Donald Keene Center

Events 2003

February 3 - April 14

300 Years of the 47 Ronin: A Chushingura Retrospective
Coordinated by Professor Henry Smith (Columbia University)
 

To mark the tercentenary of the Ako Vendetta of 1701-03, the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture at Columbia University will sponsor a variety of programs in the spring semester of 2003, including a film series, an exhibition of prints and books, a panel at the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS), and a symposium. All events at Columbia are open to the public and free of charge.

› FILM SERIES: "Exacting Revenge: A Series of Eight Japanese Films," February 3-April 14
› EXHIBITION: "Chushingura on Stage and in Print: An Exhibition of Books, Manuscripts, and Ukiyoe," March 24-April 18*
› ASSOCIATION FOR ASIAN STUDIES PANEL: "The Many Lives of the 47 Ronin: Three Centuries of Retelling the Chushingura Story," March 30, 8:30am-10:30am
› SYMPOSIUM: "Rethinking Chushingura: A Symposium on the Making and Unmaking of Japan's National Legend," March 30, 3pm-7pm and March 31, 9am-6pm

*The exhibition was originally scheduled from March 17-April 11

February 3 (Monday)
Film: Harakiri (Seppuku)
Director: Masaki Kobayashi (1962, b/w, 134 min.)
Altschul Auditorium (417 International Affairs Building), Columbia University (118th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
7:45 PM

Harakiri brilliantly attacks the adherence to tradition at the expense of human values. The strict code of honor of the samurai is challenged by a warrior whose son-in-law is forced to commit an agonizing suicide in order to maintain the honor of the clan. The film's precise visual structure contributes to the steadily mounting suspense which culminates in an explosive final sequence. Photo: Photofest - Janus Films Catalogue Cannes Film Festival 1963, Special Jury Prize

Part of "Exacting Revenge: A Series of Eight Japanese Films"

February 7 & 8 (Friday & Saturday)

The Twelfth Annual Graduate Student Conference on East Asia
Coordinated by Matthew Augustine, Martin Fromm, and Valerie Jaffee (Columbia University)
Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
 

The conference provides opportunities for participants to meet and share ideas with graduate students from institutions worldwide. Panelists gain valuable experience in presenting their work to an audience of their peers and, in some cases, Columbia faculty. The conference will include graduate students engaged in research on all fields in East Asian Studies, including History, Literature, Anthropology, Political Science, Sociology, Art History, and Religion. For further details, contact Matthew Augustine, Martin Fromm, or Valerie Jaffee. E-mail: asiagradcon@columbia.edu Website: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ealac/gradconf Mail: Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, 407 Kent Hall, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027 Tel: 212-854-5027 Fax: 212-678-8629

Co-sponsored by the Donald Keene Center, the Mellon Foundation, the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, the East Asian Institute, and the Institute for Medieval Japanese Studies
 

February 10 (Monday)

Brown Bag Lunch Lecture Series: North Korea: Japan's Moment of Truth
Yoichi Funabashi (Columnist & Chief Diplomatic Correspondent, The Asahi Shimbun; Visiting Fellow of the Donald Keene Center)
918 International Affairs Building, Columbia University (118th St. & Amsterdam Ave.)
12:00 PM
Dr. Funabashi is a Visiting Fellow of the Donald Keene Center, under a program supported by the United States-Japan Foundation.
Co-sponsored by the East Asian Institute

February 10 (Monday)

Film: Gonza the Spearman (Yari no Gonza)
Director: Masahiro Shinoda (1986, color, 126 min.)
Altschul Auditorium (417 International Affairs Building), Columbia University (118th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
7:45 PM
 

A beautiful film set in 18th century Japan. The handsome but overly ambitious Gonza (Hiromi Go) is one of the Matsue clan's most talented lancers. Although he is already engaged to the sister of one of his fellow retainers, Gonza agrees to wed the daughter of his lord to better his position. The fiancée's infuriated brother plots against Gonza. This classic tale of conflicts between love and honor, duty and devotion, won a Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. - Facets Multi-Media

Part of "Exacting Revenge: A Series of Eight Japanese Films"

February 24 (Monday)

