IASIL Japan Newsletter2018 No. 2
The Japan Branch of the International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures
September 2018

1. IASIL Japan Conference 2018, Toyo University
The IASIL Japan Conference 2018 will be held on Saturday 13 and Sunday 14 October at Toyo
University (Hakusan Campus), with the theme of ‘Exits and Entrances’. The programme, book ofabstracts, campus map, and poster of the conference are downloadable from the IASIL Japan website<http://iasil.jp/conference.html>. Students and guests are welcome to attend. We hope to meet you allthere. As of 2017, we switched to online registration system. Please go to our Conference website<http://iasil.jp/conference.html> and register by 30 September 2018.
About the Guest SpeakersOndřej Pilný is Professor of English and American Literatures and Director of the Centre for Irish Studies
at Charles University, Prague. His works include The Grotesque in Contemporary Anglophone Drama(Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) and Irony and Identity in Modern Irish Drama (Litteraria Pragensia, 2006),
Hrdina západu: Dramata a próza (an annotated edition of Synge’s work in Czech translation, 2006), Irelandand the Czech Lands: Contacts and Comparisons in History and Culture (with Gerald Power, 2014). He hasalso contributed a chapter on ‘Irish Theatre in Europe’ in The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Theatre(eds. Nicholas Grene and Chris Morash, OUP 2016). He is co-editor of the international academic journal
Litteraria Pragensia. Studies in Literature and Culture. He is the Chairperson of IASIL, Vice-President ofEFACIS, and acts as committee member at various associations in English and Irish literature.

Deirdre Madden is from Country Antrim. She studied at Trinity College Dublin and the University of EastAnglia. She has published eight novels, including The Birds of The Innocent Wood (1988), One by One in theDarkness (1996), Authenticity and Molly Fox’s Birthday (2008). Her awards include the Hennessy Award,
the Somerset Maugham Prize, the Rooney Prize and the Kerry Book of the Year Award. She has beenshortlisted twice for the Orange Prize. Her most recent novel, Time Present and Time Past was published in2013. She teaches Creative Writing at Trinity College Dublin.

2. Election of New Executive Committee Members
The ballot sheets were opened on 2 June by the secretariat with Kumiko Yamada (Rikkyo U), Masami
Nakao and Yoko Kubo serving as Election Officers. The results will be announced at the Annual General
Meeting on 14 October during the conference at Toyo University.
13. Payment of annual membership fees
If you have not already paid your membership fees for 2018, please do so by the end of September, as
the journals will be distributed to paid-up members at the conference. This of course applies to non-paidfees for past years, as well. A Student membership fee (with JIS only) went into effect as of April 2018.
If you are applying for a Student membership, please provide the office with a copy of a valid student
ID with your payment.
Membership with JIS
Membership with JIS & IUR
Student with JIS*

¥7,000¥10,000

Couple membership with JIS¥10,000
Couple membership with JIS & IUR ¥13,000¥5,000*a copy of valid student ID should be provided
annually

三菱東京 UFJ 銀行（銀行番号：0005）
経堂支店（店番：091）
普通 0648854 IASIL JAPAN 会計 桃尾美佳

ゆうちょ銀行
振替口座 00940－4－143302(099 店（099） 当座 0143302）

If you live abroad, please transfer your membership fee to the following account:
Bank Name Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, LTD.
SWIFT CODE: BOTKJPJTBranch Name: Kyodo Branch (Branch No. 091)
Branch Address: 3-1-42 Miyasaka, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo 156-0051, Japan
Tel: +81 (0)3-5477-5751
Account Name: IASIL Japan Treasurer Mika Momoo
Account No: 0648854

Please add the overseas postal charge to mail you the copies of Journal of Irish Studies and Irish
University Review for which you have paid, according to the table below:
International postal
rates for JIS & IUR
JISJIS & IUR

