Stefan Tanaka
Biographic Data
| ID | 3594806 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Stefan Tanaka |
| GIVEN NAMES | Stefan |
| FAMILY NAME | Tanaka |
| SIGNATURE | TANAKA S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California San Diego |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0046-5097 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 34 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 12 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
From the Margins
This review opens a conversation with Japan's Russia on hierarchy and hegemony in modern history. The goal declared in the volume's subtitle is ambitious: to challenge the East-West paradigm. The East-West binary is an old one and has been subject to many important and sophisticated critiques. But unlike most, which have focused on the problem of some East and the hegemony of the West, this volume brings two marginalized places, two Easts, into i…
The Old and New of Digital History
This article reflects on the expectations and changes that digital technologies have brought to history, activities that are increasingly codified as digital history. Because of the breadth of digital technologies and communicative media, the contours of a digital history are still unclear, so I frame my discussion with two potential narratives that begin from different ideas that emerged from World War II weapons research. One narrative begins w…
History Without Chronology
Asia
This essay operates from a challenge that is evident in Miyoshi’s life and career, a humility of our knowledge system and the quest to exceed it. I suggest that Asia is trapped within a historical framing (as the Orient) that prevents people and places within Asia from extracting themselves from that condition of being. The problem lies within the conflation of Asia as a relational condition and the places of Asia, which adds materiality to the i…
History without Chronology
This essay calls for historians to move beyond chronological time in the writing and understanding of history. It first shows that chronology and modern history are historical, not natural, and then offers some simple correctives, such as recognizing different timescales and writing histories using the dating system of that place or object. It then suggests that we invert the relation between stasis and mobility so that we do not unwittingly use …
Reconceiving pasts in a digital age
This essay explores the way that digital media helps us think differently about how we practice history. Digital media can raise two issues about how our current practices can offer new ways to explore the current state of historiography. First, the more one is immersed in digital tools, they make us question first principles, the various practices and assumptions of modern history itself. Second, it offers ways of communicating the past that do …
New Times in Modern Japan
New Times in Modern Japan concerns the transformation of time--the reckoning of time--during Japan's Meiji period, specifically from around 1870 to 1900. Time literally changed as the archipelago synchronized with the Western imperialists' reckoning of time. The solar calendar and clock became standard timekeeping devices, and society adapted to the abstractions inherent in modern notions of time. This set off a cascade of changes that completely…
Negotiating with Imperialism
Modern Japanese history is full of ideas that emerged from the moment of change and continue in our interpretations. The accounts, perspectives, and memories of the actors often prevail in our historiography. This is true of Japan's foreign relations despite (or because of) the long rise of Japanese studies amid the Cold War, cemented by the very strong bond between the United States and Japan. It is striking that we have had so few monographs on…
Japanese Historians and the National Myths, 1600-1945
Discourses of the Vanishing
Discourses of the Vanishing has been anticipated for several years now; it won't disappoint. Despite the rising number of authors who seek to “explain” Japan or attack its essentialism, Ivy is one of the few who have the understanding of modernity and the methodological tools to excavate the celebration (Japanese and American) of Japan's “uniqueness.” Discourses is by far one of the most sophisticated inquiries into what Ivy calls—properly I beli…
Japan's Orient
Stefan Tanaka examines how late nineteenth and early twentieth century Japanese historians created the equivalent of an "Orient" for their new nation state. He argues that the Japanese attempted to use a variety of pasts—Chinese, Indian, and proto-historic Japanese—to construct an identity that was both modern and Asian
History—Consuming Pasts
I use the idea of consumption to discuss questions of agency and purpose in history. History, as a consumer of pasts, is itself an agent in the interpretive strategies employed in the construction of a historical narrative. History also consumes people as it attempts to impose its homogenizing narrative. In these senses, there is purpose: to give order and meaning to—thus prioritizing—certain pasts over others and to define commonality—especially…
Imaging History
Acommission sponsored by the meiji governmentand headed by Okakura Tenshin (Kakuzō), Kanō Tessai, and Ernest F. Fenollosa traveled to Nara Prefecture in 1884 to catalog the important artifacts in temples and shrines. Fenollosa's later description of an event of this trip, which is often presented to show how he with the assistance of Okakura "saved" Japanese art, brings out the major argument of my article: the role of fine art in the formulation…
Japan's Orient
Stefan Tanaka examines how late nineteenth and early twentieth century Japanese historians created the equivalent of an "Orient" for their new nation state. He argues that the Japanese attempted to use a variety of pasts—Chinese, Indian, and proto-historic Japanese—to construct an identity that was both modern and Asian
History without Chronology
