Past Events & News
2019 3rd EAJS Conference in Japan – Tsukuba University
coming soon
2018 PhD Workshop Belgrade
Report of the Academic Organiser
Project reports by participants
2018 2nd Publication Workshop Ljubljana
Report of the Academic Organiser
Reports by the Participants of the 2nd EAJS Publication Workshop
2017 PhD Workshop Lisbon
Report of the Academic Organizer
Reports by the Participants of the 13th EAJS PhD Workshop
1) What are your research interests?
Throughout my studies I have been fascinated by the traditions that developed as a result of the increased contact between Japan and Europe, when, after a 250- year seclusion policy, Japan opened its borders to international trade in the mid- nineteenth century. My MA dissertation in Leuven and my MPhil and PhD dissertations in East Asian Studies at Cambridge have all focused on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Japanese intellectual history. They address various aspects of the encounter between Japan’s religious and intellectual traditions on the one hand, and Western thought and Christianity on the other, and discuss new traditions and notions that developed as a result of this encounter. My PhD, in particular, explored the intellectual legacy of the Japanese True Pure Land Buddhist Shimaji Mokurai (1838- 1911), who is credited with introducing the concepts of “separation of religion and state” and “religious freedom” to Japan after a study trip to Europe. My current postdoctoral research builds further on this theme of the relationship between religion and state. It looks at the impact of religion on the modernisation of Japan, with a particular focus on the role of Buddhist thinkers in the intellectual movement of the 1870-80s known as the Japanese Enlightenment.
2) What is your current research project about?
In contrast to the traditional narrative that Buddhism was transformed under the influence of Japan’s modernisation in the early Meiji period (1870s-1880s), my current research project considers Buddhism as an active partner in Japan’s modernising process. In 1872, when foreign travel was still mostly the prerogative of diplomats and government-sponsored students, two Japanese Buddhist missions left for Europe to study the link between Christianity and Western civilisation. Back in Japan, members of the missions actively participated in the Japanese “Enlightenment Movement” through journal publication and the establishment of societies, in response to the intellectual activities of secular thinkers. The investigation of these Buddhist ventures forms the basis of my current research project. The suppression of Buddhism in favour of a Shinto-based ideology propelled Buddhist thinkers into playing a prominent role in developing a concept of religion that suited a “civilised” Japan. In their attempt to align Buddhism with this new concept, they developed notions that supported the state’s project to become “a rich country with a strong army”, both in terms of social ideas that sought to stimulate the people’s productivity, and of views that were supportive of Japan’s militaristic expansionism. By addressing these understudied intellectual developments, the project challenges the narrative of a weakened Buddhism, reconsiders its agency in early Meiji Japan, and asks how religion shaped Japan’s modernity.
3) Please describe shortly the main stations of your academic career
2009–2010 MPhil in East Asian Studies (University of Cambridge)
2010–2015 PhD in Japanese Studies (University of Cambridge)
2015–2018 Flanders Research Foundation Post-doctoral fellowship (Ghent University)
In 2009 I started an MPhil in East Asian Studies at the University of Cambridge and wrote a dissertation on “Bushido: the Invention of a Religion?” under the supervision of Professor Richard Bowring. The thesis explores the use of the invented tradition of bushido for military educational purposes by Inoue Tetsujirō (1856-1944), the first professor of philosophy at Tokyo University. It further analyses the views of the Western scholar Basil Hall Chamberlain (1850-1935) of bushido as an invented religion. Under the same supervisor I next started my PhD project, which explores the intellectual legacy of the Japanese True Pure Land Buddhist Shimaji Mokurai (1838-1911) (see above). After obtaining my PhD in 2015, I received a three-year postdoctoral fellowship of the Flanders Research Foundation. As a postdoctoral researcher, I am affiliated with the Institute of Japanese Studies and the Centre for Buddhist Studies at Ghent University, Belgium, where I continue to research the intellectual history of Meiji Japan, a field where much remains to be explored. At the department, I am also involved in teaching Japanese language as well as a course on Japanese traditions of thought.
