Current Events
FCCJ Book Break. September 5. 17:45. "Voices of the Fallen Heroes: And Other Stories" by Yukio Mishima
The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan (FCCJ) Library is pleased to announce the upcoming Book Break event on Friday, September 5, 2025.
Book Break: “Voices of the Fallen Heroes: And Other Stories” by Yukio Mishima The Speaker: Paul McCarthy Friday, September 5, 2025 A Dinner Event, from 5:45 pm to 8:30 pm (The talk will be in English)
https://www.fccj.or.jp/event/book-break-voices-fallen-heroes-and-other-stories-yukio-mishima
Please sign up by email (front@fccj.or.jp) and pay by Tuesday, September 2, 2025.
No cancellations after Tuesday, September 2, 2025.
[Admission]
3,000 yen for members, 4,000 yen for non-members.
This Book Break will not be available for online attendance.
[Schedule]
Doors open at 5:45 pm with a casual “meet the author: cocktail time”
Dinner will be served from 6:30 pm.
The talk begins at 7:15 pm.
[Menu] Please choose from 2 options below.
Option 1: Pastrami and Tuna Salad, Sauteed Salmon with Ratatouille, Bread, Today’s Dessert, Coffee or Tea, and One beverage of choice (orange juice, oolong tea, red or white wine, beer)
Option 2: Green Salad, Warm Vegetable Bagna Cauda, Bread, Fruit, Coffee or Tea, and One beverage of choice (orange juice, oolong tea, red or white wine, beer)
Please inform the club of food restrictions when
reserving.(front@fccj.or.jp)
[Venue]
The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan 5F Marunouchi Nijubashi Building
3-2-3 Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-0005
(https://www.fccj.or.jp/article/access-contact)
The Book Break will focus on the title story in a new anthology of short fiction by Yukio Mishima, published in January in honor of Mishima’s birth centenary by Penguin Classics in the UK and Vintage Books in the US. There are fourteen stories in all, by various translators, but our speaker will talk only about the longest and most controversial one, which he translated.
Mishima’s place as a brilliant writer of novels, short stories, plays, memoirs and essays is secure. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize, although it went instead to his mentor Yasunari Kawabata. Mishima’s ideological legacy is far more controversial than his literature. To
simplify: He thought that, although Japan certainly took the wrong path in the 1930s, the many fundamental changes to Japanese society and culture that were enforced by the American Occupation went too far. In particular, he deplored the reduction of the emperor’s role to a purely symbolic one, deprived of its traditionally sacral character, and also the ambiguous restriction of Japan’s “right to self-defense,” and hence to conventional armed forces, properly so called. In the story “Voices of the Fallen Heroes,” Mishima dramatizes two negative turning points:
the suppression of an attempted coup in February of 1936 and the execution of its leaders; and the declaration that the emperor was fully human rather than quasi-divine, in 1946, under Occupation influence. The spirits of the executed coup-leaders and those of the kamikaze pilots near the war’s end express their sorrow and outrage at these two events in passionate poetry delivered during a Shinto séance.
Paul McCarthy’s academic background was in English literature as an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota and in Japanese literature and religion as a graduate student at Harvard University. He wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on Jun’ichirō Tanizaki and translated Tanizaki’s memoirs and many works of fiction over the years. He met Yukio Mishima in the mid-to-late 1960s, but is only now translating his literature. He is planning an anthology of Mishima’s nonfiction work: memoirs, essays, and lectures.
Doors open at 5:45 pm with a casual “meet the author/cocktail time” from
6:00 pm. Dinner will be served from 6:30 pm and the talk begins at 7:15 pm.
The menu is Pastrami and Tuna Salad, Sauteed Salmon with Ratatouille, Bread, Today’s Dessert, Coffee or Tea, and One beverage of choice (orange juice, oolong tea, red or white wine, beer). A vegetarian option is available. Please inform the club of food restrictions when reserving (front@fccj.or.jp).
Price: 3,000 yen for members, 4,000 yen for non-members.
This Book Break will not be available for online attendance.
The member reservation deadline is 2 pm September 5, non-members must reserve and pay by Tuesday, September 2, 2025.
