Hello! How are you? I’m back, or better, I should be back from the beginning of next year.
I’ve been so busy with my job and private life that I nearly forgotten about this Blog but I should have more free time from next year and I’d like to update you all on the topics we all love.
PS – few changes are planned for this Blog in 2019, stay tuned.
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30 April 2013, 6:00 – 7:45pm
Commitee Room 14, The House of Commons, Westminster, London SW1 2TT
China’s continuing enhancement of its international presence is a result both of the country’s growing economic and military strength and its perception of a weakened US. This is in contrast to Deng’s policy of keeping a low profile, and appears at odds with ongoing talk of harmony and peaceful development. Since 2008, China has been increasingly assertive in its approach to territorial issues, not only with Japan, but also with other neighbouring countries. How are these nations to respond? Are there only two alternatives – counter-action or surrender? What about legal/ diplomatic options, including submitting the case to international arbitration? Can China and its neighbours still build stable and cooperative ‘win-win’ strategic relationships to deal with regional security issues such as North Korean nuclear aggression, boundary questions and navigation and resource rights? Or has the long-standing neglect of a historical problem combined with old disputes and new power configurations now set a course of conflict for the next generation? How do US interests play into these questions? Now that the political and economic focus seems to have shifted to the Asia-Pacific region, the attitudes of China and its neighbouring countries will have implications for Europe too. This seminar will examine these themes and consider them from a neutral British perspective, also addressing how the new leaders of China and Japan are dealing with the growing tensions in the region, and the negative attitudes towards each other fostered by the territorial disputes between them.
Professor Michael Clarke
Professor Michael Clarke is currently the Director General of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). Until July 2007, he was Deputy Vice-Principal and Director of Research Development at King’s College London. He was the founding Director of the Centre for Defence Studies and of the International Policy Institute at King’s. He has taught international politics at the Universities of Aberystwyth, Manchester, Newcastle, and the Open University. He has been a Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Defence Committee since 1997. In 2004, he was appointed the UK member of the UN Secretary General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters. In 2009, he was appointed to the Prime Minister’s National Security Forum and in 2010 to the Chief of Defence Staff’s new Strategic Advisory Group. His recent publications include: The Afghan Papers: Committing Britain to War in Helmand2005-06, London, RUSI/Routledge 2011; ‘Strategic Posture Review: United Kingdom’, World Politics Review, November 2011; ‘Does War Have a Future?’, in Lindley-French and Boyar (eds), The Oxford Handbook of War, Oxford, OUP, 2012.
Professor Barry Buzan
Professor Barry Buzan is Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), Honorary Professor at Copenhagen and Jilin Universities, and a Senior Fellow at LSE Ideas. During 1993 he was a visiting professor at the International University of Japan, and from 1997-98 he was Olof Palme Visiting Professor in Sweden. In 1998 he was elected a fellow of the British Academy. Among his books are:Security: A New Framework for Analysis (1998, with Ole Wæver and Jaap de Wilde); International Systems in World History: Remaking the Study of International Relations (2000, with Richard Little);Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security (2003, with Ole Wæver); The Evolution of International Security Studies (2009, with Lene Hansen); and Non-Western International Relations Theory (2010, co-edited with Amitav Acharya).
Sir David Warren
Sir David Warren was British Ambassador to Japan from 2008 to 2012. This followed a career in the Diplomatic Service that focused on East Asian affairs, in which he served three times in the British Embassy in Tokyo (1977-1981; 1993-1998; 2008-2012), and as head of the FCO’s China Hong Kong Department (1998-2000). He was also a member of the team that set up the Government’s business promotion agency, UK Trade and Investment, from 2000 to 2004, and Director of Human Resources for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (and a Board member) 2004-2007. He retired from the Diplomatic Service in January 2013, and has since become a Visiting Professor at Sheffield and De Montfort Universities, and is also Chairman of the Japan Society.
