“Global Asian Studies, a platform to create dialogue and connectivity with scholarship on Asia

and to promote reflection on knowledge creation in Japan“

—— We assume you are already familiar to the flow of interview. To begin with, could you tell us historical background why GAS was initiated in Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia and the University of Tokyo?

“When it comes to the history of GAS, IASA’s commitment to GAS can be traced back to 2001 when some professors in the Institute as well as in Komaba Campus started the new program called “Network for Education and Research on Asia,” abbreviated as ASNET. At that time, Professor Furuta, who is now serving as the President of Vietnam Japan University as well as Professor Haneda, former director of the Institute, and Professor Ikemoto, a scholar on Vietnamese studies, shared the sense of challenges in common. That is, even though there were a lot of scholars of Asian studies, their affiliations were so diverse. Some were in the Institute of Social Science, some were in the Faculty of Humanities and Sociology, some were in the Komaba Campus, some were in our Institute. So, they thought of the necessity of making scholars of Asian studies get together to start a new program to promote Asian studies at the University. It was quite difficult for one institute or one graduate school to manage a program because scholars were scattered geographically. 9 years later, ASNET became institutionalized. It became an authorized institution under the supervision of the President of the University. And then, they put a lot of efforts to develop their educational program as well as a research projects to enrich Asian studies. But unfortunately, ASNET program ended in 2020. That is one storyline of the history.

     The other history has to do with the Global Japan Studies (GJS). Both ASNET and GJS were initiated by Professor Haneda. When Prof. Haneda became Vice President in charge of international affairs, he tried to set up university-level exchange programs with international partner universities. Before that, almost all the educational programs had been managed by each school, not by the university and the same can be said to the exchange programs as well. When it comes to the volume of inbound and outbound student mobility, Komaba Campus played a vital role. But, at the time when Prof. Haneda became a Vice President, Komaba had some difficulties in maintaining its exchange programs. So, some professors in Komaba asked Prof. Haneda to change their programs into university-level ones. Prof. Haneda took that proposal seriously, so he promoted and set up a variety of exchange programs at the university level.

     But the biggest challenge was to set up a new educational program that might be appealing to potential inbound students from abroad. When Prof. Haneda had an idea to start university-level exchange programs, I was in charge of development and management of exchange program as director of International Center at the University.

    As a director, I had several occasions to enjoy inspiring conversation with our international partners, from which I learned a lot. For example, when I talked about the profitability of a short-term summer program with the Vice President of SOAS, he referred to an eye-opening fact. When he asked me, “What do you think is the biggest reason of our success in summer programs in SOAS?” I answered “Moderate amount of tuition, probably” but he instantly said “no”. His answer was surprisingly interesting. “The answer is Queen Elizabeth and Buckingham Palace, which are cultural and historical symbols of London in UK. People around the world will come to London to enjoy the city. Without such ‘entertainments’, it is really difficult to attract students from abroad.” He continued to say, “Why don’t you try to utilize Emperor’s Palace and Tokyo Metropolitan subway system which operates extraordinarily punctual for the promotion of your summer program?” Through such conversations, I realized that even the top-tier universities in UK or US are utilizing some locally unique phenomena or events or things as resources for their educational programs. Why not utilize our unique historical and cultural resources in Tokyo to promote inbound programs to attract students of our international partner universities? That’s the lesson I could learn and I realized that Japan studies might be a potential attraction for inbound students from abroad.

     The biggest challenge in UTokyo, however, was that we could hardly see scholars in humanities and social sciences in our university identifying themselves as doing Japan studies. No scholars in history, philosophy, literature, no scholars in sociology, economics, political science seemed to have a sense of identity as a part of Japan study experts nor are they interested in promoting Japanese studies, because they thought that they were doing something about their own discipline rather than area, even though their major focus was Japan. So, what we tried to do first was to create an attractive name so that faculty members in other departments would find it meaningful to join us. That is why we created the concept of Global Japan Studies.

     When we started our activities in GJS program, we were seriously considering a gap between the contents of Japan Studies outside of Japan and Japan Studies inside Japan. Nihonjiron can be a good example. A concept of nihonjinron is often utilized in alphabet form, which is a part of nihonjinron (日本人論) in Japanese. Nihonjinron in English is often utilized by a group of scholars who criticize those arguments which treat Japan as exotic and homogeneous country from positive points of view. But, as you know, there are many (counter-) arguments about the nature of Japanese society and Japanese people. Some of them stress uniqueness of Japanese society, but they don’t represent all types of arguments. Thus, the use of nihonjinron in English is tricky. In other words, scope and contents of Nihonjinron in English is different from those of nihonjinron in Japanese, which causes a lot of confusions. I think this is partly because researchers in Anglosphere including Profs. Yoshio Sugimoto, Harumi Befu, and Peter Dale critically summarized and evaluated Japanese nihonjinron in their own way, which has been inherited by the following generations without critical reflection of what were really discussed in nonjinron in Japan. Paradoxically, such use of nihonjinron has continuously reproduced the idea that Japan is unique, exotic, and homogenous society even though it tries to deny such an idea.

