| 研究課題/領域番号 |
18K01422
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| 研究機関 | 早稲田大学 |
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研究代表者 |
LEHENY DAVID 早稲田大学, 国際学術院(アジア太平洋研究科), 教授 (80817479)
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| 研究期間 (年度) |
2018-04-01 – 2021-03-31
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| キーワード | Politics / Memory / History / Nostalgia / Nation / International Relations / Status / Narrative |
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| 研究実績の概要 |
As I noted in last year's report, the relatively minimal approach the Abe Cabinet ended up taking toward the commemoration of the Meiji Restoration had limited the kind of national political engagement I could chronicle in my study, I had turned toward the regional politics of commemoration and had begun to craft arguments about narrative politics for publication. Over the past year, I have worked to build on the Meiji Commemoration research with further studies of the representations of Japanese history in both the celebration of the beginning of the Reiwa Era in 2019 and had planned to do the same for the 2020 Olympics, now delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
For these reasons (and personal ones noted below), I adjusted plans to focus on writing projects allowing me to connect the research on the Meiji Commemoration with questions of contemporary concern. The two writing projects related to the Meiji Commemoration research include a chapter on "Status" for a forthcoming Handbook on Japanese Politics (Oxford University Press), drawing in part from efforts to conceptualize the Meiji Restoration as a struggle over global status rather than a contest involving regional competition over power in 19th-century Japan. Additionally, I have completed my portion of a coauthored piece with a US-based historian of Japan on Meiji Commemoration, comparing the relatively limited national attention to it in Japan but the expansive interest among members of the global Japanese studies community. We have been in touch with a major journal regarding submission, hopefully this summer.
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| 現在までの達成度 (区分) |
現在までの達成度 (区分)
3: やや遅れている
理由
Until Autumn 2019, I felt that the progress of the project was coming along well. But the birth of my child and then the subsequent COVID-19 pandemic together made it impossible to travel for research or conferences in late 2019 or early 2020, and I have had only limited and sporadic access to my research resources (especially my books in my office) after the shutdown of Tokyo's public schools and my need to stay at home to care for my elementary-school-age child and an infant.
My writing plans as well have been sidelined in part by the effect of the pandemic on publishing venues, collaborators, as well as the substance of the research project. My concerns here are strategic as much as intellectual; although there will of course be an audience for analyses of Meiji History, any effort to focus on the politics of memory, history, and representation will struggle with publishers without at least some attention to the ways in which the COVID-19-era world is dealing with question of global leadership, economic misfortune, and, of course, the inequities of grief and suffering that the pandemic has produced. That is to say, the success and viability of this project will depend in part on its being something other than a relatively anodyne study of local tourism politics or a book project that will seem wildly out of step with a changed world (and changed global audience).
These challenges inform my publication/writing plans, which I address below.
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| 今後の研究の推進方策 |
My immediate plans for 2020 are to complete the shorter writing projects I noted in the first section of this piece, as well as to schedule travel to two of the Satcho-Dohi provinces (Yamaguchi and Kochi prefectures) that I was unable to visit this spring. I hope to collect documents regarding tourism promotion efforts and historical representations during the commemoration, as well as their plans to maintain interest in the commemoration even in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to scheduling concerns, I will likely plan these trip for late fall (probably late November) in 2020.
In addition to my related chapter and co-authored paper, both of which I plan to have completed by summer 2020, I hope to draft another paper this summer for submission to refereed journals. One is an analysis of international status in debates about Japan's global role, tracing its role in the reimagining of the Meiji Restoration as a struggle for global status and recognition rather than as a civil war involving regional struggles over power, to the recent global tensions over leadership during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
My goal then is to begin drafting a monograph for submission to academic presses (in English) on the politics of the Meiji Commemoration on its 150th anniversary, combined with the subsequent opening of th Reiwa Era, the 2020 Olympics, and the COVID-19 pandemic. I have published all of my monographs with Cornell University Press and will speak with them first to gauge their interest, but I am also trying to build connections to other presses as well.
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| 次年度使用額が生じた理由 |
I am making no amendments now, though I imagine that, as was the case in early 2019, the prospects for presentations at international conferences (which were among my plans for the year in the initial project proposal) will be limited, due to the travel restrictions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.
I am hopeful about the prospects of domestic travel to sites connected with the Meiji Restoration to situate their efforts more fully in their records of 2018 as well as their rebuilding their tourism plans for a post-COVID-19 world. But I imagine these budget uses in 2020-2021 will be lower than initially anticipated.
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