RESEARCH PROJECT

The Empire’s Wilful Malaise: Ideology, Utopia, and Knowledge Production in Japan

The future of the Japanese Empire envisioned by those at the imperial centre was underpinned by discursive tropes of difference: colonial differences, which distinguished ethnic Japanese from colonial subjects within the empire; and imperial differences, which differentiated Japan’s imperial and colonial project from those of European empires. While colonial differences legitimised Japan’s subjugation of the other as a necessary means of liberation and progress, imperial differences justified such subjugation as ‘humane’ compared to the machinations of European empires. This future imaginary was thus at once ideological and utopian. It was ideological because it was so bound to the interests of the imperial centre that it disguised the reality of military conquests, suppression of dissent, oppression codified in socio-cultural lives, and exploitation of resources and labour. Yet it was simultaneously utopian because it was oriented towards the unity of racially, ethnically, and culturally different people of Asia, which was incongruous with reality.

This ideo-utopian nature of the future imaginary, however, escapes the established scholarly language of ideology and utopia. Mannheim, Jameson, Ricoeur, and Marcuse, for example, all argue that the ideological becomes the utopian when it breaks the bounds of the existing order, or, conversely, that the utopian becomes the ideological when it reconceives itself in accord with the interests of the ruling group. Yet their theoretical renderings fall short of accounting for a future imaginary that is all at once ideological and utopian.

How did those at the imperial centre discursively forge the ideo-utopian future and legitimise it as a teleological end of the Japanese Empire, while foreclosing other possibilities? To address this question, this postdoctoral project examines the intersection of chronopolitics and epistemology. First, the project traces how the future, underpinned by colonial and imperial differences, had been imagined, contested, and instrumentalised, with particular focus on chronopolitics – the ways in which politics intervened in time to establish temporal registers, to constitute relationships among these registers, and to legitimise certain visions while foreclosing others. Second, the project considers the epistemological foundation of chronopolitics, namely the conceptual formation of the ‘Japanese’ subject as a form of collective consciousness and the discursive imbrication of nation and empire that delimited the boundaries of collective consciousness. Third, the project examines how the ideological and the utopian were linked together, by attending to what is called ‘Nihongaku’ – a site of knowledge production and cultural indoctrination tied to the interests of the imperial centre. With empirically grounded analysis, the project seeks to build upon existing theories of ideology and utopia and to propose a new conceptual apparatus, ‘transgression’, that explains the imbrication of ideological and utopian futures. 

ACADEMIC ACTIVITIES

Publications

• The Subject Position: Modern Knowledge Formation in Japan as Translational Practices. Inauguraldissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde der Philosophi-schen Fakultät der Universität Heidelberg. Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg 2025. DOI: 10.11588/heidok.00036472.
• “Epistemic (Dis)Obedience: ‘Japanese’ Theory, Structural Inequality, and Kokusai Nihongaku.” In: Asiatische Studien – Études Asiatiques 79(2), 2025, pp. 329–366. DOI: 10.1515/asia-2025-0001

Fellowships and Research Stays

• Sep–Oct 2024. Fieldwork in Japan, German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ), Tokyo, Japan.

Guest Lectures

• “A future that remoulds the past: An introduction to the studies of past futures in East Asia”. Department of Asian and North African Studies, Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, Italy, Oct 7, 2025.
• “‘Narrating Japan as Japanese to those outside?’ Kokusai Nihongaku and Categories of Knowledge”. Satsuma Chair Guest Lecture, Faculty of Arts, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, Apr 30, 2025.

Conferences and Workshops

• “The Temporality of Utopia: A Case of the Japanese Empire.” Workshop “East Asian Futures”, German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ), Tokyo, Japan, Nov 13, 2025.
• “Chronpolitics, Temporalities, and Future Imaginary of the Japanese Empire.” German Association for Social Science Research on Japan (VSJF) Annual Conference, Fachgruppe Geschichte, Vienna, Austria, Nov 7, 2025.
• “An Imagined Future, Disappearing Futures.” Fieldwork Result Workshop, GRK 2833 “East Asian Futures”, Herne, Germany, Oct 9, 2025.
• Panel Chair for “Cybercrime in a Digitalized Japan: Risks, Responses, and Implications for the Future”. British Association for Japanese Studies (BAJS) 2025 – 50th Anniversary Conference, Cardiff University, United Kingdom, Sep 4, 2025.
• “Transgression: A theoretical reflection on the temporality of future imagery of the Japanese Empire”. International Conference of the Young Scholars‘ Group of the German Association for Asian Studies (DGA) “Thinking Futures in Asia”, Leipzig University, Germany, May 9, 2025.
• “On the Limits of Analytical Categories: Japanese Imperial and Colonial Discourses and the Conception of Time and Temporality”. 18th Annual Conference on Asian Studies (ACAS) “Asian Temporalities: Chronologies, Seasons, Tenses”, Department of Asian Studies, Palacký University Olomouc, Czechia, Nov 23, 2024.
• Panel Organiser for “Challenging the Modern Time Regime: Heterotemporal Imaginations in China and Japan”. 18th Annual Conference on Asian Studies (ACAS) “Asian Temporalities: Chronologies, Seasons, Tenses”, Department of Asian Studies, Palacký University Olomouc, Czechia, Nov 22–23, 2024.
• “‘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”. Mittagsforum, Faculty of East Asian Studies, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, Jul 3, 2024.
• “An Imagined Future, Disappearing Futures”. Proposal Workshop, GRK 2833 “East Asian Futures”, Duisburg, Germany, Jun 14, 2024. [Poster]