EU-Japan Young Scholars WS “Japanese Transnationalism and Empire” Abstracts

The 5th EU-Japan Young Scholars Workshop in Alsace
Japanese Transnationalism and Empire
日本のトランスナショナリズムと帝国
Date: November 4th – 6th, 2022

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Hosei University Research Center for International Japanese Studies (HIJAS)
European Center for Japanese Studies in Alsace (CEEJA)
Consortium for Global Japanese Studies (CGJS)

OutlineEmpire is an agency that promotes the mobility of people and the flow of goods and information acrossborders to expand its power. At the same time, transnationalism can lead to various actions that would
potentially destruct the empire. Hence, transnationalism both empowers and demolishes the empire.
Empirically speaking, throughout its long history, Japan has been influenced by different empires anddeveloped ties with them. On the other hand, Japan was also once an empire that displayed power
against the world, especially toward its Asian neighbors. Based on these theoretical and empirical
understandings, this year’s workshop explores Japan’s transnational relations with the empire acrossthe world and transnational activities within the Japanese empire. How did Japan develop transnational
relations with the past and present empires? How were the transnational practices within the Japanese
empire? How did the Japanese resist the empire through generating transnational ties with people
outside? We welcome historical and contemporary works that tackle the workshop theme from different
fields of research - international relations, transnational culture and language, migration research, global
civil society, policy transfer, globalization of education, tourism studies, and diffusion of knowledge,
among others.
ØCommentators: Josef KYBURZ (CNRS), Akinobu KURODA (Strasbourg University), Nozomi
TAKAHASHI (Strasbourg University), Erich PAUER (CEEJA), Regine MATHIAS (CEEJA), Hideto
TSUBOI (Waseda University), OGUCHI Masashi (Hosei University), ABIKO Shin (Hosei
University), Kei TAKATA (Hosei University), Yusuke SUZUMURA (Meijo University)

Keynote Speaker 1
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EU-Japan Young Scholars WS “Japanese Transnationalism and Empire” Abstracts

Naoki SAKAI
Cornell University, USA
The End of Pax Americana The Loss of Empire and Hikikomori Nationalism (Duke UP, 2022)
⽇本語ヴァージョン『ひきこもりの国⺠主義』（岩波書店, 2017 年）
In The End of Pax Americana, Naoki Sakai focuses on U.S. hegemony's long history in East Asia andthe effects of its decline on contemporary conceptions of internationality. Engaging with themes ofnationality in conjunction with internationality, the civilizational construction of differences between
East and West, and empire and decolonization, Sakai focuses on the formation of a nationalism of
hikikomori, or “reclusive withdrawal”—Japan’s increasingly inward-looking tendency since the late
1990s, named for the phenomenon of the nation’s young people sequestering themselves from publiclife. Sakai argues that the exhaustion of Pax Americana and the post--World War II international order—
under which Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and China experienced rapid modernization throughconsumer capitalism and a media revolution—signals neither the “decline of the West” nor the rise of
the East, but, rather a dislocation and decentering of European and North American political, economic,
diplomatic, and intellectual influence. This decentering is symbolized by the sense of the loss of oldcolonial empires such as those of Japan, Britain, and the United States.

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EU-Japan Young Scholars WS “Japanese Transnationalism and Empire” Abstracts

Keynote Speaker 2

Michael LUCKEN
Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO), France
The Japanese and the War Expectation, Perception, and the Shaping of Memory (Columbia UP,
2017 Translated by Karen Grimwade)
Memories of World War II exert a powerful influence over Japan's culture and society. In The Japaneseand the War, Michael Lucken details how World War II manifested in the literature, art, film, funerarypractices, and education reform of the time. Concentrating on the years immediately before and after(1937 to 1952), Lucken explores the creation of an idea of Japanese identity that still resonates ineverything from soap operas to the response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Lucken defines three
distinct layers of Japan's memory of World War II: the population's expectations at the beginning, thetrauma caused by conflict and defeat, and the politics of memory that arose after Japan lost to the Allied
powers. Emphasizing Japanese-language sources, Lucken writes a narrative of the making of Japanesecultural memory that moves away from Western historical modes and perspectives. His approach also
paints a new portrait of the U.S. occupation, while still maintaining a cultural focus. Lucken sets out tocapture the many ways people engage with war, but particularly the full range of Japan's experiences,which, he argues, the Japanese state has yet to fully confront, leading to a range of tensions at home andabroad.

