New Books on Japan: "Humanitarian Internationalism Under Empire: The Global Evolution of the Japanese Red Cross Movement, 1877–1945"

Monday, February 3, 2025 | 7:00-8:30 PM ET | REGISTER FOR ZOOM

Humanitarian Internationalism Under Empire: The Global Evolution of the Japanese Red Cross Movement, 1877–1945 (Columbia University Press, 2024)

Author: Michiko Suzuki, Project Researcher, Graduate School of Economics, University of Tokyo

Discussant: Jessamyn Abel, Associate Professor of Asian Studies, Pennsylvania State University

The Modern Japan History Association invites the wider community to a conversation with  Michiko Suzuki (University of Tokyo). Dr. Suzuki will be speaking about her new book Humanitarian Internationalism Under Empire: The Global Evolution of the Japanese Red Cross Movement, 1877–1945 (Columbia University Press, 2024). Humanitarian Internationalism Under Empire examines the history of the Japanese Red Cross Society (JRCS) to offer a new account of the humanitarian movement in modern Japan. Dr. Suzuki argues that contrary to its typical portrayal, the JRCS was not wholly subordinate to the government and the Imperial Family, nor was it derivative of Western values and institutional models. Instead, the JRCS operated within a transnational discourse, both contributing to and borrowing from peacetime and wartime international humanitarianism. By tracing the inclusion of non-Western national societies in the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and the evolution of the JRCS from a national into a transnational organization with branches in Japan’s overseas empire as well as in the Asia Pacific and the Americas, Humanitarian Internationalism Under Empire provides a fresh vantage point on major historical questions relating to Japanese modernization and internationalism before the Second World War. Jessamyn Abel (Penn State) will serve as interlocutor.