A study of contemporary Japanese politics.  The Soka Gakkai, an 8-10 million member new religious organization in Japan, founded a successful political party, the Komeito, in the 1960s.  The Soka Gakkai’s political involvement has forced it to compromise several cherished religious ideals which in turn has enraged many Gakkai faithful.  The study focuses on the sacrifices a religious organization must make when it enters politics and the consequences it faces in the political realm and with its faithful.  The situation of the New Komeito also provides an interesting case study of both the benefits and problems that may arise when a large and successful religious movement enters partisan politics. While a religious movement is based on certain ideals and beliefs that remain essentially unchanged for a long period of time, a successful politician or party must make many compromises which may involve altering one’s core beliefs.  But what happens to the religious organization and its followers if these core beliefs are altered for reasons of political expediency?

Beverly Bossler is Professor of History at University of California, Davis, where she specializes in the social, intellectual, and gender history of middle-period China.  Her current book project, "Harlots and Heroines," examines changing gender ideology from the late Tang through the Yuan dynasties, by tracing the intertwining cultural roles of courtesans and female exemplars. 

Dr. Sung Young Kim has been a Professor of Theology at Sungkyul University since 1989.  He was the fourth President of Sungkyul University from 2002 to 2006, and is currently a visiting scholar at the University of Washington.  He received his Ph.D. in Systemic Theology from the Korea Baptist Theological University in 1996, and a Literary Degree in Contemporary Literature from Korea University in 2005.
 
Dr. Kim is a Theologian, whose dedication to Theology has led him to hold positions such as the Vice President and Director of the Korea Evangelical Theological Society (2002-Present) and President of the Korea Presidents’ Association of Theological Universities (2004-2006).  Ever the philanthropist, Dr. Kim has also served on the Originator and Executive Committee of the Commission to Help North Korean Refugees since 1997, and as Goodwill Ambassador to the Korea Food for the Hungry International since 2004.
 
His poetic star began to rise in 1972 when he was chosen as a “recommended poet” by Hyundai Moonhak, the oldest literary magazine in Korea.  Since then, Dr. Kim has been a member of the Korean Writers’ Association, the Korea Poets Association, the International P.E.N. Club Korea Center and the Korea Christian Literary Association.  His poetry titles include Earth 1978, Baek-Ui-Jong-Koon (Epic of Admiral Lee’s Great Activity of National Salvation at 15th Century War of Korea-Japan) 1979, The Thorn Bird 1988, Star! Let Your Light Shine 1993 and Beautiful People’s University 2002.  His literary titles include translations of Nikos Kazantzakis’s The Greek Passion and Saint Francis.  He has also published extensively on Theology.  Dr. Kim is a 1977 recipient of the “Prize of Korea Literature” awarded by the Ministry of Culture and Information in Korea government. 
 
Dr. Kim will be reading and comparing poetry written by Kim Hyun Seung (Dahyung) and Park Young Jong (Mogwol).

Details TBA

David Roxburgh (History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University) will reexamine the socio-political frameworks, artistic sources (portable objects and paintings), and formal consequences of exchanges between China, Iran, and Central Asia. The lecture begins in the period of peaked interaction between Timurid ruler Shahrukh (r. 1409-47) and the Ming dynasty “perpetual happiness” emperor Yongle (r. 1403-24) through diplomacy and trade, and continues into the second half of the fifteenth century with the rising Turkman courts of western Iran. The practices of Persian drawing and its changing aesthetic are the principal topics of inquiry, and include consideration both of drawing as a design medium and the rising status of drawing as an artistic medium in its own right.

Roxburgh's publications include Prefacing the Image: The Writing of Art History in 16th-century Iran (2001) and The Persian Album, 1400–1600: From Dispersal to Collection (2005), as well as articles on the art of the book, calligraphy, and the history of collecting.

Arif Dirlik, recently retired, taught at Duke University for thirty years, before moving to the University of Oregon in 2001 as Knight Professor of Social Science and Director of the Center for Critical Theory and Transnational Studies.  He has just completed a term as Visiting Professor at the Contemporary Marxism Institute of the Central Compilation and Translation Bureau of the Communist Party of China in Beijing.  His most recent book-length publications are "Global Modernity: Modernity in the Age of Global Capitalism," and an edited volume, "Pedagogies of the Global: Knowledge in the Human Interest."

There have been claims in recent years to a "Chinese Model of Development."  Floated first by an employee of Goldman Sachs in Beijing, it has assumed more enduring theoretical dimensions in the promotion of a "Concept of Scientific Development" by the Communist Party of China.  The Party also claims the concept as the articulation of Marxism appropriate to a "New Age." The discussion will review the theoretical and practical validity of these claims with reference to developmental policies pursued by the PRC, their consequences for Chinese society, and their implications for the so-called Global South, the contemporary reincarnation of the Third World.

Ulrich "Rick" Straus lived a total of twenty-one years in Japan, first as a child between 1933 and 1940 in Tokyo. He served as a U.S. Army language officer in Japan during the Occupation and participated in the trial of Japan’s major war criminals.  He was Consul General on Okinawa from 1978 to 1982 and retired from the Foreign Service in 1987.
 
Book Summary:
Based on the author’s interviews with dozens of former Japanese POWs along with memoirs only recently coming to light, The Anguish of Surrender tells one of the great unknown stories of World War II.  Beginning with an examination of Japan’s prewar ultranationalist climate and the harsh code that precluded the possibility of capture, the author investigates the circumstances of surrender and capture of Japanese soldiers and their experiences in POW camps.

Shen Mingming received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Michigan, and currently is a professor at the School of Government of Peking University.  His areas of research include theories of comparative politics, political development, survey research methodology, and regional security of Northeast Asia.  Most of his publications are in English.

Since 1996, he has served as director of the Research Center of Contemporary China (RCCC), an interdisciplinary research institute at Peking University.  Under his tenure the RCCC has developed, among other achievements, a center of survey research and quantitative data analysis in China.

Dr. Shen also serves as adjunct research scientist at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.  He has also provided professional consultancy to a number of international organizations, such as UNDB, WHO, World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank.

This talk will begin with the analysis of an elite college co-ed in South Korea: a young woman who Dr. Abelmann analyzes as emblematic of South Korea's aggressive globalization.  Dr. Abelmann also considers self-development project of this young woman as one in keeping with the neoliberalization of selfhood.  In her talk, Dr. Abelmann will make an attempt to at least partially unravel this confident portrait with evidence from later meetings with the young South Korean woman in which the character of her forays abroad made Dr. Abelmalnn questions her own understanding of South Korea's global and cosmopolitan desires and anxieties.

Nancy Abelmann is a Professor of Anthropology, Asian American Studies, East Asian Languages and Cultures, and Gender & Women's Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  She has published books on social movements in contemporary South Korea (Echoes of the Past, Epics of Dissent: A South Korean Social Movement, University of California Press, 1996); on women and social mobility in post-colonial South Korea (The Melodrama of Mobility: Women, Talk and Class in Contemporary South Korea, University of Hawai'i Press, 2003); on Korean America (Blue Dreams: Korean Americans and the Los Angeles Riots, with John Lie, Harvard University Press, 1995); and on South Korean film with Kathleen McHugh, South Korean Golden Age Melodrama: Gender, Genre, and Nation (Wayne State University Press, 2005).  Currently she is completing The Intimate University: College and the Korean American Family, based on 4 years of transnational ethnography on the educational trajectories of Korean American public college students as they articulate with the educational histories of their émigré parents.  She is the co-founder of the Ethnography of the University (EOTU), a project that has been lots of fun!