4) How has your participation in the EAJS PhD Workshop 2013 benefitted your research and/or your career?
First of all, the workshop was a wonderful networking opportunity. Doing a PhD can be an isolating experience so it was especially refreshing to be able to socialise with other doctoral candidates over the two days of the event. The feedback given by expert scholars after each of the participants’ talks proved to be useful for me in terms of methodology, formulation of research questions and other general issues related to conducting a research project. This encouraged me to continue to think outside of the box and to engage more with scholars in Japanese Studies from fields beyond my own. The theoretical and methodological insights gained proved to be valuable for the further development of my PhD project.
5) What do you think are the opportunities such workshops can offer to junior scholars?
The workshop was a unique platform that enabled me to exchange knowledge and experience and to befriend many young scholars who have become my colleagues in the scholarly community of Japanese Studies in Europe and beyond. When participating in large conferences such as the triennial EAJS conference, there is always a good chance that a colleague from the PhD workshop will be present as well. As a young scholar, I believe it is particularly important to have this network of colleagues and friends who are at a similar stage in their career, to share experiences and to discuss potential future collaborations.
6) How has receiving a TIFO Fellowship benefitted your research and/or your career?
The limited timeframe of a PhD project necessitates the ongoing process of refining and narrowing the scope of research. One of the purposes of my research trip to Japan with the Toshiba grant was to facilitate direct contact with Japanese scholars and gain access to sources that are difficult to obtain in Europe, with the ultimate aim of finding material that might help me further structure my thesis and pinpoint its main arguments. I structured my research trip around Kyoto, Yamaguchi, Tokyo and Morioka—all of them locations where the central historical figure of my research project, Shimaji Mokurai (1838–1911), spent a significant period of his life. In theory, I could have conducted my research entirely in libraries and archives, without necessarily visiting the places linked to the life of this Meiji figure. However, my visits proved to be extremely useful and provided me with a concrete image of the places, happenings, and local atmospheres that I hitherto had only experienced vicariously as “book knowledge”. I realise that to have been able to do so is a luxury, and I am profoundly grateful for the Toshiba grant that gave me this opportunity.
7) What do you think are the opportunities such a fellowship can offer to junior scholars?
The opportunities are countless. Thanks to all the contacts I established during my research stay in Japan, I was able to meet most of the authors of the secondary works that I had read prior to the fellowship, as well as Japanese scholars who were working on related topics but had not yet published their results, thus enabling me to map out a large part of the scholarly activity in my field that was taking place in Japan. Since my current research builds further on my PhD project, I am still benefiting from the network that I established during my TIFO fellowship, as well as the research materials that I was able to amass, both at university libraries in Kyoto and at the National Diet Library. In particular, a professor I met during my fellowship offered to send me two boxes of books directly related to my research (including the no longer published and much coveted Collected Works of Shimaji Mokurai), since he no longer required them, having moved on to a different subject. I am still using the materials he sent on a regular basis. In short, with a minimum of contacts at the outset, the fellowship enabled me to experience a snowball effect that gradually led to the formation of a broad network of contacts that still benefits my research today.
8) Please name three of your major publications
Deneckere, Mick. 2016. “The Japanese enlightenment: a re-examination of its alleged secular character”, Global Intellectual History, Vol 1, Iss. 3, 2016: 219-240.
Deneckere, Mick. 2014. “Shin Buddhist Contributions to the Japanese Enlightenment Movement of the early 1870s” in Hayashi Makoto, Otani Eiichi, and Paul L. Swanson, eds., Modern Buddhism in Japan. Nagoya: Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture: 17-51.
Deneckere, Mick. 2011. “The birth of banzai”, translation of Makihara Norio’s article “Banzai no tanjo” in Japan Forum 23 (2): 237-261.
1) What are your research interests?
My research interests are broadly in the early modern and modern cultural history of Japan in its regional, transnational and global contexts. I am particularly fascinated by the changing patterns of knowledge exchange and circulation and the history of language and translation.
