Symbols convey meaning, but not all symbols are equal. In this lecture, I consider a hierarchy of symbols within what I term ‘Visual Packaging Culture’, focusing on pictograms, emoji, and kamon as representatives of each group, to question whether symbols truly carry the meanings ascribed to them.

Christopher Hood is Honorary Professor of modern Japanese history at Cardiff University. His books include Japan: The Basics (2024),  Dealing with Disaster in Japan (2011), and Shinkansen: From Bullet Train to Symbol of Modern Japan (2006). In 2025/6, he was a Japan Foundation Fellow at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, researching symbolism in Japan.

This hybrid lecture will be held on site (registration required in advance from here) and via Zoom.

Zoom Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82070889460

Meeting ID: 820 7088 9460

Zen swept through Western culture in the 1950s and 1960s. How did this cultural transfer occur, and who were its key actors? Answering these questions requires reconstructing a largely overlooked history. This involves moving beyond national and disciplinary boundaries, considering the agency of both Japanese exporters and Western importers, and examining the historical contexts that turned individual encounters into a collective phenomenon.

Emmanuel Lozerand is Professor of Modern Japanese Literature at the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO, Paris, France). His research focuses on the language, literature, thought, and history of modern Japan, as well as on major authors such as Natsume Sōseki, Mori Ōgai, and Masaoka Shiki.

This hybrid lecture will be held on site and via Zoom.

 Registration required in advance from here.

Zoom Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87452093537

Meeting ID: 874 5209 3537

Speakers: 

Daniel White (University College London)

Marié Abe (University of California, Berkeley)

Emma Cook (Hokkaido University)

Andrea De Antoni (Kyoto University)

What if the most productive response to moments of ethnographic puzzlement and uncertainty were not the formulation of an answer but the cultivation of a feeling? And where academic professional practices discourage the experience of possible worlds, what if anthropology could leverage somatic rather than semiotic exercises to connect and cultivate collaboration with interlocutors in the field?

Anthropologists have offered ample analytical responses to the problematization of feeling, but they have not always engaged with affect as a phenomenon operating beyond Western philosophical traditions, nor fully explored its potential to challenge anthropology’s modernist explanatory drive and generate new ethnographic possibilities.

Developed through years of shared conversations and workshops among the presenters and published as Affect as Cultural Critique (Toronto 2026), this roundtable explores how affective encounters can shape research trajectories, orient fieldwork decisions, and open forms of understanding that exceed conventional analytic language. Moving beyond the treatment of feelings as data to be interpreted, the discussion approaches affective practices as techniques of knowing, attending, collaborating, guiding fieldwork choices, and experimenting when discursive accounts alone prove insufficient.

Drawing on ethnographic and artist-activist engagements involving meditation, encounters with spirits, experiences of illness, music, play, and other embodied exercises, the conversation will consider how affective methods can highlight the force of discourse, reconfigure how discourse operates by working through embodied forms, and unsettle disciplinary interpretive norms. The session invites participants to engage affect as a form of critique that not only diagnoses worlds but also contributes collaboratively to remaking them.

This hybrid roundtable will be held on site and via Zoom. 

Registration required in advance from here by July 20.

Japanese feel-good literature has enjoyed considerable success in Europe, particularly in France, Italy, and the United Kingdom. However, the category of “healing fiction” or “feel-good fiction” is neither as self-evident nor as widespread in Japan. What does this say about the reception of “Japanese feel-good fiction” in Europe? Is this label blurry and irrelevant in and of itself? Should we distinguish different trends within “Japanese feel-good” literature? By addressing these questions, this lecture aims to provide a better understanding of the perceptions and realities underlying the “Japanese feel-good” phenomenon.

Thomas Garcin is an associate professor at Paris Cité University and currently serves as director of the French Research Institute on Japan (IFRJ-MFJ), Tokyo. He edited Mishima, Écrits sur le théâtre (2023) and co-edited Mishima revisité (2025). His current research focuses on Japanese healing fiction and its commodification.

This hybrid lecture will be held on site (registration required in advance from here) and via Zoom.

Zoom Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82771534635

Meeting ID: 827 7153 4635

Yakushiji temple constitutes an interesting laboratory to explore the intersection between cultural heritage and religion. Using the concept of karmic connections (en 縁), Yakushiji clergy has tied the lay community to the preservation of the material and immaterial culture of the temple, also building on the broader Japanese imaginary of Silk Road. Combining historical and ethnographic approaches, this lecture will analyze Yakushiji through the lens of “living heritage,” shifting focus from nation-centered and secularization narratives to the role of Buddhist communities.

Paride Stortini is an FWO research fellow at Ghent University. His work explores Buddhism in the modern and contemporary cultural imaginary of Japan as a way to question imperialism, orientalism, and national identity. His current project investigates the idea of Silk Road in postwar Japan, at the intersection between religion and cultural heritage.

This hybrid lecture will be held on site (registration required in advance from here) and via Zoom.

Zoom Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82644934790

Meeting ID: 826 4493 4790