time zone will be applied.
Report this post?
Monash Beyond Borders Korean Studies Seminar Series 2026
Dr Shin Takahashi (Monash University Japanese Studies)
Date & Time: Friday 22nd May, 2-3pm (Melbourne time)
Venue: Room 221 LTB (Learning & Teaching Building), Monash Clayton Campus, and via ZOOM
Abstract:
In a corner of inner Kyoto City, there is an area that is starkly different from the neighbourhood for its distinctive Korean-style garden, which invites visitors into a rich cultural world, including collections, which are registered on UNESCO’s World Memory Heritage List. The Koryo Museum of Art was founded in 1988 by Chung Jo-Moon, a first-generation ethnic Korean resident in Kyoto, and his friends. Among them are his older brother, Chung Quy-Moon, and Quy-Moon’s neighbour in Osaka, Shiba Ryōtarō, one of the most prominent Japanese historical novelists of the last century; Ueda Masa’aki, a professor of ancient Japanese history at Kyoto University; Kim Tal-su, a renowned Korean novelist; and Okabe Itsuko, a Kyoto-based essayist.
Since the 1970s, these authors and academics had started to publish a quarterly journal called Korean Cultures in Japan (‘Nihon no Naka no Chōsen Bunka’), and their collective project eventually led to the opening of the Koryo Museum. The questions I have at this preliminary stage are: (a) Why was it built in the middle of Kyoto? (b) What were the ideas behind the founding of this museum? (c) What implications can we draw from the founders’ stories, especially with regard to transcultural memory studies and to understand postwar Japan-Korea relations? Starting with those questions, this research investigates the thoughts and practices of those key intellectuals by tracing their works over the two decades between the 1970s and the 80s.
Bio:
Shin Takahashi is a historian of modern Japan and Japan-Asia relations. He is a lecturer in Japanese Studies at Monash University and the author of Translocal Island of Okinawa: Anti-Base Activism and Grassroots Regionalism (Bloomsbury 2024). He is an Associate Editor for The Journal of the Society for Asian Humanities.
