FW: Belangrijk en dringend FUNDRAISING voor Japanese Studies
Klara Belmans
Beste alumni,
(English version and further explanations below and in the attached brochure!)
Dit jaar was ongetwijfeld een uitzonderlijk en lastig jaar.
Op de valreep van dit jaar zou ik jullie nog even willen herinneren aan een project met een positieve boodschap, van wederopbouw en investering in cultuur, nl een gezamenlijke KU Leuven-UC Louvain fondsenwerving gerelateerd aan de donatie van Japanse boeken die in de bibliotheken van beide universiteiten te vinden zijn. Voor meer details verwijs ik graag naar bijgevoegde uitleg en de brochure.
De fondsenwervingscampagne begint nu pas en zal de komende maanden en in ieder geval tot de opening van onze tentoonstelling in oktober 2022, worden voortgezet.
Iedere gift vanaf 40 euro is fiscaal aftrekbaar en voor 2020 is er zelfs een speciale fiscale regeling voor giften aan KU Leuven. Via deze link vind je hierover meer informatie:
https://www.kuleuven.be/mecenaat/nieuws/haal-meer-uit-je-gift-in-2020
U kan uw bijdrage storten op volgend rekeningnummer van KU Leuven:
IBAN account number BE45 7340 1941 7789
BIC code KREDBEBB
met vermelding “1SK-FOJAPT-P3610”.
Dank u dat u overweegt om dit project te steunen.
Jan Schmidt
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English version and further explanation (see also the attached PDFs):
Dear alumni,
This year has obviously been an extraordinary and difficult one. Today, at its very end, I would like to address you all with a project that hopefully carries a very positive message, one of post-catastrophe reconstruction and of investment in culture. I would like to ask you to become ambassadors for a joint KU Leuven-UCLouvain fundraising project. Also any individual donation would be highly appreciated as well. You find more information on the fundraising campaign, the bank account details and the historical background in the attached PDF. If you would be interested to donate to the campaign still this year, it turned out that there is even a special tax scheme due to Corona (see the attached nota or visit the following link: https://www.kuleuven.be/mecenaat/nieuws/haal-meer-uit-je-gift-in-2020).
This is only the beginning, of course, and we will further step up the fundraising efforts in 2021 and continue at least until the opening of our special exhibition „Japan’s Book Donation to the University of Louvain. Japanese Cultural Identity and Modernity in the 1920s“ in the university library in October 2022.
Let me be very clear here: I do not want to be a salesman and, of course, I fully understand that asking people or companies for financial contributions to a project that focuses on culture right now, might be considered as frivolous given the enormous suffering in our society due to the Corona crisis. But I do think that among all the hardships that we were and are still facing from that crisis, it is important to look ahead and to set some positive goals. And we in the humanities are very often too humble to make our wishes and dreams known buying into the narrative that it is the mainly natural sciences and engineering that should have priority. We are actually facing a unique window of opportunity in the coming months for an unprecedented fundraising campaign focusing on the 100ths anniversary of the fabulous collection of almost 14.000 precious Japanese books that were donated by Japan as part of the international effort to rebuild our university library at the beginning of the 1920s.
