Nichibunken News

On Monday, March 9, an international workshop titled Body as Subject in Religious and Healthcare Spaces: A Comparative Perspective with Japan was held at Université Paris Cité, France, bringing together undergraduate students, graduate students, and researchers for wide-ranging scholarly discussion.

The workshop opened with Ken Daimaru (Université Paris Cité, CRCAO) outlining the aim of the event: to take the body as a shared subject of inquiry and to foster broad interdisciplinary dialogue.

The morning session, Human Body as Concept, Practice and Representation, was chaired by Matthias Hayek (EPHE, CRCAO) and featured three presentations. The first, "Body Images and Healing in Modern and Contemporary Japan: A Comparative Perspective," was delivered by Manami Yasui (Nichibunken), who was in residence at Université Paris Cité as a visiting professor. She introduced a comparative framework centered on Japanese ema — votive tablets offered in hopes of bodily healing — and the ex-votos donated at churches across Europe and South America, exploring the body images these objects convey. The second presentation, "Childbirth in Medieval Japan: Time, Politics, Expertise," was given by Anna Andreeva (Ghent University), who drew on diaries, paintings, and ritual records of the period to concretely examine the experience of childbirth as lived by women. The session concluded with "Body Parts on Display: Vows, Illness and Material Proxies in Japanese Temples and Catholic Churches," presented by Lucia Dolce (SOAS University of London / Ca' Foscari University of Venice), who drew on examples of ex-votos displayed in European churches to propose a theoretical framework for analyzing body-related votive objects and to identify the key conceptual issues required for comparative research.

The afternoon session, Maternity, Religious Landscapes, Healthcare Pluralism in Comparative Perspective, was chaired by Ken Daimaru and consisted of open discussion building on the morning presentations. Clémence Jullien (CNRS / CESAH [affiliation to confirm]) offered comments drawing on her fieldwork on childbirth in India, while Matthias Hayek provided wide-ranging reflections from his own research on divination and fortune. Participants then engaged in deeper discussion aimed at building a collaborative research platform with the body and body parts as its organizing theme. Dialogue on this topic will continue through various venues and occasions going forward.

This international workshop was co-organized by the following institutions:

• Université Paris Cité
  - UFR Langues et Civilisations de l'Asie Orientale (LCAO)
  - Graduate School of East Asian Studies
  - Centre de Recherche sur les Civilisations de l'Asie Orientale (CRCAO, UMR 8155)
• Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
• Collège de France (CdF)
• École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE)
• International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken, Kyoto, Japan)

Reported by Manami Yasui

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