{"id":737,"date":"2012-04-02T04:01:34","date_gmt":"2012-04-02T04:01:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/?p=737"},"modified":"2012-04-03T04:31:55","modified_gmt":"2012-04-03T04:31:55","slug":"waseda-film-studies-in-the-us-with-jet-lag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/?p=737","title":{"rendered":"Waseda Film Studies Comes to Yale-with Jet Lag"},"content":{"rendered":"

In an earlier posting (Back in Japan: A Conference on Acting\u2013\u2013with Jet Lag<\/a>), I mentioned that three graduate students from Waseda University (Tokyo, Japan) would be coming to Yale to present their scholarship.\u00a0 The story in brief:\u00a0 They would attend the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference in Boston (March 21-25, 2012), but their university expected them to return home immediately–with no time to go sightseeing or do research. And no time to get over their desynchronosis<\/em> (otherwise known as jet lag<\/a>). It was subsequently so arranged that they gave presentations at Yale a few days after SCMS (on March 28th) buying them some extra time in the US.\u00a0 Since DAIBO Masaki and Johan Nordstrom were reprising their SCMS papers, they headed to New York and did research at Columbia University’s library which has a very strong archive of Japanese film material.\u00a0 NIITA Chie, who had been a pre-doc at Yale for a year, spent her time preparing a presentation on her recently defended dissertation.\u00a0 Moreover, the resulting symposium provided an opportunity for Yale Film Studies graduate students to meet their Waseda counterparts\u2013\u2013and obviously vice versa.<\/p>\n

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Introducing Johan Nordstrom, DAIBO Masaki and NIITA Chie<\/p><\/div>\n

Here is the announcement for their presentations, which had a shared concern with the relation of radio and recorded sound to motion pictures:<\/p>\n

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I just want to report, in case their advisor KOMATSU Hiroshi reads this posting, that they did a terrific job.\u00a0 It was a particular pleasure to hear Chie present an overview of her dissertation before focusing on a particular chapter dealing with Lux Radio Theater, which offered radio adaptations of motion picture dramas from the mid-1930s into the mid-1950s. Dr. Niita is quite independent and research is lonely work, so I was unsure how successful her previous year at Yale as a pre-doctoral fellow had been.\u00a0 Clearly it was highly productive, and I felt very honored to have served as her sponsor.\u00a0 The relationship between radio and motion pictures has been a seriously under-examined aspect of American cultural history: Chie’s strong dissertation should be translated into English and published.<\/p>\n

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While Masaki presents, Johan offers a short interjection<\/p><\/div>\n

Nordstrom’s exploration of the way records and songs were incorporated into silent Japanese cinema was a fascinating surprise, at least to this non-expert. His presence also reminded Yale students that Waseda has a graduate population that is as international as our own.\u00a0 Daibo’s work on the long history of syncrhonous recorded sound in Japan took an original turn as he explored the ways in which successive waves of sound technology went through a process of Japanification.<\/p>\n

The symposium was embedded within a reception\u2013\u2013coffee before the presentations, wine afterwards (well that was the idea, anyway).
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Someone at the symposium declared that Waseda has the foremost scholar of Japanese Silent Cinema in Japan (Hiroshi KOMATSU) while Yale has the foremost scholar of Japanese Silent Cinema outside Japan (Aaron Gerow). Admittedly, this comparison would seem to call for a final round of some reality TV show along the lines of\u00a0 American Idol<\/em> (tentatively names Academic Idoltry<\/em>), but this meeting of their students simply ended in a friendly group portrait:<\/p>\n

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Waseda and Yale Film Studies United: A Group Portrait<\/p><\/div>\n

Photos by Mal Ahern (standing next to Chie) and Josh Glick –(almost hidden behind Sam Good). Incidentally Sam provided Masaki with hospitality for a couple of nights.\u00a0 So thanks go to Mal, Josh, Sam and above all to our administrative general\u00a0 Katherine Germano, who organized the whole event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In an earlier posting (Back in Japan: A Conference on Acting\u2013\u2013with Jet Lag), I mentioned that three graduate students from Waseda University (Tokyo, Japan) would be coming to Yale to present their scholarship.\u00a0 The story in brief:\u00a0 They would attend the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference in Boston (March 21-25, 2012), but their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=737"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":740,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737\/revisions\/740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}