Special Contribution
A Transnational Moment
IRIYE Akira
I am honored to be present at this wonderfully transnational moment. You
have brought together scholars, students, and interested citizens from many
countries to commemorate the inauguration of an innovative program for thestudy of the history of cultural contact and communication in East Asia andbeyond. Cross-cultural encountering and networking are the essence of transnational history. As someone who recently co-edited a dictionary of transnational history (The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History), I cannot behappier to have been invited to participate in the events that you have organized. To receive an honorary degree in such a setting is a rare privilege, thepleasure of which I shall share with my coworkers across the globe who
dedicate themselves to transnational communication and understanding.
Transnational history, an approach to studying the past through a focus
on cross-national encounters and exchanges, is a rather recent development.
Traditionally, history, especially of the modern era, has privileged nations.
Historians have accepted the nation as the key conceptual framework within
which to explore political, economic, and cultural affairs. History, in otherwords, has tended to consist of national histories, and most historians havefocused their study on just one country’s past. Even when they have dealt
with a plurality of nations, their primary interest has been in international
affairs, which by definition concern relations among nations. That is the subfield of history known as international history, which has developed inparallel to national history. Transnational history, in contrast, chronicles interconnections across boundaries that go beyond national identities or international relations. When individuals, their associations, or their products (material or spiritual) cross national borders – as tourists, artists, missionaries,
business people, exchange scholars and students, migrant workers, refugees,
and in numerous other ways --, they may not necessarily shed their respective
nationalities, but their cross-national encounters do constitute transnational
moments and contribute to defining a global landscape that is independent ofa map of the world whose units are nations (including empires).
Thus characterized, transnational history has existed side by side with

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national histories and with international history for a long time, even longer
these other kinds of history, for cross-border encounters in various parts of theworld preceded the birth of modern nation states. And even in the modern
era, states and nations by no means exhaust human groupings. People haveorganized themselves into many types of associations, some of which havebeen local, while others have been transnational, be they regional or global.
Nations, too, have entered into various associations in which they pursue
shared objectives. Thus modern history needs to be conceptualized asconsisting of local, national, regional, international, and transnational histories, all of which make up world or global history.
Nevertheless, historians have been rather slow to recognize this simple
fact. It is only during the last fifteen or twenty years that the traditional privileging of national and international history has given way, albeit slowly, tosuch new conceptionalizations as world history, global history, and transnational history. Historical perception tended to lag behind historical reality.
Speaking of transnational history, it may be said that while it always existed,transnational historiography did not emerge till the end of the twentiethcentury. A good example of transnational consciousness may be seen in thetranscripts of a conference held in Belagio, Italy, in 1972, where participantsfrom around the world spoke of “a growing network of individuals concernedwith the improvement of long-tern cultural relations among people and countries who wish to transcend the barriers – political, military or ideological –which often distort or handicap the fulfillment of human relationships.” Suchlanguage reflected the growth of transnational connections separate from individual national identities or political and strategic considerations. It took suchawareness nearly twenty years before historians began to refer to thosecultural developments as transnational, a development that led to the development of transnational history as a distinctive category. Although the term“transnational history” was at first used by a tiny group of historians during
the 1990s, it is only in the last ten years that it has spread worldwide, thus
becoming a transnationally recognized conception of the past. Historians
throughout the world now not only find the conception of transnational
history useful, but they have also forged transnational networks to further thisway of studying the past, transcending their respective national boundaries,geographically and cognitively.
We might put the founding of Kansai University’s program in East Asian
cultural interactions in such a historiographic context. This program reflects
awareness of the importance of transcending a purely nation-centric approach
to history, and it stresses the cultural aspect of cross-border relations. Suchawareness fits well into the framework of transnational history. It is part of theglobal, transnational effort at charting a new course in understanding our past.

