Amin Abbas

DUBAI: The UAE-Japan Cultural Center has launched a new program called the “Japanese Cultural Seminar,” which features online seminars about various topics of Japanese culture and history.

In an exclusive interview with Arab News Japan, Naoko Kishida, director and founder of the cultural center said the new program launched last month, and featured online seminars about topics such as Sakura, Manga, and Samurai.

“The duration of lecture was 75 minutes from 8:00pm to 9:15pm (UAE Time) every Wednesday night,” she explained.

“For the Sakura seminar, we talked about the important words related to Sakura flowers, introducing the emperor who started Hanami Party, the War General who inspired warriors with Sakura, the politicians who used Sakura as tools of international policy, etc.”

“For the Manga seminar, we talked about the history of Manga in the late 19^th century, the concept & definition of the word,” Kishida said. They also looked at old manga scrolls and books about Yokai.

The third session talked about the history of the Samurai from the late 12th century to their abolition in 1876.

Kishida added that they also discussed “the rankings of the samurai along with their swords and armory. As well as the famous battles of the samurai in Japanese history.”

“The UAE-Japan Cultural Center used to hold many physical activities such as annual ‘New Year Event’, ‘Japanese Summer Camp’ and ‘Japan Study Tour.’ But since the COVID-19 pandemic started, we couldn’t do any physical activities to avoid the risk of spreading the COVID-19 to our participants.

“We shifted many courses to an online format. But all our staff felt not right or enough to offer only language courses. We wanted to introduce Japanese culture to local and Arab community as well. So, we decided to offer online cultural courses related Japanese life and society,” she added.

Kishida told Arab News Japan that the center’s activities are offered in a “casual and social” setting compared to other events in the UAE.

“We decided to offer the seminars to whomever wants to know about Japanese culture. It should not be commercial at all, but should be academic and fun,” she explained. “The attendees do not need to know the language. This seminar will open up your eyes for new knowledge of Japanese culture.”

Kishida said the center does not offer seminars that one can easily search on Google. “The lecturers have so much experience in introducing Japanese culture. These seminars introduce you to totally different views and angles of a topic every time.”

Registration can be found on Japan Center’s website: www.jp.ae