IASIL Japan Newsletter
2023 No. 2
The Japan Branch of the International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures
September 2023

1. IASIL Japan Conference 2023
The IASIL Japan Conference 2023 will be held at Ritsumeikan University, Kinugasa Campus, which iswithin a walking distance from Ryoan-ji (with its renown zen garden) and Kinkaku-ji (the Goldenpavilion) on Saturday 28th and Sunday 29th October, with the theme of “Evolutions/Dissolusions.”
The venue has excellent conference facilities.
Please go to our Conference website <http://iasil.jp/conference.html> and register by the endof September 2023. The conference programme and book of abstracts are downloadable from the IASIL
Japan website <http://iasil.jp/conference.html>. Please note the following changes:l

Optional packed lunch boxes are only available for Sunday 29th. Please book via
registration form and pay in advance. A variety of options for Saturday lunch is listed on
the conference programme.
Please book for the Reception via registration form and pay in advance.

l

The Conference Reception will not deal with membership payments.

l

In light of the recent tourism boost in Kyoto, the members are advised to make their hotel bookingsfor the conference early. Hotels around JR Enmachi (円町) station, Nijojo (二条城), Doshisha University(同志社大学), Kyoto Gosho (京都御所) should be most convenient for the venue. It is also advisable toavoid areas near Shijo (四条) and JR Kyoto station (京都駅), because the route to the venue will beheavily congested. We hope to meet you all in Kyoto.
About the Guest Speakers
Anne Haverty is an award winning novelist and poet. She was educated at Trinity College Dublin andthe Sorbonne. Her first novel, One Day As A Tiger, won the Rooney Prize and was shortlisted for theWhitbread Book Awards.
The Far Side Of A Kiss, set in Hazlitt’s London of the 1820’s, was long listed for the BookerPrize. The Free And Easy, a novel about Celtic Tiger era Ireland, appeared in 2006. Her poetry collections
are The Beauty of the Moon (a Poetry Book Society Recommendation) and A Break In The
Journey (2018). Her biography of Constance Markievicz, An Independent Life was first published in
1989 and re-issued as Irish Revolutionary in a new edition in 2016.

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She has written literary criticism and journalism for publications such as the TLS and The Irish Times,scripts for film and radio and co-directed the C4/RTE documentary, The Whole World In His Hands. Herwork has been translated into several languages.
She has been a Visiting Professor at the Adam Mickievicz University in Poznan and at TCD, andshe lives in Dublin. She is a member of Aosdána, and is its current Chair.

Claire Connolly is Professor of Modern English at University College Cork in Ireland. Her book A
Cultural History of the Irish Novel, 1790-1829 was awarded the Donald J. Murphy Prize by the American
Conference for Irish Studies. With Marjorie Howes, she was General Editor of a new six volume series,
Irish Literature in Transition, 1700-2015 (Cambridge University Press, 2020); as well as editor for
Volume 2 of the series, Irish Literature in Transition, 1780-1830.
She is a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales, a Member of the Royal Irish Academy and a
Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She currently leads the ERDF-funded project,Ports, Past and Present (2019-2023), an interdisciplinary research project that joins the concerns ofmarine biology with those of cultural history. She sits on the board of the Irish Research Council and isa member of the Editorial Board for Cambridge Studies in Romanticism. Formerly a professor at Cardiff
University, Claire Connolly has been a visiting professor in Irish Studies at Boston College (2002-3) andConcordia University, Montreal (Fall 2011). For 2018-19 she was Parnell Fellow in Irish Studies at
Magdalene College Cambridge. For 2023-2024, she is Burns Visiting Scholar at Boston College.
2. Payment of Annual Fees
If you have not already paid your membership fees for the fiscal year of 2023 (April 2023-March 2024),
please do so by the end of September, as Journal of Irish Studies, vol. 37 (and IUR for those subscribing)will be distributed to paid-up members at the conference. This of course applies to non-paid fees for pastyears, as well. Please note that the Conference Reception will not deal with membership paymenttransactions, and you are cordially requested to complete the payment in advance. 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¥ 7,000

Couple membership with JIS¥ 10,000

Membership with JIS & IUR¥ 10,000
Couple membership with JIS & IUR ¥ 13,000Student 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 sent to you byTreasurer Tetsuko Nakamura treasurer@iasil.jp in April. Or you can transfer your membership fee to thefollowing 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, Japan2

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, CentralAsiaSouth America, Africa
rates for JIS & IUR
America, Europe, Middle EastJIS¥ 850¥ 1,000¥ 1,300
JIS & IUR
¥ 1,500¥ 2,000¥ 2,600
NB Due to the rise in postage, the international postal rate for JIS to be sent to a member in Asia has
become ¥850. If you wish to receive Journal of Irish Studies, vol. 37 (and IUR for those subscribing) at
the annual conference in October 2023, please complete your payment by the end of September 2023.

