Christopher T. Nelson explores the work of an Okinawan organization dedicated to returning the remains of war dead to their families and native places, intertwined with a hope that the physical traces of the Pacific War can be used to create the material basis of a new and just community.

Viewed from the prism of modern Japan, replacing the triumphal narrative of V-E and V-J Day with a sober assessment of wartime Japan and its legacies, we see the true calamity of what some now erroneously label a "New Cold War."

The Poetic Roots of Chanoyu in Linked Verse Practice

This talk by Tim Smith (PhD candidate, Religious Studies, UNC Chapel Hill) examines how the positionality of churches within Tenrikyō has shaped his research, and how alternative networks are forming within the religion in response to the obstacles traditional church networks present.

Anne Allison explores the nuances of kodokushi ("lonely death") and the implications of the social expectation for individuals to make their own mortuary arrangements on the temporality, sociality, and ontology of life as well as death in Japan.

Tracing the trans-Pacific tea trade from the eighteenth century onward, this talk by Robert Hellyer (History, Wake Forest University) will show how interconnections between Japan and the United States have influenced the daily tea-drinking habits of people in both countries.

Barbara Ambros (Religious Studies, UNC Chapel Hill) examines how early modern Buddhist tracts emphasized the importance of protecting and prolonging animal lives, reflecting a complex ethic that used affect to trigger human compassion toward other living beings.

In this first Japan Forum talk of 2021-22, Richard Jaffe (Religious Studies, Duke) will summarize his work editing Suzuki's lecture manuscript from 1952-1953, while discussing Suzuki's presentation of Buddhism, the audience at the seminars, and the supporting factors that made the ongoing lectures possible.

"Maiko Masquerade" explores Japanese representations of the maiko, or apprentice geisha, in films, manga, and other popular media as an icon of exemplary girlhood.

This talk will be based on the life of Kawai Koume, an artist and housewife in a bushi family in Kishūdomain who kept a diary that offers a window into life in a scholarly middle-class family before and after the Meiji Restoration.