"From Women to Westerners: Untold Stories in the History of Chanoyu", presented by Dr. Rebecca Corbett

 

This lecture (in English) will be held Friday, November 1 at 7:00 PM at Lakeland University in Ryogoku, Tokyo. It will also be streamed via Zoom.

In this talk, Dr. Rebecca Corbett will outline her research on chanoyu history, moving from women in the Edo period to Westerners in the Meiji period, giving some preliminary findings from her current research stay in Japan. Her research foregrounds "ordinary" tea practitioners, including those who have casual encounters or limited practice, rather than the typical focus on the great (male) tea masters of the past. She argues that a focus on a wider range of tea practitioners and perspectives on chanoyu is important for understanding the historical development of the practice and its place in contemporary Japanese society.

 

Dr. Corbett is currently a Japan Foundation Fellow at Waseda University. She received her PhD from the University of Sydney (2009), was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University (2013-2015), and since 2016 has worked at the University of Southern California. Her book Cultivating Femininity: Women and Tea Culture in Edo and Meiji Japan (University of Hawai'i Press, 2018) analyses privately circulated and commercially published texts to show how chanoyu tea practice for women was understood, articulated, and promoted from the eighteenth through early twentieth centuries. Her current research explores early Western involvement in chanoyu tea practice during the Meiji period (1868-1912). 

 

-To attend the event in person, there is no need to register. For a map and directions to Lakeland's Ryogoku campus, see our website: https://luj.lakeland.edu/contact

--To join on Zoom, please register here (before 5PM on the day of the event). You will be emailed a link that afternoon

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1x-mGFIO2XlIPVhUmkSJ_WrWsyzWB9TuNsuDBIYFTQec/edit

--

Roger Grabowski, Jr.

Assistant Professor of General Studies

Lakeland University Japan