January–December 2025
January • February • March • April • May • June • July • September • October • November • December
The following is an archive of past Japanese Art Society of America lectures and special events. Go to JASA-Sponsored Events for our most current schedule.
December
Wednesday, December 10, 5 p.m. ET
Live Zoom Webinar
The Art of Yoshida Chizuko
Dr. Jeannie Kenmotsu, Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Curator of Asian Art at the Portland Art Museum, will explore the career of groundbreaking 20th-century painter and printmaker Yoshida Chizuko (née Inoue, 1924–2017), a pioneering woman modernist in Japan. As a young painter, Yoshida Chizuko made remarkable inroads in the male-dominated, often conservative, art establishment of mid-century Japan, securing coveted prizes and invitations to join distinguished art societies. Committed to forging her own style of radical modernism and gifted with a brilliant sense of color and pattern, Chizuko’s work engaged with abstraction for over 60 years. However, today she is best known as a member of the Yoshida family of artists into which she married. This lecture is informed by the artist’s first major retrospective exhibition, titled Yoshida Chizuko, and presents a new understanding of Chizuko’s six-decade artistic career. The exhibition is on view at the Portland Art Museum until January 4, 2026, and brings together over 100 works—many of which have never been seen outside Japan.
The video for this Zoom event has been posted here.
November
Tuesday, November 11, 5 p.m. ET
Live Zoom Webinar
Japan’s Manga Revolution: From Painted Scrolls to Comic Books
Dr. Andreas Marks, Mary Griggs Burke Curator of Japanese and Korean Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, will provide an overview of Japanese illustrated books in premodern times. Storytelling has always played an important role in Japanese visual arts. Over a thousand years ago, painted hand scrolls began to appear in Japan that enhanced text with pictures. This tradition of interplay between word and image continued in the form of illustrated books and remains active today in modern manga comics. This talk coincides with the release of his latest book, Japan’s Manga Revolution: From Painted Scrolls to Comic Books. Covering subjects from poetry to celebrated beauties, famous kabuki actors to adventure tales, this survey ends with the birth of political cartoons in Japan in the early 20th century.
The video for this Zoom event has been posted here.
October
Monday, October 6, 5 p.m. ET
Live Zoom Webinar
Exploring the Art of Manga
Dr. Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere, Research Director of the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Art and Culture at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, England, will speak on manga, a Japanese visual narrative art form that has evolved over the past century into a global phenomenon. Once referring primarily to comics and graphic novels, manga now encompasses digital media, fine art, fashion and other cultural expressions, achieving immense international reach. In Japan, manga is read across all generations and is a thriving industry, with 2023 domestic revenues reaching approximately ¥694 billion ($4.7 billion US dollars).
Over the last two decades, exhibitions of manga in Japan have typically highlighted the work of a single publisher or artist. In contrast, the British Museum’s 2019 exhibition presented original drawings (genga) by 50 artists within a historical framework. From September 25, 2025, to January 25, 2026, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco will stage The Art of Manga, an ambitious exhibition of drawings by ten leading contemporary artists. This lecture introduces manga as a compelling art form by focusing on these two major exhibitions, both curated by Dr. Rousmaniere.
Please note: Due to copyright restrictions, we must ask that the slides shown during this lecture not be “screen grabbed” and disseminated through social media. For a link to Dr. Rousmaniere’s new publication, The Art of Manga, published to coincide with the exhibition, click here. It contains many of the images to which Dr. Rousmaniere will refer during the webinar.
The video for this Zoom event has been posted here.
September
Sunday, September 14, 2–4 p.m.
Midtown New York City (Location to be provided after registration)
JASA Collector Show and Tell
The Japanese Art Society of America (JASA), originally founded as the Ukiyo-e Society of America in 1973, traces its origins back to the tradition of Collector Show and Tell gatherings. These informal events were the heart of our community, where collectors came together to share and discuss their treasured Japanese artworks. In honor of these early days, we are thrilled to invite you to a special JASA Collector Show and Tell event, bringing back this cherished tradition.
Join JASA Board Member and collector Elias Martin as we revisit this beloved custom. Bring one or two Japanese prints from any period or genre to share and discuss with fellow JASA members. This casual, engaging gathering offers a unique opportunity to connect with like-minded individuals who share a passion for Japanese art, whether you’re an experienced collector or new to the field.
