LECTURE AND ANNUAL MEETING DURING ASIA WEEK NEW YORK
We Do Not Work Alone: Kawai Kanjirō and Ceramics in Modern Kyoto
Sunday, March 22, 2026
Lecture at 11am & Annual Meeting at 12pm EST
Free for JASA members; Purchase tickets for nonmembers
Japan Society, 333 E. 47th St. NYC
Preceding our annual meeting at noon, Meghen Jones, Professor of Art History at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University will give the talk We Do Not Work Alone: Kawai Kanjirō and Ceramics in Modern Kyoto.
Registration is required whether attending the noon member meeting in person or via Zoom, or if attending the 11 a.m. lecture via Zoom.
The in-person lecture is a free ticketed event for JASA members; contact [email protected] for tickets. Nonmembers, please contact the Japan Society box office at (212) 715-1258. Only those with tickets will be admitted.
To learn more, click here.
RECENT ZOOM TALK
Staging the Samurai
Tuesday, March 3, 12 p.m. EST
Live Zoom Webinar
In this live webinar, Dr. Rosina Buckland, Asahi Shimbun Curator in the Department of Asia at the British Museum, will discuss the major exhibition Samurai currently on view at the museum until May 4. The exhibition examines the history and myths of the samurai, from their warrior origins in the 11th century to their pervasive presence in popular culture today. As Lead Curator, Dr. Buckland has also co-authored the accompanying book for the show. In her presentation, she will describe the thinking behind the exhibition and a sampling of the exhibits, as well as explain the broader scope of an associated research project. Dr. Buckland notes that within Japan’s history, the figure of the samurai is unique in its global intelligibility, reading as both symbol of Japan and a universal icon of the virtuous and fearless warrior, ripe for appropriation. Although the term is now commonly used in English and other languages, among the general public there is little understanding of the changing historical reality of the people called samurai, or of the wide variety of ways in which the stereotype has been used over time, both in Japan and elsewhere.
Please note: The program will start at noon EST, to accommodate our guest speaker, who is in the UK.
To register, click here.
RECENT ZOOM WEBINARS NOW ONLINE
Lecture: The Art of Yoshida Chizuko (Dr. Jeannie Kenmotsu)
December 10, 2026
Online
On December 10, 2025, Dr. Jeannie Kenmotsu, Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Curator of Asian Art at the Portland Art Museum, explored the career of groundbreaking 20th-century painter and printmaker Yoshida Chizuko (née Inoue, 1924–2017), a pioneering woman modernist in Japan. As a young painter, Yoshida Chizuko made remarkable inroads in the male-dominated, often conservative, art establishment of mid-century Japan, securing coveted prizes and invitations to join distinguished art societies. Committed to forging her own style of radical modernism and gifted with a brilliant sense of color and pattern, Chizuko’s work engaged with abstraction for over 60 years. However, today she is best known as a member of the Yoshida family of artists into which she married. This lecture is informed by the artist’s first major retrospective exhibition, titled Yoshida Chizuko, and presents a new understanding of Chizuko’s six-decade artistic career. The exhibition is on view at the Portland Art Museum until January 4, 2026, and brings together over 100 works—many of which have never been seen outside Japan.
To watch the lecture, click here.
Lyrically Rebellious: The Prints of Onchi Kōshirō
Tuesday, January 13, 2026 at 5pm ET
Online
If you missed our Januarly Zoom Webinar Lyrically Rebellious: The Prints of Onchi Kōshirō, the video is now posted on our site. For this live webinar, Stephen Salel, curator of Japanese Art at the Honolulu Museum of Art (HoMA) discussed an exhibition currently on view at HoMA that commemorates the 70th anniversary of the death of Onchi Koshirō (1891–1955), the leader of the Creative Prints (sōsaku hanga) movement and one of Japan’s first abstract artists. Thanks to the generosity of Honolulu-based collectors such as James Michener (1907–1997) and Oliver Statler (1915–2002), the Honolulu Museum of Art possesses the largest public collection of prints by Onchi outside of Japan.
To watch the lecture, click here.
Lecture: Japan’s Manga Revolution: From Painted Scrolls to Comic Books (Dr. Andreas Marks)
Tuesday, November 11, 2025 at at 5pm ET
Online
If you missed our November Zoom Webinar on Japan’s Manga Revolution: From Painted Scrolls to Comic Books, the video is now posted on our site. Dr. Andreas Marks, Mary Griggs Burke Curator of Japanese and Korean Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, provided an overview of Japanese illustrated books in premodern times. Storytelling has always played an important role in Japanese visual arts. Over a thousand years ago, painted hand scrolls began to appear in Japan that enhanced text with pictures. This tradition of interplay between word and image continued in the form of illustrated books and remains active today in modern manga comics. This talk coincided with the release of his latest book, Japan’s Manga Revolution: From Painted Scrolls to Comic Books. Covering subjects from poetry to celebrated beauties, famous kabuki actors to adventure tales, this survey ended with the birth of political cartoons in Japan in the early 20th century.
