2023 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
Positioning Tokyo as Global City: Anglo-American Narratives of the New Japanese Capital, 1868 - 1922
| Project/Area Number |
18K12316
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| Research Institution | Sophia University |
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Principal Investigator |
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| Project Period (FY) |
2018-04-01 – 2024-03-31
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| Keywords | travel writing / orientalism / Japan / English literature |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
This research has shed light on British ideas of Japan in the long nineteenth century, and specifically how travellers and foreign residents experienced Tokyo between 1868 and 1920. Research has focused on three main areas: 1) foreign residence in Tokyo and travel to adjacent areas; 2) British clandestine travel and "indirect diplomacy" in the early nineteenth century 3) the influence of broader trans-Pacific imperialism, including trade and infrastructure networks.
During the research period, I have produced co-edited volumes of essays on "Pacific Gateways" and "British Romanticism in Asia", as well as book chapters on topics including Isabella Bird, Lafcadio Hearn, climbing Mount Fuji, arrival by steamship, Western interest in Japanese material culture, and English education and literature in Japan.
During the final year, I gave a lecture at Nihon University on Isabella Bird's views of Tokyo, and attended the Society for Global Nineteenth-Century Studies inaugural conference in Singapore. I wrote a chapter titled "Hermit Kingdoms: British Ideas of Japan and Tibet, 1760-1860", forthcoming in the Bloomsbury Handbook of British Romanticism and Asia. I am also working on an anthology of British writing on Tokyo, to be completed after the grant ends.
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