Rod Wye
Rod Wye is currently an Associate Fellow with the Asia Programme at Chatham House and a Senior Fellow in the China Policy Institute atNottingham. He was an analyst specialising in China and East Asia for over thirty years in the Research Analysts of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He also did two postings inChina as First Secretary in the British Embassy in Beijing in 1985-88 and again in 1995-99, and Deputy Head of the China Hong Kong Department in 1999-2002.
Dr Bobo Lo (Chair)
Dr Bobo Lo is an independent scholar and consultant. He was previously Director of the Russia and China Programmes at the Centre for European Reform; Head of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House. Dr Lo writes extensively on Russian and Chinese foreign policy. His books include Russiaand the New World Disorder (Brookings and Chatham House, forthcoming in 2013), Axis of Convenience: Moscow, Beijing and the New Geopolitics (Brookings and Chatham House, 2008). Other recent writings include ‘Kinder, gentler geopolitics’, Caixin Media, 22 January 2013, ‘A 21st century myth – authoritarian modernization in Russia and China’ (with Lilia Shevtsova), Carnegie Moscow Center Report, June 2012; ‘What can we learn from China’s modernisation?’, Diplomaatia,May 2012; ‘The Russia-China-US triangle and its post-Cold War fate’, in Robert E. Bedeski and Niklas Swanstrom (eds), and ‘How the Chinese See Russia’,French Institute of International Relations, Dec 2010.
18 April 2013
6:00 – 7:30pm, followed by a drinks reception to 8:30pm
13/14 Cornwall Terrace, London, NW1 4QP
Organised by The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation
Japan has struggled with chronic deflation since its financial and real estate bubble burst 20 years ago, triggering a severe financial crisis in 1997-1998. Since then, the Japanese economy has in fact grown in real terms, albeit sluggishly, as a result of extraordinary fiscal and monetary stimuli implemented in response to this crisis. Nonetheless, most Japanese now feel less well-off (unless they travel abroad to take advantage of the strong Yen) and Japanese industrial pre-eminence, especially in electronics, is being challenged by Korean competition. Against this backdrop, the LDP won the general election last December in a landslide, ushering into the limelight again Shinzo Abe (Prime Minister in 2006-7), who has since embarked on a new economic initiative, nicknamed “Abenomics, ” which has pushed equity markets up by more than 30%. In this seminar the speakers address the question: ‘What is “Abenomics”, and can it achieve its goal of lifting Japan out of deflation?’ They also consider what its side-effects might be domestically, and what the implications could be for other advanced economies, especially the UK and Eurozone, which are experiencing their own prolonged period of economic troubles.
Yosuke Kawakami
Yosuke Kawakami was appointed Minister for Financial Affairs at the Embassy of Japan in July 2010, where he follows developments in UK fiscal, monetary and financial policies as well as in the London financial markets and represents Japanese interests in these areas. He is on secondment from the Japanese Ministry of Finance where he served as Director in the Financial Bureau, the Customs Bureau and the Minister’s Secretariat, as well as Deputy in the International Finance and Banking Bureaus. He also has extensive overseas experience, having previously served at the IMF, OECD, and at the Embassy of Japan in Moscow in his 30 year career in public service. Since arriving in London, he has kept close watch on the near implosion of the Euro as well as the slow financial recovery and rising tensions in Europe, which has caused him to question the wisdom of the economics and finance professions, and thier ability to learn from past mistakes.
Andrew Smithers
Andrew Smithers started Smithers & Co. Ltd. in 1989 and now the firm provides advice on international asset allocation to more than 100 clients worldwide, covering the economies, stock, bond and currency markets of Japan, the US and major European countries. It is particularly well known for its work on the Japanese economy. Prior to starting his own firm, Andrew was at S.G.Warburg & Co. Ltd. where he ran the investment management business for some years.He read Economics at Cambridge, first visiting Japan in 1968 and living there from 1986 to 1989. He has been a regular contributor to the Nikkei Veritas Market Eye column (until Sept 2011) and to theLondon Evening Standard and Japan’s Sentaku magazine. His publications include: Valuing Wall Street with Stephen Wright, (McGraw-Hill, 2000) and Japan’s Key Challenges for the 21st Centurywith David Asher, published in Japanese by Diamond Press in 1999. He is a member of the Advisory Board for the Centre for International Macroeconomics and Finance (CIMF) at Cambridge and a Fellow of CFA (UK).
