On April 21, 2023, the symposium on Representations of India in Japanese Literature was held as the first of two symposiums toward the Fourth International Conference in November. The two speakers at the event, Prof. Mukesh Williams, Advisor to SARC, and Asst. Prof. Ann Susan Aleyas from the Department of English at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, covered different aspects of the topic.
 

Prof. Williams shared that India was considered a faraway land and Japanese writers wrote about India based on fables and fantasies from Buddhist Cosmology and Hindu spirituality. His talk was based on the seven different conceptions of the world in Japanese writings such as the Tenjiku Worldview, the Buddhist Cosmological Worldview, the Reincarnation Worldview, and so on.

Prof. Aleyas spoke about how India as a culture and a geographical space is represented in Japanese literature through the idea of translation based on the book Deep River by Shusaku Endo.

The symposium covered the writings of Okakura Tenshin, Mishima, Endo, and so on, as well as the role played by individuals such as Bodhisena in bringing Buddhist Literature and Sanskrit to Japan.

The videos of SARC events can be viewed on the South Asia Research Center YouTube channel.