2) What is your current research project about?
Currently I am working on a book project called “Beyond Edo. Transnational narratives of the Early Modern in 20th-century Japan”. As the title suggests, the project employs approaches from transnational and global history to explore stories about the early modern period in Japan. I focus on stories which have not received a lot of scholarly attention: stories that go beyond “Edo” – the old name of the capital which is often used as a shortcut for cultural achievements from kabuki to sushi which are today closely associated with a “national” heritage. Such stories were not just told by professional historians. They can also be found in tourist books, museum exhibitions, or computer games. Depending on the genre, time frames and teleologies of these stories varied widely, and even though they are in some sense about Japan, the people who told them could just as well be Chinese or European. The project is comprised of separate case studies that together showcase the diverse forms of the Japanese engagement with the early modern past.
3) Please describe shortly the main stations of your academic career.
After an MA in Japanese studies and linguistics in Bonn, I held positions at two interdisciplinary research clusters at Freie Universität Berlin titled “Actors of cultural globalization” and “Episteme in motion. Knowledge change in premodern societies”. Between 2009 and 2015, I undertook several research trips as a visiting fellow at the University of Tokyo. In 2016 I received my PhD from Freie Universität with a dissertation on the transformation of Chinese knowledge in Japan in the context of 19th-century globalization. Since then I have served as coordinator of the graduate school “Global Intellectual History” and research associate at the Center for Global History. This April, I started a British Academy Newton International Fellowship at the Centre for Transnational History, University College London.
4) How has receiving a TIFO Fellowship benefitted your research and/or your career? What do you think are the opportunities such a fellowship can offer to junior scholars?
While my positions at Freie Universität came with some travel funds provided by the German Research Council, the TIFO fellowship allowed me to substantially extend my stay at the University of Tokyo in 2009/10. This was my first research stay in Japan, so the fellowship made all the difference: I was able to do in-depth work in the relevant archives, make new research contacts, participate in academic events, and generally familiarize myself with Japanese academia. I am truly grateful to my liaison officer at Toshiba International Foundation, Ms Obayashi Masae, who made every effort to provide me with all kinds of information, bring me in touch with other researchers, and invite me to cultural events. The report I wrote up for the bulletin of the European Association of Japanese Studies, which manages the application process for TIFO, turned out to be of great value as well, because it got read by established scholars who were so kind to approach me and express interest in my work. All in all, the fellowship was a brilliant opportunity for me, as I am sure it will be for future grantees.
5) Please name three of your major publications
Transcultural Philology in 19th-century Japan: The Case of Shigeno Yasutsugu (1827-1910). In: Philological Encounters 3 (2018), p. 3-33.
China Übersetzen. Globalisierung und chinesisches Wissen in Japan im 19. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt am Main, Campus, 2017.
Japanisch – Kundoku – Chinesisch. Zur Geschichte von Sprache und Übersetzung in Japan. In: Geschichte und Gesellschaft 38 (2012), p. 217-242.
The European Association for Japanese Studies (EAJS) and the Toshiba International Foundation (TIFO) intend to foster networking activities among EAJS-TIFO Alumni, i.e. previous recipients of Toshiba International Foundation Fellowships and participants in the EAJS Ph.D. Workshops.
This Alumni Network is intended to be a source of information and a platform for exchange. Our aim is to create a wide network of early career and younger scholars in the field of Japanese Studies. EAJS and TIFO would like to use this network to promote academic exchange, to share information about current research themes and trends in the field of Japanese Studies, to announce upcoming academic events, such as conferences and workshops, and to inform network participants about career opportunities.
The TIFO Alumni Network will be based on two pillars: first, regular exchange via electronic media (social media, this website, newsletter) and second, meeting opportunities for network participants (e.g. reunion events at EAJS International Conferences, workshops etc.).
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The Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership (CGP) announce the annual Abe Fellowship Program competition. Funding for the Abe Fellowship Program is provided by CGP.