Film: An Actor's Revenge (Yukinojo henge)
Director: Kon Ichikawa (1963, color, 113 min.)
Altschul Auditorium (417 International Affairs Building), Columbia University (118th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
7:45 PM

Yukinojo, a female impersonator in a Kabuki theatre troupe, takes revenge on the three nobles who forced his parents to commit suicide. Maintaining his female role offstage, he pursues his vendetta by playing out a false courtship and by turning his enemies against each other. A film of phenomenal all-around accomplishment, with daringly stylized visuals. Nothing is more astonishing than the twin performances of Kazuo Hasegawa as both Yukinojo and the thief who befriends him, Yomitaro. - Time Out Film Guide

Part of "Exacting Revenge: A Series of Eight Japanese Films"

February 27 (Thursday)

Note: This program was originally scheduled for February 17.
Film: The Bad Sleep Well (Warui yatsu hodo yoku nemuru)
Director: Akira Kurosawa (1960, b/w, 151 min.)
Altschul Auditorium (417 International Affairs Building), Columbia University (118th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
7:45 PM

Akira Kurosawa's The Bad Sleep Well adopts the American gangster-film style to weave a fascinating tale of corporate greed. Toshiro Mifune stars as a young executive who marries his boss's daughter to infiltrate "the family," expose their corrupt business dealings, and avenge his own father's murder. With echoes of Hamlet, the chilling film opens as the couple is wed in an elaborate, strangely ominous celebration. As Mifune falls in love with his wife, his plans for revenge fall apart. Meanwhile, another executive (Takashi Shimura) plots his downfall. The Bad Sleep Well is filled with exciting twists and turns—bribery, kidnapping, and killings—as well as Kurosawa's sardonic humor and rich irony. Photo: Cowboy Pictures   - Cowboy Pictures

Part of "Exacting Revenge: A Series of Eight Japanese Films"

March 3 & 4 (Monday & Tuesday)*

Film: The 47 Ronin (Genroku Chushingura)
Director: Kenji Mizoguchi (1941, b/w, 222 min.)
Altschul Auditorium (417 International Affairs Building), Columbia University (118th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
7:45 PM
*two-part screening

Considered by many to be the finest Japanese film made during World War II, and one of the finest of all time, Mizoguchi's epic is a rich and poetic retelling of the Japanese classic Mayama Chushingura. When their leader is deceived and forced to commit suicide, a group of legendary samurai warriors sets out to take vengeance for his death. A masterpiece that remained unseen in America until the 1970s, and one of Mizoguchi's most remarkable achievements. - Facets Multimedia

Part of "Exacting Revenge: A Series of Eight Japanese Films"

 

March 11 (Tuesday)

Lecture: Defining Fashionability in Moronobu's Iconography for the Yoshiwara
Helen Nagata (Assistant Professor of Art History, Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design)
612 Schermerhorn Hall, Columbia University (116th St. & Amsterdam Ave.)
6:00 PM
Co-sponsored by the Ukiyo-e Society of America, Inc. and the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University

March 13 (Thursday)

Lecture: Japan's New Course in the Coming Century
Yoichi Funabashi (Columnist and Chief Diplomatic Correspondent of the Asahi Shimbun; Visiting Fellow of the Donald Keene Center* and the Weatherhead East Asian Institute)
Japan Society, 333 East 47th Street, New York, NY, 10017
6:30 PM (Reception to follow)
Tickets: $10, Japan Society members and seniors $8, students $5
To order tickets, please call Japan Society box office, Mon-Fri, 10 AM to 4:45 PM, 212-752-3015, or visit their Website.
For further information about this lecture, please call the Japan Society at 212-832-1155.
Yoichi Funabashi is Columnist and Chief Diplomatic Correspondent of the Asahi Shimbun and a leading journalist in the field of Japanese foreign policy. A former Washington Correspondent and American General Bureau Chief of the Asahi Shimbun, he has received numerous awards for his reporting on international affairs, including the Japan Press Award, known as Japan's "Pulitzer Prize," for his columns on foreign policy. Drawing from his newest book "Japan's Postwar Dreams," Dr. Funabashi reflects on Japan's postwar history and nation-building aspirations and their significance for Japan's new course in the coming century.
Co-sponsored by Asahi Shimbun International and by the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture
*Dr. Funabashi is a Visiting Fellow of the Donald Keene Center, under a program supported by the United States-Japan Foundation.

