On Receiving the Ishibashi Tanzan Award: Another Step on My Path to Becoming a Researcher

My paper that won the Ishibashi Tanzan Award was published in the Sophia University academic magazine, Sophia Historical Studies, in November 2012, and focused on the activities and role of Alexander von Siebold, eldest son of Philipp Franz von Siebold (known for the Siebold Incident in the Edo Period), who served as a foreign adviser and diplomat employed by the Meiji government.

He worked alongside the circles of top Japanese diplomats in the Meiji government, such as Hirobumi Ito, Shuzo Aoki and Kaoru Inoue, but he scarcely receives a mention in Japanese historical documents, even though he is thought to have made a significant contribution to both the development of German-Japanese relations and acted as something of a "living textbook," leading Japan toward modernization. It is necessary to read the original German historical documents to glimpse the full extent of his achievements.

Anti-Japanese feeling peaked in Europe at the time of the Russo-Japanese War. In particular, there was a prevalent fear of the "Yellow Peril"?people of "yellow" races being a threat to white people and to European countries?based on racial and religious prejudices. Japan was in a position of experiencing a somewhat warped sense of inferiority towards the Western powers, while also feeling under pressure to hurry to become a modernized country like those in Europe and to become a first-class westernized power in Asia, and Siebold understood this deeply from his position at Japan's side.

Siebold used various media to attempt to sweep away the negative impressions held about Japan in Europe and to justify Japan's modernization and its various policies. These activities may well just have been part of his duties as a diplomat, but he firmly refused invitations to change his nationality to Japanese and chose to engage in relations with Japan as a German citizen. What, in fact, was Siebold's sense of himself and his own "Japaneseness" and what were his views on national identity?

It may have been greatly influenced by his family situation, such as the existence of his elder sister by a different mother, Ine Kusumoto, the first female doctor of Western Medicine in Japan, and his younger brother Heinrich von Siebold, who was "married" to a Japanese women and worked in Japan as an diplomat and guide on the Austrian-Hungarian legation, but there are far too many elements to fit into a single paper.

Last year, I was fortunate enough to participate in an exchange program with Heidelberg University in Germany, and during my stay I visited the home of one of Siebold's descendants. Up to then, I had been using only published historical documents in my research, but I was shown photographs and handwritten documents and gained various hints for the direction of my future research.

In the lecture hall at Heidelberg University with my classmates

Since I was in high school, I have always aspired to become a researcher. I decided to study history at university since I see history as an academic discipline that encompasses all academic disciplines. For example, diplomatic history also involves politics and law, but, for me, historical studies is really about going right back and examining the primary historical documents. I think history is the most starkly human of all the academic disciplines. People might think they have studied history by simply putting the word "history" on anything in which they are interested, but I want to face history as an academic discipline.

When I was an undergraduate, I received the Shiba Ryotaro Fellowship and wrote a research paper for this, but that prize was awarded in recognition of my project-work abilities. This time, I was particularly pleased because I received the Ishibashi Tanzan Award in recognition of my paper itself and of my future potential as a researcher. This was the first paper I wrote since entering the doctoral program at Sophia University, but last year I also published a translated book and this year I have already published another paper on a different topic. I also plan to complete another paper by the end of this year.

Most of the other students I studied with as an undergraduate are already working full-time in companies and the only prospective employers for me as a researcher in terms of a research institution in the humanities are colleges and universities. It will not be an easy road, but my goal is to try to earn my PhD as soon as possible.

My friends often express wonder that I seem to be so happy in what I am doing. I may stumble at times, but I never run out of things I want to research and write about.

In fact, both my parents were students at Sophia University, which is why they named me Satoko (a name that borrows one Chinese character "智" with an alternative reading from the Japanese name for Sophia University, "上智大学"). I used to visit the Yotsuya Campus for "All Sophians' Festival"(Homecoming Day) when I was a child and listen to lots of old stories, so Sophia was always very familiar to me. But my parents certainly did not push me to choose Sophia. I looked into the history departments at other universities, but they were too big and there were few where it was possible to study German history and Japanese history at the same time. In this sense, Sophia's appeal was overwhelming: it is cozy and compact, but it is possible to study freely across the boundaries between disciplines, and it has a deep relationship with Germany. There is little distance between professors and students and it is easy to request assistance and advice from them, which was just the environment I was looking for.

This is my ninth year at Sophia now, already longer that the six years that I spent at junior high and high school. In that time, my younger sister has also entered Sophia. I cannot help but wonder about how Sophia relates to my identity and whether it was not indeed my fate to study here from the moment my parents named me.