Events category: Webinar

6 May 2021

Suicide and the COVID-19 pandemic: Trends in Japan and around the world

The COVID-19 pandemic is a public health crisis with both physical and mental health consequences. There are concerns that it may lead to an increase in suicides. In the first part of this webinar, we discussed global trends in suicides in high-income and upper-to-middle income countries in the early months of the pandemic. The second half of the webinar focused on the case of Japan, which experienced a notable increase in female suicides during the pandemic. We discussed the likely causes of this increase in suicides and the implications for other countries.

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27 April 2021

Photography after the Tsunami: Lieko Shiga in conversation with Yasufumi Nakamori

Lieko Shiga is a Japanese photographer based in Misato, Miyagi Prefecture, in North-East Japan, whose work focuses on documenting the lives of local people in her community. On 11 March 2011, the Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami destroyed her village of Kitakama, taking the lives of many. After surviving the immediate aftermath, Shiga has recorded local events, capturing the overarching significance of the tragedy, and tracing the transformation of her community. In this webinar chaired by Yasufumi Nakamori, Lieko Shiga spoke about how her art practice and activities became meaningful in capturing and expressing the significance of a devastating event that she experienced directly.

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20 May 2021

Tokachi Millennium Forest: a Radical Natural Vision

Thirty years ago, Japanese media entrepreneur Mitsushige Hayashi bought 400 hectares of land in the Tokachi region of Hokkaido, with the aim of offsetting the carbon footprint of his newspaper business, Tokachi Mainichi. Ten years later he invited British landscape designer Dan Pearson and Midori Shintani, now Head Gardener at Tokachi Millennium Forest, to help design an ecological public park on the site, with the aim of safeguarding this place for a thousand years. In this talk, chaired by British garden designer and writer Sophie Walker, they discussed the design and development of the forest and gardens, and how a naturalistic strand of European garden and planting design came to find a new natural home in Japan.

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16 April 2021

Fake News and Social Media: Perspectives from the UK and Japan

The rise of “fake news” and other forms of misinformation are eroding trust in real news, generating concern in democratic systems worldwide. Fake news has also become an integral part of the political debate and political campaigning. The spread of inaccurate beliefs and misinformation have the potential to undermine democracies and create an atmosphere of uncertainty and confusion. In this webinar, chaired by James Harding, we discussed the current situation in the UK and Japan, the effects of social media on journalism, and the impact of the age of fake news on democracy.

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9 April 2021

Women in Politics in the UK and Japan

Gender balance in politics can improve the quality and responsiveness of public policy, increase public trust in government and provide a better reflection of society. Despite the benefits of greater inclusion of women in politics, women in Japan and the UK still face barriers which restrict them from attaining full participation in political life. While the UK has shown significant progress in this regard, female representation in the Japanese Diet is at only 9.9%. This webinar discussed the importance of women in politics, the current situation in the UK and Japan, the barriers and obstacles to female participation, and gave recommendations to deal with them.

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23 March 2021

Poverty in the UK and Japan

The “invisibility” of poverty in Japanese society has long been one of the reasons for the underestimation of this social issue by the authorities. Nevertheless, data from the OECD reveals that the poverty rate in Japan (15.7% in 2018) is actually higher than that in the UK (11.7%). In this talk, Dr Aya Abe described how Japan “discovered” the problem of child poverty and how social science informed policymakers. Then, Dr David Gordon discussed the UK’s experience of child poverty, its anti-poverty policies, and some of the lessons that have been learned from poverty research.

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22 April 2021

New Frontiers: Robotics, Technology, and the Future of Dance

In this talk, Adrienne Hart, Artistic Director of Neon Dance, discussed the new contemporary dance work ‘Prehension Blooms’ with her collaborator Dr Hemma Philamore from the University of Bristol’s Robotics Lab. The work combines dance with robotics to explore loneliness, companionship, and belonging. The creative duo shared early-stage prototype designs and Professor Takashi Ikegami (University of Tokyo) commented on the project as well as offering an insight into his own cutting-edge research centered on complex systems and artificial life. The speakers ended this webinar by sharing their thoughts on how emerging technologies might influence dance in the future.

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31 March 2021

Women in Classical Japanese Literature

Classical Japan was scene of a great cultural flourishing, an era of literary and artistic output unrivalled anywhere in the world. Women, though living in an otherwise highly oppressive patriarchal society, were just as significant in this literary environment. In this webinar we explored this extraordinary era of women’s writing with reference to the seminal works of Murasaki Shikibu and Sei Shōnagon: Professor Haruo Shirane posed the question “Why did a woman write the Tale of Genji in the 11th century?”, while Dr Jennifer Guest discussed literary education for women, including how early women writers interacted with Chinese texts, using the Pillow Book as her main example.

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26 March 2021

日本の桜を救ったイギリス人

英国人園芸家のコリングウッド・イングラム（1880-1981）は20世紀初めに日本の桜の虜になり、明治・大正・昭和期に3度訪日して桜の穂木を持ち帰り、ケント州の自庭に植えて素晴らしい「桜園」を創りました。最盛期には130種類近くが植樹され、イングラムはそれらを英国や欧米社会に紹介し、広めました。 イングラムにとって一番大切だったのは桜の「多様性」です。ところが日本では当時、伝統の桜が忘れられて多数の品種が絶滅の危機に瀕していました。明治以来の近代化政策によって、人々は多品種を生んだ桜文化を忘れてしまったのです。日本で絶滅した「太白」桜は、イングラムが1932年、日本に里帰りさせ、イングラムは多様な桜を大事にするよう、日本人に警告を発します。しかし、その後日本はクローンの「染井吉野」に席巻され、まっしぐらに軍国主義の道を歩みます。 

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2 March 2021

10 years from the Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami

On 11 March 2011 Japan experienced the Tohoku Earthquake, the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in the country. The quake was followed by a massive 120-foot-high tsunami smashing into the coast of north-east Japan. The tsunami wiped out many coastal communities, dragging houses, cars, trees and people on its way. This natural disaster resulted in the greatest loss of life Japan has suffered from a single event since the end of World War II. In this webinar, British journalists Jon Snow and Richard Lloyd Parry spoke about their different experiences reporting the tragedy, describing the impact of the disaster as they witnessed it on the ground.

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