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

Join us via Zoom for a talk with Dr. Mina Qiao of the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies about the meanings behind coronavirus narratives taking us back, not forward. Rather than “neo-” or new, a “re-”: returning to the past, revealing existing problems, and reclaiming memories lost and lessons forgotten. In her 2021 short story collection Unsocial Distance, Japanese

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,”

Congratulations to Don Hellmann on the selection of his dissertation for republication in the Voices Revived series from the University of California Press.  Japanese Foreign Policy and Domestic Politics: The Peace Agreement with the Soviet Union is now available in on-demand paperback. “UC Press Voices Revived commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and

What impact is the Trump administration having on Japan’s role in the world? How is Japan shaping international relations economically and politically as a result? Takako Hikotani (Columbia University) gave her talk “Stepping Up (Is hard to do?)” on April 19, 2018, as part of the Griffith and Patricia Way lecture series. Hikotani’s recent article

What impact is the Trump administration having on Japan’s role in the world? How is Japan shaping international relations economically and politically as a result? Join us for a talk by Takako Hikotani of Columbia University at the Griffith and Patricia Way Lecture on April 19, 2018 at 7 PM. Hikotani’s recent article “Trump’s Gift

The Nikkei Newspapers Digital Archive (NNDA) is a project of the Hokubei Hochi (North American Post) Foundation and the University of Washington Libraries.  The project goal is to make accessible two significant newspapers which tell the story of Japanese immigration and Japanese American community life in Seattle and beyond, from 1902 to 1950, and continuing

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

Outer space security expert and Japan specialist Prof. Saadia Pekkanen argues in her latest Forbes column “North Korea’s Threats Revitalize Preemptive Strike Debate In Japan” that as the idea of preemptive strikes is flying around following recent tension between the U.S. and North Korea, Japan’s preemptive capabilities are being brought into sharper focus.