COMMUNICATIONS

With the creation of the Uehiro Research Division for Global Japanese Studies at Nichibunken* in October 2024, I took up my role managing the division. In the past I was attached to various universities and research centers in the Kantō and Kansai regions of Japan, but this appointment has meant my return to Kyoto, where I did postgraduate work. I had been away for six years. Every day, I experience a quiet sense of elation, a mixture of nostalgia and joy.

The mountain peaks of the Nishiyama range, as seen from a quiet path to the north of Nichibunken. Photograph: author

My research examines social science thinking in Japan during the pre-war and wartime periods. As a scholar and a student, I have a deep interest in how people of that era sought to engage with society through academia. We have the impression that the period was one in which thought and speech were severely controlled. To be sure, total war mobilized knowledge, including social scientific knowledge, to meet the demands of the state. But at the same time, there was progress in the management of statistical data, such as the national population census. Empirical social research progressed by leaps and bounds. In the social sciences of that era, there were vigorous debates among scholars about worldviews, values, and indeed research methodologies. To borrow an expression fashionable today, in an “unpredictable society,” intellectual activity played out in many different ways. Toughened by the harshest of circumstances, it swayed between state and society, freedom and suppression, and value neutrality and conviction.

Standing here eighty years after the war, we can say that we live in a comparatively peaceful and abundant environment. But the global movement of people, things, and capital, rapid developments in artificial intelligence, and unprecedented climate change are also posing new questions for academics. These changes demand that we, like our forebears of eighty years ago, continue to question our own standpoints, and reexamine the workings of knowledge as we confront an uncertain future. I hope with all my heart that, unpredictable though these times are, we may be able to think and walk our way through them together.

I look forward to facing the future with you.

＊ For details of the Uehiro Research Division for Global Japanese Studies, click on the link below.
https://ugjs.nichibun.ac.jp/