Throughout U-M's academic year, the Center for Japanese Studies hosts numerous Japan scholars and specialists who provide educational presentations under CJS Thursday Lecture Series and Special Lecture programs. Additionally, guest and faculty speakers often generously extend accessibility to their work by granting CJS permission to video-record and provide free public access to their lectures.
See all of our videos on the CJS YouTube Channel.
2025 Event Videos
Winter Term
What Do Japanese People Want From Their Constitution?
PLAY | Kenneth Mori McElwain (Professor of Comparative Politics at the Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo; Visiting Professor of Japanese Politics, Columbia University), February 20, 2025
Dancing in Motion: Untangling the Framing of ‘Geisha’ in Early Cinematic Records
PLAY | Mariko Okada (2024–25 Visiting Scholar, Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan; Professor of Japanese Literature, Oberlin University in Tokyo), February 6, 2025
Do Victims and Survivors Voices Reach Society? Changes to the Support System for Gender-based Violence in Japan
PLAY | Sachiko Kita (2024–25 Visiting Scholar, Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan), January 30, 2025
Laughter’s Time, Media’s Time: Contemporary Comedy in Japan
PLAY | David Humphrey (Associate Professor of Japanese Studies and Global Studies; Director, Japanese Studies Program, Michigan State University), January 23, 2025
2024
Fall Term
Other “Punks” in Late 1970s–1980s Cinema and Visual Culture in Japan: Gender, Documentary, Ephemerality
PLAY | Kirsten Seuffert (2024–25 Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan), November 21, 2025
The Uniqueness of Japanese Documentary Films: Focusing on the Minamata Series
PLAY | Kenji Ishizaka (2024–25 Toyota Visiting Professor, Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan), November 7, 2024
The Hidden Diversity of the Japanese People: Deconstructing Japan’s Nation-Building Process
PLAY | Masataka Okamoto (Professor, Department of Public Sociology, Fukuoka Prefectural University, Japan), October 10, 2024
Examining and Understanding Distress Experiences for Japanese Women: A Retrospective
PLAY | Denise Saint Arnault (Professor of Nursing; Director, Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan), October 3, 2024
Japanese English: Weird English or Creative Japanese? How Understanding Language Can Change Your Perspective
PLAY | Anne Crescini (Associate Professor, University of Kitakyushu, Fukuoka, Japan), September 19, 2024
Democracy on Edge: Japan’s Atsumi Peninsula During the Allied Occupation
PLAY | Emer O'Dwyer (Associate Professor of History and East Asian Studies, Director of the East Asian Studies Program, Oberlin College), September 26, 2024
Winter Term
Can You Hear the Difference Between a Tactical Aircraft and a Commercial Airplane?: Views from Okinawa and Transnational Approaches
PLAY | Aya Rodriguez-Izumi (interdisciplinary artist and educator), March 28, 2024
Is the Nuclear Taboo Still Robust in Japan?
PLAY | Naoko Matsumura (Professor of International Relations, Graduate School of Law, Kobe University), March 21, 2024
Metaphors in Matter: Environmental Consciousness and Symbolic Explorations
PLAY | Yuken Teruya (Berlin-based Okinawan artist), February 22, 2024
Being Backstage of a 600-Year-Old Noh Theater World: My Journey From War-Torn Beirut to Japan
PLAY | Madeleine A. Jalil Umewaka (President, MJU Public Relations), February 8, 2024
2023
Fall Term
Sazanami 漣 Taiko Arts Ensemble
PLAY | December 6, 2023
Listening to the “Explosive Sound” of U.S. Military Aircraft in Wartime Japan
PLAY | Keisuke Yamada (2023–24 Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan), November 3, 2023
The Power of the Pad: Menstrual Products and Embodied Femininity in Japan
PLAY | Maura Stephens-Chu (2023–24 Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan), October 26, 2023
The Themepark of Nuclear: An Exhaustive Survey on Nuclear Power Plant Visitor Centers in Post-Fukushima Japan
PLAY | Hajime Hasegawa, Professor of Media Studies, Meiji Gakuin University; Visiting Scholar, Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan
Significance of Positive Human Factors Contributing to Safety
PLAY | Makoto Takahashi (Professor of Social System Design, Department of Management Science and Technology, School of Engineering, Tohoku University), September 28, 2023
Winter Term
CJS Alumni Panel | Melissa Van Wyk, Bradly Hammond, and Dyron Dabney
PLAY | April 24, 2023
From Malthus to Miracle: Rethinking the Economic Development of Japan
PLAY | David Weinstein (Carl S. Shoup Professor, Department of Economics, Columbia University; Director, Center on Japanese Economy and Business, Columbia Business School), April 13, 2023
Yaoi/BL Novels as Feminism in Contemporary Japan
PLAY | Kazuko Suzuki (Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Texas A&M University), April 6, 2023
Fields of Memory: Movement and Stasis in the Noh Play Ohara gokō
PLAY | Elizabeth Oyler (Associate Professor of Japanese, Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Pittsburgh), March 30, 2023
Betting on the Farm: Institutional Change in Japanese Agriculture
PLAY | Patti Maclachlan (Professor of Government, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Professor of Japanese Studies, University of Texas at Austin), March 23, 2023
Designing Wartime Economic Controls: Productivity and Firm Dynamics in the Japanese Cotton-Spinning Industry, 1937–1939
PLAY | Tetsuji Okazaki (Professor of Economic History, Graduate School of Economics, University of Tokyo), March 9, 2023
Border Crossings: Transnational and Exophonic Voices in Contemporary Japanese Literature
PLAY | Gregory Khezrnejat (Associate Professor of Modern Japanese Literature, Faculty of Global and Interdisciplinary Studies, Hosei University), February 23, 2023
Technically Well: Machine Models for Emotional Health Beyond the Human
PLAY | Daniel White, Affiliated Researcher Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge), February 16, 2023
Queer Legacies: Whither the “LGBT Boom” in Japan?
