Minutes of the general assembly of the 31th EAJRS conference, Saint-Petersburg

 

1. Approval of the minutes of the general assembly of the 30th conference held at Sophia

You can find the minutes here.The minutes are approved.

2. Next year’s venue

Organiser: Centro Científico e Cultural de Macau, Lisbon, Portugal, has accepted to organise next year’s conference.
Dates proposed: 14 through 17 September.

3. Funding

We are very grateful to the Toshiba International Foundation (TIFO) for their support. Ms Mariko Kuwayama has been joining our Zoom session. I take this opportunity to thank Toshiba International Foundation for their loyal and committed support to our association. TIFO also sponsored the EAJS conference recently, held at Ghent. These are just two cases that eloquently prove how vital TIFO’s support has been for Japanese Studies in Europe and the world.

4. Programme booklet

The abstracts, the presentations and/or the text of each presentation will be uploaded on the EAJRS website, if and when the speaker agrees to do so. Many speakers have already given their consent. The speakers who did not deliver their file to Arjan van der Werf and wish it to be uploaded on the EAJRS website, are kindly requested to send it in to him (eajrs@eajrs.net).

5. Format of the next conference

Resource providers’ workshop:
Vital role and contribution of the resource providers, both the public or non-profit institutions and the commercial vendors. We thank them for their presence, for organizing the workshop and for their support in general. I heard nothing but extremely positive echoes about this year’s workshop.

Growing numbers of presentations and participants:
Limit to single session or rather parallel sessions? We prefer a unique session, which limits the number of slots available for presentations to around 30. The consequence is that this may entail, and has entailed in the past, rejection of good proposals. Still, we believe that the pros outweigh the contras.

6. Deadline for applications for the 2022 Conference

The Board proposes mid-May 2022 as the deadline for the submission of applications and the abstract. End of May, screening of proposals will be completed, and the results will be notified beginning of June. Guidelines will be added to streamline the presentations. Presentations should normally not exceed 25 slides.

7. Next year’s special topic

This year’s topic was Materiality and Virtuality in Japanese Studies Resources was spot on. Next year’s topic: leave decision to organiser.

8. Scholarships

Scholarships will depend on the funding we receive.

9. Report from the secretary

The website has been down, as you will be aware of by now. It is what is called a White Screen of Death (WSOD) : we get a white page, but we don't know why. Fortunately, the data is still present on the server, and has been downloaded and saved. We just cannot get it to show on the website. (NB: after correcting the data on a local WAMPP installation, the re-upload was successful).
It did mean, however, that we could not show the new NIJL/EAJRS Kuzushiji workshop part of the webpage

There were 142 registration. 25 of those participated in person and 117 were online.

Participants (registrations) came from 19 different countries:

  • Belgium: 3
  • Bulgaria: 1
  • Canada: 1
  • Denmark: 2
  • Estonia: 1
  • Finland: 1
  • France: 9
  • Germany: 5
  • Italy: 3
  • Japan: 58
  • Norway: 1
  • Pakistan: 1
  • Russia: 30
  • Slovenia: 1
  • Sweden: 1
  • Switzerland: 4
  • Thailand: 1
  • United Kingdom: 9
  • United States: 9

by continent:

  • Europe: 72
  • Asia: 60
  • North America: 10

There were 29 presentations, of which 12 were in person in Saint Petersburg, and 17 were online. 21 presentations were in English, and 8 presentations were in Japanese.
10 Resource providers took part in the Resource Providers workshop.
Additionally there was a panel discussion.

From Wednesday 15 September to Friday 17 September, a survey was held for the confirmation of the board. 95% percent of the voters approved, 5% opposed. Additionally two new board members were approved, both by 100%: Dr. Kristin Williams of Cambridge University Libraries, and Dr. Rie Fuse of University of Helsinki.
The members of the board take the opportunity to thank the members of EAJRS for their support and overwhelming expression of confidence. 

10. Kuzushiji workshop

A Kuzushiji workshop was supposed to be organised in Oslo in March 2020 by the National Institute of Japanese Literature, with support of the EAJRS. Due to the pandemic, this workshop was delayed and organised online instead in April 2021.
Akira Hirano reports.

11. Words of gratitude

I thank all presenters, for the many excellent presentations. Moreover, virtually everyone respected the allotted time.

Thanks to:
Prof. Irina F. Popova (Director of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts)
Prof. Alexander V. Philippov (Department of Japanese Studies, St. Petersburg University)
Two researchers of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts have been extremely helpful with the organization of the conference: Aleksey Lushchenko and Tatiana Pang
Special thanks to Kana Kunishige of Kinokuniya London, who organised and coordinated the Resource Providers Workshop
Thanks for the IT support (fantastic, throughout the conference): Oleg Kenunen of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts

Thanks to Arjan van der Werf, who once again put in a great deal of effort and time to prepare the conference. The site went down. The syndrome is called “white screen of death.” He spent a considerable amount of time during the conference to get the site up and running again. We are much indebted to him.
Thanks to the members of the board, who have accepted to chair each one or two sessions.

No one has earned our appreciation and gratitude more than Vasilii Shchepkin.

12. AOB

No other points of business are raised.

13. Closing of the general assembly and the conference.