JCURRENT
Quarterly Newsletter of the Center for Japanese Studies, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
Spring 2006 Vol. 9 No. 2

CJK PRAGMATICS CONFERENCE
Contents
1Pragmatics Conference

2

Recent and Upcoming
Events3Student News

4Faculty News

5

From the Tea Center/Notes

6

From the Library

7

Announcements

J-Current reports on the achievements
and activities of UHM JapaneseStudies faculty and students as well asJapan-related events, research,scholarships and overseas programs.
Submission deadline for the next issue
is July 15, 2006. Please send to:
J-Current Editor
Center for Japanese Studies
1890 East-West Road, Moore 216
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
Honolulu, HI 96822
E-mail: cjs@hawaii.edu
Tel: (808) 956-2667
Fax: (808) 956-2666
Web: www.hawaii.edu/cjs
Copyright © 2006 Center for Japanese Studies.
All rights reserved.
An Equal Opportunity / Affirmative Action
Institution

From June 5th to 7th, more than 100
scholars, specialists, and researchers from
Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, England andthe U.S. gathered at UH-Mānoa campus
to share their interest in and experienceswith pragmatics in the East Asianlanguage classroom. The conference
provided both an opportunity to hear abroad range of research reports on the latest work being conducted in the areas ofteaching and assessing pragmatics in theChinese and Japanese foreign language
classroom, as well as a chance toparticipate in hands-on workshops led byVice Chancellor Neil Samtresk andConference Organizer Dina Yoshimi(EALL) at the closing ceremony.

some of the leading figures in the fieldof pragmatics for Chinese, Japanese, andKorean, respectively. Among the highpoints of the event was a stimulating
and insightful
keynote address by Dr. Agnes Weiyun
He (Assistant Professor, Department ofAsian and Asian American
Studies at the State University of New
York at Stony Brook), “Pragmatics asTeachers’ Practice.” The conference,co-sponsored by the National
Resource Center – East Asia (NRCEA)
at UH-Mānoa and the UH-Mānoa
National Foreign Language Resource
Center (NFLRC), was the culminating
event of a five-year NRCEA-funded
initiative to establish UH-Mānoa as aleader in the field of East Asianlanguage instruction through extensive
outreach activities that have enabled
UH- Mānoa faculty specializing in thepragmatics of East Asian languagesto share their expertise with others inthe field, and to provide training in theinnovative approaches that they havedeveloped at the university.

BREAKING NEWSThe United States Department of Education has announced that UH
will retain its designation as a National Resource Center for East Asia (NRCEA)
for the next four years, with nearly $1,000,000 in funding throughTitle VI of theHigher Education Act. The money will be used for curriculum development,outreach activities and library resources.
This follows on last month’s announcement of $1.2 million in Foreign
Language and Areas Studies (FLAS) fellowships for East Asia for thesame cycle. Two other area centers at UH, the Center for Pacific Island
Studies and the Center for Southeast Asian Studies have received similar grants,
as has the National Foreign Language Resource Center (NFLRC). Thank you
to all who have helped to make this possible. We could not have done it withoutyou.

2006 Spring

2JCURRENT
Tanabe Retirement

With mixed emotions we note the retirement ofProfessors Willa Tanabe (Art History) and George Tanabe(Religion) this year. Willa began teaching Art History atUH in 1977, subsequently completed her Ph.D. at Columbia University in 1983, and reached the Full Professorrank in 1992. She served as the Director of the Center forJapanese Studies in 1990-91, Interim Dean of the Schoolof Hawaiian, Asian and Pacific Studies, 1993-96, andDean from 1996 to 2002, guiding SHAPS into international prominence. From then until her retirement at the endof June, she has served as Chair of the Art Department.
Her research centered on Japanese Buddhist art, especiallypainting. Her publications related to Japanese art and theLotus Sutra are particularly well known. The Japaneseembroidery exhibit she organized “Painting With Threads:
The Art of Japanese Embroidery” last year was a suitablecap to a long, distinguished career.

