As the clocks go forward and we get to enjoy lighter evenings, as well as cherry trees and magnolias in full blossom around the Norwich Cathedral Close, we are delighted to release details about our conference in honour of the memory of Toshio Watanabe (1945-2025), our Emeritus Professor of Japanese Arts and Heritage, on May 15-16 in London, as well as an invitation to take part in our Norwich to Walsingham pilgrimage on June 9-12, and the call for our second round of the Ishibashi Foundation Network Leader Fellowships. You can see what our first wonderful cohort have been up to here. We are tremendously grateful to the Ishibashi Foundation for their continuing support of this important initiative. I also draw your attention to the forthcoming Robert Sainsbury Lecture on Wednesday 13 May at UEA, which will take the place of our usual May Third Thursday. We will be welcoming Katsuo Suzuki from the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo – and will post more details shortly. Please put this in the diary – it promises to be a great evening.
It was a pleasure to welcome Professor Junzo Uchiyama back to the Institute to give our March Third Thursday Lecture marking the 15th anniversary of the Great East Japan Disaster. A short report about the talk is available here and you can view the recording on our YouTube channel here. This month we look forward to Dr Eve Loh-Kazuhara, Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Fellow 2025-26, speaking on the nihonga artist Tanaka Isson. Please join us in-person at The Hostry, Norwich Cathedral or online via Zoom. Further details, including how to register, can be found here.
In mid-March we enjoyed a visit to Tisbury, Wiltshire, which is hosting Yakimono: A Culture of Exchange – The Impact of Japanese Ceramics, an exhibition of Japanese-inspired British contemporary ceramics in the stunning surroundings of Messums West. It was a pleasure to share the stage with Paul Greenhalgh, former Director of the Sainsbury Centre, and Libby Buckley, Director of the Leach Pottery in St Ives, and to meet some of the ceramicists whose work are on display.
The next day, in the company of a select group of Japanese colleagues we visited Stonehenge and Avebury. The Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site marks its 40th anniversary since its inscription by UNESCO, and we are pleased to be working with Avebury Parish Council to further foster links with Japanese stone circles. Many thanks to Andrew and Jan Williamson for providing a delightful afternoon tea, and a wonderful (if rather wet) stroll around the stones. David Dawson, Director of the Wiltshire Museum gave a talk about his visit to Japan as part of the preparation for our Circles of Stone exhibition at Stonehenge a few years ago, which you can view here.
Congratulations to two former interns at the Institute. John Garner who has just completed an MA in Heritage Studies at the University of Cambridge, following a BA in Art History, Archaeology and Anthropology with a year at ICU in Tokyo, has just headed off to the University of Tsukuba to take up a Japanese Government Scholarship (MEXT) there. He shared an office with Laurence Stobart while at the Institute, and Laurence was on the same plane to take up a MEXT scholarship at Keio University. We wish them both well in their new adventures.
We enjoyed a visit by Professor Shinichi Suda and Chikako Asao from Keio University Libraries on March 10. As well as spending time in the Lisa Sainsbury Library, they also visited the Norwich Cathedral Library and the UEA Library. We have welcomed librarians from Keio for over a decade, coming to Norwich for about three months to work with Akira Hirano, our Librarian, and to meet library colleagues across the UK and Europe.
On March 20 we were delighted to welcome Takahashi Kazuya, Abe Natsumi and Semba Tomoko from the Japan Foundation, London. During their time here they were able to visit the Lisa Sainsbury Library and Norwich Cathedral next door.
We also welcomed a group of students and colleagues from universities in central and eastern Europe for The Future of Japanese Studies conference organised by UEA’s Centre for Japanese Studies and supported by the Toshiba International Foundation. As a keynote address, the award-winning journalist at the Okinawa Times, Jon Mitchell, spoke about his latest book Why are we in Okinawa: a History of Violence published by Bloomsbury. Congratulations to all involved at CJS – which celebrates its 15th anniversary this year. We will be hearing more about this next month.
Professor Simon Kaner
Executive Director