Japan’s craft industries have frequently been cited as one of the main cultural domains affected by the ageing and shrinking population. Adopting new technologies or marketing strategies has shown attempts to maintain them. However, the transformation of community values has gotten less attention. This presentation examines the resilience of the Tamba pottery industry in Hyogo Prefecture by looking at the potters’ collective re-evaluation of their internal social dynamics.

This year’s Black History Month Lecture, ‘Ann Pratt, Mary Seacole, and Questioning British History’, will be delivered by Dr Christienna Fryar, writer and independent historian of Britain and the Caribbean. This lecture tells the story of two mixed-race Jamaican women, one of whom is widely considered an important figure within Black British history while the other is barely known, and questions the fraught relationship between British history and Black British history.

Why do rising powers sometimes challenge an international order that enables their growth, and at other times support an order that constrains them? Based on a recently published book, Ascending Order: Rising Powers and the Politics of Status in International Institutions (Cambridge University Press), this talk will offer the first comprehensive study of conflict and cooperation as new powers join the global arena. International institutions shape the choices of rising states as they pursue equal status with established powers.

After nearly 70 years of distant relations, ties between NATO and Japan are flourishing. Over the past year alone, an unpreceded level of integration and planned commitment has taken place with the adoption of a number of important initiatives, including high-level political dialogues, joint military training, and cooperation in science, technology, and cyber security. This seminar considers the drivers and objectives of the institutionalization of NATO-Japan relations and their implications for broader global security in both the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific.

Japan’s government posits that its 2022 three national security documents are at the same time transformational and yet maintain overall continuity in military and security policy. This talk through investigating several pivotal aspects of the defence reforms weighs the arguments for essential continuity versus step change. It concludes that the three documents fundamentally change Japan’s exclusively defence-oriented policy and the US-Japan alliance division of labour, further accelerate Japan’s radical military trajectory, and pose important implications for regional security.

Corporeal Mime is a theatrical art based on the expressive power of the body. Born in early 20th century France it is now practised across the globe - including Japan. In this seminar, the directors of Japan-based Tarinainanika Theatre Company will share with you the story of this globe-trotting art. You will experience for yourself its startling but intuitive corporeal grammar. And together we will flesh out the case for a new departure in transnational understanding, based on the universal language of the body.

The medieval period (11-16c) in Japan was a moment of great creativity in the religious and political sphere. Shaped by Tantric Buddhism, new notions of attainment emerged, articulated through distinctive practices and unconventional visual forms. This talk re-reads a curious portrait of Go-Daigo Tenno in light of an influential ritual of Tantric consecration that was constructed anew in the medieval period.