The Purpose of the Fellowship
The Abe Fellowship is designed to encourage international multidisciplinary research on topics of pressing global concern. The program seeks to foster the development of a new generation of researchers who are interested in policy-relevant topics of long-range importance and who are willing to become key members of a bilateral and global research network built around such topics. It strives especially to promote a new level of intellectual cooperation between the Japanese and American academic and professional communities committed to and trained for advancing global understanding and problem solving.
Research support to individuals is at the core of the Abe Fellowship Program. Applications are welcome from scholars and nonacademic research professionals. The objectives of the program are to foster high quality research in the social sciences and related disciplines, to build new collaborative networks of researchers around the four thematic foci of the program, to bring new data and new data resources to the attention of those researchers, and to obtain from them a commitment to a comparative or transnational line of inquiry.
Successful applicants will be those individuals whose work and interests match these program goals. Abe Fellows are expected to demonstrate a long-term commitment to these goals by participating in program activities over the course of their careers.
The Abe Fellowship Research Agenda
Applicants are invited to submit proposals for research in the social sciences and related disciplines relevant to any one or any combination of the four themes below. The themes are:
1) Threats to Personal, Societal, and International Security Especially welcome topics include food, water, and energy insecurity; pandemics; climate change; disaster preparedness, prevention, and recovery; and conflict, terrorism, and cyber security.
2) Growth and Sustainable Development
Especially welcome topics include global financial stability, trade imbalances and agreements, adjustment to globalization, climate change and adaptation, and poverty and inequality.
3) Social, Scientific, and Cultural Trends and Transformations Especially welcome topics include aging and other demographic change, benefits and dangers of reproductive genetics, gender and social exclusion, expansion of STEM education among women and under-represented populations, migration, rural depopulation and urbanization, impacts of automation on jobs, poverty and inequality, and community resilience.
4) Governance, Empowerment, and Participation Especially welcome topics include challenges to democratic institutions, participatory governance, human rights, the changing role of NGO/NPOs, the rise of new media, and government roles in fostering innovation.
Across the program’s four dominant themes, projects should demonstrate important contributions to intellectual and/or policy debates and break new theoretical or empirical ground. Within this framework, priority is given to research projects that help formulate solutions that promote a more peaceful, stable, and equitable global society or ameliorate the challenges faced by communities worldwide. Applicants are expected to show how the proposed project goes beyond previous work on the topic and builds on prior skills to move into new intellectual terrain.
Please note that the purpose of this Fellowship is to support research activities. Therefore, projects whose sole aim is travel, cultural exchange, and/or language training will not be considered. However, funds for language tutoring or refresher courses in the service of research goals will be included in the award if the proposal includes explicit justification for such activities.
Policy-Relevant, Contemporary, and Comparative or Transnational Research Rather than seeking to promote greater understanding of a single country-Japan or the United States-the Abe Fellowship Program encourages research with a comparative or global perspective. The program promotes deeply contextualized cross-cultural research.
The Abe Fellowship Program Committee seeks applications for research explicitly focused on policy-relevant and contemporary issues with a comparative or transnational perspective that draw the study of the United States and Japan into wider disciplinary or theoretical debates.
Policy Relevance
The program defines policy-relevant research as the study of existing public policies for the purpose of (a) deepening understanding of those policies and their consequences and (b) formulating more effective policies. Policy relevance can also be found in research questions that are pertinent to understanding public dialogue on contemporary issues of concern to various sectors of society. All proposals are expected to directly address policy relevance in theme, project description, and project structure.
Contemporary Focus
The program is concerned with present day issues and debates. Thus, proposals in history or with a historical component must demonstrate how the research is specifically intended to inform contemporary concerns.
Comparative or Transnational Perspectives The Abe Fellowship Program does not support research on a single country. Priority is accorded to comparisons of processes, problems, and issues across time and space. Successful proposals will explicitly address how the project will be comparative or transnational in construction and goals.
