Members

・東京大学の博士論文（2025年10月）
Commemoration and Condemnation in North Eurasia: A　reexamination of the Japan-South Korea history issues through a comparative study of collective memory in the domestic politics and international relations of Finland and Korea（日韓歴史問題の再考：韓国・フィンランドの集合的記憶の比較分析）

・東京大学の修士論文（2022年3月）The Emergence of the Comfort Women Issue: A narrative analysis of discourses in Japan and South Korea from a constructivist dialogical perspective (1991-1993)（慰安婦問題の登場：構成主義的・対話法主義的視座から見た日韓マスコミ言説のナラティブ分析 （1991－1993年））

・Politics of memory
・Global history as transregional history

I envision my future research as taking place at the intersection of two contrasting but mutually reinforcing perspectives: 1) understanding the world from the perspective of East Asia, and 2) understanding East Asia from the perspective of the rest of the world. From this twofold perspective, my research will focus on the political dimension of collective memory in domestic as well as international politics. It will explore how the political mobilization of history in certain instances can lead to division and conflict, but it will also explore how it in other instances can serve to enable mutual reconciliation and cooperation.

Broadly speaking, my future research will be underpinned by three primary goals.

The first goal is to strike a balance between idealism and pragmatism. Voltaire famously said that perfect is the enemy of good, but I disagree with this proposition. I believe that friendship between perfect and good can allow for a realistic pursuit of a third option: the pursuit of better. This means never losing faith in the power of human agency while simultaneously acknowledging that there are structural forces beyond the immediate control of such agency. The pursuit of better is based on a desire to live in accordance with the Serenity Prayer: it is a quest to accept the things we cannot change so that we may find the courage to change the things we can.

The second goal is to strike a balance between tradition and innovation. I want to make sure that I conduct all my future research as series of dialogues with the generations of researchers who came before me and to whom I owe most of my knowledge about the world. However, I also want to challenge certain aspects of their findings in order to produce new, interesting, and useful knowledge. In so doing, I hope that my research will be able to benefit the next generation of researchers just as the research of past generations has benefitted mine.

The third goal is to strike a balance between descriptive and normative. Above all, I want to make sure that my future research stands on a firm empirical foundation; the pursuit of empirical knowledge will always form the core of my research agenda. However, I also want to be able to use such empirical knowledge in order to draw normative conclusions and provide actionable insights whenever it is warranted. In particular, I hope to be able to contribute toward finding ways of resolving lingering tensions from the past in order to promote future peace and reconciliation. I also hope to be able to contribute toward establishing acceptance of the fact that not all such tensions can be resolved but that peace and reconciliation may be possible nevertheless.

My research strives toward establishing a fuller understanding of the political dimension of collective memory in domestic as well as international settings from a comparative perspective. I am interested in differences between how liberal democratic societies and authoritarian societies can and should manage social and political discord resulting from clashing interpretations of the shared past. I am also interested in how liberal democratic states deal with such clashes in their diplomatic relations with one another, and also how dyads of liberal democratic states and authoritarian states deal with such clashes in their diplomatic relations.

In my doctoral dissertation I investigate from a comparative perspective the political dimension of collective memory in Korea and Finland in the longue durée. I explore how history has been mobilized politically in various ways and to various ends in the domestic politics of both countries over the past century, and I also explore how South Korea has used collective memory in its international relations with Japan and China, as well as how Finland has used collective memory in its international relations with Russia and Sweden. For the purposes of this analysis, I develop and demonstrate the utility of three new analytical concepts aimed at capturing the finer aspects of the political dimension of collective memory: 1) the implicit statute of limitations for collective memory; 2) the viscosity of collective memory; and 3) sorting mechanisms for collective memory.

My future research will be aimed at further developing this analytical toolbox into a comprehensive theoretical and methodological framework with general applicability to the qualitative analysis of memory politics in East Asia as well as other regions of the world.