Taking place on the 16th and 17th December 2023, the symposium will explore the connections, similarities and differences among poetry from various cultures, with a particular emphasis on early modern and Anglo-Japanese poetry. Held at Waseda University in Tokyo, venues for the symposium will include the Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum founded to commemorate William Shakespeare's first major translator into Japanese.
Co-organised by Institute fellows Dr Robert Stagg and Dr Jessica Chiba and Waseda academics Professor Tetsuhito Motoyama and Professor Hiromi Fuyuki, with assistance from the University of Birmingham's Fiona Gilyead and Rob Doolan, events will include panel discussions about translating Shakespeare's verse into Japanese, comparative criticism of early modern English and Japanese poetry, the 'global' quality of sonnet form across the centuries, and a plenary lecture by Dr Stagg titled 'Shakespeare's Arabic Sonnets'.
Here at the Shakespeare Institute, we are delighted by this opportunity to develop our partnership with Waseda University -- and what better way to do so than by thinking cross-culturally about early translations of Shakespeare into Japanese, transnational histories of literary form, and the development of English and Japanese verse in the early modern period?
Dr Robert Stagg, Leverhulme Research Fellow at the Shakespeare Institute.
Alongside the Institute's Dr Chiba and Dr Stagg, speakers include Prof Daniel Gallimore, Professor Adrian Pinnington, Professor Gaye Rowley, Professor Rieko Suzuki, Dr Kristopher Reeves, and Waseda MA student Yoshikaze Kawakami.
The symposium has been generously sponsored by the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation, with additional funding and funding-in-kind provided by the Waseda University Top Global University Program, the Global Japanese Studies Model Unit, the Shakespeare Institute, and the Leverhulme Trust.
