We heard about the Japanese gendered job marked, homosocial desires in Abe Kazushige’s fiction, revisited the ethnographic primal scene of Suye Mura and explored medieval concepts of menstruation and time. One lecture focused on android perspectives on affect, another on creativity in rural Japan, and a third one on the role of Buddhist temples as storehouses in a literal and emotional sense. We learned about seed laws and taijinkyōfu – the fear of others – but also about the Japanese language in the age of post-standardization, and finished our first season with an excursion into all-female worlds in Japanese speculative fiction.

For those of you who missed a lecture or want to re-watch it, visit our recorded lectures section (https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/records/)

And for those who are more future-oriented – rest assured – the second season of the u:japan lectures will start soon (at the 4th of March 2021), consisting of 13 distinguished scholars delivering lectures about crucial subjects in Japanese studies. For more information visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures

See you soon in season two,
meanwhile enjoy the recorded lectures,
your u:japan lecture team