3rd Nichi-Doku Joint Lecture: “Looking at Japanese History from a Global History Perspective: The Proliferation of Violence, Global Weapons Trade and the Meiji Revolution”

Office Kyoto the 3^rd Nichi-Doku Joint Lecture was held on March 19^th, 2016 at Yoshida International Exchange Hall. Prof. Harald Fuess (Cluster of Excellence – Asia and Europe in a Global Context, Heidelberg University) lectured on “Looking at Japanese History from a Global History Perspective – Proliferation of violence, weapons trade and the Meji Restoration” in Japanese. After the lecture Prof. Kagotani Naoto (Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University) commented on the topic.

The welcome address for the Nichi-Doku Joint Lecture was opened by Takagi Hiroshi (Director of the Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University), who had previously visited Heidelberg. Prof. Fuess—studying processes of globalization in Japanese early modern and modern history at the Center for Transcultural Studies—presented his finding on the possible influence of large scale weapons trade by German merchants and diplomats from the late Edo to Meiji period. In his commentary Prof. Kagotani Naoto pointed out recent trends in research on the Meiji Restoration concentrate on the keywords “Railways”, “tariff”, “currency” and “merchants”.