Edward Carr (Chair)
Edward Carr joined The Economist as a Science Correspondent in 1987. After a series of jobs covering electronics, trade, energy and the environment, he moved to Paris to write about European business. In 2000, after a period as Business Editor, he left for the Financial Times, where he worked most recently as News Editor. He returned to The Economist in 2005 as Britain Editor, and was Business Affairs Editor for several years before taking up his appointment as Foreign Editor in June 2009.
13 March 2013 from 6.30pm
The Japan Foundation, London
Learn the basics of Japanese writing while creating your own calligraphy…
Japanese from Scratch is a Japanese language and culture workshop from the Japan Foundation London, suitable for those who are interested in learning Japanese but haven’t started yet, or those who have just started learning.
This month’s workshop theme is Shodō: An Introduction to Japanese Calligraphy
The course will teach you to:
The course will be led by Hiroko Tanaka, Japanese Language Advisor at the Japan Foundation London. Instructions and explanations will be in English.
The course fee is £5.00, which includes all necessary calligraphy materials. This must be paid in cash on the day of the event – we regret that we are unable to accept credit cards or cheques.
Advance booking is essential. This workshop is limited to 20 people.
The deadline to apply is Friday, March 8th 2013.
12 March 2013
6:00 – 7:30pm, followed by a drinks reception to 8:00pm
13-14 Cornwall Terrace (Outer Circle), London, NW14QP
In the UK, young people with low or no qualifications make up 39% of all young people unemployed and not in education, and 47% of those inactive and outside learning, despite only accounting for a quarter of the youth population. Tony Wilson, Policy Director of Inclusion, which delivers research and new approaches to policy that promote social inclusion in the labour market, will talk about the UK’s policy of intervention and provision of training to improve the employability of British youth. His recent publications include the BIS research paper (Number 101) Youth Unemployment: Review of Training for Young People with Low Qualifications (Dept. for Business Innovation and Skills, February 2013).
From the 1960s onwards, Japan’s rapid economic growth generated internationally low levels of youth unemployment. This changed in the 1990s however, and by the 2000s, youth unemployment was recognised as a serious concern. Japan’s Emerging Youth Policy (Routledge, 2013) is based on extensive fieldwork that draws on both sociological and policy science approaches, and is the first book to investigate in detail how the state, experts, the media, and youth workers have reacted to the rise of youth joblessness in Japan. The book argues that entrepreneurial youth support leaders in Japan can provide sustainable, attractive solutions to the dilemmas that virtually all post-industrial nations currently face but have not yet seriously addressed. Dr Tuukka Toivonen, the author of the book, will discuss Japan’s emerging youth policy and attempt to bring evidence from Japan into a dialogue with the realities in other advanced nations, such as the UK.
Dr Tuukka Toivonen
Dr Tuukka Toivonen is Junior Research Fellow at Green Templeton College, University of Oxford, and is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Global Communications Centre (GLOCOM), the International University of Japan, Tokyo. He holds a DPhil in Social Policy from the University of Oxford, and is a graduate of Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan. He has held visiting positions at the universities of Kobe, Tokyo, Kyoto and Keio. He is a sociologist by training and has published several articles in world-class journals that comparatively analyse policy-making processes, youth problems and social innovations. He is also the co-editor of A Sociology of Japanese Youth: From Returnees to NEETs (Routledge, 2012). Currently, he is carrying out fieldwork on the evolution of social entrepreneurship and related innovation communities in Japan. Alongside his purely academic work, he also engages in social innovation activities himself as the founder and representative of Kansai RISE, which promotes young people’s creative involvement in public improvement and policy-making at regional level.
