MOMRI Director Participates in Book Project with Deborah Wong at Minpaku

It was such a meaningful occasion, both joyful and reflexive, for the four of us to gather at the National Museum of Ethnology (Minpaku) in Osaka, Japan, on April 21, 2025.

It was joyful because we were able to get together again after several years: Deborah Wong, Takako Iwasawa and Shota Fukuoka, to work on a book project that emerged from the research initiative “Performing Arts and Conviviality” launched in April 2018.

• Deborah Wong is Professor at the University of California, Riverside (USA), specializing in the musics of Asian America and Thailand. She has written three books and is a past President of the Society for Ethnomusicology.
• Takako Iwasawa is Professor at the Hokkaido University of Education (Japan), with expertise in the Anthropology/Ethnomusicology of Thai music & dance, and Ainu traditional song & dance. Her current focus is on the representation of music in the contemporary Asian school system.
• Shota Fukuoka is Deputy Director-General of the National Museum of Ethnology (Minpaku) and Professor at its Graduate University for Advanced Studies.

It was reflexive because the creator and leader of this project, Yoshitaka Terada, passed away unexpectedly on March 29, 2023 at the too young age of 68. We have not fully recovered from the loss of our friend and colleague at the time of this writing, but his profound humanity and broad scholarship serves as a daily inspiration as we carry on with the research project he had launched.

Yoshitaka Terada held various academic positions at Minpaku, including Professor in the Department of Cultural Research; member of the Board of the ICTMD Study Group on Music and Minorities, and of the Advisory Board of Music and Minorities Research Center of the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (Austria). He received awards for Best Longer Film in the 3rd International Folk Music Film Festival (Nepal) in 2013 and the Jaap Kunst Award (Society for Ethnomusicology) in 2000. Source.

During our meeting, we made progress in the development of a book resulting from the Performing Arts and Conviviality research project, with the tentative title:

Empathy and the Performing Arts: How Music Connects Communities

Co-edited by TERADA Yoshitaka and Deborah WONG

It was a wonderful conversation that lasted six hours, in various locations such as in Shota’s office, over lunch at the Minpaku cafeteria, walking across the Banpaku Park, and even on the train going back to downtown Osaka! We very much look forward to the completion of this work, as we move forward together with the various outstanding authors contributing to the manuscript. Stay tuned for more news about this project on MOMRI’s Latest.