Books by Nathan Hopson
Ennobling Japan’s Savage Northeast is the first comprehensive account in English of the discursiv... more Ennobling Japan’s Savage Northeast is the first comprehensive account in English of the discursive life of the Tōhoku region within postwar Japan, 1945–2011. The Northeast became the subject of world attention with the triple disaster of March 2011. But Tōhoku’s history and significance to emic understandings of Japanese self and nationhood remain poorly understood. When Japan embarked on its quest to modernize in the mid-nineteenth century, historical prejudice, contemporary politics, and economic calculation together led the state to marginalize Tōhoku, creating a “backward” region in both fact and image. After 1945, a group of mostly local intellectuals attempted to overcome this image and rehabilitate the Northeast as a source of new national values. Since the 1980s, this early postwar Tōhoku recuperation movement has proved to be a critical source for the new Kyoto school’s neoconservative valorization of native Japanese identity, fueling that group’s antimodern, anti-Western discourse. Nathan Hopson unravels the contested postwar meanings of Tōhoku to reveal the complex and contradictory ways in which that region has been incorporated into Japan’s shifting self-images since World War II.
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Papers (History) by Nathan Hopson
JunCture, 2020
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Food, Culture & Society, 2020
This article explores the history and politics of American-funded food demonstration buses (“kitc... more This article explores the history and politics of American-funded food demonstration buses (“kitchen cars”) in postwar Japan. Their express mission was to transform the Japanese national diet. I make two primary arguments. First, at least in the short to medium term, the kitchen cars were a win-win for both the United States and Japan. On the one hand, Japan benefited because the kitchen cars taught Japanese women how to cook cheap, nutritious, mostly easy dishes to improve the health of their families and the nation. On the other hand, these menus were planned specifically to increase consumption of American agricultural products, especially wheat, soy, and corn. For US agricultural and political interests, in addition to supporting the economic recovery and political stability of a Cold War ally, the kitchen cars—along with the school lunch program—were instrumental in teaching Japan to accept and consume American produce. My second argument concerns the reasons for the kitchen cars’ success. I identify the following two factors: staffing by mostly female professional nutritionists, who combined authority with approachability for the kitchen cars’ main audiences of middle-aged, married women; and the kitchen cars’ mobility, which allowed them to reach even remote villages and hamlets.
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Verge: Studies in Global Asias, 2018
“Henkyō, The Universal Japanese Frontier (An Interpretation).” Verge: Studies in Global Asias 4, ... more “Henkyō, The Universal Japanese Frontier (An Interpretation).” Verge: Studies in Global Asias 4, no. 1 (2018): 85–109.
in 1979’s Henkyō: Mō hitotsu no Nihonshi (The Frontier: Another Japanese History), historian Takahashi Tomio (1921–2013) applied Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis to the history of ancient Japanese state formation. The frontier, in Japan’s case the East and Northeast, was thought of as a savage outback forever failing to attain the level of culture and civilization of the putative centers of Japanese political, economic, and cultural history. Takahashi argued that statist historiography had distorted the shape of history. The frontier was not empty of culture and value; rather, the history of the frontier was the true locus of state formation, and the history of state formation was the history of the frontier. Center and periphery, colony and metropole, capital and frontier were mutually constitutive...
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“Nutritionists in Japan as a Professional Elite, 1914-1964.” In Professional Elites of Modern Jap... more “Nutritionists in Japan as a Professional Elite, 1914-1964.” In Professional Elites of Modern Japan. Bibliothèque de l’Institut des Hautes Études Japonaises du Collège de France. Paris: Collège de France, Forthcoming.
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Verge: Studies in Global Asias, 2018
Hopson, Nathan, and Ran Zwigenberg. “Can the Frontier Write Back?” Verge: Studies in Global Asias... more Hopson, Nathan, and Ran Zwigenberg. “Can the Frontier Write Back?” Verge: Studies in Global Asias 4, no. 1 (2018): vi–xv.
This issue of Verge is about reclaiming one of the “f words” of academia, “frontier...”
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Japanese Studies, 2018
Hopson, Nathan. “‘A Bad Peace?’ – The 1937 Nagoya Pan-Pacific Peace Exhibition.” Japanese Studies... more Hopson, Nathan. “‘A Bad Peace?’ – The 1937 Nagoya Pan-Pacific Peace Exhibition.” Japanese Studies, September 2018. https://doi.org/10.1080/10371397.2018.1467730.
