Turning Points
University of California, Los Angeles
May 12 - 14, 2022
Call for Papers for the AJLS meeting (2021–22)The 29th annual meeting of AJLS, which was originally scheduled to be held at UCLA in the spring of 2021, was postponed to Spring 2022. The conference committee at UCLA (Torquil Duthie, Michael Emmerich, Seiji Lippit, Satoko Shimazaki, and Junko Yamazaki) chose the theme of “Turning Points” for the conference. As a prelude to the in-person event (held in Los Angeles in May 12–14, 2022), they organized two roundtable conversations that took place online in 2021: Roundtable 1Michael Bourdaghs (University of Chicago)David Lurie (Columbia University)Vyjayanthi Selinger (Bowdoin College)Satoko Shimazaki (UCLA) Moderated by Torquil Duthie (UCLA) Roundtable 2Will Bridges (University of Rochester)Seiji Lippit (UCLA)Mimi Long (UC Irvine)Sharalyn Orbaugh (UBC) Moderated by Michael Emmerich (UCLA) These conversations were intended as a stimulating jumping-off point and also served as the “call for papers” for the conference, which was held May 12–14, 2022. The schedule of the conference was as follows: Thursday May 12Special event: In Memoriam: Sari Kawana, A Scholar of and in Turning Points. (Royce 314)Participants make their own way to Royce Hall, UCLA Campus
1:00 Covid-19 Clearance and Rapid Testing for all participants
2-2:15PM Welcome
2:15-3:45PM Panel 1: Genre Investigations
Eve Zimmerman, Wellesley CollegeTITLE TBA
Linda H. Chance, University of PennsylvaniaPast Uncertain: What Medieval Commentaries Right
Jonathan Abel, Penn StateMiyabe Miyuki’s New Media Theory
4-5:30PM Panel 2: Body-Mind Investigations
James Dorsey, Dartmouth CollegeBody of Evidence / Burden of Proof: Sakaguchi Ango’s Mystery Novella “The Murder of a Repatriated Soldier” (1949~1950)
Sarah Frederick, Boston UniversitySpring Cleaning for the Bundan
Bruce Baird, UMass AmherstMaking the ‘Ugly’ More than Ugly: Looking at Butô through the Lens of Sari Kawana
5:30-6 In Memoriam Roundtable (Royce 306)
Friday May 13
8:30: Shuttle pick-up at Angeleno Hotel (Arrival at UCLA Royce Hall before 9am).
9:00: Covid-19 Clearance and Rapid Testing for all participants (Royce Back Entrance)
9-9:50: Breakfast
9:50: Welcome (Royce 314 and 306)
10-12PM Session 1
Panel 1A (VIRTUAL): Proletarians Entering Narratives: New Modes of Depiction and the Rise of the Proletarian Figure
Yauheniya Hudziyeva, Waseda UniversityBy the People, for the People: People’s Art Debates and the Rise of the Proletariat, 1916-1918
Kevin Michael Smith, UC BerkeleyIndignant Illustration: Yanase Masamu’s Proletarian Comics and the Japanese Avant-Garde
Edwin Michielsen, University of TorontoForeign Revolution, Local Struggle: Maedakō Hiroichirō’s “Shina” Works and the Chinese Proletariat
Vanessa Baker, UC IrvineSalmon, Sardines, and Seaweed: Displacing the Terrestrial in Fisheries Literature
Panel 1B: Postwar and Contemporary Turning Points (Royce 314)
Julia Clark, UCLAReclaimed Landscape: The Figure of the Chōsen Buraku in Postwar and Zainichi Literature
Alex Bates, Dickinson CollegeReimagining the multiethnic nation after disaster: Japan Sinks 2020 and Fukasawa Ushio’s Green and Red
Giulia Baquè, Ca’ Foscari UniversityDeconstructing 3.11 as a Paradigm Shift: Literary Continuity and Social Responsibility in Environmental Disaster
Chiara Pavone, UCLA“Radioactive Aesthetics”: Distance and Avisuality in Post-Fukushima Literature
12-1: Lunch on Third Floor Royce Terrace
1-3PM: Session 2
Panel 2A: Kikigaki as Attunement: Turning to Listening, Turning to Environment (Royce 306)
Kimura Saeko, Tsuda CollegeThe Kikigaki Literary Shift in Shinsaigo Bungaku