Let us not forget that the reconstruction of our university library is symbolic for the revival after the horrors of the First World War that had led to its destruction in 1914 – but also after another deadly pandemic, the so-called „Spanish Flu“. Next year we face the centennial of the visit of then-Crown Prince Hirohito, the later Shōwa-Emperor, to Leuven as part of his tour to witness post-First World War Europe. In the aftermath to that visit in 1921 the Imperial Household Ministry donated 10,000 Yen – back then a sizeable sum of money – to the already ongoing efforts to support the reconstruction of our university library. These efforts were coordinated by a National Committee in Japan that was headed by the legendary entrepreneur Shibusawa Eiichi. The Committee decided that money should be collected for assembling a major book donation to the reconstructed university library in Leuven, that should represent Japanese culture in as many facets as possible. Triggered by the donation by the Imperial Household other industrialist families such as the Iwasaki family (behind Mitsubishi), the Mitsui, Sumitomo and Furukawa families (all in the center of prewar zaibatsu that transformed into several corporate groups still existing today), but also individual donors, often related to the array of Japanese universities also involved in the effort, contributed. When the devastating Great Kantō Earthquake (Kantō dai-shinsai) hit the Tokyo-Yokohama region in September 1923 there was an imminent danger that the Japanese book donation would be cancelled because of the immense loss of books throughout Tokyo during the fires that raged after the earthquake and due to the obvious financial constraints. But then it was Belgium, still in the middle of the postwar reconstruction itself, that donated money – and our university also books – for the rebuilding of Tokyo. The strong impression of this led to the decision in Japan to continue the donation effort, and in the end those almost 14.000 books, the majority from he Edo period (1600-1868), were sent to Leuven. Even the bookshelves we still use today in our East Asian Library can be traced to this effort, as well as our Satsuma Chair, which was a 1927 donation by Satsuma Jirohachi, the son of a textile mogul and philanthropist back then residing in Paris with the purpose to bring life to the Japanese book donation with lectures on Japanese culture, history and religion.
What is this fundraising campaign now about?
Thanks to the enthusiastic reaction of the rectors of KU Leuven and UCLouvain, Luc Sels and Vincent Blondel, both universities after several meetings now in November 2020 – and despite the hardships of the Corona crisis – decided to launch a joint fundraising effort to facilitate the enormous potential of the 1920s Japanese book donation. The books themselves are stored in a secured space and under good conditions in our French-speaking sister university UCLouvain since 1968, while we keep the bookshelves and several pieces of artwork. And because of the decade-long efforts of our emeritus Professor Willy Vande Walle we have a strong Japanese Studies Department here at KU Leuven and good relations to the colleagues of the University Library of UCLouvain, where especially the curator for the special collections, Emily Vilcot, is doing her best to keep the Japanese donation in a good condition. It is just that we here at KU Leuven have expertise of our Japanese Studies team and the infrastructure of our East Asian Library and at UCLouvain the donation is waiting. So why not raising a major amount of money now for the centennial of the donation to bring both together in a joint effort?
What we still need from now is a specialist who would help us to continue the efforts of Professor Vande Walle, who is still very active, to use this massive book donation for further research, for our education and for outreach to the public here in Belgium and beyond. Among our students we have a growing tangible interest in premodern Japanese history. Professor Vande Walle and also David De Cooman supported students with such interests already for many years. For the future it would be an extremely important extension to our research and education team to have an additional permanent position for a researcher who could facilitate the enormous potential of the book donation. We also all know how restricted our means for more individual supervision of students, especially of BA, MA and PhD theses candidates are with just three professors and a lecturer for about 200 students. Of course, we have this incredible team of language teachers which has elevated our education for Modern Japanese to the European top-level. If we could add this new professorship now, not only our level of supervision for thesis projects would further rise but we also would gain the crucial ability of letting students write their thesis projects about the Early Modern Period – very possibly using examples from the fabulous 1920s book donation. There is also considerable interest among the colleagues affiliated with the new KU Leuven Institute for the Study of the Transmission of Texts, Ideas and Images in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (LECTIO, see: http://lectio.ghum.kuleuven.be/index/) in comparing the famous Early Modern book printing culture in the Lower Lands to other world regions and to study premodern flows of knowledge around the world. This is our opportunity now to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 1920s Japanese book donation and make this dream come true via a fundraising campaign.