Originally planned as a city branding and regional promotion event, the March-May 1937 Nagoya Pan-Pacific Peace Exhibition (NPPPE) was supposed to showcase Nagoya as an industrial and cultural center of the empire, prospering in free-trade, capitalist peace. Concessions made to the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) to ensure the survival of the NPPPE—from a national defense hall to live-fire demonstrations—made the event appear a cynical misappropriation of the concept of “peace.” The expo was a “mega-event,” intended to disseminate elite ideologies but ultimately large, inclusive, and complex enough to permit alternative interpretations, resistance, and even discord. Looking past Nagoya’s accommodations to the IJA suggests that even on the eve of all-out war, local business and government elites clung to a 1920s-style vision of peace through international trade and intercourse rather than through autarky and military force. While Nagoya was unable to prevent military interference in the peace expo, the city’s commitment to an agenda that did not square with that of the IJA or Tokyo is an indication of the continued internal diversity of Japan in the 1930s.
10.1080/10371397.2018.1467730
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“’Fake Food: Authentic Japanese Product’—On the Rise of Visuality in Middlebrow Japanese Culinary... more “’Fake Food: Authentic Japanese Product’—On the Rise of Visuality in Middlebrow Japanese Culinary Culture.” Japan Forum (Forthcoming)
Food replicas (shokuhin sanpuru) line the show windows of cafes and restaurants in cities, towns, and villages throughout Japan. They are usually found artfully arranged in exterior restaurant show windows or cases, facing and visible from the street, corridor, hall, etc., on which the restaurant is located. Building on consumers’ familiarity with foods, ingredients, and cooking techniques, these replicas visually evoke other senses—taste, scent, texture and mouthfeel—instantly providing massive amounts of information. As a ubiquitous visual marketing tool, sanpuru have contributed to the creation and maintenance of Japan’s hybrid national culinary culture, especially the pervasive ‘middlebrow’ echelon of mainstream, everyday consumer culture. In particular, I argue that as an inevitable, almost transparently naturalized part of the visual landscape of food and consumer culture, samples have played a crucial but underappreciated role in the establishment and dissemination of the much-remarked-on visual aesthetic of Japanese culinary culture.
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Journal of Japanese Studies, 2019
Hopson, Nathan. ‘Nutrition as National Defense: Japan’s Imperial Government Institute of Nutritio... more Hopson, Nathan. ‘Nutrition as National Defense: Japan’s Imperial Government Institute of Nutrition, 1920-1940’. Journal of Japanese Studies 45, no. 1 (2019).
This article explores the early history of nutrition science and nutritional activism in Japan, 1920-1940, focusing on the role of the Imperial Government Institute for Nutrition (IGIN). I argue that the IGIN, the world’s first government-sponsored nutrition institute, was a manifestation and key instrument of Japan’s state-led program of national nutrition as civilization and national defense. The IGIN’s successes in science and dietary reform were viewed as a triumph, an indication that Japan had surpassed the West in the most fundamentally modern and rational of pursuits, science—and specifically nutrition science, a critical technology of nation building.
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Hopson, Nathan. ‘Henkyō, The Universal Japanese Frontier (An Interpretation)’. Verge: Studies in ... more Hopson, Nathan. ‘Henkyō, The Universal Japanese Frontier (An Interpretation)’. Verge: Studies in Global Asias 4, no. 1 (2018): 85–109.
In 1979’s Henkyō: Mō hitotsu no Nihonshi (The Frontier: Another Japanese History), historian Takahashi Tomio (1921-2013) applied Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis to the history of ancient Japanese state formation. The frontier, in Japan’s case the East and Northeast, was thought of as a savage outback forever failing to attain the level of culture and civilization of the putative centers of Japanese political, economic, and cultural history. Takahashi argued that statist historiography had distorted the shape of history. The frontier was not empty of culture and value. Rather, the history of the frontier was the true locus of state formation, and the history of state formation was the history of the frontier. Center and periphery, colony and metropole, capital and frontier were mutually constitutive.
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Journal of Japanese Studies , Jul 2014
Since 1945, Hiraizumi has by turns been envisioned as exemplar of the independent history and cul... more Since 1945, Hiraizumi has by turns been envisioned as exemplar of the independent history and culture of Tohoku (northeastern Japan), of the possibilities of local culture for national recuperation, and as an exceptional instance of the shared heritage of humankind. This article explores the role of Hiraizumi in the early postwar work of historian Takahashi Tomio, whose vision of an independent Hiraizumi polity governed by and for Tohoku shaped the field of Hiraizumi studies in the early postwar decades.
