Naoki SAKAI - Tokyo College

01 Description of Research

Naoki Sakai is Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences in Asian Studies Emeritus at Cornell University. He used to teach in the departments of Asian Studies and Comparative Literature, and the graduate field of history and the graduate faculty of feminism, gender and sexuality studies until he retired in July 2021. He has published in the fields of comparative literature, intellectual history, translation studies, the studies of racism and nationalism, and the histories of textuality. His publications include: The End of Pax Americana – the Loss of Empire and Hikikomori Nationalism(Duke University Press, 2022); Nationalism of Hikikomori (Iwanami Shoten, 2017); Japan/Cinematic Images/US,(Ibunsha, 2007); Translation and Subjectivity (University of Minnesota Press, 1997); The Stillbirth of the Japanese as a Language and as an Ethnos (Shinyô-sha, 1995); Voices of the Past-the status of language in eighteenth-century Japanese discourse (Cornell University Press, 1991) and many others. He edited a number of volumes including Politics of Translation, special issue of Translation, co-edited with Sandro Mezzadra (2014); The Trans-Pacific Imagination co-edited with Hyon Joo Yoo (World Scientific, 2012); The End of Area, special issue of positions asia critique (Duke UP, 2019). Naoki Sakai served as the founding editor for the project of TRACES, a multilingual series in five languages – Korean, Chinese, English, Spanish and Japanese.

02 Short Biography

1980-1983 Ph.D., University of Chicago, Department of Far Eastern Languages and Civilizations

1984-1988 Assistant Professor, Department of Far Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and the College, the University of Chicago.

1988-1991 Assistant Professor, Department of Asian Studies, Cornell University

1992-1997 Associate Professor, Department of Asian Studies, Cornell University

1997 Full Professor, Department of Asian Studies

1998 Professor, Department of Comparative Literature at Cornell University

2011 Endowed Chair, Goldwin Smith Professor of Asian Studies, Cornell University.

2016 Outstanding International Visiting Scholar at the Institute for World Literature and Cultures, Tsinghua University.

2021 Endowed Chair, Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences in Asian Studies, Cornell University, discarding the title of Goldwin Smith Professor of Asian Studies.

2021 Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences in Asian Studies Emeritus at Cornell University.

03 Publications and Other Research Activities

MONOGRAPHS

The End of Pax Americana and Nationalism of Hikikomori, Duke University Press, 2022.

Japanese Nationalism of Hikikomori, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, December, 2017.

Hope and the Constitution. Tokyo: Ibunsha, 2008.

Japan/Image/the United States: The Community of Sympathy and Imperial Nationalisms, Tokyo: Seidosha, 2007.

Translation and Subjectivity: On “Japan” and Cultural Nationalism, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.

The Problem Called Japanese Thought: Translation and Subjectivity, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1997.

The Stillborn of the Japanese as Language and as Ethnos: “Japanese” History–Geopolitical Configuration, Tokyo: Shin’yôsha, 1996.

Voices of the Past: The Status of Language in Eighteenth-Century Japanese Discourse, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991.

CO-EDITED VOLUMES

Knowledge Production and Epistemic Decolonization at the End of Pax Americana, London, Routledge, 2023.

“Overcoming Modernity” and the Kyoto School of Philosophy – modernity, Empire, Universality, Tokyo: Ibunsha, 2010.

SELECTED ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS

“Area Studies and Civilizational Transference: Epistemic Decolonization at the End of Pax Americana,” in Knowledge Production and Epistemic Decolonization at the End of Pax Americana, Naoki Sakai, Jon Solomon and Peter Button eds., London, Routledge, 2023: 43~88.

“Equality and Nationality: the Emergence of Modern Identity Politics,” in Routledge Series on Political Theories in East Asian Context, Jun-Hyeok Kwak ed., Routledge, London, 2023.

“The Individuality of Language: Internationality and Transnationality” in Routledge Handbook of Translation and Globalization,Esperanza Bielsa Mialet and Dionysios Kapsaskis eds., London, Routledge, 2020.

“Translation and History – on Politics in Translation” in Routledge Handbook of Translation and Politics, London: Routledge, 2018.

“The West and Bordering” in Former West: Art and the Contemporary after 1989, Boris Buden et al ed., Cambridge: The MIT Press, March 2017.

“From Relational Identity to Specific Identity – On Equality and Nationality” in Values, Identity and Equality in 18^th and 19^th-Century Japan, Peter Nosco et al ed., Brill, 2015: 290-320.

“Theory and the West – on Humanitas and Anthropos” in Transeuropéenes – International On-Line Journal of Critical Thought, August 2011.

“Civilizational Difference and Area Studies: Pan-asianism and the West” in UTCP Japanese Philosophy volume 2, 2010.

‘Trans-Pacific Complicity and Comparative Strategy: Failure in De-Colonization and the Rise of Japanese Nationalism’ in Globalizing American Studies, Dilip Gaonkar and Brian Edwards ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming in 2010: 240-265.