July
Thursday, July 29, 5 p.m. ET
Live Zoom Webinar
Hiroshige: Artist of the Open Road
This online introduction to the British Museum’s exhibition Hiroshige: Artist of the Open Road, on view through September 7, will include not only an overview by the lead curator, Alfred Haft, but also a chance to hear from one of its featured lenders, U.S. collector Alan Medaugh, about his long-standing passion for Hiroshige prints.
The video for this Zoom event has been posted here.
Tuesday, July 29, 3 p.m. ET
Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Ave.
New York, NY
The Three Perfections: Japanese Poetry, Painting and Calligraphy
JASA members will have another opportunity for an in-person tour of the current Met exhibition The Three Perfections: Japanese Poetry, Painting, and Calligraphy, led by curator John T. Carpenter. (See the description below.) Please note that after The Three Perfections closes on August 3, the Arts of Japan Galleries will be undergoing renovation and won’t reopen until December.
June
Thursday, June 26, 3 p.m. ET
Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Ave.
New York, NY
The Three Perfections: Japanese Poetry, Painting and Calligraphy
John T. Carpenter, Mary Griggs Burke Curator of Japanese Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, will guide JASA members on in-person tour of the current exhibition The Three Perfections: Japanese Poetry, Painting, and Calligraphy, from the Mary and Cheney Cowles Collection.
In East Asian cultures, the arts of poetry, calligraphy and painting are traditionally referred to as the “Three Perfections.” This exhibition presents over 160 rare and precious works—all created in Japan over the course of nearly a millennium—that showcase the power and complexity of the three forms of art. Examples include folding screens with poems brushed on sumptuous decorated papers, dynamic calligraphy by Zen monks of medieval Kyoto, hanging scrolls with paintings and inscriptions alluding to Chinese and Japanese literary classics, ceramics used for tea gatherings, and much more.
The majority of the works are among the more than 250 examples of Japanese painting and calligraphy donated or promised to The Met by Mary and Cheney Cowles, whose collection is one of the finest and most comprehensive assemblages of Japanese art outside Japan.
Monday, June 9, 5 p.m. ET
Live Zoom Webinar
In the Shadow of Empire: Art in Occupied Japan
Alicia Volk, Professor of Japanese Art at the University of Maryland, will speak about her new book, In the Shadow of Empire: Art in Occupied Japan. This publication unearths an immensely creative yet almost entirely overlooked body of Japanese art. Introducing captivating but little-known paintings, prints, and sculpture made during the US occupation (1945–1952), her talk will show how the forgotten art of a country in the shadow of the Japanese and American empires variously accommodated and resisted the Cold War global realignment that followed on the heels of World War II.
The video for this Zoom event has been posted here.
May
Tuesday, May 20, 5 p.m. ET
Live Zoom Webinar
The Three Perfections: Japanese Poetry, Calligraphy, and Painting
John T. Carpenter, Mary Griggs Burke Curator of Japanese Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, will give an overview of the themes covered in the recently published book The Three Perfections: Japanese Poetry, Calligraphy, and Painting, co-authored with Tim T. Zhang, research associate in the Department of Asian Art. This volume and the exhibition it accompanies—co-curated with Mr. Zhang and Monika Bincsik, Diane and Arthur Abbey Curator of Japanese Decorative Arts—serve to commemorate the extraordinary gift of more than 300 Japanese paintings and calligraphies to The Met from Seattle-based collectors Mary and Cheney Cowles.
The five primary areas addressed in the book include: kana calligraphy of the 11th to 14th centuries; bokuseki, or Zen monks’ calligraphies of medieval times; courtly styles of calligraphy and paintings of the early modern period; Ōbaku Zen calligraphy of the 17th century; and literati painting of the 18th and 19th centuries. By way of background, please see the in-depth interview with Cheney Cowles published in Impressions 41 (2020), “Cheney Cowles: A Seattle Collector Makes a Statement.”
The video for this Zoom event has been posted here.
April
Monday, April 21, 5 p.m. ET
Live Zoom Webinar
Pictures of a Changing Japan: The Evolution of Shin Hanga
The Worcester Art Museum has a fine collection of Japanese art, and we have invited Fiona Collins-Rosedahl, Assistant Curator of Asian Art, to discuss the museum’s new print exhibition Pictures of a Changing Japan: The Evolution of Shin Hanga that opens on March 29 and is on view until June 29.
