In this episode Miles is join by Paul Hullah (Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo) and Chiho Omichi (Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo) to discuss Murdoch and Japan - her visits, the inspiration she took from Japan, Murdoch in translation, her philosophical links, the Japanese Murdoch Society, and much more.

https://irismurdochjapan.jp/en/

Paul Hullah (MA (Hons), PhD) is Associate Professor of British Literature at Meiji Gakuin University and, since 2015) has been President of The Iris Murdoch Society of Japan (1997-). With Murdoch’s active participation, he co-edited and wrote a 'Critical Introduction’ to the authorised collection of Murdoch’s Poems (UEP 1997), and her Occasional Essays (1998). He has published literary studies, including Romanticism and Wild Places (Edinburgh University Press & Quadrega 1998) and We Found Her Hidden: The Remarkable Poetry of Christina Rossetti (Partridge 2016); twenty university-level ‘literary’ textbooks, including Rock UK: A Sociocultural History of British Popular Music (Cengage, 2013); and seven collections of award-winning poetry, including Climbable (Partridge 2016). Murdoch herself described Hullah’s poetry as ‘fine... with an enchantment that touches me deeply’, and John Bayley also praised his work. Hullah received the 2013 Asia Pacific Brand Laureate Award for ‘paramount contribution to the cultivation of literature’. He was keynote speaker at the 2022 Tenth International Iris Murdoch Conference (University of Chichester, UK), contributed a chapter on Murdoch and Zen to the recent volume Iris Murdoch’s Literary Imagination (Palgrave Macmillan 2023), and is currently working on The Japanese Iris: Murdoch’s Affinities and Interactions with Japanese Thought, a critical monograph tracing the important impact of Japanese ideas on Murdoch’s literary and philosophical writings.

Chiho Omichi is Professor at Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo, Japan and Vice President of the Iris Murdoch Society of Japan. She earned a BA in English literature from Tokyo’s Keio University, MAs from Keio University and London University, and a PhD from Keio University. Her research considers British 20th-century women novelists, particularly Murdoch and Dorothy Richardson, and she has published widely in this area.