Film and Symposium on Nakagami Kenji

[Aaron Gerow]

The Council on East Asian Studies and the Department of East Asian 
Languages and Literatures at Yale University are pleased to present

A FILM AND SYMPOSIUM ON NAKAGAMI KENJI

Saturday, April 16, 7pm
Whitney Humanities Center Auditorium
Yale University

Nakagami Kenji (1946?92) was one of Japan's most prominent postwar 
novelists, a member of the "burakumin" caste long subject to 
discrimination in Japan as "unclean." He confronted this identity 
through works that explored the familial relationships in his hometown 
"alley" (roji), a burakumin ghetto in Shingu, Japan, using a literary 
style that was both grittily physical and poetically mythic. His works 
have been made available in English in the collections _Snakelust_ 
(Kodansha, 1998) and _Cape and other stories from the Japanese ghetto_ 
(Stone Bridge Press, 1999).

The documentary film _To the Alley_ (Roji e, 2001), which combines 
footage Nakagami shot of the "Alley" with an appreciation of his 
literature and landscape, will be screened starting at 7pm (with 
English subtitles), to be followed by a symposium featuring the film's 
director, Aoyama Shinji, and Nakagami scholar Eve Zimmerman.

Symposium participants:

Aoyama Shinji (film director and novelist)
Eve Zimmerman (Wellesley College)
John Treat (Yale University)
William Burton (Yale University)
Aaron Gerow (Yale University)

For other events involving Aoyama Shinji's visit to Yale, please 
consult the CEAS website: http://www.yale.edu/ycias/ceas/events.html

Aaron Gerow
Assistant Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Director of Undergraduate Studies, Film Studies Program
Yale University
53 Wall Street, Room 316
PO Box 208363
New Haven, CT 06520-8363
USA
Phone: 1-203-432-7082
Fax: 1-203-432-6764
e-mail: aaron.gerow at yale.edu