Public Lecture Series Begins

On 11 October my public lecture series "News about Japan on bbc.co.uk" began. This course runs for six weeks from 11 October to 15 November. How the BBC reports news about Japan is a topic in which I have a long-standing interest. It was the subject of my 2005 paper "Reporting the 2001 textbook and Yasukuni Shrine controversies". The current course expands the previous focus on war issues to look more broadly at Japan today. There are lectures on the tsunami and nuclear crisis, the Senkaku Islands dispute, and Japanese culture among others. There are many materials available on the course homepage (go via the teaching menu to public lectures). At the moment, the abridged video versions of the lectures are not being made public, but I plan to put them on Hokkaido Open Courseware after the course is over.