George Tanabe and Victor Kobayashi

Willa Tanabe and Hisami Springer

George also came to UH in 1977, and similarlycompleted his Ph.D., in Religion, from Columbia in 1983.
He became a Full Professor in the Department of Religion in
1994, and also served as Chair of that department from 1991
until 2001. Active in promoting Buddhist Studies at UH,and prominent nationally and internationally in the study ofJapanese Buddhism, he is especially well-known for his work
on Myoe, and his collaboration with Willa on The Lotus Sutra
and Japanese Culture (UH Press, 1989). He was advisor of
the “Sacred Treasures of Mt. Koya” exhibit at the Honolulu
Academy of Arts in 2002 for which Willa was co-curator.
Both George and Willa have been key members of
the Japanese Studies community at UH, having served numerous terms on the CJS Executive Committee and other of theCenter’s standing committees. We will greatly miss theirguidance and support, and cannot begin to thank them for all
they have done for CJS. We wish them a full and productive
retirement.

Recent and Upcoming Events
Kyōgen2006-2007 is the year of Kyōgen in the Department of Theatre and Dance, with guest artists from the Shigeyama family of the Okura
School coming to train students for performances of four traditional kyōgen. The production will run from Jan. 24 through Feb 4 at
Kennedy Theatre, with Outreach performances throughout the spring semester at libraries and schools on Oahu and the neighborislands.
PAAC Japan Study TourWith funding from Freeman-Asia, The Pacific Asian Affairs Council organized and led a group of 20 students to travel to Japan.
Prior to their departure, the students spent an intensive period studying about Japanese culture, history and contemporary society. A
number of people from UH helped with this preparation, including Dr. Robert Huey (Center for Japanese Studies), who spoke about
culture and perception, Dr. Wayne Farris (History) who spoke about Japanese history up to the Second World War, Dr. Gay Satsuma(CJS), who spoke on post-war history, and Dr. Christopher Bondy (CJS), who discussed education and contemporary society.

Spring 2006

3JCURRENT

Front Row (LtoR):Terry Higa, Norman Kaneshiro, Akiko Kohashi, Satoko
Imada; Second Row: Junko Nishimoto, Takushi Uchiya, Robin Grant; Last
Row: Yukiko Ampo, Issa Cohen, Seitaro Kawawa

Sanshin Performance
The Okinawa Sanshin Club at UH
closed out the spring semester witha rousing performance of Okinawansong and dance. The peformancefeatured traditional dances, thebackground on various types of
Okinawan music, and a discussion of
the Sanshin instrument. The Okinawa
Sanshin Club features members
ranging in skill from those who havebeen playing Sanshin for years to those
who just took it up this semester. If you
are interested in learning more about
this club, or Okinawan music ingeneral, please contact SeitaroKawawa at kawawa@kisc.meiji.
ac.jp.

Student NewsWe rely on readers to provide this information. We encourage you to share your news with us.

Presentations
Kazutoh Ishida (PhD, EALL) presented his paper,“Developing understanding of how the desu/masu and plain
forms express one’s stances” at the CJK Pragmatics
Conference.

Ryoko Yamamoto (PhD, Sociology) will present her paper ,“Criminally Foreign: Immigration Control and Fear of Crime
in Japan” at the The UC San Diego Center for
Comparative Immigration Studies Summer Institute onInternational Migration.

Midori Ishida (PhD, SLS) presented her paper, “Engagingin assessment activities in Japanese: L2 development ininteractional competence during one-year study-abroad.” atthe CJK Pragmatics Conference.

NewsMidori Ishida received a research grant from the Arts &Sciences Advisory Council, University of Hawai’i at Manoa,April 2006.

Tomoko Iwai (PhD, EALL) presented her paper“Becoming a good conversationalist: Pragmatic developmentof JFL learners Dynamically Develop Social Relations” at
the CJK Pragmatics Conference.