March 22 & 23 (Saturday & Sunday)

Critical Horizons: A Symposium on Japanese Art in Memory of Chino Kaori
501 Schermerhorn Hall, Columbia University (116th St. & Amsterdam Ave.) and New York University's Institute of Fine Arts (1 East 78th St.)
9:00 AM - 5:00 PM (3/22) & 9:30 AM - 6:30 PM (3/23)
No registration fee, but RSVP REQUIRED
PLEASE E-MAIL Meghen Jones at mmj228@nyu.edu or call 212-992-5869 by March 14th.

The purpose of this two-day international symposium, to take place at Columbia University and the Institute of Fine Arts, is to honor the work and memory of the late Japanese art historian Chino Kaori. Professor Chino was a highly influential scholar who was instrumental in introducing new methodologies to the art historical discipline in Japan, especially those revolving around gender studies and feminism. Over twenty of Professor Chino's former colleagues and students from Japan, North America, and Europe will present papers concerning aspects of Japanese art related to Professor Chino's work and the theoretical and methodological approaches she championed. Reflecting the breadth of Professor's Chino's scholarship over her nearly twenty-year career, the twenty presentations cover a broad range of objects, methodologies, and time periods in the history of Japanese art.

Co-hosted by the Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University, and the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, with support from the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture; Weatherhead East Asian Institute's Program in Contemporary Culture and Arts of East Asia, the Institute for Medieval Japanese Studies, Columbia University; Peggy and Richard M. Danziger; Judith Dowling; Rosemarie and Leighton Longhi; and John C. Weber.

March 24- April 18

Note: This program was originally scheduled from March 17 - April 11
Chushingura on Stage and in Print: An Exhibition of Books, Manuscripts, and Ukiyoe
Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Butler Library, Columbia University (114th St. & Broadway) & Rare Book and Special Collections Reading Room, C.V. Starr East Asian Library, Columbia University (116th St. & Amsterdam Ave.)

March 24 & 25 (Monday & Tuesday)*

Film: Chushingura
Director: Hiroshi Inagaki (1962, color, 207 min.)
Altschul Auditorium (417 International Affairs Building), Columbia University (118th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
7:45 PM
*two-part screening

In the dawn of the eighteenth century, a young lord is sentenced to ritual suicide for an act of disobedience stemming from corruption in the Shogun's court. Masterless and displaced, his followers bide their time, suffering humiliation and poverty, waiting for the chance to prove their loyalty and adherence to the fading virtues of Bushido. A Japanese classic, often characterized as "the Gone With the Wind of Japan." © 1962 Toho Co., Ltd. All rights reserved. - www.ifilm.com

Part of "Exacting Revenge: A Series of Eight Japanese Films"

March 25

Lecture: Becoming a Reader, Becoming a Writer: On Enchi Fumiko's Autobiographical Fiction
Yûko Iida (Associate Professor of Japanese Literature, Kobe College; Visiting Professor, Stanford University)
403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
6:00 PM
Lecture to be given in Japanese

Writing is never an enclosed system but always exists within linguistic and cultural circuits. Writers are themselves always readers, and writers write their works always for imagined readers. Becoming a reader does not confine oneself to identifying with a given text, and when a writer writes a text for readers, the images of the readers are not uniform. Paying attention to the complex dialectics between reading and writing, between a writer and imagined readers, sheds critical light on fissures and diversions in literary text, particularly with regard to texts by women writers. This talk will address these issues in reference to Enchi Fumiko's key autobiographical fiction, Ake o ubaumono (That Which Takes Away Vermilion, 1955-56), which dramatizes the process by which Enchi becomes a reader and a literary writer. Professor Yûko Iida, Associate Professor of Japanese Literature at Kobe College and currently Visiting Professor at Stanford University, is a specialist of modern Japanese Literature and the author of Karera no monogatari: Nihon kindai bungaku to jendaa (Men's Stories: Gender and Modern Japanese Literature, 1998), an influential book on the establishment of a gendered literary field in the early 20th-century Japan through re-readings of Natsume Sôseki's major works and their impact on the subsequent literary texts. Professor Iida has been writing extensively on the relationship between gender constructions and the processes of becoming literary readers and writers. She has been examining the formation of gendered literary magazines from the 1900s to the 1930s, and recently published, as an author and editor, a collection of essays called Seitô to iu ba: bungaku, gendaa, 'atarashii onnna' (Seitô as a Cultural Site: Literature, Gender, and the 'New Woman,' 2002).

