Curated by Ryoya Mizuno and Dina Gusejnova, this international workshop will examine how concepts of modernity, Europe, and the West, developed in the light of changing political constellations linking Europe, Japan, and East Asia.
This international workshop will shed light on the way concepts of modernity developed under changing political constellations involving Europe, Japan, and East Asia. With a focus on Japanese political thought in East Asian and global contexts, the workshop will reconsider the meaning of modernity beyond European historical teleologies. While traditional models of knowledge transfer view Western knowledge and institutions as exports to Japan, this workshop will enable participants to develop a more multidirectional understanding of knowledge circulation in East Asian as well as in global contexts.
The first part of the workshop takes place at the British Museum.
In Session 1, participants will join a private tour of the British Museum’s Japanese collections with BM Curators Dr Akiko Yano and Joe Nickols.
In Session 2, participants will be looking at a set of objects from the British Museum’s collections in a private study room session. This session will be accompanied by a talk by Professor Antony Best (LSE) on “British cultural diplomacy towards Japan in the interwar period".
Please note that places in session 1 and 2 are strictly limited to 15 participants. If you wish to join, you will need to sign up to both sessions separately. Registered participants will be contacted directly about specific meeting points and directions for these sessions.
After a short break, the workshop then continues at the LSE (MAR.1.08, Marshall Building, LSE).
In Session 3, the workshop will showcase current research on Japanese intellectual history by scholars based in Japan, whose work has not been widely introduced in the UK. Following an introduction by Ryoya Mizuno, Professor Ōkubo Takeharu will present his recent biographical study of Fukuzawa Yukichi, one of Japan’s most canonical modern thinkers, focusing on his engagement with the Rangaku tradition (Dutch Studies) in Japan. Dr Ryu Aerim will present her current research drawing on her recent monograph on the reception of Alexis de Tocqueville in Japan. Finally, Professor Kiri Paramore will reflect on these presentations from a broader East Asian and global perspective.
Programme:
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(5-7pm) SESSION 3 - MAIN PANEL: ‘Non-European Modernity: Modern Japanese and East Asian Ideas of the West in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries', featuring our three speakers, Prof Takeharu, Prof Paramore and Dr Ryu (Venue: MAR.1.08, Marshall Building, LSE)
Meet our speakers:
Takeharu Okubo, Ph.D. (2004, Tokyo Metropolitan University), is Professor of the History of Asian and Japanese Political Thought at Keio University, Japan and a visiting scholar at Leiden University's Institute for Area Studies since September 2024. He has numerous publications regarding global intellectual history, especially in the cultural interaction between the Netherlands and Japan. His publications include The Quest for Civilization: Encounters with Dutch Jurisprudence, Economics and Statistics at the Dawn of Modern Japan, (translated by David Noble, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014), “The Concept of Rights in Modern Japan”, in Oxford Handbook of Comparative Political Theory, (eds. Leigh Jenco et al., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), Kindai Nihon no Seiji Kōsō to Oranda (University of Tokyo Press, Expanded Revised Edition, 2022), FUKUZAWA Yukichi: Saigo no Rangakusha (Kodansha, 2023).
Antony Best joined the LSE as a Lecturer in 1989. Professor Best's main fields of research interests lie in Anglo-Japanese relations, the origins of the Pacific War; the international history of East Asia; the history of modern Japan, and intelligence and International history. Among his recent publications are (Routledge, London, 2020) Other publications include (2019) [co-edited with Peter Kornicki and Hugh Cortazzi]; Japan and the Great War (2015) [co-edited with Oliviero Frattolillo]; and Imperial Japan and the World, 1931-1941 (2011).
Kiri Paramore is Professor of Asian Studies in the National University of Ireland, University College Cork, where he directs the Irish Institute of Chinese Studies and the Irish Institute of Japanese Studies. He is the author of Japanese Confucianism: A Cultural History (Cambridge University Press, 2016), (a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award winner, 2016), Ideology and Christianity in Japan (Routledge, 2009), and Religion and Orientalism in Asian Studies (Bloomsbury, 2016). His articles have appeared in Modern Intellectual History, the Journal of Asian Studies, the Journal of Early Modern History, Comparative Studies in Society and History, the Journal of Japanese Studies, and the Proceedings of the British Academy, etc. He currently serves as chief editor of the Cambridge History of Confucianism, and as one of the authors of the Cambridge History of Democracy, and the New Cambridge History of Japan.
