Europe Japan Research Centre

Contact: alexanderjacoby@brookes.ac.uk +44 1865 484106

Announcement

Get your Masters or PhD with us and receive up to £10k/year with a Sasakawa Studentship! To receive an application, please contact hssresearch-degrees@brookes.ac.uk with “Sasakawa studentship” clearly labelled in the subject line. Deadline for applications will be 27th FEBRUARY 2023. Jason Danely (jdanely@brookes.ac.uk) is happy to discuss potential project with you.

About us

欧日研究会

The Europe Japan Research Centre (EJRC) was launched in 2001 and, since then, has brought over 200 academics, artists and other performers from around the world to Oxford Brookes for scholarly talks and other public events. In addition to this seminar series, the EJRC has hosted research conferences, supported visiting researchers, and published occasional papers. At the postgraduate level, we support students working on various aspects of Japanese Studies through the Masters by Research degree as well as through independent Mphil/PhD research.

EJRC has become a home for researchers in Japanese Studies across the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences with a wide range of research expertise, including Japanese cinema, linguistics, language pedagogy, religions of Japan, modern Japanese history, and contemporary Japanese culture.

Japanese ceremony

Part of

Related courses

Anthropology (BA (Hons) / BSc (Hons))
Japanese Studies (BA (Hons))
Social Anthropology (BA (Hons))

Leadership

Dr Alexander Jacoby

Senior Lecturer in Japanese Studies and Director of Europe Japan Research Centre

View profile

Membership

Staff

Name	Role	Email
Dr Jason Danely	Reader in Anthropology of Japan	jdanely@brookes.ac.uk
Dr Hanako Fujino	Senior Lecturer in Japanese Language and Linguistics	hfujino@brookes.ac.uk
Professor Joy Hendry	Emeritus Professor of Anthropology	jhendry@brookes.ac.uk
Sumire Hori	Language Instructor in Japanese	shori@brookes.ac.uk
Dr Alexander Jacoby	Senior Lecturer in Japanese Studies and Director of Europe Japan Research Centre	alexanderjacoby@brookes.ac.uk
John LoBreglio	Senior Lecturer in Japanese Studies	jlobreglio@brookes.ac.uk
Dr Laurence Mann	Senior Lecturer in Japanese Language	lmann@brookes.ac.uk
Dr Louella Matsunaga	Programme Lead for Anthropology and Geography	lmatsunaga@brookes.ac.uk
Mrs Yumiko Ishiwata O'Meara	Language Instructor in Japanese	yishiwata@brookes.ac.uk
Dr Kerri Russell	Senior Lecturer in Japanese Language and Linguistics	kerri.russell@brookes.ac.uk

Students

Name	Thesis Title	Supervisors	Completed
Dr Sébastien Boret	New Buddhist “natural” funerals in Japan	Dr Mitchell Sedgwick, Professor Jeremy MacClancy, Professor Joy Hendry	2011
Alexandra Chesters	The Joy of Possessions and Decluttering in Japan and the West	Dr Jason Danely, Professor Jeremy MacClancy	Active
Dr Paola Esposito	Butoh and the West: A Performative Ethnographic Analysis of the Spread of Butoh-dance outside of Japan	Dr Mitchell Sedgwick, Professor Jeremy MacClancy	2014
Dr Anna Fraser	Medical properties of hot springs in Japan	Professor Chris McDonaugh, Professor Jeremy MacClancy, Professor Joy Hendry	2013
Dr Douglas Frewer	The social agency of postage stamps: Japanese postage stamps in a global context	Catherine Atherton, Professor Jeremy MacClancy, Professor Joy Hendry	2004
Dr Duccio Gasparri	Locals, New-locals, Non-locals: (Re)mapping people and food in post-disaster Ishinomaki, Japan	Professor Jeremy MacClancy, Dr Louella Matsunaga	2020
Dr Ruth Martin	Opportunity and fulfilment: Overseas transfer and the Japanese housewife	James Roberson, Professor Joy Hendry	2004
Dr Stephanie Oeben	Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games in Europe and Japan: A Comparative Anthropological Study	Dr Mitchell Sedgwick, Professor Jeremy MacClancy	2013
Brittany Rapone	Cultural Influences Behind Exotic Pet Cafés in Japan and their Relation to the International Pet Trade	Professor Anna Nekaris, Dr Jason Danely	Active
Dr Ayumi Sasagawa	Life-choices: university educated mothers in a Japanese suburb	Dr Jane Ribbens-McCarthy, Professor Joy Hendry	2001
Dr Phil Sawkins	(Not) only connect – investigating the place of the mobile phone in Japanese lives	Dr Mitchell Sedgwick, Professor Joy Hendry	2007
Dr Katsunobu Shimizu	Spurning the Classroom: The discourse and reality of School Non-Attendance in Contemporary Japan		2009