Graduation and Positions
Mie Hiramoto (PhD, Linguistics, Chair: Andrew Wong)
graduated in May, 2006. Her dissertation is entitled: “Dialect
Contact in Hawai’i: The Use of Japanese by Plantation
Immigrants.” Dr. Hiramoto will be a visiting assistantprofessor at the University of Arizona, Tucson (Departmentof East Asian Studies).

Emi Murayama, (PhD, EALL) presented a paper,“A pragmatic approach to turn exchange: Instruction of nemarked listener responses in elementary JFL classes” at theCJK Pragmatics Conference.
Yumiko Tateyama (PhD, EALL) presented her paper “JFLlearners pragmatic development and classroom interaction
examined from a language socialization perspective” at theCJK Pragmatics Conference.

Elizabeth Izaki (MA, EALL, Chair: Nobuko Ochner)completed her Master’s Degree and will be an instructorof Japanese in the Department of Foreign Languages andLiteratures at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Robert Straton (PhD, History, Chair: Sharon Minichiello)
graduated in May, 2006. His dissertation is entitled:“Patriarchy in Meiji Japan.” Dr. Stratton has a teachingposition at Punahou Schools.

42006 Spring

JCURRENT

Faculty NewsWe rely on readers to provide this information. We encourage you to share your news with us.

AwardsDr. Joel Cohn (Associate Professor, EALL) received
the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for theTranslation of Japanese Literature for his translation ofNatsume Soseki’s Botchan. Dr. Cohn was only one oftwo scholars to receive this award, admistered by theDonald Keene Center of Japanese Culture at Columbia
University.
Dr. Petrice Flowers (Assistant Professor, PoliticalScience), along with James Spencer and Jungmin Seo(Political Science) have been awarded an SSRC Korean
Migration Fellowship for 2006-2007 to undertake acomparative project focusing on Korean communities inBeijing, Tokyo and Los Angeles.
Dr. Christine Yano (Associate Professor, Anthropology)
received a Smithsonian Institution National Air and Space
Museum Verville Fellowship to conduct archival researchduring 2006-2007 on her project on Pan American
Airways stewardesses of Japanese ancestry, 1955-1972.
Dr. Yano will be in residence in Washington, D.C. as a
Visiting Researcher at Georgetown University.
Presentations
Dr. George Tanabe (Professor, Religion) will present hispaper, “The Death and Rebirth of Buddhism in Contemporary Japan” at a conference sponsored by the British
Association of Buddhist Studies at Lancaster Universityin July, 2006.
Dr. Dina Yoshimi (Associate Professor, EALL) presented
a paper, “Teaching pragmatics: A teacher’s toolkit” at theat the CJK Pragmatics Conference, held at Honolulu,
Hawai’i on June 7, 2006.
Visiting Scholars
Dr. Ken Ito (Associate Profesor of Japanese Literature,
the University of Michigan), and Dr. Timothy Vance(Professor, East Asian Studies, the University of Arizona),
will be Visiting Colleagues in EALL from this fall.

The Japanese novelist, Mr. Murakami Haruki, will be
an Exchange Visitor in EALL from this fall.
Publications
The late Mitsugu Sakihara’s Okinawan-English
Wordbook is available now from UH Press. The bookwas edited by Dr. Andy Curry (Instructor, EALL)
and Dr. Leon Serafim (Associate Professor, EALL),
along with Dr. Karimata Shigehisa and Dr. Shimabukuro Moriyo (University of the Ryūkyūs).
Dr. Wayne Farris (Professor, History) published anew book, Japan’s Medieval Population: Famine,Ftertility and Warfare in a Transformative Age fromUH Press.
Dr. Petrice Flowers (Assistant Professor, PoliticalScience), published a chapter, “The International
Refugee Convention: National Identity as a Limitation on Compliance,” in Forced Migration and Global
Processes: A View from Forced Migration Studies,
Edited by Francois Crepeau, et al. Lexington Books,
2006.
Dr. Kyoko Hijirida (Professor, EALL) publishedan article, “Okinawan Language and Culture Course:
Its Contents and Curriculum Implementation at theUniversity of Hawai‘i” in Immigration Studies, No. 2,March 2006.
A new book, Crowning the Nice Girl: Gender, Ethnicity,and Culture in Hawaii’s Cherry Blossom Festival by Dr.
Christine Yano (Associate Professor, Anthropology) is
due out in June, 2006 from UH Press.
EventsDr. Julie Iezzi (Associate Professor, Theater & Dance)
recently co-curated an exhibit at the East West Center
Gallery entitled, “From Stage to Page: Kabuki throughWoodblock Prints” which runs from May 17 to August24.

