Faculty of Art
Miss any Meiji at 150 Lectures? You can watch video of lectures by David Howell, Gideon Fujiwara, Marcia Yonemoto, and Shunya Yoshimi on our Homepage! Or listen to the lecture audio on the Meiji at 150 Podcast!
Meiji at 150 Student Podcast
In the Meiji at 150 Student Podcast, UBC students discuss aspects of Japanese culture they research in class. Students share their research findings, thoughts, and passion for Japanese anime, manga, food, music, literature, film, sports, and other facets of Japanese society and popular culture. Check out the first two episodes on Karōshi (working to death) and Yakyū (Baseball) at the bottom of the page here.
TOMORROW: Built Japan Workshop and Keynote Lecture
Meiji at 150 Workshop: “Built Japan: Environment, City, Empire”
Friday, February 9-Saturday, February 10
CK Choi Building, Room 351
Join us tomorrow for the “Built Japan: Environment, City, and Empire Workshop” hosted by the Centre for Japanese Research, Department of History, and Department of Asian Studies.
This provides the first extended application of the spatial history methodology to the study of modern Japanese history. Scholars of Japanese urbanism, architecture, and geography will gather in February 2018 to survey how attention to the built forms and spaces of the Japanese empire – its architecture, materials, and natural and built environments – can lead to new historical understandings.
Contact convenor Tristan Grunow for more information or if you would like to attend the workshop.
The Keynote Lecture for the workshop will be delivered by Dr. Shunya Yoshimi (University of Tokyo). Details below:
Image credit: View of Ginza Main Street, looking north towards 3-chōme and 4-chōme, circa 1895, from atop the Hattori Clock Tower. Note the Kyōya Clock Co. Ginza clock tower and the Iwaya Shōkai tobacco store on the right. Image courtesy the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, James Davidson collection, Rooftop view of city (a033342).
THURSDAY: History Colloquium: Illumination and its Discontents: Electricity Theft and the Political Economy of Japanese Energy” by Dr. Ian Miller
THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED
Thursday, February 8, 2018
12:30-2:00 PM
Buchanan Tower, 1197
How did the world’s third-largest economy, Japan, become addicted to fossil fuels? The first non-Western nation to industrialize—a process driven by calories from coal and calories from bodies—the country now imports 97% of its primary energy and is home to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, site of three partial core melts. This talk takes us back to the dawn of the energy-intensive culture that we now call “modernity,” tracing the emergence of new attitudes towards electrical power and tracking the development of a political economy that has colonized the climate. Our focus will be tight: the streets of Yokohama and Tokyo at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Meiji at 150 Podcast Episode 15 Available Now!
In this episode, Dr. Yonemoto stresses the continuities between the early modern and Meiji Periods, resituating the Meiji Restoration and the Meiji Charter Oath in particular as products of early modern concerns and conditions. With this in mind, we evaluate the historical usefulness of categories like “modern” and “early modern” in the Japanese context, date the beginning of Japanese “early modernity,” and discuss insights from Meiji-era diarists.
Workshop & Public Keynote: “Built Japan: Environment, City, Empire”
The Meiji at 150 Committee proudly presents the workshop “Built Japan: Environment, City, Empire” taking place on Friday-Saturday, February 9-10, 2018 at UBC. For more details, click here.
A public keynote address will be delivered on Friday, 2/9 at 4:00 PM by Dr. Shunya Yoshimi (University of Tokyo, Harvard University), and entitled “Scales of History: Resonant Vibration between Family History and Global History.” For more details, click here.
For more information and a link to pre-circulated papers, contact convenor Tristan Grunow.
This event is part of the ongoing UBC Meiji at 150 Project organized and hosted by Centre for Japanese Research, Department of History, and Department of Asian Studies with the generous support of the Consulate-General of Japan in Vancouver, the Japan Foundation, and the UBC Faculty of Arts to commemorate the 150th Anniversary of Japan’s 1868 Meiji Restoration. For more details and a complete list of Meiji at 150 events, click here.
Meiji at 150 Podcast Episode 14 Available Now!
In this episode, Dr. David Anderson (UBC) appraises historical memory in Japan and the reactions of visitors to Japanese history museums, particularly of the Shōwa Period. We discuss the interplay of museum visitor and curator in museum exhibitions, social roots of the recent nostalgia for the Showa Period, and the interrelationship of historical narrative, cultural production, and popular memory.