International Workshop: Japanese-Russian Intellectual Triangulations and Global Circulations
This workshop is an international collaboration between the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń and the University of Chicago Paris Center. The first part of the workshop will take place at the NCU in Toruń, and the second part will be held in July 2026 at UChicago’s Center in Paris.
Workshop Co-Organizers:
Olga V. Solovieva (NCU in Toruń)
Michael Bourdaghs (University of Chicago)
This workshop is based on the forthcoming scholarly volume edited by Olga V. Solovieva (Center of Excellence—IMSErt, NCU in Toruń), focusing on Japanese-Russian intellectual triangulations and their global impact from the Meiji era to the present. The volume will be published in Routledge’s Nissan Institute Japanese Studies Series in December 2025.
The workshop highlights eight contributions and includes two keynote lectures. It gathers scholars from various disciplines to explore Japanese-Russian intellectual dissent through the lens of “circulatory histories” (Prasenjit Duara), focusing on how knowledge circulates globally through local transformation and complex cultural interactions.
Contributors will present case studies from literature, history, philosophy, film, and political thought to demonstrate the triangulating methodology that challenges simplistic East-West binaries and emphasizes multi-directional, cross-cultural interconnections.
Program Schedule
June 5, 2025
13:00 – Greetings: Prof. Dr. Sławomir Wacewicz, Director, Center of Excellence IMSErt
13:05 – Opening Words: Olga V. Solovieva
13:10 – Keynote I: Michael Bourdaghs, “With Friends Like This, Who Needs Enemies? Hotta Yoshie and the Soviet Union, 1955–1969”
14:00 – Tea Break
14:15 – Panel I: (A)Social Translations
Chair: Przemysław Sztafiej
Yuki Ishida – Translating Madness: Psychiatry, Literature, and the Emergence of the “Modern Person” in Post-Russo-Japanese War Japan
Janice Brown – “I Saw a Pale Horse”: Hayashi Fumiko, Boris Savinkov, and the Abjection of Revolution
Respondent: Emilia Wajs
15:10 – Q&A / Discussion
15:40 – Tea Break
16:00 – Film Screening
Kazuo Hara, The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (122 min)
Location: Film Theater at the Center for Contemporary Art (Open to the public)
Introduced by Brian Bergstrom (Montreal, Canada)
18:15 – Post-Screening Discussion: Brian Bergstrom & Olga Solovieva
June 6, 2025
10:00 – Panel II: Traveling Texts—People—Ideas
Chair: Olga Solovieva
Andrew Leong – From Commune to Co-operation: Global Trajectories of the Heiminsha Translation of The Conquest of Bread
Scott Mehl – Wests: The Logogenic Travels of Inoue Yasushi’s Writings on the Silk Road
Respondent: Przemysław Sztafiej
11:00 – Q&A / Discussion
11:25 – Tea Break
11:40 – Panel III: Retracing Multiplicities
Chair: Andrew Leong
Christopher Bush – “like the arc of the Northern Lights”: Japan in Russia’s Asian Constellations
Olga Solovieva – Takemitsu’s Ocean in Ohtake’s Drop of Water: Japanese-Russian Legacies in Contemporary Brazilian Art
Respondent: Dariusz Pniewski
12:30 – Q&A / Discussion
15:00 – Panel IV: Rethinking Alliances
Chair: Dariusz Pniewski
George T. Sipos – Lenin’s Letter, the Japanese Writer, and the Soviet Ambassador: A Re-Reading of Tenkō Short Story “The House in the Village” by Nakano Shigeharu
Ryan Johnson – “To Leave Contradictions as They Are”: Reconfiguring the Tolstoyan Network of Tanabe Hajime’s Philosophy as Metanoetics
Respondent: Tom Lamarre
16:00 – Q&A / Discussion
16:30 – Tea Break
17:00 – Respondent Keynote II: Jinyi Chu (Yale University)
18:00 – Closing Remarks: Olga V. Solovieva
June 7, 2025
06:30 AM – Bus to the Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology in Kraków