Spring 2006

5JCURRENT

From the Tea Center
The Tea Center library, featuring over 250 itemsreference materials, videos, books, and guides - hasbeen catalogued. Materials, in both Japanese andEnglish, include historical works on past Tea
Masters as well as discussion for the beginner andthe veteran by Sen Soshitsu. If you are interested inviewing these materials, please contact the Centerfor Japanese Studies.
The Tea House at the University of Hawaii

The Tea Center now has an email
account. Please email wayoftea@hawaii.edu
to contact the Tea Center.

If you would like the Center to give demonstrations atlocal schools, or to host schools at the UHM campus,
please contact Dr. Robert Huey or Dr. Gay Satsuma at
the Center for Japanese Studies, University of Hawai‘iat 808-956-2665 or wayoftea@hawaii.edu.

UH GATHERINGS IN TOKYO

CLASS ON OKINAWANS LOCALLY AND GLOBALLY

If you are in Tokyo on the first Mondayof any month, please join in the monthly meetings of the UH community. Thegatherings, held in a variety of restaurants in Shibuya, are informal, usually
over dinner and drinks, and provide anopportunity to meet with other students
and faculty conducting research andstudying in Japan. For more information, contact Mr. Brian Masshardt(PhD student, Political Science) atmasshard@hawaii.edu.

Dr. Joyce Chinen, professor of sociology at UHWest Oahu, will be teaching a cross-listed sociology
and anthropology class, “Okinawans Locally andGlobally” in an accelerated session starting August25, 2006. This class will examine the history andculture of the Uchinanchu (Okinawan) people, theconditions which contributed to the immigration ofOkinawans to Hawai‘i, the conditions and challenges they faced Hawai‘i and globally. The classwill run from August 25-September 29, 2006 onFriday evenings and Saturday mornings. Students
may also sign up for a special 10-day study tour
to Okinawa in October and participate in the 4thWorldwide Uchinanchu Festival. For more information, please contact Dr. Joyce Chinen at 4544720 or chinen@hawaii.edu.

2006 Spring

6JCURRENT

From the Library
UHM Library Preserves Rare Ryūkyū Scrolls
A 296 year-old Ryūkyū scroll is at its midpoint towards full restoration thanks to the collaborative efforts of theUH Mānoa Library and National Museum of Japanese History (Kokuritsu Rekishi Minzoku Hakubutsukan, knownas“Rekihaku”). Recognizing the cultural significance of the scroll, the Rekihaku agreed to pay half of the scroll’s
total restoration cost. In exchange for their financial assistance, The UHM will allow the Rekihaku to create an
on-line exhibit and a museum quality replica to add to their own collection. The scroll, Procession of Ryūkyūans En
route to Edo Castle (Ryūkyūjin Tōjō Gyōretsu), 2 pieces totaling 65 feet in length, is part of the Sakamaki/Hawley
Ryūkyū/Okinawa Collection in the Japan Collection at Hamilton Library. The Hawai‘i portion of the restoration
cost is $14,000, of which $11,500 has been raised so far. The University of Hawai‘i Library is seeking donations
to cover the remaining $3,400 needed to pay for the scroll’s restoration.
When completed in March 2007, the fully restored ancient scroll
will be returned to Hawai‘i , along with its digital images. The scroll
will be available for community viewing, exhibitions, and research.
The scroll condition has been too fragile to allow it to be handled inthe past.

