Historical Consciousness and the Future of Modern China and Japan: Conservatism, Revisionism, and National Identity

This research project seeks to deliver a comparative study of a major factor in the intellectual life of modern China and Japan: the conservative and revisionist reinterpretation of tradition and its impact on the creation of collective identity. Manifested in debates on history and modernity, this process has hitherto been largely neglected by Western scholars. The fact that both countries have strongly and consciously influenced each other in this process of collective identity formation requires a comparative analysis of this phenomenon. This project represents a major new profile for East Asian Studies in not one, but two, areas that have to date been treated quite separately: modern China, and modern Japan. The project is entirely comparative in nature, a methodology that is essential both on academic grounds, and for the purposes of building a new body of expertise and training a new generation of comparative scholars. The research team will be led by two principal researchers who share an academic specialisation in the history of poli-tical and historical thought in China and Japan respectively. Component parts of the research will be con-ducted by two post-doctoral scholars, and three PhD candidates, who will be supervised jointly by the two main researchers. All members will be required to possess good (PhD candidates) and advanced (PostDocs) lan-guage skills respectively, and to read primary sources as the core material. Participating in bi-weekly seminars throughout the project plus two workshops will build and enhance the comparative skills of the research team. A major monograph on comparative historical consciousness in China and Japan, co-authored by the two main researchers, will be the cornerstone of the project. The research findings of all participants will be presented at an international conference. Keywords: Historical consciousness, conservatism, revisionism, historical thought, collective identity formation.