Japanese Arts & Globalizations

Engaged Critic, Radical Art
2018-03-21 08:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | CA
Engaged Critic, Radical Art: Yoshida Yoshie in Art and Performance.
UCLA symposium in honor of the opening of the Yoshida Yoshie Collection
In commemoration of the donation of the Yoshida Yoshie Collection to UCLA, this symposium addressed the life and work of critic, organizer, artist, and poet Yoshida Yoshie (1929-2016). The daylong symposium introduced the manifold activities of Yoshida while locating his activities within the broader art and performance world in which he worked.
Over some six decades of work, Yoshida was instrumental in engaging, participating, and promoting radical art and performance. Yoshida introduced Maruki Iri and Maruki Toshi’s Hiroshima Panels in the early 1950s, traveling to over 300 locations throughout Japan. As a critic in the 1960s and beyond, Yoshida championed avant-gardes in art, dance, cinema, music and performance–including Hi Red Center, Neo-Dada, butoh practicioners, and the artists of the Yomiuri Indépendant exhibitions. Yoshida supported artists prosecuted for protest, including Akasegawa Genpei and anti-Expo performers.
Yoshida took the lead in supporting conceptual, environmental, and commune-oriented art endeavors, including organizing the first free festival in Japan in 1971. From 1973, he traveled to South America, to São Paolo and Buenos Aires organizing exhibitions. Returning to Japan, he participated in the Artist Union and its artist-led symposia and exhibitions, and from 1977, the Japan Asia Africa Latin America Artist Association, JAALA, with a focus on solidarity with “third world” artists and activists.
The event accompanied an exhibition of works and ephemera from the Yoshida Yoshie Collection, preserving significant portions of Yoshida’s library and archival materials.
The Yoshida Yoshie Collection and this event are thanks to the kind support of Kakuya and Atsushi Yoshida and the Yoshida family, the Charles E. Young Research Library and staff, the Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies, the Japanese Arts and Globalizations Research Group (directed by William Marotti, History), and artist and researcher Yoshiko Shimada.
10:00am Welcome and Introduction. William Marotti, UCLA Department of History.
10:15 The Library and the Collection. Sharon Farb, Associate University Librarian for Special Collections and International Collaborations.
10:30 Biographical and analytical sketch of Yoshida Yoshie. Yoshiko Shimada, Ph.D, artist and researcher.
11:15 Tour of exhibits
12:00 break
Afternoon: extensions/networks
1:00 A photographic introduction to art and performance of the 1960s. Hanaga Mitsutoshi photo presentation by Hanaga Taro.
1:45 The Kodomo no Kuni controversy. Kenji Kajiya, University of Tokyo.
2:30 Yoshida Yoshie and Art and Project. Peter van der Meijden, University of Copenhagen.
3:00 “Living Differently Now– the utopian exhibition in Sweden that Matsuzawa had to join.” Tania Ørum, University of Copenhagen.
3:45 Roundtable: art and performance in the 1960s/early 1970s: experiments, collectives, solidarities.
5:00 Reception

Exposed Bodies: Feminism and Art in Japan
2018-02-26 13:00 - 16:00 | CA
Three generations of feminist artists in Japan, presented by both artists and scholars. Featuring Professor Namiko Kunimoto (The Ohio State University), artist and researcher Dr. Yoshiko Shimada, and from the anonymous collective, Tomorrow Girls Troop, “Midori Ozaki.”
Sponsored by the Japanese Arts and Globalizations research group (jag.ucla.edu), the Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies, and the UCLA Library.

Fifth Annual JAG Works-In-Progress Retreat
2017-05-12 - 2017-05-14 | Lake Arrowhead, CA, United States
Qualifications:
Faculty and Graduate student applicants will be considered from JAG member institutions; participation requests from JAG alumni will also be considered. Prospective JAG institutions are also welcome to apply, though they will have to self-fund (contact William Marotti for details). To be considered, please submit a one-paragraph summary, and a current draft of the paper or chapter to be considered; send them to marotti@history.ucla.edu with “JAG retreat” in the subject line. Please send in your requests by April 5, though early submissions are encouraged, as are short messages of initial interest in advance of the application. Successful applicants will be notified of their status shortly after the deadline.
Accommodations:
Double and single occupancy rooms will be provided courtesy of JAG, along with meals. We also hope to reimburse students for reasonable travel (contact me for details), but will ask for your help in arranging car pools etc. as possible to minimize costs.
Rough Schedule:
People will arrive in the late afternoon of the 12th. We’ll have orientation and dinner that night, and get organized into groups. The next day will be the intensive group sessions, followed by a final morning get-together on the 14th and an optional lunch.
Families/non-participants:
Lake Arrowhead has many facilities and attractions for family members and partners to enjoy while the JAG participants convene, and they are welcome, as always. You would have to pay for their stay (it’s a discounted “non-participant” rate—contact William Marotti for details). Participants can expect to be completely busy apart from meals during the Saturday sessions, but we’ll be done by the morning of the 14th.

