March 2022

The Sainsbury Institute was delighted to welcome His Excellency Mr Hajime Hayashi, Ambassador of Japan to the UK, to Norwich on Friday 25 February. He was greeted by the Lord Mayor, Councillor Kevin MacGuire, the Sheriff of Norwich, Caroline Jarrold, and the Dean of Norwich Cathedral, the Very Reverend Jane Hedges, and met the Institute’s staff and fellows before a tour of Norwich Cathedral with the Canon Librarian, Reverend Peter Doll. Later in the day the Ambassador visited the Sainsbury Centre at the University of East Anglia, and then gave an address to the participants at the British Association for Japanese Studies – Japan Foundation Postgraduate Workshop in Japanese Studies, […]

Back in 2017, the Ashmolean decided to stage a Japanese exhibition to coincide with the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, making the most of the global spotlight on Japan. We wanted to create a fun show that would appeal to a broad audience and decided on Tokyo itself as a lens through which to explore different aspects of Japanese art over 400 years, as the city developed from a remote backwater into the vast and dynamic metropolis it is today. My co-curator, Lena Fritsch, and I worked together to try to find a fresh way of telling this story, making the most of our different areas of expertise (Lena’s in modern and […]

On the 17th February, our Third Thursday Lecture was joined by the wonderful Professor Nicole Coolige Rousmaniere, currently a professor at UEA, and Research Director and Founding Director of the Sainsbury Institute. The talk consisted of a discussion on an ongoing research project in Salem, Massachusetts, exploring the lives and legacies of renowned zoologist and one of the first Japanologists, Edward Sylvester Morse (1838-1925), and Japanese entrepreneur and dealer, Matsuki Bunkyo (1867-1940), on the subject of the landscape of collecting in early 20th-century New England and beyond. In recent times, Professor Rousmaniere has found herself in Marblehead, Massachusetts, about two miles from both the house formerly owned by Edward Sylvester […]

The Sainsbury Institute community is horrified by the situation following the illegal invasion of Ukraine by Russian and Belorussian forces. It comes as we are exploring potential new research projects under the rubric of ‘Japanese Entanglements with the former states of the Soviet Union, and central and eastern Europe’ , designed to build on the networks we have fostered through our Japan Orientation Summer Schools, which have brought many outstanding students of Japanese studies from across that region, including Ukraine, to Norwich since 2014. We were developing this initiative in consultation with our colleagues working on the history of this region at the University of East Anglia. We offer our […]