12 Questions for Jonas Rüegg: Japan and Oceanic History (with Paul Kreitman)

Featuring: Jonas Rüegg, Senior Teaching and Research Assistant, University of Zurich, and winner of the 2024 Modern Japan History Association Dissertation Prize

Interviewer: Paul Kreitman, Associate Professor of Japanese History, Columbia University

The Kanrin Maru, the first shogunal steamboat, which had sailed to San Francisco in 1860 with Fukuzawa Yukichi other members of the Japanese embassy on board (National Diet Library)

In light of a broader "oceanic turn" in historiography, Jonas Rüegg (Zurich) and Paul Kreitman (Columbia) will examine Japan's place within this broader historiography with reference to Professor Rüegg's prize winning dissertation The Kuroshio Frontier: Business, State and Environment in the Making of Japan’s Pacific (Harvard University, 2022), and Professor Kreitman's new book Japan's Ocean Borderlands: Nature and Sovereignty (Cambridge University Press, 2023). Significant time will also be allotted for audience Q&A.

This presentation was made possible by support from the Japan Foundation.