The Party and the World Dialogue 2015

Sean Golden, member of the Inter-Asia research group took part as an invited guest in The Party and the World Dialogue 2015 organised by the China Center for Contemporary World Studies (CCCWS), a think tank of the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China from 7-10/09/2015 and dedicated to the topic of:

To Discipline the Party: Responsibility of the Party

He participated as Rapporteur for Panel 3, dedicated to:

Governing the Party according to rules: state laws and Party Disciplines?

Inaugural Conference of the International Yeats Society

Sean Golden, member of the Inter-Asia research group, spoke at the 1st annual conference of the International Yeats Society, A Writer Young and Old: Yeats at 150, at the University of Limerick Ireland, 15-18/10/2015, on the topic of:

The Ghost of Fenollosa in the Wings of the Abbey

 Abstract

Ernest Fenollosa’s unpublished manuscripts on Noh theatre influenced W.B. Yeats explicitly in 1913. Prior to that, Fenollosa’s publications on Chinese and Japanese art, and his theories of design, also influenced the works of Yeats. Correspondence among Yeats, Frank Fay, J.M. Synge and Lady Gregory in November 1904 regarding tree wings for the Abbey Theatre finds Yeats searching for an effect from Japanese prints he was researching at the British Museum and he confides in the taste of Pamela Colman Smith, in his own words, the only person who understood what he was seeking. In March 1909 Yeats is discussing Laurence Binyon’s Painting of the Far East, published in 1908, the year that Fenollosa died. Binyon wrote an obituary for Fenollosa in Littell's Living Age, and the Introduction to that book announces forthcoming studies on Chinese and Japanese art that Fenollosa’s widow would publish posthumously, prior to passing his papers on to Ezra Pound. Binyon’s studies draw heavily on Fenollosa’s published work. Pamela Colman Smith collaborated with Jack B. Yeats, and Lily Yeats, as well as W.B. Yeats. She studied design at the Pratt Institute in New York with Arthur Wesley Dow from 1893 to 1897, shortly before becoming involved with the Yeats circle and Edward Gordon Craig’s family. That was when Dow assisted Fenollosa in cataloguing East Asian art in Boston. Dow’s textbook on Composition draws heavily and explicitly on Fenollosa’s theories. The extent to which Fenollosa’s ghost inhabits the wings of the Abbey deserves greater scrutiny.

XV EastAsiaNet Workshop. Water in East Asia. Interfacing Environmental Risk

Sean Golden, member of the Inter-Asia research group, took part in the  XV EastAsiaNet Workshop. Water in East Asia. Interfacing Environmental Risk, Culture & Society, held at the Università Ca'Foscari Venezia from 14-16/05/2015, on the topic of:

A discourse analysis of the communication of ecological risk and its subsequent management in China

Abstract

This paper will study three sources of discourse for the communication of ecological risk in China and its subsequent management: the discourse of informal, nongovernmental or emergent civil society communication of ecological risk (social movements, protest movements, critical analysis of risk and governmental policy); the discourse of formal or academic, nongovernmental communication of ecological risk (academics, advisers, opinion-makers); the official, governmental communication of ecological risk (official think tanks, ministry documents). The working hypothesis of this study is that even though awareness of ecological risk is high among the emergent civil society, the ministry advisers and the policy-makers, the management of ecological risk is hampered by contradictory priorities and criteria in the meritocratic evaluation of performance by government and Party officials, on the one hand, and the generation of wealth, on the other. This debate is analogous to the debate on efficiency (the generation of wealth) and equity (the redistribution of wealth) in the field of economic planning and performance.

White Rose East Asia Centre & Foreign and Commonwealth Office workshop

On 17-18 March 2015, Sean Golden, member of the Inter-Asia research group, participated in the White Rose East Asia Centre and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office workshop on Cultural diplomacy and soft power in East Asia: China, Japan, South Korea organised by the White Rose East Asia Centre at Sheffield University (UK).

He spoke on the topic:

Hymn Sheets Versus Jam Sessions. Can Cultural Diplomacy Promote Plurality? Chinese perceptions of value diplomacy and their implications for policy-making

