The Yanai Initiative
UCLA + Waseda University
reimagining the Japanese humanities
for the world
Beyond the Era of the Witness: 80 Years Later, Passing the Lessons Forward
A symposium at UCLA
October 18-19, 2025
The year 2025 marks the eightieth anniversary of the end of World War II. The largest and deadliest conflict in human history, the horrors of the war were told through the testimonies of many witnesses, from all walks of life, and across the globe. In this “era of the witness,” museums and educators have long relied on the luxury of speaking with, or directing others to speak with, living witnesses to these histories. Now we face a new challenge: how do we continue to talk about the horrors—and lessons—of World War II when we can no longer hear from those who witnessed and survived it?
Quinzaine Directors' Fortnight Extended 2025 in LA
The Yanai Initiative at UCLA continues its collaboration with Acropolis Cinema to bring two recent Japanese films from the 2025 Cannes film festival Directors' Fortnight (Quinzaine des Cineastes).
November 8
1:00 p.m. Kukuho (Dir. Sang-il Lee)
7:30 p.m. Brand New Landscape (Dir. Yuiga Danzuka)-Director in person!
The three-day festival will be held at the DGA Theater Complex November 7-9, 2025. For tickets and more information,
Open Talk: What Novelists Heard in Silent Cinemas: Sound Culture in Japan
The lecture will focus on the early days of cinema experienced through Japan’s great literary writers who lived at the time when movies first arrived in Japan. These writers reacted to cinema in various ways: some wove cinema into their literary works, others recorded their thoughts only in their journals and letters, and a few even shunned cinemas entirely.
Four Days of English Language Noh: Oppenheimer/ Blue Moon Over Memphis
English Noh. This refers to a performance in English through the style of the classical Japanese musical drama, Noh, which integrates masks, props, costumes, movement and music. Based on traditional Japanese Noh, Noh in English gives classical Noh a new international sensibility which has not been seen before.
Tadashi Yanai gives $31 million to support hub for Japanese humanities research at UCLA
The Yanai Initiative is excited & humbled to share that philanthropist Tadashi Yanai has committed $31 million to support the Yanai Initiative’s activities in the Japanese humanities, in particular its newly launched project Japan Past & Present.
The World of the Benshi
Edited by Michael Emmerich and Daisuke Miyao
Featuring more than 300 images from archives and private collections around the world, this beautiful, approachable volume will captivate anyone with an interest in film.
Click to order!
The Yūgen of Elvis: Performing Noh in English
This lavish, richly illustrated Japanese-language book, published to accompany a performance at Waseda University of the English-language noh performance Blue Moon Over Memphis, includes playwright Deborah Brevoort’s original English libretto with a Japanese translation, along with dialogues, essays, and discussions of the music, costumes, and masks. Click to order a copy!
Japanese Novellas newly published by Pushkin Press
With Yanai Initiative support, English translations of six new novellas will be published by Pushkin Press in 2023-2024.
Bungaku Bideo “Extremely Short” selected for the 56th Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes.
The “Bungaku Bideo” series is an innovative effort to bring literature and film together in a new way, and to introduce the work of phenomenal artists in both forms to new audiences worldwide. The first film in the series is Extremely Short by the world-renowned animator Kōji Yamamura and based on a short story by prize-winning author Hideo Furukawa.
Extremely Short has been selected for the 56th
niou: when we were together inhaling the same scent
Now available for purchase: a limited-edition record featuring novelist Kobayashi Erika and olfactory artist Ueda Maki, pressed from a lacquer master cut before a live audience.
A poster by Kamijō Takahisa from The Poster Project (2017)
In 2017, the Yanai Initiative worked with eleven major Japanese designers to reimagine a legendary series of posters created in 1982
The Hentaigana App, released in 2015
Available for free in Japanese and English versions for both iOS and Android devices, this was the first such app ever created
A poster by Asaba Katsumi from The Poster Project (2017)
In 2017, the Yanai Initiative worked with eleven major Japanese designers to reimagine a legendary series of posters created in 1982
The BeHere / 1942 exhibition catalog (2022)
In 2022, we collaborated with the Japanese American National Museum on the exhibit BeHere / 1942, marking the passage of 80 years since the Japanese American incarceration
One of two kyogen masterclasses with Nomura Mansai and Ishida Yukio held at UCLA in 2017
Designated holders of Important Intangible Cultural Property Nomura Mansai and Ishida Yukio each held one free masterclass for participants from UCLA and the broader Los Angeles community
Nonsense Way of Thinking: A Workshop with Maywa Denki in 2019
This workshop, held at the UCLA Game Lab, served as a preface to a free lecture and performance, open to the general public
Matsumoto Seichō: Media, Adaptation, and Middlebrow Literature (2020)
This eye-opening symposium was the first in the United States to focus on the work of the versatile writer Matsumoto Seichō, best known for his detective and period fiction
Traditional Japanese Theater and Theater Studies in a Global Age (2017)
This major symposium was part of a series of events called "Five Days of Kyogen" centered on two performances by living national treasure Nomura Mansaku and his troupe Mansaku no Kai