Speakers:
Yoshiko Nakano, Professor, Department of International Design Management, Tokyo University of Science
Georgina Challen, CSGC Research Assistant, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU
Respondent: John M. Carroll, Principal Lecturer, Department of History, HKU
Moderator: Alvin K. Wong, Assistant Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU
Date: Monday, March 3, 2025
Time: 5:00 pm Hong Kong Time
Venue: Room 436, 4/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, HKU
The Hong Kong Cemetery in Happy Valley is home to over 470 graves connected to the city’s Japanese population. Most of these graves belong to individuals who died during the Meiji era (1868–1912), a remarkable period of modernisation and opening up of Japan that saw thousands of its inhabitants travel to other parts of the world to study, work, and settle. Who were these people? What were they doing in Hong Kong? And why were unbaptised Japanese buried in what was called at one time the ‘Protestant Cemetery’?
These are the questions that Meiji Graves in Happy Valley (2024, HKU Press) seeks to answer. By revealing the personal journeys of these mostly forgotten Japanese, the authors aim to add to transnational perspectives on Hong Kong and Japan during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Yoshiko Nakano is a professor in the Department of International Design Management at Tokyo University of Science. She previously taught Japanese Studies at the University of Hong Kong from 2000 to 2022.
Georgina Challen holds an MA in literary and cultural studies from the University of Hong Kong. She is currently a Research Assistant in the Department of Comparative Literature’s Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures.
HKU Press is offering a 20% discount (code 20CP2025) for online orders of the book up to April 5, 2025. For details, visit https://hkupress.hku.hk/Meiji_Graves.
This event is co-organized by the Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures (CSGC), Department of Comparative Literature, Department of Japanese Studies, and Department of History at the University of Hong Kong.
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