My interests in Japanese history concentrate on the early modern period, or Tokugawa period (1600-1868).
Main Projects:
- Lately I am interested most in network studies. I receive funding from the Institute of Comparative Culture, Sophia University. Please see the homepage for more details.
- In addition, as part of my research on network studies from April 2012 until March 2014 I joined an intra-university collaboration (University Project 学内共同研究).
- With the beginning of the next academic year (2012-13) I am part of yet another project at Sophia that aims at innovation of our curriculum. “Reacting to the Past”: New Approaches to Critical Thinking and Japanese History” will in the end bring the Reacting-to-the-Past-Pedagogy to our classrooms. I began working on this pedagogy in 2010, and applied it twice so far with much success (thanks to all the patient students), and hope to develop a textbook in the near future, which will be co-written by my collaborators Professors Mathew Thompson and James McKinley.
- Since 2013 I participate in the research group JETTS (a grant from JSPS based at Waseda University) Economic Thought
Other projects include:
- The translation into Japanese of my book on Tadano Makuzu, published in 2013.
- The translation into Japanese of the co-edited book on Economic Thought in Early Modern Japan, published in 2013.
- East Asian Trade: Nagasaki Copper Trade and shogunal regulations
- Epidemics (Cholera) in Early Modern Japan
- Women’s History (Tadano Makuzu and Rai Shizuko)
- Reacting to the Past Pedagogy
- Participating in the research group: “Shaping of Japanese Culture and War Memories” at the Nichibunken (leader of the project: Theodore Cook) (ended 2013)
- Participating in “Religion in the Public Sphere in Modern, Historical and Cross-Cultural Perspectives,” The University of Winnipeg’s Department of Religion & Culture
- Participating in the “European Association for Edo Studies”