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The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, Dec 30, 2013
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Reformed Church missionary Christoper Noss (1869-1935) spent most of his career in the Tōhoku reg... more Reformed Church missionary Christoper Noss (1869-1935) spent most of his career in the Tōhoku region of Japan. His published and unpublished works provide some of the only English-language materials on a region neglected by most modern histories, and especially on Fukushima. Rereading Noss’ work in the wake of the March 11, 2011 triple disaster is particularly important to enrich and complicate our picture of the Minamisōma area’s history as it moves slowly toward recovery. Additionally, Noss was an opponent of American racism against Japan and a strong advocate for Japan—especially Tōhoku—in the United States. His writings on Japan and the Northeast constitute a fascinating counterpoint to standard view, locked in a self-fulfilling feedback loop with Japan’s modern development, of Tōhoku and its people as backward. As Japan Westernized and industrialized, the Northeast was made into the Empire’s “internal colony,” an economic periphery defined by its backwardness and understood as somehow alien and “un-Japanese.” In addition to Noss’ 1918 Tohoku, the Scotland of Japan, this article introduces unpublished archival materials that formed the basis for the book in order to present Noss’ unique view of Tōhoku and Northeasterners.
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In 1979, historian Takahashi Tomio applied Frederick Jackson Turner’s “frontier thesis” to the hi... more In 1979, historian Takahashi Tomio applied Frederick Jackson Turner’s “frontier thesis” to the history of Japanese state and national formation, arguing that as the Western frontier had determined American national character, the Eastern frontier had determined the course of ancient Japanese history and the character of Japan itself. Takahashi was a scholar of Northeast Japan (Tōhoku) who attempted to transcend the limitations of Japanese history with a structural model recognizing the mutually constitutive nature of core and periphery, metropole and frontier. This article traces the development of Takahashi’s argument, with attention to the influence of his personal history and the universalist tendencies of early postwar Japanese historiography. Ultimately, Takahashi’s appropriated frontier thesis did not catch on, and his prominence in Tōhoku studies diminished. However, developments in the early 1990s accomplished his goal of imparting value to the Northeast better than his frontier thesis could have.
Nichibunken Japan Review, 2014, 141–70.
http://shinku.nichibun.ac.jp/jpub/pdf/jr/JN2706.pdf
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"Tōhoku as postwar thought: focused on Takahashi Tomio"
戦後思想としての東北—高橋富雄を中心に
In: Gurōbaruka no nak... more "Tōhoku as postwar thought: focused on Takahashi Tomio"
戦後思想としての東北—高橋富雄を中心に
In: Gurōbaruka no naka no Nihonshizō: Chōki no 19 seiki (2013)
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Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Papers (Telepathology) by Nathan Hopson
Journal of Pathology Informatics, 2013
Recent advances in information technology have allowed the development of a telepathology system ... more Recent advances in information technology have allowed the development of a telepathology system involving high-speed transfer of high-volume histological figures via fiber optic landlines. However, at present there are geographical limits to landlines. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has developed the "Kizuna" ultra-high speed internet satellite and has pursued its various applications. In this study we experimented with telepathology in collaboration with JAXA using Kizuna. To measure the functionality of the Wideband InterNet working engineering test and Demonstration Satellite (WINDS) ultra-high speed internet satellite in remote pathological diagnosis and consultation, we examined the adequate data transfer speed and stability to conduct telepathology (both diagnosis and conferencing) with functionality, and ease similar or equal to telepathology using fiber-optic landlines. We performed experiments for 2 years. In year 1, we tested the usability of the WINDS for telepathology with real-time video and virtual slide systems. These are state-of-the-art technologies requiring massive volumes of data transfer. In year 2, we tested the usability of the WINDS for three-way teleconferencing with virtual slides. Facilities in Iwate (northern Japan), Tokyo, and Okinawa were connected via the WINDS and voice conferenced while remotely examining and manipulating virtual slides. Network function parameters measured using ping and Iperf were within acceptable limits. However; stage movement, zoom, and conversation suffered a lag of approximately 0.8 s when using real-time video, and a delay of 60-90 s was experienced when accessing the first virtual slide in a session. No significant lag or inconvenience was experienced during diagnosis and conferencing, and the results were satisfactory. Our hypothesis was confirmed for both remote diagnosis using real-time video and virtual slide systems, and also for teleconferencing using virtual slide systems with voice functionality. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of ultra-high-speed internet satellite networks for use in telepathology. Because communications satellites have less geographical and infrastructural requirements than landlines, ultra-high-speed internet satellite telepathology represents a major step toward alleviating regional disparity in the quality of medical care.
