The next meeting of the Japan History Group (JHG) at the Institute
of Social Science (ISS), University of Tokyo, will be held on Tuesday,
7 November 2017, at 6:00 PM in Conference Room No.1(Dai-Ichi Kaigishitsu)
of the Institute of Social Science main Building.

Presenter: Amin Ghadimi (Ph.D. Candidate, Harvard University)

Title: Overcoming Modernity in 1870s Kumamoto　

Discussant: Kaoru Iokibe (Professor, the University of Tokyo)

Abstract:
This talk examines the intellectual history of 1870s Kumamoto. What is today Kumamoto prefecture was the site of ferocious ideational contest in the aftermath of the upheaval of 1868. In search of intellectual surety, some young samurai and wealthy farmers set out to invade Taiwan and then launched a radical movement for imperial democracy at home; some partook in prayer groups and Bible study circles, converting en masse to Christianity; and some pushed ahead with anti-state fundamentalist terrorism, what we might consider a form of Japanese jihadism that culminated in the 1876 Shinpūren Rebellion. This talk argues that these seemingly disparate upheavals emerged as strategies to resolve a common underlying crisis of modernity. The problem of globality destabilized the ideational relationships among self, society, and state in 1870s Kumamoto. The intellectual disequilibrium wrought by the globalization of knowing in turn threw social life into disequilibrium. The young men of Kumamoto were left trying to rebuild intellectual and social order amid the violent throes of world-historical revolution.

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Dr. Naofumi NAKAMURA
Professor of Business History
Institute of Social Science,
The University of Tokyo
naofumin@iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp
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