Events category: Webinar

1 June 2021

Japanese politics and its challenges under the global pandemic

It has been eight months since the Suga administration took office, and there have already been significant challenges in both domestic and foreign policy, including the government’s management of the pandemic, the vaccination programme and the decision whether to go ahead with the Olympics and Paralympics. The Suga administration has also found it hard to position Japan amid ongoing tensions between the US and China. The lack of transparency in Japan’s system of government has given rise to increasing public discontent. In this webinar chaired by Dr John Nilsson-Wright, Professor Makihara explained what is currently going on in Japanese politics, covering both short-term challenges and fundamental structural issues.

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25 May 2021

Jeremy Thomas – Working with Japanese Film Directors

In this webinar, chaired by film producer Shozo Ichiyama, legendary Oscar-winning auteur and film producer Jeremy Thomas discussed the cultural influences surrounding Japanese cinema and what drew him to work with Japanese directors and actors, and explored creative approaches to scripted projects that break through with international audiences.

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6 May 2021

Suicide and the COVID-19 pandemic: Trends in Japan and around the world

The COVID-19 pandemic is a public health crisis with both physical and mental health consequences. There are concerns that it may lead to an increase in suicides. In the first part of this webinar, we discussed global trends in suicides in high-income and upper-to-middle income countries in the early months of the pandemic. The second half of the webinar focused on the case of Japan, which experienced a notable increase in female suicides during the pandemic. We discussed the likely causes of this increase in suicides and the implications for other countries.

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27 April 2021

Photography after the Tsunami: Lieko Shiga in conversation with Yasufumi Nakamori

Lieko Shiga is a Japanese photographer based in Misato, Miyagi Prefecture, in North-East Japan, whose work focuses on documenting the lives of local people in her community. On 11 March 2011, the Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami destroyed her village of Kitakama, taking the lives of many. After surviving the immediate aftermath, Shiga has recorded local events, capturing the overarching significance of the tragedy, and tracing the transformation of her community. In this webinar chaired by Yasufumi Nakamori, Lieko Shiga spoke about how her art practice and activities became meaningful in capturing and expressing the significance of a devastating event that she experienced directly.

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20 May 2021

Tokachi Millennium Forest: a Radical Natural Vision

Thirty years ago, Japanese media entrepreneur Mitsushige Hayashi bought 400 hectares of land in the Tokachi region of Hokkaido, with the aim of offsetting the carbon footprint of his newspaper business, Tokachi Mainichi. Ten years later he invited British landscape designer Dan Pearson and Midori Shintani, now Head Gardener at Tokachi Millennium Forest, to help design an ecological public park on the site, with the aim of safeguarding this place for a thousand years. In this talk, chaired by British garden designer and writer Sophie Walker, they discussed the design and development of the forest and gardens, and how a naturalistic strand of European garden and planting design came to find a new natural home in Japan.

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16 April 2021

Fake News and Social Media: Perspectives from the UK and Japan

The rise of “fake news” and other forms of misinformation are eroding trust in real news, generating concern in democratic systems worldwide. Fake news has also become an integral part of the political debate and political campaigning. The spread of inaccurate beliefs and misinformation have the potential to undermine democracies and create an atmosphere of uncertainty and confusion. In this webinar, chaired by James Harding, we discussed the current situation in the UK and Japan, the effects of social media on journalism, and the impact of the age of fake news on democracy.

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9 April 2021

Women in Politics in the UK and Japan

Gender balance in politics can improve the quality and responsiveness of public policy, increase public trust in government and provide a better reflection of society. Despite the benefits of greater inclusion of women in politics, women in Japan and the UK still face barriers which restrict them from attaining full participation in political life. While the UK has shown significant progress in this regard, female representation in the Japanese Diet is at only 9.9%. This webinar discussed the importance of women in politics, the current situation in the UK and Japan, the barriers and obstacles to female participation, and gave recommendations to deal with them.

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23 March 2021

Poverty in the UK and Japan

The “invisibility” of poverty in Japanese society has long been one of the reasons for the underestimation of this social issue by the authorities. Nevertheless, data from the OECD reveals that the poverty rate in Japan (15.7% in 2018) is actually higher than that in the UK (11.7%). In this talk, Dr Aya Abe described how Japan “discovered” the problem of child poverty and how social science informed policymakers. Then, Dr David Gordon discussed the UK’s experience of child poverty, its anti-poverty policies, and some of the lessons that have been learned from poverty research.

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22 April 2021

New Frontiers: Robotics, Technology, and the Future of Dance

In this talk, Adrienne Hart, Artistic Director of Neon Dance, discussed the new contemporary dance work ‘Prehension Blooms’ with her collaborator Dr Hemma Philamore from the University of Bristol’s Robotics Lab. The work combines dance with robotics to explore loneliness, companionship, and belonging. The creative duo shared early-stage prototype designs and Professor Takashi Ikegami (University of Tokyo) commented on the project as well as offering an insight into his own cutting-edge research centered on complex systems and artificial life. The speakers ended this webinar by sharing their thoughts on how emerging technologies might influence dance in the future.

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31 March 2021

Women in Classical Japanese Literature

Classical Japan was scene of a great cultural flourishing, an era of literary and artistic output unrivalled anywhere in the world. Women, though living in an otherwise highly oppressive patriarchal society, were just as significant in this literary environment. In this webinar we explored this extraordinary era of women’s writing with reference to the seminal works of Murasaki Shikibu and Sei Shōnagon: Professor Haruo Shirane posed the question “Why did a woman write the Tale of Genji in the 11th century?”, while Dr Jennifer Guest discussed literary education for women, including how early women writers interacted with Chinese texts, using the Pillow Book as her main example.

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