The 10th Academic Conference on East Asian Cultural Studies was successfully held on September 15th, 2024. It was hosted by the East Asian Cultural Studies Center (EACSC) at the School of Foreign Studies (SFS) of Nankai University (NKU) and the Virtual Teaching and Research Office of Japanese History and Social Culture Curriculum of the Ministry of Education, and co-organized by the Graduate School of Literature of Kokugakuin University. The conference had two venues, Nankai University in Tianjin and Kokugakuin University in Tokyo, and was carried out online and offline. This is the fifth time that representatives of Kokugakuin University's faculty and students have come to Tianjin again since 2019. Over fifty teachers and students from both universities were present.
On the morning of the September 15th, Associate Professor Wang Kai, Deputy Dean of SFS, presided over the opening ceremony. Prof. Yan Guodong, Dean of SFS, and Prof. Nagato SATO (佐藤 長門), Chairman of Kokugakuin University's Graduate School of Literature, delivered opening speeches respectively. Prof. Yan pointed out that it is of great commemorative significance as this is the 10th Academic Conference on East Asian Cultural Studies. The two universities have alternately organized the conference for nine sessions and jointly edited and published 11 issues of the international academic journal East Asian Cultural Studies, which has strongly promoted academic exchanges and cooperation between the two universities. Prof. SATO encouraged and looked forward to the young students to seek for the sake of academics, citing the example of the Japanese monk Ennin (圆仁), who spent over ten years in China to seek the Dharma.
Prof. Wang Xinxin, Deputy Director of the Japanese Department of SFS, Nankai University, and Prof. Michinao MOROHOSHI (諸星 美智直) of the Graduate School of Literature, Kokugakuin University respectively gave keynote speeches titled “Appearances of Literary Consumption in the Heisei Era: Focusing on Parody” and “Dialectality in the Speeches of Marquis Shigeya HACHISUKA (蜂須賀 茂韶)(Lord of Tokushima) in Minutes of proceedings of the House of Lords”, which broadened the academic horizons of the students and faculty members in attendance. After that, Associate Professor Shinji ANZAI (安西 晋二) of the Graduate School of Literature, Kokugakuin University gave lectures on “The Distance between Tatsuhiko SHIBUSAWA's Guard and its Literary Reference: Materialized Bodies and Dazzling Spaces”, and Dr. Jin Zhenglin of SFS, Nankai University, gave lectures on “On Mongolian Loanwords in Japanese: about the Changes of Vowel Phonology”. The audience responded favorably.
The Graduate Student Academic Forum was held on the afternoon of the 15th, in which 18 graduate students from the two universities gave presentations. With a warm and academic atmosphere, the forum featured four subsections, covering Linguistics, Ancient Literature, Modern Literature, Folklore, Chinese and Japanese cultural exchanges, etc. Experts from Kokugakuin University: Prof. Nagato SATO (佐藤 長門), Prof. Michiaki ISHIMOTO (石本 道明), Prof. Yasuo OISHI (大石 泰夫), Prof. Michinao MOROHOSHI (諸星 美智直), Prof. Hidemi HIGUCHI (樋口 秀実), Prof. Ryohei ITO (伊藤 龍平), Prof. Hisashi MATSUMOTO (松本 久史), Prof. Hiromi HATTORI (服部 比呂美), Prof. Yoshiyuki IIKURA (飯倉 義之) and Associate Professor Shinji ANZAI (安西 晋二) and scholars from Nankai University: Prof. Liu Yuzhen, Prof. Wang Xinxin, Associate Prof. Wang Kai, Associate Prof. Sun Xuemei, Associate Prof. Wang Xiufang, Associate Prof. Jiang Yundou, Associate Prof. Yu Jun, Associate Prof. Zheng Lin and Dr. Cui Xueting, etc. provided insightful commentary and scholarly guidance on the presentations of the four subsections. Students expressed that they had gained a lot.
Prof. Wang Xinxin of SFS hosted the closing ceremony. Prof. Liu Yuzhen, Director of the East Asian Cultural Studies Center (EACSC) at SFS, and Prof. Yasuo OISHI (大石 泰夫) of Kokugakuin University provided a summary of the conference and expressed optimism for the further growth of the two universities' collaboration and scholarly exchanges. Finally, Prof. Nagato SATO (佐藤 長門) of Kokugakuin University and Associate Prof. Wang Kai, Associate Dean of SFS of Nankai University, delivered their closing speeches. Prof. SATO noted that although only hosted between the two universities, this conference may be considered a truly high-level international symposium in terms of the high level of research and the wide range of research fields of the participants. The conference ended with warm applause from the representatives of the two universities. The 12th and 13th issues of East Asian Cultural Studies, which contain the academic exchanges between the teachers and students of the two schools, will be published in the upcoming year.
The 11th Academic Conference on East Asian Cultural Studies will be hosted by Kokugakuin University in the summer of 2025, and students and faculty from both universities are looking forward to gathering in Tokyo.
