Date – 12 March 2024 at 19:00
Venue – Room G.02, 50 George Square
Guest Speaker – Professor Joy Hendry ORS (Oxford Brookes University)
Indirect communication is important in Japan, where, as in other Pacific societies, it may be positively rude to speak too directly. This language is not easy to learn out of context, but various material means have been devised to make unspoken communication quite clear, and some of these are also examples of Japanese arts and crafts. The talk will be based on Joy’s research in various parts of Japan, including her study of politeness which long ago became a book about wrapping culture. She will illustrate her talk with photographs.
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About the speaker:
Joy Hendry is Professor Emerita of the Social Anthropology of Japan, Oxford Brookes University, founder of the Japan Anthropology Workshop and the Europe Japan Research Centre. She carried out fieldwork in Japan over 45 years, including research on politeness which inspired her interest in non-verbal communication. She has published many books and articles, including the regularly updated textbook Understanding Japanese Society, and a publication related to the talk entitled Wrapping Culture: Politeness, Presentation and Power in Japan and Other Societies, which she wrote while working with Professor Gow at the Scottish Centre for Japanese Studies at Stirling University. Her latest book is a memoir entitled An Affair with a Village, published by Extremis Publishing, also Stirling (http://tinyurl.com/affairvillage). In 2017, the Government of Japan bestowed on her the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette.
