IASIL Japan Newsletter
2024 No. 1
The Japan Branch of the International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures
April 2024

Message from the President
2024 is a momentous year for IASIL Japan: our fortieth anniversary, and the year in which we will,
for the first time since 1990, hold the International IASIL Conference, at Gakushuin University, from 59 August. If we cast our minds back to that previous event, the theme was “Irish Literature as an
International Literature”, but it was also an occasion for Japanese scholars of Irish literature to present
themselves as international scholars and, on home soil, to take part in an international event. That
opportunity has arisen once again, and I hope that all of our members will avail of this chance to present
their work, and to hear and engage with the work of scholars from all over the world. The theme thistime is “Aftermaths”, and one of the feelings that can arise with “aftermaths” is regret for lost opportunity.
IASIL 2024 is a rare event for us in Japan and is one to be embraced and cherished and, indeed, seizedby our members: we want to see you all at IASIL 2024!
As ever, I want to thank the hard work and dedication of the secretariat: Yuri Yoshino, our secretary,and Tetsuko Nakamura, our treasurer, for their commitment of time and energy and intelligence to IASIL
Japan, but especially over the last year when the demands on them have been so heavy. I want to thankthe Executive Committee, and all of our membership, for the time they devote to IASIL Japan. I want tomark a special thank you to the steering committee of IASIL 2024, who have dedicated huge amounts of
their inner resources to the organizing of IASIL 2024, especially our inspirational, supremely capablechief, Haruko Takakuwa.

Andrew Fitzsimons
1. Election of New Executive Committee Members
The term of the present IASIL Japan Executive Committee Members is due to expire on 31 December,
2024 and we are now conducting an election for the new members. Masami Nakao and Yoko Kubo haveagreed to serve as Election Officers.
-Members in good standing (paid-up for 2023) whose postal addresses are registered as inside Japanas of 31 March 2024 receive a ballot sheet with this Newsletter by post. They are requested to choose
10 candidates and check the corresponding blank boxes, to place the ballot sheet in the smallenvelope, seal and post it in the return envelope. Please make sure that it will reach the office by 31May 2024.

-Members in good standing (paid-up for 2023) whose postal addresses are registered as outside Japan1

as of 31 March 2024 receive a voting-code by post, and the URL to a ballot sheet in Google Formsby e-mail by 25 April 2024. Please make sure to complete e-voting by 31 May 2024.
The results of the election will be announced at the Annual General Meeting during the IASIL 2024
Conference to be held online in Autumn.
2. Payment of Annual Fees
Membership of IASIL Japan runs from the beginning of April to the end of March every year. Pleasefind enclosed the 2024 Membership Fee remittance sheet payable to Japan Post Bank. You may choose
to pay into the IASIL Japan account at MUFG BANK (Mitsubishi UFJ Bank) below. If you have notpaid the membership fee below for any of the past three years, a separate sheet indicating the unpaid year
is enclosed, so we ask you to add that amount to the 2024 fee.
If you are applying for Student membership fee, please provide the office with a copy of a valid
student ID with your payment.
Membership with JIS¥ 7,000
Couple membership with JIS¥ 10,000
Membership with JIS & IUR¥ 10,000
Couple membership with JIS & IUR ¥ 13,000
Student with JIS*
¥ 5,000*a copy of a valid student ID should be submitted at the beginning of every fiscal year
If you live abroad, you can use PayPal. Please follow the instruction shown in the email you will
receive shortly from Treasurer Tetsuko Nakamura <treasurer@iasil.jp>. Or you can transfer yourmembership fee to the following account:
Bank Name: MUFG Bank, Ltd.
SWIFT Code: BOTKJPJT (in 8 digits); BOTKJPJTXXX (in 11 digits)
Branch Name: Okurayama Branch (Branch No. 308)
Branch Address: 3-7-17 Shin-Yokohama, Kohoku-ku, Yokohama City, Kanagawa Prefecture,
222-0033, Japan
Tel: +81(0)45-475-3822
Account Name: IASIL Japan Treasurer Tetsuko Nakamura
Account No: 0688983 (Savings Account)
The membership fee for overseas members does not include the transfer charge, so please makesure that the exact amount reaches us. Please add the overseas postal charge so that we can post you thecopy/copies of Journal of Irish Studies (and Irish University Review) for which you have paid, according
to the table below.
International postal
Oceania, North America, CentralAsia
South America, Africa
rates for JIS & IUR
America, Europe, Middle East
JIS
¥ 850
¥ 1,000¥ 1,300
JIS & IUR
¥ 1,500¥ 2,000¥ 2,600
NB If you wish to be eligible for presenting your paper at the IASIL 2025 Conference (University ofGalway), please complete your payment by the end of November 2024. IASIL Japan Office is to submita list of members in good standing to IASIL Headquarters in December 2024.

23.

