Katsuya Hirano 
Assistant Professor
Office: 322 McGraw Hall
Phone: 607-254-1329
Fax: 607-255-0469
E-Mail: kh326@cornell.edu
Office Hours: T 3:30-5:00
Research and Teaching Interests
Katsuya Hirano teaches premodern and early modern Japanese history, with an emphasis on the cultural and intellectual history of the Tokugawa and the Meiji periods (1600-1912). He is particularly interested in questions of ideology, representation, cultural production, historical transformation, and subject/subjectivity. Hirano’s current project is a book manuscript entitled “Politics of Dialogic Imagination: Power and Popular Culture in Early Modern Japan, 1750-1890.” It is an investigation of the politics of urban popular culture in late Tokugawa and early Meiji Japan, viewed through an analysis centered on the culture of “play” and its complex, often conflictive relations with state ideology, social order, and political economy. Hirano has also started preliminary research for his next project which examines, through the prism of biopolitics, the correlative operation of capitalism and racism in the making of the Japanese empire. Taking the colonization of the Ainu people as the locus of analysis, the project explores the relation between the state’s drive for primitive accumulation (deterritorialization of Ainu) and the construction and implementation of racial categories through academic and legal discourse. Ainu’s struggle to reclaim their economic rights and cultural autonomy will also be an important aspect of the research. Hirano received his Ph.D in history from the University of Chicago in 2004 and has been a member of the department since 2006.
Courses
| Fall 2009: | 4502 |
Power and Popular Culture in Early Modern Japan |
|---|---|---|
6020 |
East Asia Colloquium | |
| Spring 2010: | 6020 |
East Asia Colloquium |
6140 |
Readings in Cultural Materialism: Theory and Practice |
Other Courses Taught at Cornell
HIST 1900 East Asia to 1800
HIST 2981 Power, Culture, and Heterogeneity in Premodern Japan, 1200-1800
HIST 3611 Power, Culture, and Transformation in the Making of Modern Japan, 1700-1912
HIST 4501 Representing Atrocity: Mem & Hist Knowledge in Nanking Massacre & Comfort Women Discourses
HIST 4502 Power and Popular Culture in Early Modern Japan
HIST 4XXX Capitalism and Racism in the (Un)making of Modern Japan
HIST 6140 Readings in Cultural Materialism: Theoretical Investigations
HIST 6150 The Past in the Present/The Present in the Past: Histories of Tokugawa Japan
HIST 6861 Readings in Japanese Historiography: From Marxian to People’s History (Minshushi) Paradigms
Education
Ph.D. University of Chicago, 2004
M.A. University of Birmingham (Britain), 1993
B.A. Doshisha University, 1991
Recent Publications and Awards
Book Chapters and Articles
Book chapter: 「訳者あとがき 現代の苦境を切り開く過去との対話」（Afterword: Dialogue with the past to live through the predicament of modernity） in Doing 思想史 (Doing Intellectual History) by Tetsuo Najita (Tokyo: みすず書房(Misuzu shobo), 2008)
Book chapter: “Social Networks and Production of Public Discourse in Edo Popular Culture” in Elizabeth Lillehoj (ed.) Acquisition: Japanese Arts and Their Owners (New York: Floating World Edition, 2007)
Journal article: “The Politics of Colonial Translation: On the Narrative of the Ainu as a “Vanishing Ethnicity”” in The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus (a refereed e-journal, 2009). Link: http://www.japanfocus.org/_Katsuya_Hirano
Journal article: “コロニアルな翻訳とその政治 ― アイヌ＝「滅びゆく民族」という語りをめぐって” （Tokyo, forthcoming）
Article: “江戸の遊びと権力” (On Play and Power in Late Tokugawa Edo) みすずno. 565 (Misuzu) (Tokyo: Misuzu shobo, 2008)
Book manuscript in progress: Politics of Dialogic Imagination: Power and Popular Culture in Early Modern Japan, 1750-1890.
Translations (Books and Articles)
Book: Editor and translator of Doing 思想史 (Doing Intellectual History) by Tetsuo Najita (Professor Emeritus, University of Chicago) (Tokyo: みすず書房 (Misizu shobo), 2008)
Book: Translator of The Empire’s New Clothes: Paradigm Lost, and Regained by Harry Harootunian (Professor Emeritus, NYU) (Tokyo: みすず書房 (Misuzu shobo), Forthcoming)
Article: “Minken jiyu ron (On Popular Rights and Liberty),” “Yo ni yoki seifu naru mono naki no setsu (There is No Good Government Anywhere in the World),” and “Hin min ron (On the Poor),” by Ueki Emori in Modern Japanese Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago, Center for East Asian Studies, 2002)
Article: “Ambiguous Encounters: Ogata Koan and International Studies in Late Tokugawa Osaka,” by Tetsuo Najita in近世の大坂 (Kinsei no Osaka), (Osaka: 大阪大学出版会 (University of Osaka Press), 2000)
Article: “The Kaitokudo Academy and the Meiji Enlightenment,” by Tetsuo Najita in Soft (Osaka: Osaka City, 1999)
Article: “Secular Economy and The Concept of Time in Late Tokugawa Japan,” by Tetsuo Najita in文学(Bungak）(Tokyo: 岩波書店 (Iwanami Shoten), 1998)
Article: “Shinkiron” (On the Urgent Matter) by Watanabe Kazan in Readings in Tokugawa Thought, (Chicago: University of Chicago, Center for East Asian Studies, 1997)
Awards and Fellowships
Visiting Professor at University of Michigan (Center for Japanese Studies), Spring 2009
The Society for the Humanities Research Grants, Cornell University, 2007-8
Fellowship at DePaul Humanities Center, DePaul University, 2006 (Declined)
Faculty Research and Development Grants, DePaul University, December 2004.
Unsung Hero’s Award (Distinguished Contribution to the University) from Indiana University-South Bend, 2004
International Scholars’ Honor Society, 2004
Center for Japanese Studies Teaching Fellowship, University of Chicago, 2002-2003
Bob Adams Memorial Fellowship, University of Chicago, 2002-2003
Center for East Asian Studies Dissertation Fellowship, University of Chicago, 2001-2002
Mellon Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, 2000-2001
Toyota Teaching Fellowship, University of Chicago, 1998-1999
University Fellowship (tuition and stipend), University of Chicago, 1996-2000