EVENT

Wednesday, December 3, 2025, 15:00-16:00 JST

In 2024 the UNESCO World Heritage Committee listed the gold mines on Sado island as world heritage sites with significantly less controversy than in 2015, when the cluster of Meiji Era Industrial Revolution sites, mainly in Kyushu, were listed. At issue in both cases was the way these industrial heritage sites would describe the treatment of wartime foreign laborers, Koreans in particular, who were brought to Japan and forced to work against their will. The Sado case generated less controversy mainly because the Japanese side offered a fuller and more honest account. In this presentation I explore the reasons for this difference with particular attention to the role of local civil society actors.

Wednesday, December 10, 2025, 15:00-16:00 JST (14:30 Open)

In this interview, Tokyo College Ushioda Fellow Alastair Morgan will share with the audience some fascinating insights on three decades as a British diplomat. Retired in 2019, Alastair Morgan spent his diplomatic postings in Asia, namely Tokyo, Beijing, Guangzhou, and Pyongyang. What was his life like as a British diplomat? What were the challenges he faced in his various postings? How does a diplomat balance the needs of a local posting with the needs of Whitehall? This will be a unique opportunity to gain insight through Alastair Morgan’s reflections on his life as a British civil servant and diplomat in Asia from the 1980s onwards.

Wednesday, 17 December 14:00-15:00

What is the big picture of global politics, and can we even draw one? Three simultaneous dynamics shape global developments, yet they are difficult to think together. ...

Wednesday, January 7, 2026, 14:00-15:00 JST

In economics, there is a well-known idea that new technologies and ideas replace older ones, driving progress. This concept, known as "creative destruction," was a central theme in the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics. In contrast, physics teaches us the principle of conservation: nothing is lost, everything simply changes form. So, is economic progress truly about destruction—or is it more about transformation? In this lecture, a physicist and an economist will explore the differences between these perspectives, and discuss topics such as sustainable growth and the power of human imagination, in a way that is accessible to all.

Wednesday, 14 January 14:00-15:00

The body politic has, since the Middle Ages, provided an enduring analogy in Europe for describing the ‘right’ kind of political organisation. In this talk I explain how this analogy was turned inside out by the scientific discoveries made around the real body in16th and 17th centuries Europe.

Tuesday, 25 July 2023, 1:00-2:30pm (12:30pm Doors Open)

“Ukraine today could be East Asia tomorrow,” Prime Minister Kishida has warned. But how to prevent this? America’s allies, including Japan and the Philippines, are seeking to build a network of deterrence. How can this be combined with diplomacy? Could deterrence become provocation? This lecture will explain and explore these dilemmas.

Thursday, 20 July 2023, 4:00-5:30 pm

In this online launch of “Plural Entanglements: Philippine Studies,” anthropologist Dr. Dada DOCOT discusses the ethic of scholarly generosity, plurality, and diversity that frames this newly edited volume, and Dr. Grace BARRETTO-TESORO introduces their chapter that uses Indigenous perspectives to rebuild a chronology that advances a decolonial approach in the study of Asia.

Tuesday, 18 July 2023, 16:00-17:00 JST

In this talk, Prof. IMAI Mutsumi discusses how language, culture, perception, and cognition interact with one another across different domains, speculating how cultural identity might emerge though this process.

Tuesday, 18 July 2023, 17:00-18:30 JST

In this workshop, we discuss approaches to national, ethnic and personal identities in psychology and behavioral sciences. This workshop aims to present an up-to-date picture of the theory and practice of psychology in the context of relations between language and identity.

Tuesday, 11 July 2023, 15:00-16:30 JST

That we face a massive environmental crisis is widely accepted, but most people will agree that little has been done to avert it. To the extent that a solution is mooted, it is almost always techno-scientific in nature. In this lecture I suggest limitations of techno-scientific knowledge: first, in offering a belated understanding of the crisis; and, second, in vitiating non-scientific discussions and solutions.

Monday, 3 July 2023, 3:00-4:30 pm

Songbirds use learned vocal signals to communicate information about their species, their identity, and even their emotional state. We study how the songbird brain decodes this information to allow songbirds to use song for recognition, mate selection, and forming long-lasting social bonds. By doing so, we gain broad insight into the neural basis of vocal communication across animal species, including in humans.

Thursday, 29 June 2023, 4:00-5:30 pm

The world is on the brink of genuinely fundamental reform of the century-old arrangements for taxing multinationals. The aims are to reduce the scope for tax avoidance by companies and put a brake on international tax competition between governments. But what exactly will change? And will the proposed reforms achieve their objectives?

Wednesday, 21 June 2023, 9:00 am - 10:00 am (JST)

By framing the Economic Partnership Agreement as a form of language policy, Dr. OTOMO Ruriko demonstrates that the trade policy represents contemporary language issues that have important consequences for language (education) policies and for discourses about the state, language, migration, and healthcare.

Friday, 16 June 2023, 4:00 pm -5:30 pm

This lecture will present a neural model of two of humans’ most fundamental cognitive feats, i.e., the ability to interpret linguistic instructions in order to perform novel tasks with no training, and the ability to describe solutions to new tasks with full sentences.

Tuesday, 13 June 2023, 10:30 am - 12:00 pm

Climate change, industrial development, and population growth continuously increase the need for freshwater worldwide. Unconventional wastewater and saline sources must be tapped to reduce the stress on natural resources. However, producing freshwater from unconventional streams requires significantly more energy than traditional ways. While energy needs will always be high, innovative methods will rely on renewable energy, reduce the process complexity, and increase the socio-economic feasibility of desalination. This lecture discusses challenges and opportunities of these methods and the water-energy nexus.

Monday, 5 June 2023, 5:00 - 7:00pm JST

Plastic is essential for so many of the things we value in today’s world. But excessive and unplanned use of plastic worsens the conditions driving climate change and threatens the land, the seas and the lives of animals and humans.

Speakers on this panel will highlight issues including the chemical challenges plastic poses for the environment; the lives of waste-pickers who minimize the harm caused by discarded plastic; the science and economics confronting small-scale, local reuse of plastic; government mechanisms to coordinate the containment of plastic; and the dangers to animals and humans of micro-plastics in diverse forms.

Friday, 2 June 2023, 3:00 pm - 4:30 pm JST

The Anthropocene—the geological era dominated by human activities—is often associated with the climate change, ecological crisis, the sixth extinction, etc., or in brief, with an apocalyptic end. The recent acceleration of digital technology added more strength to the eschatological imagination which underlines the philosophy of history in the past centuries. In this sense, the Anthropocene is posed as a problem of modernity and it consequently calls for a new movement of overcoming modernity, which we can identify with the recent efforts of anthropologists such as Philippe Descola, Eduardo Vivieros de Castro, Bruno Latour among others, who want to undo the modern concept of nature. This talk will address this impasse of modernity and introduce what I call technodiversity as a response.