Typically projects involve data collection in more than one country or across several time periods. Data from a single country may be collected under the auspices of the fellowship only if the purpose of collecting that data is explicitly comparative or transnational. Single-country proposals that merely imply that the data have broader comparative relevance will be eliminated from the fellowship competition. Further, it is not sufficient for a proposal to implicitly suggest a comparative perspective because of the pervasive or global distribution of the phenomenon being studied.
Eligibility
* This competition is open to citizens of the United States and Japan as well as to nationals of other countries who can demonstrate strong and serious long-term affiliations with research communities in Japan or the United States.
* Applicants must hold a PhD or the terminal degree in their field, or have attained an equivalent level of professional experience at the time of application.
* Previous language training is not a prerequisite for this fellowship. However, if the research project requires language ability, the applicant should provide evidence of adequate proficiency to complete the project.
* Applications from researchers in professions other than academia are encouraged with the expectation that the product of the fellowship will contribute to the wider body of knowledge on the topic specified.
* Projects proposing to address key policy issues or seeking to develop a concrete policy proposal must reflect nonpartisan positions.
Please note: Past recipients of the Abe Fellowship are ineligible. You may hold only one fellowship sponsored by the Japan Foundation, which includes the Abe Fellowship, during any one Japanese fiscal year, which runs from April 1 through March 31. Current recipients of a Japan Foundation Fellowship and those who will commence that fellowship by March 31, 2017, are ineligible to apply for an Abe Fellowship in 2016. Fellowship awards are contingent upon receipt of funding from the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership.
Fellowship Terms
Terms of the fellowship are flexible and are designed to meet the needs of researchers at different stages in their careers. The program provides Abe Fellows with a minimum of 3 and maximum of 12 months of full-time support over a 24-month period. Fellowship tenure must begin between April 1 and December 31 of a given year. Fellowship tenure need not be continuous, but must be concluded within 24 months of initial activation of the fellowship.
* The fellowship is intended to support an individual researcher, regardless of whether that individual is working alone or in collaboration with others.
* Candidates should propose to spend at least one third of the fellowship tenure in residence abroad in Japan or the United States. In addition, the Abe Fellowship Committee reserves the right to recommend additional networking opportunities overseas.
* Abe Fellows will be expected to affiliate with an American or Japanese institution appropriate to their research. Fellowship funds may also be spent on additional residence and fieldwork in third countries as appropriate to individual projects.
* Fellows will be required to attend specific Abe Fellowship Program events.
Applications
The application deadline is September 1 annually. Applications must be submitted online at https://soap.ssrc.org. For further information, please contact the program directly at abe@ssrc.org.
Contact Info:
Abe Fellowship Program staff can be reached by email at abe@ssrc.org.
Contact Email:
With the goals of further strengthening the fundamentals of international research into Japan and deepening understanding of Japan, the Hakuho Foundation Japanese Research Fellowship invites leading international researchers of the Japanese language, Japanese language education, Japanese literature and Japanese culture to Japan to conduct residential research. Click here for more information.
Eligible research
Japanese language
Japanese language education
Japanese literature
Japanese culture
Applicants
Researchers working in the fields of Japanese language,Japanese language education, Japanese literature or Japanese culture who reside outside Japan and meet all of the criteria below.
Affiliated with a higher education or research institution (including postdoctoral scolars’ adjunct in Japanese and part-time lecturers).
Scholar or researcher with a doctoral degree (including degrees due to be granted on or before December 31, 2017) and an extensive research or education background.
Sufficient Japanese language proficiency to be able to conduct research in Japanese.
Non-Japanese national residing outside of Japan or Japanese national who has resided outside Japan for 10 years or more and been active in the academic community ,etc. of the country of their residence.
Able to stay continuously in Japan for the duration of the Fellowship period and participate in research reporting sessions arranged by the Foundation.
Applications are not sought from those whose purpose is to write a doctoral thesis.
As research reporting and communications with the Fellowship secretariat on various procedures will be conducted in Japanese only, a suitable level of Japanese language ability is required.
Those who have previously received support for residential research in Japan may also apply.
Fellowship content
Invited fellows will have their airfares, living and research expenses, housing and other expenses necessary for conducting research in Japan covered.