To watch the lecture, click here.
Exploring the Art of Manga
Monday, October 6, 2025 at 5pm (EST)
Online
If you missed our October Zoom Webinar on Exploring the Art of Manga, the video is now posted on our site. Dr. Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere, Research Director of the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Art and Culture at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, England, spoke on manga, a Japanese visual narrative art form that has evolved over the past century into a global phenomenon.
To watch the lecture, click here.
Hiroshige: Artist of the Open Road
Thursday, July 29, 2025 at 5pm (EST)
Online
If you missed our July Zoom Webinar on Hiroshige: Artist of the Open Road, the British Museum’s exhibition on view through September 7, the video is now posted on our site. This talk included both the lead curator, Alfred Haft, and one of its featured lenders, U.S. Hiroshige-print collector Alan Medaugh.
To watch the lecture, click here.
In the Shadow of Empire: Art in Occupied Japan
Monday, June 9, 2025 at 5pm (EST)
Online
For those who missed our June 6 webinar—a talk by Alicia Volk, Professor of Japanese Art at the University of Maryland, on her new book, In the Shadow of Empire: Art in Occupied Japan—we have posted the video on our site.
This publication unearths an immensely creative yet almost entirely overlooked body of Japanese art. Introducing captivating but little-known paintings, prints, and sculpture made during the US occupation (1945-1952), her talk will show how the forgotten art of a country in the shadow of the Japanese and American empires variously accommodated and resisted the Cold War global realignment that followed on the heels of World War II.
To watch the lecture, click here.
The Three Perfections: Japanese Poetry, Calligraphy, and Painting
Tuesday, May 20, 2025 at 5pm (ET)
Online
On May 20, 2025, John T. Carpenter, Mary Griggs Burke Curator of Japanese Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, gave an overview of the themes covered in the recently published book The Three Perfections: Japanese Poetry, Calligraphy, and Painting, co-authored with Tim T. Zhang, research associate in the Department of Asian Art. This volume and the exhibition it accompanies—co-curated with Mr. Zhang and Monika Bincsik, Diane and Arthur Abbey Curator of Japanese Decorative Arts—serve to commemorate the extraordinary gift of more than 300 Japanese paintings and calligraphies to The Met from Seattle-based collectors Mary and Cheney Cowles.
The five primary areas addressed in the book include: kana calligraphy of the 11th to 14th centuries; bokuseki, or Zen monks’ calligraphies of medieval times; courtly styles of calligraphy and paintings of the early modern period; Ōbaku Zen calligraphy of the 17th century; and literati painting of the 18th and 19th centuries. By way of background, please see the in-depth interview with Cheney Cowles published in Impressions 41 (2020), “Cheney Cowles: A Seattle Collector Makes a Statement.”
To watch the lecture , click here.
To view all past lectures, click here.
Impressions 46 (2025)
October 2025 (ET)
Check your mailbox: Impressions 46 (2025) has been sent out to JASA members. This issue features an essay by Kawashima Tadashi on Mauyama Matsutaro (1882-1935), founder of the famed Mayuyama gallery in Tokyo. An interview with Richard Danziger (1933-2024) reveals the collector’s life story and collecting strategy. There are book reviews by Gennifer Weisenfeld, J. Keith Vincent and Samuel Leiter, as well as tributes to Robbie Capp and Norman Tolman. (View the Table of Contents here.) Additional copies can be ordered for $25 (plus shipping) through the JASA Store or our online Publications Order Form.
PAST ASIA WEEK NEW YORK EVENT NOW ONLINE
Birds, Diplomacy and Painting in 16th-Century Japan
Friday, March 14, 2025 from 5-6pm (EST)
Japan Society Auditorium, 333 E. 47th St.
In-person and Online (kindly register in advance)
If you missed our recent Asia Week New York event, you can now watch the full talk online! Dr. Matthew McKelway—Takeo and Itsuko Atsumi Professor of Japanese Art History in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University—delivered a captivating lecture titled Birds, Diplomacy, and Painting in 16th-Century Japan.
To watch the lecture, click here.
Help Us Celebrate 50 Years of JASA!
The exhibition Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan, celebrating 50 years of the Japanese Art Society of America, opened at Asia Society Museum, New York, on October 3, 2023. One review called Meiji Modern a “perfect exhibition,” engaging both scholars and non-specialist visitors who are “thrilled to discover beautiful art they didn’t know and to learn its history in labels that are both clear and serious.”
JASA’s beautiful 272-page full-color catalog for the exhibition (cover above) takes a fresh look at the art of the Meiji period (1868-1912) through a selection of approximately 200 objects drawn from public and private collections across the United States, including newly discovered prints, photographs, textiles, paintings, and craft objects. Copies of the catalog can be ordered through the JASA Store or our online Publications Order Form.
To learn more about the catalog, click here. To order a copy online, click here.