PLAY | Claire Maree (Professor in Japanese, Asia Institute, University of Melbourne), February 9, 2023
Applying Japanese Garden Principles to Create Healing Spaces
PLAY | Hoichi Kurisu (President, Principal Designer, and Founder, Kurisu LLC & Michiko Kurisu, Project Coordinator and Public Relations, Kurisu LLC), February 2, 2023
Naomi Fukuda, Backseat Player for Japanese Studies
PLAY | Izumi Koide (former Director of the Resource Center for the History of Entrepreneurship, Shibusawa Eiichi Memorial Foundation), January 26, 2023
Reading the Air and Creating Trouble: Food Allergy Disclosures in Japan
PLAY | Emma Cook (2022–23 Toyota Visiting Professor, Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan), January 19, 2023
Producing People Who Have No One: Child Welfare and Well-Being in Japan
PLAY | Kate Goldfarb (Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Colorado Boulder), January 12, 2023
2022
Fall Term
Negotiating the Cold War: Yamaguchi Yoshiko in Sacramento, 1950
PLAY | Michael Bourdaghs (Robert S. Ingersoll Professor of East Asian Languages & Cultures, University of Chicago), December 8, 2022
Minamata: Lens on Postwar Democracy and Persistent Legacy of the Transwar Period
PLAY | Timothy George (Professor Emeritus, University of Rhode Island), December 1, 2022
Kaze to tomo ni sarinu as jidai shōsetsu: The 1938 Japanese Translation of Gone With the Wind
PLAY | Jim Reichert (Associate Professor, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Stanford University), November 17, 2022
Pre-modern Japanese Book History
PLAY | Takahiro Sasaki (Professor, Keio Institute of Oriental Classics, Keio University), November 10, 2022
Kawakami Hiromi and the Queering of Distant Intimacies: Reading Japanese Literature from Hong Kong and Taiwan
PLAY | Grace En-Yi Ting (Assistant Professor of Gender Studies, University of Hong Kong), November 3, 2022
The Japanese Film Industry Today: Problems and Potential
PLAY | Mark Schilling (American Film Critic, Journalist, Translator, and Author, Tokyo, Japan), October 20, 2022
Becoming Marimo: The Curious Case of a Charismatic Alga and Imagined Indigeneity
PLAY | Jon L Pitt (Assistant Professor of Japanese Environmental Humanities, University of California, Irvine), October 13, 2022
Chikemuri Takadanobaba (1929) with live narration
PLAY | Nanako Yamauchi (benshi, Japan), October 13, 2022
The Anatomy of Loneliness: Suicide, Social Connection, and the Search for Relational Meaning in Contemporary Japan
PLAY | Chikako Ozawa-de Silva (Professor of Anthropology, Emory University), October 6, 2022
Okinawan Independence and Autonomy Debates in the 1980s
PLAY | Ryan Masaaki Yokota (2022–23 Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan), September 22, 2022
Harry Harootunian: In Conversation
PLAY | Harry Harootunian (Max Palevsky History Professor, University of Chicago; Research Associate of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University), September 25, 2022
Looking Forward: A Communal Blueprint for our CJS 75th Anniversary Events
PLAY | Reginald Jackson (Director, Center for Japanese Studies; Associate Professor of Premodern Japanese Literature and Performance, University of Michigan), September 8, 2022
Winter Term
Literary Toilet Papers of Japan and Beyond
PLAY | Linda Galvane (2021-22 Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan), April 14, 2022
The Japanese Way of Well-being and the Self: An Examination of Local and Working Communities
PLAY | Yukiko Uchida (Professor of Cultural and Social Psychology, Kokoro Research Center, Kyoto University, Japan), April 7, 2022
Uncertain Powers: Sen’yōmon-in and Landownership by Royal Women in Early Medieval Japan
PLAY | Sachiko Kawai (Project Researcher and Assistant Professor, National Institutes for the Humanities/ National Museum of Japanese History, Japan), March 17, 2022
Democracy without Policy Competition: Voter Preferences and Single-Party Dominance in Japan
PLAY | Yusaku Horiuchi (Professor of Government and the Mitsui Professor of Japanese Studies, Department of Government, Program in Quantitative Social Science, Dartmouth College), March 10, 2022
Rabelais, Rakugo and Me
PLAY | Anna Ogino (Professor of French Literature, Keio University, Japan), February 24, 2022
Dancing in a Swirl of Imagery: A History of Butô Book Talk
PLAY | Bruce Baird (Associate Professor, Director, East Asian Languages and Cultures; Program Director, Japanese Language & Literature, University of Massachusetts Amherst), February 17, 2022
Japan: People, Society, Tradition and its Relations with the US
PLAY | Yusuke Shindo (Consul General of Japan in Detroit), February 3, 2022
Reading Japanese Hihyō in the Postcritical Age
PLAY | Miyabi Goto (Assistant Professor, Dept of Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures, University of Kentucky), January 27, 2022
Japan's U.S. Investment Dynamic: A New Look at the U.S. - Japan Economic Relationship
PLAY | Ralph A. Inforzato (Chief Executive Director JETRO Chicago), January 20, 2022
Too Young to Run? Voter Evaluations of the Age of Candidates
PLAY | Charles McClean (Toyota Visiting Professor, Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan), January 13, 2022
2021
Fall Term
Creation of and Participation in Networks: Visiting the Japan Biographical Database
PLAY | Bettina Gramlich-Oka (Professor of Japanese History, Faculty of Liberal Arts, Sophia University, Japan), December 9, 2021
Japan as a Marine Tourism Mecca
PLAY | Kirk R. Patterson (former President/Dean, Temple University Japan), December 2, 2021
Japanese Contemporary Literature: Perspectives and Aporia in the Global 21st Century