Tony Wilson
Tony Wilson joined Inclusion as Director in October 2011. He has more than ten years’ experience of policy and research, project management and delivery across a range of roles in HM Treasury, the Department for Work and Pensions and Jobcentre Plus. Since joining Inclusion, Tony has led on a range of projects including a feasibility study on developing a new employment programme in Northern Ireland, assessing approaches to tackling youth unemployment, the fragmentation of services for young people, and evaluations of programmes to increase employment among inactive groups. Most recently, Tony led on employment policy and delivery at HM Treasury: advising on labour market trends, policy responses to the downturn, delivery of welfare-to-work programmes and benefit reform. Prior to this he was responsible for the design and delivery of a number of Department for Work and Pensions employment projects. These included overseeing the development and introduction of the Future Jobs Fund, which created over 105,000 temporary jobs for long-term unemployed people. He was an expert policy adviser to David Freud on his independent review of welfare-to-work, published in 2007.
Organised by The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation
7pm February 28, 2013
Multi Purpose Hall
Sa-kwa
After seven years, Hyeon-jeong is dumped by Min-Seok. Broken and teetering on the brink of and emotional collapse she dedicates herself to finding a new suitor and to get married as soon as possible. She meets Sang-hoo, an awkward man, who Hyeon-jeong is attracted by his shy demeanour, and makes the conscious decision to marry him-until Min-Seok decides he’s made a mistake and wants to get back together with her.
26 February 2013
6:00 – 7:45pm, followed by a drinks reception to 8:45pm
13/14 Cornwall Terrace, London, NW1 4QP
After the “successful” launch on 12 December 2012 of yet another rocket in contravention of UN Security Council resolutions 1718 and 1874, the threat posed by North Korea appears ever more real. The stability of the Korean peninsula is not just a regional concern but also an issue for Europe, given the proliferation relationship between North Korea and Iran. How have political developments in the peninsula affected recent relations between the two Koreas? Can there be any easing of tensions between them under the new South Korean leader, Park Geun-hye? There are various reasons why multilateral engagement with, and coercion of, North Korea have failed to promote denuclearisation. Thomas Plant of ICSA, King’s College London, will consider if there is potential for progress, and look at Japan’s likely contribution under new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Noriyuki Shikata, Political Minister at the Japanese Embassy in London, will discuss Japan’s perspective on the recent situation in the Korean Peninsula and explore the collaboration among Japan, the US, the UK, South Korea and China aimed at tackling the issue. The seminar will be chaired by Mark Fitzpatrick, Director of the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Programme at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Noriyuki Shikata
Noriyuki Shikata is Political Minister at the Embassy of Japan in UK. He was Deputy Cabinet Secretary for Public Affairs, Director of Global Communications at Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) of Japan (2010-2012). He was international media spokesperson at PMO, always accompanying the Prime Ministers’ trips overseas. He was the recipient of 2011 Gold Standard Award for Political Communications, at awards hosted by Public Affairs Asia. He graduated from the Law Department of Kyoto University in 1986. After entering MOFA in 1986, he worked at the Korea desk, and graduated from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, completing its Masters in Public Policy Program (International Affairs/Security) in 1989. His previous overseas postings include the Embassy in Washington, D.C.(1989 – 91), and the Delegation to the OECD in Paris(1999-2002). Between 2004 and 2010, he was Director of Status of U.S. Forces Agreement Division, Director of International Press Division, Director in Charge of Economic Relations with North America, and Director of Economic Treaties Division, International Legal Affairs, Bureau of Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA). His publications includeEnergy Policy of the Republic of Korea (2002: IEA; contributor), amongst others.
Thomas Plant
Thomas Plant is Research Fellow at the International Centre for Security Analysis (ICSA), King’s College London. His main research interest is in North Korean issues, though he also works on wider regional security in East Asia and, more broadly, on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament. He joined ICSA on secondment from the Ministry of Defence; he has also spent time at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, where he worked on proliferation issues in the Middle East and East Asia.
