The East Asia Center will be hosting Haruo Shirane, Shincho Professor of Japanese Literature and Culture and chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University, for his talk "Animism in Japanese Culture: Rethinking the Human, Animals, and Discarded Tools."

Professor Shirane is the author of Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons: Nature, Literature, and the Arts, Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Basho, The Bridge of Dreams: A Poetics of The Tale of Genji, and many other books. He is the recipient of the Kadokawa Genyoshi Prize, Yamagata Bantō Prize, and the inaugural NIHU International Prize in Japanese Studies. He was elected honorary member of the Japan Academy.

The talk will be held Friday, April 25, from 3:15 - 4:30 p.m. in Gibson 211.