• Abstracts

“Beyond National Unification: How Defeat in the Boshin Civil War Shaped Transnational Counterculture” (Chinami Oka)

Modern histories often portray civil wars as stepping stones toward national unification, strengthening the idea that the nation-state is the natural endpoint of history. In studies of modern Japan, the Boshin Civil War (1868–69) is usually understood as a moment that paved the way for the Meiji state and the formation of a modern nation. This perspective, however, absorbs the defeated side into the winners’ national story and leaves little room for people who questioned or moved beyond the logic of the nation-state.

This paper reexamines the meanings and implications of the Boshin Civil War by tracing a transnational lineage of ideas and actions that grew out of the defeated North. It highlights the intellectual and social networks around Arai Ōsui, a former samurai from Sendai, whose transnational cultural engagements during and after the war helped sow the seeds of social reformative ideas in early twentieth-century Japan, including women’s education, environmentalism, and radical agrarian philosophy.

By centring these individuals and networks, the paper uncovers a vibrant transnational counterculture rooted in the historical context of civil war defeat. In doing so, it encourages a rethinking of civil war history that moves beyond narratives of national unification to consider the transnational solidarities and overlooked social movements that challenged the state’s own story of civilisation and progress.

“From Transregional to Transnational Cooperation: Aizu Samurai in Kyushu” (Joel Littler)

The experience of defeat in the Boshin Civil War (1868-69) and the Seinan Civil War (a.k.a. Satsuma Rebellion, 1877), bound together some people from former rival regions. On one hand they shared their animosity towards the new Meiji state, and on the other found themselves excluded from mainstream political activity unless they conformed to the new order. While previous studies have focused on those who fell in line and found success under the new regime, this paper follows those who continued to imagine a future for Japan that was different from the nation-building project concentrated in Tokyo. By taking a transregional and transnational approach, this paper shows how a number of former samurai from Tohoku, mainly Aizu, made their new life in Kyushu, which in turn led them to become involved in Asianist activities in Korea, China, the Philippines, and beyond. These social and political movements present a vastly different vision of what the place called “Japan” should be and how the people living there should relate to people in neighbouring countries. As such, this research demonstrates how some historical actors understood ways of practicing transnational relations that defied the hierarchical ordering inherent in international relations.

• Presenters’ Bio:

Chinami Oka is an Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Humanities at Nagoya University. She specialises in transnational history, with a particular focus on the cultural, intellectual, and religious lives of people in modern Japan and the wider world. Before joining Nagoya, she taught at the University of Oxford as the Tanaka Junior Research Fellow in Japanese Studies, where she also completed her DPhil in History and MSc in Modern Japanese Studies. Her research has been published by The Historical Journal (Cambridge University Press), Amsterdam University Press, and Brill, among others, and she has been featured in the Historical Association’s podcast series.

Joel Littler is a JF-GJS Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia at the University of Tokyo. He is a transnational cultural and intellectual historian of Japan. After receiving his DPhil in History from the University of Oxford in 2024, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Japanese Studies at Harvard University. He is currently working on a book manuscript about how people excluded from the Meiji nation-building project imagined the future for Japan and Asia and were involved in some of the largest cultural and intellectual movements of the early twentieth century.