What’s in thisissue

WelcomeMessage
Eye on Japan
News from ourmembers
A Piece of Japan
News Links
General Links
Contact Us

Editor: Oliver Moxham, CJS Project CoordinatorCJS Director: Professor Simon KanerHeader photo by editor

Welcome Message

CJS ニュースレターへようこそ！

Welcome to the second April edition of the CJS e-Newsletter. We hope to bring the latest updates fromJapan in these uncertain times straight to you in in bitesize pieces, as well as recommend Japan-related
activities you can enjoy from the comfort of your home. In this issue, we will provide updates on how Japanis responding to the COVID19 virus, success stories from our research colleagues and recommendations ofJapan-related activities you can enjoy from the safety of your home in our new ‘A Piece of Japan’ section.
You can find a message from CJS Director Professor Simon Kaner on the Sainsbury Institute for the Study ofJapanese Arts and Cultures website and hear more from our SISJAC colleagues on their monthly e-bulletin.
Eye on Japan – state of emergency without the urgency

日本の更新

As reported last week, the Japanese government has been reluctant to impose
tough restrictions seen in nations around the world in response to COVID19. This
week a state of emergency is finally set to be declared yet its impact isunderwhelming; Prime Minister Shinzō Abe has stated it will last a month andonly be implemented in the seven prefectures of Tokyo, Ōsaka, Kanagawa,Saitama, Chiba, Fukuoka and Hyogo. Furthermore, the state of emergency will
empower governors to close businesses and schools, but not to order citizens tostay at home. This is contrasted by other governors who are in fact reopening
schools, exposing the incoherent response in Japan against the pandemic. In an ambiguous defence
measure, Abe asserted that “we will not close cities [as] experts have told us that there is no need for sucha step.” This is in spite of the devastating impact the virus would have on Japan’s aging and declining
population, with officials in the health ministry fearing an “overshoot” in cases that would break thehealthcare system. With local medical experts in Tokyo claiming that the virus has already spread beyond
reasonable control in the capital, it is sincerely hoped that sterner measures will be implemented with1

haste. It is, however, reassuring to see people and institutions acting independently to limit the spread ofthe virus, including 44 Japanese universities which have committed to online learning. Business
Breakthrough University in Tokyo has taken this to the next level by using robots to stand in for students attheir graduation ceremony. We hope to see more of such innovative strategies being developed to bringpeople together during social isolation.
Written by the editor
Source material can be found in the ‘News from Japan’ section
News from our colleagues

研究員のニュース

Manga exhibit triumphs at British Museum
Last year’s Manga exhibit, curated by Sainsbury Institute Research Director Nicole Coolidge
Rousmaniere, was last week proven to be the most popular exhibit of the British Museum in 2019,trumping special exhibits on Captain Cook, Rembrandt and Assyrian king Ashurbanipal. Nicole curated theshow as IFAC Handa Curator for Japanese Art at the Japanese Section of the British Museum, and herefforts saw the world’s largest collection of manga material put on display for 1,920 paying visitors eachday according to an internal survey. Such pieces featured a towering figure of Astro Boy, one of thefounding characters of manga soon to make an appearance in the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at UEA.
Nicole attributed the success of the exhibit to the wide appeal of manga, “a multi-billion-pound industry,
super-fueled by its readers … with hundreds of genres, from sports to love, and from horror to sexualidentity, there is a manga for everyone.”

Sources:
Manga beats Rembrandt in the battle of British Museum visitors, Craig Simpson, The Telegraphhttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/04/manga-beats-rembrandt-battle-museum-visitors/

British galleries are the world’s masters in the art of social media, David Sanderson, The Times
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tate-saatchi-national-museum-victoria-albert-british-galleries-are-world-smasters-in-the-art-of-social-media-lkm6hzvdh

2

Nick Bradley’s new book The Cat and the City on Radio 2’s Spring Reading List
Creative and Critical Writing PhD student Nick Bradley has had his novel ‘The Cat and the City’, thecumulative work of his PhD, selected for Jo Whiley’s Book Club on BBC Radio 2. Tune in on Monday 1 June
7-9pm to hear Nick in interview with Jo Whiley discussing his book. The blurb reads:
In Tokyo – one of the world’s largest megacities – a stray cat is wending
her way through the back alleys. And, with each detour, she brushes up
against the seemingly disparate lives of the city-dwellers, connecting
them in unexpected ways.
But the city is changing. As it does, it pushes her to the margins where
she chances upon a series of apparent strangers – from a homeless man
squatting in an abandoned hotel, to a shut-in hermit afraid to leave hishouse, to a convenience store worker searching for love. The cat orbits
Tokyo’s denizens, drawing them ever closer.
In a series of spellbinding, interlocking narratives – with styles ranging
from manga to footnotes – Nick Bradley has hewn a novel of interplay
and estrangement; of survival and self-destruction; of the desire tobelong and the need to escape.
For more information: https://readinggroups.org/news/spring-2020-season-of-the-jo-whiley-radio-2-bookclub
Written by the editor
A Piece of Japan