March 26

Lecture: Embracing the Firebird: Yosano Akiko, Modern Japan's Preeminent Female Poet, and her Revolutionary Poetry Collection 'Tangled Hair' (Midaregami)
Janine Beichman (Professor, Department of Japanese Literature, Daito Bunka University; Adjunct Lecturer, Department of Comparative Literature, Tsukuba University)
403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
5:00 PM

In 1901, the young Yosano Akiko published her first collection of poems, Midaregami (Tangled Hair). A sensation at the time, it became one of the classics of modern Japanese poetry, and the only one by a woman. Akiko's later poetry has now begun to win long-overdue recognition and she is considered modern Japan's preeminent female poet, but in terms of literary history the impact of Midaregami still overshadows everything else she wrote, for it brought the modern ideal of individualism to traditional poetry with a passion found in no other work of the period. Professor Beichman's lecture takes a fresh look at this classic, based on her new book Embracing the Firebird: Yosano Akiko and the Birth of the Female Voice in Modern Japanese Poetry (July 2002, University of Hawai'i Press). The lecture will incorporate bi-lingual readings in Japanese and English of many of Akiko's poems. Copies of Embracing the Firebird will also be available for sale. For over thirty years, Janine Beichman has been living in Japan, where she teaches Japanese and comparative literature at Daito Bunka University and Tsukuba University. She is one of America's foremost translators of Japanese poetry.

Co-sponsored by the Institute for Medieval Japanese Studies

March 27

Lecture: Voluntary Blindness: A Typology of the Japanese Melodrama
Inuhiko Yomota (Professor of Film Studies and Comparative Literature, Meiji Gakuin University; Visiting Fellow of the Donald Keene Center)
403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
6:30 PM (Reception to follow)

What is the significance of becoming blind by one's own will? A comparison of some cases from Indian epics and contemporary Japanese films shows us an alternative way of thinking about blindness in the context of melodramatic imagination. From his perspective as a film historian, Mr. Yomota will discuss the three cases of Mahabharata, Tanizaki Jun'ichiro, and Wakao Ayako. Mr. Yomota is currently a professor of film studies and comparative literature at Meiji Gakuin University, in addition to being a distinguished film and arts critic. He has authored various publications on Japanese and Asian cinema, films in general, literature, and Asian studies, among other subjects. His recent publications include Radical Wills in Contemporary Japanese Cinema (1999), Japanese Cinema in an Asian Context (2000), Li Xianglan and East Asia (2001), and Korea My Love (2002). His publications have received numerous awards, including the Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities, Saito Ryoku-u Literature Award, Itoh Sei Literature Award, Kodansha Essay Award, and the Japan Essayist Award.

Mr. Yomota is a Visiting Fellow of the Donald Keene Center, under a program supported by the United States-Japan Foundation.

March 30

The Many Lives of the 47 Ronin: Three Centuries of Retelling the Chushingura Story
New York Hilton Hotel, Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS), Panel #190
8:30 AM-10:30 AM
REGISTRATION REQUIRED: Contact AAS

March 30 & 31 (Sunday & Monday)

Rethinking Chushingura: A Symposium on the Making and Unmaking of Japan's National Legend
East Gallery, Buell Hall, Columbia University (116th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Avenues)

April 1

2003 Soshitsu Sen XV Distinguished Lecture on Japanese Culture: Bunraku: Japan's Traditional Puppet Theater
Bunzo TORIGOE (Professor Emeritus, Waseda University, and Former Director, Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum, Waseda University)
Low Rotunda, Low Memorial Library, Columbia University (116th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenues)
Lecture to be given in Japanese with English translation
RSVP EQRUIRED
PLEASE E-MAIL the Donald Keene Center at donald-keene-center@columbia.edu or call 212-854-5036 by Monday, March 17th

Professor Bunzo Torigoe has devoted his career to the study and preservation of Bunraku and Kabuki, the two distinctive forms of Japanese theater that emerged in the Edo period and continue as living performance traditions today. He has spent most of his academic career at Waseda University, from which he graduated in the department of theater in 1956, and where he began teaching as a lecturer in 1965 following a period of teaching and research at Cambridge University in 1962-64. He became Professor of Japanese Literature at Waseda in 1974, and currently holds the title of Professor Emeritus.

