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Associate Professor of Japanese Kyoko Omori gave an invited talk at the University of Pittsburgh on October 15. Her lecture, “The Voice of Silent Film: Benshi Performance in Context and in the Classroom,” focused on the figure of the benshi, or live silent film narrator, as a way to chart the shifting sensorium of modernity in early 20th century Japan.

Associate Professor of Japanese Kyoko Omori, gave an invited talk, “Usher Unsilenced: Benshi Performance, Modern Japanese Film Cultures, and Global Modernity,” at a symposium at Syracuse University on Sept. 13. The conference was titled “Japan Today: Interdisciplinary Symposium in Japanese Studies.”

“The Sound of Silent Film: A Two-Part Benshi Event,” the second 2014 F.I.L.M. Series program, offered a packed house a multi-faceted event featuring a unique musical collaboration between international artists from Japan, France and Canada on Sunday, Sept. 28. The audience, which included numerous local Utica community members, were treated to a world premiere of a Western-style composition with traditional Japanese instruments brought together for the purpose of accompanying Japanese silent movies.

Hamilton’s FILM series will host a Benshi Event featuring benshi Ichiro Kataoka, composer Gabriel Thibaudeau and musicians from Japan, Canada and France on Sunday, Sept. 28, at 2 p.m., in the Bradford Auditorium, KJ.

This summer, Tori Fukumitsu ’15, an English major and Japanese minor, is working on an independent Emerson project,“Performing With the Picture, Moving With the Times: the Role of Benshi in Preserving a Japanese Cultural Practice and Adapting to a Global Audience” with Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures (Japanese) Kyoko Omori. Fukumitsu is exploring benshi, Japanese silent film narrators, and their performing art of setsumei.

With the exception of the 2011 French film The Artist, which won three Golden Globes and five Academy Awards, silent films have become a thing of the past. Yet there may still be lessons to learn from this antiquated art form. John Lyons ’16, an Asian studies major with a Japanese focus, was recruited by Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures Kyoko Omori to work on the DHi project, “Reconstructing Serpent.”

Recipients of the 2014 Emerson Summer Grants were recently announced. Created in 1997, the  program was designed to provide students with significant opportunities to work collaboratively with faculty members, researching an area of interest. The recipients, covering a range of topics, are exploring fieldwork, laboratory and library research, and the development of teaching materials. The students will make public presentations of their research throughout the academic year.

Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures Kyoko Omori has been awarded an $11,000 grant from the Japan Foundation for a project titled “Reconstructing and Creating a New Japanese Silent Film Experience: Benshi, Music and Film.”

Associate Professor of Japanese Kyoko Omori presented a paper, “Reinvesting Nuclear Capital: Hiroshima, Cinema, and Global Circulation of Witness,” at the American Comparative Literature Association Conference on March 22 at New York University.

Associate Professor of Japanese Kyoko Omori gave an invited talk at a symposium held at the University of Bonn on Nov. 30. The conference was titled “Film as Performing Art: Comparative History of Early Japanese and European Cinema.”