Kyoto City University of Arts, discussed the communication problems that would likely confront overseas researchers when conducting research on Japanese music. As an example she related her own experiences about the discrepancy in scholarly expectations between Japan and outside Japan that could not be overcome no matter how proficient in the Japanese language a person may become after many years of training. Meanwhile, she underlined the importance of the role of foreign researchers in transmitting Japanese music to the world, introducing two cases when foreign scholars brought about a paradigm shift in research on Japanese music—Laurence Picken regarding research on gagaku (court music) and Kenneth D. Butler on katarimono (narrative styles of music).
The last to speak on the first day of the symposium was Bonaventura Ruperti, professor of University Ca’ Foscari, Venice, Italy who reported on findings of the 2015 collaborative research project he had headed, “The Body in the Japanese Performing Arts: Death and Life, Puppet and Artificial Bodies.” He said that the project examined views of the body in Japanese culture and thought from the standpoint of various disciplines—history of drama, aesthetics, comparative culture, history of religion, study of dance, etc.—in an international and comprehensive manner. He was thereby able to delve into the essence of the performing arts. He concluded by saying that understanding and knowledge of other cultures was vitally important for world peace, citing a relevant passage 遊楽万曲の花種をなすは、一身感力の心根也 from Zeami’s treatise on noh.
(Continued to Day 2 Report.)
(Reported by Shiraishi Eri, assistant professor, Office of Digital Resources, Publications, and Public Information)
