Events by year: 2020

5 March 2020

Press Freedom in Contemporary Asia

Globalisation, in the form of new communication technologies, is posing common challenges to media freedom worldwide. In contemporary Asia, where authoritarian propaganda, censorship, physical violence and cyber-intimidation abound, courage is needed to work as a journalist. Even in the region’s democracies, political polarisation, disinformation, and business concentration are eroding media pluralism and freedom of the press. In this book launch, Tina Burrett and Jeff Kingston discussed these issues and released their edited volume Press Freedom in Contemporary Asia.

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4 March 2020

Crisis thinking in regional Japan – the case study of Kamaishi City

Kamaishi City was once a thriving city in Iwate Prefecture with 80,000 inhabitants, a flourishing steel industry and Japan’s most successful rugby team. Following the decline of its steelworks, however, Kamaishi is today a small rural city with a population of 36,000 facing a chronic crisis of depopulation. In this lecture, Dr Naofumi Nakamura used Kamaishi as a case study to investigate crisis thinking in post-war regional Japan; he examined the policies and actions of both the public and private sectors in their pursuit to find solutions to depopulation, economic restructuring, and disaster readiness.

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3 March 2020

Film Screening: Alliance by Kounosuke Kawakami

Protagonists in Kounosuke Kawakami’s film work explore the tensions around ideas of counter-hegemony. Kawakami re-investigates the ideologies which have dominated both nations’ cultures in the past and their histories of imperialism, post-colonialism, and neoliberalism. For the first part of his career Kawakami painted ruins, exploring the symbols of authority, until an eye operation in 2013 led to a change of medium. Since then, he has created film installations. In this screening, he showcased the three most recent films that highlight the duality of the qualities in our humanity, the paradox of political promises, and how the projections of past futures can be reviewed today.

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20 February 2020

Fathoming Fragility and Seeking Stability: Understanding Prime Ministerial Leadership in the 21st Century

This seminar explored the phenomenon that the prime minister is becoming stronger in Japan at the same time that the UK prime minister seems to be weakening. Traditionally the Japanese prime minister was regarded as a transient, weak, compromise figure but this has changed in recent years. In the UK, intra-party and executive-legislative dynamics have shifted in a way that has weakened the prime minister. The seminar explored factors such as the broader socio-economic context, the core executive, party relations, individual styles and skills, celebrity politics and psychological factors.

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13 February 2020

Private View: Fragments of Information by Hochoul Lee

The Private View was a chance to have a first look at the works of the artist Hochoul Lee, and to watch him put on a special performance. Lee’s recent works have focussed on the meaning of human cognitive functions, and his works are greatly influenced by philosophy. Lee’s inspiration for this series of works comes from the worrying problems related to political issues, the spread of racism and the growth of nationalism, and he believes that the collapse of traditional ethics is related to a lack of imagination and acceptance towards individuality.
SPECIAL PERFORMANCE: Thursday 13 February 2020, 6:30pm

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11 February 2020

Whose right to life? The ethics of suicide prevention in the UK and Japan

“Who has the right to prevent suicide?” Following a rapid increase in suicides in Japan during the 1990s, annual suicide numbers have since reduced from over 30,000 to just above 20,000 in recent years, while in the UK, suicide numbers are at their highest levels since 2002. In this seminar with Prof. Richard Huxtable and Dr Satoshi Kodama we discussed the ethical justifications for suicide prevention, both its end and means. We explored questions such as: ‘Should all suicide attempts be prevented or is there a case for “rational suicide”?’

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23 January 2020

McAuley 1

The Poetry Contest in Six Hundred Rounds

For the monumental Poetry Contest in Six Hundred Rounds (Roppyakuban uta’awase) (1193-94), twelve poets each provided one hundred waka poems, fifty on seasonal topics and fifty on love, which were matched, critiqued by the participants and judged by Fujiwara no Shunzei (1114-1204), the premiere poet of his age. The combination of poetry, criticism, judgements and appeal make it one of the key texts for understanding poetic and critical practice in late twelfth century Japan. The Competition and Appeal were presented here for the first time in complete English translation with accompanying commentary and explanatory notes by Dr Thomas McAuley.

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17 January 2020

Ainu Art in Contemporary Life

The Ainu are an indigenous people in Japan native to the regions of Hokkaidō, Northern Tōhoku, and Karafuto, among others, that have developed their own original identity, culture, and language over the past centuries. Despite their ancestral roots, the Ainu people have historically suffered from various forms of discrimination and disputes with the rest of Japan, being officially recognised as indigenous to the country only as recently as 2008. Their unique language and traditional culture are at serious risk of being lost and only a few Ainu artists remain. In this talk, Mr Kohei Fujito, an emerging Ainu artist from a young generation based in Akan, Hokkaido, gave a talk along with a small demonstration of his artworks. He spoke about the history & future of Ainu art based on his recent artworks.

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16 January 2020

The Meaning of Tattoos for Ainu Women

The Ainu (“human” or “people”) are an indigenous people in Japan native to the regions of Hokkaidō, Northern Tōhoku, and Karafuto, among others. As part of their ancestral tradition, Ainu women had the custom of getting tattoos on their bodies, including their lips. For the Ainu, the tattoo was perceived as a symbol of beauty, a talisman and an indispensable tool to prepare their body for death. However, the traditional tattoo was legally prohibited by the Japanese government in 1899. In this talk, Mayunkiki, an Ainu artist, talked about the sense of beauty among the Ainu based on her artwork and research, and how the traditional concept of beauty has changed after the imposition of a “Japanese lifestyle”.

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16 January 2020

Special Display: Contemporary Ainu Art by Kohei Fujito

The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation is delighted to introduce several works by the Ainu artist Kohei Fujito, which are on display in the Foundation’s Regency Room. Fujito, an emerging Ainu artist from the young generation based in Akan, Hokkaidō, presents a small selection of his artworks ranging from a knife and sheath to phone cases and sunglasses. The display will be on until the 14th of February 2020.

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