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Center forSoutheast Asian Studies Kyoto University

About Staff

About Staff: FY2007

SHIRAISHI, Takashi

  • Area Studies III
  • Japanese Visiting Scholar (Professor)
  • B. A. in International Relations, The University of Tokyo, 1972
    Ph. D. in History, Cornell University, 1986

Current Research Interests

  1. The rise of China and the transformation of its vicinities
  2. The formation of East Asia
  3. Macro-comparative history of state formations in Southeast Asia

Scene of the July 2004 presidential election in downtown Jakarta

I am currently working on the topic, “The Rise of China and the Transformation of Its Vicinities.” In this research, I examine the ways in which Southeast Asian countries engage China both multilaterally and bilaterally while keeping in mind the broader transformation in the regional order.
In the longer term, I am working on three book projects. The first is concerned with the formation of East Asia (with special emphasis on Southeast Asia) over a period from the mid-1980s to the late 1990s. During this time the Cold War came to an end, China transformed itself into a socialist market economy, the Japanese economy boomed and busted, and de-facto economic integration of East Asia proceeded with the deepening and expansion of business networks. The second project is a macro-comparative history of state formations in Southeast Asia, particularly Malaysia/Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Burma. This book project builds on my previous collection of essays, Umi no Teikoku(Empire of the Seas: The Making of a Region). My third project takes up where An Age in Motion: Popular Radicalism in Java 1912-1926 left off by investigating the historical origins of surveillance politics in Indonesia from 1927 to 1941.