Margherita Long, University of California, IrvineDifference and Repetition at the Fascist Olympics: Kobayashi’s Trinity
Yukiko Shigeto, Whitman CollegeNarrating Fūdo into Life: Ishimure Michiko and the Capital of Living Things
Mika Endo, Independent ScholarWriting Daily Life in the Classroom: Observation, Mutuality, and Practices of Attunement in Prewar Japanese Education
Panel 2B: Meiji Turning Points (Royce 314)
Daphne van der Molen, Leiden University (VIRTUAL PRESENTATION)In the Eye of the Beholder: The Meiji Restoration in Fukuzawa Yukichi’s Autobiography
Victoria Davis, UCLALayered Temporalities: Reconsidering Railway Space-Time in Izumi Kyōka’s Kōya Hijiri
Yuki Ishida, Columbia University (VIRTUAL PRESENTATION)Localization, Foreignization, Japanization: Futabatei Shimei, Translation, and the Formation of the “Modern” Literary Language at the Turn of the Twentieth Century in Japan
Shu Sakaguchi, Fukuoka Joshi DaigakuKunikida Doppo and the Phenomenological Turn at the End of the Nineteenth Century: An Interface between Empathetic Aesthetics and the Modernization of Narrative Style
3:15-5:15: Session 3
Panel 3A: Premodern Turning Points (Royce 306)
Gian Piero Persiani, University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignThe Most Momentous Marriage in Japanese Cultural History? The Adoption of Kana as the Go-To Script to Inscribe Waka in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries
Kurtis Hanlon, University of British ColumbiaA Poetic Power-Party: Saneyori’s Maneuvers During the Tentoku dairi uta-awase
Kim McNelly, UCLAPoetry, Grief, and Trauma of the Genpei War and Jōkyū Disturbance
Emi Bushelle, Western Washington University (VIRTUAL PRESENTATION)To Love Not is to be a Person Without a Heart: Mono no aware and the Affirmation of Feeling in Medieval Buddhist and Early Modern Nativist Thought
Panel 3B: The Toggle: Digital Turnings (Royce 314)
Andrew Campana, Cornell UniversityOther Internets: Rethinking Digitality and the Beginnings of Online Poetry in Japan
Young Yi, Yale University (VIRTUAL PRESENTATION)Heterotopic Hybridity: (Re)constructing ‘Asia in Tokyo’ through Narrative/Media/Space
Jonathan E. Abel, Penn State UniversityViral Literature in Real-Time: Covid Cultures in Japanese Twitterature, or JLit in the Time of Corona
Kimberly Hassel, Princeton University (VIRTUAL PRESENTATION)Digitizing Women’s Worlds: Gender, Visual Participatory Culture, and “New” Mediatic Assemblages in 5G Japan
5:30: Keynote Lecture and Reading: Furukawa Hideo (Royce 314)
6:30 Dinner at Luskin Center Centennial Terrace
9:30 Shuttle bus back to Angeleno Hotel.
Saturday May 14
8:30: Shuttle pick-up at Angeleno Hotel (Arrival at UCLA Royce Hall before 9am).
9:00: Covid-19 Clearance and Rapid Testing for all participants (Royce Back Entrance)
9-9:50: Breakfast
10AM-12PM: Session 4 (Royce 306)
Panel 4A (VIRTUAL): Turning Points and Transformation in Medieval Japanese Texts (Royce 306)
Bonnie McClure, UC BerkeleyTurning toward a Poetics for the Future in Shinkokinshū poetry
Beth M. Carter, Case Western Reserve UniversityBorrowing Past Mourning Poetics for Future Stability: Parallels between Genji's "The Seer" and Heike’s Initiates’ Chapter
Jeremy Sather, Virginia TechDust in the Wind: Tale of the Heike’s Initiate’s Chapter in A Chronicle of Great Peace
Kendra Strand, University of IowaCountless Thousands of Years: Ashikaga Yoshiakira Imagines the Future
Vyjayanthi Selinger, Bowdoin CollegeDiscussant
Panel 4B (VIRTUAL): Attunements and Enactments: Multi-sensorial Reimagining and the Unsettling of Japanese Literary Thought and Praxis (VIRTUAL, Royce 314)
Junnan Chen, Princeton UniversityAdventure of the Gaze—Event and Structure in Taki Kōji’s Semiotics of the Image