PLAY | Cécile Sakai (Professor, Paris University, France), November 11, 2021
Drawing the Sea Near: Satoumi and Coral Reef Conservation in Okinawa
PLAY | C. Anne Claus (Assistant Professor of Anthropology, American University, Washington DC), November 4, 2021
Judging Inequality: Japan in Comparative Perspective
PLAY | Yeonju Lee (Assistant Professor, Waseda Institute for Advanced Study, Waseda University, Japan), October 28, 2021
Empowering Women Through Radio: Evidence from Occupied Japan
PLAY | Yoko Okuyama (Assistant Professor, Economics Department, Uppsala University), October 7, 2021
Differences between Japan and China: Perspectives from Japanese Journalism, 1980 - Present
PLAY | Seiichiro Aso (Journalist, Japan), September 30, 2021
Special Duty: A History of the Japanese Intelligence Community
PLAY | Richard J. Samuels (Ford International Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for International Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology), September 23, 2021
The Link Between Marriage and Fertility and Changing Pathways to First Marriage in Japan
PLAY | Jim Raymo (Professor of Sociology and the Henry Wendt III ’55 Professor of East Asian Studies, Princeton University), September 9, 2021
Winter Term
Japanese Studies and Antiracist Pedagogy | Fugitive Planning and Potentials for Study: Lessons from the Japanese Studies and Antiracist Pedagogy Project (JSAP)
PLAY | Reginald Jackson (Associate Professor of Pre-modern Japanese Literature, University of Michigan), June 17, 2021
Japanese Studies and Antiracist Pedagogy | Pedagogy for Solidarity: Teaching Japanese American Incarceration and Social Justice
PLAY | Mika Kennedy (Visiting Assistant Professor of English, Kalamazoo College), June 10, 2021
Japanese Studies and Antiracist Pedagogy | Getting Started: Challenges and Opportunities in Anti-racist Pedagogy in Premodern Japanese Literature
PLAY | Vyjayanthi Selinger (Associate Professor of Asian Studies, Bowdoin College), June 3, 2021
Japanese Studies and Antiracist Pedagogy | Multiculturalism in Japan: The Contradiction of Samba Matsuri
PLAY | Zelideth Rivas (Associate Professor of Japanese, Marshall University), May 27, 2021
Japanese Studies and Antiracist Pedagogy | Kaleidoscopic Vision: Okinawa Amidst Competing Transpacific Politics
PLAY | Annmaria Shimabuku (Director of Graduate Studies and Associate Professor of East Asian Studies, New York University), May 20, 2021
Japanese Studies and Antiracist Pedagogy | Contrapuntal Imaginations: Reading Empires in an Undergraduate Japanese Studies Class
PLAY | Leo Ching (Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Duke University), May 13, 2021
Japanese Studies and Antiracist Pedagogy | Confronting the “Ends” of Area: On Transpacific Accountability
PLAY | Andrea Mendoza (Assistant Professor of Japanese and Comparative Literature, University of California, San Diego), May 5, 2021
Japanese Studies and Antiracist Pedagogy | Challenges and Opportunities for a Historian of Japan Teaching about Race and Imperialism
PLAY | Takashi Fujitani (Professor of Asia-Pacific Studies, University of Toronto), April 29, 2021
Japanese Studies and Antiracist Pedagogy | Decolonizing Race and Ethnicity: Understanding Racial Formation in Japanese Society
PLAY | Hwaji Shin (Associate Professor of Sociology, University of San Francisco; and the 2020-21 CJS Toyota Visiting Professor), April 22, 2021
Unseen Artists in a Theater of Timeless Pace: Iconic Bonsai Inspire Iconoclastic Futures
PLAY | David Michener (Curator, Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, Vice Provost for Academic Graduate Studies); Carmen Leskoviansky (Collections/Natural Areas Specialist), April 8, 2021.
Contrasts in US-Japan Global Supply Chain Management during the Coronavirus Pandemic
PLAY | Masaaki Kotabe (Washburn Chair Professorship in International Business and Marketing, Fox School of Business, Temple University), April 1, 2021
An Introduction to Ishinomaki Kokeshi
PLAY | Takatoshi Hayashi (Maker of Kokeshi Dolls, Tree Tree Ishinomaki), March 18, 2021
3.11, Ten Years Later: Addressing Gender Disparity in Japan’s Disaster Response
(東日本大震災から10年: 災害対策に女性の視点を！)
PLAY | Presenter(s):
Teruko Karikome (Women’s Space Fukushima)
Reiko Masai (Women’s Net Kobe)
Etsuko Yahata (Hearty Sendai)
Moderated by Professor Mieko Yoshihama, U-M School of Social Work
苅米照子 (NPO法人ウィメンズスペースふくしま 元代表理事)
正井禮子 (認定NPO法人ウィメンズネット・こうべ 代表理事)
八幡悦子 (NPO法人ハーティ仙台 代表理事)
吉浜美恵子 (ミシガン大学 社会福祉学大学院教授)
How Japan Got It Wrong: Government Policy, Gender, and the Birth Rate
PLAY | Mary C. Brinton (Reischauer Institute Professor of Sociology; Director, Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, Harvard University), March 4, 2021
Nuclear Nation (2013), Screening & Discussion
PLAY | Atsushi Funahashi (Tokyo-based filmmaker), February 22, 2021
At the Crossroads of Peace and Coexistence: Documenting the Lives of Japanese Wives of Korean Repatriates
PLAY | Kim Jongwook (Freelance Documentary Photographer, Gyeongju, Korea) February 18, 2021
Intimate Disconnections: Divorce and the Romance of Independence in Contemporary Japan
PLAY | Allison Alexy (Assistant Professor, Departments of Asian Languages and Cultures, Women’s and Gender Studies Studies, University of Michigan), February 11, 2021
Japanese Undergraduate Students’ Study Abroad for Language and Cultural Learning
PLAY | Chihiro Tajima, PhD, MEd (Senior Visiting Scholar in the Mixed Methods Program, University of Michigan), January 28, 2021
Japonisme and the Birth of Cinema (Book Talk)
PLAY | Daisuke Miyao (Professor and Hajime Mori Chair in Japanese Language and Literature, University of California, San Diego), January 21, 2021
2020
Fall Term