Long-term (12-month) and short-term (6-month) fellowships are available.
Around 15 fellows will be invited each year.
Receiving organizations
Invited fellows will conduct their research with the cooperation of one of the following receiving organizations:
International Research Center for Japanese Studies The Japan Foundation Japanese-Language Institute,Urawa Kyoto University National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics Ochanomizu University Ritsumeikan University Tokyo University of Foreign Studies Waseda University
For more information, please visit https://www.hakuhofoundation.or.jp/en/program/
1) What are your research interests?
Modern Japanese history and culture, Japanese management.
2) What is your current research project about?
Organizational culture in Japan.
3) Please describe shortly the main stations of your academic career.
4) How has your participation in the EAJS PhD Workshop 2002 benefitted your research and/or your career?
Exchange with other PhD candidates from the field of Japanology, feedback about the research approach from a variety of scholars from the field.
5) What do you think are the opportunities such workshops can offer to junior scholars?
Motivational push, networking with other young scholars.
1) What are your research interests?
My research interests are epistemologically based in what one could call “historical sociology”, focusing on how social structures and the ideologies accompanying them change through social processes. In this context, I am mainly interested in modern Japanese history and society, specifically in the area of language ideologies and national identity and the connection between the institution of “standard” (or national) language and nation.
2) What is your current research project about?
In my research for my PhD I focused on changes in language ideologies in the context of transforming Japanese society into a nation after Meiji restauration. At the moment I am editing an issue of our journal (Asian Studies) dedicated to Bushidō as another ideological mechanism which has played an important role in transforming Japanese society through imbuing new Japanese nationals with dubious “samurai ethic” and transforming the concept of Bushidō into a mystical ideology referred to as “the soul of Japan”.
3) Please describe shortly the main stations of your academic career.
I graduated the four-year program of Sociology of Culture and Japanese Studies (double major) at the University of Ljubljana. During my undergraduate study, I got a JASSO scholarship to study one year at the University of Tsukuba. After graduation, I enrolled in a PhD program in Sociology at the University of Ljubljana. During my PhD course, I also received a MEXT scholarship and I was as a research student (kenkyūsei) for a year and a half at Hitotsubashi University, with Professor Yasuda Toshiaki as my advisor. After returning from Japan, I took up the post of assistant lecturer at the University of Ljubljana and continued to teach at the Department of Asian Studies. Before finishing my PhD thesis, I received a Japan Foundation Fellowship and spent another year at Hitotsubashi University completing my dissertation. After gaining the degree, I continued to teach at the Department of Asian Studies as assistant professor (docent in our Slovenian academic system).
4) How has your participation in the EAJS PhD Workshop 2011 benefitted your research and/or your career?
Since I had done most of the work on my dissertation alone in solitary isolation, my participation in the EAJS PhD workshop, which made it possible to present some ideas and the course of my discussion, was very beneficial. Discussing your arguments with advisors as well as with other PhD candidates was not only a great experience, but almost a necessary step in the long and often disheartening process of a PhD project, which inevitably leads to many dead ends or leaves you hanging over precipices. It is the comments by people unburdened by your course of argument, who can show you the way across or out of this dead end. I only wish I could have had that opportunity more than once, especially in the final stage of writing. This would definitely have further improved my thesis.
5) What do you think are the opportunities such workshops can offer to junior scholars?
It is definitely a great opportunity to discuss your thesis not just with your PhD advisor, but with researchers, who are working in other areas and who can offer a different perspective and compel you to present your argument in such a way that it is of interest and understandable to researchers from various fields of Japanese Studies. Besides it is a great opportunity for networking. Being in a foreign place for a few days with fellow PhD candidates sharing a similar experience can form strong bonds for the future.
