“Listening to and Writing with Sound: Rethinking Japanese Studies through Sonic Practices” Roundtable session at the ASCJ annual conference (July 4-5, Sophia University, Tokyo)
How can listening to and writing with sound deepen our understanding of Japan and Japanese Studies? This roundtable brings together contributors to Listening to Japan (Haukamp & Smith, Routledge), which explores how sound mediates culture, identity, and everyday life across historical and contemporary contexts. Rather than treating sound as peripheral, the participants position it as central to Japan’s histories and practices, asking how sonic approaches can reveal dynamics “invisible” within dominant paradigms of text and image in area studies. Taking listening as both sensory and analytical, the discussion asks whether sound—understood as a form of writing—might act as a shared language that redefines cultural and political boundaries and offers new ways of researching and representing Japan. With contributions by Martyn Smith, Irina Holca, Jeremy Corral and Masayuki Iwase, the roundtable participants will consider how listening to and writing with sound can expand Japanese Studies, attentive to the auditory dimensions of cultural life and to the many ways people make sense of the world through sound.’
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Sonic Japan Research Association (SJRA) Official Launch Event & Book Launch: The Advent of Sound in Japanese Cinema: A Handbook
Date: Tuesday, 27 January 2026
Time: 19:30 JST / 11:30 CET / 10:30 GMT / 05:30 EST
Format: Online roundtable discussion via Zoom
Registration: https://uva-live.zoom.us/meeting/register/RVe7caehR1uEGfQjhxejfw
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International Japanese Studies workshop
Date: 23 May 2025
Location: University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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And Suddenly There Was City Pop…. The Global Dimensions of the Retrograde Formation of A Japanese Popular Music Genre, international workshop
Date: 19-29 March 2025
Location: University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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