June 4-6, 2012, 10 AM-5:30 PM
University of Southern California
(building and room to be announced)

Shoen, agricultural estates with a complex hierarchy of rights to income from the land and cultivators, represented a major landholding structure in classical and medieval Japan.  Shoen received considerable attention in Japanese scholarship some thirty years ago and now, historians in Japan are beginning to revisit the topic.  While knowledge about shoen has informed much English-language scholarship over the last few decades, there have been few intensive studies of the land-holding system per se.

At this conference, scholars from Japan and the U.S. will present research on shoen and shoen-related topics.  Contributions from the ongoing Obe Estate Project at the University of Southern California are included, but coverage is not limited to a single estate.  Scholars from several disciplines, including history, archaeology, religious studies, and art history, will participate. The conference will focus on the ways that research on shoen can be applied more broadly to Japanese historical studies, as well as on methods to introduce shoen to undergraduates and non-specialists.

Participants

(from Japan)
Oyama Kyohei, emeritus professor, University of Kyoto (keynote speaker)
Endo Motoo, Historiographical Institute, University of Tokyo
Hirota Koji, Izumi-Sano Museum
Kimura Shigemitsu, Teikyo University
Nagamura Makoto, Japan Women’s University
Nishida Takeshi, Kokokan, Ono city, Hyogo prefecture
Noda Taizo, Kyoto Koka Women’s University
Sakurai Eiji, University of Tokyo
Takahashi Toshiko, Historiographical Institute, University of Tokyo

(from the U.S.)
Lee Butler, Independent Scholar
David Eason, SUNY Albany
Ethan Segal, Michigan State University

(From the Obe Estate Research Project, Project for Pre-Modern Japan, Dept. of History)

Michelle Damian
Janet Goodwin
Yoshiko Kainuma
Rieko Kamei-Dyche
Sachiko Kawai
Joan Piggott
Dan Sherer

Titles and a schedule of talks will be circulated later.  Presentations will be in Japanese and English; translations of key points will be provided.

Conference organizers:  Joan Piggott, Professor of History, USC; Janet Goodwin, Associate in Research, East Asian Studies Center, USC.

Everyone is welcome.  If you plan to come, please let us know at:
gjan@email.usc.edu  OR  jan@cs.csustan.edu