Fourth Annual Works In Progress Weekend
2016-06-12 - 2016-06-14 | Lake Arrowhead, CA, United States
We will be hosting our fourth annual Works In Progress weekend at UCLA’s Lake Arrowhead conference facility on June 12-14.
The CFP was sent to JAG members last month. Please contact Bill Marotti if you need a copy. Applications are due by April 5, though early notifications of interest via email is appreciated to facilitate better planning.
This event has proven to be extremely successful as an exercise in intensive engagement and scholarly exchange, and has had substantial benefits for all participants, graduate students and faculty alike. Graduate students in particular will find this an invaluable chance to get helpful, informed, attentive commentary on your work from a variety of perspectives—as indeed will faculty. We once again anticipate having a balanced mix of graduate students and faculty for the event, which will feature intensive discussions of each other’s works. Peers will be primarily responsibility for responding to each other’s papers, but all will be welcome to comment. And as always, the goal will be to create an atmosphere of constructive support and interchange among the groups.

Seminar on the Experimental Critical Theory Program
2016-04-28 08:00 - 17:00 | UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, 90024, United States
Join JAG in sponsoring the visit to UCLA of Kristin Ross and Harry Harootunian. Ross will be giving an open seminar on April 28 in the Experimental Critical Theory program (see http://ect.humnet.ucla.edu/ for further details and registration). Harootunian will be giving a public lecture the same week. Details TBA.

UW-JSPS Joint Symposium, “Socially Engaged Art in Japan.”
2015-11-12 - 2015-11-14 | University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States
The Lighthouses – 3.11 Project ©Tsubasa Kato (all rights reserved). Lighthouse raising at Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, 2011 Photo: Kei Miyajima

Socially Engaged Art in Japan
A UW-JSPS Joint Symposium
November 12-14, 2015
University of Washington, Seattle
The past two decades have seen a surge in practices that cross the boundaries between art and social activism. Nowhere has the social turn been more deeply felt than in Japan, where the art world has seen a massive shift towards socially engaged art and artists increasingly finds a role in rebuilding struggling communities, helping disadvantaged populations, and connecting people with local history and culture. As many have noted, socially engaged art has emerged at a time when social services wither, civic space disappears, and visions of a shared future falter, all trends which register with particular intensity in contemporary Japan. This symposium will explore how to understand the field of socially engaged practice in a global context and how Japan’s experience can inform that understanding.

Keynote addresses by Kitagawa Fram and Sharon Daniel
Artist talk by Tanaka Kōki
Confirmed panelists Kawashima Nobuko, Kuresawa Takemi, Yoshimoto Mitsuhiro, Adrian Favell, Kumakura Sumiko, Fukuzumi Ren, Sasha Su-Ling Welland, Ueda Kanayo, Sumitomo Fumihiko, Makiko Hara, Xiaojin Wu, Reiko Tomii, William Marotti, Mōri Yoshitaka, Tad Hirsch, Igarashi Taro, Takehisa Yu, Miwako Tezuka, and Marilyn Ivy

For full details please visit the website: https://sites.google.com/a/uw.edu/seajapan/home.
This symposium is organized by Justin Jesty.
Generous support has been provided by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, the Simpson Center for the Humanities, the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership, the Japan Faculty in Humanities and Arts, the UW Japan Program, and the UW Department of Asian Languages and Literature.

JAG May 2015 Work in Progress Event
2015-05-22 - 2015-05-24 | Lake Arrowhead, CA, United States
May 22-24, 2015
Lake Arrowhead [call for papers] [event schedule]

JAG's Works In Progress Event
2014-05-23 08:00 - 2014-05-25 17:00 | CA
May 23-25, 2014
Lake Arrowhead
[Call for Papers] | [Event Schedule]

"These Things Here and Now: Japanese Poetry in the Wake of the 2011 Disasters”
2014-04-30 17:00 - 19:00 | California State University, Long Beach, CA, United States
Jeffrey Angles, WMU
April 30, 2014
CSULB
Carl Anatol Center
[link to description]

