Books by Bill Mihalopoulos
Past & Present, 2024
While covering the same ground as recent scholarship on the emancipatory potential of the Maria L... more While covering the same ground as recent scholarship on the emancipatory potential of the Maria Luz incident, this article takes a radical departure, arguing that the background to the incident was British desire to disrupt the Macao trade in Chinese labour to Peru; that the legal focus of the ad hoc tribunals was not on any nascent human right to free the Chinese men and minors from being trafficked to Peru but on who owned and controlled their labour; and that the release of Japanese licensed prostitutes from their contracts was an unintended consequence of the legal fiction that the Japanese legal system was comparable with the principles of British common law.
Based on archival research undertaken in Japan and Britain, the monograph offers a new perspecti... more Based on archival research undertaken in Japan and Britain, the monograph offers a new perspective on the relations between gender hierarchies and the political economy in a newly modernized Japan. The industrialization of Japan in the late nineteenth century coincided with attempts to establish new trade links abroad. The peasant class were sent overseas as ‘free labourers’ in a state-sponsored programme that also sought to maintain traditional codes of behaviour and morally acceptable forms of work. This study examines the particular impact of these restrictions on Japanese prostitutes abroad and reveals how the freedom offered to the poor by the state was limited and highly selective.
Papers by Bill Mihalopoulos
International Journal of Asian Studies, Oct 24, 2023
Economy and Society, 2001
But while wanting to write I was in some trepidation too, which goes to show that I am not one of... more But while wanting to write I was in some trepidation too, which goes to show that I am not one of those who achieve glory by writing; for an immortal pen has always been required to record the deeds of an immortal man, the man becoming known to prosperity through the writing and the writing known to prosperity through the man – until nally it is not clear who is making whom known. (Lu Hsun, ‘The true story of Ah Q’, 1963: 91)
The Journal of Asian Studies, Feb 1, 2010
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 2012
British Association of Japanese Studies/Japan Forum, Aug 29, 2020
n the podcast Dr Lukács talks about her research on online content sharing and social networking ... more n the podcast Dr Lukács talks about her research on online content sharing and social networking platforms and the work female photographers, net idols, bloggers, online traders, and cell phone novelists do to make Japan's digital economy profitable. Dr Lukács discusses how women were drawn to Japan's fledgling digital economy by the promises of freedom and enhanched opportunities for fulfilling and meaningful work; and how this promise stands in relation to the new forms of gendered labour precarity that have emerged in Japan since the turn of the century
One of the difficulties of doing historical research is the relentless temptation to endow the pa... more One of the difficulties of doing historical research is the relentless temptation to endow the past with the inevitability of the present. The temptation manifests itself in a desire to identify the origins or prime agency of history. In the context of Meiji Japan, this aspiration finds expression in seeing the Meiji Restoration as an epochal event heralding the origins of new institutions grounded in rights claims. This has been the preferred approach by recent scholarship on the Maria Luz Incident which has linked the freeing of Japanese licensed prostitutes to a “shared global culture of modernity” “within the great ‘master narrative’ of nineteenth-century liberalism” – culminating with the Japanese drawing up a constitution guaranteeing individual rights. But this approach leaves us with a methodological quandary. Are institutions reflective of the transitions brought in by a distinct epoch? Or do the institutions compose what it means to be free and generate the meaning of auto...
Arts, 2019
The paper focuses on Imamura Shōhei’s History of Post-War Japan as Told by a Bar Hostess (Nippon ... more The paper focuses on Imamura Shōhei’s History of Post-War Japan as Told by a Bar Hostess (Nippon Sengoshi—Madamu Onboro no Seikatsu), a documentary released for general viewing in 1970. The subject of the documentary was Azaka Emiko, the uninhibited middle-aged owner of the bar Onboro in the port city of Yokosuka, home to a U.S. naval base. Emiko embodied the phantasmagoric (chimimōryō) lowlifes who inhabited the nooks and crannies of Japanese cities and went about their lives without resentment or guilt, unburdened by familial responsibility and social norms that fascinated Imamura. While other intellectuals and film makers were obsessing about the status of Japanese democracy, Imamura chose to focus on people such as Emiko to identify the psychological and moral changes undergone by the Japanese people during three decades of post-war recovery and growth.
Japan Forum, 2020
This article focuses on three documentaries made by the acclaimed director Imamura Shōhei (1926–2... more This article focuses on three documentaries made by the acclaimed director Imamura Shōhei (1926–2006) for Tokyo Channel 12 between 1971 and 1973. The three documentaries – In Search of the Unreturned Soldiers in Malaysia (1971), In Search of the Unreturned Soldiers in Thailand (1971); and Outlaw Matsu Returns (1973) – challenge contemporary accounts that valorise the Japanese state as the ultimate political agent of progress. Imamura presents his documentaries as exposés into the actual operations of collusion between the Japanese ruling elite and business, and the ongoing linkages between militarism, autocracy and Japanese prosperity. Each of the three documentaries interrogates how Japan's relations with other Asian nations are deformed by the ruse of memory, by focusing on Japanese war responsibility and the unfinished history of the Pacific War: a war that is not a problem of yesterday but of the today. In his documentaries, Imamura investigates how the spectre of the war lies heavy on the present, not only for the Japanese people, but also for the peoples who inhabited the regions occupied by Japan that became the bloody battlefields of the Pacific War.
