Reminder: Japan History Group, ISS, University of Tokyo18.10.2026 {en}
The Third Japan History Group (JHG) at the Institute of Social Science (ISS), University of Tokyo, will be held on 5 November 2026, at 18:00 (JST) in a hybrid format (on-site and online). To join via Zoom, please register using the following link by 17:00 (JST) on 4 November 2026.
https://forms.gle/41zgHwRp7EFbQQv17
Date and Time: Thursday, 5 November 2026, 18:00-20:00 (JST)
Venue: ISS Center Meeting Room #549, 5F of Akamon Research Building, Hongo Campus, The University of Tokyo
Presenter: Dr. Michiko Suzuki, Project Research Associate, RCAST, The University of Tokyo
Title: Humanitarian Internationalism Under Empire: The Global Evolution of the Japanese Red Cross Movement, 1877-1945
Discussant: Prof. Stephen Vlastos, Professor Emeritus, The University of Iowa
Abstract:
The book, Humanitarian Internationalism Under Empire, awarded the 42nd Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize, revises the history of humanitarian internationalism in the pre-World War II period in presenting the birth and growth of the Red Cross movement in modern Japan as a case study of transnational humanitarianism as it developed outside the West. It challenges the assumption that non-Western Red Cross Societies were merely imitative of the Christian-based ideology of the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and it recovers the indigenous Japanese humanitarian notion of jindō (人道), literally, ‘the way of humanity’ as a modern articulation of humanitarianism embraced by ordinary Japanese as they confronted the great crises of modern civilization.
The book shows that the Japanese Red Cross Society (JRCS), far from replicating Western conceptions and institutional models, made its own contributions to the praxis of transnational wartime and peacetime humanitarianism. The book highlights the bottom-up vector in the steady growth of the JRCS, which became the world’s largest national Red Cross society by the end of the Second World War. Contributions of the JRCS to the international Red Cross and Red Crescent movement include a pioneering role in making disaster relief and public health care peacetime missions of Red Cross internationalism. The JRCS extended its institutional reach in tandem with Japanese imperialism and emigration as it established chapters both in its overseas empire and in countries situated along the Pacific Rim that hosted large communities of Japanese immigrants.
Today’s world is shaped by the unprecedented advance of digitalization, science and technology dependent on fossil fuels located in geopolitically unstable regions. Mankind has entered an age of mutual dependence when global pandemics and wars cause economic and social crises. Furthermore, nobody yet knows the impact of AI and AGI, which bodies, emotions and experiences on our future society and mentality. Our civilization may be at a tipping point. As the world seeks to cope with current global crises, jindō, indigenous Japanese humanitarianism, is as relevant to the present as it was in the past.
Source: Reminder: Japan History Group, ISS, University of Tokyo, 5 November 2026, H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online „CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.“