Lou Ye (Shanghai, 1965). Being the son of theatre performers, Lou Ye’s childhood was spent backstage and in dressing rooms. Once an adult, he devoted himself to studying painting at the well-know Beijing Film Academy. He made his first feature film Weekend Lover in 1994, as a graduation project. Weekend Lover was the Winner of the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Prize for Best Director at the Mannheim-Heidelberg Film Festival in 1996. In 1995 Lou Ye turned to television, producing the ground-breaking tv series Super City. In 1998, he founded Dream Factory, one of China’s first independent film production companies. Dream Factory’s first production was Suzhou River, which won the vrpo Tiger Award at the 29th Rotterdam Film Festival 2000.
© 2001 AsiaticaFilm Mediale-Mnemosyne

Lou Ye has banned for the next five years from making films for submitting his latest film Summer Palace to 2006 Cannes Film Festival without permission from the Chinese authorities. Please see the Guardian article for more information.

Gonçalo Duro dos Santos is a Senior Associate Researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon.  He has been carrying out extensive fieldwork (1999-2001, 2005) in rural Southeastern China and has recently started to undertake comparative field research (2005-2006) in Eastern and Southwestern China as well as in the island of Sulawesi (Indonesia).  His research and writings focus primarily on kinship, personhood, gender and identity, wet-rice farming, economics, distinction and social change.  He currently holds a Post-Doctoral Grant from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology to complete a monograph on kinship and relatedness in Southeastern China.
Details forthcoming.
 
Bearing in mind the old anthropological motto: “small places, large issues”, Dr. Duro dos Santos will take you on a short trip to a small Cantonese lineage-village in Northern Guangdong, to provide a detailed portrait of the process of local implementation of the ‘one child policy’ as well as of the villagers’ demographic behaviour before and after the implementation of this policy. The qualitative and quantitative data presented will suggest that the residents of this village may have been good students of the recent market-oriented post-Mao reforms but they were certainly not good students of the ‘one-child policy’. Their seemingly ‘atypical’ family-planning ideas and behaviour will lead us to raise questions about the extent of the urban/rural and regional variations of China’s recent fertility decline, and about widespread Malthusian assumptions regarding the key motivational factors behind a population’s fertility decline.

A key component in the Fifth Generation of Chinese filmmakers, Wu Tianming was designated the leader of Xi'an Studios in 1984. As a producer, he was behind the highly acclaimed Red Sorghum (Zhang Yimou, 1987) and King of the Children (Chen Kaige, 1988). Wu has also directed his own films, including the distinguished The Old Well and the popular King of Masks. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
 
Featured film:
River Without Buoys (Wu Tianming, Xi’an, 1983). The story of three men floating a timber raft down the river during the Cultural Revolution. The oldest meets his first love, now a beggar. The youngest looks for his fiancé, forcibly married to someone else. The third, a married man, is in self-denial. ~Le Monde Diplomatique.  A beautifully structured film of deceptive calm, a journey into the past as three men, traveling by raft down the Pushui River in Xian, share their experiences of the Cultural Revolution. ~Los Angeles Times. Excellent Film Award of China Cultural Ministry 1983. East-West Center Award, Kodak Best Cinematography Award at the 4th Hawaii Int'l Film Festival 1984. Best Film at the 4th Golden Rooster Awards, China 1985.
 
$8 general, $6 students/seniors, $5 members

For more information, please visit http://www.nwfilmforum.org/

Erland  Heginbotham counts fifty-three  years as an Asian specialist. He teaches Asian economic development and dynamics at the Johns Hopkins University graduate School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, D.C. (since 1999).  He also teaches Asian studies at the National Foreign Affairs Training Center (Foreign Service Institute) in Arlington, Virginia (since 1990.)

In 1982 he concluded twenty-seven years as a diplomat with the U.S. Foreign Service  In 1978-80 he was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia, and in 1980-82 was the first Director-General of the U.S. Foreign Commercial Service overseeing some 700 officers in 53 posts abroad.  From 1976-78 he was Vice President for Development of the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), following a tour as Director of the State Department Office of International Monetary Affairs (1975-76).  He served Economic and Commercial Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Indonesia from 1971- 75, as well as in economic positions in Vietnam (1963-67), Liberia (1960-62), and Korea (1958-60).

From 1982-91 he served, in succession, as senior staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Director of the Office of Industries of the U.S. International Trade Commission, and senior research fellow at the Institute for Defense Analyses, a local think-tank supporting the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense, specialized in Asian security and economic affairs.

In 1991 he founded and until 1997 directed Gateway Japan, a print and on-line clearinghouse of information on Japan and Northeast Asia, co- sponsored by the National Policy Association and the University of Maryland. GJ was one of the earliest Internet enterprises.  Under his direction it published five major reference works on Japan.  In 1997-99 he was Director of the China Agriculture Strategy Project at the Institute for Global Chinese Affairs, University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP), which sought by concrete steps to elevate U.S.-China relations to a positive strategic partnership based on expanding cooperation in a broad range of agriculture-related endeavors. 

He has authored several books and numerous articles on Asia. He speaks frequently on current Asian issues (e.g. China and India impact the global balance of power), and will present lectures at a fall series on Indonesia at a local university.  His country specialties are China, India, Indonesia, Korea, Japan and Vietnam.  He is writing a book on "Asian Economic Development and Dynamics, 1950-2010."

Emily Hannum is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is also affiliated with the Graduate School of Education, the Population Studies Center, and the Center for East Asian Studies.  Her research focuses on education, child welfare, and social inequality, particularly in China. Recent publications include "Market Transition, Educational Disparities, and Family Strategies in Rural China: New Evidence on Gender Stratification and Development" (Demography, 2005) and "Global Educational Expansion and Socio-Economic Development: An Assessment of Findings from the Social Sciences" (with Claudia Buchmann, "World Development", 2005).

In the context of rising costs for health care services in rural China, some studies suggest that ill health has become a common precursor to falling into poverty.  Does the pernicious impact of ill health reach across generations? Drawing on a survey of rural children and families conducted in Gansu province in 2004, this presentation investigates linkages between parental health problems and children's access to education. 

At this talk, Joseph Esherick will share his views on the fall of empires and the rise of nation-states as defining political transitions in the making of the modern world.  He will be joined by UW Professors Daniel Chirot and Resat Kasaba who will discuss the empire-to-nation transition in comparative perspective while exploring the common features and diversity of transition in Qing/China and Ottoman/Turkey.

For more information, contact tleonard@u.washington.edu. or call 206 685-2354.  This event is free and open to the public.

Details TBA

Benjamin Nyblade has recently joined the Department of Political Science at the University of British Columbia.  His research focuses on Japanese politics and, more broadly, comparative democratic institutions and political parties.  His research on the Japanese prime minister has been published in the British Journal of Political Science and the Journal of Legislative Studies.  Most recently he has co-authored an article on legislative organization in Japan published in the American Political Science Review.  Current research projects include the consequences of electoral reform in Japan, political corruption, coalition politics in Western Europe, and theories of political party competition.

In choosing cabinet ministers, party leaders face important tradeoffs: party leaders seek to balance the ambitions of their MPs, the need for policy expertise, and the importance of ensuring reelection.  The degree to which parties emphasize these different goals varies, based at least in part on their institutional and electoral environment.  We can better understand party goals by analyzing patterns of ministerial selection and better explain patterns of ministerial selection by incorporating the varying emphases parties place on different goals.  By examining the case of the LDP in Japan before and after electoral reform in 1994, it is clear that the change in the electoral system led the party to rebalance its priorities—deemphasizing office-seeking, and placing more weight on policy-seeking and vote-seeking—and that this change in goals has been reflected in its cabinet appointments.

Details TBA

The National Forum on Trade Policy (NFTP) is an annual conference that brings together business leaders, federal and state policy makers, higher education practitioners and leading experts.
 