Art & Activism in Postwar Japan: The Antiwar Art of Shikoku Gorō
PLAY | Ann Sherif (Professor of East Asian Studies, Oberlin College), November 5, 2020
Voice as Talisman: Theorizing Sound in Medieval Japanese Treatises on Sutra Chanting
PLAY | Charlotte Eubanks (Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Asian Studies, Penn State), November 5, 2020
How Pork-Barrel Politics Holds Japan's Governing Coalition Together
PLAY | Amy Catalinac (Assistant Professor of Politics, New York University), October 22, 2020
Contentious Citizenship: Zainichi Korean Activism in Japan
PLAY | Hwaji Shin (Associate Professor of Sociology, University of San Francisco; and the 2020-21 CJS Toyota Visiting Professor), September 24, 2020
Winter Term
Reading Medieval Ruins: A Material History of Urban Life in 16th-Century Japan
PLAY | Morgan Pitelka (Professor of History and Asian Studies, University of North Carolina), February 20, 2020
China-Japan-US Trilateral Relationship on East Asia Order: History and Prospects
PLAY | Ryo Sahashi (Associate Professor of International Relations, Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, University of Tokyo), January 23, 2020
Hired to be Overheard: Resonances of Chindon-ya in Contemporary Japan
PLAY | Marié Abe (Associate Professor of Music, Musicology and Ethnomusicology, Boston University), January 16, 2020
Religion and Politics in Japan: Mapping a Shifting Terrain
PLAY | Levi McLaughlin (2019-2020 Toyota Visiting Professor, Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, North Carolina State University), January 9, 2020
2019
Fall Term
Help (Not) Wanted: Immigration Politics in Japan
PLAY | Michael Strausz (Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of Asian Studies, Texas Christian University), November 14, 2019
History of Furigana
PLAY | Shinji Konno (Professor of Japanese Language and Literature, Seisen University, Tokyo), November 7, 2019
Put to the Test: HIV/AIDS, Japan and Sexual Citizenship
PLAY | John Whittier Treat (Emeritus Professor, Department of East Asia Languages and Literatures, Yale University), October 31, 2019
Reeking of Mud: Japanese Counter-Culture in the 1960s and '70s
PLAY | Ian Buruma (Paul W. Williams Professor of Human Rights, Democracy and Journalism, Bard College, NY), October 17, 2019
Is Japanese Trade Policy Finally Proactive? Japan’s Multilateral Leadership in TPP
PLAY | Keisuke Iida (Professor in the Graduate Schools for Law and Politics, University of Tokyo), October 3, 2019
Working on a High Energy Experiment in Japan
PLAY | Myron Campbell (Professor of Physics, University of Michigan), September 26, 2019
Ann Arbor and Hikone: 50 years of Sister-City Relationship
PLAY | Christopher Taylor (Mayor, City of Ann Arbor), September 19, 2019
An Exploration of Japanese Game Audio
PLAY | Matthew Thompson (Assistant Professor of Music, University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance), September 12, 2019
Winter Term
Radical Adaptation: Japan’s Foreign Policy in the Trump Era
PLAY | Toshihiro Nakayama (Professor of American Politics and Foreign Policy, Policy Management, Keio University, Japan), April 18, 2019
Toward the Denuclearized Future: Ruses of Safety Myth and Citizen’s Activisms since the Fukushima Disasters
PLAY | Katsuya Hirano (Associate Professor of History, UCLA), April 11, 2019
The Consequences of Short-Time Work Schemes: Evidence from Japan
PLAY | Naomi Kodama (Professor, College of Economics, Nihon University), April 4, 2019
Trying to Figure Out Japan for 50 Years
PLAY | John Campbell (Professor Emeritus, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts - University of Michigan), March 14, 2019
Japan’s Response to the ‘US-China Cold War
PLAY | Masashi Nishihara (President of the Research Institute for Peace and Security, Tokyo, Japan), February 21, 2019
Motivations of Job Crafting: Evidence from Japan and China
PLAY | Greg Laurence (Chair, Department of Management and Marketing and Associate Professor of Management, School of Management, The University of Michigan-Flint), February 14, 2019
Refuge Neighborhoods: Gentrification and Ontological Security in Japan’s Declining Yoseba
PLAY | Matthew Marr, Associate Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociocultural Studies and Asian Studies, Florida International University), February 7, 2019
Poetry, Class, and Politics: Making Haiku into “Literature” in Meiji Japan
PLAY | Robert Tuck (Assistant Professor of Modern Japanese Literature and Culture, Arizona State University), January 24, 2019
Stitching New Identities: Embroidery and Socio-Political Change in Late-Nineteenth/Early-Twentieth Century Japan and Korea
PLAY | Lee Talbot (Curator of Eastern Hemisphere Collections, The George Washington University Museum and Textile Museum in Washington, DC), January 17, 2019
2018
Fall Term
Modern Temple Art as “Public” Art
PLAY | Yasuko Tsuchikane (Adjunct Assistant Professor, Cooper Union, New York and Waseda University, Tokyo), November 29, 2018
From the Fastest Woman in the World to the First Woman on the Board
PLAY | Keiko Ihara (Race car driver, Independent Director of Nissan Motor Corporation, Associate Professor of Keio University Graduate School Media Design), November 15, 2018
Promiscuous Reading: Reading and Writing Poetry Across Languages
PLAY | Jeffrey Angles (Professor of Japanese Literature and Translation, Department of World Languages and Literatures, Western Michigan University), November 8, 2018
Angry Spirits and Urban Soundscapes in Ancient Japan
PLAY | Michael Como (Toshu Fukami Associate Professor of Shinto Studies, Columbia University), October 18, 2018
Tradition and Innovation in English-language Noh, "Blue Moon Over Memphis"
