Northern Illinois University's John R. Bentley pokes holes in the view that 'Sendai Kuji Hongi' ('Kujiki') is a derivative historical text.
Brandeis University's Matthew Fraleigh explains how the 'shishi' passed on Chinese poetic traditions by reinventing the poem "The Song of the Righteous Spirit."
Art historian Kendall Brown explains how the Ryoanji stone garden in Kyoto, Japan, became a commercialized symbol of Zen Buddhism.
Miriam R. Silverberg joined the UCLA faculty in 1990 and retired in 2005. Her scholarship on modern Japanese history is influencing the work of historians today.
U of Arizona's Timothy Vance examines the life of the American mining engineer and accidental linguist Benjamin Smith Lyman.
U of Tokyo's Tadashi Uchino discusses the birth of Butoh dance and the performance of "children's" bodies in postmodern Japanese dance.
Durham University's Gina Barnes challenges prevailing views on mounded-tomb culture and the development of the Japanese state in the earliest historical period.
Art historian Shigemi Inaga discusses the transformation of Japanese art in the first half of the 20th century.
World-renowned architect Hitoshi Abe, the new chair of the UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design, discusses his fascination with Los Angeles' environs and Japanese-influenced structures.
Political scientist Michael Thies sets current Japanese politics in context and discusses his plans as director of the Paul I. and Hisako Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies at UCLA
62 years after bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, documentarian Stephen Okazaki tells the stories of survivors in modern cities that are struggling to remember their horrific pasts.
MIT anthropologist Ian Condry discusses the history of Japanese hip hop and Japanese rappers' commentary on the Iraq war and 9/11.
Cornell's Robert Weiner explains why the opposition Democratic Party of Japan will keep losing to the Liberal Democratic Party in Japanese politics.
Stanford's Indra Levy discusses the development of the schoolgirl figure as a femme fatale in modern Japanese literature.
Fred G. Notehelfer directed the UCLA Center for Japanese Studies for 16 years and co-directed an East Asian Studies consortium in Southern California for 20 years. He will continue teaching at UCLA for another year before retiring.
