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Takashi Fujitani

Vita

Publications

Current Research

Courses

 

Vita

Tak Fujitani teaches and conducts research across a range of topics and fields, especially focusing on modern and contemporary Japanese history, East Asian history, and transnational history (primarily U.S./Japan and Asia Pacific). Much of his past and current research has centered on the intersections of nationalism, colonialism, war, racism, ethnicity, and gender, as well as the disciplinary and area studies boundaries that have figured our ways of studying these issues. He received his A.B., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees in history from UC, Berkeley. Before coming to UCSD in 1992, he taught at UC, Santa Cruz. Outside of UCSD, he serves as editor for the series Asia Pacific Modern (UC Press), Advisory Board member of the Stanford Humanities Center, and Editorial Board member of Japanese Studies. He has also served on UC Press' editorial committee and in various positions in the Association for Asian Studies. Fujitani's research has been supported by the John J. Guggenheim Foundation, ACLS, Stanford Humanities Center, SSRC, NEH, Kyoto University Institute for Research in the Humanities, UC Humanities Research Institute, UC President's Research Fellowship in the Humanities, American Philosophical Society, Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, and a number of doctoral fellowships. His publications have appeared in Japanese, Korean and English.

Publications

Books and Other Edited Works:

  • Perilous Memories: The Asia Pacific War(s), co-edited with Geoffrey White and Lisa Yoneyama (Duke University Press, 2001).
  • Japanese Civilization in the Modern World: Nation-state and Empire, an issue of Senri Ethnological Studies, co-edited with Umesao Tadao and Kurimoto Eisei (Japan National Museum of Ethnology).
  • Splendid Monarchy: Power and Pageantry in Modern Japan, (University of California Press, 1996). Korean translation from Yeesan Press, 2003.
  • Tenno no pejento: kindai Nihon no rekishi minzokushi kara (The Emperor's Pageants: A Historical Ethnography of Modern Japan), NHK Books (Nihon Hoso Shuppan Kyokai, 1994) [core of Splendid Monarchy, with with additional chapter].
Other Representative Publications:
  • "Right to Kill, Right to Make Live: Koreans as Japanese and Japanese as Americans in the Asia Pacific War" (in Japanese), in Kurasawa Aiko, et. al., Doin, teiko, yokusan (Mobilization, Resistance, Assistance), Iwanami koza: Ajia-taiheiyo senso (Iwanami Lectures: The Asia-Pacific War), vol. 8 (Iwanami Shoten, forthcoming early 2006).
  • "Imperial Succession Panic: The Politics of Gender, Blood and Race in Contemporary Japan," in Amy M. Thernstrom, ed., Japanese Women: Lineages and Legacies (Woodrow Wilson Center, forthcoming 2005).
  • "Humanism, Universalism, and Racism in Late Colonial 'Korean' Films: The Case of Imai Tadashi" (in Korean), in Yonsei University Institute of Media & Art, ed., Aesthetics and Historical Imagination of Korean Cinema (Sodo, forthcoming 2005).
  • "Shocho tennosei no mirai ni tsuite" (On the Future of the Symbolic Monarchy), in Amino Yoshihiko, et. al., ed., Nihon wa doko e yuku no ka (Whither Japan?), Nihon no rekishi (History of Japan), vol. 25 (Kodansha, 2003).
  • "Senka no jinshushugi: dainiji taisenki no 'Chosen shusshin Nihon kokumin' to 'Nikkei Amerikajin'" (Racism Under Fire: 'Korean Japanese' and 'Japanese Americans' in WWII), in Narita Ryuichi, et. al., ed., Kanjo, kioku, senso (Sentiment, Memory, War), Iwanami Koza: kindai Nihon no bunkashi (Iwanami Lectures: The Cultural History of Modern Japan), vol. 8 (Iwanami Shoten, 2002).
  • "'Go for Broke', The Movie: Japanese American Soldiers in U.S. National, Military and Racial Discourses," in Perilous Memories.
  • "The Masculinist Bonds of Nation and Empire: The Discourse on Korean 'Japanese' Soldiers in the Asia Pacific War," in Japanese Civilization in the Modern World: Nation-state and Empire. [Japanese translation, Kansai Gakuin Press].
  • "Raishawaa no kairai tennosei koso" (Reischauer's Plan for a Puppet Regime Emperor System), Sekai 672 (March 2000). [Korean translation, Silch'on munhak 61 (15 February 2001); expanded English version, "The Reischauer Memo: Mr. Moto, Hirohito, and Japanese American soldiers," Critical Asian Studies 33:3 (2001).]
  • "Ima minshu o kataru shiten towa: Nihon no minshushi kenkyu to Indo no sabarutan kenkyu o tsunagu mono" (On Narrating the "People": The "People's History" in Japan and Subaltern Studies), conversation with Yasumaru Yoshio, Sekai 663 (July 1999).
  • "Minshushi as Crititque of Orientalist Knowledges," positions 6:2 (Fall 1998). [Slightly different version published in Japanese as the commentary for the reprint of Yasumaru Yoshio's Nihon no kindaika to minshu shiso (Heibonsha, 1999)].
  • "National Narratives and Minority Politics: The Japanese American National Museum's War Stories," Museum Anthropology 21:1 (Spring/Summer 1997). [Japanese translation in Bunka koryushi kenkyu 1 (May 1997)].
  • "Amerika no 'Nihon'/Amerika kara no koe" (Japanese Studies in the U.S.), roundtable with Narita Ryuichi and Naoki Sakai, Gendai shiso 23 (Sept. 1995).
  • "Kindai Nihon no okeru kenryoku no tekunorojii: guntai, 'chiho', shintai" (Technologies of Power in Modern Japan: The Military, The 'Local', The Body), Shiso 845 (Nov. 1994).
  • "Electronic Pageantry and Japan's 'Symbolic Emperor'," Journal of Asian Studies 51:4 (Nov. 1992).

Current Research

  • a transnational and comparative history of Koreans in the Japanese military and Japanese in the U.S. military during WWII
  • a co-edited volume on questions of modernity and the Japanese monarchy
  • a history of war, security, culture, and power in modern Japan

Courses

Undergraduate:

  • HILD 12. "East Asia in Global Perspective: The Twentieth Century" (Emphasizes the conflicts, interactions and mutually constitutive experiences of the peoples of China, Japan, Korea and the Euro-American powers).
  • HIEA 111. Japan: Twelfth to Mid-Nineteenth Centuries.
  • HIEA 112. Japan: Mid-Nineteenth Century through the U.S. Occupation
  • HIEA 113. "The Fifteen Year War in Asia and the Pacific" (Considers the 1931-1945 war through various "local", rather than strictly national experiences in Japan, China, Korea, Okinawa, the Pacific (including Hawaii) and the U.S.
  • HIEA 160. "Topics in Modern Japanese History" Topics vary: last two times taught on "Japanese Colonialism in Korea" and "Nationalism and Fascism in Modern Japan."

Graduate:

  • HIGR 207. "Nationalism, Colonialism and Race" Theories and comparative perspectives on the intersections of nationalism, colonialism and race in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
  • HIGR 211. "Historical Scholarship on Modern Japanese History" Introduction to the historiographical issues and secondary literature relevant to modern Japanese history. Usually taught over three quarters every third year.
  • HIGR 212. "Historical Scholarship on Modern East Asian History" Topics vary: last time taught on "The Japanese Empire."
  • HIGR 214. "Readings in Japanese on Modern Japan" Instruction on selection, collection and critical evaluation of texts in Japanese for historical research.
  • HIGR 216. "Research Seminar in Modern Japanese History" Two quarter seminar in which students conduct original research on individual topics.