Earlier this month, the Government of Japan announced the recipients of the 2025 Autumn Conferment of Decoration on Foreign Nationals. Among the recipients is Marie Anchordoguy, a professor emerita at the Jackson School and former chair of the Center for Japanese Studies. Anchordoguy was honored with the Order of the Rising Sun in the third

Monday, Dec. 8, 2025 | 6 – 8 p.m. | Town Hall Seattle When “Shogun” was released last year, it was a commercial and critical success. So of course, academic historians fretted. Were they concerned that it painted sixteenth-century Japan as another Game of Thrones (with more ninjas and fewer dragons)? Maybe a little. But

On Oct. 24, the Jackson School’s Program on Strategy, Policy and Diplomacy Research (SPDR) hosted the public panel, “Positioning Japan in Cybersecurity Trajectories.” Sponsored through a grant from the United States-Japan Foundation, the panel is part of the SPDR Speaker Series. Professor Saadia Pekkanen, the SDPR director, welcomed the panel, moderated and chaired by Steven Vogel, a professor

Looking to spend a year studying in Tokyo? Applications are now being accepted for the 2026-2027 Global Leadership Fellow Program. Hurry, the deadline to apply is November 30. Learn more about the application process here.

Tateuchi East Asia Library (TEAL) is hosting a special research presentation by Azusa Tanaka, TEAL Japanese collection librarian as part of the 2025-26 Digital Scholarship Series.  Tanaka’s research using microscopic examination and artificial intelligence unlocks the origin and age of paper used in premodern media. November 6, 2026 Gowen Hall 3 FL Seminar Room (enter

Join Jackson School Acting Assistant Professor ​​​​​​​Andrea Gevurtz Arai on Wednesday, Nov. 12 as she dives into the world “Spaces of Creative Resistance: Social Change Projects in 21st-Century East Asia,” of which she is the editor. Over the last two decades, social disconnection, increased income disparity, and new burdens have been placed on the young,

As the world takes note of the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we wanted to share writings on this subject by UW students and faculty. Hiroshima and Nagasaki seminar student papers From 1992 through 2019, Professor Kenneth Pyle taught “Hiroshima and Nagasaki”, an honors level seminar. As part of the

  Every spring, as the cherry blossoms on the University of Washington’s quad start thinking about blooming, students from the Institute of Science Tokyo (IST; formerly known as Tokyo Medical & Dental University) come to Seattle for a two-week study abroad program. Participants, who are both undergraduate and graduate students, get a first-hand look at

During her 2024-2025 research leave, Japan Studies Librarian Azusa Tanaka addressed a longstanding challenge in Japanese book history: dating premodern books (pre-1868) that lack publication dates. Traditional methods are often subjective or invasive, but Tanaka used a novel, non-invasive approach combining microscopic imaging and machine learning. Using a digital microscope, Tanaka captured over 13,000 images

Join Center for Japanese Studies Acting Assistant Professor Andrea Gevurtz Arai on Friday, July 11 from 7-8 p.m. at the Elliot Bay Book Company for a discussion on the new book, “Spaces of Creative Resistance: Social Change Projects in Twenty-First-Century East Asia.” She will be joined by Summer Dai, a Ph.D. student in the University