Transnational Japan as History, 2016
This chapter takes Japanese migration to colonial Singapore, the political and economic heart of ... more This chapter takes Japanese migration to colonial Singapore, the political and economic heart of the British Straits Settlements, as a case study to deal with the wider question of how migration, gender, and political economy entwine in the social arrangements of culture.1 The largest Japanese presence in Singapore until 1920 were Japanese women engaged in sex work. Between 1907 and 1915 Japanese women working as licensed prostitutes made up over half of the Japanese population in the Straits Settlements. In 1908 Japanese sex workers accounted for 79 percent of the total number of Japanese residing in the area. The largest number of Japanese women working as licensed prostitutes was registered in 1917. The Japanese consul counted 1912 women, around 62 percent of the total Japanese population, working in the brothels of Singapore and Malaya.2
The Power of Memory in Modern Japan, 2008
Tome,s life-story stands as a metonymy for the transformations in Japanese character and sociabil... more Tome,s life-story stands as a metonymy for the transformations in Japanese character and sociability from the interwar years until the second decade of post-war recovery and growth. The Insect Woman unflinchingly traces the correlation between the transformation in the psychological processes of the Japanese and the history of Japanese encounters with modernity. The Insect Woman opens Japan to the existence of multiple pasts, presents and possible futures that are incompatible and outside the narratives of official history that form the conditions of shared memory. The scepticism concerning modernization as the elixir of all our ailments is interrelated with another theme, namely, the limitations of progress. The history of post-war recovery as experienced by Tome is not about the advancements made by democratization and the genesis of a new, mature Japanese species being that has overcome all militaristic tendencies, but about how to make the best of given circumstances.
Journal of World History, 2011
Social Science Japan Journal, 2012
Based on archival research undertaken in Japan and Britain, Mihalopoulos offers a new perspective... more Based on archival research undertaken in Japan and Britain, Mihalopoulos offers a new perspective on the relations between gender hierarchies and the political economy in a newly modernized Japan. The industrialization of Japan in the late nineteenth century coincided with attempts to establish new trade links abroad. The peasant class were sent overseas as ‘free labourers’ in a state-sponsored programme that also sought to maintain traditional codes of behaviour and morally acceptable forms of work. This study examines the particular impact of these restrictions on Japanese prostitutes abroad and reveals how the freedom offered to the poor by the state was limited and highly selective.
Fukuzawa Yukichi penned a series of articles from 1884 to 1896 on why the Japanese must emigrate ... more Fukuzawa Yukichi penned a series of articles from 1884 to 1896 on why the Japanese must emigrate and settle abroad. Most striking is Fukuzawa's opposition to any legislation preventing the movement of Japanese subjects abroad, including rural women who migrated with the purpose of engaging in prostitution abroad. According to Fukuzawa, the challenge facing Japanese government policy makers was not at what point do you say "no" to poor rural women migrating abroad, but the opposite, at what point should you say "yes."
This chapter adopts methodological cosmopolitanism to revisit the Maria Luz Incident (1872), a co... more This chapter adopts methodological cosmopolitanism to revisit the Maria Luz Incident (1872), a colourful diplomatic episode that involved two civil suits brought before a court created for the specific purpose of adjudicating whether the ship’s captain’s ill-treated and abused his Chinese ‘passengers’ while the ship was anchored for repairs in Yokohama Port. The chapter argues that the Maria Luz Incident was not a seminal moment when rights talk was introduced to Japan. Rather, the incident was due to a lack of consensus in international law whether the “coolie trade” was free labour or slavery. The research traces how international law and narrow ideas of freedom (the freedom to enter contracts) became aligned with the workings of Japanese licensed prostitution.
In the podcast Dr Prichard talks about the Cold War, Japan's urban makeover, and the synchron... more In the podcast Dr Prichard talks about the Cold War, Japan's urban makeover, and the synchronic transformation in the mental, the social, and environmental ecologies. But it is not all heavy going. Along the way he talks about the enchantment of Nakahira Takuma’s photography, the topological readings of Maeda Ai and Abe Kōbō, and a forgotten documentary gem by Tsuchimoto Noriaki, a director closely associated with his oeuvre on Minamata disease.
Killers, Clients and Kindred Spirits The Taboo Cinema of Shohei Imamura, 2019
This chapter deals with three documentaries made by Imamura Shōhei (1926–2006) for Tokyo Channel ... more This chapter deals with three documentaries made by Imamura Shōhei (1926–2006) for Tokyo Channel 12 between 1971 and 1973. Each of the three documentaries investigates how Japan's relations with South-East Asia was deformed by the ruse of memory, and the unfinished history of the Pacific War: a war that is not a problem of yesterday but of the today. In his documentaries, Imamura investigates how the spectre of the war lies heavy on the present, not only for the Japanese people, but also for the peoples who inhabited the regions occupied by Japan that became the bloody battlefields of the Pacific War.
We caught up with Oleg Benesch to talk about his new book "Japan's Castles: Citadels of ... more We caught up with Oleg Benesch to talk about his new book "Japan's Castles: Citadels of Modernity in War and Peace," co-authored with Ran Zwigenberg. In the podcast Dr Benesch talks about what motivated them to write a book about castles that is not military history; writing a book with another author who lives in another part of the world; the meaning of modernity; the ambiguous relationship between history and heritage; and why issues of “space” matter in history.
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Books by Bill Mihalopoulos
Papers by Bill Mihalopoulos