C040 - Individuals and Organizations As Socio-Economic Lenses on Japan's Overseas Contacts across the Twentieth Century

    Session will be held in person

    Friday, March 15, 2024 Friday, March 15, 2024

    11:00 AM - 12:30 PM 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM PDT 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM UTC

    • Room 212 (Level 2, Convention Center)
This panel offers fresh perspectives on twentieth-century Japan’s interactions with the outside world by considering the contributions of individuals and organizations in shaping domestic socio-economic trends as well as humanitarian initiatives and commercial ties with the Global South. The panel includes two papers exploring the role of individual foreigners in the marketing and dissemination of key industrial equipment—locomotives—and a dietary staple—bread—within Japan. By contrast the panel’s two other papers focus on organizations, the Japanese Red Cross Society and its activities in Brazil, and the major Danish shipping firm, Maersk, which facilitated Japanese commercial engagement with Southeast Asia and West Africa. To prompt discussion of trends spanning the twentieth century, the panel includes one paper each on organizations and individuals early in the twentieth century, and one paper each on organizations and individuals after 1945. Through the focused lenses of organizations and individuals, the panel will enable discussion of new ways to interpret Japan’s interfaces with the outside world within two major trends unfolding in the early twentieth century: industrialization and imperial expansion. Similarly, its discussions will shed new light on external interactions during the US Occupation and the period of high-speed economic growth in 1960s and 1970s. It will also offer means to consider knowledge transfers in diverse areas—technology, medicine, and foodways—within interactions with North America as well as a wide range of nations in the Global South.
Presentations
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