Commoning the City: The Townscape Councils of Kyoto

The burgeoning social scientific debate about urban commons rarely focuses on the visual aspects of public space, the most elementary shared good in cities. In the former Japanese capital of Kyoto, however, the townscape has been intensely debated over the last decades. Reacting to widespread discontent with the previous laissez-faire policy, the city now boasts one of the strictest building codes of the nation.

Beyond "trans-border": Translation and Difference in Contemporary Japanese Literature.

In 1988, the Japan Foundation expressed concerns that as a symptom of declining interest in Japan among American readers, sales of Japanese literature in translation were falling. Thirty years later, following the reintroduction of the National Book Awards for Translated Literature in 2018, two titles originally published in Japanese (The Emissary and Tokyo Ueno Station) received the top prize while a third (The Memory Police) reached the shortlist.

Going Logo: What to Expect of Japan's G7 Presidency

In 2023 Japan will assume the presidency of the Group of 7 (G7) and host the forty-ninth summit of this informal gathering of leaders in May. This talk will look ahead and outline what to expect of Japan's presidency within the historical context of its participation in the G7 since 1975. It will also focus on an overlooked aspect of global summitry - logos. Global summitry does not simply revolve around discussions across the summit table or resulting communiqués.

Reforming Capitalism, Going Digital and Going Green: Does Japan Hold Answers?

-----What is the event?-----
Join us for the Nissan Institute's newest conference on the 17th and 18th of February at the Säid Business School. The event brings together great minds from across business, government, and academia to discuss what we can learn from Japan to help us navigate our future. Two days of free talks, networking opportunities (and even free Sake and Sushi!).

----What is the conference about?-----

Meaningful, but lacking in depth? Critical attitudes to Sinitic material in the Poetry Contest in Six Hundred Rounds

This paper will present conclusions from research investigating the early mediaeval poetry competition, Roppyakuban uta’awase (‘Poetry Contest in 600 Rounds’, 1193-94) and the conflicting critical attitudes to material of Chinese origin expressed by the judge, Fujiwara no Shunzei (1114-1204), and one of the participants, the monk Kenshō (1130?-1209?), who composed an extensive Chinjō (‘Appeal’) against Shunzei’s criticisms of his work.

A Defeated Samurai of Japan’s Civil War and the Transnational Re-imagination of Civilisation in the Late Nineteenth-Century United States

In contrast with the vast scholarship on the American Civil War (1861–5), very limited attention has been paid to Japan’s Boshin Civil War (1868–9), let alone its losers. Defeated samurai – particularly those who refused to follow the ideology of the victorious Meiji state (1868–1912) – have been largely forgotten. One of such defeated samurai intellectual, Arai Ōsui (1846–1922), joined a mixed-race religious agricultural community in late nineteenth-century rural America.

Buddhism and Marginality in Translation among Ambedkarites in East Asia

As Ambedkarite Buddhists have increasingly migrate outside India in the past thirty years, they interact with other Buddhist traditions and socio-political contexts that prompt new considerations of Buddhism and marginality. Ambedkar’s rationalist vision of Buddhism focused on social transformation, explicitly responding to caste-based discrimination in modern India. Ambedkarite Buddhists carry on this legacy while exploring further what Buddhism means to them.
Subscribe to

QS WORLD RANKINGS FOR POLITICS & INT’L STUDIES: 2

BEST UK UNIVERSITIES FOR POLITICS – THE GUARDIAN: 1

THE WORLD UNIVERSITY RANKINGS FOR POLITICS AND INT’L STUDIES: 1 IN THE UK