No cancellations after Tuesday, September 2.
Library, Archives & Workroom Committee
The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan (FCCJ)
Symposium "Internationalization of Japanese traditional performing arts" at Teikyô University, July 31
On July 31, Dr Magali Bugne is hosting a symposium in Tokyo on the internationalization of Japanese traditional performing arts.
The event, held at Teikyô University, is supported by the French Research Institute in Tokyo (MFJ-IFRJ) and the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken), through the Consortium for Global Japanese Studies.
Please refer to the information sheet for details.
VSJF Annual Conference 2025 (Vienna) – Registration now open: “(Un)Democratic Futures: Japan and the Global Trajectories towards an (Un)Equal World”
We are delighted to cordially invite you to the annual conference of the German Association for Social Science Research on Japan (VSJF), which will take place at the University of Vienna from November 7 to 9, 2025.
This year’s theme, “(Un)Democratic Futures: Japan and the Global Trajectories Towards an (Un)Equal World,” raises the central questions on the future of democracy and equality. Bringing together outstanding scholars of Japanese studies and political theory, the conference aims to explore how democratic futures are imagined and enacted in an age of planetary crisis, democratic backsliding, and growing inequality.
As the sense of an open future is increasingly overshadowed by nostalgia, defensiveness, and defeatism, we ask: What kinds of democratic imaginaries inspire and enable hope and collective action today? Drawing on the roots of democracy as a future-oriented emancipatory project, this three-day conference invites both rigorous critique and desirable imaginaries.
We especially welcome participants from diverse academic and professional backgrounds, and we hope for vibrant interdisciplinary exchanges. The conference further aims at fostering scientific community-building and career development for early-career researchers.
Keynote Speakers:
- Prof. Uno Shigeki (University of Tokyo)
- Prof. H. L. T. Quan (Arizona State University)
The full conference program (with remaining presentation titles to be added shortly) is available on the conference website:
👉 https://vsjf2025.univie.ac.at/
Conference fees*:
Supporting Fee (for professors & high-income individuals wishing to support VSJF and the event) €200
Regular Fee €150 (€120 Early Bird until August 1)
Regular Fee (VSJF Members) €100 (€80 Early Bird until August 1)
PhD Candidates with Funding €60
Students (BA, MA, and unfunded PhD) incl. Dinner €30
Students (BA, MA, and unfunded PhD) excl. Dinner €0
* All conference fees include:
– Access to all panels
– Post-conference dinner (November 7, unless otherwise noted)
– Lunch (November 8)
– Coffee breaks throughout
– Discounted print copy of the MINIKOMI VSJF 2025 Special Issue, featuring previously unpublished translations by invited speakers
Registration:
👉 Register here: https://univie.eventsair.com/vsjf2025/regregularen/Site/Register
Registration and payment deadline: November 6, 2025
VSJF Gender Workshop
The VSJF Gender Workshop will take place in conjunction with the main conference, on the afternoon of 6 November and the morning of 7 November, at the Marietta-Blau-Saal, University of Vienna.
Co-organized by Annette Schad-Seifert (Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf) and Kerstin Fooken (University of Hamburg), the workshop program will be distributed via J-Studien.
Participation is free of charge.
To register, please contact:
📧 schadsei[at]hhu.de and kerstin.fooken[at]uni-hamburg.de
VSJF Annual Conference 2025 is supported by:
- Department of East Asian Studies, Japanese Studies, University of Vienna
- Japan Foundation
- Toshiba Foundation
- German Association for Social Science Research on Japan (VSJF)
- Doctoral School of Philological and Cultural Studies (PhilKult), University of Vienna
- City of Vienna
We are truly excited to welcome you to Vienna for what promises to be a stimulating and inspiring conference. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or require support for your participation.
Symposium "Internationalization of Japanese traditional performing arts" at Teikyô University, July 31
On July 31, Dr Magali Bugne is hosting a symposium in Tokyo on the internationalization of Japanese traditional performing arts.
The event, held at Teikyô University, is supported by the French Research Institute in Tokyo (MFJ-IFRJ) and the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken), through the Consortium for Global Japanese Studies.
Please refer to the information sheet for details.