UBC Japanese Library Resources Blog

The film A Degree of Justice: Japanese Canadian UBC Students of 1942, which was shown during last week’s symposium, is available to view online. Please see the Japanese-Canadian Student Tribute site for more details on the commemorative events.

The webcast of the symposium “Addressing Injustice: UBC’s Response to the Internment of Japanese Canadian Students – Then and Now”, which took place on March 21, 2012 is now available online.

The symposium looked at the removal of 76 Japanese Canadian students attending UBC in 1942.

More information is available through the UBC Equity Office website.

Click here to go directly to the webcast.

Click here for the program poster.

The BC Japan Earthquake Relief fund is offering a special concert on March 11, the anniversary of the Japan disasters. For details check the BC JERF website.

UBC Library will be hosting an exhibition and one-day conference to commemorate the March 11 disasters in Japan. See below and the event page for more details.

Exhibition | February 20 – April 30, 2012
Rare Books and Special Collections, Irving K. Barber Learning Centre
retelling the history of the areas affected by the disasters

Irving K. Barber Learning Centre Foyer
rethinking social media & the use of nuclear power

Asian Library
recovery in Japan and its ties to Canada

3.11 Portrait Project | February 20 – April 30, 2012
Ike’s Café, Irving K. Barber Learning Centre
featuring picture portraits of survivors
sponsored by The Japan Foundation & Shiseido

Conference | Saturday, March 10, 2012
10am – 4pm
Dodson Room, Irving K. Barber Learning Centre
students, faculty, alumni & community members
share their experiences & insight
co-sponsored by UBC Asian Studies Department
e-mail to register: retell-rethink-recover[at]interchange.ubc.ca

University of Toronto Professor Emerita Sonja Arntzen will be speaking this Friday at Asian Centre as part of the Kameyama Lecture series organized by the Asian Studies Department.

“Telling it Slant” Dreams and Religious Meaning in the Sarashina Diary
September 30 (Friday) @ 5:00 p.m.
Room 604, Asian Centre

For more details, check out the pdf here.

After the Quake: Japan Researchers Discuss Japan’s Current Catastrophe and Considerations for Canada
Bruce White, Anthropologist from Doshisha University in Japan joins UBC and Vancouver based panel of Millie Creighton, Kozue Matsumoto, Dada Docot, Larissa Dziubenko, and Greg Masuda to discuss Japan’s earthquake, tsunami and radiation disaster and researching on a fault line.

Date & Time: Tuesday, March 22nd, 11:30 – 1:00 pm
Venue: Anso 134
see poster for details

Award-winning novelist Katherine Govier
will read from and discusses her latest novel The Ghost Brush.

Tuesday, February 22
5:00–6:30 pm
Auditorium, Asia Centre, 1871 West Mall
University of British Columbia

For more details, see the poster (pdf).

Cinema Kabuki is coming to Vancouver. Kabuki Theatre in high definition on the big screen, showings are as follows:

Cineplex Odeon International Village Cinemas, 88 West Pender Street
February 9 (Wednesday), 2011
6:00 pm Triple Lion Dance
7:30 pm Heron Maiden

The event is presented by The Japan Foundation in association with the Consulate General of Japan and TomoeArts. Click here for more details.

From today until October 1 (Friday) Rare Books and Special Collections will be holding a small exhibit featuring a selection of maps and atlases from our Japanese Maps of the Tokugawa Era collection. Rare Books and Special Collections is located on the lower level of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. Please click here for more details. The display is in conjunction with the Japan Studies Association of Canada Conference, which will take place at UBC this week.

Also, I would like to announce that the digitization of the collection is now complete. Although the flat maps in the collection had already been digitized, several scrolls and monographs (mostly atlases) could not receive this treatment in the first phase of the project. Thanks to the financial support of the Asian Studies Department, Rare Books and Special Collections and University Archives have worked over the past year to digitize the many works in the collection, and they are now all viewable online.

Finally, at the beginning of this month we hosted a student intern from Tsukuba University who entered the original script for several titles. Including the original script in the database is an ongoing project, and we hope to be able to provide more Japanese-language functionality in the near future.

Asada Jiro, Atoda Takashi and Mori Eto

Canada Meets Japan: A Conversation of Authors

Monday May 3rd, 7-9:30 p.m.
Asia Pacific Hall, SFU Wosk Centre for Dialogue

Admission: FREE, but registration required

Hosted by David Chariandy, SFU Department of English, Melek Ortabasi, SFU World Literature Program, and Hal Wake, Artistic Director of the Vancouver International Writers Festival.

Featuring Atoda Takashi 阿刀田高, President of PEN Japan, Mori Eto 森絵都, winner of the Naoki Prize for Kaze ni maiagaru biniiru shiito 風に舞いあがるビニールシート　and Asada Jiro 浅田次郎, winner of the Naoki Prize for Mibu gishiden 壬生義士伝. In dialogue with Steven Galloway, author of The Cellist of Sarajevo, Nancy Lee, author of Dead Girls, and Timothy Taylor, author of Story House. With special guests Ayako Sato, Takeaki Hori and PEN Canada spokesperson Douglas Coupland.

Check out the Vancouver International Writers & Readers Festival website, or download a poster for more details.