This essay calls for historians to move beyond chronological time in the writing and understanding of history. It first shows that chronology and modern history are historical, not natural, and then offers some simple correctives, such as recognizing different timescales and writing histories using the dating system of that place or object. It then suggests that we invert the relation between stasis and mobility so that we do not unwittingly use …
Imaging History
Acommission sponsored by the meiji governmentand headed by Okakura Tenshin (Kakuzō), Kanō Tessai, and Ernest F. Fenollosa traveled to Nara Prefecture in 1884 to catalog the important artifacts in temples and shrines. Fenollosa's later description of an event of this trip, which is often presented to show how he with the assistance of Okakura "saved" Japanese art, brings out the major argument of my article: the role of fine art in the formulation…
Japan's Orient
Stefan Tanaka examines how late nineteenth and early twentieth century Japanese historians created the equivalent of an "Orient" for their new nation state. He argues that the Japanese attempted to use a variety of pasts—Chinese, Indian, and proto-historic Japanese—to construct an identity that was both modern and Asian
History—Consuming Pasts
I use the idea of consumption to discuss questions of agency and purpose in history. History, as a consumer of pasts, is itself an agent in the interpretive strategies employed in the construction of a historical narrative. History also consumes people as it attempts to impose its homogenizing narrative. In these senses, there is purpose: to give order and meaning to—thus prioritizing—certain pasts over others and to define commonality—especially…
Imaging History
Acommission sponsored by the meiji governmentand headed by Okakura Tenshin (Kakuzō), Kanō Tessai, and Ernest F. Fenollosa traveled to Nara Prefecture in 1884 to catalog the important artifacts in temples and shrines. Fenollosa's later description of an event of this trip, which is often presented to show how he with the assistance of Okakura "saved" Japanese art, brings out the major argument of my article: the role of fine art in the formulation…
Discourses of the Vanishing
Discourses of the Vanishing has been anticipated for several years now; it won't disappoint. Despite the rising number of authors who seek to “explain” Japan or attack its essentialism, Ivy is one of the few who have the understanding of modernity and the methodological tools to excavate the celebration (Japanese and American) of Japan's “uniqueness.” Discourses is by far one of the most sophisticated inquiries into what Ivy calls—properly I beli…
Japanese Historians and the National Myths, 1600-1945
Negotiating with Imperialism
Modern Japanese history is full of ideas that emerged from the moment of change and continue in our interpretations. The accounts, perspectives, and memories of the actors often prevail in our historiography. This is true of Japan's foreign relations despite (or because of) the long rise of Japanese studies amid the Cold War, cemented by the very strong bond between the United States and Japan. It is striking that we have had so few monographs on…
New Times in Modern Japan
New Times in Modern Japan concerns the transformation of time--the reckoning of time--during Japan's Meiji period, specifically from around 1870 to 1900. Time literally changed as the archipelago synchronized with the Western imperialists' reckoning of time. The solar calendar and clock became standard timekeeping devices, and society adapted to the abstractions inherent in modern notions of time. This set off a cascade of changes that completely…
Reconceiving pasts in a digital age
This essay explores the way that digital media helps us think differently about how we practice history. Digital media can raise two issues about how our current practices can offer new ways to explore the current state of historiography. First, the more one is immersed in digital tools, they make us question first principles, the various practices and assumptions of modern history itself. Second, it offers ways of communicating the past that do …
History Without Chronology
Asia
This essay operates from a challenge that is evident in Miyoshi’s life and career, a humility of our knowledge system and the quest to exceed it. I suggest that Asia is trapped within a historical framing (as the Orient) that prevents people and places within Asia from extracting themselves from that condition of being. The problem lies within the conflation of Asia as a relational condition and the places of Asia, which adds materiality to the i…
History without Chronology
This essay calls for historians to move beyond chronological time in the writing and understanding of history. It first shows that chronology and modern history are historical, not natural, and then offers some simple correctives, such as recognizing different timescales and writing histories using the dating system of that place or object. It then suggests that we invert the relation between stasis and mobility so that we do not unwittingly use …
The Old and New of Digital History
This article reflects on the expectations and changes that digital technologies have brought to history, activities that are increasingly codified as digital history. Because of the breadth of digital technologies and communicative media, the contours of a digital history are still unclear, so I frame my discussion with two potential narratives that begin from different ideas that emerged from World War II weapons research. One narrative begins w…
From the Margins
This review opens a conversation with Japan's Russia on hierarchy and hegemony in modern history. The goal declared in the volume's subtitle is ambitious: to challenge the East-West paradigm. The East-West binary is an old one and has been subject to many important and sophisticated critiques. But unlike most, which have focused on the problem of some East and the hegemony of the West, this volume brings two marginalized places, two Easts, into i…
History (12 works) · Law (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · Japanese History and Culture (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · History (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Aesthetics (5 works) · Archaeology (5 works) · Art (5 works)