NFTP 2006 will focus on pressing trade issues, draw from regional case studies, and examine the role of key industries in trade and regional prosperity throughout the United States.
 
These issues are particularly important in an emerging global economy, where company headquarters and production can take place anywhere in the world.  There are no guarantees that a region will be able to attract business, or to keep and grow existing firms.  Businesses will locate where there is a high quality of life, good schools, efficient transportation, supportive government policies, and good prospects for trade.  A region must take steps to make itself competitive, or jobs will go elsewhere.  Around the world, regions are marshalling public and private talent and money to pursue economic development and prosperity, and this conference will address how business and political leaders can position a region to do the same.
NFTP 2006 will take place in Seattle's vibrant downtown area.

For more details, please visit http://bschool.washington.edu/ciber/nftp/

Monday, January 8
Guarding Shangri-La
Directed by Xie Qin, Li Xiaoming, and An Tongqing; 35 mins ; 2005; English Subtitles
 Song’s Inn
Directed by Yang Yun, 52min; 2005; English Subtitles
 
Tuesday, January 9
Villagers’ Documentary Films
Produced and Curated by Wu Wenguang , 99 mins; 2005; English Subtitles
 
Wednesday, January 10
Floating Life
Directed by Huang Weikai, 93mins, 2005, English, Subtitle
 
Thursday, January 11
Nostalgia
Directed by Haolun Shu, 70 mins, 2006, English Subtitles

For detailed information, please click here

Dr. Saegusa is a postdoctoral fellow in the Asia Pacific Dispute Resolution Program at the Institute of Asian Research, University of British Columbia. She received a Ph.D. in Sociology from University of Illinois at Chicago in May 2006. Her research interests are institutions, organizations, and law & society. Particularly, Dr. Saegusa is interested in comparative institutional and organizational analysis in different countries on topics including legal training systems and legal services markets.
 
In today’s world of interdependence, law is heavily involved in every aspect of globalization. Because of the economic position and applicability of the common law, the United States and the United Kingdom, to a lesser degree, substantially influence the process of globalization of law. To meet the challenges of globalization of the law, Asian countries are experiencing the transformation toward “law-governed societies.” As the step toward law-governed societies, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and China are currently instituting "American-style" law schools with the aim of mass producing qualified lawyers. It is thus interesting and important to find out why East Asian countries have adopted a path to reform their legal education system.
 
For the first time in its history, 74 American-style law schools were recently opened in Japan. Her paper examines the institutional process by which American-style law schools became the solution to a shortage of legal professionals in Japan, based on archival analyses and in-depth interviews.
 
In the late 1990s, judicial reform drew attention as an emergent issue. A substantial increase in the number of legal professionals was considered a vital first step to enable the accomplishment of many other judicial reforms. The law school system was established as a solution to the problem of the shortage of legal professionals. However, why was the law school system selected as the solution? Were there any other alternatives? I argue that the law school system was selected because it was the most desirable solution bringing the least conflict among existing institutions. The alternatives required substantial changes in the existing institutions such as the national bar exam, mandatory legal training, and lawyers’ jurisdiction. On the other hand, the three legal branches (“hoso sansha” the Supreme Court, the Ministry of Justice, and the Japan Federation of Bar Associations), or power-holders, thought that creating a new institution (i.e. introducing the law school system) could buffer their existing institutions from substantial changes. At the same time, pro-law school scholars played a role of agenda-setters by leading to the selection of the law school proposal which would not threaten any vested interests. Pro-law school scholars convinced the three legal branches and other stakeholders that the law school system was the best solution because it was a new mechanism of quality control that connects all of the existing institutions.

Tong Chee Kiong teaches at the Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore.  He was past Dean, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Director, Graduate School of Arts and Social Sciences, and Co-Director, NUS Center for the Arts.  Presently, he is chair of graduate studies in the Department of Sociology.  Chee Kiong completed his undergraduate training at the University of Singapore and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. from Cornell University, USA.  Tong Chee Kiong’s research interests focus on ethnicity, religion and the nation state in Southeast Asia, and Chinese Business Networks.  His publications include Chinese Death Rituals in Singapore (Routledge 2004), Rationalizing Religion: Religious Conversion, Revivalism and Competition in Singapore (Brill 2006).  Tong Chee Kiong has also published papers in the British Journal of Sociology, Diaspora, International Migration Review and International Sociology.

Much of the literature on the success of East Asian economies and Chinese business has emphasized the importance of guanxi, trust, and networks in business transactions.  There is a tendency to incorporate personal relations in decision making, and business relationships are based on personal trust.  Business relationships are based on trust and guanxi relations.  Based on fieldwork in China, Malaysia, and Singapore, Professor Tong examines the origins of this particular mode of doing business and rethinks the idea of trust in Chinese business.  He suggests that ideas such as trust, guanxi, and personalism can be better understood if they are seen as dependent rather than independent variables, and argues that Chinese business practices arose out a deep sense of distrust, rather than trust, especially in the institutional and environmental conditions in which the businesses operated.  There is a fear of being cheated and defrauded, and Chinese businessmen develop practices, such as trust, personalism, and guanxi to minimize risk and deal with the distrust of others.

Anthropologists, historians, botanists, and filmmakers from China, Hong Kong, Europe, and the US will gather at the Burke Museum and the Washington Park Arboretum to present lectures, films, exhibits, and garden tours that illuminate the careers of a variegated group of scientists, explorers, writers, photographers, and missionaries from America and Europe who were active in exploring, collecting, and writing in the northern and western borderlands of China in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Presented in conjunction with the exhibits “Vanished Kingdoms” and “Tibetan Religious Art” at the Burke Museum.
 
Visiting speakers include Magnus Fiskesjö (Anthropology, Cornell University), Denise Glover (Anthropologist), Paul Harris (Documentary Filmmaker), Geng Jing (Sichuan Province Nationalities Research Institute), Charles McKhann (Anthropology, Whitman College), Erik Mueggler (Ethnology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor), Margaret Swain (Anthropology, University of California, Davis), Paul Weissich (Lyon Arboretum, University of Hawai'i, Manoa), Tamara Wyss (Documentary Filmmaker), Gan Xuechun (Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences), Alvin Yoshinaga (Lyon Arboretum, University of Hawai'i, Manoa), David Zuckerman (Washington Park Arboretum).

A Thousand Miles of Dreams is an evocative and intimate biography of two Chinese sisters who took very different paths in their quest to be independent women. Ling Shuhao arrived in Cleveland in 1925 to study medicine in the middle of a U.S. crackdown on Chinese immigrant communities, and her effort to assimilate began. She became an American named Amy, while her sister Ling Shuhua burst onto the Beijing literary scene as a writer of short fiction. Shuhua's tumultuous affair with Virginia Woolf's nephew during his years in China eventually drew her into the orbit of the Bloomsbury group. The sisters were Chinese "modern girls" who sought to forge their own way in an era of social revolution that unsettled relations between men and women, and among nations. Daughters of an imperial scholar-official and a concubine, they followed trajectories unimaginable to their parents' generation.
 
Biographer Sasha Su-Ling Welland stumbled across their remarkable stories while recording her grandmother's oral history. She discovered the secret Amy had jealously hidden from family in the U.S.-her sister's fame as a Chinese woman writer-as well as intriguing discrepancies in the sisters' versions of the past. Shaped by the social history of their day, the journeys of these extraordinary women spanned the twentieth century and three continents in a saga of East-West cultural exchange and personal struggle.
~ Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Matthew Sommer (BA, Swarthmore College, 1983; MA, University of Washington, 1987; Ph.D., UCLA, 1994) taught Chinese history at the University of Pennsylvania for seven years before joining Stanford University’s History Department in 2002.  His work focuses on sexuality, gender relations, and law in the Qing dynasty (1644-1912).  He is the author of Sex, Law, and Society in Late Imperial China (Stanford University Press, 2000).  His second book is near completion: its title will be Wife Selling in Qing Dynasty China: Survival Strategies and Judicial Interventions.  Future plans include a study of male same-sex union and masculinity in the eighteenth-century, based on some 2000 sodomy cases already collected from legal archives in China.

