October 2020 Message from the Executive Director

Welcome to our October e-bulletin. I hope this finds you well. October is a beautiful month in Japan, as the ‘autumn colours’ begin to appear and gold, brown, red and yellow leaves glory against bright blue skies. This month, with the start of a new academic year in Norwich and students now studying for the […]

Making Manga: The Citi Exhibition

In the summer of 2019, the hallowed halls of the British Museum came alive with futuristic space travelers and ninja, fashion designers and amateur detectives, salarymen and white rabbits.  The Citi Exhibition: Manga, curated by the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures’ (SISJAC’s) own Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere and Matsuba Ryoko, would […]

Book report for The Archaeology of Medieval Towns: Case Studies from Japan and Europe

Published last month with the Oxford-based publisher Archaeopress, The Archaeology of Medieval Towns: Case Studies from Japan and Europe represents the culmination of a number of years research, translation, compiling and editing, looking at the medieval urban forms found both in the Japanese archipelago and in Europe. The seeds of the book were initially sown […]

Report for the talk “Online Lecture: Mirror of the Japanese Empire: Japanese “War Art” and its Legacies”

Shimizu Toshi (1887-1945), Refugees, 1941. Oil on canvas, 162.1 x 130.3 cm.

Last month we had the pleasure of discussing Japanese War Art with Professor Maki Kaneko, Associate Professor of Japanese Art at the Kress Foundation Department of Art History. The online lecture was moderated by our Centre for Japanese Studies colleague Dr Sherzod Muminov, Lecturer in Japanese History at the University of East Anglia. Together they discussed […]

Treasures of the Library: The First Western-style Circus in Japan by Utagawa Yoshitora

As the previous issue briefly mentioned the Western-style circus performed in the early Meiji era, this issue will introduce an ukiyo-e that depicts the first Western circus performed in Japan on record. The Tokugawa Shogunate was forced to open its ports to overseas trade due to the arrival of the Black Ships in 1853 and […]