In addition to numerous scholarly journal articles, a number of which were collected in book form in 1991 as Genroku kabuki kô, Professor Torigoe has written a book on the playwright Chikamatsu (Chikamatsu Monzaemon, 1989), and has edited and annotated numerous editions of Chikamatsu's plays. He has also played a major role in editing and co-editing basic source materials for Japanese theater of the Edo period. In English, he joined with Charles Dunn of Cambridge University to translate and annotate The Actors' Analects (Yakusha Rongo) (Columbia University Press, 1969), a collection of Genroku-period writings about Kabuki acting.

Professor Torigoe has also contributed broadly to the study and preservation of Japanese theater as the director from 1988 until 1999 of the Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum on the Waseda campus, the single most important collection of theater material in Japan. He has recently been active in the preservation and promotion of the Bunraku puppet theater as chairman of the Ningyô Jôruri Bunrakuza, a non-profit organization founded in 2002.

April 7 (Monday)

Film: Youth of the Beast (Yaju no seishun)
Director: Seijun Suzuki (1963, color, 92 min.)
Altschul Auditorium (417 International Affairs Building), Columbia University (118th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
7:45 PM

Soon after the apparent love-suicide of a cop and his mistress, the tough Mizuno...muscles his way to prominence in Yakuza circles. He gets himself hired by two rival gang bosses who hate each other as much as they hate the cops. But who is Mizuno really and what is his secret agenda? Suzuki films with a keen sense of absurdity, but also raises the genre's visual rhetoric to a new high. - Time Out Film Guide

Part of "Exacting Revenge: A Series of Eight Japanese Films"

April 8 (Tuesday)

Symposium: The Future Security of East Asia
featuring Yoichi Funabashi (Columnist and Chief Diplomatic Correspondent of the Asahi Shimbun; Visiting Fellow of the Donald Keene Center* and the Weatherhead East Asian Institute)
301 Uris Hall (118th St. between Broadway and Amsterdam Aves.)

4:30 PM-6:00 PM (Reception to follow in Calder Lounge, Uris Hall)
Registration Required
Please go to http://www.gsb.columbia.edu/japan/ and click on "events" to register online.
Dr. Funabashi, an award-winning journalist in the field of Japanese foreign policy, discusses the future security of East Asia with leading specialists on Japan, China, and Japan-U.S.-Asia relationships.
 

Panel Chair: • Hugh Patrick (Director, Center on Japanese Economy and Business, Columbia Business School) Discussants: • Urban Lehner (Former Executive Editor, Asian Wall Street Journal, Hong Kong; Former Executive Editor, Dow Jones Asia) • Xiaobo Lu (Director, Weatherhead East Asian Institute; Associate Professor of Political Science, Barnard College) • George Packard (President, U.S.-Japan Foundation; Former Director of the Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University)

Co-hosted by Columbia University's Center on Japanese Economy and Business, Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture, and Weatherhead East Asian Institute
*Dr. Funabashi is a Visiting Fellow of the Donald Keene Center, under a program supported by the United States-Japan Foundation.

April 11 (Friday)

Award Ceremony and Reception for Translation Prize
Main Reading Room, C.V. Starr East Asian Library, Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. & Amsterdam Ave.)
6:15 PM
Reception immediately following ceremony
RSVP REQUIRED
PLEASE E-MAIL the Donald Keene Center at donald-keene-center@columbia.edu or call 212-854-5036 by April 1st if you plan to attend
The Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture will hold an award ceremony and reception honoring the winner of the 2002-2003 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature:
Professor Royall Tyler
For his translation of The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
Copies of The Tale of Genji will be available for purchase

April 14 (Monday)

