Rethinking Japanese Studies: Eurocentrism and the Asia-Pacific Region

Description

Japanese Studies has provided a fertile space for non-Eurocentric analysis for a number of reasons. It has been embroiled in the long-running internal debate over the so-called Nihonjinron, revolving around the extent to which the effective interpretation of Japanese society and culture requires non-Western, Japan-specific emic concepts and theories. This book takes this question further and explores how we can understand Japanese society and culture by combining Euro-American concepts and theories with those that originate in Japan. Because Japan is the only liberal democracy to have achieved a high level of capitalism outside the Western cultural framework, Japanese Studies has long provided a forum for deliberations about the extent to which the Western conception of modernity is universally applicable. Furthermore, because of Japan's military, economic and cultural dominance in Asia at different points in the last century, Japanese Studies has had to deal with the issues of Japanocentrism as well as Eurocentrism, a duality requiring complex and nuanced analysis. This book identifies variations amongst Japanese Studies academic communities in the Asia-Pacific and examines the extent to which relatively autonomous scholarship, intellectual approach or theories exist in the region. It also evaluates how studies on Japan in the region contribute to global Japanese Studies and explores their potential for formulating concrete strategies to unsettle Eurocentric dominance of the discipline. Cover Title Copyright Contents Figures and tables Contributors Acknowledgements 1 Rethinking ‘Eurocentrism’ and area studies: Japanese Studies in the Asia-Pacific 2 Studying Japan as ‘the other’: a short history of Japanese Studies and its future 3 Japanese language research: kokugo as an ideology, nihongo as an autonomous and global scholarship? 4 From ‘national’ literature to multicultural literature in ‘Japanese’ language? 5 Developing Japanese Studies with a Southeast Asian perspective 6 Japanese Studies in South Korea 7 Australia’s view of Japan, as seen from Japanese Studies 8 Transnational dialogues in the making of modern East Asian history: collaborative project to write history textbooks 9 Whispering, writing and working across borders: practising transnational history in East Asia 10 Turning towards a cosmopolitan Japanese Studies Bibliography Index