Both rectorates have agreed now to a joint campaign of KU Leuven and UCLouvain with the ultimate goal to establish a new academic position for a specialist in Early Modern cultural history of Japan, focusing on the printing culture, book history, and history of knowledge of the 17th, 18th and 19th Century – which was a crucial time forming the link between premodern and modern history. This is a dream scenario that would strengthen our Japanese Studies here immensely and would counter the tendency of a growing lack of expertise on Early Modern Japan throughout Europe, where many former professorships that were focusing on premodern Japanese history and culture have been either entirely scrapped or converted into positions focusing on Modern and Contemporary Japan. For establishing such a lifetime position exclusively with outside funding, we will need an large sum of money (depending on the age of the incoming new colleague more than 3 million Euro), since this has to cover the salary, administrative costs and also the pension and take inflation rates into account. But many KU Leuven fundraising efforts in the past have raised much higher sums, and in a meeting of the fundraising departments of KU Leuven and UCLouvain the goal was evaluated as realistic, even in our troubled times. And even if ultimately the campaign would fall short of that goal, we could establish a prestigious position for several years – for instance filled then by young career or senior scholars on a yearly basis. This could also be a so-called „named chair“ in case of major donations from one source, which then would be attributed the right to name the chair (e.g. Shibusawa Chair of Early Modern Japanese Culture etc. – it also could have your name!). With the fund that is to be established in addition several other, smaller, but equally important goals will be met: a lecture series by international specialists highlighting important books or in general aspects of the 1920s Japanese book donation, restoration works on the 1920s bookshelves in our library, financial support of our special exhibition „Japan’s Book Donation to the University of Louvain. Japanese Cultural Identity and Modernity in the 1920s“ which will open in October 2022 and of the exhibition catalogue with Leuven University Press, that will already be published within the next months (https://lup.be/products/131397). I could also imagine that we would finally be able to reestablish the very popular lecture on Japanese Religion by Jinsen Pinnoo, if he would kindly agree to it. But in the end, it would be that additional professorship that would be of the greatest help for us and for the further academic and educational use of the Japanese book donation that basically is waiting in the vaults of UCLouvain.
Donations of any size would be highly welcome. Of course, the professional fundraising effort will try to encourage companies or possible individual philanthropists to donate major sums, but we should also be smart and aspire a crowd-funding approach.
And there is a concrete first goal: 25.000 Euro or at least a significant part of it. Why this sum? Because this is the sum in the KU Leuven fundraising framework that is needed to officially set up a fund for further fundraising. That this fund will be set up is decided already, but now we want to reach out to all possibly interested individuals and companies to meet this first goal. To be able to raise even a good part of this sum by a first crowd funding by ourselves would send a very strong message to the university fundraising department and show a strong sign of sympathy for this campaign.
You find the necessary account information in the attached fundraising brochure (page 8). Donations starting from 40 Euro are tax-deductible. To this end, you will receive a tax certificate by KU Leuven. In case of larger amounts from 5.000 Euro KU Leuven would ask to sign a letter of intent prior to the bank transfer. In this case, please contact Ms. Kristine Chapelle (kristine...@kuleuven.be) of our KU Leuven fundraising department (in urgent cases via her phone number: 0477 892 616). In case of an immediate wish to donate, there is even a special tax-deduction scheme in place still for this year 2020 – obviously you would have to react fast then. Here the link to more information:
https://www.kuleuven.be/mecenaat/nieuws/haal-meer-uit-je-gift-in-2020
You also will find further explanation in the attached PDFs, especially in the fundraising brochure. We would highly appreciate if you would consider a donation – any sum would be welcome! Most important would be if you could become ambassadors of our fundraising effort in the nexts months and inform anybody who could be interested in contributing!
Greetings, stay safe and healthy, and best wishes for 2021!
Jan Schmidt
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Professor Dr. Jan Schmidt
Associate Professor, Japanese Studies (Modern History of Japan)
KU Leuven
Faculty of Arts
East Asian and Arabic Studies Research Unit
Blijde Inkomststraat 21, Room 7.27
3000 Leuven, Belgium
Tel. +32 16 32 10 31
E-mail: Jan.S...@kuleuven.be