Donald Keene Center

See the complete schedule for this event.

* Reservations are required. RSVP by February 27th by email
( donald-keene-center@columbia.edu ) or by fax (212-854-4019).

This sensational tale of one translator's demise has become the stuff of legend in the annals of Meiji literary history. While it is common knowledge that comedy is among the first things to get lost in translation, how is it that the (mis)translation of a piece of comic literature could meet with such dire consequences? This presentation will attempt to shed light on this question by considering the Hara-Twain episode as emblematic of the often tortured relationship between literary translation and the concept of literary humor – more broadly, between the rush to attain new knowledge and the propensity for literary laughter – in the Meiji era.

* Reservations are required. RSVP by April 15th by email ( dcc2119@columbia.edu ) or by fax (212-854-4019).

See more about this event here.

The recipient of the 2008-2009 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature is Dr. Dennis Washburn of Dartmouth College, who will be honored for his skilled translation of The Temple of the Wild Geese and Bamboo Dolls of Echizen, by Tsutomu Mizukami.

The recipient of the Donald Keene Center Special Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature is Dr. Peter McMillan of Kyorin University. Dr. McMillan is being honored for his superb translation of the classical poetry anthology One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each.

* Reservations are required. RSVP by April 17th by email ( dcc2119@columbia.edu ) or by fax (212-854-4019).

Film still from PU-SAN 1953 with permission from Toho Co., Ltd. All rights reserved.

As Japan emerged from the catastrophic wreckage of WWII, many film directors turned to the bleak realities of the postwar to inspire their movies, and audiences flocked to newly-built theaters, hungry for entertainment that spoke to their privations. Ironically, through these stories of poverty, orphaned children, political turmoil and corruption, filmmakers ushered in Japan's golden age of film. Working with a stylish palette of black humor, irony and compassion, Japanese postwar movies-some of the best of which are featured in this series-unflinchingly stared down a ruined nation and championed the unlikely heroes struggling to resurrect it.

Children of the Beehive (SHIMIZU Hiroshi, 1948)

Tuesday, February 26
6:00 - 8:00PM
Areldge Cinema, Lerner Hall
Alfred Lerner Hall is located at 2920 Broadway (at W. 115th St). Please go to http://www.columbia.edu/about_columbia/map/lerner.html for a concept map.
NO RSVP is necessary for Columbia ID holders. For guests to Columbia, please RSVP to outoftheashes_weai@hotmail.com by February 24 so that we may add your name to the front desk check-in list.

Battles Without Honor and Humanity (FUKASAKU Kinji, 1973)

Tuesday, March 11, 2008, 6-8 PM
Davis Auditorium, Schapiro Center, 530 W. 120th St. between Broadway and Columbus.
No RSVP necessary.

Doctor's Day Off (SHIBUYA Minoru, 1952)

Monday, March 31, 2008, 6-8 PM
Arledge Cinema, Lerner Hall, 2920 Broadway (at W. 115th St).
NO RSVP is necessary for Columbia ID holders. For guests to Columbia, please RSVP to outoftheashes_weai@hotmail.com

Pu San (ICHIKAWA Kon, 1953)

Tuesday, April 8, 2008, 6-8 PM
Arledge Cinema, Lerner Hall, 2920 Broadway (at W. 115th St).
NO RSVP is necessary for Columbia ID holders. For guests to Columbia, please RSVP to outoftheashes_weai@hotmail.com

Black River (KOBAYASHI Masaki, 1957)

Tuesday, April 15, 2008, 6-9 PM (to be followed by panel discussion)
Arledge Cinema, Lerner Hall, 2920 Broadway (at W. 115th St).
NO RSVP is necessary for Columbia ID holders. For guests to Columbia, please RSVP to outoftheashes_weai@hotmail.com .

Donald Keene Center participates in Weatherhead East Asian Institute's 60th Anniversary Event in Tokyo, Japan

On June 3, 2009, the Donald Keene Center was pleased to take part in a very special event in Tokyo. The day-long symposium, co-sponsored with other Columbia organizations, was entitled "Columbia and Japan: A Celebration of the 60th Anniversary of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute." The event drew approximately 200 participants from an array of backgrounds, including Columbia University alumni, politicians, students, and businesspersons. It highlighted the quality and depth of East Asian scholarship at Columbia University and its significant influence on the region and beyond. Similar events were also held in Beijing and Seoul.

At the Tokyo event, the Keene Center took charge of the morning program. One of the highlights was the presentation of the Third Annual Donald Keene Prize for the Promotion of Japanese Culture, which recognizes individuals and organizations that have made significant contributions toward expanding awareness of Japanese culture in the world at large. Mr. Seiji Tsutsumi accepted the award on behalf of one of Japan’s most innovative private-sector foundations, the Saison Foundation, which focuses on promoting the performance arts. Prof. Donald Keene sent a special video message to the Saison Foundation, congratulating it on decades of "bridging the gap between Japan and the rest of the world."

The award ceremony was followed by a panel entitled "Japan and Columbia: A Bridge to the Future." Audience members listened attentively as prominent cultural figures such as the novelist and critic Shimada Masahiko and Satô Takanobu, fourth-generation president of the historic publishing house Shinchôsha, debated the complexities of cultural production and intellectual exchange across geographic borders, linguistic boundaries, and difference of genre and medium. Another special guest was Dr. John Carpenter, Associate Professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), who flew in from London expressly to attend the panel. Dr. Carpenter was the first recipient of a Shinchô Graduate Fellowship.

Hosting the morning session gave the Donald Keene Center an opportunity to focus on achievements by notable individuals and organizations that have significantly contributed to the promotion of Japanese culture in areas such as literature and the arts. The session also provided a forum to reflect on the past and present of the Columbia-Japan relationship and explore new possibilities for future partnership.

