Japan 400
Many thanks to everyone who registered an event as part of the Japan400 year of special events and celebrations in 2013.
We are no longer registering events under ‘Japan400’. But please watch this space! This website is being evolved into a E-book which will include many of the event highlights, images and features about the expanding horizons of Japan-British relations which thousands of people have helped to create. The Japan400 team is also supporting a small number of follow-up events in 2014—see the letter from the co-chairs of Japan400 on the front page to find out more. Please come back to www.japan400.com in a while and see what we have become!
DECEMBER
As we rush towards the end of the year and ‘Bonenkai’ parties are happening all around us, the excitement and enthusiasm for events and activities celebrating Japan400 doesn’t stop!
Everyday this month we can see over ten exhibitions, lectures, seminars, concerts, workshops and films in one day! You can also have a peek at the events lined up for January in our Events Calendar.
This year, 2013, we hope Japan400 has brought the magic of the special relationship between Japan and Britain a little closer and that you’ve been able to experience something new for the first time.
With a focus on the small beginings in 1613, who would’ve thought it would lead to the dynamic relations between Japan and Britain today, in Education, trade, science, lifestyle, business and the arts and culture? With the enthusiasm and confidence and affection for this special relationship, we are sure it will continue for at least another 400 years!
As we look into next year we see that people are talking already about celebrations to commemorate that small wooden ship the Clove returning from Japan in September 1614 to Plymouth. ..
We also have plans to continue to celebrate the special relationship in [My Japan, My Britain] next year. This may be popping up as a feature in one of our supporters sites, in a gallery of inspiring stories of the mutual interest, respect and admiration that the British and Japanese continue to share.
We are hoping to keep an online presence (please follow our Twitter and Facebook pages for latest updates). This maybe linked to sites such as Embassy of Japan in UK, Japan Society, Japan Foundation, Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation and Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation, so please check back to this site and see our plans!
With best wishes for the festive season!
Past Events › education
Events List Navigation
WG Beasley Memorial Lecture: Professor William Marotti Timely and Untimely Politics: Art and Protest in Early 1960s Japan
Marotti explores politics and timeliness by examining the advent of a critical art of the everyday in Japan in the 1960s and its links to political action. Between Anpo and the Olympics, and out of sync with eventful mass activism, artists sought to create eventfulness against a state-promoted, depoliticized daily life in the high growth economy. Marotti argues that microhistorical attention to such groupuscular art activities reveals hidden dimensions of conflict and engagement within the context of a global 1960s.…
Find out more »Japanese Modern Foreign Language (MFL) Launch Day
Hurrah! Omedeto! to Great Malvern Primary School for its launch event to adopt Japanese as its MFL to key stage 2. To celebrate there will be a full day of workshops from anime to calligraphy, origami to taiko for all children in Years 4 to 6 (Appx 130) The whole school will have a Japanese themed lunch and experience a taiko drum concert. The event launches closer ties between this school and our partner school In Tokyo. Our KS2 children…
Find out more »Beneath the Surface: The Culture of Cosmetics in Japan
For the first time in the United Kingdom, Noriyo Tsuda, Chief Curator of POLA Research Institute of Beauty and Culture, will explore the culture of cosmetics in Japan. In two special talks Tsuda, an expert in comparative studies on the history of cosmetic culture in both Western and East Asian countries, will discuss how the production, application and use of cosmetics illuminates the cultural, social, and aesthetic changes that have taken place in Japan through the centuries. 07 November from…
Find out more »Ami-Llanarth Group Collaborative Theatre Project
Phillip Zarrilli with the Llanarth Group, Wales, UK, and Yojiro Okamura with his AMI Theatre Company, Japan, have begun a two-year collaborative theatre project. This November, they will stage in Tokyo the Llanarth Group’s “Told by the Wind” and AMI’s “Silent Rain in the Neander Forest” and hold workshops in their respective psychophysical training methods. In November 2014 they will produce a new collaborative performance in both the U.K. and Japan. From the inception of British-Japanese relations, cultural exchange has been active. In the performing arts,…
