Dear colleagues,

It is my pleasure to inform you about the November meeting of the Kansai Modern Japan Group, an interdisciplinary platform for scholars based in or visiting the Kansai area who work on modern and/or contemporary Japan. The November meeting is our anniversary meeting, the festivities as usual consisting of three lectures in the afternoon followed by a modern (and affordable) kaiseki dinner in Kyoto's most vibrant restaurant.

The lectures will be in English, the comments and discussion either in English or Japanese. All interested are most welcome. In order to make sure that we have sufficient seats, both at the lecture room and the restaurant, please send a notice of your attendance well beforehand to:

Here are the data:

DATE: Saturday 12 November
TIME: 13:00 - 17:30; dinner from 18:00
PLACE: Kyoto University Research Institute for the
Humanities

SPEAKER: Hans Martin Kramer (Ruhr University Bochum)
TITLE: An Other Other: Japanese Views of Islam and
Translations of
the Qur’ān in the Twentieth Century
DISCUSSANT: tba

SPEAKER: Aike P. Rots (University of Oslo)
TITLE: Shinto Environmentalism? The Rediscovery of
'Sacred Forests'
in Contemporary Japan
DISCUSSANT: tba

SPEAKER: Marie Thorsten (Doshisha University)
TITLE: American Sputnik Nostalgia and the Attraction
of Japan
DISCUSSANT: tba

More details about the venue and the discussants will follow next week.
For the abstracts of the lectures, please see below.

Those willing to present at one of our monthly meetings, please send an abstract of the presentation you propose to and .

I look forward to welcoming many of you next week.

Best regards,

Dick Stegewerns
Kyoto University & University of Oslo