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EU-Japan Young Scholars WS “Japanese Transnationalism and Empire” Abstracts

Presenter Day 1, No.1
Fukuda Hideko and the Transimperial Origins of Japanese Terrorism
福⽥英⼦と⽇本におけるテロリズムの超帝国的起源
Amin GHADIMIOsaka University, Japan
This presentation examines the case of Fukuda Hideko and her involvement in the 1885 Osaka Incident toconsider the origins of Japanese global terrorism. The Osaka Incident was a failed plot to detonate explosives
in Korea, topple the Korean monarchy, and thereby reinvigorate the Movement for Freedom and Popular
Rights (jiyū minken undō) in Japan and spread democratic ideals in Asia. Fukuda, a major player in thescheme, proclaimed women’s rights as a major rationale for her participation in the terror plot. The paperargues, first, that the 1885 Incident was the first significant attempt at international terrorism, as understoodin the contemporary sense, in Japanese history. The paper then argues that Fukuda’s terrorism emerged fromtwo transimperial developments in the 1880s. The first was the physical, geopolitical competition of empires.
The Osaka Incident responded to multiple imperial rivalries: the Japanese-Qing rivalry over Korea, which
had been inflamed by the Imo Incident of 1882 and the Kapsin Coup of 1884; French-Qing rivalry overVietnam, which had ratcheted up with the Sino-French War of 1884; the European scramble for Africa in the
1880s, which the terrorists explicitly invoked; and the rise of Germany and Russia as increasingly powerfulimperial forces. Second was the transimperial flow of ideas, especially about gender, individual rights, andthe violent public. The paper situates the Osaka Incident in what is known as the global “first wave” ofterrorism and reveals that the Osaka terrorists, including Fukuda, turned to Ireland and especially Russia for
inspiration. Theirs was a “democratic” terrorism: an attempt to spread global ideas of liberty andrepresentative governance through popular, non-state action.

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EU-Japan Young Scholars WS “Japanese Transnationalism and Empire” Abstracts

Presenter Day 1, No.2
Consequential Application of Watsuji’s Ethics of Ningen to Transnational Relations
和辻の人間倫理の国際関係への一貫した適用
Tomoki SAKATA
Otto-Friedrich-University Bamberg, Germany
Watsuji Tetsurō (1889-1960) has developed his ethical concept through the WWII. Despite hissuspected involvement in Japan’s imperial politics, this article examines his ethics in view of its
application to transnational relations, which he frames as World Republic.1 According to Watsuji, weare (ontologically) ningen (the betweenness of us humans) and ought (ethically) to be cognizant of thisfact; this idea is meant to dialectically solve the dualism of individual and social or particular anduniversal. How can we systematically extend this principle to world society? My analysis concerns
three aspects: 1) a hierarchy of different classes of the betweenness such as family, community, andstate; 2) an egality of entities under one class, esp. World Republic; 3) a precise nature of ningen. To
address these issues, I will argue; 1) Watsuji ascribes original productivity to the lower and formal
regulation to the higher class, e.g., each family is a substantial unity whereas families in a community
are abstract entities that are regulated through their common features (the same applies for higher
classes). 2) Watsuji sees nations to be mostly competitive; but on the other side, he contends that thetrue Absolute2 is expressed in concrete phenomena—Gods of specific doctrines— without conflicts
and exclusion.3 3) The betweenness of various nature is simply there before conceptualization; actual
living enables the comprehension, not vice versa. To conclude, an ideal relation between nations for
Watsuji must be the most abstract regulation that each nation respects for its own populace that alreadylive in families and communities. Concept of such transnationality is abstracted by observing andinterpreting multifaceted appearance of the betweenness, which peoples of particular society, climate,and history demonstrate.

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EU-Japan Young Scholars WS “Japanese Transnationalism and Empire” Abstracts

Presenter Day 2, No.1
Two colonialisms in contrast: The Italian and Japanese cases in the 19th century
対照的な 2 つの植⺠地主義：19 世紀のイタリアと⽇本の事例
Nikolaos MAVROPOULOS
The Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg - Institute of Advance Study, Germany
The goal of the current study is to highlight the nature and to outline the origins of Japanese colonialism
by comparing it with the Italian example. The collation with European colonialism in general would beinappropriate on the grounds that each Great Power moved differently in the colonial arena according
to its interests and aspirations. For this reason I chose the comparison with the Italian equivalent
phenomenon with which, I am convinced that it shares many common and perhaps largely unknown
elements. The two phenomena naturally encompass interesting differences as well, the highlighting of
which will help the deeper understanding of the birth, the development and the causes of early Japanesecolonialism. This paper offers a comparison of early Italian and Japanese colonialism. The majority ofstudies on Italian and Japanese expansion refer to the fascist and totalitarian periods of the 1930–1940s,
when Japan seized Manchuria (1931) and Italy Ethiopia (1936). However, the first formative and crucial
steps that paved the way for this expansion have been neglected. The analysis covers a range ofnineteenth century’s social, political, and economic parameters illuminating the diversity, but also thecommonalities in nature and origins of Japan’s and Italy’s early colonial endeavours. This examination
has never been attempted before, and it provides a deeper understanding of Italy’s and Japan’s similarand common historical evolution in the late 19th and the first half of the twentieth centuries.

