UBC Japanese Library Resources Blog

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.

Print by Toyohara Kunichika (Private Collection)

We are currently hosting an exhibition entitled “Kabuki in Print” as part of our 50th Anniversary celebrations. The exhibition is presented by the Canadian Society for the Asian Arts and is in anticipation of the TomoeArts’ production of “Odori: The World of Kabuki Dance”, which will be performed this weekend (April 10 & 11) at UBC’s Frederic Wood Theatre. Included in the exhibition are woodblock prints from private collections, as well as books from the UBC Library collection. Highlights include several original Japanese woodblock prints from the 18th to 20th centuries by popular artists Utagawa Toyokuni (1769–1825), Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797–1861), and Toyohara Kunichika (1835–1900).

The Asia Voilà festivities will also be taking place on April 10, so please drop by the library and enjoy all the activities taking place 12-4pm at the Asian Centre, the Nitobe Gardens and the C.K. Choi Building.

Today the Emperor and Empress of Japan visited UBC Asian Centre, and we had the opportunity to show them three items from UBC Library’s collection. I have listed the works below, for those who are interested.

Ise monogatari utakaruta, a set of late-Edo uta-garuta (poem cards) that we acquired for the Asian Library just this year.

The following two maps, both from Rare Books and Special Collections’ Japanese Maps of the Tokugawa Era collection.

Bankoku Sozu (萬國総図), part a and part b

Kanagawa ko oezu (神奈川港大絵図)

Ise Monogatari Utakaruta

Maps

TomoeArts will be staging a performance entitled Ten Nights of Dream, based on the 1908 Natsume Sôseki work (夢十夜). The show will feature performer and UBC instructor Colleen Lanki, and the May 22 event will include a talk on Natsume Sôseki by UBC Asian Studies Professor Sharalyn Orbaugh.

Event details:
May 21, 22 & 23
8:30pm (note: Dr. Orbaugh’s lecture @ 7pm, Fri May 22)
Centre A, 2 West Hastings Street, Vancouver

For more on the events, including ticketing information, check out the TomoeArts performances page.

Featuring Alcvin Takegawa Ramos on biwa and shakuhachi and Satomi Saeki on koto
With commentary by Dr. Jan Walls, Professor Emeritus, SFU
Saturday, October 25, 2008 at 2:00 pm
at the National Nikkei Heritage Centre, Ellipse Lobby

Alcvin Takegawa Ramos and Satomi Saeki will offer moving new musical interpretations of the classic poetry of The Tale of Genji. Recitations of selected poems from the tale in both English and the original Japanese will provide links between their renderings of the themes of love, the seasons, solitude, and impermanence perfectly suited to the haunting sounds of shakuhachi, biwa, and koto.

For more information about this event, check the event poster.

Lecture by UBC Asian Studies Professor Joshua Mostow
Sunday, October 19, 2008 at 2:00 pm
at the Royal Bank Cinema, Chan Centre for Performing Arts, UBC
Followed by a special reception with the speaker.

This talk will explore how women were exposed to the Tale of Genji in the early modern period, especially through manuals of feminine etiquette. It will trace how this continued into the 20th century, despite the radical changes that transformed Japan, and the place of Genji in such pop culture genres as manga and anime.

Professor Mostow is an internationally acclaimed specialist of classical Japanese literature and visual culture, with a particular focus on the interplay of text and image in pre-modern Japan.

For more information about this event, check the event poster.