The Digital Humanities occupy an ever-growing place in the research landscape of the twenty-first century. The past few years have seen rapid advancements in the development of digital technologies in the field of Japanese Studies. Scholars working on early modern Japan—be it literature, history, textual scholarship, art, or other areas of study—can avail themselves of several digital tools. What do we gain and lose from approaching early modern Japanese culture and its multifarious texts with the help of the new digital technologies? Fostering critical reflections on both opportunities and the limitations of a Digital Humanities approach is key to enable scholars to make an informed choice about their own research as well as to identify fresh research horizons in the study of early modern Japan.
The conference The Digital Turn in Early Modern Japanese Studies aims to bring together developers and scholars from within and without Japanese studies, in order to start an honest and fruitful dialogue. We view this as the first step towards a critical exploration of the opportunities and benefits that digital approaches might offer to the study of early modern Japan, with a vested interest in early modern Japanese literature. The conference is designed to explore the advantages brought by engagement with digital humanities resources and research methods while giving due consideration about the pitfalls of going only digital and assessing the merits of more traditional research methods.
The conference will be held on Zoom over three days from 2 to 4 December 2022. Japanese and English will both be used, with no interpreting.