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EU-Japan Young Scholars WS “Japanese Transnationalism and Empire” Abstracts

Presenter Day 2, No.2
Gambling in the Empires: A Comparison of Early Modern Japan and Europe「帝国における賭博―近世⽇本とヨーロッパの⽐較」
Paola MASCHIO
Hosei University, JapanI will examine how European and Japanese regimes viewed gambling, what measures they took towards
it and what guided their different policies towards gambling, through theoretical and political texts
which analyze and suggest solutions to the phenomenon. Both in Christian Europe and in Confucian
Japan gambling was viewed as a ‘moral evil’, and the authorities initially tried to ban it. When it became
apparent that it was too alluring for people and couldn’t be eradicated, authorities had to compromiseand find a policy to tolerate gambling in their society. Tokugawa Japan prohibited gambling all along,enforcing the ban or not in different phases. Instead, some European countries started allowing
gambling in order to tax it, and used the profits for public works, thereby giving a good purpose to anevil pastime. Another point in common was the similarity between gambling and commerce, as thephenomenon was linked to monetary economics and to the merchant class. My thesis is that both in theEuropean and in the neo-Confucian regimes the approach towards commerce influenced the policies ongambling. I am undertaking this study also as a framework to my previous research on tenshō karuta,
European playing cards brought to Japan by the Portuguese. Gambling with tenshō karuta became
widespread in Tokugawa Japan, and the game was almost synonymous of gambling. Here I will consider
gambling in general, with a special focus on playing cards in the colonies of the European empires,
since cards were perhaps the most popular gambling tool on ships. I will examine the spread of playing
cards in the colonies of the Spanish and Portuguese empires, and then, in the modern period, a similar
process occurs with hanafuda cards in the colonies of the Japanese empire.

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EU-Japan Young Scholars WS “Japanese Transnationalism and Empire” Abstracts

Presenter Day 2, No.3
Tracing Joseph Conrad’s colonial ambivalence in the popular literature of Imperial Japan
⼤⽇本帝国の⼤衆⽂学におけるジョゼフ・コンラッドの植⺠地主義のアンビバレンス
Anna SHIMOMURA
Osaka University, Japan
Joseph Conrad is considered as one of the first important critics of Western imperialism. However, as
many postcolonial scholars starting with Chinua Achebe have pointed out, his attitude to colonialism
and Western hegemony was ambivalent, to say the least. Conrad’s sea adventure novels such as Lord
Jim were widely read by and were the source of inspiration to Japanese authors of taishu bungaku – theso-called popular literature – from the first decades of the 20th century. At the same time, Conrad’snovels set in South-East Asia were the prism through which the Japanese perceived the lands that they
intended to colonize, while his apparent anti-colonialism served to formulate the Japanese Empire’s
own colonial and nationalist discourses. My aim is to trace the influence of Joseph Conrad’s ambivalent(anti-)colonial writings in the pre-war taishu bungaku by reading works of Osaragi Jiro. Heroes from
Osaragi’s novels and short stories dedicated to youth are often – like Jim – hot-blooded and free-spirited
outsiders and idealists, who became role models for Japanese boys and, thus, raised the generation of
new (male) imperial subjects. I am going to analyze how his popular historical fiction reflected thepolitical atmosphere of the period and how Conrad’s writing served as a (distorting) mirror that helped
to construct the Japanese Empire. My research is an attempt of contribution to the still rather
underdeveloped postcolonial approach to Japanese literature.

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EU-Japan Young Scholars WS “Japanese Transnationalism and Empire” Abstracts

Presenter Day 2, No.4
Visual Constructions of Empire in the Illustrated Magazines Manchuria Graph (1933-1945) and
Hokushi – Northern China (1937-1943)
写真⼊りの雑誌『満州グラフ』（1933-1945）と『北⽀』（1937-1943）に⾒る帝国の視覚的構築物

