Events by year: 2014

Across the Three Pagodas Pass- The Story of the Thai-Burma Railway

“Across the Three Pagodas Pass” is a translation of the only known detailed account of the building of the notorious 262-mile long Thai-Burma Railway by one of the Japanese professional engineers who was involved in its construction. The author, Yoshihiko Futamatsu, provides an invaluable new source of historical and technical reference that complements the existing large body of literature in English on this subject.

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The Art of Soup- A Taste of Fukushima

Ei Arakawa started the UNITED BROTHERS art collective with his brother Tomoo Arakawa in 2011. Their purpose is a mediation between the reality of Fukushima (where they were born) and the reality of the international art world at large. UNITED BROTHERS created the Green Tea Gallery, and is participating in the new Live Section of this year’s Frieze Art Fair with their new work Does This Soup Taste Ambivalent? Arakawa discussed this new performance of giving away soup containing an ingredient grown in Fukushima.

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Japan’s Modern History, 1857-1937

Professor Junji Banno is a prolific and widely read writer on the political history of modern Japan, whose many insights into its kaleidoscopic politics from the middle of the nineteenth century until the late 1930s have re-written various aspects of Japanese political history. This translation of his latest work by Professor Arthur Stockwin treats eighty crucial years of history with a combination of synoptic overview and fascinating detail.

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Film Screening: Brakeless

On Monday April 25th 2005, a West Japan Railway (JR West) commuter train crashed into an apartment building and killed 107 people when a driver tried to catch up with an 80-second delay. Since the accident, the official committee report has concluded that the direct cause of the accident was over-speeding and JR West have agreed to pay compensation for the victims and changed the timetable. However, the fundamental question has remained unanswered – what made the driver risk so many lives for an 80-second delay?

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Keeping the doors open between China and Japan - the role of personal networks and Track II diplomacy

Track II Diplomacy is a way for private individuals to meet unofficially and find their way to common ground when official negotiators cannot. NGOs, academics, and ex-officials often act as Track II diplomats in having unofficial conferences and conversations about pressing issues, and have sometimes brought them to a successful conclusion. Official government-to-government interactions are not necessarily the most effective methods for resolving differences between nations.

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Nation, Dice, Instruction, – Private View and Artist Talk

Satoshi Hashimoto is currently one of Japan’s most ‘alarming’ artists, producing works of art that make the viewer feel like someone witnessing a traffic accident. By somehow “questioning your stance”, “ignoring you”, “making a contract with you” or “transferring ownership to you”, they transcend social laws and morality and turn you into a participant, not just an observer.

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The Power of Conscience

Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat based in the Japanese consulate in Kaunas, Lithuania in 1940, went against his superiors and granted visas to Jewish refugees looking to escape Europe by travelling to Japan via the Trans-Siberian Railway. Virtuous behaviour seems to be strongly linked to the notion of conscience, that inner voice that tells us what we ought to do. But when and how do we learn conscience, or are we born with it? Is conscience synonymous with ethics, morals and a sense of justice? Morals and values differ from country to country, so do cultural values influence people’s conscience?

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University Reform in Japan

The Japanese Government is vigorously promoting university reform, and many universities are grappling with their own problems brought on by demographic change in Japan and various other issues.
Nagoya University is opening Asian Satellite Campuses in October 2014 in Vietnam, Cambodia and Mongolia to help train a greater number of graduates in these countries. In this session, President Michinari Hamaguchi of Nagoya University will explain some of the contentions regarding these reforms, and consider the problems Japanese universities will face in the future.

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Excavating cultural heritage: the archaeological implications of the Great East Japan disaster three years on

As well as the terrible human cost, the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the Pacific coast of northern Honshu in March 2011 had a major impact on cultural heritage.

In the first instance a number of museums, stores and other facilities were directly damaged, and great quantities of heritage materials, both public and personal, were lost. This initial impact was to an extent mitigated by a programme of ‘cultural heritage rescue’. A second impact has been on buried archaeological sites and the important remains they contain in advance of the redevelopment of the region.

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Concert: An Evening with Taro Takeuchi and Kyoko Murai

We welcome back the lute and baroque guitarist Taro Takeuchi to the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, who will be accompanied by soprano Kyoko Murai. They will be performing 17th century British music, with songs and instrumental music by Henry Purcell and his contemporaries.

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Think Locally, Dance Globally: The Butoh Dance Form in the Age of Globalisation

One of the most important imports from Japan in the world of performing arts in the last half century has been the dance form butoh, which has shocked and captivated audiences around the globe. However, it appears that contact with Europe and America was changing butoh in significant ways.

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Film Screening: August Shadows- Reflections on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Kirk Palmer will hold a film screening of ‘August Shadows’, a trilogy of moving image works – Murmur (2006), Hiroshima (2007) and War’s End: An Island Of Remembrance (2012). Centred upon Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Yakushima these works collectively examine how historical events manifest in the present-day physical substance of place, where the pall of the atomic bombings are a latent and unifying presence.

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