Past Events

3 June 2020

Leadership in crisis: does gender matter?

Unprecedented challenges brought on by the coronavirus pandemic have tested the leadership of organisations, companies and countries around the globe. In this webinar, we discussed leadership in times of crisis, and asked the questions: ‘What are the key elements in successful leadership in crisis?’ and ‘Does gender matter?’. Avivah Wittenberg-Cox shared examples of female crisis leadership and discuss what their responses have in common. Yumiko Murakami, Head of the OECD Tokyo Center, shared the OECD’s analysis on the role of trust in government, how gender diversity can impact the policy-making process and addressed the provocative question: does “female” leadership work better in time of crisis?

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27 May 2020

Domestic violence as a threat to world public health

In this webinar, Yuri Morita discussed family violence in Japan, and the lack of adequate legal measures to protect against it or to enable preventative interventions. She highlighted recent severe cases of domestic violence and child abuse during the ongoing pandemic stay-home policy, and called for all governments to recognise family violence as a pressing public health issue along with COVID-19. She also called for men around the world to play an active role in preventing domestic violence, having taken a deep look at why men have accounted for the majority of violence throughout human history.

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21 May 2020

Creation, communication, and community: a better response to coronavirus?

The Covid-19 pandemic has abruptly disrupted our lives and everyday routines, and attempting to stay social in the time of social distancing has created different sets of challenges and forced us to reframe our understanding of communication and community. So when, or if, we are back to our so-called ‘normal’ life, what is our new normal? What does communication mean to us now? What is our community? In this webinar, Shelagh Wright, Peter Jenkinson and Hiroko Kikuchi shared how the arts and cultural sector is dealing with the current situation, and discussed how artists are responding to it in the context of redefining communication and community.

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14 May 2020

The keys to Covid: vaccines, treatments, and immunity

All developed countries are racing to develop effective vaccines and treatments for Covid-19. It is hoped that vaccines will end the pandemic by inducing immunity to the virus. However, there is no reliable test available to assess people’s immunity to the virus, which raises questions about the feasibility of vaccine development. In this webinar, Dr Ono explained how our immune system fights the Covid-19 infection and how it can be defeated in severely affected patients. He highlighted the key role of lymphocytes and their ‘memory’ function in recovery and immunity. He then reviewed current global efforts to develop treatments and vaccines.

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30 April 2020

Soft power in the era of the pandemic - challenges and possibilities

Governments around the world have been dedicating enormous efforts to fighting the coronavirus outbreak. This new pandemic is posing significant challenges for institutions and individuals globally. Those nations that will emerge successfully from this crisis, demonstrate international solidarity and contribute to international efforts to address the consequences of the pandemic could gain stronger influence, strengthen their diplomatic positions, and even attract more foreign investment. In this webinar chaired by Professor Corneliu Bjola, Professor Watanabe of Keio University discussed the role of soft power in the Covid-19 context, as well as the major challenges presented, providing a perspective of how the new pandemic might reshape the international order.

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9 April 2020

Covid-19 and Public Media Services - BBC & NHK

The Covid-19 outbreak is changing the context of public media services in the UK and Japan, which until very recently were experiencing significant challenges in maintaining public trust and funding through their licence fee systems. Nevertheless, both the BBC and NHK are now playing key roles in coverage of the latest news on the Coronavirus outbreak, gaining increased attention and interest from the public in their content over the past weeks. In this webinar, NHK journalist Kohei Tsuji and Professor Ivor Gaber from Sussex University talked about the role of and challenges faced by public service media in the UK and Japan.

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12 March 2020

Artist Talk: Hochoul Lee in conversation with Jonathan Watkins

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. In this Artist Talk, Lee and Jonathan Watkins, Director of Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, discussed the artist’s influences and the works on show.

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10 March 2020

British Management of Territorial Disputes and Lessons for the Japanese Government

The three territorial disputes Japan has with its neighbours remain important factors of discord in Northeast Asia. They originated in Japan’s imperial expansion in the past and remain unresolved because of its sensitive public opinion in the present. The United Kingdom has richer experience of territorial disputes. It has settled many territorial disputes in the past and maintains five territorial disputes to date, from which the Japanese government should take some lessons. Professor Tetsuya Toyoda discussed the UK’s example and how it may affect Japan’s legal claims to Senkaku/Diaoyu and Dokdo/Takeshima.

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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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