New Books on Japan: "Kinkakuji and Kitayama: Space, Place, Monuments and Memory in Japan 1222-1994"

Thursday, September 10, 2026 | 7:00-8:30 PM ET
Friday, September 11, 2026 | 8:00-9:30 AM JST

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Kinkakuji and Kitayama: Space, Place, Monuments and Memory in Japan 1222-1994 (Brill, 2025)

Presenter: Thomas Conlan, Professor of East Asian Studies and History, Princeton University

Discussant: Mimi Yiengpruksawan, Professor of Art History, Yale University

Moderator: Nick Kapur, Associate Professor of History, Rutgers University-Camden

The Modern Japan History Association invites the wider community to a conversation with Thomas Conlan (Princeton), who will be speaking about his recent book Kinkakuji and Kitayama: Space, Place, Monuments and Memory in Japan 1222-1994. This work adopts a typology of intentional monuments, historical monuments, ancient monuments, and timeless monuments to describe how Kinkakuji, the Golden Pavilion, was created, preserved, destroyed, and rebuilt. It reveals how Ashikaga Yoshimitsu built Kinkakuji as a monument to glorify his rule. Later, Kinkakuji became a mortuary temple and historical monument, commemorating the Ashikaga, before becoming an ancient monument that was valued for being old. It then became a National Treasure of Japan. After it was destroyed in 1950, Kinkakuji was built as a timeless monument. In the process, Kinkakuji’s reconstruction influenced how UNESCO authorities defined “original” monuments. Mimi Yiengpruksawan (Yale) will serve as interlocutor.