Conference: At the Roots of Visual Japan. Word-text dynamics in early-modern Japan

This two-day international conference, organised by the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge, brings together scholars in the field of Japanese early-modern literature with a specific remit: to examine the interaction of text(s) and image(s) in a systematic manner across the main genres of early-modern popular prose and poetry in print. This is done in dialogue with scholars who work on comics, graphic prose and manga.

Building on the methodology developed in influential works on Western illustrated texts each presentation discusses selected case studies from Japanese early-modern sources, in order to offer preliminary answers to specific research questions.

Presentations are closed each day by a wrap-up session with a view to sum up the answers emerged during the day, to highlight new research questions, and to offer points of discussion for the roundtable. A roundtable closes the conference, featuring scholars of comics, graphic prose and manga. The goal is to position early-modern Japan in a continuum with contemporary Japan and to view its visual culture as an integral part of visual cultures around the World and across time.