“Out of Doubt: Japanese Art Post 3/11”
2014-03-13 17:00 - 19:00 | California State University, Long Beach, CA, United States
Gabriel Ritter, Nancy and Tim Hanley Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, Dallas Museum of Art
March 13, 2014
CSULB
Academic Services Bldg. Rm. 384
[link to description]

Commensurable Distinctions: Intercultural Negotiations of Modern and Contemporary Japanese Visual Culture
2014-01-31 08:00 - 2014-02-01 17:00 | UCI – Humanities Gateway, Room 1010, 1030
A Conference of the Japanese Arts and Globalizations (JAG) Group
Organizers: Bert Winther-Tamaki & William Marotti
Dates: January 31-February 1, 2014
Location: University of California, Irvine; All events Humanities Gateway, room 1010 except Second Keynote Lecture in Humanities Gateway, room 1030
While modern Japanese art has often been assessed in terms of the uniqueness of its transformations or revisions of modern Euramerican art, the closeness of its products to transnational ideas and forms has typically been overlooked or regretted. This conference examines the critical role of relationships of convergence, similarity, or identity whether or not these relationships serve to provoke new forms of difference.
“Commensurable distinctions” operate within a globalized concept of art as distinctive visual dimensions generated by a transnational framework (format or genre), one that positions artists (and artworks, styles, movements) in relative measure to some standard presumed to have global reach or authority. Focusing on fluidity, mutations, and interstices as opposed to modes of analysis based on contained national and cultural forms, we hope to examine the compatibility and global passages of transfer and transaction that lead to situated distinctions and complex drifts. This conference will provide another take on the JAG moniker and our shared injunction to consider “Japanese Arts and Globalizations.” We invite considerations of the frameworks operative in, and generative of, the possible identification of distinguishing features of modern Japanese art as commensurate with the distinguishing features of foreign counterparts. This conference aims to forge innovative approaches to the analysis of relationships between visual culture in Japan and other regions.
(Download Flyer)

CONFERENCE SPONSORS:
Art History Department, UCI
Center for Asian Studies, UCI
Dean of Humanities, UCI
East Asian Languages & Literatures, UCI
Friends of Art History (FOAH), UCI
Japanese Arts and Globalizations (JAG)
Music Department, UCI
University of California Institute for Research in the Arts

Adachi Gen, "A Japanese Manga Artist in Occupied Indonesia; Ono Saseo and Modern Painting in East Asia"
2013-03-01 16:00 - 18:00 | Bunche Hall, Room 6275
Presented by Gen Adachi, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Fellow
Co-hosted by the Interdisciplinary Japan Studies Group
In discussions of World War II propaganda in Japan and occupied Indonesia, the cartoon artist, Ono Saseo (1905-1954) is one of the most frequently referenced figures in relation to the increase of racial stereotypes in manga, or cartoon-style drawing. He was in Indonesia from 1942 to 1946 as a propaganda painter. This study challenges this general understanding of Ono and re-examines his work by focusing on the following three ways that we may understand the diversity of his production. First, Ono was not limited to militaristic messages in his work, but rather portrayed styles of the period with humor and fancy, inspired in part by jazz, Western films, and fashion. Second, Ono continued to produce erotic images of women even during the war, under the pretense of providing comfort for soldiers; almost all of these women were depicted as vamps who tempted or threatened men. Third, in Indonesia, he was interested in local art and established relationships with local Indonesian artists – something quite unusual at the time. There was mutual influence, but he never depicted the dark side of the war. These three points help reveal the paradoxical motives and multiple-significance of Ono’s manga works in the wartime period.
—
Gen Adachi is an art historian who has written on modern Japanese avant-garde art and manga including “Avant-garde Debates Over Japanese Tradition in the 1950’s with a Focus on the Role of Isamu Noguchi,” which was published in S. Inaga (ed.). Artistic Vagabondage and New Utopian Projects, (Kyoto: International Research Center for Japanese Studies, 2011). He is currently a Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship for Young Scientists of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (2010-2013) and is an adjunct lecturer at Joshibi University of Art and Design and other universities.

