This lecture will argue that the Hebrew Bible contains different views on nature and the environment, especially in relation to the destruction of the kingdom of Judah and its capital Jerusalem in 587 BCE. This event triggered different discourses of crisis management that will be analyzed with the help of a German sociologist Armin Steil who distinguishes three attitudes toward crisis also found in the Hebrew Bible: 1) The prophetic attitude: belief that crisis will lead to a new creation with harmony between humans, nature, and animals; 2) The mandarin attitude: view of disasters as divine punishment without much interest in the environment; and 3) The priestly attitude: construction of a mythic past that offers rituals for the present with interest in the place of humans in their environment. The last discourse offers an important reflection about a possible harmony between all beings.

Zoom Webinar
Thursday, 22 May, 13:00–14:30 JST

Texts travel across continents and cultures, translated from every language, taught in universities worldwide, and forming an emerging global canon. Never before have we been so free to read whatever we wish, from anywhere. Or so it seems. But is this true freedom, or merely a comforting illusion? What are the boundaries of this seemingly limitless literary exchange? This talk aims to explore those limits and propose a new approach to literature.

Zoom Webinar
Thursday, 8 May, 10:30–12:00 JST

On a crisp and windy Tuesday morning in mid-February, members of the Heritage Studies and Global History Groups based at Tokyo College, together with a small contingent of associated academic visitors, visited Yoshimi Hyakuana in Saitama Prefecture. We were fortunate to visit this extraordinary site with Korea University Professor Jung-Sun Nina Han...

Mark TURIN, Andrew GORDON
March 4, 2025

This blog post was created as part of the interdisciplinary zengaku seminar "Knowledge Encounters in Global History and the Contemporary World" offered at the University of Tokyo during the 2023-2024 academic year.

KAWASAKI Takehiro
December 20, 2024

Tokyo College is an organization like no other. Founded in 2019 to serve as an interface between the University of Tokyo and overseas researchers and research institutions, our core philosophy centers around the “Joy of Discovery and Power of Knowledge.”

Japan outlaws gender discrimination in virtually the same terms as every equivalent country and yet it ranks 118th out of 146 countries, 111 notches below Germany, 103 below the US. Why? Is it that Japanese culture demands women remain meekly at home? If so, why do women graduate from universities at a higher rate than men? Why do they participate in the work force at a high rate? Why do they bring – and win – employment discrimination suits? This lecture will explore these questions and offer tentative – extremely tentative – observations on the reasons.

Zoom Webinar
Wednesday, May 7, 2025, 10:30-12:00 JST