Steven Miles received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Washington in 2000 and is currently an assistant professor in the History Department at Washington University in Saint Louis.  His book, The Sea of Learning: Mobility and Identity in Nineteenth-Century Guangzhou, was published by the Harvard University Asia Center in 2006.  His articles have appeared in the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, the Journal of Chinese Overseas, Late Imperial China, Ming Studies, Nan Nü, and T’oung Pao.  He is currently working on a second book project, which will explore Cantonese migration along the West River basin during the early modern era.

Professor Kawato received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo.  He taught at Hokkaido University from 1980-1992, then moved to Tohoku University.  Currently, Professor Kawato is Toyota Visiting Professor at the Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, for 2006-2007 and specializes in contemporary Japanese politics, elections and voting behavior, the Japanese Diet and party politics, and comparative studies of legislatures.

Professor Kawato will address problems of two constitutional principles of Japan: parliamentary supremacy and the parliamentary cabinet system.  These two principles would have produced the fusion of powers similar to the United Kingdom.  However, the separation of power principles has prevented it.  The consequence of this has been that these two principles embody contradictory visions of how the Diet should operate.  Postwar party politics can, he argues, be described as an ongoing contest over which of the two principles would prevail.

Details TBA

Sasha Su-Ling Welland (Women Studies, UW) presents a lively pre-show talk for the On the Boards opening night performance of "Three Sisters" by Pappa Tarahumara.
This seemingly sweet take on Chekhov’s Three Sisters unravels into a steamy meditation on female identity, coming of age and the Japanese obsession with youth culture. The dancers of Pappa Tarahumara begin as sprightly school girls, eventually exposing little black net unitards and unbridled dancing in a portrayal that peels away the epic overtones of Chekhov’s masterwork and intimately reveals 3 sisters grappling with womanhood.
 
Pre-show talk is free. To purchase tickets for the performance, contact the On the Boards Box Office at 206-217-9888.

Dr. Dingli Shen, a physicist, is the Executive Dean of Fudan University’s Institute of International Studies and Director of Center for American Studies.  He is also the founder and director of the Program on Arms Control and Regional Security at Fudan University.

His research areas cover China-U.S. security relationship, nuclear arms control and disarmament, nuclear weapons policy of the United States and China, regional nonproliferation issues concerning South Asia, Northeast Asia and Middle East, test ban, missile defense, export control, as well as, China’s foreign and defense policies. He is the author of several books as well as over 500 articles and papers in both international relations and physics.

He received his Ph.D. in physics in 1989 from Fudan University and did his post-doc in arms control at Princeton University from 1989-1991.

For the third year in a row, the Jackson School Asia Outreach Centers have teamed up with the Newspapers In Education program of The Seattle Times to offer a series of articles about Asia (written especially for young readers), a teaching guide, and a complementary workshop. Topics in the five-article series include child labor in India, pastimes in Indonesia, online chatting in Central Asia, and examination hell in Japan. Students will get a glimpse of the challenges and opportunities that confront their peers around the world and make connections to current news.

One week before the series debuts, teachers will have an opportunity to hear experts speak in depth about two of the regions featured in the article series. Craig Jeffrey, Assistant Professor in the UW Jackson School and the Department of Geography, will present on youth and child labor in South Asia. Dr. Leila Madge, former Assistant Professor in the UW Jackson School, will talk about education in Japan. Pat Burleson, master teacher in Asian studies, will introduce the extensive teachers’ guide she authored to accompany the series.

Registration: The article series is offered at no cost to educators. To register, visit The Seattle Times Newspapers in Education website and click on "registration," call the NIE office at 206-652-6342, or email nie@seattletimes.com. The workshop registration fee is $20, which includes clock hours, dinner, and materials. To register, call or email the NIE office. For more information about workshop content, call the EARC at 206-543-1921.

Please note: Workshop participants must also be registered for the Youth Culture in Asia article series.

David Schaberg (A.B. Stanford 1986, Ph.D. Harvard 1996) is Associate Professor in Asian Languages & Cultures at UCLA.  He has published articles on early Chinese literature, historiography, and philosophy as well as Greek/Chinese comparative issues in Early China, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, and Comparative Literature.  He is author of A Patterned Past:  Form and Thought in Early Chinese Historiography, Harvard East Asian Monographs 205, which was awarded the 2003 Levenson Prize for Books in Chinese Studies (Pre-1900 Category).

Attested in the Zuozhuan and other pre-Han sources, the ci form of oratory shows a distinct kinship with the diction and rhythms of Shijing songs.  Read in connection with early comments on the uses of Shijing, examples of ci suggest that Shijing memorization and exegesis were designed primarily to hone practical oratorical abilities.  This pedagogical reading in turn casts early Chinese poetics ("The Great Preface") and the origins of the rhyme-prose (fu) in a new light.

William Nienhauser first studied Chinese at the Army Language School in Monterey, California but took his degrees (in Chinese literature) from the University of Indiana (PhD 1972) with a year abroad at the University of Bonn.  After a year teaching German for two years at Indiana University, he joined the Dept. of East Asian Languages and Literature at the University of Wisconsin in 1973.  He has taught or been a fellow in China, Taiwan, Japan, and Germany and published a number of books and articles on early Chinese narrative and poetry.

Although modern scholars know something about the sources for the pre-Qin period Sima Qian must have used in compiling his Shiji, it is unlikely that any of those ‘texts’ has been transmitted to us in the form that he saw them.  Moreover, little is known about how Sima actually put together his great history.  On reading and translating “The Hereditary House of the Jin,” chapter 39 of the Shiji, several perplexing passages led back to the current versions of the Zuo zhuan, Gongyang zhuan, and Guliang zhuan.  A comparison of those texts, which I propose to present in a short paper, may lead to hypotheses about (1) the nature of those three commentaries in Sima Qian’s time, (2) Sima’s use of those three early sources, and (3) the methods Sima may have used in compiling his history.

Ming WAN is Professor of Government and Politics and Director of Global Affairs Program, George Mason University.  His Ph.D. was from the Department of Government at Harvard University.  His most recent book is Sino-Japanese Relations: Interaction, Logic, and Transformation (2006).  His current research interests include East Asian political economy and the political economy of security.

How do we explain Sino-Japanese relations in recent years, both the sharp deterioration during the five and half year term of Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro and a significant warming after Abe Shinzo became prime minister in September 2006 and President Hu Jintao demonstrated his firm control over the party and the government in a party plenary in October?  This presentation will evaluate what will have happened to Sino-Japanese relations in the first five months of Abe’s term as prime minister and in the context of ongoing personnel changes leading to the 17^th Chinese Communist Party National Congress in October.  A key question to be addressed is whether it is structural forces, domestic politics or leadership personalities that shape this important bilateral relationship.  Thus, the talk will shed some light on both Chinese and Japanese foreign policy.  Professor Wan’s argument, as it stands now, is that whereas structural and domestic politics set the parameters for a troubled Sino-Japanese relationship from a long-term perspective, how the two governments handle or mishandle their relationship explains the recent sharp swing in the bilateral relationship.

Details TBA

For more information see: http://depts.washington.edu/asianll/news/events/event_colloquium.html or contact John Malcomson at jwbm@u.washington.edu or 206-543-4918.

