The Yanai Initiative
UCLA + Waseda University
reimagining the Japanese humanities
for the world
A-side / B-side: Conversation & Music
Now available for purchase: a limited-edition record featuring novelist Furukawa Hideo and musician Mukai Shūtoku, pressed from a lacquer master cut before a live audience.
Cross-Border Book Exchange and Natural History Writing: Library Collections, Classical Studies, and Digital History
A symposiun at Waseda University
November 18, 2023
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.
Niou: When We Were Together Inhaling the Same Scent
Record Project at Waseda University
November 23, 2023
Experience something invisible, smell, in one place, and share it in words.
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