War and Peace: How ‘Grave of the Fireflies’ Speaks to Japanese Literature, Art, History, and International Relations

Date: Tuesday 4 November 2025, 6pm GMT (In-person and Hybrid Event)

Venue: The University of East Anglia

With: Dr Ra Mason (Sasakawa Associate Professor); Dr Sherzod Muminov (Associate Professor in Japanese History); Dr Hannah Osborne (Lecturer in Japanese Literature); Dr Eriko Tomizawa-Kay (Associate Professor in Japanese Art History & Director of the Centre for Japanese Studies) and Dr Nadine Willems (Associate Professor in Japanese History).

This talk is available to watch on our YouTube Channel!

To watch the video recording of this lecture, click here.

Talk Description:

This event takes inspiration from Studio Ghibli’s renowned film Grave of the Fireflies, a powerful story of war and loss. We will begin with a screening of the film’s trailer, using it as a starting point for an open discussion with both the panel and audience. Each speaker will then give a short presentation (around 10 minutes) from their area of expertise, followed by interactive discussion and questions from the audience.

The talks will explore themes such as the intersections of art and war, the ethics of representing wartime experiences through film and literature, Japan’s anti-nuclear movement, the dynamics of modern Japan–China relations, and the role of nationalism in twentieth-century Japan. Taken together, these perspectives invite us to reflect on how the themes depicted in Grave of the Fireflies connect to broader questions of memory, ethics, politics, and international relations.

Click here to read our full report of this lecture.

Speaker Profiles

Dr Ra Mason

(Sasakawa Associate Professor, School of Politics, Philosophy and Area Studies) is an internationally recognised specialist in the international relations of the Indo-Pacific, with a specific focus on Japan. His work draws on theories of risk, security and social construction to understand the complex relations between regional alliances, states and non-state actors. He is also interested in wider questions about global politics and conflict.

Dr Sherzod Muminov

(Associate Professor in Japanese History) is a multilingual historian working with sources in Japanese and Russian, and is also fluent in Turkish. His primary research is in modern Japanese and East Asian History, Japanese-Soviet/Russian relations, the Cold War in East Asia, the post-WWII, post-imperial migrations in East Asia, and the international and transnational history of the Soviet system of forced labour camps for prisoners-of-war.

Dr Hannah Osborne

(Lecturer in Japanese Literature) is Japan Foundation Lecturer in Japanese Literature at the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing and the Centre for Japanese Studies at the University of East Anglia. She completed her doctoral thesis, Gender, Love and Text in the Early Writings of Kanai Mieko at the University of Leeds in 2015. Her research interests include: intersections between text, illustration and the avant-garde arts; gender and the body; and women's writing and translation in modern Japanese literature.

Dr Eriko Tomizawa-Kay

(Sainsbury Institute Associate Professor in Japanese Art History and Director of the Centre for Japanese Studies at the University of East Anglia)’s research focuses on modern and contemporary Japanese art, with particular emphasis on nihonga and Okinawan visual culture. She explores their roles in identity, diplomacy, and memory, and her curatorial projects highlight collaboration with artists, museums, and communities. She received her PhD from SOAS, University of London, and has previously held positions as Art History Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Fellow at the Sainsbury Institute, Toyota Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan, and Visiting Research Associate at the Okinawa Prefectural University of Arts.

Dr Nadine Willems

(Associate Professor in Japanese History) is an intellectual and cultural historian of modern Japan, whose research interests include historical geography, early 20th century agrarian movements, the anarchist critique of modernisation in a transnational perspective, and the literature of dissent. She is currently engaged in a project that examines the personal accounts and visual records produced by rank-and-file soldiers who participated in Japan’s military intervention in Siberia between 1918 and 1922. She obtained her PhD from Oxford University.