EVENT

Friday, 21 February 2025 9:00 - 10:15 JST/ Thursday February 20, 19:00 - 20:15 EST

Will President Trump demand higher defense spending by Japan? How will Japan respond? President Trump has pledged to negotiate a deal to end the Russia-Ukraine War in the first 100 days of his administration. Will it happen? How will he do that? What will the truce influence the situations in East Asia? Will Japan’s policy to advance defense technologies and promote defense industry succeed? Will Ishiba’s minority government be able to handle it?

Thursday, 27 February 2025, 15:00-16:30 JST

The past, it is said, is a foreign country, and historians seek to understand it without imposing present-day values. Yet inevitably, to write history is to engage in a dialogue between the past and the present. In this talk I will introduce my internal dialogue over the 25 years during which I wrote four editions of A Modern History of Japan, and am now considering a fifth edition.

Tuesday, 4 March 2024, 15:00-16:30 JST

This lecture explores the influence of the Japanese language on the global branding of Japan beyond its borders. It examines how the Japanese language is strategically employed to evoke distinct imagery, cultural significance, and authenticity. The session offers insights into the current landscape and future research directions of Japanese language as an important world language. Employing linguistic case studies from Germany and Hungary, the lecture highlights how Japanese writing elements are rephrased or combined with a product’s identity and with design cues evoking Japaneseness. Creatively adapted in new contexts overseas, the Japanese language has become a strong branding tool in Europe.

Thursday, 13 March, 2025, 16:00-18:00

The Global Partnership on AI (GPAI), established in June 2020, is an international initiative for the responsible development and use of AI based on the concept of “human-centered.” The GPAI has several working groups, one of which discusses the “Future of Work.” As part of this group’s project, an international interview survey is being conducted around the world to find out how our work will change as AI is introduced into the workplace. One of the unique methods of this survey is that the students who will be responsible for the future are interviewing companies and organizations.
At this event, following the survey report last year, we will introduce an overview of the survey conducted this year. Inviting students and faculty members who joined in this year’s project to share their observations on the “future of work” through the survey, we also discuss the possibilities and challenges of its methodological aspects. We would like to discuss future developments of the survey with companies, organizations, and students who are interested in this work.

Monday, 17 March 2025, 3:00 - 4:30 pm (Doors open: 2:00 pm)

Today, digital networks provide us with an abundance of information. We invest more than ever in education and science. Despite these achievements our mental, socio-economic and political conditions have not improved. They seem to be even deteriorating. Why? What is going wrong? What can we do better? What can the first information revolution 600 years ago teach us? Two leading Japanese scholars in the field of media and AI governance will discuss these questions with Yuval Harari, the world-famous thinker and best-selling author, who explores the risks and opportunities of the information age in his new book Nexus.

Tuesday, 18 February 2025, 15:00-16:30 JST

The Conservative-led British government's perception of China changed markedly between 2010 and 2024. In 2010, Prime Minister David Cameron described the rise of China as an opportunity. A decade on, the government described China as the biggest long-term threat to the UK's economic security and expressed increasing concerns about Chinese assertiveness overseas. During the same period, the UK and Japan built up an ever-closer security relationship. Did British government perceptions of China determine its policy towards Japan during this period, or were other factors just as influential? What approaches should we expect now from the new Labour government?

Friday, 14 February 2025 9:00 - 10:15 JST/ Thursday February 13, 19:00 - 20:15 EST

President-elect Donald Trump threatened to impose 60% tariffs on imports from China, 25% on imports from Canada and Mexico, and 10% on imports from the rest of the world. Three weeks after the inauguration, what are the prospects for those tariffs? If those are really implemented, what will Japan do? Will Japanese manufacturers just suffer huge declines in exports to the United States? Will Japanese manufacturers increase tariff-jumping investment in the U.S.? Will it turn out that they have already shifted enough production to the U.S. to avoid the negative impacts of tariffs entirely? If China and the EU retaliate the U.S. with their tariffs, a tariff war is likely to harm the global trades and cross-border investment. How will Japanese manufacturers respond?

