The Japanese Program welcomes a new faculty member this coming fall. Dr. Tomoyuki Sasaki received his PhD in history from the University of California, San Diego. He also holds a Masters degree in Japanese studies from the Kobe City University of Foreign Studies. He has taught at Kalamazoo College and Eastern Michigan University. His research addresses issues of democracy, sovereignty, and the military, and their cultural representation. His monograph, Japan’s Postwar Military and Civil Society: Contesting a Better Life, was published last year by SOAS/University of London through Bloomsbury.
Dr. Sasaki will offer two new courses for fall 2016. Cultures of the Cold War (JAPN 307 02) examines the immense impact of the Cold War on forms of social governance, notions of democracy and freedom, perceptions of the past, and people’s everyday lives in Japan. Crossing Lines (JAPN 208 01) considers how flows of people have shaped Japan’s modernity, looking at travel, migration, and other cross-border movement both out of and into Japan, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century. Both courses are taught in English.