Yosuke Nirei
Yosuke Nirei is an Assistant Professor of History at Indiana University South Bend. He completed his doctorate in history at the University of California at Berkeley with his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Sophia University, Tokyo, in English language and American / Canadian studies and international relations. Born and raised in Japan, he also graduated from an American high school through the Japan Prefectural Representative Scholarship.
Prof. Nirei teaches courses on history and cultures of Asia, the non-Western world, historical method. He specializes in Japanese history and is currently finishing a book manuscript with the title, The Ethics of Empire: Protestant Thought, Moral Culture, and Imperialism in Meiji Japan. He is also working on an intellectual, social, and political history since the late Tokugawa and Meiji period and a cultural history of the U.S.-Japanese relations.
Recent Publications
“Toward a Modern Belief: Modernist Protestantism and Problems of National Religion in Meiji Japan.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 34/1, 2007 (Special issue titled, Christians in Japan, ed. Mark Mullins and Peter Nosco).
“Rôyama Masamichi no Tôa kyôdôtai-ron: senjika jiyûshugi chishikijin no shisô” (Royama Masamichi’s East Asian community theory: an idea of a wartime Japanese liberal). Kokusaigaku ronshû (Journal of International Studies) 32 (January 1994), Institute of International Relations, Sophia University.
Teaching
H 207 Modern East Asia
Contrasting patterns of indigenous change and response to Western imperialism in East Asia during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. China and Japan receive primary consideration; Korea and Vietnam, secondary. Emphasis on the rise of nationalism, capitalism, and communism directed toward revolutionary change and emergence of postindustrial society in Japan, post-cold war Korea, and China’s struggle with modernity.
H225 Traditional East Asian Civilization
A chronological and comparative survey of the traditional civilizations of East Asia, particularly Japan and China, through lectures, readings, and discussion, of source materials (in translation) in literature, ethics, philosophy, religion, and the arts, with emphasis on the interrelationship among the cultures of East Asia from ancient times to the mid nineteenth century.
G367 Modern Japan
Japan’s modern transformations from the shogunate in the seventeenth century to modern military and economic power in the twentieth century. Western impact and social and intellectual change in the late Tokugawa period from about 1720. The Meiji Restoration, state capitalism, and political development, empire, war, defeat, U.S. occupation, and recovery in the twentieth century including a consideration of social and economic structures, religious systems, gender, science, and art, literature, film, Japan’s interactions with Asia and the West.
Hist-J 495 Proseminar for History Majors
Theme of the course varies: but primary focus on Japan, China and East Asia, in comparison with the West, on the question of tradition and modernity in East Asian fashion, and social, intellectual, economic, and cultural questions of East Asian transformation since the seventeenth century to the present.
H101 The World in the twentieth century
A survey of world history, particularly focusing on the development of the non-Western world and the emergence of modern society throughout the world in the twentieth century. Through lectures, readings, discussion, and films, the course aims to understand the key feature of our times - global interdependence and interrelatedness, by examining important characteristics of the modern world including the emergence of the nation-state, imperialism, colonialism, nationalism, industrialization, mass society, and world wars.
H217 Nature of History
This is a course on historical method and history of historiography designed for History Majors and Minors. The way in which history has been recorded, understood, produced in the past, and studied in scholarly and popular forms. We will also give attention to some important elements in historical phenomena such as the role played by religion, language, and nation in the emergence of modern social and cultural consciousness from the medieval period to our times. In our readings, we will selectively cover both Western and non-Western historiography.