JAG affiliate event: Media Histories/ Media Theories and East Asia UC Berkeley, February 7-8
2013-02-07 08:00 - 2013-02-08 17:00 | UC Berkeley
The Media Histories / Media Theories & East Asia conference will bring together prominent and emerging scholars to discuss Japanese and East Asian cross-cultural developments in media theory and culture from the early twentieth century to the present. The symposium will read East Asian film and visual arts as part of a changing media landscape in relation to commercial cinema, television, and intermedia arts as well as political, economic and cultural transformations. The conference topics include: the relation between urban space and the arts in cultural politics; reading the problems of film audience and reception; the important (and neglected) role of East Asian film and media theory and critical writings; East Asian arts movements in transnational perspective; film and visual art as a mediator of cultural/political history; avant-garde artist networks, commercial culture, and architectural transformation. The symposium aims to foster transnational and local scholarly perspectives on East Asian arts and media theory in the context of recent cross-disciplinary arguments in film and media studies.
In February 2013, UC Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archive will host “Chronicles of Inferno: Japan’s Art Theater Guild,”a retrospective of the films of Art Theatre Guild (ATG), Tokyo’s center of cinematic innovation from 1961-1988. This conference takes this opportunity, in conjunction with this film series and other events concerning Japanese arts in the 1960s, to bring together five invited media theorists from Japan, the prominent film director Hani Susumu from ATG, and 37 international scholars to discuss East Asian and Japanese cross-cultural developments in media theory and culture from the early twentieth century to the present.
For more information click here

"Japanese Arts and Globalizations," April 7, 2012, Royce Hall 314, UCLA Part of the “Rethinking the Space and Place of Japan” Conference*
2012-04-07 09:00 - 19:00 | Royce Hall, 10745 Dickson Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
9-10 Coffee and Check-in

9:50
Welcoming Remarks – William Marotti, UCLA
10-12
Panel One: Authenticity is Elsewhere
Bert Winther-Tamaki, UCI, “Remediation: The Dependence of Modern Asian Ink Painting on New Media”
Christine Spiker, UCI, “Exploring the Real Hokkaido: A.H. Savage Landor’s Travel Illustrations, 1893″
Michael Raine, UCB, “The filmmaker who is most like an artist: Ozu Yasujiro & the Double Bind of Situated Modernity”
Timothy Unverzagt Goddard, ” Teito Tokyo and the Cosmopolitan Imagination”
12-1:00
LUNCH, Royce 314
1:00-3:00
Panel Two: Politics is Here
Margherita Long, UCR, “Nausicaa Now More Than Ever”
Samantha Close, UCI, “Citizens of the Market”
Anne McKnight, UCLA, “Japanese Culture in/and the Study of Food Systems”
Ken Shima, UCLA, “Territorializing Journalistic Space: Miyatake Gaikotsu, Comedic Realism, & Printing the Concrete”
3:00-3:30 Coffee
3:30-4:15 Breakout Panels
4:15-5:00 Reconvening for Group Reports, Discussion
5:00-6:30
Roundtable: Assessing Japanese Arts and Globalizations: a report on the past and future of the multi-campus research group
William Marotti, UCLA
Miriam Wattles, UCSB
Marguerita Long, UCR
Bert Winther-Tamaki, UCI
Jordan Yamaji Smith, Roger Williams University, JAG Alumnus
Noriko Aso, UCSC
*Our gratitude for the support from the Nikkei Bruins and the Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies

JAG November 2011 Affiliated Event
2011-11-21 16:00 - 17:00 | UC Irvine Campus

JAG May 2011 Event
2011-05-01 08:00 - 17:00 | CA
Between Experiment, Form, and Culturalism
May 20-21, 2011
UCLA Campus [link to description]

JAG December 2010 Weekend Symposium
2010-12-03 08:00 - 2010-12-05 17:00 | CA
Performing Politics in Japan and Modern East Asia
December 3-5, 2010
UCLA Campus [link to description]
[link to Group A report]
[link to Group B report]
[link to Group C report]
[link to Group D report]

JAG May Weekend Symposium 2010
2010-05-01 08:00 - 17:00 | CA
Theories of Violence
May 14-16, 2010
UC Riverside [link to description]
____________________________

JAG May Weekend Symposium 2009
2009-05-15 08:00 - 2009-05-17 17:00 | CA
Collapsing Spaces: The Arts in the Premodern World
May 15-17, 2009
UC Berkeley [link to description]

[link to report]

International Symposium 2008
2008-11-22 08:00 - 2008-11-23 17:00 | CA
International Symposium 2008
“Count 10 Before You Say Asia”
November 22-23, 2008
Japan Foundation
Tokyo, Japan
*JAG sponsored travel awarded to Namiko Kunimoto (UC Berkeley) and Ken Yoshida (UC Irvine)
[link to Namiko Kunimoto’s report]
[link to Ken Yoshida’s report]

Fall Retreat 2008
2008-10-24 08:00 - 2008-10-26 17:00 | CA
JAG Works In Progress
October 24-26, 2008
UCLA Conference Center, Lake Arrowhead [link to schedule] [link to abstracts] [link to photos]
