The Global History Group aims to analyze historical relationships among peoples from temporal and structural perspectives that transcend the confines of national histories. In doing so, it seeks to demonstrate persuasively, while offering new interpretations, how national collective consciousness and identities have been formed within the dynamics of group formation constituted by values, memories, and emotions. At the same time, the group examines how conflicts both within and between nations, as “imagined communities,” emerge and unfold in tandem with concrete events and historical incidents.
Underlying this line of inquiry is a recognition that conventional historical narratives, regardless of ideological orientation, have tended to converge into nationally bounded stories that develop as internally oriented narratives. It is therefore necessary to historicize the very existence of the nation itself. A central pillar of this research lies in tracing the processes of such historicization through emotionally entailed public debates surrounding the construction of hard institutional infrastructures, including legislation, treaties, and court processes. Furthermore, by analyzing institutions such as school education, museums, and commemorative practices—each functioning as mechanisms for cultivating “the nation”—it becomes possible to identify the distinctive “memory regimes” that operate within individual nations. Examining the structures of these memory regimes, as well as the dynamics of conflicts among them, provides an effective means of writing history at a global level beyond the framework of national histories.
As part of the International Reconciliation Studies book series written in English, the group is currently preparing two edited volumes. One volume seeks to clarify the institutional conditions that have shaped reconciliation among nations in twentieth-century East Asia, where the processes of nation-state formation, imperial expansion, and warfare in international relations unfolded in an interconnected manner—almost like a series of falling dominoes. By comprehensively examining historical processes such as Japan’s modernization, the expansion of imperial citizenship, the confrontation with Chinese nationalism and the collapse of empire, the reconfiguration of regional order and decolonization during the Cold War, and the normalization of relations between postwar Japan and its neighboring countries, this volume aims to elucidate how universal values such as democracy and human rights became embedded within the historical experiences and institutional frameworks of each country. These values, in turn, came to be shared across political divides and crystallized into collective memories that shaped the formation of distinct political societies.
The second volume focuses on cultural heritage in East Asia. Cultural heritage has not merely reflected conflicts over historical recognition; rather, it has played an active role in generating and reproducing such conflicts within the processes of nation-state formation. In particular, by adopting the concept of the Authorized Heritage Discourse (AHD) as a central analytical framework, this volume examines how institutional structures—including museums, colonial heritage, and World Heritage frameworks—have contributed to the formation of national narratives and have shaped the possibilities for both conflict and reconciliation within the broader historical contexts of colonial rule, decolonization, and postwar nation-(re)building.
Taken together, these two forthcoming volumes represent significant achievements of the group. They aim to provide both theoretical and empirical foundations for reexamining the historical processes through which nation-states and international orders have been formed in Asia, thereby contributing to a long-term understanding of the conditions necessary for international reconciliation.
Teams
In preparation.
