Symposium: New Perspectives on Studying Medieval Japan
November 3, 2000
Symposium: New Perspectives on Studying Medieval Japan
Professor Masaharu Imai (Tsukuba University); Visiting Fellow of the Donald Keene Center; Visiting Professor (Dept. of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia)
403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. & Amsterdam Ave.)
10:00 AM – 6:00 PM
4 Sessions involving Professor Imai and leading scholars from surrounding institutions:
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Professor Imai is a Visiting Fellow of the Donald Keene Center, under a program sponsored by the U.S.-Japan Foundation. Co-sponsored by the Institute for Medieval Japanese Studies
IMAI Masaharu (Historian)
Professor Imai is considered one of Japan’s most prominent scholars of medieval Japanese Buddhism. He received his Ph.D. in History from Tokyo University of Education (Tokyo Kyoiku Daigaku, now University of Tsukuba) in 1977, held Visiting Professor positions at Beijing University (1992), Princeton University (1993), and Lijublijanna University in Slovenia (1997), and taught as an Assistant Professor and Professor in the Department of Human Science at Ibaraki University from 1977-1996. He was recently named Dean of the College of Japanese Language and Culture at the University of Tsukuba, where he has been a Professor at the Institute of History and Anthropology and Director of the Program on Japanese History since 1996.
Professor Imai has published, edited, and presented a vast number of volumes, articles and lectures on a great range of topics related to Japanese studies. Some of his more recent books include Amerika ni watatta bukkyo bijutsu (Japanese Buddhist Art Objects Preserved in the United States, 1999), Sutehijiri Ippen (Ippen the Recluse-Mendicant, 1999), Shinran to sono kazoku (Shinran and His Family,1998), Ibaraki no Zenshu (The Zen Schools of Ibaraki,1997), and Chusei o ikita Nihonjin (Outstanding Figures of Medieval Japan,1992).
Professor Imai was a Visiting Fellow of the Donald Keene Center and a Visiting Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures from September to November 2000. His activities included workshops and seminars with Columbia graduate students in Japanese religion, history and literature, and public lectures at Columbia University, the University of Michigan, the University of California, Santa Barbara, the University of California, Berkeley, Harvard University, the University of Illinois, Princeton University, Yale University, and Honganji (New York Buddhist Church).
On November 3, 2000, Professor Imai led a symposium at Columbia entitled New Perspectives on Studying Medieval Japan that was co-sponsored by the Donald Keene Center and the Institute for Medieval Japanese Studies at Columbia. The symposium involved twenty-two leading scholars from surrounding universities, museums, and institutions, and focused on four topics: Defining “Medieval Japan”: New Perspectives; Buddhism, Shinto, and Women’s History; History and Art: Dealing with Textual and Nontextual Primary Sources; and The Formation of “Nihon Kenkyu” and US-Japan Intellectual Exchange.
Upon Professor Imai’s return to Japan, he wrote a book about his experiences as a Visiting Fellow entitled Japan Studies at Columbia University in New York, Fall 2000, which was published by the College of Japanese Language and Culture, University of Tsukuba, in the spring of 2001.