Thursday, 13 February 2025, 10:00-11:30 JST

In her new book Everyday Ambassadors, Annelise Riles argues that we are on the cusp of an exciting new world order, where leadership is not just in the hands of few but of all. She argues that what the world needs now is many more diplomats--connectors, translators, interpretors, across political and cultural differences, between science and religion, between the arts and the technology world. In this talk, Prof. Riles will discuss her book, which synthesizes decades of legal and ethnographic research into seven "moves" that empower anyone to be a great diplomat right from where you are.

Wednesday, 29 January 2025, 15:00-16:30 JST

Around 60,000 years ago, at the time when humans successfully migrated out of Africa, something transformational happened. Homo sapiens must have experienced significant DNA changes that profoundly altered our capacity to compete for natural resources. Critical for this change in our behaviors was a new capacity for abstract thinking. Today with AI, we are on the brink of taking the final step away from Darwin’s principle of Survival of the fittest by rapidly evolving to escape our DNA dependence altogether and thereby our mortality as well.

Tuesday, 21 January 2025, 14:00-15:30 JST

As survivors raise their voices, the realities of sexual violence are gradually coming to light. Despite this increased attention, why does sexual violence continue to occur? This lecture examines the experiences of sexual violence survivors based on data collected from 38,383 responses to a 2022 NHK survey on the prevalence of sexual violence. It highlights the existence of rape myths in Japanese society, which perpetuate a pattern in which victims are blamed and suffer even further. Underlying these issues are societal norms of masculinity that sustain gender inequality. To eliminate sexual violence, it is essential to critically reexamine these societal norms.

Wednesday, 15 January 2025, 16:00-17:00 JST

At the University of Tokyo, a webinar was held on December 11, 2024, to explain the EU AI Act and the first draft of the CoP. In this webinar, we will provide an overview of the second draft released at the end of December and highlight important points that Japanese companies should particularly pay attention to.

Wednesday, 18 December 2024, 14:00-17:30 JST

Every Monday from December 2, 2024 (Available from 17:00 JST)

“The Salon” is a dialogue series featuring distinguished scholars in the humanities at the University of Tokyo that aims to transcend disciplinary boundaries. It is hosted by Professor Naoko Shimazu of Tokyo College and Professor John Lie of UC Berkeley, who is currently staying at Tokyo College.
We invite you to listen to an informal discussion between experts in different fields, as if you are sitting next to them.This is a chance to see a new side of our guests that you have never seen before.

Available from Friday, 13 December 2024 17:00 JST

H.E. Mr. Teimuraz LEZHAVA, Ambassador of Georgia to Japan, who has deep knowledge and insight into Japanese culture and business practices, and Professor SHIMAZU Naoko, a global historian who has studied Japan from an external perspective, will explore one of Tokyo College’s key research themes, “Japan viewed from the inside and outside.”
We invite you to join us for this insightful and engaging discussion.

Wednesday, 11 December 2024, 12:00-13:00 JST

This webinar will outline the overview of the EU-AI Act, the activities of four working groups involved in the formulation of the Code of Practice, and important points that Japanese companies and organizations should particularly pay attention to. 
We look forward to the participation of companies, research institutions, and development communities involved in the development, provision, and distribution of AI-related technologies as an opportunity to deepen understanding of the “Brussels Effect” brought about by EU regulatory trends and its impact on Japan. 

Wednesday, 11 December 2024 10:30-12:00 JST

Many low income countries face severe environmental problems. They also face an urgent need for tax revenue to finance social needs and economic development. Can environmental taxes provide a way to meet both objectives? Drawing on a recent book, this lecture will take stock of the most pressing of the many environmental challenges faced by low income countries—including in air quality, waste management, soil quality, deforestation, congestion, adaptation to climate change—and consider to what extent improved tax policy can simultaneously help address them and raise a significant amount of tax revenue.

Friday, 6 December 2024, 15:00-16:30

This lecture will cover ethnographic research on Filipino trans women or transpinay before, during, and after migration in Japan from the 1980s to the early 2000s. Drawing from an intersectional invisibility (Purdie-Vaughns & Eibach, 2008) framework, it will relate the Filipino trans women’s migration experiences to the cases of current issues transgender migrants are facing. This talk will also explore how social media and films create spaces to show and negotiate the (in)visibility of genders.