日本のかけら

Each week, we will bring to you some fresh recommendations from CJS members tohelp bring a piece of Japan to you at home through film, books, anime, manga andmore. This week’s theme for recommendations is survival. If you have anysuggestions for themes or recommendations, send us an email at cjs@uea.ac.uk.
Books
JR Ueno eki kōenguchi by Yū Miri
JR 上野駅公園口、 柳美里
Available in English and Japanese in hard copy
Recommended by Hannah Osborne, Lecturer of Japanese Literature at UEA
Yū Miri’s JR Ueno eki kōenguchi (2014) – a title which literally translates as The
Park Exit at JR Ueno Station, (the location in Tokyo notorious for its
community of homeless people) is a narrative that interweaves the memoriesof that community, including their remembrances of war, loss, anddestitution. It addresses the theme of survival on multiple levels: discussing
whether families and individuals can survive in the face of extreme financial
hardship and personal loss; describing instances of catastrophic loss during
Tokyo’s firebombing and the 3/11 disaster; and marking the lack of proper3

memorialisation for such struggles and tragedies through the novel’s own writing. It can be foundin Japanese on Kindle and is available in paperback in English as Tokyo Ueno Station (2019). Itstranslation earned Morgan Giles, the translator, the TA First Translation Prize this year.
Coin Locker Babies by Ryū Murakami
コインロッカー・ベイビーズ、村上龍
Available in English and Japanese
Recommended by Hannah Osborne
While we are in lockdown mode, however, even past dystopic visions
might seem like an escape into nostalgia. In Ryū Murakami’s 1980 novel,
Coin Locker Babies, the two male protagonists, Hashi and Kiku, share thefate of having been found abandoned as babies in coin lockers at Tokyo
Station. Such extreme acts of rejection, and the physical discomfort suchacts entailed, define their entire lives as they both struggle to forge viable
identities for themselves. The novel asks what the implications are forsocieties in which such acts are possible.
Coin Locker Babies is available to read on Kindle in both Japanese and English (1995, trans StephenSnyder).
Ghosts of the Tsunami by Richard Lloyd Parry
Available in English
Recommended by CJS Director Professor Simon Kaner
Ghosts of the Tsunami is an exceptionally readable (if heartbreaking) andincisive analysis of what happened and what went wrong on 3/11 in onesmall community on the Tohoku coast. It covers the six years Lloyd Perry
spent reporting from the disaster zone, in particular determining the final
moments of a village at the heart of the disaster, where he encounteredstories of ghosts, excorisms and mystery. The tale tells the story of how anation faced a catastrophe, and the bleak struggle to find consolation inthe ruins. I suggest reading it in conjunction with March was Made of Yarn,
edited by Elmer Luke and David Karashima.
Ghosts of the Tsunami is available on Amazon as both e-book and audiobook.
Film
Recommended by the editor
Madadayo by Akira Kurosawa
まあだだよ、黒澤明
This wonderful celebration of life by the titan of Japanese cinema Akira
Kurosawa follows the true story of Professor Hyakken Uchida from hisretirement through old age. The tale is told through the eyes of his faithfulstudents who fondly remember the professor’s warmth and wit and so
pitch in together time and again to see him through the hardships visited
upon him big and small, from the loss of his home to air raids in the4Second World War to the loss of his beloved cat. Through it all the students put together a grandnomikai for their teacher named ‘the Maahda Kai’, where the students yell out mada kai, “are youstill here?”, to which Uchida responds madadayo, “you’d better believe it!” A poignant reminder inthese times of the cyclical nature of trials and triumphs and the people around us who carry usthrough.
You can watch the introduction here on YouTube and order the DVD on Amazon.
日本に関する記事

News from JapanFor a running number of reported COVID19 infections, victims and recoveries in Japan, see theAsahi Shimbun homepage (Japanese only): https://www.asahi.com/
For the BBC summary of Japan’s state of emergency:
Coronavirus: Japan to declare emergency as Tokyo cases soar
The Asahi Shimbun provide more detail on the ramifications of the state of emergency (Japanese only):
7 日に緊急事態宣言、1 都 6 府県に約 1 カ月

首相表明

For information on government measures to financially support households:
Japan to give ¥300,000 to struggling households as COVID-19 cases rise
For a regional overview of the impact of the virus:
Local officials and residents fear influx from Japan's virus hot spots
For Japanese speakers, here’s an article in English laying out vocabulary coming out of the crisis:
The Japanese words used to encourage self-restraint
Click here for a comprehensive online document on Japanese universities adopting distance learning.
For more information on Japanese universities see this twitter thread by Rochelle Kopp, professor at
Kitakyushu University, for resources.
General Links

一般な情報

Embassy of Japan: http://www.uk.emb-japan.go.jp/
Japan Foundation: http://www.jpf.org.uk/
JSPS: http://www.jsps.go.jp/english/
British Association for Japanese Studies: http://www.bajs.org.uk/
Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation: http://www.dajf.org.uk/
Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation: http://www.gbsf.org.uk/
Japan Society: http://www.japansociety.org.uk/
EU-Japan Centre: http://www.eu-japan.eu/
Canon Foundation: www.canonfoundation.org
Applications for JET Programme: http://www.jetprogramme.org/
Japanese Language Proficiency Exam: http://www.jlpt.jp/e/index.html
UEA Japan Society: ueajapansociety@gmail.com
Taiko Centre East: http://www.taikocentre.org.uk/
5Career Forums: http://www.careerforum.net/event/?lang=E
連絡情報

Contact Us
If you have any contributions for the next issue of the e-newsletter,
please send them to us by Wednesday to make the next issue.

The CJS office is located in the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts (the mezzanine floor), although theoffice is temporarily closed as per university guidelines. You can always email us at cjs@uea.ac.uk.
To keep up with goings-on at CJS, follow us on social media:
www.facebook.com/CJSUea/
www.twitter.com/CJS_Uea
Or visit our website: www.uea.ac.uk/cjs

If you wish to be removed from our mailing list, please email cjs@uea.ac.uk

6