Jasmin RÜCKERTUniversity of Düsseldorf, Germany
This presentation analyses the two illustrated magazines Manchuria Graph and Hokushi, that were
published in Manchuria and Northern China respectively during a time when Japan intended toconsolidate its sphere of influence, particularly after the official outbreak of war with China in 1937.
Both magazines have so far been studied under the aspects of style and the development of professional
photography, i.e., from avant-garde art to ‘reportage photography’. This presentation engages with thevisuals of these magazines by tracing how the official language of ‘racial harmony’ was enacted in theirphotographic representations, but also discusses how the photographs, despite the underlying
propagandistic intentions, can serve today to point out the inconsistencies of the narratives they
supposedly showcased. Spanning a period of roughly 15 years, the magazines provide ample evidence
for changing views on citizenship and ethnicity in both the puppet state of Manchukuo and the northernChinese regions. Rather than just showing Japan as a merciful force and harbinger of modernisation,
the photographs also portray and reinforce stereotypes that mark the bodies of the photographed people
and the hierarchical relations among Japanese themselves and in respect to other ethnicities in theoccupied territories. The analysis is embedded in a discussion of photographic material as a historicalsource and at times effective, but at times also defective propaganda tool. The discussed examples
include Japanese urban and rural migrants, Chinese ‘coolies’ and ethnic minorities in Manchuria andNorth China. The presentation ends by posing the broader question of how persistent visual reminders(such as reproductions of the photographic material from the magazines) may work to reinforce thelegacy of Japan’s imperialism; how they prompt ethical questions of (war)responsibility as well as ofnationalist identity in contemporary publications, in permanent and temporary exhibitions and inmemorial spaces.

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EU-Japan Young Scholars WS “Japanese Transnationalism and Empire” Abstracts

Presenter Day 3, No.1
Painting Two Empires: Okada Kenzō and Kawabata Minoru under the Empire of Japan andPax Americana
⼆つの帝国を描く：⼤⽇本帝国とパクス・アメリカーナのもとでの岡⽥謙三と川端実
Kimihiko NAKAMURA
Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Germany
Okada Kenzō (1902–1982) and Kawabata Minoru (1911–2001) established themselves as painters by
repeatedly changing their locations, identities, and painting styles. Both spent their lives under the two
entirely different modes of empires: the falling Empire of Japan during World War II and the rising
American hegemonic power under the Cold War Pax Americana. By examining the trajectory of Okada
and Kawabata in relation to these two empires, this paper situates their practice in its wider historicaland socio-political context. The paper begins by chronicling the career of Okada and Kawabata in thepre-1945 period, with a focus on their involvements in Imperial Japan’s propaganda war painting(sensōga). Through an examination of the wartime lived experiences of these two painters in Japan,
Manchukuo, and Southeast Asian Islands, this paper simultaneously draws our attention to the historyof Imperial Japan’s aggression in Asia and the Pacific. The paper then considers why Okada andKawabata, after the war, emigrated to the US, not France, and contextualizes their self-imposed
displacements within the framework of Japan-US relations during the Occupation. The following partof this paper interrogates the paintings Okada and Kawabata produced after moving to New York andtheir American reception, together with the American-Asian relations in the Cold War era. Unlike theAmerican issei painters, who experienced vitriolic anti-Japanese/Asian discrimination in the exclusionera (1882–1952), Okada and Kawabata received support from various American art institutions andindividuals. The Japanese émigré painters and postwar American society had formed what Christina
Klein calls “sentimental” bonds. The paper concludes by arguing that the art and career of Okada andKawabata, who crossed two empires, mirror Japan’s shifting position in the international community,
as well as the broader history of Asian-Pacific-American region throughout the twentieth century.

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EU-Japan Young Scholars WS “Japanese Transnationalism and Empire” Abstracts

Presenter Day 3, No.2
A Benevolent Empire? : Representations of Women’s Liberation and Democracy in Japanese
Women’s Magazines under the U.S.-Occupation
善意のある帝国？：米軍占領下日本女性雑誌における女性解放と民主主義の表象
Jana Isabel ARESINFriedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany
The historical moment of the U.S.-Occupation of Japan after WWII simultaneously saw thedisintegration of the Japanese empire and the beginning of the so-called ‘American Century.’ This
period witnessed not only the rise of the United States to political, military, and economic dominancein the world, but also a contested, yet influential and persistent legitimization of U.S. politicalsupremacy as a ‘fair’, democratic, and benevolent global power. My project examines how this imageof the U.S. as a global leader and its model of democratic capitalism was promoted and perceived in
occupied Japan through the case study of mass media portrayal of women’s liberation. The
representation of the U.S. presence in Asia as a democratizing project frequently referenced the topics
of gender equality and women’s rights as a legitimizing argument. I analyze how this portrayal is
discussed, reproduced, or criticized in Japanese women’s magazines in the late 1940s and early 1950s
and reflect on the frequent comparisons of U.S. democracy and the potential for a U.S.-Japanese allianceto other transnational relations, for example to China or the Soviet Union, and to their respective
political and economic models. The ubiquity of magazine articles reporting on the social position of
women in these and various other countries and world regions reflects a moment in which the fallingapart of the Japanese empire required a redefinition of Japan’s place in the world. This redefinitiontranscended discussions of state- level diplomatic relations and instead sought a broader ideological andcultural repositioning of Japan, further intensified by growing Cold War divisions. I argue that Japan’s
ideological repositioning between the ‘Cold War empires’ is visible in discussions of social issues suchas women’s rights which serve as symbolic markers or ‘placeholders’ through which national identity
is negotiated.

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