Fusako Innami, Assistant Professor, Durham UniversitySculpting Space: Rewriting the Body–Ground Relationship
Alex Murphy, PhD Candidate, University of ChicagoYoshimasu Gōzō, Tape-Voice, and the Listening Body
Franz Prichard, Princeton UniversityAnticolonial and Ecological Embodiments: Place in the Work of Ishimure Michiko, Nakahira Takuma, and Tsumura Takashi
Tsuboi Hideto, NichibunkenDiscussant
12-1: Lunch
1-3PM: Session 5
Panel 5A (In-Person): (Re)Turning Points in Literatures of War, Disaster, and Pandemic (Royce 306)
Daryl Maude, University of California, BerkeleySticky Futures: Writing and Futurity in Murakami Ryū’s Kagirinaku tōmei ni chikai burū
Shelby E. Oxenford, The University of Texas at AustinTime and the Ghost in Yū Miri’s Tokyo Ueno Station
Jon L Pitt, UC IrvineBreathing Environmental and Literary History in the Age of COVID-19: On Uchidate Makiko’s The Mystery Behind the Miracle
Livia Monnet, University of MontrealVirtual Discussant
Dan O’Neill, UC BerkeleyVirtual Discussant
Panel 5B: Shōwa Turning Points (Royce 314)Yoshihiro Yasuhara, Carnegie Mellon UniversityIshikawa Jun’s Haikai no sanbunka as a Turning Point of Literary Reification
Jue Hou, University of Chicago (VIRTUAL PRESENTATION)Tenkō and the Invention of the Quotidian Subject: Parapolitics and the I-Novel Form from Kobayashi Takiji to Nakano Shigeharu
Mariko Takano, Oberlin CollegeHanada Kiyoteru’s Discourse of the Turning Point
Nate Shockey, Bard CollegeCalling Out from the Coal: Writing, Reportage, and Reconstruction at the Crux of Energy Regimes
3:15-5:15PM: Session 6
Panel 6A: On the Many Lives of Japanese Literature in Postwar America (Royce 306)
J. Keith Vincent, Boston UniversityFlaming Creatures: Parker Tyler Reads the Tale of Genji
Patrick Carland-Echavarria, University of PennsylvaniaPlanting The Seeds of the Heart: Donald Keene, Arthur Waley, and the Melancholic Birth of Japanese Literature in Cold War America
Matt Mewhinney, Florida State UniversityMake it Sing: John Nathan and the Poetry of Translation
Brian Hurley, University of Texas, AustinBetween Conservatism and Capitalism: On the Market Origins of Our Field
Ann Sherif, Oberlin CollegeDiscussant
Panel 6B: Refashioning Imperial Tokyo: Literary Ruptures of Urban Space (Royce 314)
Wakako Suzuki, Bard CollegeCross-Dressing Youth in Tokyo: Gendered Bodies and Another Fashion Statement in Imperial Japan
Pedro Bassoe, Purdue UniversitySightseeing After the Earthquake: Rupture, Cyclicality, and the Pacification of Spirits in Izumi Kyōka’s Fukagawa senkei (1927)
Mari Ishida, Wake Forest UniversityUndoing Imperial Space: Anti-Imperialist Movements in 1920s’ Tokyo from a Gender Perspective
Timothy Unverzagt Goddard, Yale UniversityTurning to the Past: Tanizaki Jun’ichirō’s “Tōkyō o omou” and the Aftershocks of the Great Kantō Earthquake
END OF CONFERENCE
1:00 Covid-19 Clearance and Rapid Testing for all participants
2-2:15PM Welcome
2:15-3:45PM Panel 1: Genre Investigations
Eve Zimmerman, Wellesley CollegeTITLE TBA
Linda H. Chance, University of PennsylvaniaPast Uncertain: What Medieval Commentaries Right
Jonathan Abel, Penn StateMiyabe Miyuki’s New Media Theory
4-5:30PM Panel 2: Body-Mind Investigations
James Dorsey, Dartmouth CollegeBody of Evidence / Burden of Proof: Sakaguchi Ango’s Mystery Novella “The Murder of a Repatriated Soldier” (1949~1950)
Sarah Frederick, Boston UniversitySpring Cleaning for the Bundan
Bruce Baird, UMass AmherstMaking the ‘Ugly’ More than Ugly: Looking at Butô through the Lens of Sari Kawana
5:30-6 In Memoriam Roundtable (Royce 306)
Friday May 13
8:30: Shuttle pick-up at Angeleno Hotel (Arrival at UCLA Royce Hall before 9am).
