Global Asia Research Center: Toward Reconciliation and Sustainable Development

The aim of our research center is to contribute to the global interdisciplinary scholarship on reconciliation and sustainable development and to disseminate its results from Asia to the world. We pursue our research through the dual perspective of global history and global governance, integrating three spheres of knowledge: peace and security, economics and development, and society and culture.

Global history and global governance are already well established fields of study but it has not yet developed a distinctively East Asian perspective. East Asian global history and global governance put at their center the problems of imperialism, colonialism, and war, which are inseparably bound up with each other. In pursuing reconciliation in East Asia, a critical reexamination of Japanese war responsibility and colonialism are necessary. In Europe, war and colonial responsibilities have been discussed separately and, while advances have been made on the question of war responsibility, debate over the legacy of colonialism has only begun recently. The study of East Asian experience enables us to bring these two issues of war and colonialism together and thus its implications will be of tremendous global significance. On the issue of sustainable development too, the study of East Asia is globally relevant, for Asia is known as a region of great diversity that exhibits wide gap in economic inequality. As Europe and the rest of the world have become more economically unequal and increasingly diversified through immigration, the study of sustainable development in East Asia will have deeply global implications.

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For more information about current initiatives at the center, follow the link here.