Amin Ghadimi

Associate Professor, Graduate School of Humanities, Osaka University *Profile is at the time of the award.

2023Inamori Research GrantsHumanities & Sociology

Research topics
The Shinpuren Rebellion: A Global Intellectual History of Samurai Rebellions
Keyword
Summary
What intellectual forces precipitate social and political disorder? My research uses rebellions by former samurai in the first decade of the Meiji era to consider this question. Were these “samurai rebellions” but rebellions by disgruntled men against their government, or might they be better understood as rebellions against the emerging global condition of the late nineteenth century, against the intellectual and spiritual disequilibrium wrought by a ferociously globalizing world?

Comment

To work on the humanities and on Japanese history at a university is to be forced to confront, every day, the deepest, most essential questions of human existence: who are we? why are we? how do we know? what does it matter? One can hardly imagine a happier (and at times a more absolutely maddening) calling.

Outline of Research Achievments

The generosity of the Inamori Foundation enabled me to engage in research in archives here and abroad; to advance my previous investigations; and to discover entirely new fields of inquiry. A highlight of my research was learning about the intellectual and empirical connections between the US Civil War and the samurai rebellions of the early Meiji era, and thus between the problem of racism and slavery in the United States and social and intellectual disorder in Japanese life, a topic on which I was given the opportunity both to present and write. I was grateful for the chance to broadcast my research findings through various published articles, through presentations at international conferences, through papers that remain forthcoming, and through other media. I ask the Foundation to accept my profound thanks for their largesse.


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Humanities & Sociology