Kicking off our Diversity and Inclusion film series this year, is “Close-Knit” (2017 2 hr. 7 min.),  a drama by writer and director Naoko Ogigami about Tomo, an 11-year old girl who discovers her mother has abandoned her. Tomo’s uncle and his transgender girlfriend, Rinko, take her in. November 13 also marks the beginning of

Keijiro Suga (b. 1958) is a poet and critic based in Tokyo. Formerly the president of ASLE (Association for the Study of Literature and Environment) Japan, his work covers ethnopoetics, ecocriticism, contemporary world literature, and translation theory. He was awarded the Yomiuri Prize for Literature in 2011 for his travel essays Transversal Journeys. With nine collections

The UW Japan Studies Program is Proud to Sponsor Spaces of Creative Resistance 2021, a research initiative by UW Faculty Andrea Gevurtz Arai (JSIS & UW Japan Studies Program) and Jeff Hou (Dept. of Landscape Architecture & UW Taiwan Studies Program). The three day workshop, called “Public Spaces, Creative Action, Democratic Practices in East Asia,”

Japan’s recent efforts in cyberspace reflects its ambition to have a more proactive military posture and expand the scope of the US-Japan alliance. Under the current Abe administration, Japanese policy-makers have significantly enhanced Japan’s cyber-defense capabilities due to the growing cybersecurity tensions between the United States’s relationships with China, Russia, and North Korea. Given Japan’s position as a

Waseda University is 4800 miles away from the University of Washington. And yet they share a deep connection stretching back many years. There are currently four programmatic relationships between the UW and Waseda. This year Professor Amy Snyder Ohta of the department of Asian Languages and Literature and UW Japan Studies Program faculty is participating