Professor Tateno received his. B.A. and M.A at Nihon University, and Ph.D. in Medicine at Jyuntendo University.  He teaches Chinese philosophy and medicine at Nihon University, Tokyo, Japan.

For human beings, health and living healthier lives, is an everlasting theme.  Even living in a highly medically and scientifically developed world, we still fear a number of diseases.  This is the case for all ages and countries.  But at the same time, as a medical scientist, Professor Tateno would like to show you the ways to live healthy lives, not in some theoretically ideal world, but actually in the everyday phenomenal world, where real people suffer from real ailments, such as diabetes mellitus, myocardial infarction, organ failure, cataracts, and so on.  He will attempt to do this mainly from the oriental medical perspective.

Philosophy and medicine may seem a bit of a strange combination.  But in ancient China, philosophy and medicine were like two sides of one coin.  In ancient China, both medicine and philosophy share psychosomatic via mind-bodily systems of practical regimen as a background for the other.  These two sides, when properly combined, form the harmonious unity of a healthy person.  This is real “mens sana in corpore sano” (healthy mind in healthy body).

This talk will explore the representation and repression of demonic and ghostly figures in the medieval Japanese noh drama by comparing the depiction of the Kawara-no-in (Riverside Cloister), once owned by the aristocrat Minamoto no Tôru (822-95), in two plays.  In Tôru, the villa is constructed as a site for aesthetic excess and courtly elegance; in Yûgao, it is haunted by the ghost of a young woman, a fictional character from The Tale of Genji (ca. 1000), who was murdered there by the living spirit of one of Genji’s former lovers.  While on the surface dissimilar, both plays suggest that noh playwrights regarded their classical past not as a age of bygone glory but rather as frightening, sinister, and ultimately unknowable.

Annual book sale for books in various Asian languages (Bengali, Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Sanskrit, Thai, Tibetan, Vietnamese…etc.) and English books about Asian languages, literature, and civilizations. Reference books, dictionaries, and a lot of valuable and rare items are available. Come and buy books for $2, $1, or even less. Everyone is welcome

For more information see: http://depts.washington.edu/asianll/news/events/event_booksale.html or contact John Malcomson at jwbm@u.washington.edu or 206-543-4918

From The New York Times bestselling author of Rise of the Vulcans, an exploration of Chinese authoritarianism and Western capitalism. In The China Fantasy, bestselling author James Mann examines the evolution of American policy toward China and asks, Does it make sense? What are our ideas and hidden assumptions about China? In this vigorous look at China’s political evolution and its future, Mann explores two scenarios popular among the policy elite. The Soothing Scenario contends that the successful spread of capitalism will gradually bring about a development of democratic institutions, free elections, independent judiciary, and a progressive human rights policy. In the Upheaval Scenario, the contradictions in Chinese society between rich and poor, between cities and the countryside, and between the openness of the economy and the unyielding Leninist system will eventually lead to a revolution, chaos, or collapse.

Against this backdrop, Mann poses a third scenario and asks, What will happen if Chinese capitalism continues to evolve and expand but the government fails to liberalize? What then and why should this third scenario matter to Americans? Mann explores this alternate possibility and—in this must-read book for anyone interested in international politics—offers a startling vision of our future with China that will have a profound impact for decades to come.

About the Author

James Mann is author in residence at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies and the author of Rise of the Vulcans, About Face, and Beijing Jeep. He was previously the Los Angeles Times Beijing bureau chief.

For information, please contact abernier@u.washington.edu or 206.543.4391.

Professor Machidori received his B.A. in Law (LL.B.) and Ph.D. in Law (LL.D.) from Kyoto University and his M.A. in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin.  His research interests include comparative analysis of legislative institutions and the executive-legislative relationship.  Professor Machidori has published, Fiscal Reform under Democracy: Budgetary Politics in Congress (2003, Book in Japanese). In 2006, his article in English, "An Institutional Analysis of the Presidential Premiership," was published in the Kyoto Journal of Law and Politics, vol.2, no.2.  He is co-author of a forthcoming book also in Japanese, Local Politics in Japan: Policymaking under the Dual Representation System.

Many believe Jun-ichiro Koizumi changed the role of the prime minister and procedures of the Japanese parliamentary system.  However, since we do not have a common understanding about structures of his political resources, there are various expectations on the continuing effects of the changes he brought to the office.  In Professor Machidori’s presentation, he will analyze the main features of the premiership under the Koizumi Administration from a viewpoint of comparative institutional study and consider to what extent his successors will continue to take the same direction.

Professor Heimer’s research interests encompass state capacity, state transformation, development strategy, and poverty reduction.  A new project about to start is focusing on the impact of popular protest in China.  Recent publications include an edited volume (together with Stig Thogersen) on Doing Fieldwork in China.

Local government in China is often described as the villain on the political stage.  Professor Heimer’s paper suggests that the concern with corrupt local governments is to a large part misdirected.  She outlines a basic framework through which the role of local governments in Chinese politics can be understood.  While agreeing in large with those who hold that the central state maintains its capacity to steer local behavior, this project will look not only at the political incentives from above but also at the fiscal constraints and increasing grassroots pressure that local governments face today, as well as the coping strategies that local leaders adopt in response.  Why do local leaders act like they do? The difference in approach result in very different conclusions where reforming political incentives or introducing local elections are viewed as inadequate solutions to China's implementation problems.  Her paper is a first rough draft of the introduction to a book volume on local governments.

Darrin Magee recently completed his Ph.D. in geography at the University of Washington after a year of field research at the Asian International Rivers Center in Kunming, China.  His background in the natural and social sciences, coupled with his longstanding interest in political economic questions related to natural resources, led him to focus on the politics of large-scale hydropower development on transnational rivers in southwestern China’s Yunnan Province for his dissertation research.  He expects to continue conducting water- and energy-related research in China, and is particularly interested in the social and ecological impacts of China’s South-North Water Transfer, which will divert water from the Yangtze River northward to the Yellow River.

For more information, please visit http://www.extension.washington.edu/ext/special/jackson/default.asp.

Dr. Chun received her Ph.D. in 2005 from the University of California, Santa Barbara.  She has taught at St. Michael’s College and Grand Valley State University, and will be joining the faculty of Suffolk University as an Assistant Professor of Political Science in the Fall of 2007.

Dr. Chun will present an analysis of the emergence of the labor party in South Korea.  Based in part on extensive personal interviews with union members and labor party officials, her research demonstrates that the emergence of the Korean labor party is a response to the inability of liberal democracy to address class-based distributional conflicts that emerge during periods of globalization.  Her talk will also include findings from her current work-in-progress, Empire and Revolt: an Analysis of the Proposed Korea-US Free Trade Agreements.

Patrick Köllner studied politics and management at the University of Constance (Germany) and contemporary Japan at Essex University (Great Britain). He holds a Ph.D. in political science from Humboldt University of Berlin and a venia legendi (Habilitation) in political science from the University of Trier. From 1996 to the present, he has been affiliated with the Institute of Asian Studies, part of the GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg. Since 2005, he has also served as head of the GIGA research program on ‘legitimacy and efficiency of political systems’. He has taught Japanese and Korean politics at various German universities.

Dirk Nabers has studied at Muenster University (Germany) International Christian University (ICU) and Tokai University, Japan; Ph.D. in Political Science 1999 from Muenster University (Summa cum laude), Ph.D. Scholar of the Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation, as well as, 1999-2000 Assistant Professor for Political Science at Trier University (Germany) and Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Miami University, Dolibois European Centre (Luxemburg).  Since October 2000, he has served as Senior Research Fellow at GIGA Institute of Asian Studies, Hamburg (Germany) and from 2005 to 2006 as Humboldt Scholar in the Department of Political Studies.  He has published numerous books and articles on Japanese foreign policy, security in the Asia-Pacific and Europe, and International Relations theory, and his latest book titled “The Social Construction of the Alliance against Terror: Germany, Japan and the United States.”