Mark Fitzpatrick
Mark Fitzpatrick (Chair) is Director of the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Programme at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London. His programme focuses on nuclear and missile challenges posed by Iran, North Korea and other outlier states, and on nuclear security and nuclear disarmament issues. He is the editor of North Korean Security Challenges (July 2011) and of five other IISS Strategic Dossiers on countries and regions of proliferation concern. He has lectured throughout the world and is a frequent media commentator on proliferation topics. He joined the IISS in October 2005 after a 26-year career in the US Department of State, including as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Non-Proliferation (acting). He earned a Master’s degree in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and he attended a one-year post-graduate study programme (1990-1991) at the Japanese National Institute of Defence, where his dissertation on Korean unification was published in journals in Japan and South Korea.
5 February 2013
6:00 – 7:30pm, followed by a drinks reception to 8:00pm
13/14 Cornwall Terrace, Outer Circle, London, NW1 4QP
Margaret Thatcher was thrown out of office in 1990 but the British Conservatives still won a fourth term in office in 1992. Academics claimed that the British political system was ‘turning Japanese’. Within a year, Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was voted out for the first time in 38 years just as Italy’s Christian Democratic Party (DC) was imploding after four decades of hegemony. The Conservatives’ aura as the natural party of government was shattered in 1997 by Tony Blair’s New Labour but it took another 12 years for Japanese voters to vote out the LDP. Meanwhile, Canada’s Liberal Party had been in charge for some 80 years but came third in a 2011 election. Particular circumstances differed in each country but internal dissent and disorder were common. Particular circumstances differed in each country but internal dissent and disorder were common. In her book, Françoise Boucek explains how this factionalism precipitates the downfall of many political leaders but can also prolong office by containing conflict and hanging onto dissidents. In a survey of the British Conservative Party, the Liberal Party of Canada, the Christian Democratic Party of Italy and the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan, Dr Boucek explores this paradox and the potential dangers of factional politics for dominant political parties.
Dr Françoise Boucek
Dr Françoise Boucek is Teaching Fellow in European politics and policy in the School of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary University of London, Visiting Professor at the University of Witten Herdecke (Germany) and Research Associate of the London School of Economics’ (LSE) Public Policy Group. She grew up in France, graduated in business administration (1973) and moved to London and then Canada where she worked as a research analyst for an investment bank. She gained her BA (1988) in political science from the University of Toronto and gained her MSc (1991) and PhD (2002) from the LSE. She was Lecturer in the Department of Politics and Modern History at London Metropolitan University (1991-93) and LSE (1994-97 and 2001-03). She has written widely about political parties, representative democracy and one-party dominance including in Japan and is co-editor of Dominant Political Parties and Democracy: Concepts, Measures, Cases and Comparisons (London: Routledge, 2010).
Professor Kensuke Takayasu
Professer Kensuke Takayasu (discussant) is Professor of Political Science at the Faculty of Law, Seikei University in Tokyo. He received his BA (1994) and MA (1996) both in political science from Waseda University. He read his doctorate at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), gaining his PhD from the University of London in 2003. He became a research fellow at Hokkaido University in 2004, before joining Seikei University as associate professor in 2006. He is currently a visiting fellow at the Department of Government, LSE. Professor Takayasu has written widely on both British and Japanese politics, and has published a book in 2009 titled The Power of Prime Ministers in Japan and Britain – Dynamics of their Relationships with the Governing Party (Tokyo: Sobunsha). His articles appear regularly in Sekai. In 2011, his paper ‘New Conventions Required: Ideas to Re-invigorate Japanese Party Politics’ was published in Asia-Pacific Review (Vol.18 Issue 2), while the website Japan Echo Web (No.7 August-September) carried his article ‘In Need of New Rules of the Game.’