Asia
¥ 750
¥ 1,500

Oceania, North America, Central
America, Europe, Middle East
¥ 1,000¥ 2,000

South America, Africa¥ 1,300¥ 2,600

4. Report of IASIL 2018, Radboud University, Nijmegen
The 2018 IASIL Conference was held at Radboud University in Nijmegen 23-27 July in rather hot, dryweather. Nijmegen is located in the central eastern part of the Netherlands near the border with Germany
and is the oldest Roman city in the country. During the week, the academic programme was held in amodern building on the spacious campus outside the city, but some evening events were offered in thecity centre. Thanks are due to the conference team headed by Marguérite Corporaal, who ensured that
we were able to enjoy the whole conference in pleasant circumstances.
In line with the conference theme ‘Reimagining Traditions’, four keynote speeches and around 130
papers were delivered, along with a roundtable discussion on theatre research. The participants werealso given opportunities to listen to Anne Enright’s powerful reading, Lillis Ó Laoire’s sonorous singing,
and Claire Kilroy’s reading as a mother. The animated feature film The Song of the Sea was also shownand commented on by its director, Tomm Moore.
The conference kicked off with a spectacular keynote speech by Guy Beiner, who as a historian
showed how a historical episode can be reimagined as it evolves in the literary arena. The other keynote2speakers, all of whom were well known to IASIL members, provided participants with wide-ranging
and insightful talks on their specialist subjects: Claire Connolly on Irish Romanticism, Joep Leerssen
on memory and the Gaelic tradition, and Paige Reynolds on contemporary women’s writing. Details canbe seen on Twitter: @iasil2018, https://twitter.com/iasil2018). The IASIL Japan members who delivered
papers were Hawk Chang, Nao Igarashi, Neil Murphy, Mika Yoshimoto Murtagh, Haruko Takakuwa,Toshiki Tatara, Naoko Toraiwa, Yuri Yoshino and myself.
The 2019 conference returns to Trinity College, Dublin, where the inaugural IASIL conference washeld in 1970, and in 2020 it will be hosted by the University of Łódź in Poland. I hope that manymembers of IASIL Japan, younger members in particular, will participate in and, indeed, contributeacademically to these commemorative conferences celebrating half a century of achievements by IASIL
and its members.
Tetsuko Nakamura (Komazawa University)
With the help of the IASIL Japan Scholarship, I was able to take advantage of a great learning
opportunity at IASIL 2018. In my own presentation about Louis MacNeice’s use of refrain, I received
some thought-provoking questions from specialists in my research area, which will surely help reviseand enrich my argument. It was a valuable experience for me to attend this particular conference whose
theme, ‘Reimagining Traditions’, concerns the topic of my PhD thesis.
I would like to extend my appreciation to the officers and all the members of the IASIL Japan, who
made this scholarship possible.
Nao Igarashi (Durham University, Recipient of IASIL Japan Scholarship 2018)

5. IASIL Annual Conference, 22-26 July 20192019 marks IASIL’s 50th anniversary and the conference will be hosted by Trinity College Dublin, where
the first IASIL (then IASAIL) conference was held. The conference theme is ‘The Critical Ground’.
In celebration of the 50th anniversary, IASIL is hoping to compile the archive, and IASIL Japan isinvited to contribute our own history. Members who have photographs and/or documents of our pastconferences that should be posted on the IASIL website, please send them to the secretary.

6. Irish University Review Online-only Subscription OptionIASIL Japan is looking into the possibility of switching to the online subscription option of the Irish
University Review. We started an online survey this July, and we will continue for another threemonths. Please let us know whether you prefer online subscription to a paper-based one by goingto the following URL: https://goo.gl/forms/R30eNIpAwZOagWXk2. We would like to get answers
from all members, especially those who are currently subscribing to IUR. The online-only subscription
option will be available to the members who opt for it from 2019 (vol. 49).

37. Another Poet Gone: Matthew Sweeney (1952-2018)
Many will still recall the conference that we had in Hiroshima at which we welcomed two writers fromthe North of Ireland, Matthew Sweeney and Glenn Patterson, poet and novelist respectively, fromdifferent sides of the border. It is with sadness that I learnt earlier this year, from Padraig Rooney, ourmutual friend and another attendee of our conferences, that Matthew was suffering from motor neurone
disease. He died in Cork on August 5th, with his family beside him, and Padraig was one of eleven poets
who read at a memorial event there, afterwards attending the funeral in Donegal.
Matthew Sweeney was 65, and with his passing we have lost a unique voice in Irish poetry, quirky
and individual, more European in his outlook and appeal than most of his contemporaries, as somenotices have pointed out. He spent a good deal of time in Germany, and some in Romania, and had an
unusually translatable appeal: “I’m big in Mexico”, he announced once at a reading, recounting someadventure there. He evidently decided not to give in to the debilitations of his condition, and went on
writing till the end. A book of poems, My Life as a Painter, came out in April this year, and another new
book, of prose poems, is scheduled for September.
David Burleigh4