Japan’s modern legal system originated with the transplant of Western law in the Meiji period. Within three decades Japan was transformed into a centralised country with a constitution, codes, and a structured system of courts staffed by professional jurists.

This lecture traces the birth and development of Japanese comparative law studies and institutions, showing how comparative law not only paved the way for the reception of Western law, but was also instrumental in the emergence of an original Japanese jurisprudence.

Andrea Ortolani is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Tsukuba. His research focuses on legal transplants, legal evolution, and on Japanese law and its interactions with foreign jurisprudence.

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

Zoom Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84487130281

Meeting ID: 844 8713 0281

Mizoguchi Kenji (1898-1956) always had problems with censors. This presentation analyzes The Naimushō (Ministry of Internal Affairs)’s censorship, 1925-1945, taking Mizoguchi’s Gion no kyodai (Sisters of the Gion, 1936), one of the most critically acclaimed films of the 1930s Japanese cinema, as a case study. Censorship is recast as a process involving criticism, reception, and negotiation. The analysis reconstructs the censors’ logic, goal, and professional consciousness based on their published memos, interviews, the censored script, and the surviving film text.

Chika Kinoshita is a professor of Film Studies at the Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies at Kyoto University. She has published the award-winning book Mizoguchi Kenji: Aesthetics and Politics of the Film Medium (Hosei University Press, 2016), and essays and chapters on cinema, gender, and sexuality in English and Japanese.

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

Zoom Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81327602950

Meeting ID: 813 2760 2950

Although qigong is widely regarded as a traditional Chinese body practice, scholars have argued that it was “invented” as a therapeutic practice in the 1950s. Yet, despite its relatively recent origins, qigong continues to be practiced and “reinvented” through bodily techniques and embodied experiences across diverse cultural settings. Drawing on ethnographic research, this lecture explores how practitioners engage with the sensory and affective dimensions of qigong, revealing its transformation from an “invented tradition” into an “embodied tradition”.

Huang Xinzhe is a senior researcher at the Kinugasa Research Organization, Ritsumeikan University. His research explores qigong and spiritual practices in China and Japan. He recently published a book in Japanese (The Anthropology of Qi: Embodied experience in Qigong Practices, Sekai Shisōsha 2025) based on his PhD dissertation.

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

Zoom Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84974847315

Meeting ID: 849 7484 7315

Burmese mural painting is best known from the Pagan period of the 11th-13th centuries, whose corpus of over 300 monuments is the largest in Southeast Asia. This lecture shows that the Nyaungyan mural tradition is not a continuation of this first pictorial tradition, but represents a foundational change, heralding the modern era. Not subject to any major foreign influence, its fundamentals reflect a simplified program and graphism, a new iconography, and a new structuration of the mural space. These developments ultimately led to a new way to teach Buddhist moral precepts through entertaining scenes highlighting Portuguese and Indian gatekeepers.

Cristophe Munier-Gaillard is an associate member of the Centre de Recherche sur l’Extrême-Orient de Paris-Sorbonne. His research focuses on the narrative technique and styles of early modern Burmese Buddhist murals. He edited Mural Art: Studies on Paintings in Asia (River Books, 2017).

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

Zoom Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86587681543

Meeting ID: 865 8768 1543

The ritual history of Japanese Tantric Buddhism, even during its purported medieval golden age, remains inadequately understood. Advanced consecration rituals, in particular, have been little studied, despite their crucial role in establishing the identity and legitimacy of Tantric practitioners. This talk examines one such ritual, known in contemporary documents as yugi kanjō, through an analysis of Taimitsu (Tendai Tantric Buddhist) sources. This consecration encapsulates the Tantric approach to ultimate realization through distinctive practices of body marking and self-consecration. While the ritual has frequently been characterized as heterodox, an expansive reading of Taimitsu sources suggest continuity with established continental practices, underscoring the necessity of reconceptualizing Japanese Tantric Buddhist history within a broader trans-regional framework.

Lucia Dolce is Numata Professor of Japanese Buddhism at SOAS, University of London, and Chair of the Centre for the Study of Japanese Religions. Her research explores discursive and ritual practices of religion in Japan combining archival survey, philosophical analysis and fieldwork. She currently is a visiting research fellow at Nichibunken to complete a project that maps out the medieval Tantric discourse on ritual body.

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

Zoom Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85467084761

Meeting ID: 854 6708 4761