6) Please name three of your major publications
CULIBERG, Luka. Japanese language, standard language, national language : rethinking language and nation. Asian studies, vol. 1 (17), issue 2. 1st ed. Ljubljana: University Press, Faculty of Arts. 2013, pp. 21-33. http://revije.ff.uni-lj.si/as/article/view/408/783
CULIBERG, Luka. Speaking a common language: on the unity in the human sciences and the question of school history curricula. V: SHIBA, Nobuhiro (ur.), et al. School history and textbooks: a comparative analysis of history textbooks in Japan and Slovenia, (Zbirka Vpogledi, 7). Ljubljana: Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino. 2013, str. 163-189.
CULIBERG, Luka. Kangaku, kogaku, kokugaku, rangaku : reinterpretation of Confucianism in the nation building process in Japan. V: ROŠKER, Jana S. (ed.), VISOČNIK, Nataša (ed.). Contemporary East Asia and the Confucian revival. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 2015, pp. 3-22.
1) What are your research interests?
Throughout my studies I have been fascinated by the traditions that developed as a result of the increased contact between Japan and Europe, when, after a 250- year seclusion policy, Japan opened its borders to international trade in the mid- nineteenth century. My MA dissertation in Leuven and my MPhil and PhD dissertations in East Asian Studies at Cambridge have all focused on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Japanese intellectual history. They address various aspects of the encounter between Japan’s religious and intellectual traditions on the one hand, and Western thought and Christianity on the other, and discuss new traditions and notions that developed as a result of this encounter. My PhD, in particular, explored the intellectual legacy of the Japanese True Pure Land Buddhist Shimaji Mokurai (1838- 1911), who is credited with introducing the concepts of “separation of religion and state” and “religious freedom” to Japan after a study trip to Europe. My current postdoctoral research builds further on this theme of the relationship between religion and state. It looks at the impact of religion on the modernisation of Japan, with a particular focus on the role of Buddhist thinkers in the intellectual movement of the 1870-80s known as the Japanese Enlightenment.
2) What is your current research project about?
In contrast to the traditional narrative that Buddhism was transformed under the influence of Japan’s modernisation in the early Meiji period (1870s-1880s), my current research project considers Buddhism as an active partner in Japan’s modernising process. In 1872, when foreign travel was still mostly the prerogative of diplomats and government-sponsored students, two Japanese Buddhist missions left for Europe to study the link between Christianity and Western civilisation. Back in Japan, members of the missions actively participated in the Japanese “Enlightenment Movement” through journal publication and the establishment of societies, in response to the intellectual activities of secular thinkers. The investigation of these Buddhist ventures forms the basis of my current research project. The suppression of Buddhism in favour of a Shinto-based ideology propelled Buddhist thinkers into playing a prominent role in developing a concept of religion that suited a “civilised” Japan. In their attempt to align Buddhism with this new concept, they developed notions that supported the state’s project to become “a rich country with a strong army”, both in terms of social ideas that sought to stimulate the people’s productivity, and of views that were supportive of Japan’s militaristic expansionism. By addressing these understudied intellectual developments, the project challenges the narrative of a weakened Buddhism, reconsiders its agency in early Meiji Japan, and asks how religion shaped Japan’s modernity.
3) Please describe shortly the main stations of your academic career
2009–2010 MPhil in East Asian Studies (University of Cambridge)
2010–2015 PhD in Japanese Studies (University of Cambridge)
2015–2018 Flanders Research Foundation Post-doctoral fellowship (Ghent University)
In 2009 I started an MPhil in East Asian Studies at the University of Cambridge and wrote a dissertation on “Bushido: the Invention of a Religion?” under the supervision of Professor Richard Bowring. The thesis explores the use of the invented tradition of bushido for military educational purposes by Inoue Tetsujirō (1856-1944), the first professor of philosophy at Tokyo University. It further analyses the views of the Western scholar Basil Hall Chamberlain (1850-1935) of bushido as an invented religion. Under the same supervisor I next started my PhD project, which explores the intellectual legacy of the Japanese True Pure Land Buddhist Shimaji Mokurai (1838-1911) (see above). After obtaining my PhD in 2015, I received a three-year postdoctoral fellowship of the Flanders Research Foundation. As a postdoctoral researcher, I am affiliated with the Institute of Japanese Studies and the Centre for Buddhist Studies at Ghent University, Belgium, where I continue to research the intellectual history of Meiji Japan, a field where much remains to be explored. At the department, I am also involved in teaching Japanese language as well as a course on Japanese traditions of thought.
