The Excitement of Japanese Literature

Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit, Professor Emerita of Japanese Studies at Freie Universität Berlin, will give an open lecture titled:

“The Excitement of Japanese Literature: Mishima as a Case in Point, Nightmare or Inspiration in Globalized Times”

Why, among all the literatures of the world, does Japanese literature matter? As a medium undergoing constant renewal it continues to inspire our discourses in many ways.

The lecture will be held on Thursday, September 21, from 12:00-13:00 in Veröld (library, second floor).

About the speaker

Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit is Professor of Japanese literature and cultural history at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, since 1991, Emerita since 2020. She held professorships at Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, and Trier University, and was Director of the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ) of the Max Weber Foundation in Tokyo 1996-2004. She also headed the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Study at FU from 2010 to 2015 and is presently active as Principal Investigator with several projects in the Freie Universität Cluster of Excellency “Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective”. Professor Hijiya-Kirschnereit is an active literary translator, author of numerous works on Japanese literature and culture in German, English, and Japanese, such as “Joryū” hōdan (Women Writers Speak Their Minds), 2018. She is also editor of several book series, including the 34 volume Japanische Bibliothek (Japan Library) with Insel-Suhrkamp Publ. from 1990 through 2000, and initiator and co-editor of the “Comprehensive Japanese-German Dictionary” in 3 vols., completed in 2022. In 1992 she won the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation (DFG) and received the Japan Foundation Prize 2021. She has also served as president of the European Association for Japanese Studies.