2025-2026 Webinars

Feb. 2, 7-8pm ET. 1905 Treaty of Portsmouth with Viktor Shmagin, University of Alaska Fairbanks. The Treaty of Portsmouth was negotiated from Aug. 6-30, 1905, at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and signed on Sept. 5, 1905. The treaty recognized Japan’s authority over Korea, the Liaodong Peninsula, the South Manchuria Railway, and the southern half of the island of Sakhalin (Karafuto). Theodore Roosevelt was instrumental in the negotiations and won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. Viktor Shmagin is assistant professor in the history department at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. His research interests include Japan-Russia relations. Register here.

Feb. 10, 7-8pm ET. The House Before Falling Into the Sea with author Ann Suk Wang. 2024 Freeman Book Award Winner (Children’s Literature). “A child and her family take in refugees during the Korean War in this poignant picture book about courage and what it really means to care for your neighbors." In collaboration with the University of Colorado TEA. Register here.

Feb. 11, 7-8pm ET. Blossoms on a Poisoned Sea with author Mariko Tatsumoto. 2024 Freeman Book Award Honorable Mention (YA/HS). Yuki is the daughter of a poor fisherman. Kiyo is the son of a senior executive at Chisso, a huge chemical conglomerate. In 1956, they meet and become friends. But then all living things in the once beautiful Minamata Bay suddenly die. The impoverished people living around it begin suffering from a terrifying disease that causes agonizing pain, paralysis, and death . . . including Yuki’s family. With no fish to catch and incapacitated from the disease, her parents are starving. The corporation stonewalls, denying culpability. Kiyo fails to convince his father to get the company to help. As the suffering spreads, Kiyo helps researchers find answers to the devastating neurological disease. Together Yuki and Kiyo must fight both the Japanese government and a powerful and ruthless corporation to save her family and the bay. Register here.

Feb. 18, 7-8pm ET. Gambare Hiroshima—Don't Give Up! with author Stephen Miwa. When the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in August 1945, Japanese schoolboy Larry Fumio Miwa faithfully recorded each day’s events in his diary, despite the massive devastation he experienced firsthand. His eyewitness account of the improbable survival of his family and his solitary treks through the abandoned city bears haunting testimony to this unprecedented tragedy. More than 60 years later, Larry—by then a successful banker in Honolulu, Hawai‘i—rediscovered his childhood diary, which has now been reproduced in collaboration with his son, Stephen Miwa, in Gambare Hiroshima—Don’t Give Up! Register here.

Feb. 25, 7-8pm ET. Free Spirits: Katsushika Oi and Her Father Hokusai. Brenda Jordan is a Japanese art historian who teaches for the Departments of East Asian Languages and Literatures and History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research interests are early modern and modern Japanese art history, specifically issues of the dynamics of modernization and modernity in Japan. Register here.

Mar. 3, 7-8pm ET. Up, Up, Ever Up! Junko Tabei: A Life in the Mountains with author Anita Yasuda. 2024 Freeman Book Award Of Note (Children’s Literature). “Anita Yasuda’s evocative picture book biography about Junko Tabei, the first woman to summit Everest, is equal parts grit and grace. Dazzlingly illustrated by Caldecott Honor artist Yuko Shimizu.” In collaboration with the University of Colorado TEA. Register here.