Professor Urs Matthias Zachmann
Details of Professor Urs Matthias Zachmann's inaugural lecture.
Event details
Lecture title: "The Meaning of Asia in Japanese-Chinese Relations"
Date: 28 January 2014
Time: 5.30pm
Venue: Lecture Theatre 183, Old College, South Bridge, Edinburgh, EH8 9YL
Lecture abstract
The history of Japanese-Chinese relations since the mid-nineteenth century can be interpreted as a series of negotiations and contestations what “Asia” really stands for and how the concept relates to the western world. Especially from the Japanese perspective, the concept of Asia was highly unstable and oscillated between connotations of the particular and the universal, the backward and the visionary, the model and the dismal. Although these fluctuations were politically motivated and followed the progress of Japanese-Chinese relations, they also had an intrinsic logic of their own and reveal underlying constants that can be felt even today. This lecture is an inquiry into the political changes and cultural constants of the concept of “Asia” in the history of Japanese-Chinese relations and their implications for East Asia and the study of its relations today.