On July 3, 2024 at 12–1 PM, postdoctoral researcher Dr. des. Aya HINO of the Research Training Group GRK 2833 “East Asian Futures” will hold a lecture titled “‘Metascience’ of Self-Knowledge and Anthropological Knowledge? A Note on Kokusai Nihongaku 国際日本学 (International/Global Japanese Studies) from a Historical Perspective” at the Mittagsforum (lunch forum) of the Faculty of East Asian Studies at Ruhr University Bochum.
Abstract
Since the early 2000s, observers of Japanese higher education have been witnessing the emergence and popularisation of a new organising category of research and education at Japanese universities – kokusai nihongaku 国際日本学 (International/Global Japanese Studies). Yet, the name itself does not reveal much about what exactly kokusai nihongaku entails. What is ‘international’ or ‘global’ about a field of research and education that takes a nation-state, Japan, as its primary parameter? While some attempts have been made to understand kokusai nihongaku in relation to the contemporary phenomena of globalization and internationalization, little has been said about its historical provenance and epistemological implications. By locating this emerging field in the century-long genealogy of nihongaku 日本学 (studies of Japan) first forged in Japan during the 1920s and 1930s and later revived during the 1970s, this presentation maintains that kokusai nihongaku is an ongoing scholarly effort, or what those involved call ‘metascience’, to remould the field of self-knowledge production within Japan vis-à-vis anthropological knowledge of Japan produced elsewhere. ‘Metascience’ has some potential to challenge methodological and epistemological premises undergirding knowledge production. However, ‘metascience’ is often and problematically anchored back to the idea of Japan as a national community distinct from the rest, for it is predicated on the established juxtaposition of self-knowledge and anthropological knowledge, of the self and the other. Kokusai nihongaku, though paradoxical as it may sound, reveals certain inadequacies of such juxtaposition, especially in a context marked by the increasingly arbitrary nature of national boundaries.
For additional information on the Mittagsforum, please refer to the Faculty of East Asian Studies’ homepage.