Welcome remarks

Panel #1 Early Intersections of Religious and Literary Discourse: The Case of Buddhism in Three Texts of the Classical and Medieval Periods.

Moderator: Dylan McGee (Nagoya University)

Panelists:
Stephen Miller ((University of Massachusetts-Amherst)
Literary Buddhism and the One-Hundred-Waka-Sequence: Jakuzen’s Hōmon hyakushu

Nicolette Lee (University of Southern California)
Million Dollar Question: Does the Woman’s Body Matter? An Examination of Female Salvation in The Tale of the Heike

Sachi Schmidt-Hori (Furman University)|
Tangled in Ambiguity: Gender, Sexuality and Identity of a Buddhist Acolyte in a Medieval Chigo Tale, Ashibiki

Panel #2: Parodies of the Afterlife, Salvation and Intertextuality: Literary Negotiations in the Realm of the Spiritual in Edo Japan

Moderator: Stephen Miller (University of Massachusetts-Amherst)

Panelists:
Motoi Katsumata (Meisei University/Harvard University)
Zen and Filial Piety: From Medieval to Early Modern

Dylan McGee (Nagoya University)
Two Views of Saikaku in the Underworld

Jyana Browne (University of Washington)
The Path to Rebirth in Chikamatsu’s Love Suicide Plays

Olivia Yumi Nakaema (University of Osaka/University of São Paulo)
The Reception of Japanese Literature by the Jesuits in Japan: An Analysis of the Amakusaban Heike Monogatari

Lunch

Panel #3: From Engagement to Representation: The Discontinuous Continuity of Religious Elements in Literature

Panel organized by Sarah Clayton (University of Washington); view the panel abstract.

Moderator: Sachi Schmidt-Hori (Furman University)

Panelists:
Bonnie McClure (University of Washington)
Buddhist Verses in Renga and the Performance of Impermanence

Kaori Igarashi (University of Washington)
The King of Hell as Sympathetic Figure

Sarah Clayton (University of Washington)
Ishikawa Jun’s Ironic Iconography

Panel #4: Religious Practice, Social Critique and Artistic Spirituality in Early Twentieth Century Bundan

Moderator: Jennifer Scott (Shujitsu University)

Panelists:
Michiko Yusa (Western Washington University)
Hiratsuka Raichō (and Natsume Sōseki): Zen Practice, Western Philosophy and Social Activism Woven Together

Joan Ericson (Colorado College)
Synthetic Spirituality in Early 20th Century Japanese Children’s Literature

Orna Shaughnessy (University of Denver)
Nagai Kafū’s Artistic Spirituality: From Language to Music

Coffee break

Panel #5: Renditions of Christianity in Modern Japanese Literature

Moderator: Orna Shaughnessy (University of Denver)

Panelists:
Pau Pitarch Fernandez (Columbia University)
A Superfool constantly Dreaming of the Future: Christ as Poet in Akutagawa Ryūnosuke’s Saihō no hito (1927)

Yukiko Shigeto (Whitman College)
Shiina Rinzō: Conversion, Faith and Humor

Maeri Megumi (University of Texas-Austin)
Christianity and Modern Japanese Literature

Feature Panel:「近代精神における宗教と芸術の関係」

Panelists:
Miyasaka Satoru (Ferris University, President of the International Society for Akutagawa Ryūnosuke’s Studies)

Tsuboi Hideto (International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Kyoto)

Eiji Sekine (Purdue University)

Reception

Taiko Performance: Okinawa Kenjinkai Taiko Group

Panel #6: Demonology, Divination and Supernatural Abductions

Moderator: Pau Pitarch Fernandez (Columbia University)

Panelists:
Diego Cucinelli (Tuscia University)
Ghosts from the Past: The Fortune of Hyaku monogatari in Post-Meiji Japan

Peter Bernard (Harvard University)
Toward a Phenomenology of Supernatural Abduction: Izumi Kyōka and the Creation of a Mystical Subject in Modern Japanese Literature

Maryellen Toman Mori (Independent scholar)
Kamikakushi 神隠し: An Artist’s Salvation?

Jennifer Scott (Shujitsu University)
Furui Yoshikichi’s Hijiri: Spiritual Traditions Engulfed by Modernity

Panel #7: Metaphorical Representations of the Sacred

Moderator: Yukiko Shigeto (Whitman College)

Panelists:
Yongfei Yi (The Ohio State University)
Local Festivals and Exotic Customs: Nishikawa Mitsuru and Gaichi Bungakuin Taiwan

Tomoyo Inui (Josai International University)
Failure of Goddesses: The Discourses on the Culture of Female Shaman (Miko no bunka) in Contemporary Japan

Thomas Garcin (IETT, Lyon 3)
Temple, Ritual, Tomb: Representations of the Sacred and Stereotypes in Yūkoku by Mishima Yukio

Miyoshi Ihara (Josai International University)
Sata Ineko’s Kaze ni najinda uta: Maria of Yamiiti

Lunch

Panel #8: Spirituality and the Other in Postwar and Contemporary Japanese Narrative

Panel organized by Eiji Sekine (Purdue University); view the panel abstract.

Moderator: Joan Ericson (Colorado College)

Panelists:
Hiromi Tsuchiya Dollase (Vassar College)
Mothers with Demon Masks in Yamagishi Ryōko’s shōjo manga

Yoshiko Matsuura (Poole Gakuin University/Hakuho Women’s College)
Unaccomplished Desire for Japanese Aesthetics in Tachihara Masaaki’s Novels

Yuko Ogawa (Purdue University)
Spiritual Recovery in Yoshimoto Banana’s Amrita

Eiji Sekine (Purdue University)
Yasuoka Shōtarō and M/Other

Panel #9: Revising Yogācāra: Rendition and Interpretation of Yuishiki in Modern Japanese Literary Discourses

Panel organized by Ikuho Amano (University of Nebraska-Lincoln; view the panel abstract.

Moderator: Davinder Bhowmik (University of Washington)

Panelists:
Yoshihiro Yasuhara (Carnegie Mellon University)
Mystical Experiences as Literary Locus in Ishikawa Jun’s Fiction in 1930s-1950s

Christopher Rich (Eastern Kentucky University)
Resignation, Teinen and Yuishikiron in Mori Ōgai’s Writings

Ikuho Amano (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
Yuishiki and Holistic Visions of the World in Mishima’s The Sea of Fertility

Coffee break

Panel #10: Narratives of Healing

Moderator: Ikuho Amano (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)

Panelists:
Takushi Odagiri (Duke University)
Cinema’s Biopraxis: Koreeda Hirokazu and Kawase Naomi after 2011

Chiaki Takagi (University of North Carolina-Greensboro)
Why All God’s Children Dance: Religion, Spirituality and Healing in Murakami’s After the Quake

Lisette Gebhardt (Goethe University-Frankfurt)
Ghosts, Spirituality and Healing in Post-Fukushima Literature

Ben Whaley (University of British Columbia)
Reading the Holocaust through the Diary of a Shōjo: Anne Frank in Japan’s Educational manga

Dinner Banquet

Keynote address by Professor Miyasaka Satoru (Ferris University, President of the International Society for Akutagawa Ryūnosuke’s Studies)
「近代日本文学における宗教及びスピリチュアリティ」