Newcastle University

Introduction

My interest in Japan first dates from when I worked as an English teacher for three years on the JET Programme. After completing an MA in Japanese Studies at SOAS I returned to Japan and studied at Kyushu University, in the south of the country, for two more years. As part of my doctoral studies at Oxford I also spent another year doing fieldwork on remote islands in the Inland Sea region before taking up my position in Newcastle in the summer of 2008.

I am on research leave in academic year 2011-12, during which time I shall be a Visiting Professor at Heidelberg University, Germany.

Roles and Responsibilities

Degree Programme Director, MA East Asian History (2010-11)

Qualifications

DPhil (History) University of Oxford, 2008
MA (Japanese Studies) University of London, 2002
BA (Hons, Modern History) University of Oxford, 1998

Memberships

The British Association for Japanese Studies

The European Association for Japanese Studies

The Association for Asian Studies

Research Interests

I work on the social and cultural history of Japan from the mid-nineteenth to the late-twentieth centuries. My forthcoming book is a microhistory of Kaminoseki, a small town in the Inland Sea region, in which I reconstruct the lives of 'ordinary people' as they tried to make sense of modern transformations in Japan. Chapters describe the role of local revolutionaries in the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the ways that individual townspeople grasped opportunities to work overseas in the late nineteenth century, the impact that this pan-Pacific diaspora community had on everyday hometown life in the pre-war decades, and the increasingly desperate strategies by which local leaders tried to counter post-war rural decline. The climax of the book is the town council's request, in the 1980s, for a nuclear power station to be built in the municipality--a decision that unleashed a storm of protests from within the community. This ongoing nuclear dispute in Kaminoseki has particular resonance in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima crisis.

The book will be published as Hard Times in the Hometown: A History of Community Survival in Modern Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, forthcoming February 2012). It can be pre-purchased here.

My recent Journal of Asian Studies article on the Japanese post-war nuclear power industry, co-authored with Daniel P. Aldrich (see 'Publications' tab), can be accessed here.

Other Expertise

Japan's post-war nuclear power industry; discourses of furusato (hometown) in modern Japan; national and local memory-construction in contemporary Japan.

Following the March 2011 tsunami and nuclear crisis, I have written opinion pieces on Japan's nuclear power industry for The Guardian: 'After Fukushima, Japan's "authority myth" is crumbling' , and 'Is Japan really winding back on nuclear?', plus articles for Reuters 'Breaking Views' and History Workshop.

My broadcast media work includes appearances as a guest panellist on the BBC World Service's 'Weekend World Today' and Radio 3's 'Night Waves' (available on BBC iPlayer).

Current Work

In academic year 2011-2012, I am part of a research team at Heidelberg University's Excellence Cluster 'Asia and Europe': my work, under the leadership of Prof. Harald Fuess, is on a project entitled, 'The Asian Sea: A Transnational Maritime History of the Age of Imperialism, 1850-1918'.

I am also a member a research team, led by Dr. Peter Matanle (University of Sheffield) and Prof. Anthony S. Rausch (Hirosaki University), which has just published Japan's Shrinking Regions in the 21st Century: Contemporary Responses to Depopulation and Socioeconomic Decline (Cambria Press, 2011).

I have just finished a chapter, 'Searching for furusato history in Kaminoseki', to be published in Christopher Gerteis and Timothy S. George (eds.), Japan since 1945: from Postwar to Post-Bubble (Continuum, forthcoming).

Future Research

In addition to my new work on maritime history, I shall be publishing a chapter in Tosh Minohara, Tze-ki Hon, and Evan Dawley (eds.), The Decade of the Great War: Japan and the Wider World in the 1910s (Brill, 2014). My chapter is provisionally entitled, 'A Japanese Village and its Worlds: The Kaminoseki diaspora at home and abroad'.

Postgraduate Supervision

I am happy to supervise postgraduate dissertations on any aspect of modern Japan that relates to my own research interests.

Esteem Indicators

Honorary Treasurer, British Association of Japanese Studies (2009-2011)

Undergraduate Teaching

HIS1030 Evidence and Argument
HIS2013 Japan under the Tokugawa shogunate, 1600-1868
HIS2014 Japan since 1868
HIS3060 The Japanese Revolution of 1868
HIS3061 Japan and the Second World War
HIS3008 Reading History
HIS3010 Writing History

Postgraduate Teaching

HIS8055 Keywords in East Asian History (Module Leader)

HIS8001 Identities and Material Culture in East Asian History (Module Leader)

HIS8023 MA Dissertation

• Dusinberre M. Hard Times in the Hometown: A History of Community Survival in Modern Japan. Honolulu, Hawaii, USA: University of Hawai'i Press, 2012. In Press.
• Dusinberre M, Aldrich DP. Hatoko Comes Home: Civil Society and Nuclear Power in Japan. The Journal of Asian Studies 2011, 70(3), 683-705.
• Dusinberre M, David A, Evans N, Matanle P, Mizohata S. Introducing Japan's Shrinking Regions. In: Matanle, P., Rausch, A., Shrinking Regions Research Group, ed. Japan's Shrinking Regions in the 21st Century: Contemporary Responses to Depopulation and Socioeconomic Decline. Amherst, New York: Cambria Press, 2011, pp.17-38.
• Dusinberre M. Unread relics of a transnational 'hometown' in rural western Japan. Japan Forum 2008, 20(3), 305-335.