[UCI Japanese Studies] Writers Who Have Seen Too Much: Land, Parents, Care

Presented by UCI Japanese Studies
International Japanese Literature Symposium
Writers Who Have Seen Too Much: Land, Parents, Care

Friday September 30 & Saturday October 1
UCI Humanities Gateway 1010

This two-day conference brings together researchers who work on five writers: Chiri Yukie (1903-1922), Sakiyama Tami (1954- ), Tsushima Yuko (1947-2016), Ishimure Michiko (1927-2018) and Kobayashi Erika (1978- ). Our title refers to the emotional toll of environmental destruction at four moments in Japanese modernity: the theft of Ainu lands, the theft of Ryukyuan lands, the mercury poisoning of Minamata, and the nuclear disaster of Fukushima. How do those who “see too much” use literature not only to criticize but also to affirm? How does literature allow them to engage the land, and what ways of kinship, both human and more than human, do they recount in the process? Our aim is to open up environmental issues in new (and old) directions: disability studies, indigenous knowledge, care feminisms and philosophies of vitalism. By focusing on the personalities who have inspired some of the most compelling multilingual studies in Japanese Literature Studies, we want to cultivate relationships between senior and junior scholars while expanding our understanding of how the five writers amplify the projects of the each other.

https://www.earthkincareconference2022.com/

Conference program

friday september 30

9:30 a.m.: Welcome (Jon, Mimi, Anne, Sophie)
10h00-11h30: Kin Panel
Franz Prichard, “Ecological and Anti-colonial Harmonizations in Ishimure History of the Sea of ​​Camellias”
Andrew Campana, “The Threads Between Three Ainu Women Poets: Chiri Yukie, Iga Fude, Chikappu Mieko”
Chiara Pavone, “Radioactive Aesthetics: Kobayashi and Anti-Sublime Craftsmanship”
Christine Marran, “Ishimure as an aquapelagic thinker”
11:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.: Ring Road Walk, Aldrich Park: One Circuit, One Idea, One Minute Report On return (all participants; in E or J: in groups of 5 people each)
12:15 p.m.: Break & Surprise Performances
1:15 p.m. – 2:45 p.m.: Care, panel 1
Kazue Harada, “Visible Matter and Affective Radiation: Kobayashi’s Affective Strategies in Hikari no kodomo”
Masato Kurosawa, “The Traumatized Body’s Dual Dependence on Care and Environment in Postwar Okinawa: The Postcolonial Fiction of Medoruma”
Anne McKnight, “Eco-documentary in 1970s Japan: the case of the prehistoric tree in Haneda’s Usuzumi no sakura”
2:45 p.m. – 3:15 p.m.: Ring Road Walk, Aldrich Park: One Circuit, One Idea, One Minute Report On return (all participants; in E or J: in groups of 5 people each)
3:15 p.m. – 4:45 p.m.: Earth panel
Jon L Pitt, “”What’s the reason things are the way they are? “: On reading the Ainu Shinyōshū as indigenous science”
Sara Newsome, “Time Travel and Tree Transformations: Reading Ishimure through Jakuchō”
Saeko Kimura, “The Indigenous Poetics of Tsushima Yūko: in Kyrgyz with golden dream song (Ogon no yume no uta)”
4:45 p.m. – 5:15 p.m.: Ring Road Walk, Aldrich Park: One Circuit, One Idea, One Minute Report On return (all participants; in E or J: in groups of 5 people each)

Saturday October 1

9:30 a.m.: Welcome (Jon, Mimi, Anne, Sophie)
10h00-11h30: “Too Much” sign
Jeffrey Angles, “Nosari Poetics and the Entanglements of Ishimure Michiko”
Daryl Maude, “Island Archive: Indigenous Knowledge and Analog Media in Sakiyama’s Story” Kurikaeshi-Gaeshi”
Brian Bergstrom, “The Genre of Urgency: Scale, Historicity, and Generation in the Works of Kobayashi Erika”
Mimi Long, “Relationship, Disability and Vitality in Tsushima hunting age”
11:30 am: Ring Road Walk, Aldrich Park: One Circuit, One Idea, One Minute Report (all participants)
12:30 p.m.: Break & Surprise Performances
1:30 p.m.: Break
2 p.m.: Care, panel 2
Davinder Bhowmik, “Suturing the Gap in Sakiyama’s Kuja Stories”
Andrea Arai, “The Politics of Care in Ishimure’s *Lake of Heaven* and Kobayashi’s “Gemstones”
Wendy Wang, “An Environmental Network of Care: Tsushima Yūko’s territory of light“
Shinji Iwamasa, “In Search of the Roles of Writers Who Have Seen Too Much: Tomiko Inui, Fumiyo Kouno, and Erika Kobayashi”
3:30 p.m.: Ring Road Walk, Aldrich Park: One Circuit, One Idea, One Minute Report On return (all participants; in E or J: in groups of 5 people each)
4:00 p.m.: Poetry & Additional Reading: Translators & Other Enthusiasts
5:00 p.m.: Kansō & Kansha: One person, one minute: “Most Generative Feedback for Me” (everyone thanks one person), “My Big New Idea” (when did it happen?), “My moment of “too ” (oversharing allowed!) or whatever you want to say. In order of presentation.

Generously funded by the following sponsors:
The Japan Foundation
UCI Humanities Center
UCI East Asian Studies Department
UCI International Writing and Translation Center
UCI Center for Environmental Human Sciences
UCI Center for Medical Humanities
UCI Center for Asian Studies