Writing Scottish Japan, 11–12 June 2027, English Literature Society, Aoyama Gakuin University
The Writing Scottish Japan symposium will examine how Japan is portrayed in Scottish literature and how Scottish literature has been received in Japan. It draws inspiration from Doreen Massey’s idea that ‘the identity of place is in part constructed out of positive relations with elsewhere’ (1994, p. 169). As part of the long history of ‘positive relations’ between Scotland and Japan, authors from each country have visited, lived in, and written about the other. Unavoidably, the place they describe does not have the same identity as the geographical place itself.
For instance, Scottish authors in Japan as visitors and residents form a different understanding of place than Japanese authors, for whom Japan is constructed through local histories, communities, and cultures. Their writings create a third, specifically literary place—a Scottish Japan, as it were—an elsewhere that exists only in and through text. A similar elsewhere emerges in Japanese writings about Scotland and in Japanese readings of Scottish books.
In a spirit of international exchange, this two-day symposium at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo will explore these literary elsewheres—their origins, their boundaries, their transgressions, and their hopeful futures. We invite proposals for papers, panels, and roundtables about the way Scottish writers have responded to Japan and Japanese writers have responded to Scotland.
Possible topics include:
- Japan in Scottish literature
- Scotland in Japanese literature
- Japanese translations of Scottish texts
- Scots translations of Japanese texts
- Researching/teaching Scottish literature in Japan
- Teaching/researching Japanese literature in Scotland
- Japanese language in Scotland
- Scottish diaspora writers in Japan
- Japan’s cult of Burns
- Scottish Japonisme
- Zen writing in Scotland
- Travel writing, East and West
- Islands and mainlands
- Scots haiku
- and more…
Please submit a 250-word abstract in English, together with a brief academic bio, to j.pazdziora@cl.aoyama.ac.jp. Accepted papers will also be considered for publication in an edited volume on the theme of the conference.
The deadline for submissions is 1 February 2027.
