I was very pleased to see my friend and colleague Fumie Von Dehn receive some fabulous media coverage in last week's Vancouver Shinpo.

The full article appears here: on-line article but was also quite impressive as a two-page colour spread in the free edition of the weekly paper. Kudos, Fumie!

Looking forward to these two upcoming lectures:

The Inaugural John Howes Lecture in Japanese Studies

Haruo Shirane, Shinchō Professor of Japanese Literature and Culture at Columbia University, will be coming to UBC to deliver the inaugural John Howes Lecture in Japanese Studies.

Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons: Nature, Literature, and the Arts

November 22 (Thursday)
6:30pm Registration; 7:00 pm Lecture
Asian Centre Auditorium, 1871 West Mall

Elegant representations of nature and the four seasons populate a wide range of Japanese genres and media—from poetry and screen paintings to tea ceremony, flower arrangement, and annual observances. Dr. Haruo Shirane will show how, when, and why this practice developed and explicate the richly encoded social, religious, and literary meanings of this imagery.

Please join us for a lecture and reception honouring Professor Emeritus John Howes. Dr. Howes is an intellectual historian and leading authority on Japan’s Christian and pacifist thinkers, who dedicated three decades to mentoring students and expanding Japanese Studies in the Department of Asian Studies at UBC.

For more information and to register, click here.