Shin hanga, or “new prints,” emerged during a period of dramatic sociopolitical change in Japan as a nostalgic revival of collaborative, ukiyo-e-style woodblock printmaking. While capturing scenes of Japan’s vanishing traditional life, these artists incorporated Western-inspired techniques to create some of the most iconic Japanese prints of the 20th century.
Featuring works by masters including Kawase Hasui, Yoshida Hiroshi, Ito Shinsui, and Hashiguchi Goyo, the exhibition traces the evolution of shin hanga from its origins with publisher Watanabe Shozaburo in the 1910s, examining how Japan’s changing cultural landscape and the international reception of Japanese art shaped its development. Our speaker will explore the Worcester Art Museum’s key role in promoting shin hanga through exhibitions and programming that helped establish the genre internationally.
The video for this Zoom event has been posted here.
March
Friday, March 14, 5 p.m. ET
Japan Society
333 E. 47th St.
New York, NY
Annual meeting, with lecture
Preceding our JASA members’ annual meeting, Dr. Matthew McKelway, Takeo and Itsuko Atsumi Professor of Japanese Art History, Art History and Archeology at Columbia University will give a talk on “Birds, Diplomacy and Painting in 16th-Century Japan.” This event requires sign-up in advance.
The video for this Zoom event has been posted here.
February
Monday, February 24, 5 p.m. ET
Live Zoom Webinar
Meiji Kabuki: Japanese Theatre Through Foreign Eyes
Samuel Leiter, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Theater at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of CUNY, will speak on his latest book, Meiji Kabuki: Japanese Theatre through Foreign Eyes. This publication is an annotated collection of English-language documents by foreigners writing about Japan’s kabuki theater in the half-century after the country was opened to the West in 1853. Using memoirs, travelogues, diaries, letters and reference books, Meiji Kabuki contains all significant writing about kabuki by foreigners—resident or transient—during the Meiji period (1868–1912), well before the first substantial non-Japanese book on the subject was published.
Meiji Kabuki provides insights into how Western visitors—missionaries, scholars, diplomats, military officers, adventurers, globetrotters and even a precocious teenage girl—responded to a theater that had been almost entirely hidden from the world at large for over two centuries. The book reveals prejudices and misunderstandings, but also demonstrates the power of great theater to bring together people of differing cultural backgrounds despite the barriers of language, artistic convention and the very practice of theater-going.
Professor Leiter has published 31 books on Japanese theater, New York theater, Shakespeare and the great stage directors. Meiji Kabuki: Japanese Theatre through Foreign Eyes (2022) was selected as a Choice Reviews Academic Book of the Year. His most recent book is Brooklyn Takes the Stage: Nineteenth-Century Theater in the City of Churches (2024). He served as editor-in-chief of Asian Theatre Journal from 1992 to 2004. Among his many books on Japanese theater are Historical Dictionary of Japanese Traditional Theatre (2014); Kabuki at the Crossroads: Years of Crisis, 1952-1965 (2013); Rising from the Flames: The Rebirth of Theatre in Occupied Japan, 1945-1952 (2009); and the four-volume Kabuki Plays on Stag.
The video for this Zoom event has been posted here.
January
Monday, January 20, 5 p.m. EST
Live Zoom Webinar
Striking Objects: Contemporary Japanese Metalwork from the Shirley Z. Johnson Collection
Contemporary Japanese metalworking breathes life into traditional methods that have been passed down and practiced over generations. The history of Japanese metalworking evolved over two millennia, through cross-cultural exchange and internal innovation. Techniques unique to Japan flourished as metalworkers created armaments, Buddhist ornaments, and vessels used in Japanese tea practice.
In this talk, Dr. Sol Jung will examine examples of contemporary Japanese metalwork currently on view in the exhibition Striking Objects: Contemporary Japanese Metalwork. The exhibition (on view until January 11, 2026) focuses on the technique of tankin (鍛金; hammering) through metalworks that came to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art as part of the bequest of the late Shirley Z. Johnson (1940–2021), a distinguished lawyer, philanthropist, and former board member of the NMAA. Shirley Z. Johnson’s passion for contemporary Japanese metalwork and her visionary gift have made the National Museum of Asian Art home to the largest collection of such works in the United States.
Sol Jung joined the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art in 2021 as the inaugural Shirley Z. Johnson assistant curator of Japanese art. She oversees the museum’s collection of prehistoric to contemporary Japanese ceramics, lacquerware, metalwork and textiles. Jung received her B.A. with distinction in History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Art and Archaeology from Princeton University.
The video for this Zoom event has been posted here.