Being ‘Asian’: China in Japanese Discourse on ‘the East’ and its significance in Japan’s collective identity formation, 1910-194
Torsten Weber
Research
During most of the past academic year as a MEARC/VICI PhD student, I undertook research for my dissertation as a recipient of a doctoral research fellowship at the German Institute for Japanese Studies in Tokyo (DIJ).
In my thesis I analyse transnational dimensions in Asianism discourse in Taishô- and early Shôwa-Japan (1912-49) with a particular focus on Japanese perceptions of China contained therein. My aim is to understand a pre-eminent facet of modern and contemporary Japanese consciousness of Asia in relation to Japan’s place vis-à-vis China, and, more generally, to its place in Asia and in the world. During my stay in Japan, I achieved my main objective of identifying and collecting a dense body of primary and secondary sources on Japanese and Chinese Asianism discourse.
Due to the fact that my theoretical-methodological approach is only little developed in the field of East Asian history and relies heavily on materials that thus far have attained little scholarly attention or the existence of which was previously unknown, the process of identifying relevant sources for my thesis proved to be extremely time-consuming. This process was further complicated because I am not only aiming at covering a relatively long period of time (almost half a century) but I am also employing an enlarged focus that includes working with Japanese and Chinese primary and secondary sources.
Due to the academic activities I undertook during the past year, I have been able to produce a refined and detailed outline of the chapters of my thesis which I expect to complete during the academic year of 2007/2008.
Products Academic Year 2006/2007
- Paper ‘Approaching Asianism through its critics: The propagation and rejection of a political concept in Taishô-Japan’, Modern Japanese History Workshop, Waseda University, Japan, February 2007;
- Paper ‘Transnational dimensions of Pan-Asianism and their limits: Japanese-Chinese debates on “Asia for the Asians”, 1914-1919’, European University Institute, Italy, October 2007;
- Paper ‘Forgotten Aspects of Asianism? Concept, Discourse, and Transnationality in the Taishô Period’, biannual meeting Japanese History Research Study Group, Germany, November 2007.
