Research

My current book project explores the shifting dynamics of the intellectual history of history writing through the procedural study of the Dai Nihonshi (The History of Great Japan 大日本史, 1657-1906), the most monumental historiographical endeavor in Japan produced by the controversial Mito school. Using the diverse sections of the Dai Nihonshi itself (which I translated to English for the first time) and the biographies and individual records of the compilers, I situate the significance of Mito and the Dai Nihonshi, the first Japanese historical work that used the structural and stylistic features of Chinese dynastic histories, in the context of East Asian transnational intellectual exchange and trace the foreign roots of the formation of nationalism in Japan.

Visualization, workability, and creative integration are the principal key terms that characterize my approach to digital humanities and research methodology in general. In this project, I have developed a dual methodology where I integrate network analysis, word frequency analysis, geocoding, and data visualization into the broader, close reading-based, analysis. The synergetic intertwinement of these diverse methods creates an organic system that does not lose focus of the main research questions.

Weaving novel and unusual approaches into my historiographical inquiry can facilitate the understanding of longstanding questions about Mito, historiography, and, in a broader sense, the nature of East Asian transnational intellectual flows that is particularly challenging to unpack through historical methodology alone. This project also includes the elaborate database of 153 compilers who participated in the compilation of the Dai Nihonshi at certain points in the 250-year-long process.

A part of the project, entitled "Finding the Self through the Other: The Role of Rituals in the Dai Nihonshi (The History of Great Japan)" and now integrated into the flow of the larger narrative, has won the prestigious MCAA Percy Buchanan Graduate Prize for the Best Paper in the Northeast Asia Category (2015).

Very few documents of exchange between Japanese and foreign intellectuals are extant from the Tokugawa period, contributing to the longstanding assumption about the period as the era of “seclusion” (sakoku). However, I have discovered one of the only available records of a hitsudan (brush talk) conversation between Japanese and Korean Confucian scholars from the 18^th century (recorded in classical Chinese by Miyake Kanran, a key figure in the Dai Nihonshi’s compilation as well). In an upcoming journal article, I analyze this complex material against received ideas about the dynamics of East Asian early modern international relations through an interdisciplinary approach which incorporates historiography, intellectual history, philosophy, and even literature.

Digital humanities is still considered a predominantly Western-focused “field”, therefore I was very glad to contribute to the upcoming Global Debates in the Digital Humanities, which aims to add numerous non-Western voices to ongoing discussions about the role of the digital in the humanities. My piece, entitled “Digital Brush Talk: Challenges and Potential Connections in East Asian Digital Research,” aims to survey the state of the field of conducting DH in the context of East Asia. It includes a visually-enhanced analysis of the challenges of dealing with non-Latin scripts (eg. in OCR processes), and advocates for a more active collaboration between Japan, China, and Korea scholars engaged in digital research for stronger visibility.

Building on my interdisciplinary and transnational interests, my current work also includes a focus on multilingualism as a form and representation of "global Asias," particularly in the context of digital humanities and digital research infrastructures. This has taken multiple forms:

• A collaborative initiative, together with Cosima Wagner (FU Berlin Library), Cornelis van Lit (Utrecht University), and David Joseph Wrisley (NYU Abu Dhabi), to draw attention to the realities and needs of scholars working with non-English (especially non-Latin scripts) materials in DH from the perspective of digital infrastructure development. This project started as a theme group as part of King's College London's pioneering conference on "Disrupting Digital Monolingualism." The basis of our inquiry consists of a survey that we conducted on the circumstances, requirements, and workaround methods that characterize the situation of humanists in multilingual digital environments. However, for the paper, which will be included in an edited volume on multilingual DH, we also wanted to get a better sense of the experience of relevant "users," and recently organized a week-long open forum session to provide a platform for other scholars to explain their circumstances in more detail and to comment on the draft of our paper. This was a highly experimental, and non-standard approach to the writing process, but I found it to be a very lively and instructive experience. More updates coming soon!

• As an avid advocate for multilingualism in DH, I recently completed two papers on this topic: a forthcoming article on "language sensitivity" for Digital Modern Languages (part of Modern Languages Open) and a contribution to the Global Debates in the Digital Humanities edited volume on doing DH in the context of East Asian studies (scheduled to be published in 2022). Stay tuned!

• A third manifestation of multilingual DH in my work is a fascinating NEH-funded collaboration, organized by Princeton, Haverford College, and DARIAH-EU, entitled "New Languages for NLP". It is a pleasure to be a part of this unusual project which aims to give more visibility to 10 underrepresented languages in DH from classical Arabic to Quechua, Tigrinya, Kannada, and Yoruba, among others. Here, I represent Kanbun through the Dai Nihon shi. The one-year project consists of three week-long workshops, monthly meetings, and an incredible amount of annotation work (at this point), but it is wonderful to be a part of this much-needed and supportive community!

More recently, but in connection to my current book project, which also concerns with the modern transmogrification of Mito and the Dai Nihon shi, I started to develop my next larger project (or project cluster) on the representation of East Asia in "Western" mass media and the role of propaganda in this context. As part of this endeavor, I have completed an article on the representation of Japanese-Korean colonial relations in the Hungarian print media (1910-1945) for year 2 of the Area Studies Excellence Program Framework “Community-building: Family and nation, tradition and innovation” at Eötvös Loránd University (East Asian Institute). Here, I identify three major thematic perspectives that the relevant available newspaper articles take to discuss Japan's imperial efforts in Korea, which also helps us examine the effectiveness of Japanese colonial propaganda abroad and, in a broader sense, can serve as a starting point to reconsider the recurring three-part periodization of the colonial rule in Korea.

I am also actively engaged in translation efforts:

I have completed the first full English translation of the entire Shūshi shimatsu by Fujita Yūkoku, which I am currently revising for publication (in Monumenta Nipponica).

In addition, as part of my transnational and interdisciplinary interests, I have recently published the first English translation of six poems by the contemporary Hungarian haiku poet, Ákos Fodor (1945-2015), for Inventory, Princeton’s journal of translation. These six poems constitute a glimpse into the beautifully non-standard thinking of the most prolific Hungarian haiku author, pushing the reader to reconsider the meaning of haiku itself as a form of transnationalism.