Special Contribution

9The past should be shared by all people regardless of national division, but
the part of the past that can be shared most meaningfully consists of cultural
productions, their infusion, and their transmission. Your project’s emphasis on
cultural interaction and interconnection throughout East Asia is, therefore,
most appropriate.
Transnational history is above all a study of these cultural phenomena.
First of all, in contrast to international affairs, which studies interstate relations with a focus on military and economic power, transnational history
studies cultural interactions apart from such a focus. Power assumes a relationship of domination and subordination, a hierarchical system to order states
and nations. Culture, on the other hand, is less a hierarchical than a sharedpursuit among equals. Individuals and private associations engage in theirundertakings and define their identities quite often independently of power
considerations or national policies. Second, culture speaks to memory; individual and group memories may be personal, private, and even moral, quite
separate from official memories that prioritize national interests. As againstnational memories, there exist communities of shared memory across nationalborders among people who have met and interacted across national boundaries or have lived in each other’s communities. Third, not just memory but
culture in general is transnationalizable. Cultural productions such as works ofart and literature easily cross national boundaries and contribute to creating atransnational space. Fourth, various regions of the world often constitute suchtransnational spaces. East Asia is a good example. Your project assumes that
cultural pursuits in the region contribute to defining its identity. Of course,
East Asia can be seen as a space where cultural pursuits have coexisted side
by side with violent confrontations as well as with more peaceful commercialengagements. But the underlying assumption of the Society for Cultural
Interaction in East Asia seems to be that through all such contradictory andoverlapping developments, there grew a common regional consciousness, ashared awareness of its cultural legacies that can be appreciated by all people.
Here we may explore some questions that arise in connection with thebold new initiative undertaken by the Society. How is a regional identityforged? What if excessive nationalism should emerge – as it has emerged
from time to time – to question the validity of anything transnational? Can wecount on the existence of an epistemic community of scholars and educators
who are ready to overcome excessive nationalism and commit themselves toa shared task of transnational communication? Even more critically, can there
develop a community of memory and meaning across national boundaries notjust in East Asia but also in the rest of Asia and, for that matter, throughout
the world?
In seeking to explore such questions, which I am sure have also preoc-

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cupied the members of this Society, we may be inspired by and learn fromthe scholarly work being carried out by European historians. Many of them
have been interested in tracing the meaning of “Europe” and“Europeanization” through history. They agree that these are not uniform
conceptions and that the dual legacies of Europe – imperialism, war, andgenocide on the one hand, and the pursuit of human rights and international
cooperation on the other – have all contributed to creating a self-conscious
European memory and identity. Scholars studying the history of East Asia
may draw some inspiration from such work to examine the region’s past interms of the evolution of the conception of East Asia and the possibility ofEast Asianization as a counterpart to Europeanization. The East Asian region,
too, has had its empires, wars, and excessive nationalism, along with intraregional trade and flourishing cultural productions. To the extent that throughsuch diverse modes of interaction shared memories may emerge, they would
be an important counterpart to the European community of memory andculture. We could then ask if the histories of Europeanization and East
Asianization have something in common. Have the two regions developed
internally consistent regional identities? Are these regional identities universalizable, or are they more exclusionary? If universalizable, the two regions
will be able to contribute to further cultural transnationalization, but if not, theworld may remain divided. In this connection, I am impressed that one of theobjectives of the Society for Cultural Interaction in East Asia is to explore
cultural interactions between East Asia and the rest of Asia, an endeavor thatwill surely lead to a perspective that would embrace even regions beyond
Asia. Scholars and interested citizens outside of East Asia could then engage
themselves in discussions about the region’s cultural pursuits, just as nonEuropeans are invited to join Europeans to explore the meaning of Europe.
Ultimately, then, your project, and, I may add, all scholarly endeavors
everywhere in the world, will contribute to defining the meaning and direction of human civilization. For, whether we speak of Europeanization or East
Asianization, in the end we come back to the meaning of humanity. Together,Europe, East Asia, and other regions of the world may, through their histories, contribute to transnationalizing the idea of humankind and its civilization. There can be no more meaningful task in today’s world, no more significant “transnational moment.”