4 February 2013 from 6.30pm
The Japan Foundation, London
Isshin Inudo is a Japanese director with a very colourful career. Renowned for his genre-spanning cinema, Inudo has been engaged with both art-house and larger-scale productions and shifting back and forth between the two, as well as directing a number of television commercials in Japan. Inudo’s films have stretched from films tackling social issues such as coping with disabilities in Josee, the Tiger and the Fish (2003), homosexuality in La maison de Himiko (2005), in addition to a number of blockbuster films, including Inudo’s recent co-directed period drama epic The Floating Castle (2012).
Complementing the UK premiere of Inudo’s 1950s-set crime thriller Zero Focus (2009) as part of this year’s Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme, Once Upon a Time in Japan, the Japan Foundation has invited Isshin Inudo to introduce his work and filmmaking style in this special talk. With Inudo’s Zero Focus being an adaptation of Seicho Matsumoto’s novel previously imagined in Yoshitaro Nomura’s 1961 film, Inudo will discuss the process constructing his world using an ever-popular source, creating his own interpretation and envisaging a period beyond one’s own experiences. In a discussion to follow, Inudo, joined by James Bell, Features Editor for Sight & Sound, will also talk about the advantages and disadvantages of directing and writing for art-house, mainstream cinema and even television commercials in Japan, regarding a variety of themes and sources, including manga and horror; sources which Inudo is very fond of.
A pair of tickets to the screening of Zero Focus on February 5th
will be awarded to one lucky guest!
This event is free to attend but booking is essential. To reserve a place, please email your name and the title of the event you would like to attend to event@jpf.org.uk
sshin Inudo’s film Zero Focus will be screened at the ICA on February 3rd (Sunday) at 5.00pm and again on February 5th (Tuesday) at 6.10pm, before touring at five further regional venues across the UK.
30 January 2013 from 6.30pm, at the Japan Foundation, London
Through public and social events such as the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, the 1970 Osaka Expo and the radicalisation of the student protest movement, the 1960s in Japan can be considered an era of embodied cultural acts; events all engaging with experience of the body, whether it be athletics, the crowds who gathered at Expo, and mass rallies that took over the city streets and railway stations. So too can a relationship with the body be identified in the arts of the 1960s, ranging from its use in stage performance, art events and the fascination with the body in cinema.
From Nagisa Oshima’s films about the protest movement to the Black Flag stage performance art events, Peter Eckersall, Associate Professor of Theatre Studies in the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne and Research Fellow at the Centre for Interweaving Performance Cultures, Freie Universität Berlin, will discuss the various connections between the body, politics and action in the 1960s in the broader cultural context and look into how the era can be considered a decade of embodied gestures and events. This event will give an insight to the state of arts and culture in the 1960s, an era marking a milestone in Japan.
29 January 2013
6:00 – 7:30pm, followed by a drinks reception to 8:30pm
13/14 Cornwall Terrace (Outer Circle), London NW1 4QP
Organised by Daiwa Anglo Japanese Foundation
According to UNICEF, 12.1% of children in the UK are living in poverty, while the figure for Japan is 14.9% (Innocenti Report Card 10, May 2012). Since this report was produced, the economic situation has, if anything, deteriorated in both countries. Inequality and social exclusion have become concerns again, and in a time of austerity for both the government and parents, the role of education needs reconsidering. Can education contribute to better social mobility? Are working-class groups still under-represented in higher education, and if so, why? Although higher education has become more inclusive in both countries in recent decades, if investing in education does not necessarily guarantee a job, then what is the incentive for young people to aspire to go to university? Professor Robert Cassen of LSE will look at social exclusion and education, and at government policies aimed at making life chances more equal, in pre-school, primary and secondary education. Issues of gender and ethnicity will also be explored. Professor Takehiko Kariya of Oxford University will analyse a new educational selection mechanism that has contributed to rising disparity in learning motivations after Japan’s education reforms in the 1990s, and will offer important insights for understanding similar problems in other countries.
