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【Yanai Initiative】Open Talk “What Novelists Heard in Silent Cinemas: Sound Culture in Japan” (July 11)

Open Talk: What Novelists Heard in Silent Cinemas: Sound Culture in Japan

For this event, Dr. Kotaro Shibata will focus on the early days of cinema experienced through Japan’s great literary writers who lived at the time when movies first arrived in Japan. These writers reacted to cinema in various ways: some wove cinema into their literary works, others recorded their thoughts only in their journals and letters, and a few even shunned cinemas entirely.

In this open talk, he will shed light on the cinema of the Meiji and Taisho periods through examining these writers’ words and exploring the intriguing history of early movie theaters and their soundscapes.

  • Day & Time:July 11th, 2025 (Friday), 14:00-15:00
  • Venue:Lab (2nd floor of WIHL)
  • Language:Japanese
  • Participation:Free
  • Participants:Students, Faculty and Public
  • Presented by the Yanai Initiative for Globalizing Japanese Humanities, with support from the Waseda International House of Literature

Flyer

Lecture

Kotaro SHIBATA
Adjunct Researcher at the Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum, Waseda University. He received his Ph.D. in literature from the University of Tokyo. He served as a Research Assistant at the Collaborative Research Center for Theatre and Film Arts at the Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum from 2017 before becoming a Deputy Chief Researcher in 2020, managing joint research projects and curating historically informed silent film screenings. Prior to his current role, he was a Yanai Initiative Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles. His monograph, Eigakan ni narihibiita oto [Cinema Soundscapes: Cultures of Film and Sound in Prewar Tokyo] (Shunjūsha, 2024) won the Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities. He is a co-author of Shimpa: avangyarudo engeki no suimyaku [Shimpa: The Currents of Avant-Garde Theater] (Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum, 2021) and a co-editor of Koe to ongaku no eigashi [The Film History of Voice and Music] (Shinwasha, forthcoming).

Facilitator

Yanai Initiative Committee Member: Kanako MABUCHI

Contact

Yanai Initiative for Globalizing Japanese Humanities: [email protected]

Dates
  • 0711

    FRI
    2025

Place

Lab (2nd floor of WIHL)

Tags
Posted

Mon, 16 Jun 2025

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