4) How has your participation in the EAJS PhD Workshop 2013 benefitted your research and/or your career?
First of all, the workshop was a wonderful networking opportunity. Doing a PhD can be an isolating experience so it was especially refreshing to be able to socialise with other doctoral candidates over the two days of the event. The feedback given by expert scholars after each of the participants’ talks proved to be useful for me in terms of methodology, formulation of research questions and other general issues related to conducting a research project. This encouraged me to continue to think outside of the box and to engage more with scholars in Japanese Studies from fields beyond my own. The theoretical and methodological insights gained proved to be valuable for the further development of my PhD project.
5) What do you think are the opportunities such workshops can offer to junior scholars?
The workshop was a unique platform that enabled me to exchange knowledge and experience and to befriend many young scholars who have become my colleagues in the scholarly community of Japanese Studies in Europe and beyond. When participating in large conferences such as the triennial EAJS conference, there is always a good chance that a colleague from the PhD workshop will be present as well. As a young scholar, I believe it is particularly important to have this network of colleagues and friends who are at a similar stage in their career, to share experiences and to discuss potential future collaborations.
6) How has receiving a TIFO Fellowship benefitted your research and/or your career?
The limited timeframe of a PhD project necessitates the ongoing process of refining and narrowing the scope of research. One of the purposes of my research trip to Japan with the Toshiba grant was to facilitate direct contact with Japanese scholars and gain access to sources that are difficult to obtain in Europe, with the ultimate aim of finding material that might help me further structure my thesis and pinpoint its main arguments. I structured my research trip around Kyoto, Yamaguchi, Tokyo and Morioka—all of them locations where the central historical figure of my research project, Shimaji Mokurai (1838–1911), spent a significant period of his life. In theory, I could have conducted my research entirely in libraries and archives, without necessarily visiting the places linked to the life of this Meiji figure. However, my visits proved to be extremely useful and provided me with a concrete image of the places, happenings, and local atmospheres that I hitherto had only experienced vicariously as “book knowledge”. I realise that to have been able to do so is a luxury, and I am profoundly grateful for the Toshiba grant that gave me this opportunity.
7) What do you think are the opportunities such a fellowship can offer to junior scholars?
The opportunities are countless. Thanks to all the contacts I established during my research stay in Japan, I was able to meet most of the authors of the secondary works that I had read prior to the fellowship, as well as Japanese scholars who were working on related topics but had not yet published their results, thus enabling me to map out a large part of the scholarly activity in my field that was taking place in Japan. Since my current research builds further on my PhD project, I am still benefiting from the network that I established during my TIFO fellowship, as well as the research materials that I was able to amass, both at university libraries in Kyoto and at the National Diet Library. In particular, a professor I met during my fellowship offered to send me two boxes of books directly related to my research (including the no longer published and much coveted Collected Works of Shimaji Mokurai), since he no longer required them, having moved on to a different subject. I am still using the materials he sent on a regular basis. In short, with a minimum of contacts at the outset, the fellowship enabled me to experience a snowball effect that gradually led to the formation of a broad network of contacts that still benefits my research today.
8) Please name up to three of your major publications
Deneckere, Mick. 2016. “The Japanese enlightenment: a re-examination of its alleged secular character”, Global Intellectual History, Vol 1, Iss. 3, 2016: 219-240.
Deneckere, Mick. 2014. “Shin Buddhist Contributions to the Japanese Enlightenment Movement of the early 1870s” in Hayashi Makoto, Otani Eiichi, and Paul L. Swanson, eds., Modern Buddhism in Japan Nagoya: Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture: 17-51.
Deneckere, Mick. 2011. “The birth of banzai”, translation of Makihara Norio’s article “Banzai no tanjo” in Japan Forum 23 (2): 237-261.