Ms. Diane Perushek, University Librarian, handed
over the scroll to Dr. Junko Uchida, AssistantProfessor of the National Museum of Japanese
History

There are three rare scrolls in the Sakamaki/Hawley Collection, which
the UHM Library has undertaken to restore in order to make themaccessible. The first of these was restored and exhibited at the Library
Treasures Exhibit this past fall. The scroll that the Rekihaku is now
working on is the second, and the third scroll, a 335 year-old piece,
Procession of Prince Kin, Ryūkyūan Envoy (Ryūkyū Shisha Kin ŌjiShusshi no Gyōretsu), can be fully restored as well but $13,000 in
donations are needed.

It was about 40 years ago that the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa,with help of the Hawai‘i - Okinawa community, acquired these precious Ryūkyū/Okinawa scrolls. To support theRyūkyū Scroll Restoration Project or for more information, please contact Tokiko Bazzell at UHM Library, 9562315 or email tokiko@hawaii.edu. Thank you for helping UH preserve this important part of the Ryūkyū/Okinawa
cultural heritage!

(Tokiko Bazzell)

The scroll under restoration at the National Museum of Japanese History

Spring 20067

JCURRENT

Announcements
CJS Scholarships (2006 – 07)
Congratulations to the following students who received
scholarships!
FLAS:
Eric Cunningham - MA Anthropology
Jesse LeFebvre - MA Religion
Leah Kalmanson - PhD Philosophy
John Kupchik - PhD Linguisitics
Mark Ombrello - PhD History
William P. Lebra Memorial Scholarship:
Paul Christensen - PhD Anthropology

Japanese Poetry Contest
The Eighth Annual Japanese Poetry Contest, sponsoredby the Japanese Section of the Department of East Asian
Languages and Literatures, was held on April 5, 2006.
There were 230 poems submitted by 153 students, and 18students were awarded prizes for their poetry. The SenSōhitsu Poetry Prize for best overall poem of the contest
was awarded to Mr. Sean Pitchford, a third-year Japanese
student. Ms. Marina Ruiz-Tada, a fourth-year student,
received the award for best Tanka poem. Please join us incongratulating them for their fine work!

CJS graduate fellowships:
Tomomi Hasegawa - PhD SLA
Kyle Ikeda - PhD EALL
Akiko Sugiyama - PhD History
Asuka Suzuki - PhD EALL
Tasuku Harada Graduate Scholarship:
Shinji Kojima - PhD Sociology
Minae and Miki Kajiyama EndowedGraduate Scholarship:
Jun Nomura - PhD Linguistics
Hanayo Sasaki Graduate Merit Scholarship:
Matthew McMullen - MA Religion
一人きり曇った空に
凧一つSen Sōshitsu Poetry Prize: Sean Pitchford (Japanese 305)
「ひさしぶり」
さりげなく言うつもりでもさみしき思い
隠しきれず
Tanka Prize: Maria Ruiz-Tada (Japanese 431)

APPLICATION DEADLINESCJS Graduate Student Travel Grant
August 1, 2006
For more information, visit www.hawaii.edu/cjs/funding.html.
Graduate Student Organization Travel Grant
There is no application deadline. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis. Contact GSO at956-8776 or visit http://gso.hawaii.edu/ for more information.

8Spring 2006

JCURRENTCJS MAILING LIST
If you would like to receive CJS announcements by e-mail, you can become a part of the CJS listserv by e-mailing the Centerat cjs@hawaii.edu with a subject heading of “E-mail Flyer.” In the body of the message, please include your name, preferredtitle (Dr., Mr. Ms. etc.), your affiliation (faculty, student, community etc.) and regular (snail mail) contact address. If you
prefer to receive the newsletter as hardcopy and flyers by e-mail, please indicate your preferences. If you know someone
who would like to be on our mailing list, please let us know.

Center for Japanese Studies
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
School of Hawaiian, Asian and Pacific Studies
1890 East-West Road, Moore Hall 216
Honolulu, HI 96822
USATo: