Hidehiro Tachibana

Biography

Hidehiro Tachibana works mainly on Francophone literature, and in particular, West Indian and Quebec literature. He is interested in Francophone and Asian intellectuals who feel torn between their culture of origin and their knowledge of the West. Author or co-author of Québec si lointain, si proche (2013), Les Intellectuels au XXIe siècle (2009) Hidehiro Tachibana has worked on several translations: Pierre Bourdieu, Dany Laferrière, Aimé Césaire, Édouard Glissant, Julio Cortázar and many Quebec poets. He is a professor at Waseda University in Tokyo and president of the Japanese Association of Quebec Studies.

Conference: How do the Japanese perceive time?

In Japan, the daily perception of the passage of time is often linked by metaphor or metonymy to the observation of the weather, as traditional poetry attests. This particular Japanese sensitivity to cyclical time, punctuated by the seasonal elements, goes back to the mythical Shinto world described in the Kojiki (Chronicle of Ancient Facts). However, the Japanese also have another perception of time, that of duration or precariousness, introduced by Buddhism. This is a philosophy of time opposed to Western Hegelian history. In literary works, this Buddhist concept evokes an epic time that makes us realize that everything on Earth is ephemeral. The question then arises as to why the Japanese have succeeded in building a so-called “modern” society in spite of these traditional perceptions of time, which seem hardly conducive to modern times. We’ll also ask how digital time is articulated for young people today. These questions will lead us to examine the importance of latent Shinto time in contemporary Japanese life.