Past Events

  • 2019 Mar 05

    Levi McLaughlin (North Carolina State University), “Shifting Terrain: Soka Gakkai, Komeito, and Prospects for Constitutional Amendment”

    12:30pm to 2:00pm

    Location: 

    Bowie-Vernon Room (K262), CGIS Knafel Building, 1737 Cambridge Street

    Levi McLaughlin
    Associate Professor of Asian Religions, North Carolina State University

    Moderator: Helen Hardacre
    Reischauer Institute Professor of Japanese Religions and Society, and Founding Director, Constitutional Revision Research Project, Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, Harvard University

    Co-sponsored by the Constitutional Revision Research Project, Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies 

    This seminar series is supported by a grant from the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership (CGP).

    Special Series on the Future of Democracy in Japan and Asia

  • 2019 Feb 26

    Vivian Shaw (Harvard), “Japan’s Antiracism Movements: Gendered Negotiations of Violence and Vulnerability”

    12:30pm to 2:00pm

    Location: 

    Bowie-Vernon Room (K262), CGIS Knafel Building, 1737 Cambridge Street

    Vivian Shaw
    Postdoctoral Fellow, WCFIA Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, Harvard University

    Moderator: Christina Davis
    Acting Director, Program on U.S.-Japan Relations (Spring 2019); Professor of Government and Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University

  • 2019 Feb 22

    BOOK TALK: American Sutra: Buddhism and the Incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII

    4:15pm to 6:00pm

    Location: 

    S020, Belfer Case Study Room, CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA
    SPEAKER: DUNCAN RYŪKEN WILLIAMS
    Professor of Religion and East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Southern California
     
    DISCUSSANT: DIANA L. ECK
    Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies, Harvard Divinity School
    Fredric Wertham Professor of Law and Psychiatry in Society in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences
    Founder and Director, Pluralism Project
     
    DISCUSSANT: STEPHEN PROTHERO
    C. Allyn and Elizabeth V. Russell Professor of Religion, Boston University
     
    MODERATOR: HELEN HARDACRE
    Reischauer Institute Professor of Japanese Religions and Society, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
     
    Sponsor: Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies
     
    Co-sponsors: Japan Society of Boston, New England Japanese American Citizens League , Harvard Buddhist Studies Forum, Harvard Divinity School Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Pluralism Project, Program on U.S.-Japan Relations
     
    Book Signing takes place from 6pm - 7pm.
     
    Duncan Ryūken Williams will discuss his new book American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom During the Second World War (Harvard University Press, Feb. 2019) which emphasizes the prominent role of Buddhism in the WWII internment of Japanese Americans. Largely due to the Buddhist values shared by the majority of Japanese Americans, nearly 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry, two-thirds of whom were American citizens, were targeted for forcible removal from the Pacific Coast states and incarceration in remote concentration camps surrounded by barbed wire. Ironically, Buddhism was also what helped the Japanese American community endure and persist at a time of dislocation, loss, and uncertainty. Based on newly translated Japanese-language diaries of Buddhist priests from the camps, extensive interviews with survivors of the camps, and newly declassified government documents condemning Buddhism as a national security threat, Williams argues that Japanese American Buddhists launched one of the most inspiring defenses of religious freedom in U.S. history.... Read more about BOOK TALK: American Sutra: Buddhism and the Incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII
  • 2019 Feb 22

    Stefan Huebner (National University of Singapore), "From the Pacific into the Anthropocene: Japanese-U.S. Research on Floating Structures, the Metabolist Movement, and Rising Sea Levels"

    12:15pm to 2:00pm

    Location: 

    S153, 1st Floor, CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge
    Dr. Stefan Huebner 
    Visiting Scholar, Harvard University Asia Center; Research Fellow, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
     
    Chair: Professor Andrew Gordon
    Lee and Juliet Folger Fund Professor of History, Harvard University; Acting Director, Harvard-Yenching Institute
     
    Asia Center Fellows Seminar Series co-sponsored by the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations
  • 2019 Feb 19

    Ian Condry (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), “Democracy and Inequality: Learning Through Sound in Tokyo, Boston, and Berlin”

    12:30pm to 2:00pm

    Location: 

    Bowie-Vernon Room (K262), CGIS Knafel Building, 1737 Cambridge Street
    Ian Condry
    Professor of Japanese Culture and Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
     
    Moderator: Theodore Bestor
    Reischauer Institute Professor of Social Anthropology, Harvard University
     
    Co-sponsored by the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies

  • 2019 Feb 12

    David Weinstein (Columbia University), “The Economic Impact of America’s New Protectionism”

    12:30pm to 2:00pm

    Location: 

    Bowie-Vernon Room (K262), CGIS Knafel Building, 1737 Cambridge Street

    David Weinstein
    Carl S. Shoup Professor of Japanese Economy; Director of Research, Center on Japanese Economy and Business, Graduate School of Business, Columbia University

    Moderator: Christina Davis
    Acting Director, Program on U.S.-Japan Relations (Spring 2019); Professor of Government and Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University

    Co-sponsored by the Department of Economics and the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, Harvard Kennedy School

    This seminar series is supported by a grant from the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership (CGP).

    Special Series on The Future of East Asia

  • 2019 Feb 05

    Jennifer Lind (Dartmouth College), “The External Sources of Rising State Strength: Anglo-Japanese Relations in the Early 20th Century”

    12:30pm to 2:00pm

    Location: 

    Bowie-Vernon Room (K262), CGIS Knafel Building, 1737 Cambridge Street

    Jennifer Lind
    Associate Professor of Government, Dartmouth College; Faculty Associate, Reischauer Institute for Japanese Studies, Harvard University

    Moderator: Christina Davis
    Acting Director, Program on U.S.-Japan Relations (Spring 2019); Professor of Government and Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University

  • 2019 Feb 01

    Andrew Gordon (Harvard), "Dark Tourism in Japan"

    4:15pm to 5:45pm

    Location: 

    Kang Seminar Room S050, Japan Friends of Harvard Concourse CGIS South Bldg., 1730 Cambridge St., Harvard University

    Speaker: Andrew Gordon
    Lee and Juliet Folger Fund Professor of History, Harvard University; and Acting Director (2018-2019), Harvard-Yenching Institute

    Japan Forum Series Sponsored by Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies; Co-sponsored by Weatherhead Center Program on U.S.-Japan Relations

  • 2018 Dec 04

    Ambassador Robert Orr (Former Ambassador to the Asian Development Bank), “Banking on the Future: U.S.-Japan Relations, the ADB and the AIIB”

    12:30pm to 2:00pm

    Location: 

    Bowie-Vernon Room (K262), CGIS Knafel Building, 1737 Cambridge Street
    Ambassador to the Asian Development Bank (2010-16) and Distinguished Visiting Professor of History, Florida Atlantic University
     
    Moderator: Susan Pharr
    Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics and Director, WCFIA Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, Harvard University
     
    Co-sponsored by the Harvard University Asia Center
     
    This seminar series is supported by a grant from the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership (CGP)

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