Please join us Friday March 15 at 4:30pm for a lecture by Dr. Takaaki Koganezawa,  Professor at the Education Center for Recovery Support at Miyagi University of Education in Sendai.  Dr. Koganezawa will address the importance of disaster preparedness education and the idea of building a plan for the future based on a present informed by past experience.

Click here for a downloadable copy of the flyer.

“Picturing the Ryūkyūs: Images of Okinawa in Japanese Artworks from the UH Sakamaki/Hawley Collection” drew visitors February 8-22 to the UHM Art Gallery Exhibit.  Curator John Szostak displayed the entire length of two handscrolls from 1671 and 1710 showing ambassadors from the Ryūkyū Kingdom on their tributary march toward Edo.  The scrolls are on display (in digital format) at the University of Hawaii at Manoa Library’s Sakamaki/Hawley Collection website: click here.

Talks about “Parades and Processions” helped to interpret these works on Sunday February 10 and Monday, February 11.  Professor Hiroshi Kurushima explained how his recent exhibit at the National Museum of Japanese History in Chiba Prefecture incorporated works from the University of Hawaii Library Sakamaki/Hawley Collection, and how towns along the routes of parades prepared for foreign embassies.  Professor Manabu Yokoyama from Notre Dame Seishin University in Okayama compared differences seen in the 1671 and 1710 processions, and where these processions fit into the two hundred years of foreign embassies to Edo.   Professor Gregory Smits, Pennsylvania State University, discussed the overlapping cultural regions of the East China Sea, the diplomatic orientations of the Ryūkyū toward China, and intentional Japanese framing of the Ryukyuans as “Chinese.”  Professor Mark McNally (UHM) discussed the mobility and fluidity characterizing Early Modern Japan.  Professor John Szostak (UHM) and co-curator Travis Seifman (UCSB) educated audiences further about the production of the images in the Picturing the Ryūkyūs exhibit.  Japanese Collection Librarian Tokiko Bazzell organized these events with help from co-sponsors, aiming to connect the Special Collections to the interdisciplinary curriculum in Okinawan Studies and Japanese Studies at UHM.

On Tuesday, February 12th, Dr. Gregory Smits, Associate Professor of History and East Asian Studies at Pennsylvania State University, kicked off the 2013 CJS Seminar Series with his findings on the failed history of earthquake prediction in Japan.  Audience members learned that since the 1854 Ansei-Tōkai earthquake, despite vast intellectual and material resources poured into earthquake prediction in Japan, scholars have yet to identify a single unique event that can accurately predict an upcoming earthquake.  While thousands of alleged earthquake “precursors” have been identified, all were realized after-the-fact.  Dr. Smits maintained resources could be much better spent on earthquake preparedness than prediction.  More information can be found in his books, Seismic Japan: The Long History and Continuing Legacy of the Ansei Edo Earthquake forthcoming from University of Hawai’i Press, and Before 3-11: A History of Earthquakes in Japan to be published by Rowman & Littlefield.

Prof. Chris Yano, Visiting Scholar Tezuka Yoshiharu, Greg Smits, Joyce Chinen, Gay Satsuma.