     One of the missions of Global Japan Studies, I believe, was to promote a fruitful dialogue between Japan scholars outside of Japan and Japanese scholars within Japan. It is because there are a variety of unconscious gaps or differences between them. When it comes to nihonjinron, for example, I think it necessary to reflect what caused such different understandings of what we mean by nihonjinron in English and Japanese. Some social psychologists in Japan including Prof. Takano Yotaro (高野陽太郎) are continuously negating what nihonjinron in English assumes by presenting evidence of his surveys and experiments, but English-speaking scholars are still using the concept of nihonjinron to justify what they are doing in their scholarly works by neglecting what Japanese scholars are doing about nihonjinron. This is something that Global Japan Studies can contribute to.

     But, as you know, GJS program ceased in 2022 due to some reasons. The biggest reason is because the headquarter in the University established a new center named Center for Contemporary Japanese Studies. So, we thought it difficult to maintain GJS program as it was. Also, we thought it necessary to merge what ASNET tried to do and what GJS has been trying to do under the bigger category. As Global Asian Studies is the best fit to cover two different activities which IASA had initiated, we launched a new program by using the concept of GAS.”

—— Thank you very much. It was so informative even though we knew a part of the history of our own project. Related to your answers, could you introduce the main mission that Global Asian Studies have been trying to achieve after 2022?

“Promoting dialogue is one of the biggest missions for us. Conventional area studies, especially that of social scientific ones, try to take a distance to observe the phenomena as if it is a social fact, which can be called as Durkheimian stance. Sometimes scholars try to commit something, but it is strictly prohibited to do so when they make observations. But, why do we need to know the other? In order for us to understand us, sometimes we have to understand others. The same thing can be said to the others as well. Why do others need to know us? It is because they want to know themselves. Thus, knowing others is a very interactive process.

     Unfortunately, some “China watchers” take a different stance. They try to observe Chinese politics from afar, without trying any dialogues with Chinese colleagues, carrying over their pre-determined analytical framework and hypotheses. But the biggest question here is “how can you claim your framework and hypotheses are most valid?” In order to answer this question, we have to be reflexive on why we use such frames or theories. We always have to reflect why we are using such frameworks, angles, and concepts to describe and explain the phenomena that we are interested in. Here, again, dialogue and self-reflection will be of most importance.

     I will cite another example. Last year when the Japan Association of Asian Studies celebrated the 50th anniversary, I invited one scholar, Professor Esho, Professor Emeritus of Hosei University, who is an expert of Indian economics. When I asked him to describe what the Japanese scholars have done about Indian economics, he said, “well, most of Japanese scholars have tried to translate what is written about Indian economics.” Translation is an intellectual attempt to transfer knowledge from one place to another. What Prof. Esho told us is, paradoxically, the fact that Japanese scholars on Indian economics have constantly Japanese readers in their minds. Thus, knowing about the history of Japanese scholarship on Indian economies is to know about knowledge production in Japan, which is a part of Japan studies. This is where Indian studies and Japanese studies meet where a lot of dialogue is in need. GAS program should promote such dialogues.”

—— We know there are several activities in GAS, and could you briefly explain overall categories of GAS activities and what they are meant to be?

“As you know, Global Asian Studies is an overarching concept. Within this, we have roughly two initiatives. One is JF-GJS Initiative, which inherited the spirit of promoting dialogue between Japan studies experts outside of Japan. Another one is GAS Initiative, for which I modified the idea of JF-GJS in such a way to promote dialogue between Japanese scholars on Asia and Asian scholars on Japan. And there are good reasons for this.

     Let’s take the case of Thai, for example. Thai people’s knowledge on Japan has closely connected to the knowledge creation in Japan about Thailand. If Japan’s knowledge on Thai is very scarce, in most cases, Thai’s knowledge on Japan is scarce. So again, paradoxically, in order to strengthen the merits of our Institute, where a variety of scholars on Asia are doing their own research on Asia, we have to develop a good relationship with the Japan experts in the area we’re researching. In fact, many Thai scholars’ research on Japan have some connection with Thai studies in Japan. Research on “Japanese popular culture fan communities in Thailand” can be called, for example, both Thai studies and Japan studies. “

—— Thank you very much. You mentioned about the importance of promoting dialogues and being reflexive. We would like to ask the differences of GAS at this institute from other institutes on Asian studies if you intentionally take outsider’s view on this initiative. And as next reflection, could you share your insider experience on what GAS has gone through up to now, including the constraints?

“I’m not sure whether this is a merit or demerit, but one of the constraints of Global Asian Studies in our institute is that this program, as well as the institutes located in Japan, has a longer history of Asian studies than those in the other Asian countries. Especially, whenever we talk about the scholarship on Asia, Japan and China are always exceptions, because, Japan and China have a pre-war history of knowing other Asians. But, Asian studies in Singapore and other parts of Asia, for example, started in 1960s after the end of WWII. But Japan and China have a pre-war history, and we have to make the best use of it. That is one thing.

     Another point is that Japan has a long history of accepting scholars from Asia, which has a huge potential. When it comes to this institute, we have been accepting a lot of scholars under the name of Visiting Scholars. These connections might be able to enrich our program.