PLAY | Mariko Anno, Associate Professor (Tokyo Institute of Technology, Ethnomusicology), October 11, 2018
Social and Political Lives of Japanese Cherry Blossoms
PLAY | Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney (William F. Vilas Research Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin, Madison), October 4, 2018
Cheerful Disguise of Japanese Militarism: Geisha's Performances in the 1930’s
PLAY | Mariko Okada (Associate Professor, Faculty of Humanities, J.F. Oberlin University, Tokyo, Japan), September 20, 2018
The Big House" Project: How and Why We Made the Documentary in Observational Method and Style
PLAY | Kazuhiro Soda (Peabody Award-winning Filmmaker), September 13, 2018
Winter Term
Murakami Haruki: Whatever Works
PLAY | Jay Rubin (Professor Emeritus of Japanese Literature, Harvard University), April 12, 2018
Dancing Ground Zeroes in Japan and the United States: Eiko & Koma’s Transnational Choreographies of the Nuclear
PLAY | Rosemary Candelario (Assistant Professor of Dance at Texas Woman’s University), April 5, 2018
Embodied Memory and Affective Imagination: Experiencing Food Allergies in Contemporary Japan
PLAY | Emma Cook (Associate Professor, Modern Japanese Studies Program, Hokkaido University, Japan), March 15, 2018
A Woman’s Network in Japan around 1800
PLAY | Bettina Gramlich-Oka (Professor of Japanese History, Sophia University, Tokyo), February 22, 2018
Imperial Japan and the Nature of Borders in Occupied Inner Mongolia
PLAY | Sakura Christmas (Assistant Professor of History and Asian Studies, Bowdoin College), February 15, 2018
Japanese Economy: Successful Recovery, Challenges, Foreign Policy, and US Relations
PLAY | Shujiro Urata (Dean and Professor of Economics, Graduate School Asia-Pacific Studies, Waseda University), February 9, 2018
Japan-U.S. Relations in the Changing World: North Korea, China, and America First
PLAY | Naoyuki Agawa (Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law, Doshisha University), February 2, 2018
A History of Distant Reading in Japan
PLAY | Hoyt Long (Associate Professor of Japanese Literature, University of Chicago), February 1, 2018
Magic Numbers in Shinto Rituals and Music
PLAY | William Malm (Professor Emeritus of Music (Music History and Musicology), U-M School of Music, Theatre & Dance), January 25, 2018
Care as Labor, Care as Ethics: Feminism and the Documentaries of Kamanaka Hitomi
PLAY | Margherita Long )Associate Professor, East Asian Language & Literature, UC Irvine), January 18, 2018
The Economy of Fear in Nineteenth-Century Japan
PLAY | David Howell (Professor of Japanese History, Chair Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University), January 11, 2018
2017
Fall Term
Eating Contests in Early Modern Japanese Entertainment Media
PLAY | Eric Rath (2017-2018 Toyota Visiting Professor, Professor, History Department, University of Kansas), December 7, 2017
Impending Cultural Collapse? - Current Transformations in Japan’s Traditional Art Markets
PLAY | Paul Allan Berry (Professor, Kansai Gaidai University, Japan), November 30, 2017
Ainu Indigenous Modernity in Settler Japan
PLAY | ann-elise lewallen (Associate Professor, East Asian Languages and Cultures, UC-Santa Barbara) November 16, 2017
Dynasties and Democracy in Japan
PLAY | Daniel Smith (Associate Professor, Department of Government, Harvard University), October 26, 2017
Visible Rhymes, Inaudible Echoes: Script and Sound in the Sinitic Poetry of Modern Japan
PLAY | Matthew Fraleigh (Associate Professor of East Asian Literature and Culture, Brandeis University), October 10, 2017
Exploring Classical Mokuhanga Printmaking Using Laser-engraving and Bit-map Data
PLAY | Endi Poskovic (Professor of Art and Design, University of Michigan), October 5, 2017.
The Center for Japanese Studies - A 70 Year Legacy of Engaged Learning
PLAY | September 28, 2017
Visual Narrative of Japan and Self
PLAY | Steven Geofrey Braun (Data Analytics/Visualization Specialist, Northeastern University Libraries), September 21, 2017
Winter Term
Thirty-Six Views of the Eiffel Tower
PLAY | Christopher Bush (Associate Professor of French & Comparative Literary Studies, Northwestern University), April 6, 2017
The Slow Way Home: Civic Engagement and Walkability in Japanese Neighborhoods
PLAY | Leonard Schoppa (Professor of Politics, University of Virginia), March 9, 2017
Suffering Sobriety: Alcoholism and Masculinity in Japan
PLAY | Paul Christensen (Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Rose Hulman Institute of Technology), February 23, 2017
What is Rakugo? Invitation to the 400-year-old Art of Japanese Storytelling
PLAY | Yanagiya Sankyo 柳家さん喬, Yanagiya Kyonosuke 柳家喬之助 (Rakugo Storytellers), February 16, 2017
The Power of Observation: How and Why I Make "Observational" Documentaries
PLAY | Kazuhiro Soda (Toyota Professor in Residence), February 9, 2017
Alt Manga, Queer Manga: Telling Our Own Stories
PLAY | Erica Friedman (Independent Researcher and Founder of Yuricon), January 19, 2017
2016
Fall Term
Japan-US Leadership in Asia-Pacific: Making a New Trade Architecture in the Region
PLAY | Yorizumi Watanabe (Professor, Keio University), December 7, 2016
Staged Seduction: Selling Dreams in a Tokyo Host Club
PLAY | Akiko Takeyama (Associate Professor of Anthropology and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, University of Kansas), November 10, 2016
Traditionalizing Preservation: Protection of Intangible Cultural Properties in Japan
PLAY | Mariko Okada (Associate Professor, Faculty of Humanities, J.F. Oberlin University, Tokyo, Japan), November 3, 2016
Japanese Imperial Maps: Collections of Gaihozu in Japan and in the United States
