“Oceanic Knowledge and National Space-Time in Pacific History,” in: Verge: Studies in Global Asias 10, no. 2 (2024): 111–37.
How did the creation of globalized scientific discourses interact with the way states in the Pacific redefined national pasts and futures? My article “Oceanic Knowledge and National Space-Time in Pacific History” explores the uses of historical knowledge and environmental science in the construction of national pasts and futures in the Pacific since the 19th century. […]
Oceanic Japan––Islands of the Kuroshio Froniter, or: Building the Infrastructure of an Archipelagic Empire
“Oceanic Japan” is a snapshot of the rapidly evolving historiography of Japan’s aquatic dimensions. Bringing together 31 authors around a broad palette of questions pertaining to Japan’s historical relationship with the ocean, this book draws up a big, terraqueous picture of a country that is often unduly reduced to being an “island” nation. In 28 […]
Review of Yamamoto Takahiro’s “Demarcating Japan” (Harvard, 2023) in Pacific Affairs
Review of Yamamoto, Takahiro: Demarcating Japan: Imperialism, Islanders, and Mobility, 1855–1884, in Pacific Affairs. Harvard East Asian Monographs 460. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2023. US$50.00, cloth. ISBN 9780674291386. Few states seem as naturally defined as island nations, yet their boundaries are by no means more historically determined than those of political entities on the continent. Takahiro […]
幕末、明治：19世紀ジュネーヴに於ける日本研究 [Bakumatsu, Meiji: Japanese Studies in Geneva in the Late 19th Century]
In : Ôkawa S. and Okamura T. (eds.) Kokusai toshi Genève: shûkyô, shisô, seiji, keizai [The International City of Geneva: Religion, Thought, Politics and Economy]. Kyoto: Shōwadō, 2018: p. 62–70. Purchase the book at: http://www.showado-kyoto.jp/book/b361055.html
Aimé Humbert: Wertvorstellungen eines Bourgeois und das Japan der Bakumatsu-Zeit [Aimé Humbert, Value Concepts of a Bourgeois and Bakumatsu Japan]
In: ‘Asiatische Studien / Etudes Asiatiques’ 1/2015, p. 47–71. Although it had no military presence in East Asia, Switzerland was the first landlocked European country to conclude an unequal treaty with the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan in 1864. Aimé Humbert, initiator and leader of the Swiss delegation, spent 10 months in Japan waiting for the […]
Challenges of Japanese Studies in 19th century Europe
In: Kyôritsu Joshi Daigaku sôgô bunka kenkyû kiyô [Bulletin of the center for humanities, Kyôritsu Women’s University], 1/2015, p. 153–176. In 1870, the Swiss diplomat Aimé Humbert published “Le Japon Illustré,” an impactful book based on his political mission to Japan in 1863–64. Thanks to his status as a diplomat, Humbert was able to travel […]
スイス・ロマンシュ語入門：文化誌 [Introduction to the Romansh Language of Switzerland: Cultural History]
In: Kawasaki, Y. Sakaguchi, T. Rüegg, J., Kumasaka, R.: スイス・ロマンシュ語入門 [Introduction to the Romansh language of Switzerland], Tokyo: Daigaku Shorin, 2014. (In Japanese). Download Chapter 1: Bunka-shi, pp. 9–29 (in Japanese) Download Book Review in “Grüezi – Schweizerisch Japanische Zeitung” (in Japanese) Download Book Review in “Doitsu Bungaku” (in Japanese)