A young man seeking shelter in a church by the sea…
A crazed woman trapped in the labyrinth of memory, dancing with ghosts…
An encounter that changes both of them forever.
 
Theatre Nohgaku is an international theatre company dedicated to performing new works in English using the performance techniques of traditional Japanese noh theatre.  With chant, dance, instrumental accompaniment,  rich costumes and beautifully carved masks, noh creates a stunning world of aesthetic refinement that gets to the heart of what it means to be human.
 
Inspired by a character in the poetry of W.B. Yeats, Crazy Jane explores the heart of a woman thrown into madness by the loss of her lover. Three guest noh musicians from Japan complete an eminent cast of North American and Japanese noh performers for a truly unique and powerful theatrical experience.
 
$20 general admission, $15 for students/seniors, and $12 for groups of 10 or more
 
Contact:
David Crandall
shizuku@speakeasy.net

Tomohito Shinoda is Professor at the International University of Japan.  He received his Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.  He is the author or coeditor of many studies on Japanese politics, government and U.S.-Japan relations, including Koizumi Diplomacy (University of Washington Press, 2007) and Leading Japan (Praeger, 2000).

Japan's policy making strategy in foreign and defense affairs changed dramatically in 2001 after Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi took office.  Japan's center of gravity for foreign policy has shifted from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Kantei, Japan's equivalent of the White House.  The presentation will also address Japan's changing political environment, including the opposition parties, interest groups and public opinion.

For more information, please call (206) 685-3435 or email rejj@u.washington.edu

Daniel K. Inouye, the third most senior member of the U.S. Senate, is known for his distinguished record as a legislative leader, and as a World War II combat veteran who earned the nation's highest award for military valor, the Medal of Honor. His talk will examine the developing relationship between the U.S. and Japan.

Details TBA

Dr. Chan’s talk will delineate the key dimensions of US-HK relations in the strategic, political, economic and socio-cultural realms.  He will start with a retrospective on US-HK links in the 1949-1997 colonial and Cold War era as a vital element in the Containment of Communist China military-strategic calculus.  It will then focus on the strong US interests in China's HK since 1997 with special concerns for its economic development and democratization under Communist China sovereignty.  

In addition, US-Macao ties will also be examined, especially in the context of recent massive American investments in Macao's gaming-tourism industry and the alarm over North Korea’s financial dealings through Macao banks.  It will conclude with observations on HK's prospect as America's gateway to the China market and the mid-Pacific Rim hub for economic & functional services.

Details TBA

Details TBA

Armando Choy, Gustavo Chui, and Moisés Sío Wong tell the story of their participation in the Cuban revolution from its triumph in 1959 to today. In the book, Our History Is Still Being Written: The Story of Three Generals in the Cuban Revolution, published by Pathfinder Press, they recount Cuba’s more than five decades of revolutionary action and internationalism – from Angola to Venezuela today, where Cuban volunteers are collaborating to advance medical care, education, and urban agriculture to attain food selfsufficiency.  They tell the little-known history of Chinese immigration to Cuba, the involvement of Chinese in Cuba’s revolutionary struggles, and the revolution’s example in combating racist discrimination against Chinese as well as Blacks.

Panelists:

Tony Chan, Associate Professor of Communication and International Studies,

UW and author of Gold Mountain: The Chinese in the New World and

Perpetually Cool: The Many Lives of Anna May Wong, 1905-1961

Moon-Ho Jung, Associate Professor, Asian American History, UW and author

of Coolies and Cane: Race, Labor, and Sugar Production in the Age of

Emancipation

Martín Koppel joined in interviewing Armando Choy, Gustavo Chui, and

Moisés Sío Wong for the book Our History Is Still Being Written – The

Story of Three Chinese-Cuban Generals In the Cuban Revolution. Recently,

he traveled with the authors on a seven-city tour of Cuba where the book

was presented to audiences throughout the island.

Freedom Allah Siyam, Political Education Officer, BAYAN-USA

Details TBA

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Richard S. Kim (Asian American Studies, University of California, Davis) presents a lecture on the multiple and contradictory efforts by Koreans in the United States to decolonize their homeland from Japanese colonialism

Ann Anagnost is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Washington. She is the author of National Pastimes: Narrative, Representation, and Power in Modern China (1997). Her presentation is drawn from her current project entitled Embodiments of Value in China's Economic Reform (forthcoming).

The notion of "quality," or suzhi, has become a cultural determination of the value form of labor in China's economic reforms, marking the divide between manual and mental labor. As a specifically Chinese articulation of the concept of human capital, suzhi must be understood within the frame of the global economy. However, its workings in the context of China offers a critical perspective on new conceptions of value circulating more globally as the "immaterial labor" of the "knowledge economy."

Details TBA

Professor Goldstein received his Ph.D. from the University of California at San Diego in Modern Chinese history.  His interests include late Qing and twentieth century cultural history, gender studies, environmental history and the socio-economics of trash and waste management.  His publications include Drama Kings: Players and Publics in the Re-creation of Peking Opera, 1870-1937, and Everyday Modernity in China.

Professor Goldstein will describe a brief period from the 1895-1920 during which Chinese Peking Opera actors often donned exotic foreign (Western) costumes and performed plays ranging from the French invasion of Vietnam to the Crimean War to modern romances in Shanghai.  How and why did these innovative "hybrid" plays flourish during these brief and tumultuous decades, only to vanish just as suddenly in the 1920s?

Professor Kang received his Ph.D.in history from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2006 and is currently teaching at Pacific Lutheran University.  His research interest is history of gender and sexuality in China.  Professor Kang’s dissertation is entitled "Male Same-Sex Relations in China: 1900-1950."

Professor Kang studies male same-sex relations in China during the first half of the twentieth century.  His talk focuses on the issue in the Peking Opera field.  He will argue that the meaning of male same-sex relationship between literati patron and Peking Opera dan actors went through a gradual change in the semi-colonial context of 20th century China. This change involved a long process of discursive production, which included the desexualization of the actor/patron relationship, and heterosexualization of dan actors.  In the talk, Professor Kang will use some literary works to illustrate these processes.

Details TBA

The University of Washington Center for Korea Studies is pleased to present a one-day conference on Korea. Two experienced educators will work to build bridges of understanding between American teachers and the history and culture of Korea and the Koreans who migrate to America. Teachers will learn about Korean history and culture through lectures on Silla and the Silk Road, pre-modern Korea, and Japanese colonialism. During the day, they will view informative and thought-provoking documentaries on the Korean War, North Korea, and recent United States policies towards the Koreas. Handouts and resources suitable for K-12 educators will be provided.

Registration: For registration: No registration fee and first-come first-serve basis. Korean bento box lunch and clock hours will be provided at no charge. Pre-registration is required.

Please register by downloading the registration form and e-mailing it to Young Sook Lim; please call 206-543-4873 (M-Thu) with any questions.

Lunch and clock hours will also be provided free of charge.

To register for this free workshop and for additional information, please visit http://jsis.washington.edu/eacenter/apchinese. View the workshop program at http://jsis.washington.edu/eacenter/apchinese/program.htm.

* For detailed directions to the workshop, please visit the directions page.

Due to limited seating, the workshop can only accommodate 70 participants.

Please register on-line at your earliest convenience.

