Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies, University of Oxford

08/10/2026

We’ve heard of Pan-Asianism, but what about Pan-Farmerism?

Toma-Jin Morikawa-Fouquet, a graduate of the MSc programme in Japanese Studies and current DPhil candidate in History, recently published an article titled “Pan-Farmerism in Transwar Rural Japan, 1905–1928” in Global Intellectual History. It presents a non-nationalist vision of transnational farmer solidarity in early twentieth-century Japan, grounded in a reaffirmation of humanity’s connection with nature, especially the soil. The article proposes a “transwar nonstate approach” to uncover other obscured currents of thought in transnational and global intellectual history.

Read the open-access article here:

Historians have situated the Russo-Japanese War and the First World War within global and state-centric narratives of Japan's ascent from an agricultural and regional state into an industrialised a...

08/10/2026

NISSAN SEMINAR IN JAPANESE STUDIES

‘Japan’s Grand Strategy: Liminal Power in an Uncertain World’
Speaker: Saori Katada (UC Santa Barbara)

Thursday 15 October, 5:00pm to 6:30pm
Nissan Lecture Theatre, Nissan Institute, St Antony's College

Japan is a liminal power, straddling contrasting identities in terms of its power status—from small power to great power—shaped by shifts in material capabilities, international standing, and overlapping social and geographic affiliations (e.g. Western, modern, and Asian). Using a historical institutionalist approach, this book traces the evolution of Japan’s grand strategy from the Meiji period (1868) to the 2020s. Drawing on selected chapters, this talk focuses on the contemporary era, examining how Japan has constructed its Indo-Pacific grand strategy around the concept of a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific.” It argues that major shifts in the strategic environment created windows of opportunity that enabled Japan’s core decisionmakers to construct—and reconstruct—its grand strategy.

Saori N. Katada is the Louis G. Lancaster Chair of International Relations at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Department of Political Science. Previous to her current appointment at UCSB, she was Professor of International Relations and the Director of the Center for International Studies at the University of Southern California. Her 2026 book with Kei Koga, Japan’s Grand Strategy: Liminal Power in an Uncertain World, was published by Oxford University Press. Her single-authored books include Japan's New Regional Reality: Geoeconomic Strategy in the Asia-Pacific (Columbia University Press, 2020) and Banking on Stability: Japan and the Cross-Pacific Dynamics of International Financial Crisis Management (University of Michigan Press, 2001), which received the Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Book Award. She served as the vice president of the International Studies Association and on the editorial team of the Review of International Political Economy. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her B.A. from Hitotsubashi University (Tokyo).

23/09/2026

The Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies is now accepting applications for October 2027 entry to its one-year MSc in Japanese Studies programme! The deadline for applications is 12 noon (GMT) on Tuesday 26 January 2027. For further details, please see here: https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/graduate/courses/msc-japanese-studies.

This is a twelve-month course offered jointly by the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies (OSGA) and the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies that combines courses about Japan, an intensive language programme, a research methods course and a dissertation.

23/09/2026

The Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies is now accepting applications for October 2027 entry to its two-year MPhil in Japanese Studies programme! The deadline for applications is 12 noon (GMT) on Tuesday 26 January 2027. For further details, please see here: https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/graduate/courses/mphil-japanese-studies.

This is a taught two-year course combining advanced Japanese language training, research methods, and interdisciplinary study of Japan’s politics, society, literature, and history.

23/09/2026

The Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies, in association with the Faculty of Law and St Antony's College, is pleased to announce an exciting job opportunity: an Associate Professorship in Japanese Law and Society! The closing date for applications is Friday 20 November 2026, at 12 noon (GMT). Full details can be found here: https://my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecruit/erq_jobspec_details_form.jobspec?p_id=188889.

15/09/2026

The schedule for the Nissan Seminar in Japanese Studies, which begins on Thursday 15th October!

25/02/2026

On March 5, we are excited to co-convene a symposium on 'From Economic Security to Economic Statecraft: Insights from Japan, Europe, and the United States' with the Blavatnik School of Government.

Join us to hear from leading scholars and policy experts, including Aya Adachi (German Council on Foreign Relations), Michael Beeman (UC San Diego), Creon Butler (Chatham House), Victor Cha (Georgetown University), Raluca Csernatoni (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Douglas Fuller (Copenhagen Business School), Tobias Gehrke (European Council on Foreign Relations), Francesca Ghiretti (RAND Europe), Kristi Govella (University of Oxford), Akira Igata (University of Tokyo), Keisuke Iida (University of Tokyo), Robyn Klingler-Vidra (King’s College London), Claas Mertens (University of Oxford), Minako Morita-Jaeger (University of Sussex), Abraham Newman (Georgetown University), William Norris (Texas A&M University), Miguel Otero-Iglesias (IE University), Martijn Rasser (Special Competitive Studies Project), Yeling Tan (University of Oxford), Mariko Togashi (Institute of Geoeconomics), Anna Vlasiuk Nibe (University of Southern Denmark), Shino Watanabe (Sophia University), Hugh Whittaker (University of Oxford), and Jiakun Jack Zhang (University of Kansas).

To register and see further details, visit https://sites.google.com/view/economicstatecraft2026/

14/01/2026

Emeritus Professor Arthur Stockwin passed away on Wednesday afternoon (7 January) at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital

He will be much missed but his legacy at both St Antony’s and the Nissan Institute will live on for a very long time

Arthur Stockwin passed away on Wednesday afternoon (7 January) at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital.