Event

The sudden unexpected demise of Penn’s distinguished Japanologist William R. LaFleur in February 2010 deprived us of a major voice in the fields of Japanese religion, literature, culture, and recently and perhaps most importantly, bioethics.  At this conference, we will explore our colleague’s posthumous works, which range widely across these fields.  We will also spotlight his original poetry.  

The title of this conference is derived from Bill’s translation of one of the poems of the medieval Japanese monk Saigyō: “So, then, it’s the one / who has thrown his self away / who is thought the loser? / But he who cannot lose self / is the one who is really lost.” The gathering will be a memorial for the one whom we have lost, but it will also be an occasion to question our own positions in relation to this individual and his body of work. In discussing this poem, Bill notes that the literary critic Kobayashi Hideo credited Saigyō with “opening totally new territory, a place no one had entered before.”

Bill’s work has similarly been recognized for going to new places and broaching unprecedented questions. This conference aims to recall that legacy, see where it was going at the end, and craft plans for carrying it forward. 

William R. LaFleur, Awesome Nightfall: The Life, Times, and Poetry of Saigyō (Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2003), p. 29