     As for the constraints, the biggest challenge is that almost every member of our institute is too busy to do something extra other than what they are doing now. I’m sorry to say that most of the members of our institute have few, if not no, ideas what to be done under the name of GAS program.”

—— We have been conducting interviews with other institutes with similar motives under the name of “global Asia(s)”. So, we wonder what you see as the differences or uniqueness of the ways in which GAS is practicing in this institute.

“Well, Asian studies program in most of the Asian universities include the studies on their own country. But historically, Asian studies in Japan excluded Japan as a target of analysis, which I think is one uniqueness, and I’m now challenging this convention by proposing Globa Asian Studies. The second uniqueness is that we have a variety of scholars covering different parts of Asia, which is different from other programs. Most of the programs in other Asian universities are more or less discipline-driven with some focused area. Of course, many programs or leaders of these programs say that they promoting interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary projects, but at the same time, they have their own preferred disciplines and orientations. Some are from literature and cultural studies, some are from sociology, some are from global history, and so on. So again, because each program has a different leadership, the concrete areas of expertise are also varied from one another. I am afraid whether there has been some impact from my being a sociologist on the contents of GAS program, but I’m sure if the leader might change, the nature of the program might naturally change.

    As you know, Professor Nakajima has promoted the studies on Tokyo School to delve in the historically positive or negative legacy of scholarship in UTokyo. Everyone talks about Kyoto School, but quite a limited number talk about Tokyo School, which is more comprehensive, diversified, fluctuating, vibrant, and very difficult to capture. But utilizing such concepts to look back at what our senior scholars have done under the name of Asian Studies is something that we can make the best use of for the further development of Asian Studies.”

—— Thank you very much. Then, we would like to ask about the concept “Global Asia” and the use of it. How do you evaluate the concept itself from your experience? What do you think of limitations of using it?

“As I said, we started to use Global Asia because it was relatively new and more well-fitted to include what we did in our previous two programs, ASNET and GJS. So, my decision of using GAS, or that of the former director Prof. Takahashi allowed me using it, was basically instrumental with utilitarian reasons behind. But another reason why we use global rather than transnational or comparative is to think of the necessity of combining scholars from different parts of the world to share the idea and to discuss together. “Transnational” to me is a geographical concept. “Global” contains more imaginary aspect. If you can find much more convenient and appropriate word, I think you can change “Global” into different adjective. But I still think that Global Asia is a most convenient word.”

—— Thank you for your answer. It has been almost two years since GAS started its activities, and how do you think of the outlook for GAS to proceed from now on?

“It is difficult to say. It is really dependent on people who will stay here to promote this program. I personally think that JF-GJS is a very good component of the GAS because, regardless of disciplines, the continuous discussions between Japanese scholars in Asia and Asian scholars in Japan are really in need of. But it really depends on the leadership. This institute has a long history to let scholars do independent research rather than encourage them to pursue some group activities. So, there is a possibility that next directors in IASA will no longer support and develop GAS program. But as long as scholars here see some potentials or merits of utilizing the concept, there will be some possibilities to create something new under the name of GAS, which I cannot imagine.”

—— We would like to ask more about that. As a brainchild of GAS program, what do you expect and hope after you retire from IASA?

“Again, I want to emphasize that reflection is very important. Reflection is a bit blur concept, but for me, it is a combination of self-evaluation of the researcher’s capability or interest as well as his or her strategic judgment. There are many possible ways to elaborate and develop your research. First of all, utilizing internal resources is important. Designing the research strategically is also important.

     Reflecting back what I have done in my research, I can say that I gradually changed my research interest from management studies to China studies, and from China studies to studies on mutual perception. This shift is the result of my continuous self-reflection about what I should/can do under the changing macro conditions in sociological researches in Asia. When I was young, it was difficult to go deep into Chinese society, so I studied Japanese multinationals in China in comparative perspectives to understand what was happening in China. After China opened up, I could work with the Chinese partners to know about a lot of issues including class formation and rural-urban migration. But now, so many Chinese scholars are doing much better jobs than us. And because China became global, I started to look at China from outside, which Chinese researchers have a difficulty in doing. Thus, I personally tried to maximize my own resources and experiences by adjusting my research questions to meet with the potential needs of knowledge people want to get.

     Saying is one thing, but doing is quite another. In order to identify own recourse, again, dialogue is very important. You friends will give you some important advice for your research. In order to get good advice, you need to give him or her a good advice, too. Such relationship is the essence of conducting good researches, I believe.”

—— It reminds us that your another interview with Japan Foundation that you sent us before this interview, mentioning that researchers tend to isolate themselves, but we can always collaborate and interact with each other. It really is a wonderful and great idea. Thanks so much to your very intense interviews with many lessons and reflection of our own practices.

 

1. For the further information of Tokyo School, please refer to the selected publications as below:

Special Issue: The Possibility of “Tokyo School” Philosophy

Booklet Tokyo School Vol. 1

Booklet Tokyo School Vol. 2

Booklet Tokyo School Vol. 3

Booklet Tokyo School Vol. 4