Ryu Aerim, Ph.D. (2019, University of Tokyo), is Associate Professor of the History of Political Thought at the Faculty of Law, Kyushu University. Her research focuses on modern Japanese political thought, particularly the reception of Western thinkers such as Alexis de Tocqueville and Thomas Carlyle from the Meiji to Showa periods. She is the author of Tokubiru to Meiji Shisōshi: “Demokurashī” no Hatten to Bōkyaku (Tocqueville and the Intellectual History of Meiji Japan: The Discovery and Oblivion of “Democracy”) which received the 8th Yoshino Sakuzo Research Award (Grand Prize) in 2023. She is interested in examining how Japanese intellectuals appropriated the ideas of Western thinkers during a period of modernization and political transformation, contributing to a deeper understanding of cross-cultural exchanges in political thought.
Meet our chair and organisers:
Dina Gusejnova (chair and organiser) is Associate Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Dina completed her studies and her PhD in History at the University of Cambridge and has taught at the universities of Chicago, UCL, Queen Mary University of London and Sheffield. She is the author of European Elites and Ideas of Empire, 1917-57 (Cambridge University Press, 2016), and the editor of Cosmopolitanism in Conflict: Imperial Encounters from the Seven Years’ War to the Cold War (Palgrave, 2018). Her recent publications (for instance, as co-editor, ‘Wartime internment in camps as a global practice and experience’, a), and ‘Loyalty and Allegiance in Baltic German Political Thought after the First World War’, (2025), deal with the cultural and intellectual impact of wars, internment and displacement on the history of ideas, both from a historical and from a contemporary perspective.
Ryoya Mizuno (organiser) is a PhD candidate in the Department of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. After obtaining his MA from Keio University, Mizuno has been researching the international thought of Arnold J. Toynbee (1889-1975) under the supervision of Dr Dina Gusejnova and Professor David Stevenson. His thesis examines Toynbee's ideas on nation-states, the British Empire, the relationship between Western and non-Western civilizations, and world history. Mizuno's research also explores the global resonances of Toynbee's international thought, primarily focusing on the reception in the United States and Japan. More broadly, he is interested in the history of twentieth-century Anglo-American international thought, the history of Japanese international thought in the age of decolonization, the relationship between historical writings and international thought, and the global circulation of ideas. Mizuno has recently published
Jacky Huang and Akira Matsuki (workship assistants) - both LSE students
Curators at the British Museum:
Joe Nickols is a Curator in the Japan section of the British Museum, where he co-ordinates a headline exhibition on Samurai launching in 2026. Joe is a research-based curator and is concurrently developing a PhD project at SOAS, University of London. Joe was awarded the Sasakawa Scholarship 2023/24 for research into the Japanese Art Movement Mavo. He has curated exhibitions in the UK and Japan, as well as lecturing lectured at Stanford University and Hong Kong Baptist University on Arts, Culture, and Curation. In 2023 Joe launched a lifestyle platform called NCLUSIV WORLD that focussed on queer/trans arts and culture.
Akiko Yano is the Mitsubishi Corporation Curator (Japanese Collections) in the Department of Asia of the British Museum (BM). Having joined the BM in 2015, Dr Yano was a member of the curatorial team for the special exhibition Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave (2017), the renewal of the Mitsubishi Corporation Japanese Galleries (2018) and Nara: Sacred Images from Early Japan (2019). She most recently curated Salon Culture in Japan: Making Art 1750-1900 (2024), and a catalogue of this exhibition has been published in the same year.
Born and educated in Japan, Akiko Yano completed her BA (International Relations) at Tsuda College, Tokyo, and MA and PhD (Japanese Art History) at Keio University, Tokyo.
This event has been made possible by kind donations from the .
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