Events category: Book launch

22 October 2024

Music Generations in the Digital Age

Music Generations in the Digital Age is a unique work at the intersection of cultural, media and music studies. In the book, Dr Rafal Zaborowski delves into how music engagement is changing in the digital era, focusing on key themes of participation, interpretation, circulation and cultural production. In this talk, he will particularly cover the following topics:
・Why do virtual idols sometimes feel more authentic than non-virtual ones?
・How can pop groups resonate differently across generations?
・How has the Japanese music industry evolved in the digital age?
・Can you tell the difference between real Japanese pop lyrics and AI-generated poetry?

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19 September 2024

Japan: The Basics

Japan: The Basics is an engaging introduction to the culture, society, and global positioning of Japan. Starting by looking at the common stereotypes, clichés, and tropes associated with Japan, this accessible introduction to the country is designed to arm readers with key skills and knowledge for their study of Japan. In this talk, the author, Dr Christopher Hood, discussed some of the key features of the book, the way in which the book works alongside other books about Japan, how some of the research for the book was done, and other things related to the book – some of which are not mentioned in the book itself.

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26 September 2024

Graphic Narratives from Early Modern Japan

Part of a formidable publishing industry, cheap yet eye-catching graphic narratives consistently charmed early modern Japanese readers for around two hundred years, from the late seventeenth to the late nineteenth century. These booklets were called kusazōshi (lit. “grass books”). Multimodal in essence, kusazōshi combine images and words asking the reader to negotiate the complex interactions of these different modes on the page. Meaning is created out of such negotiation. Graphic Narratives from Early Modern Japan: The World of Kusazōshi (Brill 2024) is the first English-language publication to investigate this textual typology in the round. In this book launch Prof. Laura Moretti selected what she views as the most thought-provoking lines of inquiry put forward by the contributors featured in the volume.

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18 April 2024

The Martyr and the Red Kimono

On 14th August 1941, a Polish priest named Maximilian Kolbe was murdered in Auschwitz. Kolbe had spent six years in Nagasaki before the war. After Germany invaded Poland, he gave sanctuary to fleeing refugees and was arrested by the Gestapo. In Auschwitz, he volunteered to die, saving the life of a fellow prisoner. This act transformed the lives of two Japanese men. Tōmei Ozaki and Masatoshi Asari. Both men drew inspiration from Kolbe’s sacrifice, dedicating their lives to humanity and justice.
In The Martyr and the Red Kimono, award-winning author Naoko Abe weaves together a deeply moving and uplifting true story of resistance, sacrifice, guilt and atonement.

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28 November 2023

From the Forge to the Kitchen: The Art & Precision of Japanese Knives

In celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Japanese Knife Company, this book, adorned with stunning photography, follows the journey from raw metal into beautifully made knives, crafted through centuries-old traditional Japanese techniques, and into the hands of great chefs and people who love good cooking. This commemorative book is based on the significance and reoccurrence of the number five, commonly considered a lucky number within Japanese culture. It visits five towns in Japan – Takefu (武生), Sakai (堺), Seki (関), Sanjō (三条), Tosa (土佐) – all historically famous for fine blade making by master blacksmiths who live and work there.

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22 November 2023

Japan on a Glass Plate: The Adventure of Photography in Yokohama and Beyond

Between the twilight years of the Tokugawa shogunate (1603–1867) and the end of the Meiji Era (1868–1912) that followed it, photography offered a unique insight into the rapid transformation of Japan from an isolated, feudal society to a modern, industrialised state. In the four decades that followed the opening of the country in 1853, the camera evolved from an imported novelty into a familiar witness of daily life. Drawing from an extensive private collection assembled over many years, this book presents a unique selection of nineteenth-century photographs of Japan, many of which are published here for the first time.

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24 October 2023

Mister Timeless Blyth

Imprisoned as a conscientious objector during the first World War and interned as an enemy alien in Japan during the second, RH Blyth was a poet, a scholar, a musician, a linguist and a man of Zen who became a teacher to an emperor. Ultimately, he became the key link and mediator between the Japanese Imperial Household and the occupying American forces. He spent the better part of his lifetime building bridges between East and West and was an influence on a whole generation of American writers – Ginsberg, Salinger, Keroauc, Snyder – through his translations of Japanese haiku. He was, in many ways, a man who changed the world. Mister Timeless Blyth is his story.

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21 March 2023

Handbook of the Ainu Language

Handbook of the Ainu Language is the first book in English to describe the Ainu language fully and systematically. It aims to preserve invaluable knowledge about Ainu, a language-isolate previously spoken in Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and Kurils, which is now on the verge of extinction. Ainu was not a written language, but despite the existence of a huge documented stock of oral literature, it is significantly under-described in terms of grammar. It is the only non-Japonic language of Japan and is typologically different not only from Japanese but also from other Northeast Asian languages. In this book launch, the author of the book explained the Ainu Language and its main features.

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16 March 2023

Making Audiences: A Social History of Japanese Cinema and Media

Film has always been a key technology for producing and disseminating attachments to ‘the social.’ Making Audiences explores the century-old relationships between Japanese media and social subjects, analyzing the connections between cinema audiences and five significant discursive terms: minshu (the people), kokumin (the national populace), toa minzoku (the East Asian race), taishu (the masses), and shimin (citizens). Fujiki narrates the history of Japan’s transmedia ecology, illuminating cinema’s enmeshment with other forms of media, from vaudeville to the internet, so that cinema audiences emerge as simultaneously shaped by and shaping social history.

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25 January 2023

A History of Popular Culture in Japan

A History of Popular Culture in Japan provides the first historical and analytical overview of popular culture in Japan from its origins in the 17th century to the present day, using it to explore broader themes of conflict, power and meaning in Japanese history. E. Taylor Atkins shows how Japan was one of the earliest sites for the development of mass-produced, market-oriented cultural products consumed by the urban middle and working classes. In this book launch, E. Taylor Atkins presented an overview to help understand four centuries of popular culture in Japan as an arena for struggles over power, resources, identities, nationhood, ideology, political rights, civil liberties and personal autonomy.

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