2025 conference in Heidelberg: minutes

General assembly of the 35th EAJRS conference, Heidelberg

 
1. Approval of the minutes of the general assembly of the 34th conference held at Sofia

You can find the minutes on the EAJRS website. The minutes are approved.

2. Next year’s venue

Leiden, The Netherlands. 
Dates (fixed): EAJRS 2026 in Leiden September 1-4 (Tuesday to Friday). 

3. Funding

We are very grateful to the Japan Foundation  and Toshiba International Foundation (TIFO) for their support. I take this opportunity to thank the foundations for their loyal and committed support to our association.

4. Program booklet

The abstracts, the presentations and/or the text of each presentation will be uploaded on the EAJRS website, if and when the speaker have agreed to do so. Many speakers have already given their consent. The speakers who did not deliver their file and wish it to be uploaded on the EAJRS website, are kindly requested to send it in to him (eajrs@eajrs.net).

5. Format of the next conference

Singular sessions and a limited number of presentations (26)
Possibility to choose a poster presentations when applying.

6. Deadline for applications for the 2026 Conference

The Board proposes mid-May 2026 as the deadline for the submission of applications of proposals for presentations. End of May, screening of proposals will be completed, and the results will be notified beginning of June. Guidelines are added to streamline the presentations. Presentations should normally not exceed 25 slides.

7. Next year’s special topic

Probably von Siebold will be the main theme. Other subsidiary topics include: Digital Buddhist Canons, and a special presentation by NIJL representative.

8. Scholarships

Scholarships will depend on the funding we receive. 
Scholarship support is usually limited in time. When we have certainty about the continuation of the funding and the number of scholarships, we will encourage applications.

9. EAJRS cross-talk series

New project of EAJRS: a platform for open discussion on issues related to Japanese-language metadata and Romanization practices (rules for wakachigaki): Chris Dillon (coordinator), Ohtsuka Yasuyo and Kamiya Nobutake. 
There may be other similar initiatives. We encourage pooling and uniting these efforts.

10. NIJL-EAJRS memorandum

Memorandum of Understanding has been signed on Cooperation between EAJRS and the National Institute of Japanese Literature, National Institutes for the Humanities.
The purpose of this Memorandum of Understanding is to promote cooperation in support the preservation, utilization, international dissemination, and research activities related to premodern Japanese texts.

Matters for cooperation:

1. Matters concerning support for cataloguing, digitization, and preservation of premodern Japanese resources
2. Matters concerning the sharing of information on premodern Japanese resources in Europe
3. Matters concerning the promotion of the utilization of premodern Japanese texts in Europe 
4. Matters concerning cooperation in research and educational activities
5. Matters concerning other activities that both organizations recognize as necessary for the purpose of this MoU

Specific modalities are being worked out.

11. National Diet Library opening its "Digitized Contents Transmission Service for Individuals" to users outside Japan.

We support the letter written by EAJS to NDL, requesting Overseas Access to the National Diet Library's "Digitized Contents Transmission Service for Individuals.

12. Request from Historiographical Institute, The University of Tokyo

Difficulties: timing, funding, and representation from Europe.
Suggestion: not in place of the annual regular conference, but in addition to it, at a different time of the year.
Attendance from Europe would of necessity be limited.
Perhaps a hybrid mode: in person attendance combined with online attendance.

13. Conservation

There is a strong wish to revive the Conservation/Preservation Working Group, formerly led by Yasue Akio. We are calling for suggestions to that end.

14. NIHU

NIHU wants to express its gratitude for the cooperation with EAJRS in the elaboration of the Japanese Studies Resource Guide, and its gratitude to Heidelberg University, for hosting and organizing the pre-event.

15. Report from the secretary

There were 151 registrations, of which 3 did not show up and 1 had to cancel last minute, resulting in 147 actual participants. 102 were here in person in Heidelberg, and 45 participated online.

Participants came from 16 different countries

By continent:

One presentation was cancelled, resulting in 29 presentations with 42 people involved. 15 presentations were in Japanese, ans 14 were in English. One of the presentations was a panel discussion and one was a poster presentation. 11 resource providers were present with a booth and all of them made a presentation during the two resource providers' session.

16. Words of gratitude

Bessho Ken’ichi, consul-general of Japan in Munich,
Dr. Jochen Apel, Director of Heidelberg University Library,
Prof. Hans Martin Krämer, Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy,
Prof. Morita Teiko, Kyoto Sangyō Daigaku, for the wonderful keynote lecture.

I thank all presenters, for the many excellent presentations. 
Thanks to all resource providers, both public/non-profit institutions and commercial vendors.
Thanks to the members of the board, who have accepted to chair each one or two sessions.

Thanks to my colleague, Arjan van der Werf, who once again put in a great deal of effort and time to prepare the conference. We are much indebted to him.

Above all, we owe a great debt of gratitude to Prof. Dr. Judit Árokay of the Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies (CATS), Institut für Japanologie, to Marc Scheffer, librarian for Japanese Studies at the CATS Library (East Asia Section), and to Angela Tauber, staff member in the secretariat of the Zentrum für Ostasienwissenschaften, Institut für Japanologie.
Thanks to the students and volunteers for the logistical support before and during the conference.
Thanks to all presenters, for the high quality presentations.