Tuesday April 3, 2018 at 12:00 in the History Department Conference Room—255 Old Horticulture— Professor Jordan Sand, Georgetown University, “Imperial Japan and World Culture”

The idea of a single world culture is not discussed much today, but it had a robust life in the first half of the twentieth century. It appealed particularly to intellectuals in the Japanese empire, in part because of Japan’s anomalous position among the imperial powers. This lecture will examine some of the key trends in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan where world culture played a role, including the Esperanto movement, the “Culture Life” movement, and architect Kon Wajirō’s “Modernology.” It will conclude by considering Japan’s role in UNESCO.

Bio: Jordan Sand is Professor of Japanese History at Georgetown University. He is the author of three books– House and Home in Modern Japan (Harvard, 2004), Tokyo Vernacular (California, 2013), and Teikoku Nihon no seikatsu kūkan (Living Spaces of the Japanese Empire; Iwanami shoten, 2015)–and has written widely on the history of culture and everyday life in East Asia.