The ‘Globalization’ of Japanese Studies: Southeast Asian Perspectives

Japan’s relationship with the Asian continent has long been a subject of historical analysis, journalistic reportage, and impassioned political debate. In recent decades, Japan’s successful industrial development has brought increasing Japanese investment in East and Southeast Asia. Along with that investment has come a growing prominence of “Japanese Studies” as an intellectual resource for Asian societies hoping to use Japan as a model for their own industrial development. The success of several of these societies in achieving industrial growth has bolstered Japan’s relevance as a guide to “modernization,” yet also poses crucial questions for both Japan and its Asian neighbors as they negotiate the terms of their current relationship and interpret the events of their common past. The increasing influence of China in Asian affairs has also raised speculations–in Japan and elsewhere–of a diminishing role for Japan in Asia as its relative economic importance declines.

This conference seeks to examine “Japanese Studies” in its current global context, focusing in particular on Southeast Asia. Coming from a region still intensely concerned with matters of economic development, one situated between and affected by the competing ambitions of Japan and China, Southeast Asian views of and research on Japan are of increasing intellectual and political significance, and offer compelling perspectives on the themes that may come to define “Japanese Studies” in the coming decades. We anticipate that the symposium will go beyond an emphasis on Japan’s economic role and importance to address the complex relationship between Japan’s “hard” and “soft” power within the Southeast Asian region; namely, Japanese governmental and private efforts to promote the field of Japanese Studies in Southeast Asia, as well as the growing interest among Southeast Asian youth in Japanese “pop culture.” Our hope is to invite speakers from Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Australia, the Philippines and the United States to reflect on the significance of an Asia-centered Japanese studies, and the alternatives it may offer to views of Japan that dominate contemporary Western scholarship.

Program