1)-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Patrick Patterson
nobel@DARKWING.UOREGON.EDU
My name is Pat Patterson. I am in my first year as an MA student in the
Department of History at the University of Oregon. My advisor is Jeffery
Hanes, and like him, I study mass culture in "modern" Japan. Specifically,
I am interested in enka from 1887 to 1945, and what it shows about the
perceptions Japanese people of the time had of their society, themselves,
and the process of modernization. I am excited about this research, but I
am also interested in every aspect of Japan, Japanese history, culture, and
language. I hope to take part in some interesting discussions on this list.
よろしくお願いします。
Pat Patterson
University of Oregon
nobel@darkwing.uoregon.com
2)-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Taylor Atkins
e-atkins@STUDENTS.UIUC.EDU
I just joined H-Japan. I am currently writing my dissertation, tentatively
entitled "Jazz in Japan: A Cultural History, 1920-1994," in the Dept. of
History at the University of Illinois. I am focusing particularly on how the
ideology of Japanese cultural exceptionalism has influenced Japan's
jazz community, and how some Japanese musicians and jazz writers have
constructed the category "Japanese jazz" to designate a unique form of the
music that reinforces notions of cultural difference. I am interested in the
arts and popular culture in twentieth century Japan and look forward to
hearing about other people's work in this relatively new area of the Japan
studies field.
Taylor Atkins
e-atkins@students.uiuc.edu
3)-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Adrian Davis
A_davis@ACAD.FANDM.EDU
My name is Adrian Davis, and I am in my first year as assistant
professor of East Asian history at Franklin and Marshall College in
Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Last year, I received my Ph.D. in history from
Harvard, where I worked with Philip Kuhn; my dissertation is entitled
"Homicide in the Home: Marital Strife and Familial Conflict in
Eighteenth-Century China." As you see from the title, I'm basically a
"China person": in general, my interests lie in the social, cultural, and
legal history of late imperial and modern China. However, in addition to
long stints of language study and research in Taiwan and mainland China, I
also spent two years in Japan, learning (?) Japanese and researching my
thesis. Here at Franklin and Marshall, I teach Japanese history as well as
Chinese history; for example, this semester I am teaching a seminar on
postwar Japan.
Adrian Davis Voice: 717-393-1578
Department of History Fax: 717-399-4413
Franklin and Marshall College E-mail:
Lancaster, PA 17604-3003 a_davis@acad.fandm.edu
http://www.fandm.edu/Departments/History/Davis/ADavis.html
4)-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Tina Stevens
tintin@U.WASHINGTON.EDU
Dear H-Japan,
I am glad to have this opportunity to connect with other people
interested in the various facets of Japan. I am an Australian lawyer. I have
a Commerce degree, a law degree and a Japanese language degree from
Australia and am currently undertaking a Masters of Asian and Comparative
Law at the University of Washington. For my Master's thesis I am looking at
shareholder derivative suits in Japan, the US and Australia and possibly
encompassing within this a consideration of the Daiwa Bank
Scandal. I have spent in total a period of 6 months living and working in
Japan. If there is anyone with information on my topic or who would like
some information pertaining to the legal system in Japan I am willing to
assist or to find someone who can! Despite my studies my Japanese is still a
long way from perfect!! Anyway, I'm very happy to be provided with the
opportunity to talk to other "Japanologists"! Thank you, H-Japan!
Regards,
Tina Stevens.
5)-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Deborah Clearwaters
dclear@WAM.UMD.EDU
Greetings,
I am Deborah Clearwaters, a masters degree student at the University of
Maryland researching Meiji period yoga artists. My BA was a double major in
Art History and Japanese Language and Literature at the University of
Maryland. After graduation I completed the 9-week intensive course at
Middlebury College in Japanese, and that fall (1990), I went to Keio Daigaku
for a year of intensive Japanese. Subsequently, I worked for two
Japanese companies in Tokyo, and was the assistant to the Educational
Attache at the Embassy of Japan in Washington DC for a little over a year.
