Koyama - On the persistence of the Japanese history problem: historicism and the international politics of history

Edited by Jenny Edkins

Aberystwyth University

Nick Vaughan-Williams

University of Warwick

The Series provides a forum for innovative and interdisciplinary work that engages with alternative critical, post-structural, feminist, postcolonial, psychoanalytic and cultural approaches to international relations and global politics. In our first 5 years we have published 60 volumes .

We aim to advance understanding of the key areas in which scholars working within broad critical post-structural traditions have chosen to make their interventions, and to present innovative analyses of important topics. Titles in the series engage with critical thinkers in philosophy, sociology, politics and other disciplines and provide situated historical, empirical and textual studies in international politics .

We are very happy to discuss your ideas at any stage of the project: just contact us for advice or proposal guidelines. Proposals should be submitted directly to the Series Editors:

• Jenny Edkins () and
• Nick Vaughan-Williams ().

As Michel Foucault has famously stated, knowledge is not made for understanding; it is made for cutting In this spirit The Edkins Vaughan-Williams Interventions series solicits cutting edge, critical works that challenge mainstream understandings in international relations. It is the best place to contribute post disciplinary works that think rather than merely recognize and affirm the world recycled in IRs traditional geopolitical imaginary.

Michael J. Shapiro, University of Hawaii at Manoa , USA

On the Persistence of the Japanese History Problem

Historicism and the International Politics of History

Hitomi Koyama

Ontological Entanglements, Agency and Ethics in International Relations

Exploring the Crossroads

Laura Zanotti

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/series/INT

A dandelion seed nestles in red soil, sequestered apart from the busy street and is given time. Before long, concrete is poured atop. I want to thank Renee Marlin-Bennett for reminding me that there is an option other than withering, Jennifer Culbert for constant support and encouragement, P.J. Brendese for patiently going through multiple drafts, and Sibagro for having cultivated such a space for a weed to grow at Johns Hopkins. Fragments of this book were written and shared over the years in many places among endearingly critical companies both near and afar, in Baltimore, Sydney, and Kyoto, and at various conference sites in International Studies Association and American Political Science Association, and in workshops at Yonsei University in Seoul, at Kyoto University in Kyoto, and at the National Taiwan University in Taipei. I thank Nicola Parkin and Jenny Edkins at Routledge Interventions Series for publishing this book, and Himadeep Muppidi and Mustapha Pasha for putting me in touch with Jenny. I am indebted to the generous research funding offered by Ryukoku Universitys Afrasian Research Centre in Kyoto, and to be offered a space to finish the manuscript in an abandoned library in southern Kyoto. Thomas J. Mathew has been a patient copyeditor and pleasure to work with. Earlier versions have been thoughtfully edited by Casey McNeill, Timothy Vasko, Greg Sesek, and Mariam Banahi. More raw versions of my writings and thoughts have been in the making over countless exchanges with my intellectually generous cohorts in Baltimore. I am fortunate to be at Hopkins at a time when I could easily bump into Nobutaka Otobe, Aditi Saraf, Tulio Zille, Ben Meiches, Chad Shomura, Dot Kwek, Derek Denman, Alex Barder, Nate Gies, Andrew Brandel, and Daniel Levine. A special thanks goes to Osamu Koshimizu at Sannin-sha Publisher in Kyoto who introduced me to Suga Syuichi at Hanazono University, who generously gave me the permission to take photographs of his collection of wartime and postwar textbooks. Part of the chapters is based on the reuse of an earlier publication at Contexto Internacional: Journal of Global Connections , Historicism, Coloniality, and Culture in Wartime Japan Vol. 38 (3) Sep/Dec 2016 http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/50102-8529.2016380300003, the licensor is not represented as endorsing the use made of the work. Carrying out a book project while on the road without anchor would not have been possible without the support of Ching-Chang Chen, Shine Choi, Kosuke Shimizu, Cameron Shepherd, L.H.M. Ling, Mustapha Pasha, and Barry Buzan.

I would like to thank my family for their support and patience, despite the subject of my work being a thorny issue for contemporary Japan. Finally, I would like to dedicate this book to Mr. Abe Kang. The grace and generosity you extended to my family in Virginia sustained me at moments when the world felt too fraught with hate, thoughtless words, and violence. You were fighting to breathe till the very last moment and left with grace as I was still holding your hand. I wish I could have thanked you in person today. I miss you.