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Journal of pathology informatics, 2013
Recent advances in information technology have allowed the development of a telepathology system ... more Recent advances in information technology have allowed the development of a telepathology system involving high-speed transfer of high-volume histological figures via fiber optic landlines. However, at present there are geographical limits to landlines. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has developed the "Kizuna" ultra-high speed internet satellite and has pursued its various applications. In this study we experimented with telepathology in collaboration with JAXA using Kizuna. To measure the functionality of the Wideband InterNet working engineering test and Demonstration Satellite (WINDS) ultra-high speed internet satellite in remote pathological diagnosis and consultation, we examined the adequate data transfer speed and stability to conduct telepathology (both diagnosis and conferencing) with functionality, and ease similar or equal to telepathology using fiber-optic landlines. We performed experiments for 2 years. In year 1, we tested the usability of the ...
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Papers by Nathan Hopson
Verge: Studies in Global Asias
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The Journal of Japanese Studies
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Books by Nathan Hopson
Papers (History) by Nathan Hopson
in 1979’s Henkyō: Mō hitotsu no Nihonshi (The Frontier: Another Japanese History), historian Takahashi Tomio (1921–2013) applied Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis to the history of ancient Japanese state formation. The frontier, in Japan’s case the East and Northeast, was thought of as a savage outback forever failing to attain the level of culture and civilization of the putative centers of Japanese political, economic, and cultural history. Takahashi argued that statist historiography had distorted the shape of history. The frontier was not empty of culture and value; rather, the history of the frontier was the true locus of state formation, and the history of state formation was the history of the frontier. Center and periphery, colony and metropole, capital and frontier were mutually constitutive...
This issue of Verge is about reclaiming one of the “f words” of academia, “frontier...”
Originally planned as a city branding and regional promotion event, the March-May 1937 Nagoya Pan-Pacific Peace Exhibition (NPPPE) was supposed to showcase Nagoya as an industrial and cultural center of the empire, prospering in free-trade, capitalist peace. Concessions made to the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) to ensure the survival of the NPPPE—from a national defense hall to live-fire demonstrations—made the event appear a cynical misappropriation of the concept of “peace.” The expo was a “mega-event,” intended to disseminate elite ideologies but ultimately large, inclusive, and complex enough to permit alternative interpretations, resistance, and even discord. Looking past Nagoya’s accommodations to the IJA suggests that even on the eve of all-out war, local business and government elites clung to a 1920s-style vision of peace through international trade and intercourse rather than through autarky and military force. While Nagoya was unable to prevent military interference in the peace expo, the city’s commitment to an agenda that did not square with that of the IJA or Tokyo is an indication of the continued internal diversity of Japan in the 1930s.
10.1080/10371397.2018.1467730
Food replicas (shokuhin sanpuru) line the show windows of cafes and restaurants in cities, towns, and villages throughout Japan. They are usually found artfully arranged in exterior restaurant show windows or cases, facing and visible from the street, corridor, hall, etc., on which the restaurant is located. Building on consumers’ familiarity with foods, ingredients, and cooking techniques, these replicas visually evoke other senses—taste, scent, texture and mouthfeel—instantly providing massive amounts of information. As a ubiquitous visual marketing tool, sanpuru have contributed to the creation and maintenance of Japan’s hybrid national culinary culture, especially the pervasive ‘middlebrow’ echelon of mainstream, everyday consumer culture. In particular, I argue that as an inevitable, almost transparently naturalized part of the visual landscape of food and consumer culture, samples have played a crucial but underappreciated role in the establishment and dissemination of the much-remarked-on visual aesthetic of Japanese culinary culture.
This article explores the early history of nutrition science and nutritional activism in Japan, 1920-1940, focusing on the role of the Imperial Government Institute for Nutrition (IGIN). I argue that the IGIN, the world’s first government-sponsored nutrition institute, was a manifestation and key instrument of Japan’s state-led program of national nutrition as civilization and national defense. The IGIN’s successes in science and dietary reform were viewed as a triumph, an indication that Japan had surpassed the West in the most fundamentally modern and rational of pursuits, science—and specifically nutrition science, a critical technology of nation building.
In 1979’s Henkyō: Mō hitotsu no Nihonshi (The Frontier: Another Japanese History), historian Takahashi Tomio (1921-2013) applied Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis to the history of ancient Japanese state formation. The frontier, in Japan’s case the East and Northeast, was thought of as a savage outback forever failing to attain the level of culture and civilization of the putative centers of Japanese political, economic, and cultural history. Takahashi argued that statist historiography had distorted the shape of history. The frontier was not empty of culture and value. Rather, the history of the frontier was the true locus of state formation, and the history of state formation was the history of the frontier. Center and periphery, colony and metropole, capital and frontier were mutually constitutive.