9:00: Covid-19 Clearance and Rapid Testing for all participants (Royce Back Entrance)
9-9:50: Breakfast
9:50: Welcome (Royce 314 and 306)
10-12PM Session 1
Panel 1A (VIRTUAL): Proletarians Entering Narratives: New Modes of Depiction and the Rise of the Proletarian Figure
Yauheniya Hudziyeva, Waseda UniversityBy the People, for the People: People’s Art Debates and the Rise of the Proletariat, 1916-1918
Kevin Michael Smith, UC BerkeleyIndignant Illustration: Yanase Masamu’s Proletarian Comics and the Japanese Avant-Garde
Edwin Michielsen, University of TorontoForeign Revolution, Local Struggle: Maedakō Hiroichirō’s “Shina” Works and the Chinese Proletariat
Vanessa Baker, UC IrvineSalmon, Sardines, and Seaweed: Displacing the Terrestrial in Fisheries Literature
Panel 1B: Postwar and Contemporary Turning Points (Royce 314)
Julia Clark, UCLAReclaimed Landscape: The Figure of the Chōsen Buraku in Postwar and Zainichi Literature
Alex Bates, Dickinson CollegeReimagining the multiethnic nation after disaster: Japan Sinks 2020 and Fukasawa Ushio’s Green and Red
Giulia Baquè, Ca’ Foscari UniversityDeconstructing 3.11 as a Paradigm Shift: Literary Continuity and Social Responsibility in Environmental Disaster
Chiara Pavone, UCLA“Radioactive Aesthetics”: Distance and Avisuality in Post-Fukushima Literature
12-1: Lunch on Third Floor Royce Terrace
1-3PM: Session 2
Panel 2A: Kikigaki as Attunement: Turning to Listening, Turning to Environment (Royce 306)
Kimura Saeko, Tsuda CollegeThe Kikigaki Literary Shift in Shinsaigo Bungaku
Margherita Long, University of California, IrvineDifference and Repetition at the Fascist Olympics: Kobayashi’s Trinity
Yukiko Shigeto, Whitman CollegeNarrating Fūdo into Life: Ishimure Michiko and the Capital of Living Things
Mika Endo, Independent ScholarWriting Daily Life in the Classroom: Observation, Mutuality, and Practices of Attunement in Prewar Japanese Education
Panel 2B: Meiji Turning Points (Royce 314)
Daphne van der Molen, Leiden University (VIRTUAL PRESENTATION)In the Eye of the Beholder: The Meiji Restoration in Fukuzawa Yukichi’s Autobiography
Victoria Davis, UCLALayered Temporalities: Reconsidering Railway Space-Time in Izumi Kyōka’s Kōya Hijiri
Yuki Ishida, Columbia University (VIRTUAL PRESENTATION)Localization, Foreignization, Japanization: Futabatei Shimei, Translation, and the Formation of the “Modern” Literary Language at the Turn of the Twentieth Century in Japan
Shu Sakaguchi, Fukuoka Joshi DaigakuKunikida Doppo and the Phenomenological Turn at the End of the Nineteenth Century: An Interface between Empathetic Aesthetics and the Modernization of Narrative Style
3:15-5:15: Session 3
Panel 3A: Premodern Turning Points (Royce 306)
Gian Piero Persiani, University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignThe Most Momentous Marriage in Japanese Cultural History? The Adoption of Kana as the Go-To Script to Inscribe Waka in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries
Kurtis Hanlon, University of British ColumbiaA Poetic Power-Party: Saneyori’s Maneuvers During the Tentoku dairi uta-awase
Kim McNelly, UCLAPoetry, Grief, and Trauma of the Genpei War and Jōkyū Disturbance
Emi Bushelle, Western Washington University (VIRTUAL PRESENTATION)To Love Not is to be a Person Without a Heart: Mono no aware and the Affirmation of Feeling in Medieval Buddhist and Early Modern Nativist Thought
Panel 3B: The Toggle: Digital Turnings (Royce 314)
Andrew Campana, Cornell UniversityOther Internets: Rethinking Digitality and the Beginnings of Online Poetry in Japan
Young Yi, Yale University (VIRTUAL PRESENTATION)Heterotopic Hybridity: (Re)constructing ‘Asia in Tokyo’ through Narrative/Media/Space
Jonathan E. Abel, Penn State UniversityViral Literature in Real-Time: Covid Cultures in Japanese Twitterature, or JLit in the Time of Corona
Kimberly Hassel, Princeton University (VIRTUAL PRESENTATION)Digitizing Women’s Worlds: Gender, Visual Participatory Culture, and “New” Mediatic Assemblages in 5G Japan
5:30: Keynote Lecture and Reading: Furukawa Hideo (Royce 314)
6:30 Dinner at Luskin Center Centennial Terrace
9:30 Shuttle bus back to Angeleno Hotel.
Saturday May 14
8:30: Shuttle pick-up at Angeleno Hotel (Arrival at UCLA Royce Hall before 9am).
