2008-09 Harvard Whaling Visiting Summer School in 19th Century Faculty in Japan Japan TSUSHIN REISC h AUER EDWIN O. REISCHAUER INSTITUTE OF JAPANESE STUDIES HARVARD UNIVERSITY RE p ORTS Did you know... Science, Japan, and Harvard: • RI funded or facilitated the travel to Japan of 84 Harvard College students, from 22 concentrations, in 2007-08 and Summer 2008. A Growing Interest Among this group 33% were concentrators in math, the sciences, or engineering. Harvard undergraduates have been going to Japan for internships for 20 years. They have been • 35 Harvard College students held Summer pursuing language study and thesis research in Japan for even longer. But until recently, most Internships in fields from finance to baseball, students interested in Japan have come from concentrations in the humanities and social sciences. from brain science to anime. However, two programs supported by the Reischauer Institute (RI) create opportunities for science concentrators to gain experience in world-class Japanese laboratories, such that science concentra- • Last year RI gave 54 awards to Harvard tors are the fastest growing subset of students spending time in Japan with RI support. VOLUME 13 NUMBER 1 FALL 2008 graduate students for dissertation completion, summer language study, research in Japan The largest Harvard program in Japan specifically aimed at science concentrators is the Harvard and conference attendance. Summer School (HSS) Program at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute (BSI) near Tokyo. Started two years ago by Takao K. Hensch, Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology, FAS, and • RI facilitates graduate student research Professor of Neurology, Children’s Hospital, the HSS Program at RIKEN BSI sends five to and professional development, supporting 8 seven undergraduates to Japan for an intensive 10-week summer program in the lab. Graduate Student Associates in residence. This intensive neuroscience program comprises two parts: independent laboratory research and a • Harvard has 33 Japanese studies faculty, lecture course. Students work alongside top researchers and technicians from Japan and elsewhere making it one of the largest Japanese studies on cutting-edge brain research in RIKEN BSI’s four core research areas: mind and intelligence, centers in the world. Last year, there were neural circuit function, disease mechanism, and advanced technology development. Students in 70 courses on Japan or with major content this program earn two biological life science course credits, and they may also take a noncredit on Japan. course in introductory Japanese. • Last year RI organized and/or supported over 65 seminars, collaborative study projects, continued on page 6 workshops, conferences, symposia, and research projects. • RI has 181 scholars and experts on Japan in the greater New England community as RI Associates in Research. From fall 2007 through summer 2008, 84 Harvard undergraduates went to Japan—more than ever before. And a surprising feature of this growth was that one-third of those students were science concentrators. Photo: Kate Xie, Neurobiology ‘10 REISC h AUER 2 RE p ORTS From the Director Dear Friends, This issue of Tsushin highlights RI’s recent efforts to build its connections with Harvard’s science community and to create opportunities for undergraduate science concentrators to experience Japan. Five years ago, the great majority of RI-sponsored undergraduates who traveled to Japan were East Asian Studies concentrators. Today, with RI sponsoring the travel to Japan of some 85 undergrads for research, study, or internships each year, 33% are in the sciences and engineering. Why this change? One answer is the leadership provided by Takao K. Hensch, Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology in FAS and Professor of Neurology at the Children’s Hospital, who, supported by RI, now offers life science concentrators the chance to take part in cutting edge research in laboratories at two facilities of the renowned RIKEN—its Brain Science Institute in Tokyo and its Photo: Martha Stewart Center for Allergy and Immunology in Yokohama. Similarly, John M. Doyle, Professor of Physics, is working to give students lab opportunities in his field. Apart from these faculty-led efforts, however, the pull of Japan for science students has intensified. RI’s Summer Internship Program is a particular draw. Spurred by the growing emphasis at Harvard in making an SIE (Significant International Experience) a part of every undergrad’s education, science students today look for intriguing places where they can gain state-of-the-art knowledge in fields that engage them. Tokyo, a cosmopolitan metropolis with a track record in scientific and technological innovation and an intriguing youth culture, thus holds great attractions. The buzz on RI’s internship program helps; last summer’s 35 interns gave their overall experience in Japan a rating of 4.7 on a 5.0 EDWIN O. REISCHAUER scale. Harvard Summer School Japan on the campus of Waseda University in Tokyo also draws high INSTITUTE OF JAPANESE STUDIES marks from students and attracts science concentrators. Center for Government & International Studies RI’s ties with the science community on campus and internationally are deepening in other ways South Building as well. Last year, for example, Michael R. Reich, Harvard School of Public Health, spearheaded a Harvard University faculty project designed to develop policy ideas for global action on health systems, working closely 1730 Cambridge Street with a counterpart group in Japan. Coordinating the binational effort was Keizo Takemi, a former Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138 parliamentarian who spent last year in the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. The faculty group’s work contributed significantly to the launch P 617.495.3220 F 617.496.8083 by Japan of a global action plan on health at the G-8 Summit in Hokkaido in July. [email protected] www.fas.harvard.edu/~rijs We look forward to future forms of collaboration in the sciences. © 2008 President and Fellows of Harvard College SUSAN J. PHARR, DIRECTOR Ongoing Exhibit Tapestry Exhibit on the Japan Friends of Harvard Concourse I Listen to the Voice of the Thread narrated by Asakura showing her at work— Yarn is the flow of time gathering plants to make the dyes, coloring the Color speaks the shape silk thread, and weaving the threads together on I feel the life of the thread a large hand loom to create designs that are I extend my hand To create the shape that is spoken striking for their texture as well as their color. MITSUKO ASAKURA More than 220 guests celebrated the exhibition’s opening on September 18 at the fall reception In September, the walls of the CGIS South hosted jointly by the Reischauer Institute and Building burst into bloom with an exhibition the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations. On display of exquisite silk tapestries by Kyoto-based through November 21, the tapestry exhibit, artist Mitsuko Asakura. Hosted by the which made its North American debut at the Reischauer Institute with the National Japan Society Gallery in New York before coming Association of Japan-America Societies and to Harvard, moves on to the Morikami Museum the Japan Society of Boston, the exhibit is in Delray Beach, Florida, and the American entitled “Mitsuko Asakura—Tapestry In Institute of Architects Headquarters Gallery Architecture, Creating Human Spaces,” in Washington, DC. expressing the artist’s desire to impact the ordinary environments where people live and More information is available at: work. The exhibit is accompanied by a DVD www.asakuraexhibition.net/english/artist Photo: Martha Stewart 3 Ezra F. Vogel Honored Ezra F. Vogel, Ph.D. ’58, Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences Emeritus, has been awarded the 2008 Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Centennial Medal honoring alumni who have made significant contributions to society that emerged from their graduate study at Harvard. The medal was first awarded in 1989 on the occasion of the school’s hundredth anniversary. The citation for Professor Vogel read: “For being America’s scholarly ambassador to both China and Japan, helping to bring together the public and private domains of East and West, and for your unique pedagogical talents which have inspired generations of students, we honor you today.” Photo: Ezra F. Vogel (right) with Allan M. Brandt, Dean, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences; Professor of the History of Science, FAS; and Amalie Moses Kass Professor of the History of Medicine, Harvard Medical School 2008-09 Visiting Faculty ABÉ MARKUS NORNES Ogasawara Islands, home to a culturally diverse Tokyo and earned his Ph.D. in East Asian History at Edwin O. Reischauer Visiting population with origins that pre-date Japanese Stanford University. His forthcoming book, Coins, Professor of Japanese Studies, settlement. His publications include “Beyond Trade, and the State: Economic Growth in Early Dept. of East Asian Languages and Views and Types: reconsidering early photographs Medieval Japan, highlights the ways in which the Civilizations and Dept. of Visual of Japan” (Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, forthcoming), increasingly monetized economy of the twelfth, and Environmental Studies and “Photography in Colonial Asia,” Special Issue thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries paralleled and of International Institute for Asian Studies contributed to shifts in political and social power in Abé Markus Nornes is Professor of Asian Cinema Newsletter (guest editor and introductory essay) medieval Japan. He has presented and published in both the Department of Screen Arts and Cultures (Summer 2007). on topics including proto-nationalism in pre-modern and the Department of Asian Languages and East Asia, images of Japan and the Japanese in Courses: Museum Anthropology: Thinking with Cultures at the University of Michigan, where he modern film, and the 2001 Japanese textbook Objects; Visual and Material Culture of Japan; specializes in Japanese film and documentary. He controversy. In 2006 he was awarded a prestigious Material Images: The Anthropology of Photography is the author of many books, most recently Cinema Lilly Teaching Fellowship.