Nichibunken Japan Review, 2014, 141–70.
http://shinku.nichibun.ac.jp/jpub/pdf/jr/JN2706.pdf
戦後思想としての東北—高橋富雄を中心に
In: Gurōbaruka no naka no Nihonshizō: Chōki no 19 seiki (2013)
Papers (Telepathology) by Nathan Hopson
Papers by Nathan Hopson
in 1979’s Henkyō: Mō hitotsu no Nihonshi (The Frontier: Another Japanese History), historian Takahashi Tomio (1921–2013) applied Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis to the history of ancient Japanese state formation. The frontier, in Japan’s case the East and Northeast, was thought of as a savage outback forever failing to attain the level of culture and civilization of the putative centers of Japanese political, economic, and cultural history. Takahashi argued that statist historiography had distorted the shape of history. The frontier was not empty of culture and value; rather, the history of the frontier was the true locus of state formation, and the history of state formation was the history of the frontier. Center and periphery, colony and metropole, capital and frontier were mutually constitutive...
This issue of Verge is about reclaiming one of the “f words” of academia, “frontier...”
Originally planned as a city branding and regional promotion event, the March-May 1937 Nagoya Pan-Pacific Peace Exhibition (NPPPE) was supposed to showcase Nagoya as an industrial and cultural center of the empire, prospering in free-trade, capitalist peace. Concessions made to the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) to ensure the survival of the NPPPE—from a national defense hall to live-fire demonstrations—made the event appear a cynical misappropriation of the concept of “peace.” The expo was a “mega-event,” intended to disseminate elite ideologies but ultimately large, inclusive, and complex enough to permit alternative interpretations, resistance, and even discord. Looking past Nagoya’s accommodations to the IJA suggests that even on the eve of all-out war, local business and government elites clung to a 1920s-style vision of peace through international trade and intercourse rather than through autarky and military force. While Nagoya was unable to prevent military interference in the peace expo, the city’s commitment to an agenda that did not square with that of the IJA or Tokyo is an indication of the continued internal diversity of Japan in the 1930s.
10.1080/10371397.2018.1467730
Food replicas (shokuhin sanpuru) line the show windows of cafes and restaurants in cities, towns, and villages throughout Japan. They are usually found artfully arranged in exterior restaurant show windows or cases, facing and visible from the street, corridor, hall, etc., on which the restaurant is located. Building on consumers’ familiarity with foods, ingredients, and cooking techniques, these replicas visually evoke other senses—taste, scent, texture and mouthfeel—instantly providing massive amounts of information. As a ubiquitous visual marketing tool, sanpuru have contributed to the creation and maintenance of Japan’s hybrid national culinary culture, especially the pervasive ‘middlebrow’ echelon of mainstream, everyday consumer culture. In particular, I argue that as an inevitable, almost transparently naturalized part of the visual landscape of food and consumer culture, samples have played a crucial but underappreciated role in the establishment and dissemination of the much-remarked-on visual aesthetic of Japanese culinary culture.
This article explores the early history of nutrition science and nutritional activism in Japan, 1920-1940, focusing on the role of the Imperial Government Institute for Nutrition (IGIN). I argue that the IGIN, the world’s first government-sponsored nutrition institute, was a manifestation and key instrument of Japan’s state-led program of national nutrition as civilization and national defense. The IGIN’s successes in science and dietary reform were viewed as a triumph, an indication that Japan had surpassed the West in the most fundamentally modern and rational of pursuits, science—and specifically nutrition science, a critical technology of nation building.
In 1979’s Henkyō: Mō hitotsu no Nihonshi (The Frontier: Another Japanese History), historian Takahashi Tomio (1921-2013) applied Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis to the history of ancient Japanese state formation. The frontier, in Japan’s case the East and Northeast, was thought of as a savage outback forever failing to attain the level of culture and civilization of the putative centers of Japanese political, economic, and cultural history. Takahashi argued that statist historiography had distorted the shape of history. The frontier was not empty of culture and value. Rather, the history of the frontier was the true locus of state formation, and the history of state formation was the history of the frontier. Center and periphery, colony and metropole, capital and frontier were mutually constitutive.
Nichibunken Japan Review, 2014, 141–70.
http://shinku.nichibun.ac.jp/jpub/pdf/jr/JN2706.pdf
戦後思想としての東北—高橋富雄を中心に
In: Gurōbaruka no naka no Nihonshizō: Chōki no 19 seiki (2013)