On 19 April 2013, a conference, “The Future of Southeast Asia Viewed from Historical Area Studies: in Memory of Professor Sakurai Yumio” was held in honor of Sakurai Yumio, former visiting professor at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS). To the sadness of many, Sakurai suddenly passed away on 17 December 2012. He was a leading Japanese expert in historical and area studies, and many scholars both young and old gathered to give presentations in his honor.

Held at Inamori Foundation Memorial Hall, almost 80 participants from all over Japan gathered, among them retired CSEAS faculty members, colleagues from academic societies and research groups who had been associated with the late professor, and current Southeast Asian postgraduate students.

Two sessions were held in his honor, “Historical Studies and the Fieldwork: Viewed from Historical Studies of Vietnam, Southeast Asia and Asian Waters” was hosted by Momoki Shiro (Osaka University) and Okamoto Hiromichi (Prefectural University of Hiroshima). The second, “Area Studies and Historical Area Studies: Viewing Southeast Asia from its Ecological Foundations and Rural Communities” was hosted by Emeritus Professor Takaya Yoshikazu (Kyoto University) and Yanagisawa Masayuki (Center for Integrated Area Studies (CIAS)) all paid tribute to Sakurai’s achievements.

All paid tribute to the trajectory of Sakurai’s research with participants reflecting upon the various perspectives and the wide range of fields that he explored over his productive ­academic career.

The late Sakurai began his career as an assistant at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, the predecessor of CSEAS in 1977, before assuming the position of associate professor at the Department of Oriental History in the Faculty of Literature at Tokyo University in 1990. After retiring in 2007, he rejoined CSEAS as a visiting professor.

Fukami Sumio (Momoyama Gakuin University) paid tribute to Sakurai and the influence he had on textbooks. He discussed how a Japanese high school text book (published by Tokyo Shoseki and compiled by Sakurai) on world history came to deal with history of Southeast Asia as an independent issue and incorporate it as part of a broader view of history.

Visiting Professor Kato Tsuyoshi (Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, (RIHN)) spoke about Sakurai’s recognition of Southeast Asia. Sakurai was inclined to categorize Southeast Asia’s history and argued that its development stage theory arose from terms originating from the region, such as “Negara” and “Pura.”2 He had come to argue the differences of cultures and civilizations across certain periods of time and Kato noted how the fundamentals of Sakurai’s research might have been greatly influenced by postwar historical studies in Japan. This led him to development stage theory, inflected by historical materialism as well as the history of villages in Vietnam which all influenced his descriptions of the overall history of Southeast Asia as a region.

Takaya Yoshikazu shared a moment by revealing that Sakurai had recently intended to write a novel titled “The Vietnamese” by assuming the persona of one of them, and that he aimed to go as far as anecdotally explore both the method and stance of area studies, as well to test the limits of area studies achieved as a researcher.

When Sakurai was first at CSEAS, there was not yet a momentum toward establishing cross disciplinary exchanges among different areas of interest; however, there were people who were already regarding this as an issue of importance, people such as Tsuchiya Kenji, Yano Toru, and Murai Yoshinori. We will never know if Sakurai had reached a point where he identified himself with the Vietnamese, yet his straightforward attitude in achieving his goals is worthy of praise.

Professor Shibayama Mamoru (CIAS) commented that ­Sakurai’s vast accumulation of data for starting his research on Bach Coc villages in the Red River Delta in 1993 was an indication of his desire to stick to facts so as to understand his subject matter. As such, Sakurai’s more recent approaches to Area Informatics (AI) also reflected his ongoing efforts to overcome the difficulties in capturing different realities within a broad field through the application of the latest Information Science (IS) technology.

Toward the end of the conference one poignant question was raised by a younger scholar, a graduate student at the Graduate School of Asian and African Studies (ASAFAS) who did not know Sakurai;

“With research interests, there are two stances. One is to stay close to the area, and the other is to take a step back to secure objectivity. I wonder if area studies today has become too academic.”