In Fall Quarter, 2006, she co-taught a new course Global Futures in East Asia and is currently editing a volume of the same name that will include a longer version of this talk. She is also completing a book manuscript on how the effects of the economic downturn of the 1990s are reshaping representations of Japan and its youth amid restructurings of education and labor and a turn toward remilitarization. Recent publications include: "The Wild Child of 1990s Japan," in Tomiko Yoda and Harry Harootunian  (eds.) Japan After Japan: Social and Cultural Life from the Recessionary 90s to the Present, Duke U. Press, 2006; “The Neo-liberal Subject of Lack and Potential: Developing “the Frontier Within and Creating a Reserve Army of Labor in Japan,” in Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, Special issue on “Neoliberal Governmentality: Technologies of the Self and Governmental Conduct,” Volume 10, Spring 2005.

In January of this year, after very little open debate, the Japanese ruling party passed a controversial bill altering the meaning and intent of a key education law. Over its 60-year history, the Fundamental Law of Education (FLE) served as a final guarantor of educational rights and a bulwark against pressures (both domestic and foreign) for Japan to remilitarize. The new law is intended to counteract the effects of individual rights and pacifism that have rendered Japan as an “abnormal nation” and its youth as incapable of self-sacrifice and devotion. It requires schools to “foster patriotic attitudes” and parents to accept more responsibility for their child’s successful development. Although many critics view these changes as a return to the heavy-handed interventionist state of prewar times, this paper argues that they represent instead the shifting of responsibility for schooling and employment from the government to the individual as a new disciplinary structure suited to the pressures of economic globalization. In her paper, Dr. Arai tracks the inception of these changes from the moral panic and emergent expert knowledges surrounding the child during the recessionary 1990s through the present demand for mobility, liquidity, and internalized sacrifice in an era when national futures no longer guarantee personal ones.

This talk is part of the "Global Futures" project sponsored by the Simpson Center for the Humanities. This project explores how youth are linked to converging crises in public life around education, labor, militarization, criminalization and technology, and how global processes affecting young people are playing out in different locations. Particular emphases are on Africa, East Asia, and South Asia.

Kam Wing Chan is a Professor in Geography at the UW. He is the author of Cities with Invisible Walls: Reinterpreting Urbanization in Post-1949 China (Oxford, 1994) and some fifty articles on urbanization, migration, urban labor markets, the household registration system, and urban finance.  He has also served as a consultant to the United Nations, Asian Development Bank, World Bank, International Labor Organization, and McKinsey Co. on various policy issues related to urbanization and migration in China.

China's success in the global economy relies critically on rural migrant labor and its "secret weapon," the hukou (household registration) system.  This talk explains the complexity of the system and its operations, and interprets its recent changes in relation to migrant labor.  Professor Chan will also examine the geography of migration trends and discuss the implications for China's future.

Considering majoring, double-majoring, or minoring in an Asian Language?  Want to find out what’s involved in getting a degree in Asian Languages and Literature?  Come to this Spring Mixer to find out more.

-Refreshments Provided-

For more information, please visit http://depts.washington.edu/asianll/index.html

Minxin Pei is a senior associate and director of the China Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.  Dr. Pei received his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University and taught politics at Princeton University from 1992 to 1998.  His main interests are U.S.-China relations, the development of democratic political systems, and Chinese politics.  He is the author of From Reform to Revolution: The Demise of Communism in China and the Soviet Union (Harvard University Press, 1994) and China's Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy (Harvard University Press, 2006).  Pei's research has been published in Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, The National Interest, Modern China, China Quarterly, Journal of Democracy and many edited books. His op-eds have appeared in the Financial Times, New York Times, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, and other major newspapers.

Dr. Rob Efird is currently assistant professor of anthropology and Asian studies at Seattle University. He received his Ph.D. in sociocultural anthropology from the University of Washington in 2004 after earning an undergraduate degree in anthropology from Yale University and a Masters in Regional Studies-East Asia from Harvard. His research on Sino-Japanese relations includes a book manuscript on Japan's war orphans and "New Overseas Chinese," as well as, a new project on Japanese environmental NGOs in China.

Dr. Efird will discuss the history and current circumstances of “Japanese war orphans from China.” “War Orphans” is the term used to identify thousands of individuals who as infants or children were separated from their Japanese parents and stranded in northeast China—Japan’s former colony of Manchuria—in the chaotic aftermath of World War Two. Most remained in China for more than three decades as adopted members of Chinese families, unaware of their biological parentage, cut off from their Japanese kin, the Japanese language, and Japanese culture. Following the resumption of Sino-Japanese diplomatic relations in 1972, more than 2,500 of these war orphans and their families have made a widely publicized migration to Japan, where their difficult resettlement and the question of Japanese state responsibility for their predicament have been the focus of intense controversy and a series of ongoing lawsuits against the Japanese government. These lawsuits collectively constitute the largest war compensation claim in Japan’s postwar history. Moreover, the recent migration of these war orphans, their family members, and over 300,000 other mainland Chinese citizens to Japan together represent the largest immigration phenomenon in Japan’s postwar history. Against the supercharged backdrop of Sino-Japanese relations, the experiences of these migrants offer an opportunity to reflect upon Japanese war responsibility as well as conventional representations of Chinese and Japanese ethnic identity and the concept of ethnicity itself.

In this colloquium, Professor Harrell and Dr. Ergu will briefly introduce the context and the text, and spend most of the time showing how certain passages reflect different kinds of ideas about the Nuosu ideal world order.  While they will not pay much explicit attention during the presentation to the problems of translation themselves (which would constitute a whole separate talk), they will be glad to illustrate those for the linguists and others during the question period.  An electronic version of the original text and the current draft of its translation will also be made available.

Namhee Lee is an assistant professor of modern Korean history at UCLA and her recent book, The Making of Minjung Democracy and the Politics of Representation in South Korea, is forthcoming (Cornell University Press, 2007).  She is currently working on a book project entitled Social Memory and Public Production of Historical Knowledge in South Korea, which explores production of historical knowledge outside established academic institutions in the last two decades, examining the debates, tensions, and exchanges generated from historical films, novels, exhibitions, festivals, historical restorations (or destructions), and civic historical movements.

Dr. Peng Hsiao-yen is Research Fellow at Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica. Author of Chaoyue xieshi (Beyond realism), Lishi henduo loudong (There are many loopholes in history), and Haishang shuo qingyu (Desire in Shanghai). Editor of Yangkui quanji (Complete works of Yangkui), 14 volumes. Writer of collections of stories聽Duanzhang Shunniang (Shunniang with broken palm lines) and Chunzhen niandai (Age of innocence).

Dr. Peng’s studies the Shanghai Neo-Sensationists, emphasizing their connections with their Japanese and French counterparts. Dandyism manifests itself in the dandy鈥檚 love-hate relationship with the modern girl, who is his inferior other self; in his pr茅ciosit茅 of writing in the macaronic (a mixture of two or more languages); and in his stance as a perpetual traveler and woman watcher.

James Dobbins received his Ph.D. in religious studies from Yale University in 1984.  His major publications are Letters of the Nun Eshinni: Images of Pure Land Buddhism in Medieval Japan (University of Hawai'i Press, 2004); Jodo Shinshu: Shin Buddhism in Medieval Japan (paperback edition, University of Hawai'i Press, 2002); and The Legacy of Kuroda Toshio (guest editor, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, Fall 1996).  He has held research grants from Fulbright, the Japan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, and the Japanese Ministry of Education.  He is a research fellow at the National Humanities Center in 2006-2007.

A common assumption in the West is that Japanese Buddhist temples are largely sites of intense religious training for Buddhist clerics.  This presentation examines the historical emergence of temples in Shin Buddhism and attempts to show that the vast majority rose not from such a monastic model but rather from the organization of small religious circles into formal congregations.