Collaborators

Name	Role	Organisation
Professor Sébastien Boret	Associate Professor	Tohoku University
Peter Wynn Kirby	Senior Member	University of Oxford
Dr Ruth Martin	Associate Lecturer in Anthropology	Oxford Brookes University
Hirochika Nakamaki	Professor Emeritus	Osaka Museum of Ethnology
James Roberson	Professor of Anthropology	Tokyo Jogakkan College
Dr Mitchell Sedgwick	Senior visiting fellow and guest teacher	London School of Economics
Dr Bruce White	Executive Director	The Organisation for Intra-Cultural Development (OICD)

Projects

Active projects

Project title and description	Investigator(s)	Funder(s)	Dates
Japan 2020 Major online and in-venue survey of Japanese cinema from the silent era to the 21st century, timed to coincide with the (postponed) Tokyo Olympics now scheduled for summer 2021.	Dr Alexander Jacoby		From: January 2020
Eastern Buddhist Editorship John Lo Breglio moonlights as editor of the academic journal, carrying articles on all aspects of Buddhism as well as English translations of classical Buddhist texts and works by modern Buddhist thinkers. The journal was founded in 1921 by renowned scholar of Buddhism, D. T. Suzuki, and his wife, Beatrice Lane Suzuki. John is currently preparing for the centennial issue.	John LoBreglio		From: April 2017
Exploring Global Jodo Shinshu Through Ritual Practice: Histories, Transformations and Localisations Dr Louella Matsunaga, in collaboration with Dr Enrique Galvan-Alvarez (Universidad Internacional de La Rioja-UNIR) and Professor Mitsuya Dake (Ryukoku University).	Dr Louella Matsunaga	Numata Foundation	From: September 2020

Completed projects

Project title and description	Investigator(s)	Funder(s)	Dates
Comparison of older ex-offender resettlement and community-based organisations for reducing recidivi This research involved a year of fieldwork with ex-offender rehabilitation NGOs in the Tokyo area and western England.	Dr Jason Danely	SSRC, Sasakawa Foundation	From: April 2016 Until: April 2020
Kawashima: The Missing Link Retrospective films by Japanese director Yuzo Kawashima (1918-1963) at Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna. The latest programme in an ongoing collaboration with this festival inaugurated in 2012.	Dr Alexander Jacoby		From: January 2020 Until: December 2020
Poetry, song, heritage: the Poetic Mind	Dr Laurence Mann	John Fell Fund	From: January 2019 Until: December 2020
Can the music of poetry transcend cultural and linguistic barriers?	Dr Manon Jones	Creative Multilingualism	From: January 2018 Until: December 2020

Let's Read Japanese

One of the most frustrating problems for students learning Japanese is the relative absence of good reading material which allows them to both practice the language at different levels, and also learn about Japanese history and society. The Let’s Read Japanese series fulfills this need by providing graded, engaging stories for all learners of Japanese.

The books include famous stories from Japan and other parts of the world - re-tellings of traditional stories, classic tales, Japanese legends and poems, as well as some newly-commissioned stories - all designed to introduce particular aspects of Japanese culture and society. The stories complement any textbook being used by a learner of Japanese anywhere in the world; the books are ideal for those learning in language schools or through self-study.

Podcasts