Events category: Book launch

26 January 2021

Pleasure in Profit

In the first comprehensive study of the birth of Japanese commercial publishing, Dr Laura Moretti investigates the world of popular literature. She marshals new data on the magnitude of the seventeenth-century publishing business and highlights the diversity and porosity of its publishing genres. Moretti explores how booksellers sparked interest among readers and demonstrates how they tantalized consumers. In this book launch, Dr Moretti presented some of the key arguments that she puts forward in ‘Pleasure in Profit’. She also introduced a number of primary sources and fleshed out the wealth of information packed in this monograph.

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1 December 2020

The Shogun’s Silver Telescope

This book takes up the matter of the arrival of the English in Japan in 1613. It addresses why they sought access to Japan, and how they prepared themselves to enter the market. Screech argues that the English presence in Japan in this period was extremely important. His argument centres on the decision to send the spectacular present of a silver-gild telescope to the retired shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu. It was the first telescope to leave Europe and the first built to be a royal present. This book thus outlines a key but forgotten answer to the vexed question of why the missions were closed in Japan, after so many decades of successful evangelism.

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23 November 2020

Health in Japan 1960-2020

In the second half of the 20th century Japan made remarkable gains in life expectancy. To this day Japan remains one of the healthiest and most equal societies in the world, despite the recent economic slowdown. ‘Health in Japan’ brings together the research and broader perspectives of Japan’s leading social epidemiologists in English for the first time. In this 90-minute seminar and book launch, Professor Richard Wilkinson and Professor Gill Livingston reflected on Japan’s success in population health, linking social organisation to the health issues which are so important for Japan and many other countries.

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26 October 2020

Ishikawa Sanshirō’s Geographical Imagination

Ishikawa Sanshirō was a journalist and anarchist in the early twentieth century, active at a time of tremendous intellectual and social ferment. Geographical Imagination investigates his engagement with causes such as farmers’ autonomy, gender equality, and anti-war and anti-pollution. Through Ishikawa’s personal journey – which includes several years of European exile – the book invites us to reconsider the scope and ambitions of anarchism in Japan at the time and reassesses geographical thought as a basis for dialogue between Eastern and Western radical thinkers.

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9 September 2020

Surrealism and Photography in 1930s Japan: The Impossible Avant-Garde

A number of photographers across Japan produced a versatile body of Surrealist work during the 1930s. In this pioneering study of their practice, ‘Surrealism and Photography in 1930s Japan: The Impossible Avant-Garde’, Dr Jelena Stojković draws on primary sources and extensive archival research in order to map out art historical and critical contexts relevant to the apprehension of this rich photographic output, most of which is previously unseen outside of its country of origin. In this book launch, the author was joined in discussion of the book’s themes by Dr Luke Gartlan and Dr Tessel Bauduin. Discounted copies of the book were available to attendees.

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5 March 2020

Press Freedom in Contemporary Asia

Globalisation, in the form of new communication technologies, is posing common challenges to media freedom worldwide. In contemporary Asia, where authoritarian propaganda, censorship, physical violence and cyber-intimidation abound, courage is needed to work as a journalist. Even in the region’s democracies, political polarisation, disinformation, and business concentration are eroding media pluralism and freedom of the press. In this book launch, Tina Burrett and Jeff Kingston discussed these issues and released their edited volume Press Freedom in Contemporary Asia.

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23 January 2020

McAuley 1

The Poetry Contest in Six Hundred Rounds

For the monumental Poetry Contest in Six Hundred Rounds (Roppyakuban uta’awase) (1193-94), twelve poets each provided one hundred waka poems, fifty on seasonal topics and fifty on love, which were matched, critiqued by the participants and judged by Fujiwara no Shunzei (1114-1204), the premiere poet of his age. The combination of poetry, criticism, judgements and appeal make it one of the key texts for understanding poetic and critical practice in late twelfth century Japan. The Competition and Appeal were presented here for the first time in complete English translation with accompanying commentary and explanatory notes by Dr Thomas McAuley.

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17 April 2019

The Ghost of Namamugi

In 1862 a British merchant was killed by samurai, in uncertain circumstances, at Namamugi – a quiet village near Yokohama. One year later, a British fleet bombarded the port of Kagoshima in response, reducing much of the city to ash. In this book launch, Robert Fletcher re-examined this turbulent moment in the history of relations between Britain and Japan. He explored how the death of a young merchant led to the bombardment of a Japanese city, and how different accounts of precisely what happened at Namamugi have circulated ever since.

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20 February 2019

The Unmaking of An American

“The Unmaking of an American” is Roger Pulvers’ cross-cultural memoir spanning decades of history on four continents. He explores the nature of memory through connections created from people and places, both past and present. In this book launch, Roger introduced his memoir and talked about the changes he has observed over the past half-century in Japan, Britain, the United States and Russia.

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22 March 2019

The Englishman who saved the Japanese cherry

In this book launch, Naoko Abe introduced her latest book “‘Cherry’ Ingram: The Englishman Who Saved Japan’s Blossoms”. Collingwood Ingram, known as ‘Cherry’, visited Japan in the early twentieth century and fell in love with cherry blossoms. He dedicated much of his life to their cultivation and preservation, becoming a leading expert on the subject. This book is a portrait of ‘Cherry’ Ingram, a story of Britain and Japan in the twentieth century and an exploration of cherry blossoms.

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