TITLE: How Do Flowers Kill? - The Japanese Emperor and Modern Dictators
SPEAKER: Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney
EVENT DATE: 06/18/2009
FORMAT: Video + Captions
RUNNING TIME: 67 minutes
TRANSCRIPT: View Transcript (link will open in a new window)
DESCRIPTION:
Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, an expert on symbols of Japanese identity, compares the representations of the Meiji emperor of Japan with those of Lenin, Stalin and Hitler in a lecture titled "How Do Flowers Kill? -- The Japanese Emperor and Modern Dictators." Using examples from modern Japan, Germany and the Soviet Union, Ohnuki-Tierney explores how different traditions use symbols in creating and expressing political, religious, and symbolic power. The lecture contrasts the symbolism of cherry blossoms as used by the Japanese state during the modern period with that of roses, which were extensively deployed by all three dictators in order to illustrate how the words and symbols through which humans try to communicate do not always ensure understanding among people.
Speaker Biography: Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, who holds the John W. Kluge Center Chair of Modern Culture at the Library of Congress, is the William F. Vilas Professor of Anthropology at the Madison campus of the University of Wisconsin. Ohnuki-Tierney's term at the Library ran from February through July 2009. Ohnuki-Tierney's books include "Kamikaze Diaries: Reflections of Japanese Student Soldiers" (2006); "Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History" (2002); "Rice as Self: Japanese Identities through Time" (1993); and "The Monkey as Mirror: Symbolic Transformations in Japanese History and Ritual" (1989).
