Joining and presenting at EAJS2017

From August 29 (Tue) to September 2 (Sat), I joined in the 15th International Conference of the European Association for Japanese Studies (EAJS2017) held in The Universidade NOVA (Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities(FCSH)), Lisbon, Portugal. 











According to the conference committee, this conference brought together over 1200 academics and researchers working in the field of Japanese studies in the world.

Its official opening was on August 30 (Wed), but from August 28, there were as many pre-events such as tours going to the famous museums, churches, palaces, and libraries in Lisbon, and various workshops. During this conference, at 9:00-17:00 every day, about 28 sessions were conducted at the same time. It was so big.























































I conducted an oral presentation about my own research results together with introduction of our integrated studies of cultural and research resources in "S7_27:New Perspectives from Archaeology" in the late afternoon on September 1.

Ayako Shibutani. 2017. Reevaluating Plant Food Cultures during the Jomon Period Using Starch Granule Assemblages from Northern Japan.











Indeed our session room looked like the theater, and we did not have so many attendees. But I got many questions to our project and my current analysis of historical papers, as well as future perspectives of international research collaboration.

Other sessions excepting my own session contained Natural disasters and disaster prevention in Edo and Ethnographic studies based on Japanese food, and other session speakers and I discussed about our future project activities.

The following is my own opinion. This conference was focusing on "Japanese studies", but its official language was just only English. It's a little bit strange for me. When many participants recognised me as a Japanese researcher, they used Japanese, and their Japanese skills were truly perfect. All of sessions in which I joined also showed Japanese terminology in Japanese as well as English.

I found all of Japanese researchers in sessions which I attended did not show their opinions during their discussions. I understood that these may have been rare cases, but many foregn researchers took part in questions and discussions too much actively.

There are no presentations about the periods before Heian period in this conference. My presentation was just only one showing the oldest period here.

On the final day in Lisbon, I faced with a small trouble, and I was not able to come back to Japan on my original date due to an airway trouble. But in total, I've got many great results for our museum project and my own studies. I thank to all of you and EAJS members.













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