Acknowledgments

I would like to begin by acknowledging that both Murakami Naojirō, the main character of this book, and I had the privilege of being supported throughout our entire careers by internationally recognized academic institutions. We received generous funding and had relatively easy access to research facilities around the world. Neither economic constraints nor unequal power relations kept either of us from making a living as a scholar.

Critical for this particular book’s genesis was my position as a postdoctoral fellow in the interdisciplinary HERA-funded project ‘East Asian Uses of the European Past’ that ran from 2016 until 2019. The Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA) funding scheme provided not only the main financial support for this project but also an affiliation with the University of Zurich. I am ever grateful to Martin Dusinberre for welcoming me to his chair and for including me in his team of critically minded global historians trained in Asian languages: Helena Jaskov, David W. Möller, Gonzalo San Emeterio Cabañes, and Tamara Ann Tinner. I still remember fondly the stimulating, warm, and, above all, humorous work environment in our office. I can call myself lucky to have forged lasting personal and intellectual ties with everyone on the team. During the project I had the privilege of working with Joachim Kurtz, Leigh Jenco, Pablo Blitstein, and David Mervart, and I am grateful for their generosity in sharing their knowledge, for encouraging me to look at the details, and for opening their local and global networks. Our discussions at regular seminars and conferences were eye-opening. I am equally indebted to the many researchers and advisory board members involved in the project work who helped me see the many intrinsic biases and the power of translations. I received particularly valuable feedback from Noelani Arista, David Ambaras, Joan Judge, Jordan Sand, Naoko Shimazu, and Lisa Yoshikawa.

The study of Japanese history and historiography and the role of foreign relations in it have accompanied my entire academic career. Kayoko Fujita, my tutor and mentor during my undergraduate studies at Momoyama Gakuin Daigaku in 2006/7, was the first of four female Japanese historians who fundamentally shaped my understanding of Tokugawa foreign relations and how they ought to be studied. During my PhD and postdoctoral training, Shimizu Yūko, Matsui Yōko, and, above all, Matsukata Fuyuko were three other outstanding Japanese researchers with whom I had the pleasure to work.

This book would have looked very different without two extended research stays in Tokyo in 2018 and 2019 to collect material and exchange ideas with colleagues. During my visits to the Historiographical Institute, I greatly benefited from the generous support of Prof. Matsukata Fuyuko and my mentor Prof. Haneda Masashi at the University of Tokyo. Many ideas developed in conversations with Japanese colleagues whose professionalism has guided and inspired me since my days as an undergraduate student. My stay at the Historiographical Research Institute in 2019 was generously funded by the LIXIL Ushioda East Asian Humanities Initiative. At Sophia University I received invaluable support from Iijima Mariko and Bettina Oka, while I am particularly grateful to Otsuka Sachie from Sophia Archives. I am also indebted to the staff at Sophia University’s Christian Bunko Library, at the archives of Nihon Gakushiin in Ueno, and at Tokyo Gaidai Archive. During the years of travel bans related to the Covid-19 pandemic, I received invaluable help in acquiring sources for which I am enormously grateful. Chien Hung-yi and Cheng Wei-chung assisted me in locating material in Taipei, while Yeh Pi-ling and Shirane Seiji generously shared their research data with me. In Japan I am indebted to Teshima Yoshifumi (Ōita Prefectural Archives), Akune Susumu, Ōshio Ryōhei, Nii Yoko, Matsui Hiroe, Igawa Kenji, Anton Schweizer, and Travis Seifman. Ōshima Moe and Lauren Solomon spared no effort while producing photos for me in Kamakura and Manila, respectively, despite their own busy research schedules. Another key factor that enabled me to finish a first manuscript draft in late 2021 was access to the digital collections and resources of the National Diet Library in Japan, Kikuzo II Visual, JACAR (Japan Center for Asian Historical Records), and Academia Sinica. The entire project would have been impossible without the meticulous work of unnamed scholars and technicians involved in digitizing manuscripts and old prints.

Although I am unable to thank each person who provided thought-provoking comments, encouraging feedback, or, perhaps most importantly, frank criticism, I will limit myself to a series of seminars where I presented parts of this book – namely, the Geschichtskontor at the University of Zurich (UZH), the Cambridge-UZH postgraduate workshops, the Global Studies Japan Seminar, the East Asia Seminar at the University of Cambridge, the Taiwan Studies Seminar at the University of Vienna, the Global History Colloquium at the University of Bremen, the AAS Workshop for the Second Book in Denver in 2019, and the online symposium ‘Beyond the Southern Barbarians’ at Kyushu University. I also benefited enormously from the many opportunities to test my ideas and present what I read between and along the grain to colleagues who have become friends in the course of various collaborations. In alphabetic order, they include Stefan Amirell, Joshua Batts, Oleg Benesch, Dorothée Goetze, Hans Hägerdal, Preedee Hongsaton, Ariel Lopez, Stephanie Mawson, Eleonora Poggio, Daniel Sastre, Michael Talbot, and Guido van Meersbergen. The members of the Global Diplomacy Network have made engaging with ideas about diplomatic history a very stimulating exercise, and I want to thank each and every one for their enthusiasm. Special thanks are due to Lisa Hellman for never tiring of reading yet another version of a chapter and for making our joint writing salon such a stimulating laboratory.

During the final stage of writing, I benefited enormously from being part of the Linnaeus University Centre for Concurrences and, in particular, the Research Cluster for Colonial Connections and Comparisons. Both offered me important platforms for stimulating discussions and reflections about how to write history. I would also like to thank my students at Stockholm University, my participants in Linnaeus University’s international master’s program in colonial and postcolonial history, and my student groups at UP Diliman and Universidad Autónoma de Madrid for challenging my occasional dogmatism. Lucy Rhymer and Rosa Martin at Cambridge University Press offered great professional support during the publication process. I really mean it when I say that I have been touched by the incredibly constructive and substantial feedback I received from the two anonymous reviewers. I hope to get a chance to thank them personally one day. Lucia Hodgson was of invaluable help with proofreading and editing the manuscript and provided moral support during the tedious revision stage, while Akune Susumu took the time to check my Japanese references, and Christian Ely Poot helped with the index. All remaining errors and misinterpretations are mine. The book project benefited from funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 101023758, the Swedish Research Council individual grant 2019-03162, as well as the Scandinavia-Japan Sasakawa Foundation.

There have been days when this book project hung like a heavy cloud above my head. In such moments I usually forgot that there would be no book at all were it not for the life outside Japanese intellectual history. I would particularly like to thank my family and friends in Austria and Sweden for their persistent attempts to offer distractions with visits, invitations, trips to Gotland, and ski holidays in the Dachstein region. A special thanks goes to my ice hockey team, MHC Dam, for their patience with a complete newcomer to team sports who has the nerve to bring ‘books with many footnotes’ to the changing room. Each and every one has been a great inspiration for vision and self-discipline, showing me that with hard work – perhaps not everything but – a lot is possible. That ‘the sky is the limit’ I learned many years ago from my doktorvater Peer Vries, who ever since has been a great mental support and reliable reminder of the importance of both reading and writing good books. By far the biggest debt of gratitude I owe my husband Matti and my children Alexander and Freja. Thank you, Matti, for always lending an ear to my latest ideas, for encouraging me to sit up a little while longer, for letting me occasionally indulge in irrational whining, and for making me laugh; in short, for being the perfect spouse. Thank you all three for all the fun we have in everyday life, for listening to my ‘short speeches,’ for caring about Japan and all things Japanese almost as much as I do, but, most of all, for never questioning whether it was meaningful that I was ‘still working on that same book.’