Society for Cultural Interaction in East Asia The 13th. General Assembly and The 13th. Annual Meeting 2020 “Current Thinking on Shibusawa Eiichi in the Global Crisis”

[Date] 　 May 8 (Sunday), 2021
[Place] 　Nishogakusha University Japan, and online panel discussion
[Annual Meeting PDF]　 available in English, Chinese (Simplified), and Japanese

The 13th International Academic Conference and Symposium of the Society for Cultural Interaction in East Asia will be held at Nishogakusha University, Japan, in May 2021.
Today’s world is facing an unprecedented crisis of division. Religious issues, immigration issues and Britain’s Brexit are intertwined. European countries are constantly divided. The political and economic crisis caused by the tension between the United States and China is becoming increasingly serious. Globally, there is no sign that the gap between rich and poor, population reduction, various forms of discrimination, natural disasters and other problems have been solved. In addition, the global pandemic of Covid-19 in 2020 seems to have further defined the contours of the problem, pushing humanity forward into a new stage of history, and at the same time forcing changes to 21st-century globalization and digitization agendas. Moreover, there has never been a time when wisdom needed so urgently to be gathered, when global thinking and global action needed such intelligent coordination.
Shibusawa Eiichi (1840 ~ 1931), known as the father of Japanese capitalism, traversed various fields of activity over the course of his life, from finance and industrial capitalism to lay diplomacy, philanthropy, philosophy, education and publishing. As Japan’s economy falters after a century of extraordinary success, Shibusawa’s legacy is inevitably – if unfairly – tainted. His book The Analects and the Abacus (1928), however, with its insistence on the dialectical unity of ethics and economics and its dialogical approach to intercultural learning, remains of utmost contemporary relevance. With the world facing multiple crises, we have decided to reexamine Shibusawa’s legacy by making him the focus of our next General Assembly. Our venue, Nishogakusha University, will celebrate its 143rd anniversary in 2020. NU has a strong tradition in Japanese and Chinese classical scholarship. NU founder Mishima Chūshū is also widely known for his friendship with Shibusawa Eiichi.
Our call for papers, however, is not strictly limited to Shibusawa Eiichi. We welcome submissions from a wide range of perspectives, anything which will enrich the study of East Asian cultural interaction and East-West cultural interaction more broadly, as befitting the aims of the the Society since its inception.

Theme this Year

Current Thinking on Shibusawa Eiichi in the Global Crisis

Panel Themes

1. The Current State and Research Topics of Chinese Classical and Confucian Studies
2. Chinese Characters and Literatures as a Medium, and the Role of Politics and Diplomacy
in East Asian Cultural Interaction
3. Cultural Interaction in Finance, Economy and Trade
4. Public Health, Infectious Diseases, Pharmaceutical Politics and Cultural Interaction
5. Theory and Practice of Humanistic Entrepreneurship
6. Cultural Interaction in Education
7. Cultural Interaction in the Arts
8. Cultural Interaction in Social Welfare Services
9. Cultural Interaction, Regional Culture and Tourism
10. Miscellaneous Topics Related to East Asian Cultural Interaction

Meeting Schedule

Annual Meeting: Saturday, May 8, 2021

Application Schedule and Announcement of Selections

The formats of the meeting are: keynote speech, group meeting, individual presentation and doctoral presentation. Members are requested to indicate a preferred panel with their submission (see list of panels above). Those who wish to participate and publish are requested to submit the application form and publication summary (ca. 400 words) before 15th January 2021. Applications will be reviewed by the Organizing Committee for the Conference and official certificates will only be issued after approval.

Application form (docx) for download; English, Chinese (Simplified), Japanese,

General Expenses

To be determined.

To Apply for Participation, Contact:

The Organizing Committee for the 13th Annual Meeting of the Society for Cultural Interaction in East Asia: (sciea2021@outlook.com)

Head organizer:
Etsuko Makizumi, Vice-President (Dean of Faculty of Literature, Nishogakusha University)

Auxiliary organizers:
Senjuro Machi, Councilor (Director of Japan Sinology Research Center, the Institute for EastAsian Studies, Nishogakusha University)
Yunfu Li, President (Special Term Professor of ZZU, The Yangtze River Scholar, Dean of School of Chinese language & literature of ZZU, Director of Research Center for the Civilization of Chinese Characters of ZZU)
Keiichi Uchida, Vice-President (Professor, Faculty of Foreign Languages, Kansai University)
De-min Tao, Councilor (Professor, Faculty of Literature, Kansai University)
Masato Kimura, Councilor (Researcher, Kanda University of International Studies)

Secretary:
Guowei Shen, Secretary General (Professor, Faculty of Foreign Languages, Kansai University)