Public History in Japan - Theory and Practice

This book explores how public history, a field developing globally, is gaining attention in Japan and being incorporated into existing Japanese academic studies and practices. Public history in Japan is conducted through an interdisciplinary approach, involving not only history but also folklore, sociology, cultural studies, and tourism studies.
Introducing the perspective of public history means more than just applying an imported discipline to Japan; it involves a broad reconsideration of existing scholarly research and practices. Part I of the book provides an overview of the current state of academia in Japan as described above. Part II presents several case studies of public history practices, digital public history, and museums and archives dealing with difficult aspects of the past such as minority issues and environmental pollution in postwar Japan.
This book not only illustrates the current state of public history in Japan but also offers a glimpse into the internationalization of today's public history, fostering active exchanges among researchers and practitioners worldwide.

List of contents

Preface / Andrew Gordon (Harvard University/ University of Tokyo).- Part I. Theory.- Chapter 1. Considering Public History from Japanese Perspectives / Michihiro Okamoto (Toyo University).- Chapter 2. Towards the Remagicalization of History: Minoru Hokari and Public Histories / Ted Motohashi (Tokyo Keizai University).- Chapter 3. Dark Tourism and Public History / Akira Ide (Kanazawa University).- Chapter 4. Eloquent Silence: When Fiction Makes Japanese History of Christianity Alive / Emi Tozawa (University of Manchester).- Part II.   Practice.- Chapter 5. Collaboration between creators and researchers in historical manga and animation works: Examples of the manga Anna Komnena and the animation Vinland Saga / Futaba Sato (manga artist), Minoru Ozawa (Rikkyo University) and Satoshi Ohtani (Tokai University).- Chapter 6. The Potential of Digital Public History in Japan / Makoto Goto (National Institutes for Humanities, National Museum of Japanese History).- Chapter 7. Connecting "Zaihan Korean ("Zainichi Korean in Osaka") history" to "Resident History ": Exhibition practice by Osaka Korea Town Museum / Noriko Ijichi (Osaka Metropolitan University).- Chapter 8. Taking the Pollution (Kogai) Experiences Into the Future: A Practice of Public History / Miho Hayashi (Okayama University of Science) & Masafumi Yokemoto (Osaka Metropolitan University).- Chapter 9. "Archiving" the Environmental Pollution in Minamata?: Expanding the Frame of Archival Photography and Exposing Humanity / Yumi Kamuro (Kumamoto University).

About the author

Andrew Gordon
is the Lee and Juliet Folger Fund Professor of History at Harvard University. He has written numerous books on Japanese history, including A Modern History of Japan (Nihon no 200 nen). He is completing a book on the curation of industrial heritage in 20th and 21st century Japan.

Michihiro Okamoto
, Emeritus Professor at Toyo University. He organized the Japanese Association of Public History and became its president in 2024-2025. His main works in Japanese are Past and Histories (2018) and In between Micro History and Big History (2022). He co-edited Western Historiography in Asia: Circulation, Critique and Comparison, De Gruyter (2022)

Tetsuya (Ted) Motohashi
is Professor of Cultural Studies at Tokyo University of Economics. He received his D.Phil. in Literature from York University. He is the Japan Section’s president of the International Association of Theatre Critics. His publications include books on theatre, cultural studies, and Japanese translations of Bhabha, Spivak, Butler, and Chomsky.

Akira Ide
is a professor at Institute of Liberal Arts and Science, Kanazawa University. He received Ph.D. in Informatics from Kyoto University. His main research theme is dark tourism. He has led the Japanese academic scene of dark tourism and investigates the sites of dark tourism all over the world.

Emi Tozawa
is a PhD candidate in history at the University of Manchester, United Kingdom. Her research interests include the global consumption of Japanese history through historical fiction, particularly since the 1960s, and sensory connections with the past through walking tours and museums. She has published journal articles in both English and Japanese for International Public History and Shisō.

Makoto Goto
, Associate Professor at the National Museum of Japanese History (Rekihaku), applies information science to analyze, preserve, and share historical materials. He develops digital methods for encoding and analyzing premodern Japanese texts. As PI of Establishing the Digital History, he leads an open-access platform to engage various stakeholders.

Noriko Ijichi
, Professor of Sociology at the Graduate School of Literature and Human Sciences, Osaka Metropolitan University. Vice Director of the Osaka Korea Town Museum. She conducts research on mobility and transformations in the everyday life, with a focus on the Korean region.

Miho Hayashi
is Associate Professor at the Center for Fundamental Education, Okayama University of Science. She received her Ph.D. in Literature from Nara Women's University. She is also an archivist certified by the National Archives of Japan. Her majors are modern Japanese history and environmental education.

Masafumi Yokemoto
is Professor of Environmental Policy at the Graduate School of Business, Osaka Metropolitan University. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Hitotsubashi University. His research interests include damage compensation in environmental problems and regeneration of pollution-devastated areas.

Yumi Kamuro
is an assistant professor at Kumamoto University Archives. Her research focuses on community-based archiving and photographic ethnography, especially on photographers who documented Minamata disease and the preservation of their negative film archives.

Summary

This book explores how public history, a field developing globally, is gaining attention in Japan and being incorporated into existing Japanese academic studies and practices. Public history in Japan is conducted through an interdisciplinary approach, involving not only history but also folklore, sociology, cultural studies, and tourism studies.
Introducing the perspective of public history means more than just applying an imported discipline to Japan; it involves a broad reconsideration of existing scholarly research and practices. Part I of the book provides an overview of the current state of academia in Japan as described above. Part II presents several case studies of public history practices, digital public history, and museums and archives dealing with difficult aspects of the past such as minority issues and environmental pollution in postwar Japan.
This book not only illustrates the current state of public history in Japan but also offers a glimpse into the internationalization of today's public history, fostering active exchanges among researchers and practitioners worldwide.

Product details

• Assisted by: Andrew Gordon (Editor), Andrew Gordon et al (Editor), Miho Hayashi (Editor), Michihiro Okamoto (Editor), Michihiro Okamoto et al (Editor), Masafumi Yokemoto (Editor)
• Publisher: Springer, Berlin
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 25.12.2025
• EAN: 9789819513154
• ISBN: 978-981-9513-15-4
• No. of pages: 114
• Illustrations: X, 114 p. 13 illus.
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History; Populäre Kultur, Japan, Kulturwissenschaften, Asiatische Geschichte, Dark tourism, Popular Culture, Cultural Studies, public history, Memory Studies, Historiography and Method, History of Japan, Difficult Past, Japanese Popular Culture, Historical Comics, Museums and Archives