Details TBA

Richard J. Samuels is Ford International Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for International Studies.  He is also the Founding Director of the MIT Japan Program.  Professor Samuels received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1980.  He served as Head of the MIT Department of Political Science between 1992-1997 and as Vice-Chairman of the Committee on Japan of the National Research Council until 1996.  In 2001, Professor Samuels became Chairman of the Japan-US Friendship Commission, an independent Federal grant-making agency that supports Japanese studies and policy-oriented research in the United States. In 2005, he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Professor Samuels' next book, Securing Japan, will be published in 2007 by Cornell University Press.  Previous books include Machiavelli's Children: Leaders and Their Legacies in Italy and Japan, Rich Nation, Strong Army: National Security and the Technological Transformation of Japan, The Business of the Japanese State: Energy Markets in Comparative and Historical Perspective, and Politics of Regional Policy in Japan.  His articles have appeared in International Organization, Foreign Affairs, International Security, The Journal of Modern Italian Studies, The Journal of Japanese Studies, Daedalus, The Washington Quarterly, and other scholarly journals.

Many analysts do not believe Japan has a coherent grand strategy, and more than a few insist that it never did.  Japan is often depicted as groping for strategy.  Without giving Japanese strategists too much credit, and without ignoring their many mistakes, Samuels will examine Japan's strategic choices across more than a century-- and will lay out Tokyo's strategic options going forward.

Based in Ha Noi, Nguyen Qui Duc was Regional Editor for KQED’s Pacific Time, a public radio program focusing on Asian and Asian American affairs, broadcast on more than 30 stations across the U.S., and in Hong Kong.  A former commentator for National Public Radio (NPR) Nguyen is also a contributing producer for PBS’s FRONTLINE/World.  He is the author of Where The Ashes Are, The Odyssey of a Vietnamese Family (Addison-Wesley, 1994).

Join the Asia Outreach Centers and the International Studies Center of the Jackson School of International Studies for this series of presentations addressing issues surrounding the diverse situations of youth populations in 4 regions of Asia.  These events are free and open to the public.  All are in Communications Building 120 on the UW campus, at 7:00 PM.  For more information, visit http://jsis.washington.edu/seac/childhoodpi.shtml, call 206-543-4800, or email sascuw@u.washington.edu

* Educators who attend at least 2 of the lectures will receive 3 WA State Clock Hours.*

This series is supported in part by Title VI US Education Department Grants to the East Asia, International Studies, South Asia, Southeast Asia and Ellison Centers of the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies. http://jsis.washington.edu/

Ruth Rogaski received her Ph.D. in history from Yale University in 1996 and is presently Associate Professor of history at Vanderbilt University.  Her work focuses on the history of science and medicine in modern and early modern China.  Her first book, Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China (University of California Press, 2004), received several national book awards, including the Levenson Prize and the Fairbank Prize.

"In Search of Mount Changbai" is a section from Professor Rogaski’s present project, "The Nature of Manchuria," which explores the ways that Asian empires created knowledge about the Manchurian frontier from the seventeenth century to the present.

Dr. Jung will present “Urban Renaissance in Seoul:  Issues and Policy Responses” including the following topics:

1. Restoring Green Network

2. Cheonggye River Restoration Project

3. Downtown Pedestrianization

4. Historic Preservation

5. Mass Transit Oriented Development

6. Balanced Regional Development & New Town Projects

Among the above topics, the Cheonggye River Restoration Project  resembles the Alaskan Viaduct case, which required demolishing the highway connecting to the core of downtown Seoul.  In order to daylight the stream, the Seoul city government decided to demolish the freeway and brought an eco-friendly environment to the heart of downtown in just three years.

The United States concluded historic free trade agreement negotiations with the Republic of Korea on April 1, 2007.  The KORUS FTA, between the world’s largest and 11th largest economies, will be the United States’ most commercially significant free trade agreement in 15 years and one of the most significant bilateral trade agreements worldwide. 

The Asian Law Center of the University of Washington School of Law is pleased to host Consul Pok-Keun Yuh from the Consulate General of the Republic of Korea for a presentation and discussion of the KORUS FTA.  Consul Yuh was previously a Deputy Director in the Treaties Bureau of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Korea, and holds an L.L.M. from Harvard Law School, an M.P.P. from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, as well as an L.L.M. and a Ph.D. from Korea University’s Graduate School of Law.

Sponsored by the Asian Law Center, School of Law.

For additional information, please contact Prof. Yong-Sung Jonathan Kang (jonakang@u.washington.edu) or Prof. Dongsheng Zang (zangd@u.washington.edu)

Dali L. Yang is currently Professor and Chairman of the Department of Political Science at The University of Chicago.  Among his books are Remaking the Chinese Leviathan: Market Transition and the Politics of Governance in China (Stanford University Press, 2004, 2006); Beyond Beijing: Liberalization and the Regions in China (Routledge, 1997); Calamity and Reform in China: State, Rural Society and Institutional Change Since the Great Leap Famine (Stanford University Press, 1996). He is also editor of Discontented Miracle: Growth, Conflict, and Institutional Adaptations in China (World Scientific, 2007) and the co-editor (with Barry Naughton) of Holding China Together: Diversity and National Integration in Post-Deng China (Cambridge University Press, 2004).

China has been plagued by official corruption in the reform era. What have the Chinese leadership done to curb corruption? Have they taken effective measures? What does the incidence of corruption portend for China’s governance and future?

Dali L. Yang is currently Professor and Chairman of the Department of Political Science at The University of Chicago.  Among his books are Remaking the Chinese Leviathan: Market Transition and the Politics of Governance in China (Stanford University Press, 2004, 2006); Beyond Beijing: Liberalization and the Regions in China (Routledge, 1997); Calamity and Reform in China: State, Rural Society and Institutional Change Since the Great Leap Famine (Stanford University Press, 1996). He is also editor of Discontented Miracle: Growth, Conflict, and Institutional Adaptations in China (World Scientific, 2007) and the co-editor (with Barry Naughton) of Holding China Together: Diversity and National Integration in Post-Deng China (Cambridge University Press, 2004).

China has been plagued by official corruption in the reform era. What have the Chinese leadership done to curb corruption? Have they taken effective measures? What does the incidence of corruption portend for China’s governance and future?

The term guohua （Chinese painting） refers mainly to scroll and album paintings that reflect the influence of literati art theory.  According to the literati ideal, the purpose of an amateur creating a picture was to enjoy the process of ink play rather than produce a work for some social functions.  Scroll and album paintings were historically appreciated in private places by a few select people and close proximity, even held in one’s hands.  However, a Chinese painting in an art exhibition is viewed by the general public in a public space, from some distance (precluding touching), and displayed with many other works (even with sculpture and oil painting).  In twentieth-century China, art exhibition has become the major means by which art works engage public attention and artists advance their careers.  Chinese painters have had to deal with this fundamental change.  Through analyses of exhibition works done by five guohua masters, Li Keran, Pan Tianshou, Fu Baoshi, and Lu Yanshao, the author has discovered that art exhibition has finally brought an end to literati painting.

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Professor Min is a visiting scholar at the University of Washington from the Department of Korean Language Education, Seoul National University in Korea.  He studies Korean linguistics with a focus on Medieval Korean, Korean pedagogical grammar, and Korean orthography.  He received his Ph.D. from Seoul National University.  His doctoral thesis was entitled "A Study of Adverbs in Medieval Korean."  He has taught at Kangneung National University (1984-1991) and Sookmyung Women's University (1991-2000).  He held the office of chief of the Division of Korean Language Standardization (1997-1999) in the National Korean Language Research Institute.  He has been teaching at Seoul National University since 2000.

For more information, please email sumnom@u.washington.edu