Sebastian Conrad

What Time Is Japan? Problems of Comparative (Intercultural) Historiography

Rather than reflect on the process of an alleged modernization of historical scholarship, an intercultural comparison of historiography should take the European origins of academic history as its starting point. The reason, as this article argues, is that in non-European countries the European genealogy of the discipline of history continued to structure interpretations of the past. Both on the level of method, but more importantly on the level of interpretive strategies, Europe remained the yardstick for historiographical explanation. This article will use the example of postwar Japanese historiography to show that historians resorted to a European model in order to turn seemingly unconnected events in the Japanese past into a historical narrative. This is not to imply, however, that Japanese historiography passively relied on concepts from Western discourse. On the contrary, Japanese historians appropriated and transformed the elements of this discourse in the specific geopolitical setting of the 1940s and 1950s. This act of appropriation served the political purpose of positioning Japan with respect to Asia and the West. However, on an epistemological level, the priority of Europe persisted; Japanese historiography remained a derivative discourse. Studies in comparative historiography, therefore, should be attentive to these traces of the European descent of academic history and privilege the transnational history of historiography over meditations on its internal rationalization.

The Quest for the Lost Nation: Writing History in Germany and Japan in the American Century

Contents Introduction 1. Mapping Postwar Historiography in Germany and Japan 2. The Origin of the Nation: Bismarck, Meiji Ishin, and the Subject of History 3. The Nation as Victim: Writing the History of National Socialism and Japanese Fascism 4. The Invention of Contemporary History 5. The Temporalization of Space: Germany and Japan between East and West 6. History and Memory: Germany and Japan, 1945--2 Notes Bibliography Acknowledgments Index

Rethinking German Colonialism in a Global Age

Recent years have seen a sudden upsurge of scholarly interests in German colonialism. The German overseas empire, founded in 1884 and defunct in 1915, lasted a mere 30 years, and was thus one of the most short-lived of all modern colonialisms. Consequently, it has not occupied centre-stage in most accounts, either of European imperialism or of German history itself. The colonial experience was deemed marginal and insignificant, compared to the long histories of other empires. But in recent years, there has been a marked upsurge of scholarly interests in German colonialism. While much of the historiography of the German empire remains tied to the national history paradigm, recent developments have begun to move beyond a framework that treats Germany and her colonies as separate entities. This article takes up the issue and explores the ways in which we stand to gain from inserting Germanys colonial past more thoroughly in a global context. Rethinking German colonialism in a global age, it argues, allows us to see more clearly the imperial dimensions of German history. It brings into relief the colonial dimensions of German rule in Eastern Europe, moves the focus beyond the formal protectorates and helps us recognise the way in which Germany was one empire among others. Analytically, a global history perspective emphasises synchronic contexts, beyond the boundaries of formal territorial rule, instead of assuming longstanding continuities within the empire. And inserting the Kaiserreich into the larger global context also moves analysis beyond a strictly internalist framework. Forces and actors within and beyond the empire have contributed to the trajectories of imperial Germany.

Globalization effects: mobility and nation in Imperial Germany, 1880–1914

The trajectories of German nationalism in the late nineteenth century were deeply affected by the process of globalization. While the literature on the subject has largely remained within the confines of a national history paradigm, this article uses the example of mobility and migration to show to what extent German nationalism was transformed under the auspices of global integration. Among the effects of cross-border circulation were the emergence of diasporic nationalism, the racialization of the nation, the implementation of new border regimes, and the hegemony of ideological templates that linked nationalist discourse to global geopolitics. This article is intended as a contribution to a ‘spatial turn’ in the historiography of nationalism, in arguing that not only the ‘nation form’ but also the way that the nation was defined, understood, and practised – the particular contents of nationalism – owed more to the global context in which it was constituted than is usually recognized.

Remembering Asia: History and Memory in Post-Cold War Japan

‘Asia’ has returned to Japan, and Japan to ‘Asia’. For about one-and-a-half decades, intellectuals and politicians have been trying to redefine Japan’s place in the global order. Until 1990, the country’s primary orientation had been towards America. Under the umbrella of the security treaties with the US, Japan had defined herself essentially as part of the ‘West’. Asia, on the other hand, was virtually absent from Japanese discourse. The situation has changed markedly with the end of the Cold War and with the dissolution of the bipolar world order. While the US continues to be an important point of reference, the Asian neighbours in recent years have assumed increasing relevance in Japan.

The Dialectics of Remembrance: Memories of Empire in Cold War Japan

Between 1895 and 1945 Japan assembled one of the largest empires in modern world history. It vanished abruptly in the summer of 1945 at the end of the Second World War, and seemed to leave no trace in public consciousness. Historians, too, have portrayed postwar Japan as characterized by a virtual erasure of the imperial past. This article draws on recent scholarship to argue that things were more complicated than that. While references to the imperial past indeed dwindled after about 1960, immediate forgetting did not exhaust the reactions by individuals and interest groups. Some social milieus experienced the dissolution of the empire much more profoundly than official discourse would suggest. Since the mid-1990s, Japans imperial past has reemerged as a major field of historical inquiry and a more general concern in public debate. In this article I situate the dialectic of remembering and forgetting within larger processes and transformations of the postwar order in East Asia, in particular the American occupation and the emergence of the Cold War.