Academic Interests
My main fields of research are:
- political, intellectual, social and diplomatic history of modern and contemporary Japan
- history of international relations in East Asia, 1800 to present
- Japanese views of the outside world and Western views of Japan
- theories of nationalism, (transnational) regionalism, and internationalism
- war memory
- history of Japanese cinema
- history of sake (Japanese rice wine)
- Japanese popular culture
Current Research Projects
- Japanese views of the outside world and Japanese views of the national self (monograph 2007, Japanese translation 2020, various articles, newest 2020)
- Democracy in Japan (leader collective research project)
- Nationalism, regionalism (Asianism), and internationalism in Japan (book 2003, articles 2003, 2007, 2009)
- Japanese new wave cinema (book 2010, article 2015)
- Postwar Japanese war films and war memory (articles 2012, 2016, 2017 and 2019, monograph 2022)
- The visualization of Japanese history in film, manga and anime (leader collective research project; conference 2016)
- Tōzai bunmeiron - The Japanese discourse on the dichotomy of Eastern and Western civilization (leader collective research project; conference 2013, two-monthly seminars 2017-18, publication 2021)
- The Japanese film director Naruse Mikio (leader collective research project; conference 2015, retrospective 2015-17, book 2021)
- A postwar global history of the Japanese fermented rice drink sake (articles 2017, 2018)