The British Association for Japanese Studies new Podcast Series

Hello and welcome to the BAJS podcast, brought to you by the British Association for Japanese Studies. I’m your host, Oliver Moxham, MA in Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies and specialist in language and Japanese war heritage.

In this episode, Oliver is joined by Timon Screech, Professor at the International Research Centre for Japanese Studies in Kyoto, to discuss the first interactions between England and Japan at the start of the 17th century. Tim shares with us the political factors that drove England to find trading partners halfway around the world, the challenges in winning the Shogun’s ear and the statements made in the gifts they brought, such as the title item of Tim’s recent book, The Shogun’s Silver Telescope. We hope you enjoy the show.

In this episode, Oliver is joined by two veterans of BAJS: Joy Hendry, Professor Emerita of Anthropology at Oxford Brookes University; and Graham Healey, previously a lecturer in Japanese language, politics and modern history at the University of Sheffield. They share their roles in the early days of BAJS and how the field of Japanese Studies has changed dramatically since they began their careers, from motivations for studying, to technologies and resources for learning the language and culture, to researching in the field in Japan. Joy and Graham will share their own experiences as researchers in the field over the last 50 years as well as their insights on the future direction of Japanese Studies.

Graham Healey was born in Worcestershire in 1941 and attended Prince Henry's Grammar School, Evesham, before going to University College, Oxford, in 1960 to study Chinese. From 1964 to 1966 he was a Japanese Ministry of Education (Monbusho) Scholar at Waseda University, Tokyo, studying Japanese language and literature. In 1966 he joined the recently-founded Centre for Japanese Studies (now the School of East Asia Studies) at the University of Sheffield as a graduate student before being appointed to a lectureship in 1967. He spent his career there, until retirement in 2009, teaching Japanese language, politics and modern history. He has spent periods as visiting lecturer or visiting scholar at Hosei University, Kyoto University, Waseda University and Hitotsubashi University. He was president of the British Association of Japanese Studies in 1982-3. He has published in the fields of Japanese language, politics and history, his most notable work being (as translator and co-editor-in-chief) the translation in five volumes of The Iwakura Embassy, 1871-73.

Joy Hendry is Professor Emerita of the Social Anthropology of Japan at Oxford Brookes University, was Reader at the University of Stirling, and a Senior Member of St. Antony's College, Oxford. She has held visiting associations with Tokyo, Keio and Dōshisha Universities in Japan, the CNRS in Paris, the University of Melbourne in Australia, McMaster in Canada, Otago University in New Zealand, the University of Vienna, Ludwig University of Freiburg, Charles University, Prague, and the University of the South Pacific. She was a founder of the Japan Anthropology Workshop and the Europe Japan Research Centre, president of BAJS and vice-president of the EAJS. She carried out long-term fieldwork in Kyushu and a seaside town south of Tokyo, and shorter periods in other parts of Japan. Her books include Wrapping Culture: Politeness, Presentation and Power in Japan and Other Societies (Oxford University Press, 1993), The Orient Strikes Back: A Global View of Cultural Display (Oxford: Berg, 2000), and five editions of Understanding Japanese Society (Routledge 2019). A collection of her articles appeared in An Anthropological Lifetime in Japan (Brill 2017), and her account of forty-five years of fieldwork An Affair with a Village came out in February 2021. In 2017, the Government of Japan bestowed the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette, “in recognition of her outstanding contribution to the promotion of Japanese Studies in the UK and thus to deeper mutual understanding between Japan and the United Kingdom”.

In conversation with Professor Robert Aspinall - the BAJS Japan Chapter.

Welcome to BAJS, in conversation with Dr. Christopher Hood and Dr. Helen Macnaughtan