Find out more »Samurai William – the adventurer who unlocked Japan
Author Giles Milton tells the story of the navigator from Gillingham who is believed to be the first Englishman ever to reach Japan. In 1611, London merchants received an intriguing letter from a marooned English mariner. Seven adventurers were sent by the East India Company with orders to find and befriend him, believing he held the key to exploiting the country’s opulent riches. But when they arrived they discovered that Will Adams had gone native. Giles Milton’s book draws on the letters of Adams and the…
Find out more »Butoh Research Project 2013
Florencia Guerberof is carrying out an ongoing investigation on butoh movement. She invites dancers, actors, visual artists, musicians and anyone interested in butoh to join these research sessions. The investigation focuses on a deep exploration of the work of Kazuo Ohno and Tatsumi Hijikata towards the creation of new work based on a personal interpretation, assimilation and integration of some of the movement’s ideas into the participants own work. This project aims at opening new possibilities in the creation process.…
Find out more »Surviving Tsunami: Photographs in the Aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake
This exhibition presents visual material from a volunteer-led project in Japan to salvage and conserve historic photograph collections after two museums and a library in Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture, were destroyed in the 2011 tsunami. Once the flood waters had receded, and the recovery operation was under way, the damaged collections were transported to Tokyo, and subsequently to Yokohama, where specialist curators developed procedures for preserving as much of the rare material as possible, some of it badly affected by exposure…
Find out more »Asian Performing Arts UK presents: Tadashi Endo in London – Butoh performances and workshops
We are delighted to welcome the acclaimed Butoh artist Tadashi Endo to London. The artist will give a lecture and perform excerpts of his choreographies introducing Butoh for the first time to SOAS University,The School of Oriental and African Studies. In addition Tadashi Endo will give a two days intensive Butoh workshop which will take place at RADA and Chisenhale dance space. This event celebrates the 400th Anniversary of Japan-British Relations. Lecture Demonstration Date: 4th October 2013 Time: 7pm Venue:…
Find out more »Shunga : Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art, 1600-1900
British Museum Rooms 90-91 3 October 2013-5 January 2014 Admission charge. Parental Guidance Advised. In early modern Japan, 1600-1900, thousands of sexually explicit paintings, prints, and illustrated books with texts were produced, known as ‘spring pictures’ (shunga). Official life in this period was governed by strict Confucian laws, but private life was less controlled in practice. Often tender, funny and beautiful, shunga were mostly done within the popular school known as ‘pictures of the floating world’ (ukiyo-e), by…
Find out more »SOAS JRC Meiji Jingu Autumn Lecture: Professor Sharalyn Orbaugh, Mobilizing the Home Front: Japanese and British Domestic Propaganda in World War Two
As island nations that suffered bombing raids, food shortages, and the need to recruit soldiers and labourers to support a state of “total war,” Britain and Japan shared a number of similarities during World War Two. Both nations employed extensive propaganda to rally the home front, directing particular attention to women and children, whose labour and sacrifices were so necessary for the successful execution of the war. This presentation will compare the propaganda strategies used by the Japanese and British…
Find out more »Japan Society Family Day at the Golden Hinde
In conjunction with Golden Hinde and in association with Japan400, the Japan Society and the Embassy of Japan are organizing a family day to celebrate the 400-year ties between England and Japan, and to introduce Londoners to different aspects of Japanese culture. The day’s activities will centre on the replica of Sir Francis Drake’s Golden Hinde, which was used in the highly successful TV mini-series of James Clavell’s Shogun, the tale based on the true story of the first English…
Find out more »MAPLES, CHERRIES & LILIES: PLANTS FROM JAPAN with art historian, Jasleen Kandhari
From paintings, books and decorated lacquerware, to export porcelain and vibrant prints, Japanese artists have made use of plants, trees and the natural world throughout the history of Japanese art. In her lecture, Jasleen Kandhari explores this rich inheritance in artistic works and its trade to Britain. It is about the artistic heritage of Japan influenced by Western art traditions and about the artistic export-ware made for Britain from Japan. Attendance: £8, £7 (conc) including tea & cake Bookings in advance essential:…
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