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When you smell coffee, what picture appears in your mind? What do you feel? What time of the day do you imagine? Distinctive smells like the smell of coffee tend to trigger strong associations. In the…

Graphic Recording ©Innovation Team dot Moe Ikeda We often hear the phrase “work-life balance,” but are “work” and “life” really separate things? The coronavirus pandemic is making work-from-home the new normal. University researchers are no exception….

We are already aware we cannot use everything on this planet limitless and the scale of our present activities threatens the well-being of future generations as well as our own. For that reason…

Part III: The Classroom as a Site of Renewal. In the previous parts I stressed a desire for more conversation: between area studies and the disciplines, between Japanese and non-Japanese scholars of Japan, between academics and the wider public. Crucially, we also need to listen to our students. In…

PART II: Japan as Method. What I found exciting as a German studying Japanese history was the change of perspective it entailed. For good reason, schooling in German history and public debates centered on National Socialism, the Second World War and the Holocaust. The purpose of national history after 1945…

This three-part blog series is a slightly revised version of an essay I wrote for the 30th anniversary essay contest of the Toshiba Foundation. PART I: The Global Entanglements of Japanese Culture. Fifteen years onwards, I cannot say for sure what first piqued my interest in Japanese studies. I know…

Since its establishment in February of last year, Tokyo College has undertaken a diverse range of activity on the basis of its adoption of four interdisciplinary research themes of importance to the contemporary world under the…

The blue-tiled room in the photograph shows artwork at the Museum of the Qasr Prison in Iran. The building, which had been used as a prison from 1929, was opened as a museum in 2012, with…

During my dissertation research conducted during the 2016-2017 academic year, I was based at Kyushu University in Fukuoka, some 1,500 kilometres away from my primary research site. My research focuses on the 19th century Japanese colonization…