Category: Event

Our long-awaited Gagaku Critical Interventions Lab is going virtual!

“Gagaku: Cultural Capital, Cultural Heritage, and Cultural Identity” will discuss Gagaku (the ceremonial music of the imperial court and the main Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines in Japan) as “cultural capital” in its intellectual, political, and economic implications, as well as its transnational ramifications, for the definition of cultural heritage and the formation of cultural identity in Japan from the Edo period until today.

This Critical Interventions Lab gathers international scholars and performers engaged in cutting-edge research on the cultural history of Gagaku, with special focus on the Edo period and the modern era. Languages of the presentations and discussions are English and Japanese.

We have created an online platform that includes video presentations, texts, videos of performances, and live workshops and discussions, in the hope that this material will become an educational resource to learn about Gagaku in its various aspects.

Check out our participants, program, and resources here: http://gagaku.eastasian.ucsb.edu

This Critical Interventions Lab is organized by Fabio Rambelli (International Shinto Foundation Endowed Chair in Shinto Studies) as part of “Japanese Culture En Route: Transnational Currents and Connections in Japanese Performing Traditions” funded by a Japan Foundation Institutional Project Support grant (Ref. No. 10121178).

Join our Center for Taiwan Studies for a Taiwan Talk with historian Paul D. Barclay (Lafayette College) entitled “Rethinking Imperial Wartime: Anti-Colonial Insurgency in Taiwan as Japanese Military History”!

Barclay considers so-called “small wars” against Taiwanese anti-colonial armed forces as neglected episodes in modern Japanese military history. He will discuss the records of the Bureau of Merit and Awards (shōkunkyoku) to understand how brutal asymmetrical campaigns throughout the empire were branded as exercises in national defense. In Taiwan, the Government General’s system of awards and bonuses compensated Japan’s Taiwanese allies at lower rates than their Japanese comrades-in-arms. The military award system is considered as both an inclusionary and exclusionary device in the making of imperial Japan’s multi-ethnic empire.

Date: Tuesday, April 20th, 2021
Time: 4-5:30 PM PST
Zoom link:http://bit.ly/TaiwanTalks

Paul D. Barclay is Professor and Head of the History Department at Lafayette College in Easton, PA. He is the general editor of the East Asia Image Collection and author of Outcasts of Empire: Japanese Rule on Taiwan’s “Savage Border” 1874-1945 (University of California Press, 2018). He is currently researching Japanese military/police campaigns in Korea, China, Taiwan and the Societ Union from 1894 to 1934 for a project called “Imperial Japan’s Forever Wars.”

Join us for the first event in the Center for Taiwan Studies three-part panel series Taiwan Makes History on “The Gender of Empire,” guest directed and moderated by Kirsten Ziomek (Adelphi University)! 

We will welcome historians Fang Yu Hu (University of Tennessee at Chattanooga), Tadashi Ishikawa (University of Central Florida), and Sayaka Chatani (National University of Singapore) to discuss how the lens of gender can change our understanding of the Taiwanese colonial research. The panelists will introduce their current research on how the Japanese colonial government in Taiwan attempted to shape and create gender norms and practices. They will discuss methodologies for uncovering how Taiwanese men and women mediated, responded and contested idealized norms and forged their own paths. What were the competing notions of Taiwanese femininity and masculinity circulating at this time? What larger conclusions can be drawn about the experience of the Taiwanese versus other colonial peoples throughout the Japanese empire and beyond?

Date: Tuesday, April 13th, 2021
Time: 4-5 PM PST
Zoom link: http://bit.ly/TaiwanTalks