Robert Cassen
Robert Cassen is Visiting Professor at the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, London School of Economics. He held his first post at LSE in 1961, and subsequently was a Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies in Sussex, and Director of Queen Elizabeth House and Professor of Development Economics at Oxford. He also served on the staff of the UK Department for International Development, the British High Commission in New Delhi, the World Bank, and the Brandt Commission. His books include Does Aid Work? (with associates, Oxford University Press, 1994); with Tim Dyson and Leela Visaria, 21st Century, India: Population, Economy, Human Development and the Environment (Oxford University Press, 2004); and with Geeta Kingdon, Tackling Low Educational Achievement: a Report for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2007. In 2008 he received an OBE for services to education. He is currently working on a new book, with Anna Vignoles and Sandra McNally:Making a Difference: What Works in Education and What Doesn’t, to be published by Routledge in 2014.
Takehiko Kariya
Takehiko Kariya is a Professor in the Sociology of Japanese Society, at the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies and the Department of Sociology, University of Oxford and he is a Faculty Fellow of St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford. His research interests include the sociology of education, social stratification, school- to-work transition, educational and social policies, and social changes in postwar Japan. Before he joined Oxford University, he had taught sociology of education at the Graduate School of Education, University of Tokyo for 18 years. He is co-editor of Challenges to Japanese Education: Economics, Reforms, and Human Rights (Teachers College Press, 2010), the author of Education Reform and Social Class in Japan (Routledge, 2012) and Japanese Education and Society in Transition: A Sociology of Education Reforms, Opportunities and Mass Education during the Lost Decades (Routledge, forthcoming), and he has published more than 20 books in Japanese.
January 31, 2013
Korean Cultural Centre UK
The story involves dancer Eun Ho-jeong (Mun So-Ri), wife of the unfaithful Yeong-jak (Hwang Jeong-min) and mother to a seven-year-old son. She meets a teenage boy and named Shin Ji-un (Bong Tae-gyu) and the two share an intimate friendship despite their age difference. When Ji-un’s father discovers their relationship, he threatens to tell her husband. Meanwhile, her father-in-law (Kim In-mum) dies and her mother-in-law (Yun Yeo-jeong) quickly starts up another relationship. A Good Lawyer’s Wife was screened at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival.
Monday to Friday, 9:30am- 5:00pm
Peter McDonald depicts colourful scenes inhabited by people engaged in everyday activities. Images of teachers, artists, hairdressers or carpet sellers are constructed with an elementary graphic language. By making use of archetypes, symbolism and our incorrigible tendency to make the strange seem more familiar, McDonald’s alternative world reads like a parallel universe.
The artist describes the exhibition as a view of his painted universe, showcasing his paintings and works on paper, revealing the influence of everyday experiences upon his practice. For example the diptych, Looking for a Carpet(2009) was based on an experience during a trip to Morocco. Some of the works on paper reflect his stay in Japan during and after his year-long project Visitor, in Kanazawa, whilst the Noh drama series of works were based on his memories of traditional theatre performances and collaborations with the Kanazawa Noh Museum duringVisitor.
Peter McDonald was born in Tokyo in 1973, studying sculpture at Central St. Martins School of Art and painting at the Royal Academy Schools. He has had solo exhibitions at Kate MacGarry, Londonand also at Gallery Side 2, Tokyo, amongst others. He was awarded the John Moores Contemporary Painting Prize (2008). Art on the Underground commissioned McDonald to produce Art for Everybody a large scale billboard installation at Southwark station (2009). As artist-in-residence at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan (2011–12), he worked on a year-long project called Visitor, which included workshops and work-in-progress shows.
