Lecture Videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKQvL47lC08 On June 9, 2025, Alicia Volk, Professor of Japanese Art at the University of Maryland, discussed 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 shows how the forgotten art of…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6wUvfuEcaw On May 20, 2025, John T. Carpenter, Mary Griggs Burke Curator of Japanese Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, gave 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…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=if5bomVbF3A The Worcester (Massachusetts) Art Museum has a fine collection of Japanese art, and on April 21, 2025, Fiona Collins-Rosedahl, Assistant Curator of Asian Art, discussed the museum’s print exhibition Pictures of a Changing Japan: The Evolution of Shin Hanga (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…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcxA4O_QqLs Dr. Matthew McKelway, Takeo and Itsuko Atsumi Professor of Japanese Art History, Art History and Archeology at Columbia University giving a talk on “Birds, Diplomacy and Painting in 16th-Century Japan.” View more lecture recordings

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNx0Lk3LTa8 On February 24, 2025, Samuel Leiter, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Theater at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of CUNY, spoke 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,…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFNTjOv3vU0 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 January 20, 2025, talk, Dr. Sol Jung examines examples of contemporary Japanese…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0E4BIU8pKIA On December 11, 2024, JASA’s annual holiday program lecture focused on New Horizons for Japanese Art at the Princeton University Art Museum. Reopening in fall 2025 after a multi-year closure, the new Princeton University Art Museum will feature a suite of galleries devoted to the display of Asian Art. As guest speaker Dr. Kit Brooks notes, “The new museum—double the size of its previous…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpWnzMdpOgA On October 22, 204, Claudia Orenstein, Professor of Theatre at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, presented this live webinar on bunraku, also known as ningyō jōruri, a multidimensional art that marries exquisitely carved puppet figures, operated by teams of performers, with dramatic narration to shamisen accompaniment. Drawing from early ritual practices and the work of medieval itinerant bards, in the Edo period,…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BL0HAmIT6BI On September 25, 2024,  JASA hosted a webinar with Scottish multidisciplinary artist Paul Binnie, who works in the tradition of Japanese woodblock printing, particularly shin-hanga. Paul speaks about his early training as a painter in Scotland and then as a woodblock printmaker in Japan in the 1990s. He discusses the influences on his work, the changes that have taken place and the direction his…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJq05gBFEas Since the Pacific War, Japanese architects have been producing some of the world’s most innovative homes. These are the subject of architect and journalist Naomi Pollock‘s new book, The Japanese House Since 1945. Spanning eight decades, this book presents the most compelling examples and highlights key developments in form, organization, material, architectural expression and family living. In this June 13, 2024, lecture, the author…