We are delighted to launch our new initiative, the Ishibashi Foundation Network Leader Fellowship programme in Japanese arts. Since 2014 when we held the inaugural Ishibashi Foundation Lecture Series in Tokyo, we have enjoyed a close relationship with the Foundation. The lecture series continued until 2018, and can be accessed here. We published a synthetic volume arising from the lectures as Japan and the World: Artistic and Cultural Flows in 2021, followed by a Japanese edition in 2024. These lectures were followed by the Ishibashi Foundation Summer Fellowships in 2018 and 2019, bringing new generation specialists in all aspects of Japanese arts and cultures to Norwich and the UK. You can read about these Summer Fellowships here and here. The Covid-19 pandemic meant that we were unable to bring people together for the next couple of years, and we redirected the funding towards Ishibashi Foundation Digital Futures, a series of projects which explored the potential of digital technologies for deepening appreciation and understanding of Japanese arts and cultures. We are tremendously grateful to the Ishibashi Foundation for their generous support for all these programmes, and look forward to receiving applications for this new initiative from around the world.
The support we receive from our Japanese partners is invaluable to delivering our mission. In March we welcomed an enthusiastic group of students to Norwich for our Interdisciplinary Japanese Studies Student Conference, sponsored by the Toshiba International Foundation and organised through the University of East Anglia’s Centre for Japanese Studies.
March was a very busy month. No sooner had we bade farewell to the students’ conference than I was off to Columbus, Ohio, for the annual meetings of the Association for Asian Studies, where a number of our Fellows and Associates were presenting papers. I was invited by the Local Organising Committee to join a round-table on Asian perspectives on UNESCO World Heritage to mark the inscription of the exceptional Hopewell sites of the Midwest. Following an incisive panel discussion we toured a number of the sites, including Mound City, the Serpent Mound and the Angel Mounds. I greatly enjoyed meeting those involved in the management and interpretation of these sites, along with many Ohio State University students, many of whom came to hear me speak about Jōmon Repotted. I am very grateful to Professor Naomi Fukumori and her colleagues in the Department of East Asian Studies at Ohio State University, and Professor Heather Blair of the University of Indiana for so kindly guiding me around. Many of our US academic and professional colleagues face extraordinarily challenging circumstances as a result of the Trump administration’s actions, and our thoughts are with all of those affected.
April is the start of the new financial year in Japan, and a time for new jobs and retirements. We have received a number of such notifications from colleagues in Japan over the past few days, including: Professor Fukunaga Shin’ya, Professor of Archaeology at Osaka University and Professor Yano Ken’ichi, Professor of Archaeology at Ritsumeikan University, both of whom are very long-standing friends and have contributed greatly to the Sainsbury Institute’s archaeology projects; Murano Masakage of the Museum of Kyoto, who retires to take up a new post at Shizuoka University, and Nakanishi Yumiko who retires from Osaka Prefecture to take up a new post at Kansai University of Foreign Studies (where I learnt much of my Japanese many years ago as a Monbusho Scholar). I was greatly saddened to learn of the long-anticipated demise of the Osaka City Cultural Properties Association (OCCPA), which was wound up at the end of March following fifty glorious years excavating, researching, promoting and curating the archaeology of Osaka. I have learned much from my many friends in that organisation over the years, and owe them a great debt of gratitude, as do the many other international researchers who have benefited from OCCPA’s pioneering, welcoming and inclusive approach to archaeology.
The flowering sakura 桜 trees we planted a couple of years ago on the University campus and the Cathedral Close courtesy of the Sakura Cherry Tree Project are just coming into blossom, and we look forward to our hanami party on 10 April, just before the lecture by Dr Meri Arichi, Chair of the Japanese Art Circle in London on Tōdaiji temple in Nara. Do come and join us to enjoy this harbinger of spring if you can.
Professor Simon Kaner
Executive Director