AsianStudies

As President Obama begins a week-long visit to Asia, Asian Studies Program Director Constantine Vaporis writes in an Al Jazeera America op-ed that the trip is aimed at reassuring allies in the region that they remain top priorities on his agenda. Vaporis writes adding South Korea and Japan to the itinerary has made the trip even more important as tension between the two countries lingers over the history wars. “The U.S. administration has made clear that it will not act as mediator between the two sides. Nevertheless, Obama has acted assertively to try to prevent a further erosion of relations between them,”… Continue Reading Constantine Vaporis, Asian Studies, Op-Ed in Al Jazeera America

Asian Studies Program Director Constantine Vaporis has been selected as a Smithsonian expert for tours of Japan. As a director, the Smithsonian Journeys program will periodically ask Vaporis to lead tours in Japan, with the first one set for 2015. Vaporis’s research focuses on the Edo period and he is interested in the entire range of Japanese history. He is author of Breaking Barriers: Travel and the State in Early Modern Japan; Tour of Duty: Samurai, Military Service in Edo and the Culture of Early Modern Japan; Nihonjin to sankin kôtai [The Japanese and Alternate Attendance]; and Voices of Early Modern Japan: Contemporary Accounts of… Continue Reading Constantine Vaporis, Asian Studies, Named Smithsonian Journeys Expert

In an op-ed published January 31 in Al Jazeera America, Asian Studies Program Director Constantine Vaporis writes about East Asia’s “history wars” and the growing tensions among countries in the region. In “Japan stokes regional tension by revising school curriculum,” Vaporis writes the history wars are grounded in four issues: visits to the Yasukuni Shrine by Japanese officials, ongoing dispute over the sovereignty of several islets in the Sea of Japan, Japan’s responsibility for the suffering of “comfort women,” and recent controversy over Japanese textbooks and their explanation of colonial and wartime history: At the root of the troubling and deep-seated problems between… Continue Reading Constantine Vaporis, Asian Studies, Op-Ed in Al Jazeera America

In an op-ed published in The Times of India on January 12, mathematics professor and affiliate professor of Asian studies Manil Suri wrote about the nuclear terrorism threat in South Asia. The column was written in response to the revelation that a captured Indian terrorist was hoping to obtain a nuclear bomb from Pakistan to plant in the Indian city of Surat. In the column titled “The nuclear nightmare,” Suri comments on the current nuclear threat between Pakistan and India: “With enough nuclear warheads to wipe each other out, India and Pakistan are in a classic configuration of mutually assured destruction,” he writes.… Continue Reading Manil Suri, Mathematics, Op-Ed in The Times of India

Asian studies program director Constantine Vaporis was recently interviewed in Education About Asia as part of an interview series with recipients of the AAS Franklin Buchanan Prize. Vaporis was the 2013 award winner for his book Voices of Early Modern Japan: Contemporary Accounts of Daily Life During the Age of Shoguns. Education About Asia praised Vaporis for “producing a superb pedagogical tool” and interviewed him about his extensive scholarship on Tokugawa Japan and research methods for his book. In addition to the interview, the magazine published a review of Voices of Early Modern Japan.  The reviewer, Kathleen Krauth, writes: [The book] is a remarkable work in that it… Continue Reading Constantine Vaporis, Asian Studies, in Education About Asia

The National Museum of Japanese History recently published an article by Constantine Vaporis in its bi-monthly magazine “REKIHAKU.” Vaporis, who is the Asian studies program director and professor of history, was the lead article in the magazine’s special edition on processions. The article, titled “Alternate Attendance as Performance,” examines Tokugawa Japan (1603-1868) and the system of alternate attendance when the daimyo were required by the shogun to alternate their residences between their domains and Edo. The article studies alternate attendance from two perspectives: as a symbol of authority and as performance or theater. It does so by analyzing the form in… Continue Reading Constantine Vaporis, Asian Studies, in National Museum of Japanese History Magazine

The Asian Studies Program and Longwood Apartments, located in Columbia, MD, have begun a partnership this spring. Asian Studies students will serve internships at this HUD Section 8 housing complex to facilitate communication between the largely Asian population and the non-Asian staff. They will also interact with the Chinese and Korean-speaking residents in a variety of ways, particularly through the Longwood Senior Center, which is located in Longwood Apartments and operated by Howard County On April 26, two ASIA majors, Christine Au and Klara Kim, served as translators and facilitators at Longwood’s Spring Community meeting. Other internship duties will include:… Continue Reading Asian Studies Program and Longwood Apartments Begin Partnership

Constatine Vaporis, director of the Asian studies program and professor of history, was featured in a blog post on the PBS blog “The Rundown.”  The post was entitled “For Hundreds of Years, Cherry Blossoms Are Matter of Life and Death.” Vaporis said that as seppuku (ritual suicide) became a key part of the samurai’s Bushido code, the samurai “identified with the cherry blossom particularly because it fell at the moment of its greatest beauty, an ideal death.”