PLAY | Shigeru Kobayashi [Professor (Emeritus), Graduate School of Letters, Osaka University], October 27, 2016
Japan's Policy for Protecting Cultural Properties:History, Current State and Challenges
PLAY | Tadahito Tsutsui (Technical Official, Fine Arts Division, Agency for Cultural Affairs, Japan), October 20, 2016
From Security to Refuge: Visibility and Vulnerability in Japanese Cinema
PLAY | Philip Kaffen (Assistant Professor and Faculty Fellow of East Asian Studies, New York University), October 6, 2016
Personal Guarantees by SME Owners in Japan
PLAY | Takeo Hoshi (Henri H. and Tomoye Takahashi Senior Fellow in Japanese Studies at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Director of the Japan Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University), September 22, 2016
Winter Term
Girls Are Not Bound By Thermodynamics: Anime Ecology
PLAY | Ryan Cook (Assistant Professor of Film & Media Studies, Emory University), April 14, 2016
Becoming a Papermaker: Perspectives from Japan
PLAY | Aimee Lee (Artist-in-Residence, Morgan Conservatory, Cleveland, Ohio), March 17, 2016
The Ecology of the Future: An Ethnography of the Post-Fukushima Sea
PLAY | Satsuki Takahashi (Toyota Visiting Professor, Center for Japanese Studies, the University of Michigan; Assistant Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, George Mason University), March 10, 2016
Emotional Rhetoric and the Sinking of the Ehime Maru
PLAY | David Leheny (CJS Toyota Visiting Professor; Henry Wendt III ‘55 Professor of East Asian Studies, Princeton University), February 18, 2016
Japan Twang! 300 Years of Tsugaru-jamisen in 90 Minutes
PLAY | Michiyoshi Sato (Shamisen Player), February 13, 2016
The 'History Wars' and the 'Comfort Woman' Issue: Revisionism and the Right-Wing in Contemporary Japan
PLAY | Tomomi Yamaguchi, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Montana State University), February 11, 2016
Medical Error in Japan: A Subsurface Tangle of Law and Politics
PLAY | Robert B Leflar (Ben J. Altheimer Professor of Legal Advocacy; Professor, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences), February 4, 2016
Ishinomaki City, Japan: A Case Study of Community Revitalization in the Post-Industrial Era
PLAY | Shunsuke Iwai (creative director at a top global technology firm in California), and Ben Matsuzaki (President, Herman Miller Japan), January 28, 2016
2015
Special Lectures
Saving 10,000: Beyond Seppuku: A Multidisciplinary Context to Suicide in Japan
PLAY | Four brief presentations by Japanese Studies experts and University of Michigan faculty members. Seppuku is a ritual form of suicide that was traditionally used by samurai.
Presentations followed by a panel discussion. February 5, 2015
Noon Lecture Series
Fall Term
The Buddha's Shadow: The Hidden God of Medieval Japan
PLAY | Bernard Faure (Kao Professor in Japanese Religion, Columbia University), November 12, 2015
Creating the Most Interesting Town in the World: Community Development in the Aftermath of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami
PLAY | Gota Matsumura(Director and Co-Founder, Ishinomaki 2.0), October 22, 2015
Farmers in Flux: The Causes and Political-Economic Consequences of Japan’s Changing Agricultural Landscape
PLAY | Patricia Maclachlan (Associate Professor of Government and Asian Studies, University of Texas-Austin), November 5, 2015
The Performance Practice of Noh
PLAY | David Crandall (Independent Translator, Writer, and Composer), October 29, 2015
The Japan-U.S. Alliance and the Sino-ROK "Entente": The Changing Security Environment of East Asia
PLAY | Masashi Nishihara (President of the Research Institute for Peace and Security), October 16, 2015
The Role of Language Education Vis-à-vis the Globalized New Era
PLAY | Suzuko Nishihara [Executive Director, Japan Foundation Japanese-Language Institute (PhD, Linguistics, 1970, U-M)], October 15, 2015
The Gods Make You Giggle: Finding Religion in Japanese Picture Books
PLAY | Heather Blair (Associate Professor & Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department of Religious Studies, Indiana University), October 8, 2015
Winter Term
Roots of Japanese Studies in the USA: Anthropology, War, and CJS at Michigan
PLAY | Katsumi Nakao (2014-15 Toyota Visiting Professor, Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan; Professor of Liberal Arts (history and anthropology), J.F. Oberlin University, Tokyo), April 2, 2015
The Role of Family Physicians After the March 11, 2011 Tsunami Disaster in Japan
PLAY | Yukishige Ishibashi (MD, Director, Ishibashi Clinic; Director, Japanese Primary Care Association), March 12, 2014
2014
Special Lectures
Six Decades of Japan Social Science
PLAY | Ezra Vogel (Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences Emeritus, Harvard University), November 12, 2014
Noon Lecture Series
Fall Term
The Paralympic Movement, Disability, and Sports in Postwar Japan
PLAY | Dennis Frost (Wen Chao Chen Associate Professor of East Asian Studies, Kalamazoo College), November 13, 2014
Printing Salvation: Sacred Images and Kannon Sites in Japan
PLAY | Sherry Fowler (Associate Professor, Art History, University of Kansas), November 6, 2014
Characteristics of the Rebellious Youth in Japan
PLAY | David Antoine Malinas (Associate Professor, East Asian Studies, Paris Diderot – Paris 7 University), October 30, 2014
From Geisha to Activist: Sumiya Koume (1850-1920) and the Gender System in Modern Japan
PLAY | Marnie Anderson (Associate Professor, History, Smith College), October 2, 2014
Southward Bound: Voyage Narratives of the Japanese Immigration to Brazil
