金曜日 24 4月, 2015
6:00pm BST
Weston Room, Norwich Cathedral Hostry, Norwich NR1 4DH
Tokyo Futures, 1868-2020 | UK-Japan lecture series
Speaker
Professor Julia Adeney Thomas (University of Notre Dame, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University)
Admission Free | All Welcome
About the Lecture Series
The forest that surrounds Meiji Jingu, in the heart of Tokyo, was planted in the early 20th century.
From the middle of the nineteenth century, Japan, like the rest of the world, was shaken by the transformations that followed its encounter with industry and empire. The country entered a new era, named after the Meiji emperor, and embarked on an ambitious programme of modernization, centred on Tokyo, its new capital.
The UK-Japan Lecture Series, consisting of six lectures held in the UK and Japan, will explore the upheaval, as it played out in the people’s understanding and experience of art, nature and the city. How did these come together in shaping the new capital? How did the Meiji experience leave its mark on city and country in the twentieth century? And how might we draw on this history as we head towards the second Tokyo Olympics in 2020?
The first talk of the series will be held in Norwich. The talk will begin at 6pm (50-minute lecture followed by refreshments). The talks are intended to be accessible to those with no prior knowledge of Japanese history.
Admission is free and all are welcome. Booking essential. To book your seat, please go to the booking form or email the Sainsbury Institute
The lecture will be held at the Weston Room, Cathedral Hostry, Norwich NR1 4DH.
About the Lecture
Japan has been called the “toxic archipelago” and its pollution cases such as Minamata have drawn international attention. More recently, the meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant added yet another chapter to the tale of environmental degradation. But Japanese history also provides an alternative story of ecologically sound ways of living. This talk considers not Japan’s famed literary and aesthetic celebrations of nature, but its legacy of environmentally sustainable economic and political practices. These alternative social patterns show that until very recently Japan was on its way to being a vibrantly productive, healthful, modern society without resorting to the industrial excesses that pollute its islands today. Scaling population to match natural resources, using building techniques that conserved wood, eating healthy diets that did not strip the soil of nutrients, solving production problems with energy-saving technologies, and marketing human excrement to create clean cities and farm fertilizer were among the techniques used in the past. With these ecologically sound and economically productive approaches, Japan was able to meet the onslaught of Western Imperialism and maintain national sovereignty in the Meiji Period (1868-1912). But it was also during the Meiji period that Japan began to change its approach, pursuing some of the least environmentally sensitive techniques in its repertoire and adopting Western ones as well. For a while, this strategy worked. While Chinese economic development sank in comparison with European growth in the nineteenth century, the Japanese economy grew. In short, China diverged, but Japan paralleled and ultimately converged with the West, but with all the dire consequences of adapting the West’s non-ecologically sound practices. Today, Japan stands at a crossroad just as in the Meiji period. It can either continue in the thrall of the economic models of infinite growth that blight our finite planet or it can embrace a new leadership role, treating its declining population, legacy of frugal habits, and renown appreciation for natural beauty as assets in defining a sustainable economy in the age of the Anthropocene. The older history, if resuscitated, can provide hope not only for Japan but for the world.
About the Speaker
Julia Adeney Thomas investigates concepts of nature in Japanese political ideology, the impact of the climate crisis on historiography, and photography as a political practice. Her book, Reconfiguring Modernity: Concepts of Nature in Japanese Political Ideology, (published in Japanese as Kindai no saikochiku) received the John K. Fairbank Prize from the American Historical Association in 2002 and her essay on wartime memory in Japan, “Photography, National Identity, and the ‘Cataract of Times:’ Wartime Images and the Case of Japan” in the American Historical Review received the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians’ Best Article of the Year Award in 1999. She has also published two co-edited collections, Rethinking Historical Distance and Japan at Nature’s Edge: The Environmental Context of a Global Power as well as numerous essays. Her work has received support from the Mellon Foundation, the Japan Foundation, the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), Mombusho, NEH, SSRC, and the ACLS. Educated at Princeton, Oxford, and the University of Chicago, she now teaches history at the University of Notre Dame. She has held visiting positions at Bielefeld University, the University of Bristol, Heidelberg, Michigan, and Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study. Currently she is at Harvard University at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
To book your seat, please email the Sainsbury Institute or book online
Future UK-Japan Lectures Series’ lectures
‘Nature’
24 April 2015 | Cathedral Hostry, Norwich | Professor Julia Adeney Thomas (University of Notre Dame)
30 May 2015 | Meiji Jingu, Tokyo | Professor Inaga Shigemi (International Research Centre for Japanese
Studies)
‘City’
14 October 2015 | Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre, SOAS, London | Professor Jordan Sand (Georgetown University)
31 October 2015 | Japanese Nursing Association Hall, Tokyo | Professor Kuroishi Izumi ( Aoyama Gakuin Univeristy)
‘Art’
12 February 2016 | British Museum, London | Dr Sarah Teasley ( Royal College of Art)
19 March 2016 | Kyoto University of Arts and Design, Gaien Campus, Tokyo | Professor Watanabe Toshio (Research Centre for Transnational Art,
Identity and Nation, University of the Arts London)
The UK-Japan Lecture Series is supported by the Toshiba International Foundation and the Japan Foundation.
It is co-organised by the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures, the Meiji Jingu Intercultural Research Institute, and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Meiji Jingu Intercultural Research Institute
Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures