Japan’s 19th-century entry into internatio nal society was sudden\, dramatic\, and fraught with danger\, both domestic and international. Between 1853 and 1899 Japan reinvented itself as a mode rn sovereign state\, shedding its historical isolation and long-standing pa tterns and practices of politics and governance. A crucial task Japanese le aders faced was figuring out how to conform to existing norms of internatio nal society\, which were largely European in origin. How did they balance i nternational and domestic constraints and resources? What effect did Japan’ s entry into international society have on international society itself? Wh at implications does the Japanese experience hold for other countries today who are in the process of either attempting to conform\, or actively resis ting fully conforming\, to prevailing international norms?
Bi o: Tomoko Okagaki is Professor of Political Science at Dokkyo Univ ersity in Japan. She holds a doctoral degree in political science from the University of Michigan and was a visiting student at the University of Toro nto (Sankei Scholarship) in 1986-1987. She also studied at the University o f British Columbia as a recipient of a Government of Canada Award 1988-89\, obtaining her master’s degree there. Her long-standing research interests in international politics include\, inter alia\, state socialisation\, Asia n regionalism\, and political thoughts of international relations. In 2013 she had her monograph\, The Logic of Conformity: Japan’s Entry in Internati onal Society\, published by the University of Toronto Press. Her other rece nt publications include the co-translation of Kenneth Waltz’s Man\, the Sta te\, and War (Keiso Shobo\, 2013) and Theory of International Politics (Kei so Shobo\, 2011). She held an Abe Fellowship from 2008-2010\, spending a to tal of two years as an academic associate at the Weatherhead Center for Int ernational Affairs and as a visiting scholar at the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies\, both at Harvard University. She recently returned from her teaching engagement with le Départment de Géographie\, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne as a professeure invitée and with L’institut national des langues et civilisations orientales\, where she taught comparative regi onalism.
Sponsor: Centre for Japanese Research\, Jap
an Foundation\, Japan Studies Association of Canada
By: Tomoko Okagaki\, Professor of Political Science\, Dokkyo University
Type: Seminar