The UBC Meiji at 150 Committee is delighted to announce an exciting lineup of events this Spring continuing our commemoration of the 150th anniversary of Japan’s 1868 Meiji Restoration.
We look forward to seeing everybody at the stimulating events by prominent scholars of Japanese art, history, literature, and culture listed below:
1/31 – Workshop: “Photography・Modernity・Japan―写真・モダニティ・日本” (registration required)
– 11:00 AM-5:00 PM
– MOA
Wednesday, January 31, 2018
Museum of Anthropology
11:00 AM-5:00 PM
The history of photography in Japan is coterminous with that of modernity. It was during the Meiji period that photography quickly developed into one of the most important media for artistic expression and documentation in Japan. Yet as a medium, photography brings with it its own set of questions. What is a photograph, and how does it signify? What is photography’s relationship to modern notions of history? What is the nature of photographic “evidence”? Does a renewed attention to photography as a medium enable a different way to think of modernity? In addressing these questions, this workshop seeks to generate a space for the discussion of methodological questions, the articulation of doubts, and provocations.
Registration Required!
In this episode, Dr. Millie Creighton (UBC) revisits the Meiji Period through the lens of tourism, exploring the way the Restoration is repackaged and resold at local tourist sites from Kagoshima to Kochi today. We discuss the popularity of “historical theme parks” such as Meiji Village and Nikko Edo Village, the UNESCO designation of Meiji-era industrial sites, and the recent boom in TV dramatizations of the Meiji and Showa periods.
In this Episode, Dr. Naoko Kato (UBC) catalogues the impact of the Meiji Period on Sino-Japanese relations through the person of Uchiyama Kanzo and the Uchiyama bookstore in Shanghai. We also discuss the numerous Japan-related resources located at the UBC library and the Meiji at 150 Digital Teaching Resource.
In this episode, Dr. Eiji Okawa (University of Victoria) documents how the Meiji Restoration impacted the epistemology of history in Japan and Japanese overseas migration in the late 19th-early 20th centuries. We discuss ideas of “Japanese-ness” in premodern Japan and find continuities with conceptualizations of identity, language, and group among Japanese diasporic communities in British Columbia in the face of systemic racism and violence.
In this episode, Dr. Gideon Fujiwara (Lethbridge) positions the Meiji Restoration in the comparative context of a global “Age of Revolution.” We discuss the “revolutionary” aspects of the Restoration, including popular involvement, political upheaval, and cultural change during the Meiji Period, touching on the political significance of the Utakai Hajime poetry-reading ceremony and global approaches to the Restoration in the classroom.
In this episode, Dr. Sharalyn Orbaugh (UBC) sheds light on the story of Nogi Shizuko and her gruesome suicide alongside husband Nogi Maresuke on the day of the Meiji Emperor’s funeral in 1912. Noting the relative silence on Shizuko’s role in the story, we discuss the absence of Shizuko as a figure in anti-war or women’s movements in the prewar period, her reappearance in the postwar, and the position of women more broadly in Japanese wartime ideology.
In this episode, Dr. David Howell (Harvard University) situates the Meiji Restoration as one moment in Japan’s longer nineteenth century of social, cultural, and political transformations. We consider the “spirit of 1868” that informed many of the early Meiji state’s reforms, along with their impacts on people in different areas of Japan, including the Ainu population of Hokkaido.
In this episode, Dr. Ignacio Adriasola (UBC) paints a picture of how “modern Japanese art” was first defined during the Meiji Period. We discuss the relationship between artists and the Meiji state, the popularity of Japonisme in Western Europe, and the impacts of Japanese art and artists on Western artists and artistic practices.
Faculty of Art