Japan-France Conference Preparation Workshop (Special Workshop)

The OJHW is holding a maximum 90-minute hybrid discussion session in preparation for the upcoming conference in 5–6 November, 2026, titled "Across Anti-Imperial Metropolises: Nonstate Approaches to Modern Japan-France History." This session is open to members who will be participating in the conference.

We will discuss the following readings:

• “Introduction” in Anarchist Modernity: Cooperatism and Japanese-Russian Intellectual Relations in Modern Japan, by Sho Konishi. Harvard University Asia Center, 2013, pp. 1–28. (Optional: entire book, but especially “Nature in Culture, Culture in Nature: Phagocytes, Dung Beetles, and the Cosmos,” pp. 296–328.)
• “Introduction” in Reopening the Opening of Japan: Transnational Approaches to Japan and the Wider World, edited by Lewis Bremner, Manimporok Dotulong, and Sho Konishi. Brill, 2024, pp. 1–18.
• “Introduction: ‘Japan’s Russia’ as History and Method” in Japan’s Russia: Challenging the East-West Paradigm, edited by Olga V. Solovieva and Sho Konishi. Cambria Press, 2020, pp. 13–34. (Useful to conceptualize this conference as “Japan’s France.”)
• Tanaka, Stefan. “From the Margins: There Must Be More to History than Logic.” Boundary 2 51, no. 1 (2024): 203–22. https://doi.org/10.1215/01903659-10694253.
• (Optional) Michael Goebel, Anti-Imperial Metropolis: Interwar Paris and the Seeds of Third World Nationalism. Cambridge University Press, 2015.

The workshop will be an opportunity for people to ask questions about the reading and discuss any unclear points.

Questions that will guide our session are as follows:

1. What is "anarchist" or "non-state" history as method, and how does this change the way transnational history is done?
2. How does "anarchist modernity" differ from other conceptions of Western, global, and alternative modernities?
3. How should we understand "anti-imperial metropolises" as a way to understand non-state Japan-France interactions, both intellectually and physically?