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Culture Forms a Bridge between Japan and Germany

The Japanese theatre scholar, Professor Tatsuji Iwabuchi, and the Director of Japanese Studies at the University of Bonn, Professor Josef Kreiner, are this year’s winners of the Eugen and Ilse Seibold Prize in recognition of their contributions to the advancement of sciences and mutual understanding in both countries. This is the fifth time that the prize, which is worth €10,000, has been awarded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation).

The exhibition "Japan’s Beauty – Japan’s Soul", held in 2003 in the Federal Art and Exhibition Hall in Bonn, is just one of several cultural events through which Professor Josef Kreiner contributed to a better understanding between the two countries. His research and fieldwork focus on Japanese village organisation as well as on Ainu culture in northern Japan and on the Ryukyu Islands.

Between 1988 and 1996 Professor Kreiner was the founding director of the German Institute for Japanese Studies, and he now heads the Department of Japanese Studies at the University of Bonn. He has received the Special Award of the Japan Foundation, the German Federal Cross of Merit (First Class), an honorary doctorate from the School of Social Sciences at Kwansei Gakuin University as well as the Japan Foundation Award.

Jutta Höhn | alfa
Further information:
http://www.dfg.de

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