Dienstag, 27. November 2018, 18:30 - 20:00 iCal

The Danger of a Simple Story:

The Meiji Restoration after 150 Years

Carol Gluck (Columbia University)

 

Institut für Ostasienwissenschaften-Japanologie, Seminarraum JAP 1
Spitalgasse 2, UniversitätsCampus Hof 2, Eingang 2.4, 1090 Wien

Vortrag


Beginning with the contrast between the centennial of the Meiji Restoration in 1968 and the 150th anniversary commemorations in 2018, the lecture examines the Japanese historians whose views of the Meiji Restoration have been publicly prominent during the 150th anniversary, followed by a glimpse of trends in scholarship about the Restoration over the past two decades or so. The topic next moves to consideration of the "Long Restoration," from the 1820s through the 1880s, as a complicated process that involved many actors, who as they lived through the turbulent times did not know how things would eventually turn out. The seismic upheaval in politics and society in the early Meiji decades affected everyone, no matter how far or near they were to the forces responsible for what amounted to a historical earthquake. What might such a view of Meiji have to say to us today?

Carol Gluck, George Sansom Professor of History at Columbia University, specializes in modern Japan, from the late nineteenth century to the present. Her books include Japan's Modern Myths (1985), Showa: The Japan of Hirohito (1992), Words in Motion (2009), Rekishi de kangaeru (2007, paperback 2019), and Past Obsessions: World War II in History and Memory (forthcoming). Prof. Gluck is a founding member and now chair of Columbia's Committee on Global Thought.

 


Veranstalter

Institut für Ostasienwissenschaften/Japanologie und AAJ (Akademischer Arbeitskreis Japan)


Kontakt

Mag. Angela Kramer
Universität Wien
Institut für Ostasienwissenschaften - Japanologie
4277-43801
angela.kramer@univie.ac.at