June 2022

As those of you who follow us on social media already know, the roses bloomed in the Cathedral Close for the long Platinum Jubilee Weekend marking 70 years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, and despite the occasional cloudbursts – our own mini-tsuyu – Norwich is looking beautiful as we enjoy the long evenings heading towards midsummer. I encourage those of you who have not yet done so to hurry to see the wonderful Kawanabe Kyōsai exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, curated by one of our Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Fellows Koto Sadamura, which closes on 19 June. And do join us for this month’s […]

Report on the talk ‘Distinguishing the Phoenix: Conceptual Landscapes of Buddhist India in Medieval Japan’ The Sainsbury Institute was thrilled to welcome Dr Rachel Saunders as our guest speaker for this month’s Third Thursday lecture. Dr Saunders is the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Curator of Asian Art at Harvard Art Museums and is responsible for the Japanese collections at the museums. Following her recent (2021) publication titled “The Making of a Sacred Scroll: Explicit Intertextuality in the ‘Illustrated Life of Xuanzang’” (聖なる絵巻をつくる：『玄奘三蔵絵』における絵と詞], Dr Saunders adopted a geo-temporal approach to analyse two 14th century artworks, colossal in both size and importance: a 200 meter handscroll (divided into 12 smaller scrolls) titled Genjō […]

As teaching finishes for our MA students and they begin the preparation of their final research projects, students took part in two trips this month – one to the Kyōsai exhibition at the Royal Academy, and the other to the Dojima Sake Brewery at Fordham Abbey. Fieldtrip to Kyōsai Exhibition (24 May 2022) Towards the end of this year’s MA in Interdisciplinary Japanese Studies, our cohort visited the exhibition Kyōsai: Israel Goldman Collection at the Royal Academy  in London (on display until 19 June 2022). Dr Sadamura Koto (Curator of the exhibition and Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Fellow) was unfortunately unavailable that day, so we were guided by Dr Eugenia […]