Keynote & Workshop

Fusako Innami (School Of Modern Languages And Cultures, University of Durham)

Dr Fusako Innami is an assistant professor in Japanese and Performance Studies in the University of Durham. She completed her D.Phil. at the University of Oxford in 2014, conducting research into the phenomenon of touch in modern/contemporary Japanese literature and its relationship to 20th-century European thought (phenomenology and psychoanalysis, in particular), and subsequently lectured at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK (2014-15).

Innami has been interested in the relationship between writing, the body and arts, which led her to work on the filmic representations of the body for her BA thesis at the International Christian University in Tokyo, and on the sensation of falling bodies for her MA project in Performance Studies at New York University. Her questions regarding performative language, embodied experiences and the cross-cultural translation/circulation of critical theories led me to her doctoral work on touch in literature and her current research broadly concerning the senses. In 2012, Innami received New Scholars’ Prize (second prize), International Federation for Theatre Research, for her article: 'Ethics of Incorporation, Spasm, and the Sense of Otherness'. She has contributed articles for performing arts journals and cultural organisations, and commissioned works for organisations including cutural complex Bunkamura in Tokyo, Japanese performing arts journal Danceart and Glyndebourne Opera in Sussex, UK.

Keynote - Touch, Shadow, Air: Tanizaki’s Aesthetic Culturalism

Japanese novelist Tanizaki Jun’ichirō (1886–1965) made an explicit return in the 1930s to traditional Japanese beauty by focusing on shadows in an apparent reaction to the modernization that was taking place in Japan at the time. Shadows were an aid for Tanizaki to heighten the imagination of both his characters and his readers by reaching the other indirectly, mediated by the space in between, or by shadow, light and darkness, with a “close” surface yearning and a “distant” cultural yearning. Tanizaki manifests, at the heart of his literary aesthetic, the purpose of touching not in the physical touch itself, but in the mobilization of relationalities—between the subject and object, distance and closeness, touch and vision, and shadow and light.

With such an aesthetics of shadows as a part of the ‘(re)turn to the orient’ in mind, in this talk, I will consider the ways in which such attention to in-between-ness developed in the post-war context, or the second wave of Japonism, focused on writing and thought, with reference to French thinkers such as Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida. Such a process of cross-cultural interactions over decades demonstrates asynchronous and sometimes indirect confluences through migrated or transformed aesthetic practices heightening artistic and intellectual creativities.

Workshop: Academic Publishing (additional booking required)

In this workshop, Dr Fusako Innami is sharing her experience of academic publishment relating to her new book including many practical aspects. If you are planning to publish works, especially turning your thesis into a book, welcome to join the workshop and bring your questions.

Since we have limited places for this event, this section requires an additional reservation. And we will invite participants to turn on their video during the workshop. Please follow the booking system on the page of registration.

Roundtable

Intercultural Studies in terms of Occidental and Oriental

Kit Fan (York-based poet)

Kit Fan is a novelist, poet, and critic. Diamond Hill, his debut novel about Hong Kong, is published by Dialogue Books and World Editions in May 2021. His second poetry collection, As Slow As Possible was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and one of the Irish Times Books of the Year. He was shortlisted twice for the Guardian 4th Estate BAME Short Story Prize, and a winner of Northern Writers Award, Times Stephen Spender Poetry Translation Prize, and POETRY’s Editors Prize for Reviewing. www.kitfan.net | twitter: @Kit_Fan_ | Insta: kit_fan_

Oleg Benesch (History Department, University of York)

Benesch’s research focuses on the historical exchange and development of ideas and concepts across societies, with a focus on interactions between Japan, China, and the West. Benesch’s educational backgrounds in both history and philosophy inform his major research interests, as well as his interest in interdisciplinary work. His work often takes a comparative approach, examining themes including nationalism, identity, nostalgia, masculinity, civility, memory, and authenticity.