Abstract

An analysis of the Chinese policy papers on the EU reveals the importance of “culture” in diplomacy for the Chinese government. They always stress the fact that both China and Europe have millennial cultures. The corollary of this affirmation would be that other countries (the US in particular) do not have millennial cultures. This suggests a bemusement on the Chinese side that Europe should not automatically recognize that it has more in common with China than with the US. Presumably, for the Chinese side, were Europe to recognize this element it has in common with China, then Sino-European relations would be smoother. Five thousand years of Chinese culture should represent a powerful patrimony of values but the Chinese government may not be capable of turning this patrimony to its advantage in the form of value diplomacy. The creation of hundreds of Confucius Institutes around the world is a clear example of cultural diplomacy, but the CIs are experiencing teething problems that threaten to undermine their efficacy in terms of values-based diplomacy. To some extent these problems may be due to structural problems, to an erroneous vision of the role of the government in the running of the CIs. To some extent they may be due to an erroneous calculation of the proper relationship between an “official” cultural centre and a Higher Education Institution. To some extent they may due to incapacity on the part of the Chinese government to allow for autonomy or to its insistence on exercising government control, even censorship, over the activities of the CIs. This problem of interference is not limited to Chinese value diplomacy. The Japanese government has recently intervened to demand that the publishing house McGraw-Hill modify its history textbooks in the US because they refer to “comfort women” whose existence the Japanese government does not admit. Every year there is controversy because the contents of Japanese history textbooks offend the neighbouring countries in East and Southeast Asia that suffered Japanese imperial aggression. Recently the Spanish Instituto Cervantes has censored public events designed to launch books with a revisionist view of Spanish history. On another level of influence, the unwritten “Beijing Consensus” may have a more powerful effect in the developing world than the written “Washington Consensus”, and Chinese “no strings attached” foreign aid may be displacing the EU’s foreign aid restricted by conditionality. There is a debate about the extent to which the Chinese government understands the way in which soft power works, or whether it is capable of exercising soft power or even whether it even cares about soft power. The debate over “Asian Values” as opposed to Euroamerican “Universal Values” was dimmed by the 1997 Asian financial crisis but Chinese intellectuals and advisers have become increasingly more confident in China’s return to a preeminent role in world affairs, including the definition of “values” and the possibility of renovated Confucian values offering an attractive alternative to the values espoused by formerly imperialist metropoles. The most basic consideration could be the extent to which values emerge from sociocultural practice and the extent to which they can be instrumentalised; in other words, the extent to which officialdom can tolerate diversity, plurality and free-thinking and the extent to which it must promote a specific agenda.

Japan for Sligo via W.B. Yeats and Ernest Fenollosa

With the support of the Japan Foundation and the Embassy of Japan in Ireland, and in collaboration with Blue Raincoat Theatre Company, The Model, the Centre for East Asian Studies & Research of the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, the Yeats Society of Sligo and Sligo Institute of Technology, Sean Golden, member of the Inter-Asia research group, organised for the Yeats Foundation of Sligo from 10 to 13 November 2015 a four day festival dedicated to the influence of Japan on W.B. Yeats and on Sligo, past and future.

One hundred years ago Yeats learned about Japanese theatre through his contact with the manuscripts of Ernest Fenollosa’s work on Noh and through his meeting of the Japanese dancer and choreographer Michio Ito. The result was, as Yeats wrote at the time, that he “invented a form of drama”. The first example was his play At the Hawk’s Well. Yeats was already well-acquainted with Japanese art through his collaboration on set design with Edward Gordon Craig and Pamela Colman Smith. Fenollosa had been one of Smith’s teachers and she shared his esthetic with Jack B. Yeats and with Lily and Lolly Yeats.

It could be said that the Yeats family’s contact with Japan a century ago led to the globalisation of their work. A hundred years later we have an opportunity to consolidate Sligo’s contacts with Japan in order to renew the globalization of Sligo.

To this end the festival began with a contemporary performance inspired by a verse by W.B. Yeats. Composer and musician Trevor Knight, together with artist Alice Maher and the Japanese butoh choreographer and dancer Gyohei Zaitsu presented “A Skein Unwound …” on Tuesday, 10 November at The Model. This new work of art, especially created for the festival, demonstrated the continuing vitality of collaboration between Irish and Japanese artists.

Yeats was influenced by Japanese theatre but his own work has also influenced contemporary Japanese theatre. On Wednesday, 11 November, Masaru Sekine, theatre director and Yeats scholar, together with the producer Ms Noriko Kawahashi, presented his opera Hone-no-yume, based on Yeats’ play The Dreaming of the Bones at The Factory Performance Space.

On Thursday, 12 November, at The Factory Performance Space, under the heading of Japan for Sligo via Yeats and Fenollosa, Sean Golden made a multimedia presentation of the multiple links between the Yeats family, Sligo and Japan.

The festival culminated at Sligo Institute of Technology on Friday, 13 November, with a Brainstorming Workshop convened by Prof Vincent Cunnane, President of IT Sligo, for the purpose of outlining a strategic plan for increasing and consolidating relations between Sligo and Japan (by invitation).

Mr Chihiro Atsumi, Ambassador of Japan celebrated, “I am very happy that a series of events related to Yeats and Japan will be held this November to offer people the opportunity to learn more about the Japanese influence on Yeats”, and continued, “I hope that people all over Ireland will deepen their interest in Japan and its culture, and that the close connections between Japan and Ireland will go from strength to strength in the years ahead”.