PLAY | Seth Jacobowitz (Assistant Professor, East Asian Languages and Literatures, Yale University), September 25, 2014
Ritual Song in Heian Japan: Shomyo and Shirabyoshi
PLAY | Makiko Sakurai (Songwriter/Vocalist (Tendai Ohara Chant)/Performer (Shirabyoshi Dance), September 18, 2014
Winter Term
Single Mothers and Poverty in Japan: The Role of Living Arrangements
PLAY | James Raymo (Professor, Sociology, University of Wisconsin - Madison), April 10, 2014
Thought Policing or Protection of Youth? Debates around Fictional Child Characters in Japanese Popular Culture
PLAY | Mark McLelland (Australian Research Council Future Fellow; Professor, Gender & Sexuality Studies, University of Wollongong; 2007-08 Toyota Visiting Professor), April 3, 2014
Nikkei and the Construction of a Multicultural Brazil
PLAY | Jeffrey Lesser (Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Latin American History; Chair, History Department, Emory University), February 27, 2014
The Greatest Pirate in Japan
PLAY | Peter Shapinsky (Associate Professor, History, University of Illinois - Springfield), February 20, 2014
Hands of a Goze (Blind Female Musician) -- The Tactile Culture of Visually Impaired People in Modern Japan
PLAY | Kojiro Hirose (Visiting Scholar, University of Chicago; Associate Professor, Graduate University for Advanced Studies and National Musuem of Ethnology, Osaka), January 30, 2014
Kyomai and Postwar Japan: Construction of Cultural Memory in Kyoto
PLAY | Mariko Okada (Visiting Scholar, CJS; Recipient of the 2013 Suntory Prize for the Social Sciences and Humanities), January 23, 2014
2013
Noon Lecture Series
Fall Term
America’s Role in Making Japan’s Economic Miracle: New Evidence for a Landmark Case
PLAY | Yusaku Horiuchi (Associate Professor, Government, Dartmouth College), November 21, 2013
The Painting of Sadness?: The Beginnings and Ends of Nihonga
PLAY | Chelsea Foxwell (Assistant Professor, Art History, University of Chicago), November 13, 2013
Cogito Ergo Proxy: Radical Doubt in Japanese Anime
PLAY | Earl Jackson, Jr. (Professor, Foreign Languages & Literature, National Chiao Tung University), November 7, 2013
A Conversation with Ogawa Pro Member Toshio Iizuka
PLAY | Toshio Iizuka (Film Director) and Markus Nornes (Chair and Professor, Screen Arts & Cultures; Professor, Asian Languages & Cultures, Art & Design, U-M), October 24, 2013
"Out Gays” or “Shameless Gays”? What Gets Lost, and What is Gained, when U.S. Queer Theory is Translated into Japanese?
PLAY | J. Keith Vincent (2013-14 Toyota Visiting Professor; Associate Professor, Japanese and Comparative Literature, Boston University), October 17, 2013
Drying Earth: Current Global Water Issues & Provisions, and the Possibility of U.S.-Japan Cooperation in the Field of Global Water Issues
PLAY | Kazunari Yoshimura (President, Global Water Japan)
Co-sponsored by Consulate General of Japan in Detroit
October 10, 2013
Noon Lecture Series
Winter Term
Housewives and Salarymen in Postbubble Japan: Are We Facing a Changing Gender Contract?
PLAY | Ofra Goldstein-Gidoni (Professor/Chair, Sociology, Anthropology, and East Asian Studies, Tel Aviv University; 2005-06 Toyota Visiting Professor, CJS), March 14, 2013.
Scream from the Shadows: The Women's Liberation Movement in Japan
PLAY | Setsu Shigematsu (Assistant Professor, Media and Cultural Studies, University of California, Riverside), February 21, 2013.
2012
Noon Lecture Series
Fall Term
Dancing the Tradition and Conserving the Arts: Kyomai in Kyoto's Geisha Quarter
PLAY | Mariko Okada (2012-13 Toyota Professor in Residence, Center for Japanese Studies), November 15, 2012.
Modern-Day Hermits: The Story of Hikikomori in Japan and Beyond
PLAY | Alan Teo, M.D. (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar, University of Michigan Health System), November 8, 2012.
The Five-Element Pagoda & Changing Concepts of the Dead in Medieval Japan
PLAY | Hank Glassman (Associate Professor, East Asian Studies, Haverford College), October 11, 2012.
Is Immigration Necessary for Japan? Workers, Growth, and the Philosophies of Immigration
PLAY | John Skrentny (Director, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies; Professor, Sociology, University of California - San Diego), October 4, 2012.
The Concept of Persona in Bioethics and the Philosophy of Tetsuro Watsuji
PLAY | Masahiro Morioka (Professor, Sustainable System Sciences, Osaka Prefecture University), September 20, 2012.
Noon Lecture Series
Winter Term
The Fukushima Disaster: Law, Politics, and Compensation in Japan
PLAY | Eric A. Feldman (Deputy Dean and Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School), April 12, 2012.
Parody & Satire in Shunga: Takehara Shunchosai's Pillow Book for the Young (1776)
PLAY | Andrew Gerstle (Professor, Japanese Studies, SOAS, University of London), April 5, 2012.
The History of Yesterday: Japan from the Lehman Shock to the Aftermath of March 11
PLAY | Andrew Gordon (Lee and Juliet Folger Fund Professor of History, Harvard University), March 29, 2012.
ANPO: Art X War in Havoc's Wake
PLAY | Linda Hoaglund (Filmmaker), March 22, 2012.
Modern Cities and Filmmaking in Japan Around 1910: Differences Between Tokyo and Kyoto
PLAY | Manabu Ueda (Research Associate, Waseda University), March 8, 2012.
Golden Age to Nuclear Nightmare: The Past, Present, and Future of the Fukushima Disaster
PLAY | Daniel Aldrich (Associate Professor, Political Science, Purdue University), February 23, 2012.
On the Creation of a National Collection of Japanese Ceramics in the 1870s
PLAY | Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere (Research Director, Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures), February 16, 2012.
