"Acts of Writing: Language and Identities in Japanese Literature," the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Association of Japanese Literary Studies, to be held November 10-12, is sponsored by grants from the Japan Foundation and the Northeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies and by financial support from Washington University, St. Louis. The co-chairs and organizers of the conference are Professors Rebecca Copeland, Marvin Marcus, and Elizabeth Oyler, and the cooperating administrative units are the East Asian Studies Program and the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures. The conference this year is organized around topics of "literariness," national/gendered identities, and language and will feature twenty-four paper presentations along with two keynote speakers: Dr. Zdenka Svarcova of Charles University, Czech Republic, and Yoshihiro Ohsawa, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Tokyo University. For more information regarding registration, accom- modations, and transportation, and an up-to-date copy of the program, please consult our webpage: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~ajls/.