On December 20, 2020 (Sun.), Michael Como (Associate Professor, Columbia University), who is visiting Waseda University for research as part of this year\u2019s Ryusaku Tsunoda Memorial Program (a fellowship program for researchers from outside Japan), was invited to speak at the Global Japanese Studies Model Unit online workshop \u201cSound and Divination in Ancient Japan.\u201d Professor Akio Kawajiri of Waseda University’s Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences served as the event coordinator and the moderator on the day of the workshop. There were in total around 40 virtual attendees, consisting of Waseda University graduate students and researchers both affiliated and unaffiliated with the university.<\/p>\n
Como began by describing the background to and goal of his presentation while criticizing religious studies\u2013based approaches that have been applied to his subject in the past. He then comprehensively discussed instances of divination found in Rikkokushi<\/em> [The Six National Histories: a group of historical texts compiled by the Japanese state in ancient times] and articles on sound relating to those instances. Como then analyzed characteristics and trends in the articles, categorizing them into different time periods. He discussed the characteristics and trends found in each period and the historical backgrounds that may have existed in each time based on historical records. Finally, Como noted his conclusions based on his work researching this topic, namely the emergence of various phenomena from the seventh through ninth centuries, including the beginnings of an understanding of the body of the Emperor as metonymically linked to a building, the spread of the gogyo<\/em> theory (a system involving five elemental phases, known as wuxing<\/em> in China, where it originated), and changes to how sounds were heard\u2014the gaining of \u201ca new way of listening to the world.\u201d<\/p>\n During the question and answer session held after the break, there were a wide variety of queries from workshop attendees specializing in various academic disciplines. Concerning the concept of a \u201ca new way of listening to the world,\u201d Como explained the differences among \u201cto hear,\u201d \u201cto listen to,\u201d and \u201cto listen for\u201d: A given sound that in the sixth century was subject only to being \u201cheard\u201d had changed in the ninth century into something subject to being \u201clistened for.\u201d In other words, Como argued that the framework of consciousness toward sounds had changed, bringing a new perspective to research previously conducted in Japan. Regarding the background to this change in consciousness, Como\u2019s explanation suggested possible phenomena including urbanization, rather than merely ascribing everything to the importation of new ideas. Como\u2019s presentation urged recognition of the importance of looking at consciousness, rather than only the texts and tangible objects that have been emphasized in prior comparative research, and attracted considerable interest from the workshop’s attendees.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u25c6Event Overview:<\/p>\n Lecturer: Michael Como<\/p>\n Associate Professor, Religion Department and Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia University<\/p>\n Event date: December 20, 2020 (Sun.)<\/p>\n Event format: Zoom meeting<\/p>\n Schedule:<\/p>\n 2:00 pm Lecturer introduction Organizer: Akio Kawajiri, Professor, Waseda University Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences<\/p>\n Sponsored by: Waseda University Global Japanese Studies Model Unit, Top Global University Project<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Online Workshop Sound and Divination in Ancient Japan On December 20, 2020 (Sun.), Michael Como (Associate Pro […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8484,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[97,111],"class_list":["post-8478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-en","tag-en-gj","tag-report-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/sgu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/sgu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/sgu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/sgu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/sgu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/sgu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/sgu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/sgu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/sgu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/sgu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n2:15 pm Lecture
\n3:45 pm Break
\n4:00 pm Q&A
\n4:30 pm End<\/p>\n