IASIL JAPAN Newsletter2011 No. 2
International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures
August 2011

1. Report for 2011 IASIL Conference at Leuven2011 IASIL Conference was held from 19 July to 22 July in Leuven, Belgium. Thecity Leuven is known as the university town with rich culture, history, and good
foods in the country. The venue, Leuven Institute for Ireland in Europe, testifies
Belgium’s strong Catholic connections with Ireland, which goes back to the mid
sixteenth century.
The conference theme was “Conflict and Resolution in Irish Literatures” and it
started with a keynote lecture by Margaret Harper from University of Limerick on
Yeats’s Vision, followed by 132 papers and 4 more keynote lectures. Titles andtopics ranged over wide varieties: Land War Fiction, Beckett’s Stylization ofConflicts, Contemporary Irish Poetry, Aesthetics of Redemption, Early TwentiethCentury Theatre, Women Writers, Social Realism in Contemporary Irish Film,
Translation of Conflict, Contemporary Northern Irish Drama, Memory and Violence,Crime Fiction, Joycean Solutions to Conflict, Gender and Conflicted Identities andmore. Noticeably, members of IASIL Japan actively contributed: Yuri Yoshino,
Eishiro Ito, Kiminori Fukaya, Kazuhiro Doki, Tetsuko Nakamura, Fuyuji Tanigawa
and Naoko Toraiwa.
Actually, because of the human as well as natural disasters in Eastern Japan,IASIL members from all over the world were very much concerned with Japanese
members and were greatly delighted that not a few members could attend theconference. At the AGM on the last day, Secretary of IASIL Japan read a letter ofPresident Masami Nakao who could not attend the conference and greatlyappreciated. Then in the following banquet, the secretary was awarded in the statusof representing IASIL Japan with books about Irish Franciscans and Leuven because,
as Dr. Hedwig Schwall, Chief Organizer of the conference, said “Japanese people
are so resilient in spite of the terrible disaster.” I have no doubt that the dignified
style of the letter of our president was most effective in transmitting our sinceregratitude to the IASIL members. The full text of the letter is quoted below.

12. Letter of IASIL JAPAN President
12 July 2011
Dear IASIL members,
On behalf of all the members of IASIL JAPAN, I would like to convey to you mysincere gratitude for the friendship and sympathy the members and friends of IASIL
showed through the numerous kind messages sent to us after the unprecedented disasterthat took place on March 11. In the confusion after the event, which seemed to change
the lives of so many of us, how encouraging it was to be assured of these strong humanties, regardless of physical distance.
We were soon glad to find that all IASIL JAPAN members in the region were safe, butthere are a number of us with friends and relatives who lost their lives or homes. One
member reports that she was not affected personally, but that as her institution became arefuge for those who lost their residences, she is currently spending most of her time
helping them out with their daily lives.
After four months, the recovery efforts are proceeding, and at the same time, we are
beginning to realize the wide connotations of the tragedy and of its causes, both naturaland human. As people studying literature and history, we cannot but question our own
standpoints in the whole picture. IASIL JAPAN, through its primary function ofpursuing in the studies of Irish writing, will also become a forum for such exploration.
I regret not being able to come to the beautiful city of Leuven to join you and thank you
in person, but we are still finishing the last part of the semester in my institution.
However, I am confident that the conference will again be a lively and fruitful one, as isalways the case with IASIL, and I hope very much to see you next year in Montreal.
With kindest regards,
Masami Nakao,President,IASIL JAPAN2

3. The 2011 IASIL JAPAN Conference
Date: Saturday October 8- Sunday October 9
Venue: Doshisya University, Imadegawa Campus, Kyoto
Tentative Program
SATURDAY	  8 October
9:30-10:30 Registration
10:30-11:00 Opening Addresses:
1. Masami Nakao (President, IASIL- Japan)
2. Yoshiaki Nakai (Dean of Faculty of Letters, Doshisha
University)
3. Representative of the Embassy of Ireland
11:10-12:10 Poetry Reading: Paul Muldoon
Introduction: Masami Nakao
12:10-13:00 Lunch
13:00-14:30 Papers
Yoko Sato: The Symbolic Structure of Yeats’s The Deathof Cuchulain
Duncan Chesney: “The voice alone is company but notenough”: Memory and Healing in Late
Beckett
Akiko Satake: J. J. Molloy: His Life and Work
Chair: Mariko Hori
Coffee Break
14:50-17:00 Symposium 1: Wounds and Cures in Irish Literature
Toshi Takagishi: Wounds Kept Green: the Remedialin Northern Irish Poetry
Futoshi Sakauchi: Guilt and Theatrical Transformationin Joyce’s Writings
Mika Momoo: The Distorted Vision: Exile andConfinement in John Banville’s Novels
Chair: Andrew Fitzsimons
Commentator: Paul Muldoon
18:00RECEPTION
Opening Address: Masaya Shimokusu

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SUNDAY 9 October
9:30-10:00 Registration
10:00-11:00 Papers
Iain Twiddy: Healing and Ethics in Recent Irish Elegies
Naoko Toraiwa: “Yet something strange will stay”: Sinéad
Morrissey’s Search for Cures in Foreignness
Chair: David BurleighAndrew Fitzsimons: Yeats and Delight
Soichiro Onose: Cutting Away at the Nation’s Seams:
Newspaper Politics in ‘Aeolus’
Chair: Beverley Curran
11:10-12:10 Guest Lecture: Clair Wills
Introduction: Ken’ichi Matsumura
12:10-13:00 Lunch and Annual General Meeting
Chair: Seishi Matsuda
13:10-15:20 Symposium 2: Irish Writers’ Responses to Neutral
Ireland 1939-1945
Hiroyuki Yamasaki: Francis Stuart’s Response to Neutral
Ireland: His Vision of Life, Art and Nation
Masahiro Tsuji: Louis MacNeice’s Ideological Neutrality
and His Rhyming Scheme
Saeko Nagashima: Reading (Dis)location in Elizabeth
Bowen’s Wartime Fiction
Hiroko Mikami: Looking Back at the Time of theEmergency: Kilroy’s Double Cross (1986) andMcGuinness’s Dolly West’s Kitchen (1999)
Chair: Hiroyuki Yamasaki
Commentator: Clair Wills
15:20
Closing Address: Kazuhiro Doki

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