A Discussion with Yoko Tawada
Yoko Tawada (Author & Playwright)
301 Fayerweather Hall, Columbia University (117th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
10:30 AM - 12:00 PM

Yoko Tawada will discuss “The Reflection” and “Spores” from Where Europe Begins, her first volume of short stories translated into English. Yoko Tawada's work straddles two continents, two languages and cultures. Born in Tokyo in 1960, she moved to Hamburg at the age of 22 and became, simultaneously, a German and a Japanese writer. She has since published a good ten volumes in each language, won numerous literary awards (including Japan's prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 1993 and, in 1996, Germany's Adelbert von Chamisso Prize, the highest honor bestowed upon a foreign-born author), and established herself, in both countries, as one of the most important writers of her generation. Tawada's poetry, fiction, essays and plays return again and again to questions of language and culture, the link between national and personal identity. If the languages we speak help define us, what happens to the identity of persons displaced between cultures? "The interesting," she once said in an interview, "lies in the in-between." And so her characters are constantly in motion, journeying between countries, language and modes of being—providing us with "travel narratives" full of glimpses into the interstices of the world in which the structure of all experience is revealed.

from the “Translators’ Note,” Where Europe Begins (New Directions, 2002)

Copies of these stories are available in advance at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, 9th Floor, International Affairs Building.
Co-sponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute

April 14 (Monday)

Film: Vengeance is Mine (Fukushu suru wa ware ni ari)
Director: Shohei Imamura (1979, color, 140 min.)
Altschul Auditorium (417 International Affairs Building), Columbia University (118th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
7:45 PM

One of the most strikingly original films of the modern cinema, Vengeance Is Mine is an "eclectically horrifying portrait of a psychopathic criminal named Iwao Enokizu...[The film] makes every other film on the In Cold Blood theme look like child's play," wrote Tom Allen in The Village Voice. Enokizu (Ken Ogata) becomes a suspect in the murder of two men who work for the government tobacco monopoly. A nationwide dragnet is set up to capture him, but for 78 days he travels throughout Japan committing fraud, cheating women and taking numerous lives. Photo: Photofest  - Facets Multimedia Japan Academy Award, Best Film; Kinema Jumpo, Best Film

Part of "Exacting Revenge: A Series of Eight Japanese Films"

 

September 25 (Thursday)

Lecture: Visualizing the Tale of Genji: The Case of Wakamurasaki*
Professor Haruki Ii (Department of Japanese and Asian Literature, Osaka University)
403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
6:00 PM - 7:30 PM
*Lecture to be given in Japanese

October 2 (Thursday)

Lecture: Eight Million Ways to See: Japanese Artists' Books, 770-2000
1st of a three part lecture series on< Ehon: The Japanese Artists' Books
Professor Roger Keyes (Department of East Asian Studies, Brown University)
403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
An overview of the history of Japanese artists' books and an introduction to some of their special characteristics.

October 4 - November 5
YASUJIRO OZU: A CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION
A special event of the 41st New York Film Festival

Ozu's Late Spring

Thanks to the Film Society of Lincoln Center, Columbia students and faculty are eligible to purchase discounted rush tickets at $5.00 per ticket for the upcoming Yasujiro Ozu retrospective at the New York Film Festival from October 4 through November 5. To purchase tickets, present your Columbia ID at the Alice Tully Box office (Broadway between 65th and 66th Streets) on the day of the screening; you may purchase up to two tickets for $5.00 each. There will be no advanced sales at this discounted rate - advance sales will be at the regular $7.00 student rate.
Check here for a complete listing of screenings.

October 11 & 12 (Saturday & Sunday)

YASUJIRO OZU: INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
Two day symposium held at the Lincoln Center and Columbia University

October 11 (Saturday) Walter Reade Theatre

2 PM - 4 PM: THE PLACE OF OZU WITHIN JAPANESE FILM HISTORY Moderator: Daisuke Miyao (Columbia University) Panelists: Richard Combs; Keiko McDonald; Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto; Tadao Sato

4: 30 PM - 6:30 PM: OZU OUTSIDE: THE INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE TO OZU'S WORK Moderator: Zhang Zhen (New York University) Panelists: Claudio España; Andrew Sarris; Chuck Stevens

