IASIL Japan Newsletter2015 No. 1
The Japan Branch of the International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures
April 2015

1. Election of New Executive Committee Members
As was announced at the Annual General Meeting last October, the term of the present IASIL Japan
Executive Committee Members is to expire on 31 December, 2015 and we are now conducting anelection for the new members. Hiroko Mikami and Masami Nakao have agreed to serve as ElectionOfficers. Members in good standing (paid-up for 2014) receive a ballot sheet with this Newsletter.
They are requested to choose 10 candidates and check the corresponding blank boxes, to place theballot sheet in the small envelope, seal and post it in the return envelope. Please make sure that it
will reach the office by May 25. The results of the election will be announced at the Annual General
Meeting during the Annual Conference to be held at Prefectural Hiroshima University on 3-4 October.
2. Plans for IASIL Japan Conference 2015
At the Executive Committee Meeting held on March 7, plans for the 31st Conference were confirmed.
We are happy to announce that the following distinguished guests have agreed to join us, and welcome
proposals to read papers related to this year's conference theme "Commemorations: Marking Time inIreland" or other aspects of Irish literature.
Dates: 3 & 4 October, 2015
Venue: Prefectural Hiroshima University
Theme: "Commemorations: Marking Time in Ireland"
Guest Speakers: 1) Roy Foster: special lecture, commentator at symposium 12) Moya Cannon: poetry reading, commentator at symposium 2
Symposium1: "Yeats and the Ireland of Our Time" (tentative)   Chair: Andrew Fitzsimons
Symposium 2: "Poetry and Music" (tentative)
Chair: Yasuhito Sato
About the Guests
R. F. Foster is Carroll Professor of Irish History at the University of Oxford and a Fellow ofHertford College, Oxford. He is widely known as the author of the authorizedbiography of W. B. Yeats, W.B. Yeats: A Life I. The Apprentice Mage (1997); II. The Arch-Poet(2003). His most recent book is Vivid Faces: The Revolutionary Generation in Ireland, 1890-1923(2014).
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Moya Cannon was born in Co. Donegal, spent most of her adult life in Galway and now lives inDublin. She is a winner of the Brendan Behan Award and the O Shaughnessy Award. Her previous
collections of poems are Oar (1990), The Parchment Boat (1997), Carrying the Songs (2007) andHands (2011), which was nominated for the Irish Times / Poetry Now Award.
Call for papers and panelists!
Applicants for a 20 minutes paper reading are requested to send a synopsis of 250–300 words as a
Word attachment to IASIL Japan office at <secretary@iasil.jp>. We welcome proposals of 250–300
words to join the panels for the two symposia as well. Besides the synopsis itself, please send detailsof the author’s affiliation, full postal and e-mail addresses, and telephone and fax numbers by 31 May.
3. Payment of annual fees
Please find enclosed the 2015 Membership Fee remittance sheet payable to Japan Post Bank.
Membership with JIS
Membership with JIS & IUR¥7,000¥10,000

Couple membership with JIS
Couple membership with JIS & IUR¥10,000¥13,000

To members with overseas mailing addresses:
Kindly add the following international postal rates to your membership fee, and pay your own bankremittance fees to make sure that the exact amount will reach us.

International postal rates
for Journal of Irish Studies& Irish University ReviewJISJIS & IUR

Oceania,
North America,
Central America,
Europe, Middle EastSouth America,Africa¥ 750¥ 1,000¥ 1,300¥ 1,500¥ 2,000¥ 2,600

Asia

You may choose to pay to the IASIL Japan account at the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi below.
Bank Name: Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, LTD.
SWIFT CODE: BOTKJPJT
Branch Name: Kichijoji Branch (Branch No. 220)
Branch Address: 1-15-2 Kichijoji-Honcho, Musashino-shi, Tokyo 180-0004, Japan
Tel: +81- (0)422-22-3731
Beneficiary’s Name: IASIL Japan Treasurer Yoko Kubo
Benneficiary’s Account No.: 0248851
4. IASIL Annual Conference, 20-24 July 2015
The IASIL conference will be held this year at The University of York in York, UK, with the theme of"Reconciliations".
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5. Journal of Irish Studies
The deadline for submission to Journal of Irish Studies Vol. XXX is 25 April 2015.
Contributors should send articles for consideration to: Masaya Shimokusu, Editor, as an MS Word
attachment to: <mshimoku@mail.doshisha.ac.jp>, with a short biographical note as a separate file.
Please inform details of the author’s affiliation, full postal and e-mail addresses and telephone and faxnumbers.

More information is found on the back-cover of JIS Vol. XXIX as well as at our website.

The editor suggests that papers submitted by those whose mother tongue is not English should bechecked by a native speaker of English before submission. For further details, please contact theeditor.
6. Obituary
In Memory of Daniel Albright (1945-2015)
We recently received the sad news that Dr. Daniel Albright, Professor of Harvard University passed
away on January 3, 2015.

He continually stimulated our intellect with such ground breaking works

as Quantum Poetics: Yeats, Pound, Eliot, and the Science of Modernism, and his marvelous insights
resulting from a deep interest in literature and music exemplified in Modernism and Music: An
Anthology of Sources.

His interest in music integrated perfectly with his interest in painting whichblossomed into his most recent publication, Panaesthetics: On the Unity and Diversity of the Arts.
Every reader of Yeats’ poems has a tremendous appreciation for his volume on ‘Complete Yeats
Poems’ accompanied by his original detailed commentary.
In 2005, Dr. Albright visited Japan as a guest scholar of Japan Yeats Society as well as IASIL Japan.
As Secretary of IASIL Japan and also an organizer of a symposium at the Yeats Society Conference
on “Yeats, Beckett and Noh” to which he was a commentator, I got in touch with him before andduring the conference and was quite touched with his tender, warm, and very kind personality.

AtMusashino University where our annual conference was held, he gave a lecture, “The River that Flows
from Japan to England: Curfew River,” introduced by Professor Hiroyuki Yamasaki who was his longtime friend. This lecture revealed his deep understanding of Japanese Noh, particularly Sumidagawa
and Western music, specifically, Benjamin Britten’s opera.

I cannot forget his impressions on theperformance of Sumidagawa which I also enjoyed together with him, with Umewaka Rokuro (presentGensho) as shite just before the conference at Kyoto Kanze Kaikan as well as how happily he laughed
at a series of Kyogen plays performed in Kyoto a few days before that.

From a very personal

perspective, he also radiated a very sincere personality when he gave a lecture “W. B. Yeats andMusic” to my students at Shiga University.

We will sorely miss his academic insights and his verywarm, friendly smile.
Akiko Manabe

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IASIL Japan
c/o Prof. Kumiko YamadaCollege of Intercultural Communication, Rikkyo University
3-34-1 Nishi-Ikebukuro, Toshima-ku, Tokyo 171-8501, Japan
Tel: +81-(0)3-3985-4229
E-mail: <secretary@iasil.jp>
Website: <http://iasil.jp/>4