February 2021 Message from the Executive Director

As I write, much of East Anglia is blanketed in snow, courtesy of Storm Darcy. From the depths of this gloomiest of winters we are warmed by the news of the rollout of vaccines which, along with the rest of the world, we hope heralds at last the beginning of the end of this terrible […]

Thoughts on the popularity of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba in Japan

In 2020, people in Japan who should have been welcoming the much-anticipated Olympic games experienced severe difficulty and the disappointment of the Covid-19 pandemic, much like the rest of the world. Amid all of this, what ended up replacing the Olympics as the central topic of conversation, and captivated the nation’s hearts, was the manga and anime, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba. Popularly referred to as Kimetsu, it first appeared as manga, and was then serialised for TV as anime. […]

Report for the talk “Online Lecture: Edo Iconography Reading Popular Prints in Early Modern Japan”

Dr Matsuba Ryoko, Senior Digital Humanities Officer at the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures (SISJAC) presented the first online lecture of 2021 on the complex theme of Edo-period iconography in popular woodblock prints and printed books. Working in close collaboration with Ritsumeikan University’s Art Research Center, Dr Matsuba has led […]