Takagi Kenmyo and Buddhist Socialism: A Meiji Misfit and Martyr
PLAY | Paul Swanson (Permanent Fellow, Nanzan Institute for Religion & Culture; Professor, Faculty of Humanities, Nanzan University), February 9, 2012.
Picturing Hachiman: Using the Past to Serve the Present
PLAY | Melanie Trede (2011-12 Toyota Visiting Professor, CJS), January 26, 2012.
Japan-U.S. Economic Relations
PLAY | Kuninori Matsuda (Consul General of Japan in Detroit), January 19, 2012.
2011
Noon Lecture Series
Fall Term
Fukushima's Victories and Victims: The Fateful Alliance of Japanese Soccer & Nuclear Power
PLAY | Elise Edwards (Associate Professor, Anthropology, Butler University), November 3, 2011.
Time and Space in Japanese Music
PLAY | William Malm (Emeritus Professor, Ethnomusicology, University of Michigan), October 27, 2011.
Strategies of Camouflage: Suzuki Norio's Photographs of Onoda Hiroo (1974) and Tsukada Mamoru's Identical Twins Series (2003)
PLAY | Ayelet Zohar (Lecturer, History of Art & Asian Studies, University of Haifa), October 20, 2011.
We Came to Deliver What You Have Forgotten: Studio Ghibli as Producer of Cultural Memory
PLAY | Reinhard Zoellner (Professor, Japanese Studies, University of Bonn), October 13, 2011.
Future of Regional Liquidity Arrangement in E. Asia: Lessons from the Global Financial Crisis
PLAY | William Grimes (Professor, International Relations & Political Science, Boston University), October 6, 2011.
Noon Lecture Series
Winter Term
Psychology in Natsume Sōseki's Mon
PLAY | Michael Bourdaghs (Associate Professor, East Asian Languages & Civilizations, University of Chicago), April 14, 2011.
Legal and Social Responses to Children Living with Their Abused Mothers
PLAY | Yukiko Tsunoda (Professor, Law, Meiji University; Lawyer, Tanaka & Partners), March 24, 2011. (Co-sponsored by the U-M Law School's Japanese Legal Studies Program.)
Encounters with the Other Through the Medium of Oil Painting: Italian, Mexican, and Chinese Figures by the "Western Painters" of Modern Japan
PLAY | Bert Winther-Tamaki (Associate Professor, Art History, University of California, Irvine), March 17, 2011.
Rethinking the "Post-Defeat" Discursive Space: Censorship during the Occupation Period
PLAY | Richi Sakakibara (Associate Professor, School of International Liberal Studies, Waseda University), February 24, 2011.
Dining and Daydreaming in the Edo Period
PLAY | Eric Rath (Associate Professor, History, University of Kansas), February 17, 2011.
Civic Engagement in Postwar Japan: The Revival of a Defeated Society, 1945-55
PLAY | Rieko Kage (2010-11 Toyota Visiting Professor, CJS; Associate Professor, Political Science, University of Tokyo), February 10, 2011.
The Differential Network Structuration of ACID Polities: Japan's Butterfly State in US and German Comparison
PLAY | Jeffrey Broadbent (Associate Professor, Sociology, University of Minnesota), January 27, 2011.
2010
Noon Lecture Series
Fall Term
Imagination without Borders: Feminist Artist Tomiyama Taeko and Social Responsibility
PLAY | Laura Hein (Professor, History, Northwestern University), December 2, 2010.
Beyond Site/Sight: Art and Disability in Japan and Michigan
PLAY | Sadashi Inuzuka (Professor, Art, School of Art & Design, The University of Michigan), November 18, 2010.
Whither Japan's Invisible Civil Society?
PLAY | Patricia Steinhoff (Professor, Sociology, University of Hawaii), October 28, 2010.
Michizane and Tenjin: The Illustrated Version
PLAY | Robert Borgen (Professor Emeritus, East Asian Languages & Cultures/History, University of California at Davis), October 14, 2010.
Bank Integration and Transmission of Financial Shocks: Evidence from Japan
PLAY | Masami Imai (Associate Professor, Economics, Wesleyan University), October 7, 2010.
Where the Heart Goes Astray: Guilt and Responsibility in Rashōmon and Ikiru
PLAY | Dolores Martinez (Reader, Anthropology, SOAS, University of London), September 30, 2010. (This lecture is part of a series that corresponds with CJS's fall film series, "Re-viewing Kurosawa.")
Rashōmon's Shadow
PLAY | Paul Anderer (Mack Professor of Humanities, East Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia University), September 23, 2010. (This lecture is part of a series that corresponds with CJS's fall film series, "Re-viewing Kurosawa.")
Toyota's Quality Problems: How Serious? What Can We Learn from Them?
PLAY | Robert E. Cole (Emeritus Professor, Haas School of Business and Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley; Visiting Professor, Institute of Technology, Entrepreneurship and Competitiveness, Doshisha University), September 16, 2010. (Co-sponsored by the U-M Transportation and Research Institute.)
Noon Lecture Series
Winter Term
Hokusai's Great Waves and the Maritime Turn in Japanese Visual Culture
PLAY | Christine Guth (Tutor, History of Design, Royal College of Art and Victoria and Albert Museum, UK), April 1, 2010.
Children's Ibasho & Adults' Mimamori: Implications of Japanese Concepts to US Child Welfare
PLAY | Sachiko Bamba (Post Doctoral Research Associate, Social Work, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), February 11, 2010.
Suicide & Social Self: Youth, Gov., & Pop Culture Responses to Internet Group Suicide in Japan
PLAY | Chikako Ozawa de Silva (Assistant Professor, Anthropology, Emory University), January 28, 2010.
Lost in Transition: Young Workers in Japan's Changed Employment Landscape
PLAY | Mary Brinton (Reischauer Institute Professor of Sociology, Harvard University), January 14, 2010. (Co-sponsored by the Japan Foundation's Center for Global Partnership.)
