Graduate School of East Asian Studies

Studying Japan - Handbook of Research Designs, Fieldwork and Methods, edited by Cornelia Reiher (GEAS vice director) Nora Kottmann (DIJ Tokyo), is the first comprehensive guide on qualitative methods, research designs and fieldwork in social science research on Japan. More than 70 Japan scholars from around the world provide an easy-to-read overview on qualitative methods used in research on Japan’s society, politics, culture and history. The book covers the entire research process from the outset to the completion of a thesis, a paper, or a book.The authors provide basic introductions to individual methods, discuss their experiences when applying these methods and highlight current trends in research on Japan. The book serves as a foundation for a course on qualitative research methods and can also be used as a reference for all researchers in Japanese Studies, the Social Sciences and Area Studies. It is an essential reading for students and researchers with an interest in Japan!
We are particularly proud because this handbook emerged from method courses taught at GEAS and the Japanese Studies Institute at FUB and includes contributions by current and former GEAS members and PIs.

In this article in Pacific Affairs, GEAS Alumna Eunhee Woo analyzes how democratization has affected the dynamics of candidate selection in South Korea after the 2000s. To explain the persistence of such exclusive, centralized features of candidate selection, the article highlights the limited impact democratization has had on the political environment in which the parties operate.

In this journal article, Hendrik Johannemann reflects on South Korea's mobilization against LGBT rights, mainly emanating from conservative Protestant forces. This anti-LGBT mobilization has been attributed to the need to create an “external enemy” as a means for covering up internal scandals. Hendrik's study examines how the Protestant anti-LGBT movement creates an “internal enemy”, too, by fighting against pro-LGBT activism and attitudes within its faith.

In addition to other profound impacts, the corona virus has offered global energy markets an unprecedented natural experiment. Oyuna Baldakova and David Roland-Holst report on Global Decarbonization after the pandemic.

Associate Research Professor and former Einstein Visiting Fellow Gunter Schubert and project member Franziska Plümmer highlight questions of the GEAS project" Sovereignty and International Law in the PRC. Global Migration, Global Terrorism and International Law: Chinese Perceptions and Responses" in this article in the IIAS newsletter 87 (Autumn).

In this collaborative Special Issue in the Australian Journal of International Affairs, edited by Giulio Pugliese and colleagues, attendants of the 2017 KCL-FUB Joint Workshop have published their research on the change of Japanese foreign and security policies. GEAS doctoral researcher Simon Schwenke's article deals with the change in civil-military relations in Japan, 2009-2021.

GEAS vice-director Elena Meyer-Clement and her colleagues in the DFG project Steering Urban-Rural Intergration have published a Special Issue in China Information, Vol. 34, No. 2, 2020. OnlineFirst print of the introduction by Elena Meyer-Clement and Jesper Willaing Zeuthen "China's Rural urbanization and the state: Putting the countryside first?" is available now.

GEAS vice-director Cornelia Reiher has published a chapter "Embracing the periphery: Urbanites’ motivations for relocating to rural Japan" in the newly edited book on Japan's New Ruralities, edited by Manzenreiter, Lützeler and Polak-Rottmann.

Through a discourse analysis of Japanese parliamentary debates, GEAS graduate and alumni Ulv Hanssen explores how different understandings of Japan’s history have led to sharply divergent security policies in the postwar period, whilst providing an explanation for the much-debated security policy changes under Abe Shinzō.

Einstein Visiting Fellow and Associated Research Professor Richard J. Samuels (MIT) has launched and published his new book: Special Duty - A history od Japanese Intelligence Community with Cornell University Press and in Japanese with Nikkei Publishing.

GEAS postdoc Hyun-gyung Kim has co-edited a monograph on the Feminist Time Warp in Korean Society.

GEAS associate member and POINT postdoc alumna Anna Belogurova has published a monograph on the Comintern and Chinese Networks in Southeast Asia, 1890–1957. In this innovative reading, the development of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) is explored in the context of an emerging nationalism in Southeast Asia, the interplay of overseas Chinese networks and the Comintern.

GEAS faculty member Cornelia Reiher has published a special issue on „Fieldwork in Japan: New Trends and Challenges“ in ASIEN: The German Journal on Contemporary Asia (No. 149). The issue includes contributions by current and former GEAS members Julia Gerster, Chaline Timmerarens and Cornelia Reiher.