Dr Naoko Shimazu

Research interests* Teaching interests* Publications* Areas of research supervision* Contact details

Research interests

I have just completed a new monograph on the social and cultural history of the Russo-Japanese War. My central concern was to analyse the nature of state-society relations during the war, principally from the point of view of society and its people. I examined personal diaries and letters of conscripts in order to understand their attitudes towards war and death. I also looked at how collective war memories were constructed through war commemoration and heroic war myth. My previous work was in political and international history, examining the racial equality proposal raised by Japan at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. I examined the positions of the Japanese, the Americans and the British Empire on the issue, which brought to light how contemporaries understood racial equality as a general principle. I have also worked on colonial Taiwan, examining the travel writing of Japanese cultural elites.

My research focus has been on the theme of identity concerning modern Japan, in particular the political, cultural and colonial. I remain interested in examining Japan within a broader framework of Asia and the West. My next project will develop the notion of cultural legitimacy.

I am the founding member of the Comparative Histories of Asia Seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, co-editor of Japan Forum, and Research Associate of the Modern East Asia Research Centre (MEARC), University of Leiden.

Teaching interests

Modern history of Japan, comparative history of Asia, world history, history of imperialism.

Publications

Books

Japanese Society at War: Death, Memory and the Russo-Japanese War (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming November 2008).

Nationalisms in Japan (editor, Routledge, 2006).

Japan, Race and Equality: The Racial Equality Proposal of 1919 (Routledge, 1998).

Selected articles:

‘Patriotic and Despondent: Japanese Society at War, 1904-5’, Russian Review 67:1 (January 2008): 34-49.

‘Colonial Encounters: Japanese Travel Writing on Colonial Taiwan’, in Yuko Kikuchi (ed.), Refracted Modernity: Visual Culture and Identity in Colonial Taiwan (University of Hawai’i Press, 2007), 21-37.

‘Jinshu sabetsu teppai an: Pari kōwa gaikō no hitomaku’, in Kobayashi Masaya (ed.), Kensei no seijigaku: Banno Junji kinen ronbunshū (University of Tokyo Press, 2006), 149-70.

‘Popular Representations of the Past: The Case of Postwar Japan,’ Journal of Contemporary History 38:1 (January 2003): 101-16.

‘The Myth of the Patriotic Soldier: Japanese Attitudes towards Death in the Russo-Japanese War’, War and Society 19:2 (October 2001): 69-89.

‘The Experience of Middle-class Japanese Women’, in Peter Liddle, John Bourne, and Ian Whitehead (eds), The Great War 1914-45: Volume 2 The People’s Experience (HarperCollins, 2001), 140-53.

‘Reflections on the History of Japanese Diplomacy’, Diplomacy and Statecraft 10:1 (March 1999): 240-51.

Areas of research supervision

I am interested in research proposals on modern Japanese history. Proposals for joint supervision are also welcome: comparative topics that include Japan and other Asian or European countries with other members of the School; or interdisciplinary topics that involve collaboration with other University of London colleges. I am currently engaged in a joint PhD supervision with the Institute of Education.

Contact details

Email: n.shimazu@bbk.ac.uk

Tel: 020 7631 6279

Room: 270 (Malet Street)