This lecture will examine the role of sound and music in the film's representation of the urban fabric of Yokohama and the resulting use of cinema as a means of historical preservation of sounds (or sonic environments). As my analysis draws to a close, I will pay special attention to the radio broadcast of Schubert's music that marks the appearance of the film's anti-hero (the kidnapper). Far from being merely a static pointer, a cerebral, gratuitous musical reference, the broadcast is inextricably tied to the presentation of the character. While paving the way for a different interpretation of the film, my analysis of this crucial passage will also indicate in what ways the study of music and sound as an element of setting may contribute to a new understanding of the role of symbols in the context of narratives.

Lecturer information: Giorgio Biancorosso grew up in Italy and was educated in the UK and the US. After obtaining a Ph.D. in Musicology at Princeton University, in 2001-2003 he was a Mellon Fellow at the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at Columbia University. He is now an Assistant Professor in Music and a Member of the Film Culture Project at The University of Hong Kong, where he teaches courses in Music History, Aesthetics, and Film Theory and Criticism. Recent publications include: "Ludwig's Wagner and Visconti's Ludwig," in Wagner and Cinema, (Indiana University Press); "The Harpist in the Closet: Film Music as Epistemological Joke," in Music and the Moving Image 2 (3); and the essay "Sound" in The Routledge Companion to Film and Philosophy. Biancorosso is completing a book called Musical Aesthetics through Cinema, to be published by Oxford University Press in 2010. He is also active as a journalist and writes monthly columns on the arts in China and the Asia Pacific for the Hong Kong Magazine Muse. In the Spring of 2010, Biancorosso will be Visiting Professor in Music and Film Studies at National Taiwan University (NTU), Taipei.

Co-Sponsored by the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Department of Music.

Lecturer information: Serk-Bae Suh is currently an Assistant Professor in the East Asian Languages and Literature Department at the University of California, Irvine. His research interests include modern Korean and Japanese literature, modern Korean and Japanese intellectual history, and colonial and postcolonial studies. His current research examines the role of translation in shaping attitudes toward nationalism and colonialism in Korean and Japanese intellectual discourse from the 1910s through the 1960s.

Sponsored by the Center for Korean Research.

Lecturer information: Mimi Hall Yiengpruksawan received her Ph.D. in Japanese Art from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1988. She has taught at Yale University since 1990. In her work Yiengpruksawan focuses on Buddhist art and iconography with an emphasis on political and social perspectives in the analysis of imagery and ritual. She is currently completing a series of books that examine the Buddhist cultural productions of early Kyoto from a revisionist perspective grounded in primary records and material evidence. Since the early 1990s Yiengpruksawan has also maintained a research and teaching commitment to modern Asian art.

Lecturer information: Christina Laffin is an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia whose research focuses on medieval travel diaries and the contexts for their production. She is presently completing a manuscript tentatively entitled "Rewriting Medieval Women: Politics, Personality, and Literary Production in the Life of Nun Abutsu." Past contributions include The Noh Ominameshi: A Flower Viewed from Many Directions (Co-editor, 2003), and Gender and Japanese History (Managing Editor, 2 vols.). She is a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Fellow at the University of Tokyo Historiographical Institute through June 2011.

Sponsored by the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures.
Supported by the Japan Foundation.

Lecturer information: Seiichi Makino is a Professor of Japanese and Linguistics and serves as the Director of the Japanese Language Program at Princeton University, as well as the Director of the Japanese Language Program at Princeton University. He is also the Academic Director of the Summer M.A. Program in Japanese Language Pedagogy at Columbia University. Professor Makino is the author or co-author of numerous books, dictionaries, and articles, including Aspects of Linguistics: In Honor of Noriko Akatsuka (edited with S. Kuno and S. Strauss, 2007) and A Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar (with M. Tsutsui, 2008). His current research interests include the cognitive linguistics inquiry intoof metaphors, and shift phenomena of tense, formality, numbers, and grammatical persons (i.e., the 1st person "I", the 2nd person "you", and the 3rd person "he"). He is the former President of the Association of Teachers of Japanese.

This lecture is offered as the Fifth Shirato Lecture on Japanese Language.
Supported by the Japan Foundation.

 
Lecturer information: Gustav Heldt is Associate Professor of Japanese Literature at the University of Virginia, specializing in the poetry and cultural history of early and medieval Japan. He received his Ph.D. in Japanese Literature from Columbia University in 2000. His recent publications include "Writing Like a Man: Poetic Literacy, Textual Property, and Gender in the Tosa Diary," Journal of Asian Studies (2005), and "Between Followers and Friends: Male Homosocial Desire in Heian Court Poetry," forthcoming in the U.S.-Japan Women's Journal.

Supported by the Japan Foundation.

Lecturer information: Andrea Arai teaches in the Jackson School of International Studies Japan Studies Program at the University of Washington. She is completing an edited volume, entitled Global Futures in East Asia, with Ann Anagnost, and is the author of one of its chapters, "Notes to the Heart: Learning to 'Love Your Country' in Neoliberal Japan." Professor Arai is also finishing a book manuscript, provisionally titled Recessionary Sensibilities, on the new effects of time and value in the economic downturn from the 1990s and the reshaping of realities and representations of Japan and its youth amid restructurings of education and labor. Her recent publications include "The Neoliberal Subject of Lack and Potential: Developing the 'Frontier Within' and Creating a Reserve Army of Labor in Japan" (2005), and "The 'Wild Child' of 1990s Japan," in the book Japan After Japan: Social and Cultural Life from the Recessionary 1990s to the Present (2006).

Co-Sponsored by the

Supported by the Japan Foundation.