From acclaimed director Satoshi Kon (Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress) and Japan’s leading animation studio Mad House (X, Vampire Hunter D, Ninja Scroll) comes this visually and emotionally stunning tale of adventure, love, and redemption. In Tokyo, three homeless people’s lives are changed forever when they discover a baby girl at a garbage dump on Christmas Eve. As the New Year fast approaches, these three forgotten members of society band together to solve the mystery of the abandoned child and the fate of her parents. Along the way, encounters with seemingly unrelated events and people force them to confront their own haunted pasts, as they learn to face their future together. [Source: Sony Pictures] (92 min. Japanese with English subtitles) Free & Open only to Lehigh students/faculty/staff
Event Archive
Selected for the prestigious Director’s Fortnight at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival and winner of Best Screenplay at the Kinema Jumpo Awards, Miwa Nishikawa’s (Wild Berries) Sway is a psychologically thrilling portrait of the severe dysfunction behind a family clinging to decorum and pride.
Takeru is a successful photographer living the good life in Tokyo. On the first anniversary of his mother’s death, he reluctantly sets off to visit his hometown. Once there, he runs into Chieko, the girlfriend he had left behind. Events turn when an accident involving Chieko causes Takeru’s brother, Minoru, to be arrested. A trial begins, and as it progresses, years of suppressed anger and betrayal come to the surface, revealing a gulf of jealousy and resentment between the brothers that threatens to tear their family apart. [KIMSTIM] (120 min. Japanese with English subtitles)
Free & Open only to Lehigh students/faculty/staff
Asian Studies Travel Grant recipients will be sharing their experiences. Light Refreshments Served
Paul Schrader’s visually stunning, collagelike portrait of acclaimed Japanese author and playwright Yukio Mishima (played by Ken Ogata) investigates the inner turmoil and contradictions of a man who attempted an impossible harmony between self, art, and society. Taking place on Mishima’s last day, when he famously committed public seppuku, the film is punctuated by extended flashbacks to the writer’s life as well as by gloriously stylized evocations of his fictional works. With its rich cinematography by John Bailey, exquisite sets and costumes by Eiko Ishioka, and unforgettable, highly influential score by Philip Glass, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is a tribute to its subject and a bold, investigative work of art in its own right.
[Criterion Collection] (120 min. Japanese with English subtitles)
Free & Open only to Lehigh students/faculty/staff.
How do civil war commanders make their soldiers fight and risk their lives in combat? Why do some use physical violence to make their followers respond to orders, while others engage in complex psychological education and mental preparation? Why do some train their rank-and-file soldiers, while others simply hand them weapons without further preparations? And how do soldiers themselves respond to command structures and disciplinary systems? The lecture will provide answers to these questions and shed light on how power is reproduced in insurgent movements. It will explain the importance of social structure and, more precisely, the habitus of agents within the field of insurgency in maintaining hierarchy and command in organizing and enforcing consent. Commanders and soldiers, in this perspective, structure their disciplinary practice according to incorporated behavioral and cognitive schemes that relate to the social position of the respective agent and the patterns of his life course.
The lecture is based upon dozens of qualitative interviews with commanders and soldiers from three insurgent groups operating along the Thai-Cambodian border during the 1980s and 1990s. Using a technique called habitus hermeneutics, interviews were conducted with members of the Khmer People’s National Liberation Armed Forces (KPNLAF), the Armée Nationale Sihanoukiste (ANS), and the National Army of Democratic Kampuchea (NADK, better known as the Khmer Rouge). The lecture will provide insights into the social structure of these groups and how power becomes reproduced through disciplinary practice.
1958 Japanese film directed by Kon Ichikawa and adapted from the Yukio Mishima novel The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. Told in an intricate flashback structure, Enjo dramatizes the psychological collapse of Goichi (Raizo Ichikawa), a young Buddhist acolyte from a dysfunctional family who arrives at a Kyoto temple--the Golden Pavilion--for further study. Goichi is haunted by two events--the discovery of his psychologically abusive mother’s infidelity, and the effect of the revelation upon his father.
[New Yorker Video] (99 min. Japanese with English subtitles)
Free & Open only to Lehigh students/faculty/staff.
As part of International Week 2015, come visit a photography exhibition featuring girls’ education in Cambodia. All of the photographs were taken by Dr. Sothy Eng, Professor of Practice in the College of Education. This exhibit will be on display November 5th -14th at the Barnes and Noble Café in the bookstore. All photos will be for sale. All proceeds will benefit the Caring for Cambodia, Lehigh University Partnership.
Sponsored by: Asian Studies, CIE Club, Global Union, Sustainable Development Program, & Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
In an analysis of the influence of a non-Chinese dynasty on the evolution of traditional Chinese architecture from the tenth century through the seventeenth century, Dr. Zuo will discuss the technical and artistic changes effected by the Mongol Yuan Dynasty (1215-1368) upon the “elegance” of Song Dynasty (960-1279) architecture and the legacy of that effect on Ming Dynasty (1368=1644) constructions.
Dr. Zuo is an architectural historian specializing in East Asian architecture and historic preservation.