Japan Forum Podcast with Harry Harootunian

Abstract

The podcast is with Harry Harootunian, Professor Emeritus of East Asian Studies, New York University, and Max Palevsky Professor of History and Civilizations, Emeritus, University of Chicago, who was visiting the UK to give the 15th Annual Edward Said Memorial Lecture at the University of Warwick.
Japan Forum caught up with Professor Harootunian at SOAS to discuss his recently published Uneven Moments: Reflections of on Japan’s Modern History. Although the book is a collection of essays written by Harootunian over the span of thirty years, it has a thematic cohesiveness that covers the historical space of the “expansion of capitalism” from the mid-nineteenth century to early twenty-first century.

The podcast covers the importance of the Meiji Restoration, the place of Japanese modern intellectual history beyond the borders of the Japanese nation state, and how the unevenness and incompletion of capitalist modernity shapes the relationship between culture and politics.