Currently, I am interested in the Occidentalism movement in Meiji period
art, and am conducting case studies of a few yoga artists who exhibited and
sold their works in the US to finance their art training in Paris. I am
looking at critical reception of their work in the US, Europe, and Japan to
analyze how their experiences abroad might have shaped their artistic
careers and philosophies.
I am also working as a Teaching Assistant in the Arts of Asia survey here at
the University of Maryland under Jason Kuo, Professor of Chinese Art.
I am interested in networking with other Japan scholars from all of the
liberal arts fields, because I am trying to approach my subject from a
multi-disciplinary point of view. Unfortunately, I will not be able to
attend the AAS conference in Hawaii this year, but would love to hear about
it from those of you who do.
6)-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Anthony Chambers
ACHAMBERS@EAGLE.WESLEYAN.EDU
I am another new member of the list, Anthony (Tony) H. Chambers, Professor
of Asian Languages and Literatures at Wesleyan University in Middletown,
Connecticut. I've been here for twenty years, teaching Japanese language,
literature in Japanese and in translation, and occasional other East Asian
Studies courses, such as a frosh seminar in East Asian humanities. My
research has focussed on Tanizaki; I've done several translations and a
study, published last year, called "The Secret Window: Ideal Worlds in
Tanizaki's Fiction" (Harvard). Yoroshiku.
7)-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Vivian Herman
v.herman@AIS.GU.EDU.AU
Please allow me to introduce myself to the members of H-Japan. My
name is Vivian Herman. Currently I am Senior Lecturer in Japanese Politics
at Griffith University in sunny, sub-tropical Brisbane in the Australian
state of Queensland. For those of you unfamiliar with the Australian
academic system a Senior Lecturer is a senior academic position, and perhaps
equivalent to an Assoc Prof. in the US system.
Though my doctorate is in Political Science my work is more
political than scientific. I am currently revising a book-length mansucript
on Japanese travel writing and visual images of the Malay world and its
communities between 1931 and 1945, focusing on historical movements in
vision and their relationship to changing power relations between Japan and
Southeast Asia. In this context I am particularly interested in taking up
some of the ways in which the peoples of Malay Southeast Asia "returned" the
Japanese gaze. I have found one Indonesian travel memoir about Japan (circa
1943), but I also understand that there were letters written home from
Malayan and Indonesian students studying in Japan under the auspices of the
Co-Prosperity Sphere which may be in some collection. If any
H-Japan members can assist me with this area of my project I would be very
grateful indeed.
I am also rather sporadically at work on a series of essays loosely
concerned with the relations between the human body and the state in
contemporary Japan, with one essay concerned with bondage images completed,
and another on the disciplines of death row underway.
I have been collecting materials for a paper on the work of Japanese
historians on Manchuria in the 1920s and 1930s. This was intended to be
part of a major study of Japanese concepts of space in Manchuria and the
relation of those concepts to changes in the cities and landscape of
Manchuria, but since a major work work on a closely related topic is
shortly to be published, I doubt I shall continue.
I am also engaged in a collaborative project to do with space,
design, development and discourses of globalisation in regional Japan, and
at the same time I am trying to map out a project building on the interests
I have developed in Japanese emigrations and diaspora communities, several
of which appear in the travel writings I mention above.
In the midst of all this I hope to find time to enjoy and learn from
H-Japan.
Vivian Herman
Senior Lecturer in Japanese Politics
Asian and International Studies
Griffith University
Nathan, QLD 4111
AUSTRALIA
PH: 61-7-3875-5129
FAX: 61-7-3875-5111
MOBILE PHONE: (61) 0414-983-657
e-mail: v.herman@ais.gu.edu.au
8)-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Mark Gibeau
gibeau@HAWAII.EDU
Hello there - my name is Mark Gibeau, I am a graduate student in (modern)
Japanese literature at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. I am currently
writing my thesis on Abe Kobo, with emphasis on his pre-Woman in the Dunes
works, and those works that have not been treated substantially in English.
Mainly, I am dealing with the communist and Surrealistic aspects of his
works and how they come together. If anyone else out there is working on
Abe, I would be very interested in hearing from you.
Mark.
gibeau@hawaii.edu
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END H-JAPAN MESSAGE