9:00: Covid-19 Clearance and Rapid Testing for all participants (Royce Back Entrance)
9-9:50: Breakfast
10AM-12PM: Session 4 (Royce 306)
Panel 4A (VIRTUAL): Turning Points and Transformation in Medieval Japanese Texts (Royce 306)
Bonnie McClure, UC BerkeleyTurning toward a Poetics for the Future in Shinkokinshū poetry
Beth M. Carter, Case Western Reserve UniversityBorrowing Past Mourning Poetics for Future Stability: Parallels between Genji's "The Seer" and Heike’s Initiates’ Chapter
Jeremy Sather, Virginia TechDust in the Wind: Tale of the Heike’s Initiate’s Chapter in A Chronicle of Great Peace
Kendra Strand, University of IowaCountless Thousands of Years: Ashikaga Yoshiakira Imagines the Future
Vyjayanthi Selinger, Bowdoin CollegeDiscussant
Panel 4B (VIRTUAL): Attunements and Enactments: Multi-sensorial Reimagining and the Unsettling of Japanese Literary Thought and Praxis (VIRTUAL, Royce 314)
Junnan Chen, Princeton UniversityAdventure of the Gaze—Event and Structure in Taki Kōji’s Semiotics of the Image
Fusako Innami, Assistant Professor, Durham UniversitySculpting Space: Rewriting the Body–Ground Relationship
Alex Murphy, PhD Candidate, University of ChicagoYoshimasu Gōzō, Tape-Voice, and the Listening Body
Franz Prichard, Princeton UniversityAnticolonial and Ecological Embodiments: Place in the Work of Ishimure Michiko, Nakahira Takuma, and Tsumura Takashi
Tsuboi Hideto, NichibunkenDiscussant
12-1: Lunch
1-3PM: Session 5
Panel 5A (In-Person): (Re)Turning Points in Literatures of War, Disaster, and Pandemic (Royce 306)
Daryl Maude, University of California, BerkeleySticky Futures: Writing and Futurity in Murakami Ryū’s Kagirinaku tōmei ni chikai burū
Shelby E. Oxenford, The University of Texas at AustinTime and the Ghost in Yū Miri’s Tokyo Ueno Station
Jon L Pitt, UC IrvineBreathing Environmental and Literary History in the Age of COVID-19: On Uchidate Makiko’s The Mystery Behind the Miracle
Livia Monnet, University of MontrealVirtual Discussant
Dan O’Neill, UC BerkeleyVirtual Discussant
Panel 5B: Shōwa Turning Points (Royce 314)Yoshihiro Yasuhara, Carnegie Mellon UniversityIshikawa Jun’s Haikai no sanbunka as a Turning Point of Literary Reification
Jue Hou, University of Chicago (VIRTUAL PRESENTATION)Tenkō and the Invention of the Quotidian Subject: Parapolitics and the I-Novel Form from Kobayashi Takiji to Nakano Shigeharu
Mariko Takano, Oberlin CollegeHanada Kiyoteru’s Discourse of the Turning Point
Nate Shockey, Bard CollegeCalling Out from the Coal: Writing, Reportage, and Reconstruction at the Crux of Energy Regimes
3:15-5:15PM: Session 6
Panel 6A: On the Many Lives of Japanese Literature in Postwar America (Royce 306)
J. Keith Vincent, Boston UniversityFlaming Creatures: Parker Tyler Reads the Tale of Genji
Patrick Carland-Echavarria, University of PennsylvaniaPlanting The Seeds of the Heart: Donald Keene, Arthur Waley, and the Melancholic Birth of Japanese Literature in Cold War America
Matt Mewhinney, Florida State UniversityMake it Sing: John Nathan and the Poetry of Translation
Brian Hurley, University of Texas, AustinBetween Conservatism and Capitalism: On the Market Origins of Our Field
Ann Sherif, Oberlin CollegeDiscussant
Panel 6B: Refashioning Imperial Tokyo: Literary Ruptures of Urban Space (Royce 314)
Wakako Suzuki, Bard CollegeCross-Dressing Youth in Tokyo: Gendered Bodies and Another Fashion Statement in Imperial Japan
Pedro Bassoe, Purdue UniversitySightseeing After the Earthquake: Rupture, Cyclicality, and the Pacification of Spirits in Izumi Kyōka’s Fukagawa senkei (1927)
Mari Ishida, Wake Forest UniversityUndoing Imperial Space: Anti-Imperialist Movements in 1920s’ Tokyo from a Gender Perspective
Timothy Unverzagt Goddard, Yale UniversityTurning to the Past: Tanizaki Jun’ichirō’s “Tōkyō o omou” and the Aftershocks of the Great Kantō Earthquake
END OF CONFERENCE