IASIL Conference 2024 “Aftermaths”

IASIL Conference, hosted by IASIL Japan, will be held at Gakushuin University as an in-person eventfrom 5th to 9th August, 2024. The applications for paper-reading are now closed. For more details, please
go to the official conference website: https://iasil.jp/conference2024/. We look forward to meeting as
many participants as possible!
4. AGM 2024
As IASIL Japan is hosting the IASIL 2024 Conference, there will be no annual IASIL Japan 2024
Conference. The AGM will be held online in Autumn.
5.

Journal of Irish Studies, Vol. XXXVIII (Anniversary Issue)

The deadline for submission to Journal of Irish Studies Vol. XXXVIII has passed. Thank you very muchto those who submitted their materials for consideration. The deadline for submission to the next issueVol. XXXIX is 25 April 2025.
6.

The Seamus Heaney Award, JapanThe Embassy of Ireland, Japan is proud to announce that the poet, Sinéad Morrissey is toreceive the Seamus Heaney Award, Japan.
The award recognises distinguished contribution to literary relations between Ireland andJapan. In 2022, the inaugural recipient of the award was the eminent Japanese poet, Mutsuo
Takahashi.
Sinéad Morrissey’s work has made her one of the most eminent writers in contemporary
English-language poetry and the recipient of numerous accolades, including the T.S. Eliot Prize.
She has close links with Japan, having lived and written eloquently about her experiencesin the country, as well as with Seamus Heaney, having served as Professor in Creative Writingat the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University.
Sinéad Morrissey was born and raised in Belfast. After studying at Trinity College Dublin,and travelling widely, living for periods in Japan and New Zealand, she returned to her nativecity, where she lived and worked for some years. She is currently Professor in Creative Writingat Newcastle University.
Morrissey has published six collections of poetry: There Was Fire in Vancouver (1996),
Between Here and There (2001), The State of the Prisons (2005), Through the Square Window(2009), Parallax (2013), and On Balance (2017). In 2020, the volume Found Architecture:
Selected Poems appeared. Her work has been awarded most of the major prizes, beginning with
the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award in 1990 (at age eighteen, the youngest poet to receive thisaward). Other awards include The Forward Prize for Best Collection (2017), the E. M. Forster
Award from The American Academy of Arts and Letters (2016), National Book Circle Critics’Award for Poetry (finalist, 2016), Inaugural Belfast Poet Laureate (2013–2014), the T. S. EliotPrize (2013, the third collection nominated), the Irish Times/Poetry Now Award (twice, in 2009and 2013), a Major Individual Artist Award (Arts Council of Northern Ireland, 2012), the3Lannan Literary Fellowship (USA, 2007), the UK National Poetry Competition (First Prize,2007), The Michael Hartnett Poetry Prize (2005), The Rupert and Eithne Strong Award (2002),
The MacAulay Fellowship (Arts Council of Ireland, 2002), and the Eric Gregory Award (1996).
The text nominating her for the prize eloquently captures her significance withincontemporary Irish poetry: “Morrissey’s work pays precise attention to historical as well as
personal realms, reaching imaginatively and linguistically into events and objects as far-flungas the Ogaki Festival, an illustrated book from Abbasid Baghdad, Napoleon’s horse, and anewspaper photograph of the launch of the Titanic, and as near as the fears of her children,
stranded whales on Belfast Lough, her family history, and own momentary sensory experiences.
Her sense of form and voice are unerring, her poems restless with philosophical questions, often
to do with perception, eerie with hidden presences, and also still with Zen-like awareness of theeveryday. Morrissey’s poetic reach is long, her impact on other poets and the discursive
community large. She is at the top of the field of poets in the generation now taking their place
as successors to the likes of Muldoon, Boland, Carson, and Ní Chuilleanáin, and a worthy poetfor this important new award.”
7.

IASIL Japan Scholarship

We received three applications. IASIL Japan scholarships have been awarded to two successfulapplicants. Barbara Kavanagh (TU Dublin), with her paper proposal “Brave New Words: How
John McGahern’s work paved the way for a new generation” has been awarded a full IASIL
Japan Scholarship. She will receive 50,000 JPY for travel expenses to attend IASIL 2024
Conference and her conference registration fee (15,000 JPY) will be waived. Yiling Jiang(Beijing Foreign Studies University) with her paper proposal “On Wilde’s Body Aesthetics inThe Picture of Dorian Gray from Zhuangzi’s Philosophy of the Body” has been awarded apartial IASIL Japan Scholarship. Her conference registration fee (15,000 JPY) will be waived.
Ellen Orchard has also been awarded a partial scholarship by IASIL Headquarters. Many
congratulations!

IASIL Japan
c/o Yuri Yoshino
Department of English Language and Cultures, Faculty of Letters, Gakushuin University
1-5-1 Mejiro, Toshima-ku, Tokyo 171-8588, Japan
Email: secretary@iasil.jp

IASIL Japan Newsletter 2024 No.2 will be distributed digitally in September.

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