PROFESSIONAL LUNCHEON
Ben-Ami Shillony,
"A New Look at the Japanese Emperors"

The speech and Q & A will be in English.

The institution of the Japanese emperor has often been misunderstood because of the events in which it was involved in the first half of the twentieth century. But this remarkably old institution should be appreciated on the merits of its historic role of providing a symbolically strong but politically weak leadership, of a kind unknown in most other societies.

So argues Ben-Ami Shillony, Professor Emeritus of East Asian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who has been researching and writing on the topic of Japanese emperors for more than a decade and who has written two books on the subject. In his talk Shillony will present some of the ideas that he has developed on the future of the institution.

The emperor seems today irrelevant to growing numbers of Japanese, especially among the young, says Shillony. One way of making him relevant is to provide him with a new and modern role, such as protecting the environment. This role fits well the Shinto respect and worship of nature.

Shillony was born in Poland in 1937 and immigrated to Israel in 1948. After receiving his master degree in history from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1965, he studied Japanese language for two years at the International Christian University in Tokyo. At Princeton University in the U.S. he studied Japanese history under Prof. Marius B. Jansen and wrote his doctoral thesis on the Feb. 1936 military revolt in Japan. After receiving his Ph.D. degree from Princeton in 1971, he returned to Israel and since then has been teaching Japanese history and culture at his alma mater. He also taught, lectured and conducted research at the universities of Harvard, Berkeley, Tokyo, Oxford, Cambridge, and Colorado

MENU
Sandwich: Smoked salmon with avocado, dill cream cheese, tomato, lettuce, red onion & pickles on campagne.
Hot Plate: Roast chicken breast with rosemary potatoes, peas & carrots and seasonal salad.

Ben-Ami Shillony, "A New Look at the Japanese Emperors"