18 January – 23 February 2013
Haroon Mirza, 2012 Daiwa Foundation Art Prize Winner, Solo exhibition at SCAI THE BATHHOUSE in Tokyo
We are delighted to present this solo exhibition by Haroon Mirza at SCAI THE BATHHOUSE in Tokyo, Japan. As the winner of the Daiwa Foundation Art Prize 2012, Mirza was given the opportunity to have this exhibition in Tokyo. Partnerships have been central to the successful realisation of the Art Prize and we are very grateful to Masami Shiraishi, President of SCAI THE BATHHOUSE, for agreeing to host this exhibition. I am confident that Mirza’s work will resonate strongly with Japanese audiences, and I hope also that his experiences in Japan will offer new inspirations for his artistic practice.
The Daiwa Foundation Art Prize aims to open doors in Japan for British artists. From over 700 initial applications, Haroon Mirza, Tom Hammick and Jennifer E. Price were shortlisted by our expert panel of judges – Jonathan Watkins, Mami Kataoka, Masami Shiraishi, Martin Gayford and Grayson Perry. Work by the short-listed artists was shown at the Daiwa Foundation Japan House Gallery in London in June and July 2012.
The Trustees of the Foundation join me in offering congratulations to Haroon Mirza. We hope that, in awarding the Daiwa Foundation Art Prize and holding this exhibition at SCAI THE BATHHOUSE, we will not only open new doors for British artists in Japan but also create valuable partnerships and opportunities for the future.
Jason James, Director General, Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation
Art and Music and Haroon Mirza
“I was brought up Muslim … In certain regimes [in Islam] music is sort of frowned upon and related to things like infidelity and other terrible things if you listen to or engage with music”
By Haroon Mirza
Haroon Mirza’s commitment to sound, to music in particular, is an intelligent challenge not only to the dogma of organized religion, but also to the institution of art. In Mirza’s work, music counteracts the religious tendencies in art, challenging the faith required to persist with the notion that art is somehow transcendent and distinct from everyday life.
Our ears, unlike our eyes, do not have lids. Waves of sound break through. Music is irresistible, undeniable, leaking in to affect us, insinuating, and pervasive. As a constant factor in the aesthetic equations devised by Haroon Mirza, music subtly contradicts the notion of a self-contained work of art, beautiful and true in itself. Our response to music stems from association, from the countless ideas and emotions we bring to our encounter with it, which can also be said of visual art.
Found objects, readymade and often ready-used, likewise occur in Mirza’s work as signs of free thinking, a philosophical scepticism that is, frankly, one of the only redeeming features of art. He knows, as we know, that the final artistic destinations of found objects were never envisaged by their makers, and so it becomes clear that this business of art is a question both of (our imaginative) projection and co-option. This applies as much to found objects that are works of art in their own right, and sounds that are music. All is revealed as being wonderfully unfixed.
Haroon Mirza was brought up Muslim. We were all brought up within some kind of prescriptive structure – be it ideological, religious and/or political – which insists that certain thoughts, tastes and behaviours are simply not acceptable. Art can be like that too, negative and dull. Haroon Mirza’s work, on the other hand, is life-affirming and positive.
Jonathan Watkins, Director Ikon Gallery
Haroon Mirza- Winner of the 2012 Daiwa Foundation Art Prize
Haroon Mirza gained an MA in Fine Art at ChelseaCollegeof Art & Design with a Lynda Brockbank Scholarship (2007). He was awarded the Northern Art Prize 2010 and the Silver Lion for most promising young artist at the 54th Venice Biennale, 2011. He has participated in notable exhibitions including The British Art Show 7 (2011) organised by Hayward Touring, Preoccupied Waveforms (2012) at theNewMuseum inNew York, and the ninthGwangju Biennale inKorea.
Through his work, Mirza attempts to isolate the perceptual distinctions between noise, sound and music. He explores the potentiality for the visual and the acoustic to come together as one singular aesthetic form. These ideas are examined through lo-fi yet complex assemblages and installations that employ furniture, household electronics, video and existing artworks to formulate audio compositions with a temporal basis.
Image: Haroon Mirza, Digital Switchover, 2012 installation view of |||| ||, Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, 2012 Courtesy of the artist, and SCAI THE BATHHOUSE Photo by Gunner Meier
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