First Event Held for the Keio-Reischauer Joint Research ProjectThe "Constitution" of Postwar Japan

Event Date

2015.12.16（Wed）-2015.12.17（Thu）

Event Venue

Other

December 21, 2015

Last year, an agreement was reached between the Faculty of Law and the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University to conduct joint research over the next three years. The name of this joint research is the Reischauer-Keio Joint Research Project, The "Constitution" of Postwar Japan. This project was established with our Faculty of Law joining as a global partner to the "Research Project on Constitutional Revision in Japan," which was originally based at the Reischauer Institute. Although the English title includes the word "constitution," its original meaning is "form" or "basic framework." Therefore, this project aims to clarify the important issues that have shaped postwar Japan through academic exchange with researchers from Japan and abroad.

The first workshop, titled "History, Historians, and Public Issues," was held over two days on December 16 and 17, 2015, at the G-SEC Lab on the Mita Campus. The event was moderated by the project's co-directors, Professor Helen Hardacre (Harvard University) and Professor Keigo Komamura (of this Faculty), and following opening remarks by President Seike and Dean Iwatani, researchers from various fields in Japan and abroad gave individual presentations (on the 16th) and participated in a joint discussion (on the 17th). In the individual presentations, topics such as pollution/environmental issues and citizen movements, the comfort women issue and historical perception problems, and issues of constitutionalism and democracy from the establishment's perspective were discussed. The joint discussion covered the background and significance of the open letter on historical revisionism issued by American historians, as well as researcher responsibility and social commitment. It should also be noted that in parallel with this event, a student session was held where graduate students from Harvard and students from the Faculty of Law engaged in group work, leading to lively discussions in English.