3. Report of IASIL 2023 Conference, British University in Egypt
The IASIL 2023 Conference was held from 17th to 22nd July in Cairo, hosted by the British
University in Egypt. The conference theme was “Sustainability,” one of the most critical issues today,
and the conference organizing team proposed “to address artistic and critical engagements with climatechange and the related issue of human agency specifically in regard to Irish literatures and literarystudies . . . [and intended] to examine, in particular, how Irish writers have reflected on the relation
between nature and humanity, and assess the critical frameworks current in Irish studies as well as theirsustainability in the face of the present crisis.”
After heartful welcome messages by the Conference Convenor, Rania M. Rafik Khalil, Directorof the Research Centre for Irish Studies and Prof. Shadia Fahim, Dean of the Faculty of Arts andHumanities, a thoughtful speech by H.E. Nuala O’Brien, Ambassador of Ireland to Egypt was delivered.
Referring to the rich body of literature of Ireland, she proposed the necessity of retaining optimistic views
towards our future, believing the power of imagination of human beings. Following the opening
ceremony, the first keynote speaker, Prof. Malcolm Sen of University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA,addressed the importance to examine the sustainability rhetoric not only in creative writings but also,rather even more, in the scientific and ideological languages (“The Sustainability Paradigm in Literature
and Culture”).
The second day started with a provocative lecture, “Sustaining Activism: Questions and lessons
from recent writing and performance” by a professor and an eminent writer Emilie Pine of University
College Dublin, Ireland. Prof. Pine introduced the recent theatres and stories, based on actual experiences
and performed by those who actually have been through those experiences and highlighted the remainingunsolved problems in the individual and personal level, after the Yes Equality campaign achieved historic
progress in Marriage Equality in Ireland.

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On Wednesday, Professor Ondřej Pilný of Charles University, Prague, gave the lecture titled “Artand Sustenance in the Work of Sara Baume,” which I missed. Our former president of IASIL must havegiven the audience the great chance to encounter Sara Baume’s stunning physical writing – physical interms of human bodies echoing their physical environment – and his excellent analysis leading to theconsideration of the task of art in the crisis of sustainability.
Olufemi Wuraola Majekodunmi, Irish Writer and Broadcaster, came last but, of course, not least,
among the keynote addresses in Cairo. Ms. Majedodunmi’s “The modern Irish Reality” extended theissues on prejudice and national identity in Ireland, which her short film, “What does Irishness LookLike?” (2018) portrayed and examined. The provisional conclusion of her Cairo lecture was “I am aduality of identities like so many in modern Ireland, our origins and domicile is a part of us; recognitionand understanding in this is key to sustaining this unique aspect of Irishness.”
The titles of panel sessions reflected the idea of “sustainability” was explored extensively. Not
only environmental issues (“Nature and The Human,” “Ecology, Ecocriticism & Irish Literature,”“Climate Action and Nature,” etc.) but also language issues (“Translation(s) and Irish Literature,”“Publishing and Archiving Language,” “Linguistics & Sustainability”) were discussed. The mostinteresting aspect in this conference for myself is that, naturally, there were quite a few comparisons
between Irish and Egyptian writings, focusing on political instabilities both countries have experienced
and differences of traditional attitudes to animals.
Unfortunately, Japanese representation at the conference was sparse, due to the timing of theconference. Fuyuji Tanigawa’s paper, “Re-reading the Crane Bag: Book and Journal of Irish Studies andField Day Pamphlets” considered part of conscious revision of Ireland’s national myth looking back fromthe state of Ireland today. My own paper discussed the idea of sustainability in Sinead Morrissey’s poems,focusing on her concrete poems.
The IASIL 2023 conference offered good music and dance performance on the opening gatheringand the delegates were introduced to lively local markets and streets in the Wednesday afternoon. Oneday post-conference tour was organized on Friday, which took the delegates to various religious
institutions, Muslim and Christian. Highlight of the cultural events was the Conference Gala Dinner: thevenue was the Abdeen Palace, a 19th-century Cairo palace built by the king, Ahedive Ismail and served
as Egypt’s seat of government from 1874 until July Revolution in 1952 and an excellent dinner wasserved accompanied with elegant Irish harp music.
Naoko Toraiwa (Meiji University)

4. Journal of Irish Studies, Anniversary Issue
In 2024, the Journal of Irish Studies will celebrate the 40th anniversary of IASIL Japan (1984-2024).
Proposals for material for this special anniversary edition include:• Bibliography of publications in Japan within the field of Irish Studies 2003-2023 (NOT limited tothe Journal of Irish Studies) in English and in Japanese. All publications by IASIL Japanmembers may be included, regardless of where they were published.
• Reflections from original and long-standing members of IASIL Japan• Photographs (from IASIL Japan conferences 1984-2024, etc.)

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IASIL Japan members are encouraged to send any of the above material to the editor of the Journal ofIrish Studies (editor@iasil.jp) before 25 April 2024. All photographs should be sent as either JPEG or
PDF (if scanned) files to the editor by email attachment. All publications for the bibliography should bein the following format (for consistency, we will follow the same format as the 1984-2003 bibliography):
Journal Articles:
Name (year of publication) ‘title.’ In Journal Title [vol:no], [pages].
Example:Abe Kazuko (1994) ‘The Poetry of Derek Mahon, 1962-1982.’ In Kasumigaoka Review 1, 91-107.
― (1994) ‘Father-Son Relations in Brian Friel’s “Philadelphia Here I Come!”.’ In Éire 14, 21-31.

5. Announcement: Seamus Heaney Award, Japan
Nominations, to be received by 30 November 2023, can be sent by email using the subject line “SeamusHeaney Award Japan Nomination” to: IASIL Japan Office: <secretary@iasil.jp> or Embassy of Ireland,
Japan: <TokyoEmbassy@dfa.ie>. More information can be found on the IASIL Japan website:
http://iasil.jp/news/?p=795.

6. IASIL Conference 2024 in Tokyo
IASIL Conference 2024 will be held at Gakushuin University from the 5th August to the 9th August 2024with the theme “Aftermaths.” Further details will be announced at AGM and IASIL Japan website.

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

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