Description
Digital history constitutes a rapidly developing “field,” but it is still primarily dominated by Western themes and texts. In this talk, I will introduce a possible application of digital tools in the context of the “intellectual history of historiography” in East Asia. Focusing on the procedural study of the Japanese Mito School, a controversial scholarly group that compiled the Dai Nihon shi (The History of Great Japan, 1657-1906), the largest history writing product in Japan, my project explores the shifting dynamics of intellectual history and historiography in the 17th-20th centuries, as well as the significance of foreign elements in the formation of nationalism in Japan. Due to the monumentality of the overarching theme, specifically the length of the Dai Nihon shi, the 250 year-long compilation process, and the high number of contributors (more than 150 individuals), I have developed a hybrid and integrated methodology to process the large amount of data by intertwining the close reading of the Dai Nihon shi and the individual records of the compilers with the embedded visualizations of the authors’ biographical details. My presentation will explain how dealing with non-Latin scripts affected the research process and how digital methods helped deal with monumentality to create a novel, “procedural” analysis. Finally, the talk will also explore potential means to meaningfully combine the “analog” study of the Dai Nihon shi (which I conducted in Chicago, in Japan, and at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin) with its ongoing digital analysis.| Period | 23 Sep 2021 |
|---|---|
| Event title | Werkstattgespräche |
| Event type | Lecture |
| Location | GermanyShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | International |
Keywords
- Japanese studies
- Japanese culture