October 12 (Sunday) Italian Academy, Columbia University

2 PM - 4 PM: OZU AND MODERNITY Moderator: Dudley Andrew (Yale University) Panelists: Shiguehiko Hasumi; Charles Tesson; Robin Wood; Yoshishige Yoshida

4:30 PM - 6:30 PM: OZU TODAY AND TOMORROW Moderator: James Schamus (Columbia University) Panelists: Phillip Lopate; Paul Schrader

Organized by Professor Paul Anderer (Columbia University) and Professor Richard Peña (Columbia University)
Co-sponsored by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

October 16 (Thursday)

Lecture: New Perspectives on Munakata Shiko
Professor Allen Hockley (Department of Art History, Dartmouth College)
403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Co-sponsored by the Ukiyo-e Society of America, Inc.

October 23 (Thursday)

Lecture: From Kôetsu to Sekka: Kyoto Artists' Books in the Early Modern Period
2nd of a three part lecture series on Ehon: The Japanese Artists' Books
Professor Roger Keyes (Department of East Asian Studies, Brown University)
403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
A close examination of Kôetsu's Michimori (c. 1605), Yoshikiyo's Shidare yanagi (1702), Soken's Yamato jinbutsu gafu (1800), Kihô's Kafuku ninpitsu (1808), and Sekka's Momoyogusa (1909)

October 27 (Monday)

Lecture: Enough of French Painting! The Japanese Struggle for Leadership in the Arts during World War II
Professor Michael Lucken (National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations, Paris)
612 Schermerhorn, Columbia University (118th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
5:45 PM
Co-sponsored by the Department of Art History and Archaeology

November 5 (Wednesday)

Discussion: An Afternoon with Kiju Yoshida and Mariko Okada
Moderated by Professor Daisuke Miyao (Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University)
403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Award-winning director Kiju Yoshida and renowned actress Mariko Okada will discuss their work, the legacy of Yasujiro Ozu, and their most recent collaboration, Women in the Mirror (Kagami no onnatachi, 2002)
Co-sponsored by the the Weatherhead East Asian Institute

November 6 (Thursday)

Lecture: Looking at Chushingura Prints and Books
Henry D. Smith II & Chelsea Foxwell (Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia University)
403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Co-sponsored by the Ukiyo-e Society of America, Inc.

November 13 (Thursday)

Lecture: Ehon and the Transmission of Knowledge
3rd of a three part lecture series on Ehon: The Japanese Artists' Books
Professor Roger Keyes (Department of East Asian Studies, Brown University)
403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
A consideration of the relationships between pictures, text and form in Japanese artists' books and the types of knowledge they convey.

December 1 (Monday)

Brownbag Lunch: Teaching Hiroshima and the Holocaust
Professor Alan Tansman (Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of California, Berkeley)
403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
12:00 PM - 2:00 PM

"But it is the knowledge of how contingent my unease is, how dependent on a baby that wails beneath my window one day and does not wail the next, that brings the worst shame to me, the greatest indifference to annihilation."

J.M. Coetzee, Waiting For The Barbarians, 1980

The Nazi murder of the Jews and the dropping of the Atomic bomb on Hiroshima have occupied our modern historical and literary imaginations. The imprint of these events, after more than half a century, is deep and indelible.
Nevertheless, the comparison of the two events will strike some as distasteful. Dare we ask whether the Japanese were victims the way the Jews were? The very question seems to suggest that degrees of suffering can be measured and that styles of mourning can be judged. It risks robbing victims of their claim that their suffering was uniquely their own and that the particular history that caused their pain was unprecedented and unparalleled. Comparing suffering leads us to judge suffering‹and that is a delicate thing to do.
In this lecture Professor Tansman will discuss his experience teaching this comparison in the American university classroom.
Co-sponsored by the the Weatherhead East Asian Institute

December 10 (Wednesday)

Lecture: Can the Hanshin Tigers Save Japan? Performance as Narrative in a Japanese Baseball Season
Professor William W. Kelly (Department of Anthropology, Yale University)
963 Schermerhorn Extension, Columbia University (118th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
4:00 PM - 6:00 Pm
Co-sponsored by the Department of Anthropology

 

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