GCBS members Andreas Niehaus, Paride Stortini, Anna Andreeva, and Christian Uhl participated in the workshop “Japanese and Belgian Research on Japan: Perspectives from Tohoku University and Ghent University,” organized by the Center for Integrated Japanese Studies (CIJS), Tohoku University and Institute for Japanese Studies, Ghent University. In the context of 160 Years of Friendship between Japan and Beligum, Ghent University invites Tohoku University’s Center for Integrated Japanese Studies (CIJS) to come to Ghent to introduce the newly established center and discuss future research collaboration between Japan and Belgium.
🗓️ 19-20 March 2026
📍 Ghent University, Faculty Board Room, Faculty of Arts and Philosohpy, Blanfijnberg 2
Day 1
Wednesday 18 March
13:00 Visit Book Tour
14:00–16:00 Campus Tour
Day 2
Thursday 19 March
Venue: Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, Facultyboard Room, Blandijnberg 2, 9000 Ghent
10:00 Introduction of Ghent University and the Institute for Japanese, Andreas Niehaus
11:00–11:30 Coffee Break
11:30–13:00 Introduction of the Tohoku University Center for Integrated Japanese Studies (CIJS), Director Adachi Hiroaki
13:00–14:00 Lunch Break
14:00–14:45 Luca Milasi “Searching for ‘Adam’s Perfect Speech’: The Phonograph/Logograph Divide and the Roman Catholic Archives as a Laboratory for Early Japanese Studies”
14:45–15:30 Mick Deneckere “From Paris to Meiji Japan: De Rosny, Renan, and Burnouf’s Impact on Ishikawa Shuntai and the Birth of Religious Studies in Japan”
15:30–16:00 Coffee Break
16:00–16:45 Ran Wei “Theorizing Postwar Grotesque: Representations of Military Ruins and Apache Tribe in Kaikō Takeshi’s Japan’s Three Penny Opera (1959)”
16:45–17:30 Hannah Dahlberg-Dodd “Characterological Engagement and Digital Fan Practice: Linguistic Insights from a Vtuber Fandom”
17:30–18:30 John D’Amico “Borrowing Trouble in Early Modern Japan”
18:30 Reception
Day 3
Friday 20 March
Venue: Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, Facultyboard Room, Blandijnberg 2, 9000 Ghent
9:00–9:45 Paride Stortini “Relive Nara Cosmopolitanism: Nostalgia, Aesthetics, and Community Building at Yakushiji”
9:45–10:30 Marlies Holvoet “Ikebana as a Global Practice: (Re-)Arranging Boundaries”
10:30–11:00 Coffee break
11:00–11:45 Oguma Rie “Japanese Film Subtitling Project by Belgian University Students: Project‑Based Language Learning and Its Effects”
11:45–12:30 Sebastian Nehrdich “Dharmamitra: A Platform to Support Research across Language Boundaries on Buddhist Textual Material”
12:30–13:15 Felix Spremberg “Japan’s ‘Super Smart’ Society 5.0 and Toyota’s Woven City as a Technocratic Site of Knowledge Production”
13:15–14:30 Lunch Break
14:30-15:00 Andreas Niehaus “Emotional, Social and Political Spaces: Food on the Move in Hayashi Fumiko’s travelogue Santō Ryokōki (1933)”
15:00–15:30 30 Anna Andreeva “Buddhist knowledge on women’s reproductive health in early medieval Japan”
15:30–16:00 Justin Stein “Ancient Mountain, Modern Spiritualities: Mount Kurama as a Site for Contemporary Pilgrimage”
16:00-16:30 Coffee Break
16:00–16:45 Christian Uhl “Unevenness, Non-Contemporaneity and the Everyday in Ishikawa Takuboku’s poetry and poetology”
16:45–17:30 Tianyang Huang “Deadly or Remediable? Gender, Science, and the Ambivalence about Harm in the Trial of A Woman Doctor, 1939–1940”
17:30 Closing Remarks
