Living Arts Counseling Center

Presentation & Lecture

The “Rape of Nanjing”, the massacre and atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese Army after it captured Nanking in 1937, has become the most important symbol of the seven-year Sino-Japanese war. There has been an impasse between the Chinese’ need for acknowledgement of the enormity of their suffering and resentment and the Japanese’ feeling of defensiveness and shame at the thought of their country committing despicable crimes against humanity.

In an initiative launched by Japanese Professor Kuniko Muramoto, an important event took place in October of 2009 at Normal University in Nanjing, China in collaboration with Ritsumeikan, University in Kyoto, Japan. A group of 26 Chinese and Japanese students and professors from both universities spent 4 days together giving shape to their historical legacies through drama, music, poetry, ritual, dialogue and therapeutic processes.

Through lecture, demonstration and the showing of video clips from the 2009 workshop, Volkas, Muramoto, and Kasai will share their discoveries and perspectives on the potential of the arts to heal historical trauma.

Kuniko Muramoto, PhD, is a professor at Ritsumeikan University, Japan, Graduate School of Science for Human Service. She is a clinical psychologist and the founder and director of the Feminine Life Cycle Institute which provides advocacy and education on women’s issues and counseling services for women, children and families.  She is a pioneer in domestic violence issues in Japan. Muramoto approaches historical trauma and reconciliation as a way of violence prevention.  She was the lead coordinator and co-facilitator of Remembering Nanjing 2009.

Armand Volkas, MFT, RDT/BCT, is a psychotherapist and Registered Drama Therapist in private practice and Clinical Director of the Living Arts Counseling Center in Oakland, California. In addition, Armand is Associate Professor in the Counseling Psychology Program at California Institute of Integral Studies and Adjunct Professor at John F. Kennedy University. He has developed innovative programs using drama therapy and expressive arts therapies for social change, intercultural conflict resolution, reconciliation and intercultural communication. Armand directs Healing the Wounds of History, a therapeutic approach in which theatre techniques are used to work with groups of participants from two cultures with a common legacy of violent conflict and historical trauma. Healing the Wounds of History has received international recognition for its work in bringing groups in conflict together: Germans and Jews; Palestinians and Israelis; Japanese, Chinese and Koreans; Armenians and Turks; African-Americans and European-Americans and Tamil and Singhalese in the aftermath of the Sri Lankan Civil War.

Aya Kasai, M.A., MFTI is an expressive arts therapist and a graduate student at the CIIS.  Kasai was a co-coordinator and a co-facilitator of Remembering Nanjing 2009. Kasai is collaborates with therapists, educators, and peace workers and to promotes expressive arts approach to dialogue and peace education.

Healing the Wounds of History is a process in which experiential techniques are used to work with a group of participants who share a common legacy of historical trauma. The process was developed by Armand Volkas, MFT, a psychotherapist and drama therapist from Berkeley, California. Volkas is the son of Auschwitz survivors and resistance fighters from World War II. He was moved by his personal struggle with this legacy of historical trauma to address the issues that arose from it: identity, victimization and perpetration, meaning and grief. Healing the Wounds of History helps participants work through the burden of such legacies by transforming their pain into constructive action. Armand Volkas’s work has received international recognition for bringing groups in conflict together: Germans and Jews; Palestinians and Israelis; Japanese, Chinese and Koreans; African-Americans and European-Americans, Tamil and Singhalese Cultures in the aftermath of the Sri Lankan Civil War, and Armenians and Turks.