Nara, City of East Asia
Cosmopolitanism and Localism in Eighth-Century Japan

Symposium Program

Friday, April 30 – Pape Reception Hall, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art

9:00-11:30 am: Panel 1 – Urbanisms

Michael Como, Columbia University, “Urbanization and Purification in Ancient Japan”

Ellen van Goethem, Hosei University, “Where is the Tiger?: Capital Site Selection in Classical Japan”

Inoue Kazuto, Independent Administration Institution, National Institutes for Cultural Heritage, Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, “The Path to Heijo: International Relations in 7th- and 8th-Century East Asia and the Construction of a Capital” (in Japanese)

Discussant: Jeffrey Hanes, University of Oregon

1:00-3:30 pm: Panel 2 – Figurations

Akiko Walley, University of Oregon, “Lost or Just Misplaced?: Possibilities for Reconstructing the Original Location of the Horyuji Five-story Pagoda Clay Figurines”

Yui Suzuki, University of Maryland, “The Resplendent Hall of Healing: Shomu and Komyo’s Shin Yakushiji”

Cynthea Bogel, University of Washington, “The Long Eighth Century: When Eighth-Century Chinese Icons Become Ninth-Century Japanese Icons”

Discussant: Junghee Lee, Portland State University

3:45-4:30 pm: Conclusions for Day 1/Open Discussion

Discussant: William Wayne Farris, University of Hawai’i at Manoa

5:00-6:30 pm: Public Lecture

“Why So Blue?: Mandala Transmission and the Transformation of Eighth-Century Representational Modes”
Cynthea Bogel, University of Washington

Discussant: Mark Unno, University of Oregon

6:30-7:30 pm: Public Reception – Lobby, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art

Greetings from Consul-General of Japan in Portland, Okabe Takamichi, and UO President Richard Lariviere

Saturday, May 1 – Pape Reception Hall, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art

9:00-11:30 am: Panel 3 – Regionalisms

Mori Kimiyuki, Toyo University, “Diplomatic Missions to Tang and the Introduction of Tang Culture” (in Japanese)

Tanaka Fumio, Kanto Gakuin University, “Center and Periphery in the International Affairs of Ancient Japan: The Ritsuryo State’s Cosmopolitanism, Marginality, and Plurality” (in Japanese)

Joan Piggott, University of Southern California, “Tracing the Wa-Kan Dialectic at Nara”

Discussant: Andrew Goble, University of Oregon

12:30-3:00 pm: Panel 4 – Articulations

Wesley Jacobsen, Harvard University, “What the Nara Period Documents Tell Us about the Prehistory and History of Japanese: The View from the Linguistic Sciences”

Jason Webb, University of Oregon, “Odes to an Exile: Heijo Remembrances of Miwa no Takechimaro”

Mack Horton, University of California, Berkeley, “Princess Nukata and the Birth of Man’yo Poetry”

Discussant: Glynne Walley, University of Oregon

3:15-4:00 pm: Concluding Remarks/Open Discussion

Discussants: Akiko Walley and Jason Webb

This event is free and open to the public; no registration is required.

For more info, please call (541) 346-1521.

This event is cosponsored by the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies, the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, the Oregon Humanities Center, and the Departments of Art History and East Asian Languages and Literatures.   It is also made possible by generous contributions from the Maude I. Kerns Endowment and the Yoko McClain Fund, and a grant from the Japan-United States Friendship Commission and the Northeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies.

Conference Organizers: Akiko Walley and Jason Webb

Image credit:
Ichiyûsai (Utagawa) Kuniyoshi (1797-1861)
Japanese

Hyakunin isshu no uchi: Abe no Nakamaro (From the Collection of Single Poems by a Hundred Poets: Abe no Nakamaro) [detail], c. 1844-1854
Woodblock print
15 x 10-1/8 inches
Murray Warner Collection of Oriental Art
Collection of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon
MWJ51:K79